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14Confucius: A Guide for the PerplexedBloomsbury Publishing. 2013.Of the three main teachings in Chinese culture, Confucianism has exerted the most profound and lasting influence in China.While Confucianism (a term coined by Westerners) refers to a tradition (Ruism) that predated Confucius, it is most closely associated with Confucius (551-479 BCE), who determined its later development. Confucius' ideas are reflected in his conversations with students, mostly recorded in the Analects. However, this book also brings into discussion those sayings of Confucius th…Read more
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66Confucian love and global ethics: How the Cheng Brothers would help respond to Christian criticismsAsian Philosophy 15 (1). 2005.There is an increasing awareness that we are living in a global village, which demands a global ethics. In this article, I shall explore what contributions Confucianism, particularly its conception of love, can make. It has often been claimed that Confucian love is love with distinction, as a natural feeling, and as merely human love and so it is inferior to the Christian love, which is universal, commanded, and based on divine love. Drawing on the resources of the Cheng brothers' neo-Confuciani…Read more
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73Religious pluralism and interfaith dialogue: Beyond universalism and particularism (review)International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 37 (3). 1995.
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64Foundation of religious beliefs after foundationalism: Wittgenstein between Nielsen and Phillips: Yong HuangReligious Studies 31 (2): 251-267. 1995.Religious beliefs have often been taken either as absolutely foundational to all others or as ultimately founded on something else. This essay starts with an endorsement of the contemporary critique of foundationalism but sets its task as to search for the foundation of religious belief after foundationalism. In its third and main part, it argues for a Wittgensteinian reflective equilibrium as such a foundation. In this reflective equilibrium, religious beliefs are no more and no less foundation…Read more
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29Confucianism and the Perfectionist Critique of the Liberal Neutrality: A Neglected DimensionJournal of Value Inquiry 49 (1-2): 181-204. 2015.IntroductionThe idea of neutrality is one of the trademarks and also one of the most controversial ideas of contemporary liberalism as a political philosophy. One part of this idea is that, in determining the political principle of justice, the state should be neutral with respect to individuals’ religious and metaphysical conceptions of the good or the lack thereof. In their argument against political liberalism, communitarian philosophers such as Alasdair MacIntyre and Charles Taylor have argu…Read more
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129Charles Taylor's transcendental arguments for liberal communitarianismPhilosophy and Social Criticism 24 (4): 79-106. 1998.This paper sees Charles Taylor's moral discourse as a version of liberal communitarianism, an attempt to reconcile liberalism and communitarianism, by examining his three transcendental arguments: the liberal transcendence from the parochial to the universal; the communi tarian transcendence from the instinctual to the ontological; and the theistic transcendence from the good to God. While this liberal communi tarianism absorbs some great insights from both liberalism and communi tarianism and o…Read more
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34Slote, Michael, A Sentimentalist Theory of the Mind: Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014, xxiii + 247 pagesDao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy 14 (2): 307-313. 2015.
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55God as Absolute Spirit: A Heideggerian Interpretation of Hegel's God-TalkReligious Studies 32 (4). 1996.Though this is not a comparative study of Hegel and Heidegger, this article brings Heidegger's thinking of Being to shed light on some ambiguous parts of Hegel's Godtalk, which is fundamentally postmodern. Its main arguments are (1) as real, Hegel's God is not a metaphysical Being but an absolute activity; (2) as transcendent, Hegel's God is not beyond this world but immanent in this world to bring it beyond itself; and (3) as revealing, God is not external but internal to human knowing. Largely…Read more
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116Confucius and mencius on the motivation to be moralPhilosophy East and West 60 (1). 2010.Focusing on the Analects and the Mencius, this article attempts to provide a Confucian answer to "why be moral?"—a question about the motivation to be moral that is neither tautological nor self-contradictory, as some philosophers claim. The Confucian answer to this question is that to be moral is joyful. While one may find joy in doing non-moral and even immoral things, one ought to seek joy in being moral or at least in being not immoral, as being moral is uniquely human. As the Confucian moti…Read more
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99A neo-confucian conception of wisdom: Wang yangming on the innate moral knowledge (liangzhi)Journal of Chinese Philosophy 33 (3). 2006.
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353A copper rule versus the golden rule: A daoist-confucian proposal for global ethicsPhilosophy East and West 55 (3): 394-425. 2005.: Here a moral principle called the "Copper Rule" is developed and defended as an alternative to the Golden Rule. First, the article focuses on two problems with the Golden Rule's traditional formulation of "Do (or don't do) unto others what you would (or would not) have them do unto you": it assumes (1) the uniformity of human needs and preferences and (2) that whatever is universally desired is good. Second, it examines three attempts to reformulate the Golden Rule—Marcus Singer's general inte…Read more
Areas of Specialization
Value Theory |
Philosophical Traditions |
Areas of Interest
Metaphysics and Epistemology |
Value Theory |
Philosophical Traditions |