George Israel published a lovely on-line essay titled “The Trouble with Wang Yangming” a little over a year ago, but it remains highly relevant. If you are interested in all the enthusiasm about Wang in the contemporary PRC, or about Wang more generally, this is essential reading.
Category Archives: Articles of Interest
Ivanhoe and Lederman on Wang Yangming
In the most recent issue of the Journal of Confucian Philosophy and Culture, P. J. Ivanhoe published an essay engaging with Harvey Lederman’s account of Wang Yangming titled “The Introspective, Perceptual, and Spontaneous Response Models of Wang Yangming’s Philosophy.” Lederman has published a reply, currently uploaded to PhilPapers here. Enjoy!
PS–the Journal of Confucian Philosophy and Culture website was down for a week or more, apparently because Sungkyunkwan University (the host of JCPC) decided to block overseas access to protect itself from a spate of attacks from Chinese hackers … but the site is back up now and hopefully will remain so!
Articles on Confucianism and Just War
Two articles on Confucianism and Just War have been published in the latest Philosophy Compass:
- Sungmoon Kim, “The Violence of the Benevolent Ruler: Classical Confucianism and Punitive Expedition“
- Kurtis Hagen, “Mencius and Xunzi on the legitimate use of offensive force: A pacifistic critique of recent just war interpretations“
Enjoy!
Article of Interest: Extending Kindness: A Confucian Account
Waldemar Brys’ article “Extending Kindness: A Confucian Account” has recently been published in the Pacific Philosophical Quarterly. In this article, Brys argues that kindness cannot do all the theoretical work that Mengzi wants it to do if one interprets it as an emotion. Brys concludes in this article that the notion of extending kindness is best understood as the exercise of a capacity for intelligently performing kind actions. Please click here to read the article.
Jin on Mou’s Confucian Democracy in Political Theory
Yutang Jin’s article “Self-Restriction, Political Myth, and the Politics of the Ordinary: Mou Zongsan’s Confucian Democracy” has been published in Political Theory; read on for the abstract.
Xiang on Sinophobia
Shuchen Xiang (assistant professor of philosophy at Peking University) has just published “Sinophobia, American Imperialism, Disorder Without Responsibility” in Sartre Studies International. In light of the recent anti-Asian hate crimes in the United States, this paper asks the philosophical community to reflect on the relationship between racism and (American) imperialism as well as how this Sinophobia is symptomatic of an agent/community acting under “bad faith” who evades the more difficult problem of personal growth. The paper can be found here and can be downloaded here.
Article of Interest: Confucian Political Moralism
Wenqing Zhao’s article “Huang Zongxi’s Confucian political moralism” has recently been published in the British Journal for the History of Philosophy. In this paper, Zhao argues that the similarities that Huang Zongxi shares with liberalism and republicanism are superficial. Rather, Zhao illustrates how Huang’s political philosophy is best read as a decisive Confucian political moralism.
Angle on Confucian Leadership & Confucian Democracy
My article “Confucian Leadership Meets Confucian Democracy” has just been published in the Journal of Social and Political Philosophy (1:2). The abstract is below; full text is available here (through the end of October).
2021 Dao Annual Best Essay Award
Dao has established “The Annual Best Essay Award” since 2007. The editorial board has just finished its deliberation on the best essay published in 2021, and the award is given to:
Benoit Vermander, “Edit by Number: Looking at the Composition of the Huainanzi, and Beyond.” Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy 20 (2021): 459-498
Via a hermeneutics focused on numerology and concentric arrangements, the essay, which demonstrates familiarity with the germane historiography, literature, and theoretical apparatuses, offers an original construal of a textual universe in early China writings. Instead of taking for granted the organization and configuration, or the absence thereof, of these texts, it argues that there is a structural rhetoric. With particular reference to the Huainanzi, it lays bare the discernible and distinguishable patterns of textual composition while relating them to corresponding patterns of thinking. In so doing, it suggests the possibility and importance of looking beyond the writings’ intertextuality and toward their inter-structure.
The two runners-up are:
Yutang Jin, “Classic Confucian Thought and Political Meritocracy: A Text-based Critique.” Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy 20 (2021): 433-458, and
Ian Sullivan, “The Need for More than Role Relations: Queer Lives, Social Group Identities, and Confucian Self-cultivation.” Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy 20 (2021): 269-287
Springer has set the above three essays for free access.
Article of Interest: The Idea of Liberty
Sha Li’s article “Yan Fu, John Seeley, and the Idea of Liberty” has recently been published in Modern China. “This article advances a more precise appreciation of Yan Fu’s idea of liberty based on a close and contextualized reading of his Lectures on Politics.” This interpretation “exposes [Yan’s] own persistent views and tendencies. Specifically, Yan’s text adopts Seeley’s literal, neutral concept of liberty while extending its use as security against political tyranny.”
