Ethics in Early China

Ethics in Early China PDF

Author: Chris Fraser

Publisher: Hong Kong University Press

Published: 2011-08-01

Total Pages: 330

ISBN-13: 9888028936

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Early Chinese ethics has attracted increasing scholarly and social attention in recent years as the virtue ethics movement in Western philosophy has sparked renewed interest in Confucianism and Daoism. At the same time, intellectuals and social commentators throughout greater China have looked to the Chinese ethical tradition for resources to evaluate the role of traditional cultural values in the contemporary world. Publications on early Chinese ethics have tended to focus inordinate and uncritical attention toward Confucianism, while relatively neglecting Daoism, Mohism, and shared features of Chinese moral psychology. This book aims to rectify this imbalance by including essays on Daoism and Confucianism, early Chinese moral psychology including widely neglected views of the Mohists and newly reconstructed accounts of the "embodied virtue" tradition, which ties ethics to physical cultivation. The volume also includes essays addressing the broader question of the value of comparative philosophy generally and of studying early Chinese ethics in particular. The book should have a wide readership among professional scholars and graduate students in Chinese philosophy, specifically Confucian ethics, Daoist ethics, and comparative ethics. Chris Fraseris associate professor of philosophy at the University of Hong Kong. Dan Robins is assistant professor of Chinese philosophy at Stockton College of New Jersey.Timothy O'Learyis associate professor of philosophy at the University of Hong Kong. Contributors include Roger Ames, Stephen Angle, Sin yee Chan, Jiwei Ci, Chris Fraser, Jane Geaney, William Haines, Chad Hansen, Manyul Im, P.J. Ivanhoe, Franklin Perkins, Lisa Raphals, Dan Robins, Henry Rosemont, Jr., David Wong, and Lee Yearley.

Material Virtue

Material Virtue PDF

Author: Mark Csikszentmihalyi

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2021-09-13

Total Pages: 412

ISBN-13: 904740677X

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An examination of both excavated and transmitted texts that link ethics and natural philosophy, Material Virtue narrates the history of a neglected tradition that argues virtue has physical presence in the body, and rewrites the formative period of Confucianism.

Chinese Just War Ethics

Chinese Just War Ethics PDF

Author: Ping-Cheung Lo

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2015-05-15

Total Pages: 320

ISBN-13: 1317580966

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This book offers the first comprehensive analysis of warfare ethics in early China as well as its subsequent development. Chinese attitudes toward war are rich and nuanced, ranging across amoral realism, defensive just war, humanitarian intervention, and mournful skepticism. Covering the five major intellectual traditions in the "golden age" of Chinese civilization: Confucian, Daoist, Mohist, Legalist, and Military Strategy schools, the book’s chapters immerse readers in the proper historical contexts, examine the moral concerns in the classical texts on their own terms, reframe those concerns in contemporary ethical idioms, and forge a critical dialogue between the past and the present. The volume develops fresh moral interpretations of classical texts such as The Art of War, Mencius, Xunzi, Mozi, and the Daodejing and discusses famous philosophers such as Han Fei and Wang Yang-ming, representing antithetical schools of thought about warfare. Attention is also given to the military ethics of the People’s Liberation Army, examining its thinking against the backdrop of its own civilizational context. This book will be of much interest to students of just war theory, Chinese politics, ethics, and philosophy, military studies, and International Relations in general.

Virtue Ethics and Consequentialism in Early Chinese Philosophy

Virtue Ethics and Consequentialism in Early Chinese Philosophy PDF

Author: Bryan van Norden

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2007-06-11

Total Pages: 21

ISBN-13: 1139464396

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In this book Bryan W. Van Norden examines early Confucianism as a form of virtue ethics and Mohism, an anti-Confucian movement, as a version of consequentialism. The philosophical methodology is analytic, in that the emphasis is on clear exegesis of the texts and a critical examination of the philosophical arguments proposed by each side. Van Norden shows that Confucianism, while similar to Aristotelianism in being a form of virtue ethics, offers different conceptions of 'the good life', the virtues, human nature, and ethical cultivation. Mohism is akin to Western utilitarianism in being a form of consequentialism, but distinctive in its conception of the relevant consequences and in its specific thought-experiments and state-of-nature arguments. Van Norden makes use of the best research on Chinese history, archaeology, and philology. His text is accessible to philosophers with no previous knowledge of Chinese culture and to Sinologists with no background in philosophy.

Origins of Moral-political Philosophy in Early China

Origins of Moral-political Philosophy in Early China PDF

Author: Tao Jiang

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2021

Total Pages: 537

ISBN-13: 0197603475

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This book offers a new narrative and interpretative framework about the origins of moral-political philosophy that tracks how the three core normative values, humaneness, justice, and personal freedom, were formulated, reformulated, and contested by early Chinese philosophers in their effort to negotiate the relationship among three distinct domains, the personal, the familial, and the political. Such efforts took place as those thinkers were reimagining a new moral-political order, debating its guiding norms, and exploring possible sources within the context of an evolving understanding of He

Law and Morality in Ancient China

Law and Morality in Ancient China PDF

Author: Randall P. Peerenboom

Publisher: SUNY Press

Published: 1993-01-01

Total Pages: 408

ISBN-13: 9780791412374

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Huang-Lao thought, a unique and sophisticated political philosophy which combines elements of Daoism and Legalism, dominated the intellectual life of late Warring States and Early Han China, providing the ideological foundation for post-Qin reforms. In the absence of extant texts, however, scholars of classical Chinese philosophy remained in the dark about this important school for over 2000 years. Finally, in 1973, archaeologists unearthed four ancient silk scrolls: the Silk Manuscripts of Huang-Lao. This work is the first detailed, book-length treatment in English of these lost treasures.

How Should One Live?

How Should One Live? PDF

Author: R. A. H. King

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter

Published: 2011

Total Pages: 353

ISBN-13: 3110252872

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Chinese and Greco-Roman ethics present highly articulate views on how one should live; both of these traditions remain influential in modern philosophy. The question arises how these traditions can be compared with one another. Comparative ethics is a relatively young discipline, and this volume is a major contribution to the field. Fundamental questions about the nature of comparing ethics are treated in two introductory chapters, followed by chapters on core issues in each of the traditions : harmony, virtue, friendship, knowledge, the relation of ethics to morality, relativism. The volume closes with a number of comparative studies on emotions, being and unity, simplicity and complexity, and prediction.

A Panoramic History of Traditional Chinese Ethics

A Panoramic History of Traditional Chinese Ethics PDF

Author: Yi-ting ZHU (朱贻庭)

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2021-06-02

Total Pages: 365

ISBN-13: 9811612528

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This book traces the trajectory of traditional Chinese ethics from West Zhou Dynasty (1046-771 BC) through Qing Dynasty (1616—1912) and covers a myriad of Chinese philosophers who have expressed their ideas about the relationships between Heavenly Dao vs. Earthly Dao, Good vs. Evil, Morality vs. Legality, Knowledge vs. Behavior, Motive vs. Result, Righteousness vs. Profitability, Rationality vs. Animality. In this book, the readers can find Confucius’s discussion on Rite and Benevolence, Lao Zi’s meditation on Inaction of Great Dao, Zhuang Zi’s elaboration on “Transcendental Freedom”, Mohist utilitarian “Universal Love”, and Mencian theory of “Primordial Good Humanity”, to name just a few phenomenal figures. A compact yet elaborate, panoramic yet profound guidebook to traditional Chinese ethical thought, this book is an excellent window to showcase traditional Chinese mental and spiritual legacy. Composed, translated, and proofread by brilliant scholars, it produces a fluent and coherent English discourse of Chinese morality and ethics, nimbly spinning together the threads of Confucianism, Taoism, Buddhism, and other ideological schools with brief references to the historical situation. Consequently, it provides English readers, especially those curious about Chinese psychology and rationality, with thought-provoking and horizon-expanding perspectives, and provides Chinese readers, especially those of philosophy and translation, with a great number of typical and characteristic quotes of archaic Chinese that have never been translated before. Ultimately, it is a fundamental threshold to learning about Chinese people, Chinese culture, Chinese morality, Chinese mentality, Chinese policy, and Chinese diplomacy.

Confucian Ethics of the Axial Age

Confucian Ethics of the Axial Age PDF

Author: Heiner Roetz

Publisher: State University of New York Press

Published: 1993-10-05

Total Pages: 394

ISBN-13: 1438417624

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Confucian Ethics of the Axial Age describes the formative period of Chinese culture—the last centuries of the Zhou dynasty—as an early epoch of enlightenment. It comprehensively reconstructs the ethical discourse as thought gradually became emancipated from tradition and institutions. Rather than presenting a chronology of different thinkers and works, this book discusses the systematic aspects of moral philosophies. Based on original texts, Roetz focuses on filial piety; the conflict between the family and the state; the legitimating of the political order; the virtues of loyalty, friendship, and harmony; concepts of justice; the principle of humaneness and its different readings; the Golden Rule; the moral person; the autonomous self, motivation, decision and conscience; and various attempts to ground morality in religion, human nature, or reason. These topics are arranged in such a way that the genetic structure and the logical development of the moral reasoning becomes apparent. From this detached perspective, conventional morality is either rejected or critically reestablished under the restraint of new abstract and universal norms. This makes the Chinese developments part of the ancient worldwide movement of enlightenment of the axial age.

The Ethical Foundations of Early Daoism

The Ethical Foundations of Early Daoism PDF

Author: Jung H. Lee

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2014-04-02

Total Pages: 302

ISBN-13: 1137384867

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The Ethical Foundations of Early Daoism: Zhuangzi's Unique Moral Vision argues that we can read early Daoist texts as works of moral philosophy that speak to perennial concerns about the well-lived life in the context of the Way. Lee argues that we can interpret early Daoism as an ethics of attunement.