Chinese Studies Commons^™

A New Look At The Debate Between Confucian Soft-Power And Legalist Hard-Power Statecrafts And Its Contemporary Significance, Shirong Luo

Comparative Philosophy

In recent years, comparative scholars and commentators have attempted to find ways to best characterize the opposition between Confucianism and Legalism. For example, it has been argued that Confucianism exemplifies “idealism”, whereas Legalism is a version of “realism” and that their dispute can be construed as a clash between the broader philosophical frameworks of idealism and realism. While casting these opposing political philosophies as such can shed some light on the differences between the two schools of classical Chinese philosophy, these conceptual labels are too broad to capture their fundamental differences, which in my view are their different understandings of …

Confucianism Embodied: An “Interdisciplinary” Approach To Comparative Political Theory, Qi Jing

Comparative Philosophy

This article articulates and defends an “interdisciplinary” approach to Confucian political theory and presents Confucianism as a living, dynamic entity rather than merely a reservoir of ideas contained within a set of texts. It argues for a methodology that transcends traditional textual analysis, advocating for an intersectional approach that melds normative, emancipatory, and practical dimensions. This approach seeks to capture the evolving essence of Confucianism as influenced by cultural, institutional, and individual interactions. It also promotes a “distant reading” to examine not only texts and historical debates but also institutional changes, power dynamics, and guiding principles within Confucianized societies. The …

A Friend Who Does Me No Good: Aphorism In Matteo Ricci’S On Friendship, Maximilian Chan Weiher

Asian Languages and Cultures Honors Projects

This paper argues that Italian Jesuit Matteo Ricci (1552-1610) designed his aphoristic compilation, Jiaoyou Lun 交友論–On Friendship (1595)–to serve the Jesuit mission of converting the Chinese to Catholicism and express the conflict he may have felt exploiting friends to forward the Jesuit mission. Utilizing friendships to allow for greater social influence was central to the Jesuit proselytization strategy in China. However, Ricci’s moral education from youth taught him to judge utilitarian friendships as immoral. The extant scholarship regarding Ricci’s On Friendship fails to acknowledge the significance of the aphoristic form to this work. To illuminate the value of aphorism …

Turning Red, Micah Dunwoody

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a film review of Turning Red (2022) directed by Domee Shi.

Developmental Comparative Philosophy: Identifying Common Trends Between American Libertarian And Chinese Thoughts, Jacob Rich

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

East/west comparative philosophy often focuses on the differences between philosophies as finished states which, though effective at showing differences in thought, emphasizes the otherness of foreign traditions. In order to establish meaningful similarities between the development on eastern and western traditions, I compared the development of American liberalism (1651-1776 CE) and Chinese Confucianism and Daoism (772-221 BCE), focusing on the similarities between social contract to enlightenment philosophers and the early to late Hundred Schools of Thought Confucian and Daoist philosophers. Three principals were derived from this process: a shift from external to internal justifications for the state causes increased secularism …

Making Opportunity Out Of Chaos: The Misconceptions And Realities Of Republican-Era Warlord Governance, Zachary Clark

Master's Projects and Capstones

Chinese history has largely been defined by a transition of power from one major imperial dynasty to another, separated by notable times of division such as the Warring States (475 BC-221 BC) and Three Kingdoms (220-280) periods. The early twentieth-century collapse of the Qing dynasty in 1912 is no exception to this historical trend and gave way to a twelve-year period termed the “Warlord Era.” Dating back to the 1960s, Western scholarly discourse argued that these warlords lacked the ideologies or visons to implement any changes outside of their own personal and political interests. This research contends that warlords were …

Applying Gadamer: An Evaluation Of Interpretations Of The Confucian Analects By Different Schools Under The Light Of Gadamerian Hermeneutics, Yifeng Xu

Senior Independent Study Theses

This thesis attempts to analyse and evaluate several interpretations of the Confucian Analects under the light of Gadamerian hermeneutics. In chapter 1, I explicate Gadamerian hermeneutics and analyse Gadamer’s hermeneutical view. In chapter 2, I introduce a challenge to Gadamer’s theory regarding the problem of objectivity, give Gadamer a limited defence, and then reconstruct Gadamerian hermeneutics in order to answer the challenge. Chapter 3 deals with some further concerns about the application of Gadamerian hermeneutics in terms of evaluating interpretations. Chapter 4 and 5 are spent on analysing two groups of interpretations of the Confucian Analects as well as the …

Succor In Smoke: A Historical And Comparative Analysis Of Incense And Moxibustion As Similar Agents Of Edification And Self-Cultivation, Hannah E. Matulek

Black & Gold

Since its origins in the Shang Dynasty nearly 3,000 years ago, traditional Chinese medicine has undergone many dramatic shifts and adapted to a wide range of cultural, social, religious and foreign pressures. One of the most notable changes is the attribution of the etiology of disease (as well as general poor health and behaviors) from volatile and dissatisfied external forces to manageable internal forces. This allowed for a flourishing of thought in Chinese medicine, for once granting an individual the power to influence his or her own health. Three religions—Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism—were also introduced to China at this time, …

Confucian Thought And Care Ethics: An Amicable Split?, Andrew Lambert

Publications and Research

Since Chenyang Li’s (1994) groundbreaking article there has been interest in reading early Confucian ethics through the lens of care ethics. In this paper, I examine the prospects for dialogue between the two in light of recent work in both fields.

I argue that, despite some similarities, early Confucian ethics is not best understood as a form of care ethics, of the kind articulated by Nel Noddings (1984, 2002) and others. Reasons include incongruence deriving from the absence in the Chinese texts of a developed account of need, and doubts about whether the parent-child relationship in Confucian thought is best …

Confucianism And The Legalism: A Model Of The National Strategy Of Governance In Ancient China, Haiwen Zhou

Economics Faculty Publications

The Confucian school emphasizes family value, moral persuasions, and personal relations. Under Confucianism, there is a free-rider issue in the provision of efforts. Since national officials are chosen through personal relations, they may not be the most capable. The Legalist school emphasizes the usage of incentives and formal institutions. Under the Legalism, the ruler provides strong incentives to local officials which may lead to side effects because some activities are noncontractible. The cold-blood image of the Legalism may alien citizens. By exploiting the paternalistic relationship between the ruler and the ruled under Confucianism and the strength of institution-building under the …

Guarding Moral Boundaries: Shame In Early Confucianism, Jane Geaney

Religious Studies Faculty Publications

Claims that China is a ‘‘shame culture’’ tend to presume that guilt is the superior moral motivation. Such claims characterize guilt as internally motivated and operative even if no outsider is aware of any wrongdoing. By contrast, they assume that shame occurs only when someone is observed. The observer represents the moral opinion of an outsider, and, as a result, shame is said to be externally motivated. In this view, genuinely moral motivation is internal. Internality is seen as a requirement for moral autonomy (the ability to make decisions independent of particular social norms), and only guilt cultures are thought …