Samuel Crane

Federation University
  •  12
    This highly original work introduces the ideas and arguments of the ancient Chinese philosophies of Confucianism and Daoism to some of the most intractable social issues of modern American life, including abortion, gay marriage, and assisted suicide. Introduces the precepts of ancient Chinese philosophers to issues they could not have anticipated Relates Daoist and Confucian ideas to problems across the arc of modern human life, from birth to death Provides general readers with a fascinating int…Read more
  • Front Matter
    In Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Dao, Wiley. 2013.
    The prelims comprise: Praise for Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Dao Wiley Series Page Title Page Copyright Page Dedication Page Table of Contents Acknowledgments Introduction.
  •  3
    Marriage and Family
    In Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Dao, Wiley. 2013.
    Marriage and family are obviously central to Confucian ethics. Perhaps the most oft‐repeated exhortation in the Analects is the duty of children to care for parents. There is little in the Daodejing or Zhuangzi on marriage and family. Relative silence suggests that Daoism does not place much importance on the formal institutionalization of interpersonal commitments. Male and female instinctually complement one another, and their pairing opens the way to reproduction, a major theme of the Daodeji…Read more
  •  1
    Public and Political Life
    In Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Dao, Wiley. 2013.
    For Confucians, public life — holding political office or assuming some sort of community leadership role — is a natural expression of moral accomplishment. Daoists would care little for either Bill Clinton or John Roberts. The personal faults of the former president would not surprise the writers of the Daodejing or Zhuangzi. Daoism and Confucianism provide very different views on who should lead and how leaders should perform. The more activist Confucian ideal of an exemplary leader, living a …Read more
  • Work
    In Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Dao, Wiley. 2013.
    When obligations to work conflict with obligations to family, Confucians would generally counsel us to fulfill our family duties first. Professional careers are less important than our social duties, and profit‐seeking behavior, or materialist desires beyond a modest minimum can undermine our humanity. Daoists, while also profit averse, see work as potentially more important than social relationships. It is a realm in which we can discover our place in Way. Confucianism offers lucid and direct r…Read more
  •  2
    Childhood
    In Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Dao, Wiley. 2013.
    Every society has its own ways of marking the transition from childhood to adulthood. Education is central to childhood experience. Early on, parents play a key role in this regard, explicitly instructing children in principles of right and wrong and implicitly modeling good and, perhaps unwittingly, bad behavior. For Confucius, from birth to fifteen can be taken as a pre‐moral period. Morality is a function of learning, and before fifteen this kind of self‐conscious and engaged instruction had …Read more
  •  2
    End of Life
    In Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Dao, Wiley. 2013.
    The prospect of death, for Confucians, creates particular social and familial duties. Short of end‐of‐life issues, children, as a matter of general filial duty, certainly have a duty to provide care and comfort for parents as they experience the limitations of old age. Death is a major theme of Zhuangzi. At various points in the text, we are counseled to embrace the inevitable, to detach ourselves from the desire to preserve life beyond its natural bounds. When a loved one dies, however he or sh…Read more
  • Index
    In Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Dao, Wiley. 2013.
  • Birth
    In Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Dao, Wiley. 2013.
    Insights from Confucianism and Daoism disrupt the usual conversation in productive ways. While they ultimately come down for or against abortion and other related issues, they do so for reasons other than those usually put forward in conventional American debates. There is much about birth in Daoism, but nothing about a definitive determination of the beginning of life. Confucianism and Daoism maintain a certain consistency between their attitudes on abortion and in vitro fertilization (IVF). Et…Read more
  • Introduction
    In Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Dao, Wiley. 2013.
  •  3
    Key Concepts of Confucianism and Daoism
    In Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Dao, Wiley. 2013.
    Ancient Confucianism and Daoism are distinct streams of thought, their differences stark at times. But they emerge from and flow through a shared cultural context and historical time. Certain common assumptions are to be found in each, and distinguish both from Western ways of thinking. This chapter considers the particulars of these two ancient Chinese perspectives, and the ways in which they differ from one another. The three key concepts of Confucianism include: humanity, duty, ritual. The Co…Read more
  •  3
    What factors shape the movement of systems of thought from one historical-cultural context to another? This paper provides a preliminary answer to this question by constructing an analytic framework drawn from the sociology of philosophy, and it uses this framework to consider the prospects for the contemporary transposition of Confucianism from China to America. The central, though still provisional, conclusion is that while global power dynamics matter, the particular conditions of the “philos…Read more