I’ve written a review of Paul Goldin’s book, Confucianism, for Dao. I don’t know when it (the review, that is) will come out, but I’ve posted roughly the first half of it below. [Addendum (1/19/12): some general discussion of the book by Bill Haines and others starts at comment 17.]
Category Archives: Confucianism
Social Media and Confucian Way of Life: A Losing Battle?
Wong Pak Hang, a PhD reasearcher at the University of Twente in the Netherlands, raised a fascinating issue on our Question Board, which I am re-posting here (with permission) for broader discussion. He introduces the issue as follows:
As an on-going project (see also, Dao, Harmony and Personhood: Towards a Confucian Ethics of Technology), I have attempted to analyse new media (or, information technology) from a Confucian perspective. But, it is only until recently that I really started to examine the relation between (or, in fact, the compatibility of) social media and the Confucian way of life. And, I started with the hope that Confucian ethics/Confucian philosophy will have something positive to contribute to the existing philosophical discussion on the benefits and harms. Unfortunately, when I proceed with my analysis, it becomes apparent that the Confucian way of life seems to be rather incompatible with the design (and, depends on how one theorises the relations between design and use, use) of social media. So, the obvious question is: Is the Confucian way of life impractical and/or inadequate, if social media is here to stay?
Read on for some fascinating details… Continue reading →
How China Can Defeat America — Confucianism! NYT op-ed
A New York Times op-ed piece by Yan Xuetong, professor of Political Science at Tsinghua University, that cites “humane authority” in the “battle for people’s hearts and minds” as the key to victory. Here is the beginning of the piece:
WITH China’s growing influence over the global economy, and its increasing ability to project military power, competition between the United States and China is inevitable. Leaders of both countries assert optimistically that the competition can be managed without clashes that threaten the global order.
Most academic analysts are not so sanguine. If history is any guide, China’s rise does indeed pose a challenge to America. Rising powers seek to gain more authority in the global system, and declining powers rarely go down without a fight. And given the differences between the Chinese and American political systems, pessimists might believe that there is an even higher likelihood of war.
I am a political realist. Western analysts have labeled my political views “hawkish,” and the truth is that I have never overvalued the importance of morality in international relations. But realism does not mean that politicians should be concerned only with military and economic might. In fact, morality can play a key role in shaping international competition between political powers — and separating the winners from the losers.
I came to this conclusion from studying ancient Chinese political theorists like Guanzi, Confucius, Xunzi and Mencius. They were writing in the pre-Qin period, before China was unified as an empire more than 2,000 years ago — a world in which small countries were competing ruthlessly for territorial advantage.
To read the full op-ed piece, follow the permalink above. Comments welcome!
Confucius Peace Prize
…goes to Vladimir Putin (!). Thank you, Yvgeny, for alerting us to this on the Question Board. Here is a permalink to the New York Times article about it, and below is a lead from that article:
BEIJING — The Chinese committee that awarded this year’s Confucius Peace Prize minced no words in honoring the winner, Vladimir V. Putin, prime minister of Russia.
It praised his decision to go to war in Chechnya in 1999.
“His iron hand and toughness revealed in this war impressed the Russians a lot, and he was regarded to be capable of bringing safety and stability to Russia,” read an English version of the committee’s statement. “He became the antiterrorist No. 1 and the national hero.”
Not only that, it applauded him for “acting as the propagandist of current political events” while still in high school, and for being selected to join the K.G.B. while in college, “which made true his teenage dream of joining the K.G.B.” Much later, of course, came the “large-scale military action towards the illegal armed forces in Grozny, Chechnya.”
This may be disturbing to some, at different levels. Relevant to the blog’s concerns, Vygeny wonders if this is further reason to think that “Confucianism is whatever people in official positions want it to become, that it is a foldable doctrine.” Continue reading →
New doctoral program in Chinese Thought at Indiana
With applications for graduate programs due in the next couple of months I thought I’d briefly announce the development of a new program in Chinese thought at Indiana University. I’ve posted a brief description below, but more information can be found at this website (http://www.indiana.edu/~relstud/grad/tracks.shtml#chinesethought). With two faculty in the department working on Confucian thought, and good support from strong departments of Philosophy and East Asian Languages and Cultures, we hope to provide a solid option for those looking to do graduate work in Chinese philosophy within the context of a religious studies department.
Description:
This field trains students to produce original research on Chinese philosophical and religious thought. It also provides students with the skills and knowledge necessary to teach effectively about the religious traditions of East Asia. Students in this field learn to interpret the texts of early China in light of the various disciplines involved in the comparative study of religion, including philosophy, history, philology, and anthropology. While students will gain a broad knowledge of Chinese texts, the current focus of this field is the early period of Confucianism (roughly the 6th century BCE through the 3rd century CE). However, concentrating on another time period is possible, depending on previous student training.
Bongrae Seok lecture at Columbia this Friday
THE COLUMBIA SOCIETY FOR COMPARATIVE PHILOSOPHY welcomes BONGRAE SEOK (Alvernia University), with formal responses by HAGOP SARKISSIAN (Baruch College, CUNY). Please join us in RM 101 IN THE DEPARTMENT OF RELIGION at Columbia University on November 11th at 5:30 for his lecture entitled, “Embodied Moral Psychology of Confucian Heart.” Continue reading →
Review of Goldin, Confucianism
A glowing review by Yu Kam-por of Paul Goldin’s book Confucianism (Acumen, 2011) has just appeared. Among other things, Yu highlight’s Goldin’s discussion of “shu.” Goldin’s book concentrates on the classical period, concluding with a short though informative chapter on “Neo-Confucianism and Confucianism Today.”
Ruism and free speech
I’ve been giving some thought to this topic quite a bit, most recently spurred on by a response to an article by Daniel Bell that I’m writing for a Chinese journal. I won’t go into Bell’s argument in any detail, but I find significantly greater restrictions on speech accepted and even advocated by classical Ruists than in liberalism. On certain topics (criticizing the ruler/government) certain people (Ruists, or maybe the elite more generally) should speak out, though even here historically Ruists have generally accepted that they might be punished for doing so. On other topics, particularly those that might threaten social harmony and stability, they seem quite willing to ban certain kinds of expression. Continue reading →
Billioud on the "Confucian Revival"
Several of us have written a bit on the blog about manifestations of the “Confucian revival” underway in China. I want to call readers’ attention to an excellent recent article by Sébastien Billioud of the University of Paris, published in Oriens Extremus 49 (2010), called “Carrying the Confucian Torch to the Masses: The Challenge of Structuring the Confucian Revival in the People’s Republic of China” Here is an except from the first paragraph: Continue reading →
Confucianism as a Cult of "Mamas' Boys"
Guest post by Brian Griffith.
Brian Griffith is an independent historian, whose previous books are The Gardens of Their Dreams: Desertification and Culture in World History, and Correcting Jesus: 2000 Years of Changing the Story. The Fall and Rise of Chinese Goddesses is due to be published in early 2012; the following is an excerpt from it. Brian Griffith lives in Toronto; his email is pkbgriffith@yahoo.ca.
Comments and questions are welcome! Brian will reply to them himself.
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Confucianism is generally seen as China’s bastion of patriarchal tradition, with a virtually Arabian array of sanctified controls on women. But before it was a state-backed cult of obedience to superiors, Confucianism was a protest movement against warlords, and a defense of ancient village values. In a sense, the first Confucian teachers were men standing up for their mothers’ values. They were mamas’ boys—and I mean this in a good sense.
