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5Self-Restriction and Progressive ConfucianismIn Tze-Ki Hon (ed.), Confucianism for the contemporary world: global order, political plurality, and social action, State University of New York Press. pp. 91-105. 2017.
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4Building Bridges to Distant ShoresIn James Behuniak (ed.), Appreciating the Chinese Difference: Engaging Roger T. Ames on Methods, Issues, and Roles, Suny Press. pp. 159-181. 2018.
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28Symposium: How Would Feminist Concerns Fare in the Debate between Confucian Role Ethics and Virtue Ethics?Journal of World Philosophies 8 (2). 2024.How would feminist concerns fare in the debate between Confucian role ethics and virtue ethics? Ann Pang-White sketches the contours of a non-dichotomous, role-based virtue ethics that is illuminated by a Confucian feminist account as one possible answer to this query. By reimagining the virtues of chastity and filiality that are indispensable to Confucian contexts, Pang-White seeks to develop a reading that can be useful in defending feminist values and replacing outdated understandings of gend…Read more
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Buddhism and Zhu Xi's epistemology of discernmentIn John Makeham (ed.), The Buddhist Roots of Zhu Xi's Philosophical Thought, Oup Usa. 2018.
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Confucianism on human relations : progressive or conservative?In Peter D. Hershock & Roger T. Ames (eds.), Human beings or human becomings?: a conversation with Confucianism on the concept of person, State University of New York Press. 2021.
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14Confucian Sentimental Representation: A New Approach to Confucian Democracy by Kyung Rok KwonReview of Metaphysics 76 (1): 146-148. 2022.In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Confucian Sentimental Representation: A New Approach to Confucian Democracy by Kyung Rok KwonStephen C. AngleKWON, Kyung Rok. Confucian Sentimental Representation: A New Approach to Confucian Democracy. New York: Routledge, 2022. vi + 128 pp. Cloth, $128.00; eBook, $39.16Two facts have driven much of the recent theorizing about Confucian democracy. First, even in robust democracies like South Korea and Taiwan, East Asian …Read more
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20Growing Moral: A Confucian Guide to LifeOxford University Press. 2022."Growing Moral engages its readers to reflect on and to practice the teachings of Confucianism in the contemporary world. It draws on the whole history of Confucianism, focusing on three thinkers from the classical era and two from the Neo-Confucian era (Zhu Xi and Wang Yangming. In addition to laying out the fundamental teachings of Confucianism, it highlights the enduring and strikingly relevant lessons that Confucianism offers contemporary readers. At its core, this book builds a case for mod…Read more
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12Can the People (Min) Ever Grow Up? Comments on Shu-Shan Lee, “What Did the Emperor Ever Say?”Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy 21 (4): 605-609. 2022.In this essay, I find much to admire and little to disagree with in Shu-Shan L ee ’s use of James Scott’s “public transcript” framework to excavate a theory of political obligation that applies to common people in premodern China. I offer some ways to further explore the implications of Lee’s analysis, in part by connecting Lee’s essay to related work on the obligations of elites. I then build on Lee’s own suggestions of connections to contemporary empirical attitudes and contemporary normative …Read more
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15Confucian Leadership Meets Confucian Democracy1Journal of Social and Political Philosophy 1 (2): 121-135. 2022.Confucian democrats hold that the roles of Confucian political leaders must be rethought, just as the modern Confucian polity must shift from a monarchy to a constitutional democracy. This does not mean that modern Confucians must turn their backs on traditional Confucian views of leadership, however: the key traditional insights are still important, although to some degree they take on new significance in the new context of modern democratic Confucianism. Drawing on recent work by Joseph Chan a…Read more
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67Virtue Ethics and Confucianism (edited book)Routledge. 2013.This volume presents the fruits of an extended dialogue among American and Chinese philosophers concerning the relations between virtue ethics and the Confucian tradition. Based on recent advances in English-language scholarship on and translation of Confucian philosophy, the book demonstrates that cross-tradition stimulus, challenge, and learning are now eminently possible. Anyone interested in the role of virtue in contemporary moral philosophy, in Chinese thought, or in the future possibiliti…Read more
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26Can Artificial Intelligence Lead Us to Genuine Virtue? A Confucian PerspectiveIn Bing Song (ed.), Intelligence and Wisdom: Artificial Intelligence Meets Chinese Philosophers, Springer Singapore. pp. 49-64. 2021.Philosophers, technologists, and pundits are beginning to recognize the deep ethical questions raised by artificial intelligence. So far, attention has concentrated in three areas: how we are being damaged or controlled by profit-driven algorithms, and what to do about it; how to ensure that autonomous, intelligent machines make “good” decisions, and how to define what these decisions are; and how to think about the possibility of artificial superintelligence surpassing and perhaps controlling u…Read more
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7Contemporary Chinese Philosophy. Edited by Chung-Ying Cheng and Nicholas BunninJournal of Chinese Philosophy 29 (4): 571-574. 2002.
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8Reply to Dr. Yu YihsoongPhilosophy East and West 71 (1): 260-264. 2021.I am grateful to Dr. Yu Yihsoong for having engaged so deeply with my book Sagehood and its view of Coherence, and to the editor for giving me this opportunity to reply. I am also pleased that Dr. Yu is not hung up on the translation of li as “Coherence”—indeed, he says he likes the translation—but rather argues with the details of what I say about li itself. As I read him, Dr. Yu’s critique of my book has three main aspects. First, he sees that I defend a virtue-ethical rather than a rule-ethic…Read more
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36Moral Psychology: Heartmind (Xin), Nature (Xing), and Emotions (Qing)In Kai-Chiu Ng & Yong Huang (eds.), Dao Companion to Zhu Xi’s Philosophy, Springer. pp. 361-387. 2020.An overview of Zhu Xi's moral psychology, with a special focus on the metaphysical underpinnings and the relations between heartmind (xin), emotions (qing), and nature (xing). The authors explain how Zhu uses his account to balance the demand for independent standards of assessment with his commitment to ethical norms that virtuous agents can embrace wholeheartedly.
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37Does Confucian Public Reason Depend on Confucian Civil Religion?Journal of Social Philosophy 50 (2): 177-191. 2019.Journal of Social Philosophy, EarlyView.
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39The Adolescence of Mainland New ConfucianismContemporary Chinese Thought 49 (2): 83-99. 2018.This issue of Contemporary Chinese Thought is devoted to recent mainland Chinese Confucian philosophizing, and especially to arguments about what “Mainland New Confucianism” signifies that were prompted by somewhat dismissive remarks about Mainland New Confucianism by the noted Taiwanese scholar Li Minghui in early 2015. This introduction begins by summarizing some of the challenges Confucianism has encountered in the twentieth century and also the rise of New Confucianism. It next turns to the …Read more
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11ConfuciusIn Hugh LaFollette (ed.), International Encyclopedia of Ethics, Wiley. 2022.Confucius (551–479 BCE) is the Latinized name of Kong Qiu, best known in Chinese as Kongzi (Master Kong). Only partially successful in his public career, Confucius' private teaching inaugurated an era of reflectiveness and helped to define core elements of Chinese civilization. Subsequent generations of students built on his initial formulations to develop one of the world's great philosophical traditions, which in English we call “Confucianism”; various terms are used in Chinese, including Ru j…Read more
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30Guest Editors' Introduction: Rights and Chinese ThoughtContemporary Chinese Thought 31 (1): 3-10. 1999.The past decade has seen a vigorous discussion of human rights both within China and between China and other nations. It is easy to think of China as a latecomer to human rights discourse, in part because during most of the post-1949 period, rights and human rights were taboo subjects in the People's Republic. In fact, however, there was a rich and contested debate on rights throughout the first half of this century. By translating the most important pre-1949 essays on rights and human rights, w…Read more
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55Tian as Cosmos in Z hu Xi’s Neo-ConfucianismDao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy 17 (2): 169-185. 2018.Tian 天 is central to the metaphysics, cosmology, and ethics of the 800-year-long Chinese philosophical tradition we call “Neo-Confucianism,” but there is considerable confusion over what tian means—confusion which is exacerbated by its standard translation into English as “Heaven.” This essay analyzes the meaning of tian in the works of the most influential Neo-Confucian, Zhu Xi 朱熹, presents a coherent interpretation that unifies the disparate aspects of the term’s meaning, and argues that “cosm…Read more
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51The Future of Confucian Political PhilosophyComparative Philosophy 9 (1). 2018.On February 14, 2017, Joseph Chan and Stephen Angle convened a Roundtable on the Future of Confucian Political Philosophy at the University of Hong Kong. Eight invited speakers each offered thoughts on the main topic, followed by discussion among the panelists and responses to questions from the audience. This transcript has been reviewed and edited by the main participants. Much of the discussion revolves around the relations and tensions between Confucian political philosophy as academic theor…Read more
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37Response to Danielle Macbeth, "The Place of Philosophy"Philosophy East and West 67 (4): 986-989. 2017.Danielle Macbeth has two principal goals in "The Place of Philosophy": to diagnose the plight of contemporary Western—and especially analytic—philosophy, and to argue for an alternative conception of philosophy's role, according to which engagement with its history and with the philosophies of other cultures becomes crucial. I have a great deal of sympathy with both halves of her project, and feel I have learned a considerable amount from her essay. As Macbeth herself emphasizes, though, the a p…Read more
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76Translating (and Interpreting) the Mengzi: Virtue, Obligation, and DiscretionJournal of Chinese Philosophy 37 (4): 676-683. 2010.
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Concepts in Context: A Study of Ethical IncommensurabilityDissertation, University of Michigan. 1994.In my dissertation I defend the intelligibility of ethical incommensurability and ethical pluralism by analyzing the persistence of Confucian values in twentieth-century China. I begin with a case study of the ethical language used by Liang Qichao, a prominent early twentieth-century Chinese thinker. Liang sought to improve Chinese ethics by stressing the importance of individuals' responsibility towards their nationality, an idea that he believed to be responsible for the flourishing of Western…Read more
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Philosophy of governanceIn A. S. Cua (ed.), Encyclopedia of Chinese Philosophy, Routledge. pp. 534--540. 2003.
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12A Fresh Look at Knowledge And Action: Wang Yangming in Comparative PerspectiveJournal of Chinese Philosophy 33 (2): 287-298. 2006.
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310Neo-Confucianism: A Philosophical IntroductionPolity. 2017.Neo-Confucianism is a philosophically sophisticated tradition weaving classical Confucianism together with themes from Buddhism and Daoism. It began in China around the eleventh century CE, played a leading role in East Asian cultures over the last millennium, and has had a profound influence on modern Chinese society. Based on the latest scholarship but presented in accessible language, Neo-Confucianism: A Philosophical Introduction is organized around themes that are central in Neo-Confucian p…Read more
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30Review of William M. Sullivan, will Kymlicka (eds.), The Globalization of Ethics: Religious and Secular Perspectives (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2008 (3). 2008.
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New Confucianism |
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Human Rights |
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Contemporary Chinese Philosophy, Misc |