Issue 33:1 of Asian Philosophy has been published. In this issue, published in January 2023, there are six articles. Read below for the table of contents.
A Mou Zongsan’s criticism of Xunzi: ‘Morality is external’
Burcin Bedel
Reading Nishida Kitarō as a New Confucian: With a Focus on His Early Moral Philosophy
Wing Keung Lam
Transforming knowledge to wisdom: Feng Qi and the new Neo-Marxist humanism
Jana S. Rosker
Yangsheng 養生 as ‘making a living’ in the Zhuangzi
Kevin J. Turner
Reiteration and automaton: A posthumanist reading of repetition in Zhuangzi and Jacques Lacan
Quan Wang
The Confucian concepts of tianxia天下, yi-xia 夷夏and Chinese nationalism
Mao Zhaohui
The academic aspects of Eastern philosophy studies is laudable. I wish it would make some difference that might make a difference in the rest of the world. But the notions are ethereal. Even as they were several thousand years ago. Not, not can they be, attuned with change needed to affect (or is that, effect) some profound improvements in where we live, how we operate. Our seeming inextricably from complexity appears insurmountable. China, India and other origins of honorable disciplines are as hapless as anyone else, seems to me. Other thinkers eschew things I say. It could be helpful if the language of the way could be adapted for a wider audience. But that would only be an accommodation of complexity. It would not do.
The Confucian, Daoist, and Buddhist thought I have studied is for the most part very practical: very focused on concrete human experience and what to do about it. In my view if we don’t see that, we don’t understand it. Understanding it correctly is no small challenge, though, as are interpreting how to apply it today, or deciding whether and how far to do so. That said, it is also true that even without studying ancient or foreign philosophies, making *sound* decisions about today’s practical questions can be immensely challenging and strain all our intellectual capacities. Perhaps it is especially challenging when we do not study them. The world is full of the damage and debris from bad decisions and programs that were not informed by sufficient study or thought. The time we take to understand the wisdom of the ancients, or more recent thinkers from unfamiliar cultures, is well spent.