In this book, Jana S. Ros̆ker offers the first comprehensive overview and exegesis of the work of Li Zehou, who is one of the most significant and influential Chinese philosophers of our time. Ros̆ker shows us how Li's complex system of thought seeks to revive various Chinese traditions, and at the same time attempts to harmonize or reconcile this cultural heritage with the demands of the dominant economic, political, and axiological structures of our globalized world. Variously characterized as 'neo-traditional,' 'neo-Kantian,' (...) 'post-Marxist,' 'Marxist-Confucian,' 'pragmatist,' 'instrumentalist,' 'romantic,' and more, Li's work was central to the period known as the Chinese Enlightenment in the 1980s and has helped modify and transform antiquated patterns of Chinese intellectual discourse. He is one of the rare Chinese thinkers whose work has had not only had a deep and lasting impact on Chinese intellectuals, but has acquired a broad readership outside of China as well. Seen from a broader intercultural perspective, Li's unique and imaginative approach to a wide range of basic theoretical problems has created new styles of intellectual investigation, while reminding us of our belonging to a common humanity, regardless of differences in our individual cultures, languages, preferences, and traditions. (shrink)

The second edition incorporates Samuel Shirley's pre-eminent translation with corrections of the typographical errors of its first edition, and a new general index. Seymour Feldman has contributed a new Bibliography and notes.

Comparison is fundamental to the practice and subject-matter of philosophy, but has received scant attention by philosophers. This is even so in “comparative philosophy,” which literally distinguishes itself from other philosophy by being “comparative.” In this article, the need for a philosophy of comparison is suggested. What we compare with what, and in what respect it is done, poses a series of intriguing and intricate questions. In Part One, I offer a problematization of the tertium comparationis (the third of comparison) (...) by examining conceptualizations of similarity, family resemblance, and analogy, which it is sometimes argued can do without a tertium comparationis. In Part Two, I argue that a third of comparison is already required to determine what is to be compared, and insofar as that determination precedes the comparison that tertium may be called “pre-comparative.” This leads me to argue against incomparability and to show how anything can indeed be compared to anything. In Part Three, I relate my arguments to what is today commonly labelled “comparative philosophy.” Finally, I raise some questions of ontology and politics in order to demonstrate the relevance of a philosophy of comparison. (shrink)

In Modern Confucian philosophy the notion of the moral Self which is expressed through the natural moral substance represents both the foundation of each individual and the core of the universal reason. The indivisibility of the moral Self from its concrete activities within the social sphere differs in many various aspects from prevailing Western political and philosophical theories that are based on the separation of the empirical and transcendent subject. Hence, this holistic special feature of the moral Self is closely (...) related to one of the basic paradigms of Chinese intellectual history, i.e. the paradigm of immanent transcendence, which is also known as the paradigm of ‘radical’ or ‘pure’ transcendence. The present article introduces and analyses both above-mentioned, mutually intertwined traditional notions through the lens of modern interpretations, focusing upon the philosophical work written by the representatives of the second generation of Taiwanese Modern Confucians. (shrink)

In China, Xiong Shili 熊十力 is typically regarded as one of the most important Chinese philosophers of the twentieth century. The focus of this paper is Xiong’s monistic ontology and draws its findings principally from the 1932 literary edition of his New Treatise on Nothing but Consciousness. Xiong’s New Treatise is the first substantive attempt to respond to the modernist challenge of providing Chinese philosophy with ‘system,’ and he did this in the form of an ontology. The New Treatise consists (...) of an interpretive summary and discussion of key Yogācāra teachings that feature in Cheng weishi lun; a sustained critique of views Xiong attributes to the sixth-century Yogācāra master Dharmapāla; and a synthesis of Yogācāra thought with ideas derived from Madhyamaka Buddhism, various Sinitic traditions of Buddhism, the Book of Change, Laozi and Zhuangzi, and from Chinese Neo-Confucian thinkers associated with the Lu-Wang wing of Neo-Confucian philosophy, as well as Zhu Xi. Xiong was very much a syncretist. I seek to explain why Xiong insisted that reality cannot be sought independent of phenomena despite his also claiming that phenomena are not real. The first and major part of the paper introduces Xiong’s critique of Yogācāra accounts of consciousness. The second part introduces his understanding of the doctrine of emptiness. I also trace the connection between Xiong’s understanding and how the concept of emptiness was understood in Tathāgatagarbha school of Sinitic Buddhism. I do not address the Confucian elements in his thought—the Buddhist elements are complex enough. (shrink)

Examines the issues of self (including gender), truth, and transcendence in classical Chinese and Western philosophy.

Welche Kriterien kommen eigentlich ins Spiel, wenn »wir« uns fragen, ob das Denken von Móu Zōngsān dem modernen Maßstab von Kritik entspricht? Fabian Heubel versucht dieser Frage nachzugehen, indem er das im zeitgenössischen Neokonfuzianismus wichtige Motiv der immanenten Transzendenz in das Spannungsfeld von europäischer Sinologie und kritischer Theorie stellt. Das Klischee vom Konfuzianismus als unkritisch und konformistisch wird mit der Spannung zwischen Denken der Immanenz einerseits und Kritik andererseits in Verbindung gebracht, die das Werk von Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze und (...) Theodor W. Adorno geprägt hat. (shrink)