Category Archives: Books of Interest

New Book: Rawson, Life and Afterlife in Ancient China

Penguin has recently published Jessica Rawson’s new book Life and Afterlife in Ancient China. Rawson’s new book is a meant to tell a epic new history of Ancient China through the prism of a dozen extraordinary tombs. Life and Afterlife in Ancient China illuminates a constellation of beliefs about life and death very different from our own and provides a remarkable new perspective on one of the oldest civilisations in the world. Please click here for more information on the book or to purchase a copy.

New Book: The Confucian Tradition

Bridge 21 Publications is happy to announce that they have recently published a new book titled The Confucian Tradition: Between Religion and Humanism by Guoxiang Peng. In this book, the author reviews the Confucian tradition through two concepts: religion and humanities. The book covers the major phases of the development of Confucianism and includes relevant ideas of modern Western disciplines even going so far as the compare Eastern and Western thinkers. Please click here to check out the book and for more information.

New Book: Galvany, ed., The Craft of Oblivion

SUNY Press has just released a new volume entitled “The Craft of Oblivion: Forgetting and Memory in Ancient China” edited by Albert Galvany. It is an innovative volume that aims to study, for the first time, the intersections between forgetting and remembering in classical Chinese civilization. Drawing on perspectives from history, philosophy, literature, and religion, and examining both transmitted texts and excavated materials, the contributors to this volume analyze various ways of understanding oblivion and its fertile relations with memory in ancient China. Please click here (https://sunypress.edu/Books/T/The-Craft-of-Oblivion) to read more about the book or to purchase it.

TODAY: On-line Book Symposium: Tseng, Confucian Liberalism

The Center for East Asian and Comparative Philosophy at the City University of Hong Kong is hosting an on-line book symposium on Roy Tseng’s recent book, Confucian Liberalism. Speakers include Loubna El Amine, Dongxian Jiang, Sungmoon Kim, and myself, as well as responses from Roy. We begin at 9:00am Hong Kong time on June 8, which is 9:00pm EST on Wednesday evening, June 7. Details are on the poster here.

New Book: Key Concepts in World Philosophies

Bloomsbury has recently published a new book titled Key Concepts in World Philosophies: A Toolkit for Philosophers edited by Sarah Flavel and Chiara Robbiano. This new book brings together 45 core ideas associated with a variety of different philosophers all across the globe. It utilizes a universal theme of self-cultivation and transformation in order to connect each concept. Please click here to read more about the book or to purchase it.

New Book: A Tripartite Self

Oxford University Press has recently published A Tripartite Self: Mind, Body, and Spirit in Early China by Lisa Raphals. In this book, the author argues that there was an important divergence in early China between the two views of the self. In one, mind and spirit are closely aligned, and are understood to rule the body as a ruler rules a state. But in the other, the person is tripartite, and mind and spirit are independent entities that cannot be reduced to a material-non-material binary.The book addresses both philosophical and technical literature (including evidence from Chinese excavated texts) to broaden a type of inquiry that frequently is applied only to philosophical texts. Please click here for more information.

New Book: The Evolution of Pragmatism in India

A new book has been published by the University of Chicago Press titled Evolution of Pragmatism in India: An Intellectual Biography of B.R. Ambedkar written by Scott R. Stroud.  In this book, Stroud delivers a comprehensive exploration of the influence of John Dewey’s pragmatism on Bhimrao Ambedkar. He focuses on not only on the philosophical ideas Dewey employs but also on how his persuasive techniques drew on pragmatism’s commitment to reconstruction. The author further argues that Ambedkar developed his own version of pragmatism—one influenced by his Indian context and his reconstructive interest in Buddhism. Please click here to learn more about the book or purchase it.