The Book of Mencius and Its Reception in China and Beyond PDF Download

Author: Junjie Huang
Publisher: Otto Harrassowitz Verlag
ISBN: 9783447056694
Category : Philosophy, Chinese
Languages : en
Pages : 252

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Book Description
The Mencius, attributed to the philosopher Mengzi (Lat. Mencius, ca. 370-290 BC), the "second Sage" of the Confucian school after its founder, is one of the most prominent of all Chinese classics, with a great impact on the historical development of Confucianism. Today, it serves as one of the determinants for positioning Confucianism in the modern world, and it is the most discussed Chinese philosophical text in the context of the search for universally valid ethical norms and democracy. The essays collected in this volume by scholars from Taiwan, Japan and Germany focus on various aspect of the reception of the work in East Asia from the Song-Dynasty to the present day. They call into mind the signifance of a thinker who according to Albert Schweitzer is "the most modern one of all thinkers of antiquity".

Author: Yang Xiao
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3031276205
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 702

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Book Description
This book is about the philosophical, historical, and interpretative aspects of Mencius. It explores his influence, reception, and relevance in China from the third century BCE to the present, as well as offers comparative studies of Mencius and major figures in the history of Chinese and Western philosophy. With 34 accessible articles written by leading philosophers and scholars, the Dao Companion to the Philosophy of Mencius provides both broad pictures and in-depth discussions regarding the work of one of the most important and influential Chinese philosophers. It covers his normative ethics, meta-ethics, political philosophy, epistemology and moral psychology. The last section of the volume, “Mencius and Western Philosophers: Comparative Perspectives,” explicitly puts him in dialogue with major Western philosophers. The Dao Companion to the Philosophy of Mencius serves as an essential volume for college students, graduate students, and scholars who study and teach Mencius as well as Chinese philosophy and comparative philosophy in general.​

Author: Wai-ming Ng
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 1438473079
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 290

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Book Description
Pioneering study of the localization of Chinese culture in early modern Japan, using legends, classics, and historical terms as case studies. While current scholarship on Tokugawa Japan (1603–1868) tends to see China as either a model or “the Other,” Wai-ming Ng’s pioneering and ambitious study offers a new perspective by suggesting that Chinese culture also functioned as a collection of “cultural building blocks” that were selectively introduced and then modified to fit into the Japanese tradition. Chinese terms and forms survived, but the substance and the spirit were made Japanese. This borrowing of Chinese terms and forms to express Japanese ideas and feelings could result in the same things having different meanings in China and Japan, and this process can be observed in the ways in which Tokugawa Japanese reinterpreted Chinese legends, Confucian classics, and historical terms. Ng breaks down the longstanding dichotomies between model and “the Other,” civilization and barbarism, as well as center and periphery that have been used to define Sino-Japanese cultural exchange. He argues that Japanese culture was by no means merely an extended version of Chinese culture, and Japan’s uses and interpretations of Chinese elements were not simply deviations from the original teachings. By replacing a Sinocentric perspective with a cross-cultural one, Ng’s study represents a step forward in the study of Tokugawa intellectual history. “What the author has done with great success is to break down the longstanding dichotomies that have been established in prior scholarship between center and margins, self and ‘other,’ empire and tributary states, civilization and barbarism, and so forth, treating China and Japan on equal terms. An impressive achievement.” — Richard J. Smith, author of The Qing Dynasty and Traditional Chinese Culture

Author: Kerry Brown
Publisher: Berkshire Publishing Group
ISBN: 1933782617
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 1744

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Book Description
The Berkshire Dictionary of Chinese Biography, the first publication of its kind since 1898, is the work of more than one hundred internationally recognized experts from nearly a dozen countries. It has been designed to satisfy the growing thirst of students, researchers, professionals, and general readers for knowledge about China. It makes the entire span of Chinese history manageable by introducing the reader to emperors, politicians, poets, writers, artists, scientists, explorers, and philosophers who have shaped and transformed China over the course of five thousand years. In 135 entries, ranging from 1,000 to 8,000 words and written by some of the world's leading China scholars, the Berkshire Dictionary of Chinese Biography takes the reader from the important (even if possibly mythological) figures of ancient China to Communist leaders Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping. The in-depth essays provide rich historical context, and create a compelling narrative that weaves abstract concepts and disparate events into a coherent story. Cross-references between the articles show the connections between times, places, movements, events, and individuals.

Author: Vincent S. Leung
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108425720
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 215

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Book Description
History mattered to the political elite in ancient China. Leung explores why it was so important and to what end.

Author: Christopher Hancock
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 0567657698
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 697

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Book Description
Christianity and Confucianism: Culture, Faith and Politics, sets comparative textual analysis against the backcloth of 2000 years of cultural, political, and religious interaction between China and the West. As the world responds to China's rise and China positions herself for global engagement, this major new study reawakens and revises an ancient conversation. As a generous introduction to biblical Christianity and the Confucian Classics, Christianity and Confucianism tells a remarkable story of mutual formation and cultural indebtedness. East and West are shown to have shaped the mind, heart, culture, philosophy and politics of the other - and far more, perhaps, than either knows or would want to admit. Christopher Hancock has provided a rich and stimulating resource for scholars and students, diplomats and social scientists, devotees of culture and those who pursue wisdom and peace today.

Author: Anonymous
Publisher: Good Press
ISBN:
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 340

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Book Description
These Four Books are Chinese classic texts illustrating the core value and belief systems in Confucianism. They were selected by Zhu Xi in the Song dynasty to serve as general introduction to Confucian thought, and they were, in the Ming and Qing dynasties, made the core of the official curriculum for the civil service examinations. Contents: Great Learning Doctrine of the Mean Analects Mencius

Author: Mencius
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231122055
Category : Philosophy, Chinese
Languages : en
Pages : 210

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Book Description
Known throughout East Asia as Mengzi, or "Master Meng," Mencius (391-308 B.C.E.) was a Chinese philosopher of the late Zhou dynasty, an instrumental figure in the spread of the Confucian tradition, and a brilliant illuminator of its ideas. Mencius was active during the Warring States Period (403-221 B.C.E.), in which competing powers sought to control the declining Zhou empire. Like Confucius, Mencius journeyed to one feudal court after another, searching for a proper lord who could put his teachings into practice. Only a leader who possessed the moral qualities of a true king could unify China, Mencius believed, and in his defense of Zhou rule and Confucian philosophy, he developed an innovative and highly nuanced approach to understanding politics, self-cultivation, and human nature, profoundly influencing the course of Confucian thought and East Asian culture. Mencius is a record of the philosopher's conversations with warring lords, disciples, and adversaries of the Way, as well as a collection of pronouncements on government, human nature, and a variety of other philosophical and political subjects. Mencius is largely concerned with the motivations of human actors and their capacity for mutual respect. He builds on the Confucian idea of ren, or humaneness, and places it alongside the complementary principle of yi, or rightness, advancing a complex notion of what is right for certain individuals as they perform distinct roles in specific situations. Consequently, Mencius's impact was felt not only in the thought of the intellectual and social elite but also in the value and belief systems of all Chinese people.

Author: Junjie Huang
Publisher: Transaction Publishers
ISBN: 9781412828499
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 344

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Book Description
Considered second only to Confucius in the history of Chinese thought, Mencius (371?-289 b.c.), was a moral philosopher whose arguments, while pragmatically rooted in the political and social conditions of his time, go beyond particular situations to probe their origins and speculate on their larger implications. His writings constitute a living tradition in China and the world at large. Sinological studies of Mencius have long emphasized philological and archaeological research, situating the texts mainly in Chinese history. Critical appraisal of the texts lends itself to Western traditions of interpretation. In Mencian Hermeneutics, Chun-chieh Huang utilizes both approaches to offer a historical and universal understanding of Mencius. Huang builds from the premise that Mencius' thinking and all Chinese thought are sociopolitical in tone and humanistic and metaphysical in nature and range. The strength of Mencius' thought lies in the organic mutuality of these factors. His arguments are shaped by the politics, literature, and economics of his age. At the same time, the concrete programs he proposed and his sharp criticisms of alternative policies are rooted in the metaphysical soil of man and the world, human solidarity and cosmic symbiosis, and human nature within the natural world. The book is divided into two parts. Part 1 analyzes the concrete as opposed to the theoretical character of Mencius' thought. Huang demonstrates the organic unity of his intellectual system with its concepts of linkage between innermost to outermost, self to social, rightness vs. profit, and his political ideal of populist government through familial empathy. Part 2 deals with the long historical odyssey of Mencius' work in China's interpretive tradition, an exegetical process similar in its origins to Western hermeneutics. In comparing and analyzing these approaches to Mencius, Huang seeks to show that Chinese hermeneutics is more than an activity of intellectual curiosity about the ancient world, but is instead a means to sociopolitical action, an application in society of the fruits of personal cultivation. Mencian Hermeneutics will be of interest to Chinese area specialists, sociologists, literary scholars, and philosophers. Chun-chieh Huang is a professor of history and chairman of the Commission of General Education at National Taiwan University in Taipei. He is the author of five books on Confucianism and five books on Taiwan.

Author: Joseph Andrew Bjelde
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030708179
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 277

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Book Description
This book provides a collection of essays representing the state of the art in the research into argumentation in classical antiquity. It contains essays from leading and up and coming scholars on figures as diverse as Parmenides, Gorgias, Seneca, and Classical Chinese "wandering persuaders." The book includes contributions from specialists in the history of philosophy as well as specialists in contemporary argumentation theory, and stimulates the dialogue between scholars studying issues relating to argumentation theory in ancient philosophy and contemporary argumentation theorists. Furthermore, the book sets the direction for research into argumentation in antiquity by encouraging an engagement with a broader range of historical figures, and closer collaboration between contemporary concerns and the history of philosophy.