Overview

This collection of essays explores the development of the New Confucianism movement during the twentieth-century and questions whether it is, in fact, a distinctly new intellectual movement or one that has been mostly retrospectively created. The questions that contributors to this book seek to answer about this neo-conservative philosophical movement include: 'What has been the cross-fertilization between Chinese scholars in China and overseas made possible by the shared discourse of Confucianism?'; 'To what extent does this discourse transcend geographical, political, cultural, and ideological divides?'; 'Why do so many Chinese intellectuals equate Confucianism with Chinese cultural identity?'; and 'Does the Confucian revival of the 1990s in China and Taiwan represent a genuine philosophical renaissance or a resurgence in interest based on political and cultural factors?'.

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9781349526529

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In the early twentieth century, Confucianism was declared dead, both as an intellectual movement and as a social force. However, Confucianism has now been rehabilitated in mainland China, and is increasingly influential as a world philosophy. Both its critics and its admirers must admit that the most influential contemporary version of Confucianism is the so-called 'New Confucianism.' The essays in this informative and interesting volume describe the rise and development of New Confucianism, the new debates over Confucian orthodoxy, and critically introduce the thought of several major New Confucian thinkers, including Xiong Shili, Mou Zongsan and Feng Youlan. This book is a significant contribution because little is available in English on New Confucianism. Among the highlights of this anthology are the essays by editor John Makeham, who is one of the leading authorities on Confucianism today. Ironically, Makeham challenges the very notion that New Confucianism has a specific identity. This collection of essays is required reading for anyone interested in Confucianism or contemporary Chinese thought. - Bryan W. Van Norden, Vassar College

Author Information

JOHN MAKEHAM is Reader in Chinese, Centre for Asian Studies, Adelaide University. For most of the last decade he has worked in the area of pre-modern Confucian intellectual history. Between 1993-2001 he studied the Chinese commentary tradition on the Analects from the second to the nineteenth centuries, a period substantially contemporaneous with the rise and decline of scriptural Confucianism (Transmitters and Creators: Chinese Commentators and Commentaries on the Analects, Harvard Asia Center, 2003). His current research project on contemporary discourse on Confucianism is a direct outgrowth of his work on early periods in Confucian intellectual history. He has also published Name and Actuality in Early Chinese Thought (SUNY, 1994) and a translation of the Han Dynasty Confucian thinker Xu Gan's (170-217) Balanced Discourses (Yale, 2002).

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