•  17
    The Philosophical Challenge from China (review)
    Common Knowledge 22 (1): 133-133. 2016.
    The premise of this volume, which collects the work of thirteen contributors, is that Chinese philosophy has plenty to say to the problems that occupy current philosophers. Turns out that means plenty to say in their terms and by their standards. For many—not all—of the contributors, the only “challenge” Chinese thought poses is assimilation, how same can they make it. Part of the problem is that the philosophy asked to receive this challenge is our insipid, directionless, imaginatively exhauste…Read more
  •  20
    A singularity of the famous Art of War《孫子兵法》 attributed to Sunzi is the way this work conceives of knowledge as a resource for the military strategist. The idea is new in Chinese tradition, and new in the worldwide context of thinking about strategy, where Sunzi’s ideas about the value of knowledge are far in advance of the thinking of Western theorists like Machiavelli or especially Clausewitz. In this paper I analyze the role of knowledge in the Sunzi theory of strategy, and show the consisten…Read more
  •  16
    To Really See the Little Things: Sage Knowledge in Action
    Journal of Chinese Philosophy 42 (3-4): 359-370. 2015.
    Sage knowledge knows the evolution of circumstances from an early point, when tendencies may be inconspicuously, “effortlessly” diverted. This knowledge is expressed, not “represented,” being an intensive quality of action rather than of belief, proposition, or theory, and its effortlessness is not a matter of effort versus no effort, but of the intensity with which effort tends to vanish. The value of such knowledge and the explanation of its accomplishment in terms of perceiving incipience or …Read more
  •  143
    The virtual and the vacant—emptiness and knowledge in Chan and daoism
    Journal of Chinese Philosophy 37 (3): 457-471. 2010.
    Similarities between Daoism and Chan (Zen) are often merely verbal, a skillful appropriation by Chan authors of a vocabulary that seems Daoist only to a point, and then departs in a predictable way. What makes the departure predictable is the completely different understanding of emptiness in Chan and Daoism, supporting a no less different understanding of the value of knowledge. Daoism remains optimistic about knowledge in a way Chan is not. Buddhist wisdom exhausts life, extinguishes it, does …Read more
  •  37
    Barry Allen explores the concept of knowledge in Chinese thought over two millennia and compares the different philosophical imperatives that have driven Chinese and Western thought. Challenging the hyperspecialized epistemology of modern Western philosophy, he urges his readers toward an ethical appreciation of why knowledge is worth pursuing.
  •  16
    The first book to focus on the intersection of Western philosophy and the Asian martial arts, _Striking Beauty_ comparatively studies the historical and philosophical traditions of martial arts practice and their ethical value in the modern world. Expanding Western philosophy's global outlook, the book forces a theoretical reckoning with the concerns of Chinese philosophy and the aesthetic and technical dimensions of martial arts practice. _Striking Beauty_ explains the relationship between Asia…Read more
  •  20
    The cloud of knowing blurring the difference with china
    Common Knowledge 17 (3): 450-532. 2011.
    In this monograph-length article, which inaugurates a multipart symposium titled “Fuzzy Studies,” the significance and virtues of blur are investigated through the whole history of Chinese intellectual tradition. In the Western tradition, the blur of becoming seems to disqualify an object for knowledge; nothing can be an object of knowledge until the blur is resolved and clarity attained. Chinese tradition offers suggestive examples of the thought that blur, so far from being incompatible with k…Read more
  •  25
    Out of Athens: The New Ancient Greeks (review)
    Common Knowledge 18 (2): 356-356. 2012.
    The field of study we call Classics is an ideological construction. It assumes that the Greece and Rome of antiquity belong to the modern West in some singular, privileged way, as our antiquity, their works our classics, and that these civilizations were largely self-invented. In this antiquity there are no diaspora, no hybrids, no minorities, often no women or slaves. Democratic, philosophical Athens is the antitype of a cosmopolis: hermetic, autochthonous, owing nothing to the civilizations of…Read more
  •  45
    Vanishing into Things
    with Bernard Faure, Jacob Raz, Glenn Alexander Magee, N. Verbin, Dalia Ofer, Elaine Pryce, and Amy M. King
    Common Knowledge 16 (3): 417-423. 2010.
    Introducing the sixth and final installment of the Common Knowledge symposium “Apology for Quietism,” Allen looks at the symposium retrospectively and concludes that it has mainly concerned “sage knowledge,” defined as foresight into the development of situations. The sagacious knower sees the disposition of things in an early, incipient form and knows how to intervene with nearly effortless and undetectable (quiet) effectiveness. Whatever the circumstance, the sage handles it with finesse, neve…Read more
  •  131
    Daoism and Chinese Martial Arts
    Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy 13 (2): 251-266. 2014.
    The now-global phenomenon of Asian martial arts traces back to something that began in China. The idea the Chinese communicated was the dual cultivation of the spiritual and the martial, each perfected in the other, with the proof of perfection being an effortless mastery of violence. I look at one phase of the interaction between Asian martial arts and Chinese thought, with a reading of the Zhuangzi 莊子 and the Daodejing 道德經 from a martial arts perspective. I do not claim that the authors knew a…Read more
  •  25
    This work by an accomplished and respected comparative philosopher criticizes the Western ideology of individualism from the perspective of a Confucian morality of the family. Individualism is a name for the Enlightenment era ideology of the autonomous individual. The philosophical pillars of this ideology are Locke and especially Kant, and it runs through practically all modern moral philosophy. It is the moral psychology of classical liberalism, no less than of its libertarian and communitaria…Read more
  •  180
    A dao of technology?
    Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy 9 (2): 151-160. 2010.
    Scholars have detected hostility to technology in Daoist thought. But is this a problem with any machine or only some applications of some machines by some people? I show that the problem is not with machines per se but with the people who introduce them, or more exactly with their knowledge. It is not knowledge as such that causes the disorder Laozi and Zhuangzi associate with machines; it is confused, disordered knowledge—superficial, inadequate, unsubtle, and artless. In other words the probl…Read more
  •  70
    A Theory of Craft: Function and Aesthetic Expression (review)
    Common Knowledge 15 (3): 517-517. 2009.
    Craft work (for example, ceramics and furniture) poses a dilemma for modern thinking about beauty and the arts. Because of its beauty, craft has more than mere functionality, yet because of its functionality it cannot be fine art. What should craftmakers do? Claim their work to be fine art and forget about functionality? Or remain loyal to functionality (you can eat noodles from the finest ceramic bowl) and face extinction competing with machine-made products of industrial design? Apparently, th…Read more
  •  127
    The book concludes that it is a mistake to think of Art as something subjective, or as an arbitrary social representation, and of Technology as an instrumental ..