Li Zhi, Confucianism, and the Virtue of Desire

Li Zhi, Confucianism, and the Virtue of Desire
Author: Pauline C. Lee
Publisher: SUNY Press
Total Pages: 205
Release: 2012-03-01
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 143843927X

Li Zhi (1527–1602) was a bestselling author with a devoted readership. His biting, shrewd, and visionary writings with titles like A Book to Hide and A Book to Burn were both inspiring and inflammatory. Widely read from his own time to the present, Li Zhi has long been acknowledged as an important figure in Chinese cultural history. While he is esteemed as a stinging social critic and an impassioned writer, Li Zhi’s ideas have been dismissed as lacking a deeper or constructive vision. Pauline C. Lee convincingly shows us otherwise. Situating Li Zhi within the highly charged world of the late-Ming culture of “feelings,” Lee presents his slippery and unruly yet clear and robust ethical vision. Li Zhi is a Confucian thinker whose consuming concern is a powerful interior world of abundance, distinctive to each individual: the realm of the emotions. Critical to his ideal of the good life is the ability to express one’s feelings well. In the work’s conclusion, Lee brings Li Zhi’s insights into conversation with contemporary philosophical debates about the role of feelings, an ethics of authenticity, and the virtue of desire.

Li Zhi, Confucianism, and the Virtue of Desire

Li Zhi, Confucianism, and the Virtue of Desire
Author: Pauline C. Lee
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Total Pages: 205
Release: 2012-03-06
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1438439288

Li Zhi (1527–1602) was a bestselling author with a devoted readership. His biting, shrewd, and visionary writings with titles like A Book to Hide and A Book to Burn were both inspiring and inflammatory. Widely read from his own time to the present, Li Zhi has long been acknowledged as an important figure in Chinese cultural history. While he is esteemed as a stinging social critic and an impassioned writer, Li Zhi's ideas have been dismissed as lacking a deeper or constructive vision. Pauline C. Lee convincingly shows us otherwise. Situating Li Zhi within the highly charged world of the late-Ming culture of "feelings," Lee presents his slippery and unruly yet clear and robust ethical vision. Li Zhi is a Confucian thinker whose consuming concern is a powerful interior world of abundance, distinctive to each individual: the realm of the emotions. Critical to his ideal of the good life is the ability to express one's feelings well. In the work's conclusion, Lee brings Li Zhi's insights into conversation with contemporary philosophical debates about the role of feelings, an ethics of authenticity, and the virtue of desire.

The Objectionable Li Zhi

The Objectionable Li Zhi
Author: Rivi Handler-Spitz
Publisher: University of Washington Press
Total Pages: 291
Release: 2021-01-31
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0295748397

Iconoclastic scholar Li Zhi (1527–1602) was a central figure in the cultural world of the late Ming dynasty. His provocative and controversial words and actions shaped print culture, literary practice, attitudes toward gender, and perspectives on Buddhism and the afterlife. Although banned, his writings were never fully suppressed, because they tapped into issues of vital significance to generations of readers. His incisive remarks, along with the emotional intensity and rhetorical power with which he delivered them, made him an icon of his cultural moment and an emblem of early modern Chinese intellectual dissent. In this volume, leading China scholars demonstrate the interrelatedness of seemingly discrete aspects of Li Zhi’s thought and emphasize his far-reaching impact on his contemporaries and successors. In doing so, they challenge the myth that there was no tradition of dissidence in premodern China.

Public Reason Confucianism

Public Reason Confucianism
Author: Sungmoon Kim
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 289
Release: 2016-04-21
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1316592073

Recent proposals concerning Confucian meritocratic perfectionism have justified Confucian perfectionism in terms of political meritocracy. In contrast, 'Confucian democratic perfectionism' is a form of comprehensive Confucian perfectionism that can accommodate a plurality of values in civil society. It is also fully compatible with core values of democracy such as popular sovereignty, political equality, and the right to political participation. Sungmoon Kim presents 'public reason Confucianism' as the most attractive option for contemporary East Asian societies that are historically and culturally Confucian. Public reason Confucianism is a particular style of Confucian democratic perfectionism in which comprehensive Confucianism is connected with perfectionism via a distinctive form of public reason. It calls for an active role for the democratic state in promoting a Confucian conception of the good life, at the heart of which are such core Confucian values as filial piety and ritual propriety.

Contemporary Confucian Political Philosophy

Contemporary Confucian Political Philosophy
Author: Stephen C. Angle
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 290
Release: 2013-04-17
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 074566153X

Confucian political philosophy has recently emerged as a vibrant area of thought both in China and around the globe. This book provides an accessible introduction to the main perspectives and topics being debated today, and shows why Progressive Confucianism is a particularly promising approach. Students of political theory or contemporary politics will learn that far from being confined to a museum, contemporary Confucianism is both responding to current challenges and offering insights from which we can all learn. The Progressive Confucianism defended here takes key ideas of the twentieth-century Confucian philosopher Mou Zongsan (1909-1995) as its point of departure for exploring issues like political authority and legitimacy, the rule of law, human rights, civility, and social justice. The result is anti-authoritarian without abandoning the ideas of virtue and harmony; it preserves the key values Confucians find in ritual and hierarchy without giving in to oppression or domination. A central goal of the book is to present Progressive Confucianism in such a way as to make its insights manifest to non-Confucians, be they philosophers or simply citizens interested in the potential contributions of Chinese thinking to our emerging, shared world.

Symptoms of an Unruly Age

Symptoms of an Unruly Age
Author: Rivi Handler-Spitz
Publisher: University of Washington Press
Total Pages: 257
Release: 2017-04-04
Genre: History
ISBN: 029574197X

Symptoms of an Unruly Age compares the writings of Li Zhi (1527–1602) and his late-Ming compatriots to texts composed by their European contemporaries, including Montaigne, Shakespeare, and Cervantes. Emphasizing aesthetic patterns that transcend national boundaries, Rivi Handler-Spitz explores these works as culturally distinct responses to similar social and economic tensions affecting early modern cultures on both ends of Eurasia. The paradoxes, ironies, and self-contradictions that pervade these works are symptomatic of the hypocrisy, social posturing, and counterfeiting that afflicted both Chinese and European societies at the turn of the seventeenth century. Symptoms of an Unruly Age shows us that these texts, produced thousands of miles away from one another, each constitute cultural manifestations of early modernity.

The Laws and Economics of Confucianism

The Laws and Economics of Confucianism
Author: Taisu Zhang
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 319
Release: 2017-10-12
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1107141117

Zhang argues that property institutions in preindustrial China and England were a cause of China's lagging development in preindustrial times.

A Late Sixteenth-Century Chinese Buddhist Fellowship

A Late Sixteenth-Century Chinese Buddhist Fellowship
Author: Jennifer Eichman
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 438
Release: 2016-01-19
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9004308458

Through a detailed analysis of epistolary writing, A Late Sixteenth-Century Chinese Buddhist Fellowship: Spiritual Ambitions, Intellectual Debates, and Epistolary Connections brings to life the Buddhist discourse of a network of lay disciples who debated the value of Chan versus Pure Land, sudden versus gradual enlightenment, adherence to Buddhist precepts, and animal welfare. By highlighting the differences between their mentor, the monk Zhuhong 袾宏 (1535-1615), and his nemesis, the Yangming Confucian Zhou Rudeng 周汝登 (1547-1629), this work confronts long-held scholarly views of Confucian dominance to conclude that many classically educated, elite men found Buddhist practices a far more attractive option. Their intellectual debates, self-cultivation practices, and interpersonal relations helped shape the contours of late sixteenth-century Buddhist culture.

Confucianism in China

Confucianism in China
Author: Tony Swain
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 313
Release: 2017-09-07
Genre: History
ISBN: 1474242456

This accessible history of Confucianism, or the 'Way of the Ru', emphasizes the religious dimensions of the tradition. It clearly explains the tradition's unique and subtle philosophical ideals as well as the 'arts of the Ru' whereby seemingly simple acts such as reading, sitting quietly, good manners, and attending to family and state responsibilities, became ways of ultimate transformation. This book explains the origins of the Ru and documents their impact in imperial China, before providing extensive coverage of the modern era. Confucianism in China: An Introduction shows how the long history of the Ru is vital to comprehending China today. As the empire drew to an end, there were impassioned movements both to reinvent and to eradicate Ru tradition. Less than forty years ago, it seemed close to extinction, but today it is undergoing spectacular revival. This introduction is suitable for anyone wishing to understand a tradition that shaped imperial China and which is now increasingly swaying Chinese religious, philosophical, political, and economic developments. The book contains a glossary of key terms and 22 images, and further resources can be found on the book's webpage http://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/confucianism-in-china-9781474242462/.

Neo-Confucianism

Neo-Confucianism
Author: Stephen C. Angle
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 267
Release: 2017-03-27
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1509518614

Neo-Confucianism is a philosophically sophisticated tradition weaving classical Confucianism together with themes from Buddhism and Daoism. It began in China around the eleventh century CE, played a leading role in East Asian cultures over the last millennium, and has had a profound influence on modern Chinese society. Based on the latest scholarship but presented in accessible language, Neo-Confucianism: A Philosophical Introduction is organized around themes that are central in Neo-Confucian philosophy, including the structure of the cosmos, human nature, ways of knowing, personal cultivation, and approaches to governance. The authors thus accomplish two things at once: they present the Neo-Confucians in their own, distinctive terms; and they enable contemporary readers to grasp what is at stake in the great Neo-Confucian debates. This novel structure gives both students and scholars in philosophy, religion, history, and cultural studies a new window into one of the world's most important philosophical traditions.