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Paperback Boston Confucianism: Portable Tradition in the Late-Modern World Book

ISBN: 0791447189

ISBN13: 9780791447185

Boston Confucianism: Portable Tradition in the Late-Modern World (Suny Series in Chinese Philosophy and Culture)

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Book Overview

Argues that Confucianism can be important to the contemporary, global conversation of philosophy and should not be confined to an East Asian context.

Is it possible to be a Confucian without being East Asian, as so many philosophers have been Platonists without being Greek? Strangely enough, many scholars would answer in the negative, citing the inextricable connection between Confucianism and East Asian culture. Boston Confucianism argues to the contrary, maintaining that Confucianism can be important to the contemporary global conversation of philosophy and should not be confined to an East Asian context. It promotes a multicultural philosophy of culture and makes a contribution to Confucian-Christian dialogue, showing that the relations among the world's great civilizations today is not a "clash," as Samuel Huntington has argued, but an entanglement whose roots are worth sorting and whose contemporary mutual developments are worth promoting.

Customer Reviews

2 ratings

Intellectually interesting, but lacking in practical applications

I very much enjoyed this book. What I liked best was being introduced to the work of Dr. Tu Wei-Ming. The references gave me many works to study, which I appreciated. I became very interested in how an American could apply Confucianism to his or her life, but this book is not about practical applications of Confucianism. For that I recommend another book: "Achieve Lasting Happiness, Timeless Secrets to Transform Your Life" by Robert Canright.

Can you be a Christian and a Confucian?

The author is attempting to define a form of Confucianism for non-Chinese. One of the main problems is translating the Confucian notion of ritual/etiquette into Western ideas. Neville relies on Fingarette's study, "Confucius The Secular as Sacred" to do this: basically by using a much wider concept of ritual, referring to all the *signs* in our relationships: signs of friendship, love, commitment... it goes beyond courtesy, to a definition of roles in relationships, although these can be very flexible.Next Neville, who is a Christian, attempts to reconcile Confucianism and Christianity, and to do this he looks for some form of transcendence (an absolute beyond the perceptible phenomena) in Confucianism to match the transcendent Christian God: Hall & Ames have shown that such a transcendence does not exist in early Confucianism and I don't think that Neville succeeds in proving that they are wrong. He does point though to the Neo-Confucian concept of "principle" that is transcendent since it structures all things and man. This then could be a bridge towards Christianity.Well the great thinkers (Neville, Hall & Ames) have given us a green light: we can be Western Confucians!Thomas
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