This multidisciplinary program, funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, will offer five weeks of context-rich and critical engagement with Confucian teachings, practices and primary texts (in translation), examining how they have shaped and been shaped by the cultures and societies of China, Korea, Japan and Vietnam. The program will consider how Confucianism addressed both personal and social needs in ways that were inseparable from the dynamics of intellectual exchange, artistic production, social organization and politics.
Category Archives: Confucianism
Wong Reviews Cline, Families of Virtue
Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews
2015.11.28 View this Review Online View Other NDPR Reviews
Erin M. Cline, Families of Virtue: Confucian and Western Views on Childhood Development, Columbia University Press, 2015, 342pp., $30.00 (pbk), ISBN 9780231171557 .
Reviewed by David B. Wong, Duke University
This book attributes to early Confucianism the view that the parent-child relationship has a “unique and irreplaceable” role in early moral development (xi) and goes on to argue that this view is right. In the course of making this argument Erin M. Cline provides careful and perceptive comparative readings of early Confucian texts and a very wide range of texts in the Western tradition, from Plato, Aristotle, Locke, and Rousseau to contemporary feminists, to show how unusual and in-depth the insights of Confucian thinkers were. She draws from a wide range of empirical studies to support the Confucian view. There is much in this book that will be of value to anyone with interests in the fields of the philosophy and psychology of moral development, feminist care ethics, and comparative ethics. Cline’s comparison of Confucian and feminist views, which have the most to say about parent-child relationships, is informative and balanced. It is not clear that she has fully established the unique and irreplaceable role of the parent-child relationship, but Cline surely has given enough argument to establish that the relationship is one of the most important factors, perhaps the most important single factor, in moral development, and she raises good questions as to why U.S. society largely neglects its importance in its public policies.
Two On-Line Analects Resources
Two quite different approaches to the Analects:
- Robert Eno’s “On-Line Teaching Translation“
- An on-line project to present “the Analects of Confucius for a modern American audience“
Confucianism in Modern America?
Earlier in the fall, Sam Crane posted a conference paper of his called “Confucianism in Modern American Life” at his blog. There was a bit of discussion there, as well as a longer response here. This is a subject in which I am very interested, and would certainly welcome any further thoughts anyone wants to share.
Two Books on Korean Confucianism
Over the past year, Edward Chung has published two significant books on Korean Confucianism, one a translation and one an overview. Please read on for details.
Confucian Tradition panels at AAR
The annual American Academy of Religion meeting is coming up, with a number of promising-sounding panels. Here are those cosponsored or co-sponsored by the Confucian Traditions group:
Journal of Confucian Philosophy and Culture
The Journal of Confucian Philosophy and Culture has been published by the by the Institute of Confucian Philosophy and Culture (ICPC) at Sungkyunkwan Univesity (SKKU) in Korea since 2001. The Journal publishes articles in English and in Chinese; PDFs of all issues are available on-line here. There is a lot of high-quality content here, with a particular focus on Chinese and Korean Neo-Confucianism.
In addition, the journal welcomes English-language submissions (which will be double-blind reviewed). For more details, see here.
Upcoming Lecture on Japanese Confucianism
Friday, Nov. 20, 3:00pm at Kent Hall 403 (Columbia University), the ever-stimulating Takahiro Nakajima will speak on “Confucianism for the People in Modern Japan: Ishizaki Tōgoku and Osaka Yōmei Gakkai.” For more information, see here.
New book by Sarah Allan
Just published: Sarah Allan, Buried Ideas: Legends of Abdication and Ideal Government in Early Chinese Bamboo-slip Manuscripts (SUNY Press, 2015). Note that it contains translations of the excavated texts that she discusses.
Book on Kang Xiaoguang
Kang Xiaoguang is an interesting contemporary Chinese social scientist, public intellectual, and promoter of a particular brand of Confucianism; I wrote about him a bit in Contemporary Confucian Political Philosophy. I have now learned that there is an English-language book about him: Monika Gaenssbauer, Confucianism and Social Issues in China — the Academician Kang Xiaoguang: Investigations into NGOs in China, the Falun Gong, Chinese Reportage, and the Confucian Tradition (Projectverlag, 2011). I will have to take a look!
