Traces Of Humanism In China

Since discourses on humanistic traditions have so far largely been focused on European cultures, this volume attempts to open the field to counterparts within Chinese culture which, as a matter of fact, has a rich autochthonous tradition of humanism as well. The contributors explore Confucian and Daoist dimensions of humaneness in Chinese philosophy and history up to the first half of the 20th century, when Chinese and Western concepts of humanism first merged. This book addresses a non-sinological audience as well as specialists in this field and contributes to a non-eurocentric view on humanism history.

Professor Xu Xiaoyue, a top-notch scholar specializing in ancient Chinese philosophies and religions, displays essential constituents of Chinese humanism before readers. According to him, key concepts such as Confucian ten virtues, Daoist Way and Buddhist metaphysical voidness play quite a significant role in shaping the Chinese humanism, which not only is historically indispensable to the creation of traditional Chinese culture but it also realistically matters to present-day China’s cultural reconstruction in the world that is being remolded by the roots.

This book is a study of the transformation of Chinese political consciousness during the post-Mao era. Departing from the common wisdom of the day that Deng Xiaoping's pragmatic-oriented reform has made ideological discussion irrelevant, this book holds that while it is probably true that no single, fixed ideology has existed during the period, the ideological dimensions not only have persisted, but also can be analyzed systematically.

The past 60 years have seen the rediscovery of the immense cultural depth of Confucian humanist thought and its power to shape the way human beings are understood in East Asia. In this volume, renowned Confucian scholar Chun-chieh Huang analyzes various East Asian contexts to identify the central pillars of the Confucian humanist spirit: a continuum between mind and body, harmony between oneself and others, the unity of heaven and humanity, and a profound historical consciousness. Scholars of religion, history, philosophy and Asian studies will find this volume an indispensable guide to the rich tradition of East Asian Confucian humanism.

Today’s world is one marked by the signs of digital capitalism and global capitalist expansion, and China is increasingly being integrated into this global system of production and consumption. As a result, China’s immediate material impact is now felt almost everywhere in the world; however, the significance and process of this integration is far from understood. This study shows how the a priori categories of statistical reasoning came to be re-born and re-lived in the People’s Republic - as essential conditions for the possibility of a new mode of knowledge and governance. From the ruins of the Maoist revolution China has risen through a mode of quantitative self-objectification. As the author argues, an epistemological rift has separated the Maoist years from the present age of the People’s Republic, which appears on the global stage as a mirage. This study is an ethnographic investigation of concepts - of the conceptual forces that have produced and been produced by - two forms of knowledge, life, and governance. As the author shows, the world of China, contrary to the common view, is not the Chinese world; it is a symptomatic moment of our world at the present time.

This book introduces into the current global ethics debate models of humanism developed in classical Chinese traditions, which have not yet been comprehensively presented to Western scholarship or integrated into the framework of global discourses on social ethics and morality. It creates new paradigms for an understanding of humanism that meets the demands of our time. It begins by presenting European descriptions and critical assessments of this discourse, and then moves to an exploration of humanistic ideas shaped through historical developments in Asia, with a focus on the Chinese tradition. In this sense, the book is written from a transcivilizational perspective. The methods used in the research transcend---that is, surpass and overcome---the rigid, isolating, and essentialist concept of civilization. At the same time, the book points to the possibility of transformation through the exchange of knowledge and ideas between different civilizations. Within this framework, the book starts from the assumption that the ontology of civilizations and cultures is not based on immutable substances, but on the relations between different factors that constitute them as categories. The transcivilizational perspective rooted in transcultural dialogues between philosophies that originated in different cultures and civilizations is particularly valuable because of the globalized world in which we live today. This means that the problems that affect people in different parts of the world and the issues that are embedded in different geopolitical and developmental frameworks also affect all of humanity. This book is of particular interest to scholars and students of global ethics, globalization, Asian philosophy and Sinology.

"The Global Foundations of Public Relations: Humanism, China and the West explores the growing humanistic turn in public relations processes and proposes that this has compelling parallels in the roots of Chinese philosophies. As the leader of growth and power across the Pacific Rim, public relations in China is not developing in isolation from the West, but via mutual accommodations and culturally complex interactions. By collecting cases and reflections on PR practices from both Chinese and Western scholars, the chapters propose that Chinese philosophies are playing a role in the development of modern Chinese PR practices, and - focusing less on the obvious differences and contracts - seek to highlight their spiritual, philosophical and political confluences. The conclusions drawn enhance and advance our understanding of public relations globally. This innovative work is of interest to educators and researchers in the fields of public relations, strategic communications, and public diplomacy. Robert E. Brown is Professor Emeritus at Salem State University, USA, and a member of the Affiliated Faculty of Emerson College. Burton St. John III is Professor of Public Relations at the University of Colorado-Boulder, USA. Jenny Zhengye Hou is Chief Investigator of Strategic Communication and Public Relations at Queensland University of Technology, Australia, and Senior Fellow of Higher Education Academy"--

A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy is a milestone along the complex and difficult road to significant understanding by Westerners of the Asian peoples and a monumental contribution to the cause of philosophy. It is the first anthology of Chinese philosophy to cover its entire historical development. It provides substantial selections from all the great thinkers and schools in every period--ancient, medieval, modern, and contemporary--and includes in their entirety some of the most important classical texts. It deals with the fundamental and technical as well as the more general aspects of Chinese thought. With its new translation of source materials (some translated for the first time), its explanatory aids where necessary, its thoroughgoing scholarly documentation, this volume will be an indispensable guide for scholars, for college students, for serious readers interested in knowing the real China.

In this novel engagement with Ming Dynasty philosopher Wang Fuzhi (1619–1692), Nicholas S. Brasovan presents Wang's neo-Confucianism as an important theoretical resource for engaging with contemporary ecological humanism. Brasovan coins the term "person-in-the-world" to capture ecological humanism's fundamental premise that humans and nature are inextricably bound together, and argues that Wang's cosmology of energy (qi) gives us a rich conceptual vocabulary for understanding the continuity that exists between persons and the natural world. The book makes a significant contribution to English-language scholarship on Wang Fuzhi and to Chinese intellectual history, with new English translations of classical Chinese, Mandarin, and French texts in Chinese philosophy and culture. This innovative work of comparative philosophy not only presents a systematic and comprehensive interpretation of Wang's thought but also shows its relevance to contemporary discussions in the philosophy of ecology.