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!
Category Archives: China
More on Bell’s “China Model”
Last week Daniel Bell published an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, “Troubles for the ‘China Model’: Meritocracy has worked for Beijing, but to survive, the system needs more openness.” And you might also be interested in this review by Thomas Kelloggg, on ChinaFile.
Panel with Daniel Bell on The China Model at Duke
Daniel Bell will join five panelists to discuss his book The China Model: Political Meritocracy and the Limits of Democracy (Princeton, 2015) at Duke University on Monday, October 19, 5-6:30pm. Details are here.
Jenco Reviews Angle, Contemporary Confucian Political Philosophy
Leigh Jenco’s review of my Contemporary Confucian Political Philosophy: Toward Progressive Confucianism (Polity, 2013) has been published in the Journal of Moral Philosophy 12(5).
Harvard Lecture: Ethics and Professions in Asia
Ethics and the Professions – Good Practitioners in a Rising Asia
Friday, October 16, 2015, 12:15pm
S153, 1st Floor, CGIS South, 1730 Cambridge St., Cambridge, MA
Kenneth Winston, Visiting Scholar, Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation, Harvard Kennedy School
Many Asian countries are in transition, as they struggle to meet the demands of a global world. This struggle is not only economic and political; it is moral. Simply put, it is a struggle to preserve what one believes to be of value in one’s own culture or tradition while responding to new circumstances and participating in new relationships. Thus, it often involves a hybrid of traditional beliefs and transplanted values, which makes Asian countries fascinating sites for the study of political and ethical development. In particular, emerging democratic aspirations and increasing commitment to standards of professionalism are constituent elements of the new moral environment in Asia. As a result, the ethical challenges faced by practitioners have a special urgency and demand close attention. This talk presents a general framework for thinking about these challenges, focusing on the kinds of moral competence professionals require in working for the good of others.
Jiwei Ci’s Upcoming Visit to Harvard
Philosopher Jiwei Ci from the University of Hong Kong will be spending a couple weeks at Harvard in November and giving a series of lectures. The details here here: Fairbank Democracy and China poster. There will also be a one-day conference on Friday, November 13 titled “Democracy and China: Philosophical-Poltical Reflections” with a number of speakers, and Prof. Ci’s commentary. (I’ll post details of that once it has been finalized.)
New book on Confucian Revival
An important new book on the revival of Confucianism in China has now appeared in English: The Sage and the People, by Sebastien Billioud and Joel Thoraval.
Based on almost a decade of fieldwork and a cross-disciplinary approach (anthropology, sociology, history), this book explores the popular revival of Confucianism that has taken place in China since the beginning of the twenty-first century. It does not primarily focus on intellectual or normative discourses but on the reappropriation and reinvention of popular practices in society. Analyzing empirically cases and narratives of activists involved in this “revival,” it attempts to understand their motivations, aspirations, difficulties, and achievements, as well as their ambiguous relation to Chinese politics. The Confucian revival is studied within the broader context of emerging challenges to Western categories (religion, philosophy, science etc) and great modernization narratives that prevailed throughout the twentieth century. Finally, by means of a comparison between state cults carried out in both Mainland China and Taiwan the book discusses the articulation of the political and the religious and, beyond that, the contemporary fate of the Chinese cosmological tradition.
In a world of “Confucius Says (子曰),” What Can Confucius Say About Gay Marriage?
7/25/15: Upon review this blog has been edited significantly for grammatical correctness and clarity. I apologize for any glaring difficulties and hope that this revised version is easier to follow.
Synopsis: This paper-length blog post covers some of the developments in the gay-marriage debate among contemporary Confucian scholars. Throughout this piece I summarize and reconsider some of the proposed stances that some modern Confucian scholars take towards same-sex marriage. I consider what I call the Mengzi/Child Argument, the Metaphyiscal Argument, the Ren Argument, and the Institutional Argument.
New Book: Daniel Bell, The China Model
Chinese Universal Values?
A thought-provoking post at China Policy on various strands in current Chinese discourse about “values” (Confucian, universal, civilizational, and otherwise).
