Suchergebnisse

The essays collected in this volume establish Confucian role ethics as a term of art in the contemporary ethical discourse. The holistic philosophy presented here is grounded in the primacy of relationality and a narrative understanding of person, and is a challenge to a foundational liberal individualism that has defined persons as discrete, autonomous, rational, free, and often self-interested agents. Confucian role ethics begins from a relationally constituted conception of person, takes family roles and relations as the entry point for developing moral competence, invokes moral imagination and the growth in relations that it can inspire as the substance of human morality, and entails a human-centered, atheistic religiousness that stands in sharp contrast to the Abrahamic religions.

1. Why Study This Text? -- 2. Historical and Textual Background -- 2.1 Synopsis of the Work -- 2.2 Confucius -- 2.3 Master Zeng -- 2.4 The Text and Its Historical Context -- 3. Philosophical and Religious Background -- 3.1 Xiao in Classical Confucianism -- 3.2 The Socio-Political Dimensions of xiao -- 3.3 The Ethical Dimensions of xiao -- 3.4 Xiao and Human-centered Religiousness -- 4. The Chinese Lexicon of Key Philosophical Terms -- 5. The Classic of Family Reverence (Xiaojing) -- 5.1 Setting the Theme and Illuminating Its Meaning -- 5.2 The Emperor as Son of "tian" -- 5.3 The Hereditary Lords -- 5.4 The Ministers and High Officials -- 5.5 The Lower Officials -- 5.6 The Common People -- 5.7 The Three Powers and Resources -- 5.8 Governing through Family Reverence -- 5.9 Sagely Governing -- 5.10 A Narrative of Family Reverence in Practice -- 5.11 The Five Punishments -- 5.12 Elaborating upon "the Vital Way" -- 5.13 Elaborating upon "Consummate Character" -- 5.14 Elaborating upon "Raising One's Name High for Posterity" -- 5.15 On Remonstrance -- 5.16 Resonance -- 5.17 Serving One's Lord -- 5.18 Mourning for Parents -- 6. Notes to the Classic of Family Reverence

This work brings together leading thinkers from around the world to deliberate on how best to correlate worth (value) with what is worthwhile (values), pairing human prosperity with personal, environmental, and spiritual flourishing in a world of differing visions of what constitutes a moral life.

The Zhongyong--translated here as Focusing the Familiar--has been regarded as a document of enormous wisdom for more than two millennia and is one of Confucianism's most sacred and seminal texts. It achieved truly canonical preeminence when it became one of the Four Books compiled and annotated by the Southern Song dynasty philosopher Zhu Xi (1130-1200). Within the compass of world literature, the influence of these books (Analects of Confucius, Great Learning, Zhongyong, and Mencius) on the Sinitic world of East Asia has been no less than the Bible and the Qu'ran on Western civilization. With this new translation David Hall and Roger Ames provide a distinctly philosophical interpretation of the Zhongyong, remaining attentive to the semantic and conceptual nuances of the text to account for its central place within classical Chinese literature. They present the text in such a way as to provide Western philosophers and other intellectuals access to a set of interpretations and arguments that offer new insights into issues and concerns common to both Chinese and Western thinkers. In addition to the annotated translation, a glossary of terms gives in concise form important senses of the terms that play a key role in the argument of the Zhongyong. An appendix addresses some of the more technical issues relevant to the understanding of both the history of the text and the history of its English translations. Here the translators introduce readers to the best contemporary textual studies of the Zhongyong and make use of the most recent archaeological discoveries in China to place the work within its own intellectual context.