Starting with Popper, social theorists across the board have acknowledged that traditions serve socially valuable functions. However, while traditions are usually understood as ‘living’ entities that come in overlapping varieties and evolve over time, the socially valuable functions attributed to tradition tend to presuppose invariability in ways of thinking and acting. Addressing this tension, this article provides a detailed analysis of the concept of tradition, and directs special attention to conceivable criteria for the authentic continuation of a tradition. It is (...) argued that the ways of thinking and acting that constitute the material of a tradition must – among faithful members of that tradition – stand in a relation of equivalence – not identity or similarity. The implications of this account concern our ability to decide (normatively) conflicts over authenticity among rival tradition branches as well as the role that traditions play in policy-making. (shrink)

Starting with Popper, social theorists across the board have acknowledged that traditions serve socially valuable functions. However, while traditions are usually understood as ‘living’ entities that come in overlapping varieties and evolve over time, the socially valuable functions attributed to tradition tend to presuppose invariability in ways of thinking and acting. Addressing this tension, this article provides a detailed analysis of the concept of tradition, and directs special attention to conceivable criteria for the authentic continuation of a tradition. It is (...) argued that the ways of thinking and acting that constitute the material of a tradition must – among faithful members of that tradition – stand in a relation of equivalence – not identity or similarity. The implications of this account concern our ability to decide (normatively) conflicts over authenticity among rival tradition branches as well as the role that traditions play in policy-making. (shrink)

This paper begins by rehearsing a debate, which took place in the 1980s in the journal Philosophy East and West on whether Mencius was a true successor to Confucius, which has recently prompted a new debate on the topic of tradition and true succession in social epistemology. Rejecting the understanding of tradition in this latter debate as often aloof from the world and as of limited use for the investigation of concrete cases, I turn to the Confucian tradition and to (...) Tu Weiming as one of its current representatives. My interest lies in the ways Tu represents and reconstructs the Confucian tradition and I intend to offer analyses based on two sets of selected English writings asking questions such as: Which textual references does Tu explicitly or only implicitly foreground as crucial to his understanding of the tradition that he is taken to represent? What vocabulary does he use to articulate the contents of the tradition? The paper ends with some thoughts on the question of true succession in Confucianism, stressing the importance of domains of representation and the addressed audiences, in an attempt to enrich the mentioned debates in current social epistemology. (shrink)