Category Archives: Books of Interest

Book of Interest: The Gongsun Longzi and Other Neglected Texts

A book we missed here on the blog when it came out: Rafael Suter , Lisa Indraccolo, and Wolfgang Behr, The Gongsun Longzi and Other Neglected Texts: Aligning Philosophical and Philological Perspectives (De Gruyter 2020)

The Gongsun Longzi is often considered the only extant work of the Classical Chinese “School of Names”, an early intellectual tradition (trad. dated to the 4th cent. B.C.) mainly concerned with logic and the philosophy of language. The book is a heterogeneous collection of five chapters that include short treatises and largely fictive dialogues between an anonymous persuader and his opponent, which typically revolve around a paradoxical claim. Its value as a testimony to Early Chinese philosophy, however, is somewhat controversial due to the intricate textual history of the text and our limited knowledge about its intellectual backgrounds. This volume gathers contributions by leading specialists in the fields of Classical Chinese philosophy, philology, logic, and linguistics. Besides an overview of the scholarly literature on the topic and a detailed account of the reception of the text throughout time, it presents fresh insights into philological and philosophical problems raised by the Gongsun Longzi and other closely-related texts equally attributed to the “School of Names”.

To access the book for further reading, please visit this site.

New Book: Chan, Towards Confucian Republicanism

Oxford has recently published Elton Chan’s Towards Confucian Republicanism: Democracy as Virtue Politics. In the book, Chan develops a theoretical framework of Confucianism for the twenty-first century. Chan argues that liberal Confucians must take seriously the internal authoritarian leanings of Confucianism–and then argue against such strands of the Confucian tradition. He shows that Confucians are keen on concentrating power in the hands of the virtuous not merely for promoting order and material livelihood, but also for general moral cultivation. Yet this use of political and moral hierarchy as institutional platforms for perfectionist development is self-defeating.

To counter the authoritarian turn in Confucian scholarship, Chan articulates a vision of a hybrid political order that brings together Confucianism and republican democracy. He makes the case that Confucianism stands a much higher chance of achieving its political and moral ideals–good governance and collective virtuous cultivation–when merged with republicanism. Covering a uniquely wide range of Confucian classics and outlining his novel vision for Confucianism, Chan addresses pressing issues in contemporary political philosophy, including virtue politics, balance of power, civic education, public reason constraint, and the role of civil society.

To access the book for further reading, please visit this site.

New Book: Angle and Jin, eds., Progressive Confucianism and Its Critics

I am happy to announce the publication of a new book, Stephen C. Angle and Yutang Jin, eds., Progressive Confucianism and Its Critics: Dialogues from the Confucian Heartland (Routledge, 2025). More information on the book can be found here. This book is a translation into English of a series of dialogues that I held with Chinese Confucians in Beijing in the spring of 2017. The Introduction and part of the first dialogue are available at Amazon here, in case you’d like to learn more. Enjoy!

Book of Interest: Contemporary Politics and Classical Chinese Thought, Toward Globalizing Political Philosophy

Oxford has recently published Contemporary Politics and Classical Chinese Thought: Toward Globalizing Political Philosophy. The book takes up the call of globalizing contemporary applied political philosophy and applies classical Chinese thought to a series of current sociopolitical issues, including the construction and deconstruction of political narratives; the legal standing of robots; the relationships among people, communities, and the environment; the funding (or defunding) of police; the status of private militias; and the question of justified revolution in liberal democracies, among others. To make progress on the thorniest sociopolitical issues facing the world, it is imperative to bring these previously underutilized and understudied resources to bear; only then might societies attain justice, peace, and flourishing equally enjoyed by all.

To access the book for further reading, please visit this site.

Book of Interest: Ethical Theory in Global Perspective

SUNY has published Michael Hemmingsen, ed., Ethical Theory in Global Perspective, an edited collection that aims to be an easy-to-teach introduction to ethical theory from a uniquely global perspective. In addition to key Western ethical theories—such as virtue ethics, consequentialism, various deontological theories, and care ethics—moral theories from a range of East Asian, South Asian, and African philosophical traditions and schools are also discussed, including Akan philosophy, Confucianism, Daoism, Buddhism, and both orthodox and heterodox schools of classical Indian philosophy.

To view the table of contents, read an excerpt, or to obtain copies, please visit this site.

New Book: Li, The Self in the West and East Asia

Jin Li’s new book, The Self in the West and East Asia: Being or Becoming, is now available from Polity (see here). In this book, Li synthesizes philosophy with psychological research to examine how the self is conceptualized and functions in two distinct cultural systems. Please read on for more information.

Continue reading →

Book of Interest: Those Who Act Ruin It, A Daoist Account of Moral Attunement by Jacob Bender

Drawing on both western and Chinese philosophy, Those Who Act Ruin It shows how Daoism presents a viable alternative to established moral theories. The Daoist, critical of the Confucian and Mohist discourses of their time, provides an account of morality that can best be understood as achieving an attunement to situations through the cultivation of habits. Furthermore, Daoism’s meta-ethical insights outline how moral philosophy, when theorized in a way that ignores our fundamental interdependence, devolves into moralistic narcissism. Another way of putting this, as the Daodejing states perfectly, is that “those who act ruin it” (為者敗之). Sensitive to this problem, the Daoist account of moral attunement can ameliorate social woes and not “ruin things.” In their moral attunement, Daoists can spontaneously respond to situations in ways that are sensitive to the underlying interdependence of all things.

The author Jacob Bender is Hua-Shan Associate Professor of Philosophy at Xidian University, Xi’an.

To read the table of contents or an excerpt, or purchase the book, please click this link.

Episode 6 of “This Is the Way”: Partiality and Justice

Episode 6 of This Is the Way is on Tao Jiang’s book. We don’t cover every one of the fascinating issues raised in the 516 pages of Professor Jiang’s volume, but we do cover some of the core topics, including (1) tensions between impartialist justice and partialist humaneness, and (2) Zhuangzi and freedom. A short description follows, with the usual supporting materials. Continue reading →

New Zhuangzi Translation: The Inner Chapters of the Zhuangzi 莊子內篇匯評詮釋

John R. Williams and Christoph Harbsmeier have recently published a new translation of the inner chapters of Zhuangzi: 莊子內篇匯評詮釋 The Inner Chapters of the Zhuangzi: With Copious Annotations from the Chinese Commentaries, through Harrassowitz Verlag. Wiesbaden. Hardcopies and e-copies are available through this link. (Williams notes that the press is not selling the book through Amazon, and so it is being listed there at an exorbitant price. It is more reasonably priced at the publisher’s site.)

Please read the introduction below to know more about the translation. Continue reading →