Huang asking for help on Confucian Political Philosophy course

Yong HUANG asked me to post the following here; please post comments/replies here, addressed to him.

Inspired by a similar project that Steve Angle did a few years ago (on which see here, for the original plan, and here, for the outcome), I plan to offer a graduate level course on recent studies of Chinese philosophy in the English speaking world this fall. To have a better focus, I tentatively plan to limit it to Confucian political philosophy. At the end of the semester, each student will be required to write a substantive critical essay on the book he or she chooses to write. I’ll invite those students of high quality papers to do revision until I deem them publishable. Then I’ll invite authors of the books discussed to make responses to these papers. I’ll then seek a publisher to publish these papers, together with authors’ responses, tentatively with the title: Confucian Political Philosophy: The State of the Field.

After a quick search at Amazon, I’ve got the following list of books more or less explicitly devoted to Confucian political philosophy (I don’t include the edited volumes). Here I solicit your help to see whether I’ve missed some other books on Confucian political philosophy published in English since, say, the year of 2000. I’ll be also grateful, of course, if you guys have any other suggestions regarding what I plan to do in this course.

  • China – The Political Philosophy of the Middle Kingdom (World Political Theories) Nov 13, 2012 by Tongdong Bai
  • Confucian Perfectionism: A Political Philosophy for Modern Times (The Princeton-China Series) Dec 29, 2015 by Joseph Chan
  • The China Model: Political Meritocracy and the Limits of Democracy Sep 6, 2016 by Daniel A. Bell
  • Democracy in Contemporary Confucian Philosophy (Routledge Studies in Contemporary Philosophy) Jun 19, 2014 by David Elstein
  • Contemporary Confucian Political Philosophy Jun 25, 2012 by Stephen C. Angle
  • Confucian Democracy: A Deweyan Reconstruction (Suny Series in Chinese Philosophy and Culture) (SUNY Series in Chinese Philosophy and Culture (Paperback)) Feb 26, 2004 by Sor-Hoon Tan
  • Against Individualism: A Confucian Rethinking of the Foundations of Morality, Politics, Family, and Religion (Philosophy and Cultural Identity) Nov 14, 2016
  • Classical Confucian Political Thought: A New Interpretation Sep 1, 2015 by Loubna El Amine
  • Public Reason Confucianism: Democratic Perfectionism and Constitutionalism in East Asia Apr 21, 2016 by Sungmoon Kim
  • Confucian Democracy in East Asia: Theory And Practice  (2014-02-24) by Sungmoon Kim
  • Moral China in the Age of Reform Aug 11, 2014 by Jiwei Ci

3 thoughts on “Huang asking for help on Confucian Political Philosophy course

  1. Hi Yong, here are a few ideas. I think you’ve already grabbed most of the low-hanging fruit, so I don’t know whether these will fit your conception of the class or not. But for what it is worth, these come to mind:

    Huang Yushun, Voice From the East: The Chinese Theory of Justice
    David Elstein, Democracy in Contemporary Confucianism (more a study of various thinkers than a work of political philosophy in its own right, but the thinkers are important and well-explicated, and David’s charitable yet critical examinations might add up to enough?)
    Ruiping Fan, Reconstructionist Confucianism (lots of broadly political content here, even if it is not the central focus)
    Xuetong Yan, Ancient Chinese Thought, Modern Chinese Power (more IR than Pol Theory)
    Xiaofeng Liu, Sino-Theology and the Philosophy of History
    Thomas Metzger, A Cloud Across the Pacific

    In addition, I think the question of the relation of Confucianism to republicanism is really generative, and it is well-examined in Elton Chan’s dissertation (From Sage-kings to Confucian Republic).

    I also wonder whether you might allow students to examine Chinese-language books, and then discuss them in English. This would open up another set of possibilities. I’m sure you know them, but I’d be happy to add suggestions in this vein if you like; just let me know.

  2. One more I forgot: Ady Van den Stock, The Horizon of Modernity: Subjectivity and Social Structure in New Confucian Philosophy.

  3. Thanks, Steve, for the good suggestions. David Elstein’s book is in my original list, and I think about others you mentioned.

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