Chinese Religion and Philosophy

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The Origins of Chinese Literary Hermeneutics

Explores how China’s oldest poetry collection was interpreted in a Confucian exegetical text—the Mao Commentary—in the mid-second century BCE.

Confucian Iconoclasm

Challenges deep-seated assumptions about the traditionalist nature of Confucianism by providing a new interpretation of the emergence of modern Confucianism in Republican China.

Curses of the Kingdom of Xixia

By Xue Mo
Translated by Fan Pen Li Chen
Subjects: General Interest
Series: Excelsior Editions

Reality merges with illusion in this novel of northwestern China.

Writing Early China

Considers what unearthed documents reveal about the creation and transmission of knowledge in ancient China.

A Sourcebook in Classical Confucian Philosophy

Applies a method of comparative cultural hermeneutics to let the tradition speak on its own terms.

The Philosophy of Change

An analysis of the philosophy of the Yijing in comparison to modern Western philosophies.

The Annotated Laozi

A clear translation and helpful explanations illuminate this ancient classic of self-cultivation for a modern audience.

The Craft of Oblivion

Examines the intersections between forgetting and remembering in classical Chinese civilization.

From Metaphysical Representations to Aesthetic Life

Reevaluates Western and Chinese philosophical traditions to question the boundaries of entrenched conceptual frameworks.

The Humanist Ethics of Li Zehou

By Li Zehou
Edited and translated by Robert A. Carleo III
Subjects: Asian Studies
Series: SUNY series, Translating China

Presents Li Zehou's culminating views on ethics in a series of works that highlight the importance of Confucian philosophy today.

A Walk in the Night with Zhuangzi

A complete translation and analysis of "All Things Flow into Form" (Fan wu liu xing), a recently discovered manuscript from the Warring States period (481–221 BCE).

Introduction to Buddhist East Asia

Offers a variety of pedagogical and theoretical essays designed to assist professors in introducing undergraduate students to Buddhism in China, Korea, and Japan.

Crossing Boundaries and Confounding Identity

Examines literary, historical, and cultural portrayals of Chinese women, across centuries and continents.

Confucian Liberalism

Offers a renovated form of Confucian liberalism that forges a reconciliation between the two extremes of anti-Confucian liberalism and anti-liberal Confucianism.

The Future of China's Past

Addresses the question of China's rise and what it portends for the future.

The Many Lives of Yang Zhu

Presents the most important portrayals of the Daoist master Yang Zhu throughout Chinese history, from the Warring States period until today.

Approaches to Chan, Sŏn, and Zen Studies

A comprehensive treatment of the shared traditions of Chan, Sŏn, and Zen in dynamic interaction across East Asia, acknowledging the changing and growing parameters of the field of Zen studies.

A Conceptual Lexicon for Classical Confucian Philosophy

Uses a comparative hermeneutical method to explain the most important terms in the classical Confucian philosophical texts, in an effort to allow the tradition to speak on its own terms.

Adventures in Chinese Realism

Relates Chinese Realism to contemporary political and ethical challenges, such as in international relations and the morality of the public sector.

Technical Arts in the Han Histories

The first concerted attempt to analyze how the histories Shiji and Hanshu described the technical arts as they were applied in vital areas of the administration of pre-Han and Han China.

Persons Emerging

Offers three neo-Confucian understandings of broadening the Way as broadening oneself, through an ongoing process of removing self-boundaries.

Cognition and Practice

Explores the aesthetic theory of one of China's most important and influential contemporary philosophers.

Ziran

The ancient concept of spontaneous self-causation (ziran) from Daoism opens a path to understanding human action as self-organizing, attention as effortless, and art as somatic.

Self-Cultivation in Early China

An introduction to ancient Chinese ideas on how to live a good life.

The Emergence of Word-Meaning in Early China

Posits the origin of a specifically Chinese concept of “word-meaning,” and sheds new light on the linguistic ideas in early Chinese philosophical texts.

The Chinese Liberal Spirit

By Xu Fuguan
Edited and translated by David Elstein
Subjects: Asian Studies
Series: SUNY series, Translating China

The first English-language translation of an important figure in modern Confucian thought.

The Contemplative Foundations of Classical Daoism

Brings early Daoist writings into conversation with contemporary contemplative studies.

A Philosophical Defense of Culture

Draws on two different but strikingly similar streams in our world tradition to argue for the contemporary philosophical relevance of “culture.”

Friendship and Hospitality

Offers a comparative and deconstructive reading of the cross-cultural encounter between the Jesuits and their Confucian hosts in late Ming China.

The Primary Way

A unique work on the underlying ontology, cosmology, and moral philosophy of the Yijing.

Reconsidering the Life of Power

Offers a compelling intercultural perspective on body, art, self, and society.

Human Becomings

Offers an in-depth exposition of the Confucian conception of persons as the starting point of Confucian ethics.

Human Beings or Human Becomings?

Argues that Confucianism and other East Asian philosophical traditions can be resources for understanding and addressing current global challenges such as climate change and hunger.

Abolishing Boundaries

Offers new perspectives on modern Chinese political thought.

Confucian Role Ethics

Argues that the only way to understand the Confucian vision of the consummate moral life is to take the tradition on its own terms.

In Pursuit of the Great Peace

Examines the Great Peace (taiping), one of the first utopian visions in Chinese history, and its impact on literati lives in Han China.

Experiments in Intra-cultural Philosophy Set (Volumes 1 and 2)

Argues that we move beyond philosophy that is simply “comparative” and uses John Dewey’s late period reflections as the basis for an alternative.

John Dewey and Confucian Thought

Assesses John Dewey’s visit to China in 1919–21 as an “intra-cultural” episode and promotes “Chinese natural philosophy” as a philosophical context in which to understand the connections between Dewey’s philosophy and early Confucian thinking.

John Dewey and Daoist Thought

Proposes an “intra-cultural philosophy” based on John Dewey’s “cultural turn” and promotes Daoist thought as a resource that can help to reconstruct outmoded assumptions that continue to shape how we currently think.

Beyond the Troubled Water of Shifei

Offers the first focused study of the shifei debates of the Warring States period in ancient China and challenges the imposition of Western conceptual categories onto these debates.

Following His Own Path

Critically introduces the philosophical system of Li Zehou, one of the most significant modern scholars of Chinese history and culture.

Appreciating the Chinese Difference

A wide-ranging exploration and critical assessment of the work of a major figure in Chinese and comparative philosophy.

Dao and Sign in History

Provides a new perspective on important linguistic issues in philosophical and religious Daoism through the comparative lens of twentieth-century European philosophies of language.

Apophatic Paths from Europe to China

An encounter between Franke’s philosophy of the unsayable and Eastern apophatic wisdom in the domains of poetry, thought, and culture.

Reading for the Moral

Reassesses didacticism in seventeenth-century Chinese vernacular fiction and challenges the view that the late Ming was a notoriously immoral time.

Atmospheres of Breathing

Edited by Lenart Škof & Petri Berndtson
Subjects: Philosophy

Attempts to think anew about philosophical questions from the perspective of breath and breathing.

Having a Word with Angus Graham

Critical reflections on the work of Angus Charles Graham, renowned Western scholar of Chinese philosophy and sinology.

Bodies in China

Engages with Chinese philosophy to offer new conceptual models for reframing gender, bodies, and aesthetics.

Language as Bodily Practice in Early China

Challenges the idea held by many prominent twentieth-century Sinologists that early China experienced a “language crisis. ”

Birth in Ancient China

Reveals cultural paradigms and historical prejudices regarding the role of birthing and women in the reproduction of society.

Confucianism for the Contemporary World

Discusses contemporary Confucianism's relevance and its capacity to address pressing social and political issues of twenty-first-century life.

Military Thought in Early China

Provides a systematic and comprehensive survey of writings on military philosophy in early China.

The First Islamic Classic in Chinese

Translated by Sachiko Murata
Introduction by Sachiko Murata
Notes by Sachiko Murata
Subjects: Religion And Spirituality

A translation of Wang Daiyu’s Real Commentary on the True Teaching, the first and most influential work written in the Chinese language on Islam.

The Heir and the Sage, Revised and Expanded Edition

A comprehensive analysis of the transformations of ancient history in early Chinese texts.

The Rhetoric of Hiddenness in Traditional Chinese Culture

Considers the role of hiddenness in the history of cultural production in premodern China.

Returning to Zhu Xi

A reconsideration of Zhu Xi, known as the “great synthesizer” of Confucianism, which establishes him as an important thinker in his own right.

These Bones Shall Rise Again

David N. Keightley’s seminal essays on the origins of Chinese society are brought together in one volume.

Reconstructing the Confucian Dao

Discusses how Zhou Dunyi's thought became a cornerstone of neo-Confucianism.

Beyond Oneness and Difference

Continues the author’s inquiry into the development of the Chinese philosophical concept Li, concluding in Song and Ming dynasty Neo-Confucianism.

The Way of Complete Perfection

Selected by Louis Komjathy
Translated by Louis Komjathy
Introduction by Louis Komjathy
Subjects: Religion And Spirituality

An anthology of English translations of primary texts of the Quanzhen (Complete Perfection) school of Daoism.

Music, Cosmology, and the Politics of Harmony in Early China

Explores the religious, political, and cultural significance attributed to music in early China.

Mortality in Traditional Chinese Thought

A wide-ranging exploration of traditional Chinese views of mortality.

What Is Enlightenment

A cross-cultural work which reinvigorates the consideration of enlightenment.

Philosophy and Religion in Early Medieval China

An exploration of Chinese during a time of monumental change, the period after the fall of the Han dynasty.

The Examined Life--Chinese Perspectives

Edited by Xinyan Jiang
Introduction by Xinyan Jiang
Foreword by Robert Cummings Neville
Subjects: Philosophy

A collection of essays on Chinese ethical traditions, including Confucian, Daoist, and Buddhist ethics.

Asian Texts — Asian Contexts

Provides an overview of some of the great texts of Asian philosophy and religion along with an exploration of the contexts in which they arose.

Xunzi and Early Chinese Naturalism

Explores Xunzi's thought in relation to the early Chinese philosophical context that relied on the natural world.

Expanding Process

Brings Chinese Daoist and Confucian thought into conversation with Western process, pragmatic, and naturalist philosophy and theology.

A Chinese Reading of the Daodejing

Presenting the commentary of the third-century sage Wang Bi, this book provides a Chinese way of reading the Daodejing, one which will surprise Western readers.

A Comparative History of World Philosophy

Breaks through the cultural barriers between Western, Indian, and Chinese philosophy and demonstrates that despite considerable differences between these three great philosophical traditions, there are fundamental resemblances in their abstract princip

In Search of Personal Welfare

The first major reassessment of ancient Chinese religion to appear in recent years, this book presents the religious mentality of the period through personal and daily experiences.

Before Confucius

Examines the original composition of China's oldest books, the Classic of Changes, the Venerated Documents, and the Classic of Poetry, and attempts to restore their original meanings.

The Way of Water and Sprouts of Virtue

Explicates early Chinese thought and explores the relationship between language and thought.

Anticipating China

This book shows that failure to assess the significant cultural differences between China and the West has seriously affected our understanding of both classical and contemporary China, and makes the translation of attitudes, concepts, and issues extre

Tao and Method

While the Tao Te Ching has been translated and commented on countless times, interpretations are seldom based on systematic theoretical treatment of the problems of interpretive method posed by this enigmatic ...

A God's Own Tale

This scripture was revealed through spirit writing in 1181. It traces Wenchang's development through his many transformations culminating in his apotheosis as director of the Wenchang Palace and custodian ...

Name and Actuality in Early Chinese Thought

This is the first Western study of the philosophy of Xu Gan (170-217), a Confucian thinker who lived at a nodal point in the history of Chinese thought, when Han scholasticism had become ossified and ...

All Under Heaven

This book is a study of comparative philosophy and theology. The themes are the critical issues arising from the modern interpretation of Confucian doctrine as they confront the Christian beliefs of the ...

Confucian Ethics of the Axial Age

Confucian Ethics of the Axial Age describes the formative period of Chinese culture—the last centuries of the Zhou dynasty—as an early epoch of enlightenment. It comprehensively reconstructs the ethical ...

The Taoist Experience

Containing sixty translations from a large variety of texts, this is an accessible yet thorough introduction to the major concepts, doctrines, and practices of Taoism. It presents the philosophy, rituals, ...

Nature and Heaven in the Xunzi

This translation and commentary on Xunzi's Tian Lun argues against naturalistic interpretations of Tian. Tracing the course of interpretation of Xunzi down to the present, discussing some of the influences ...

Heaven and Earth in Early Han Thought

The Huainanzi has in recent years been recognized by scholars as one of the seminal works of Chinese thought at the beginning of the imperial era, a summary of the full flowering of early Taoist philosophy. ...

The Shape of the Turtle

Many Chinese philosophic concepts derive from an ancient cosmology. This work is the first reconstructions of the mythic thought of the Shang Dynasty (ca. 1700- 1100 B. C.) which laid the foundation for ...

The Confucian Creation of Heaven

This book explores the earliest Confucian texts to find coherent structural principles linking the various facets of Confucian doctrine. Its central theme is that the coherence of early Confucianism emerges only when doctrine is viewed as a function of the unique ritual practice of the early Confucian community.

Thinking Through Confucius

Thinking Through Confucius critically interprets the conceptual structure underlying Confucius' philosophical reflections. It also investigates "thinking," or "philosophy" from the perspective of Confucius. ...

T'ai Chi Ch'üan

The foremost work on the ancient Chinese art of T'ai Chi Ch'üan in the English language is now even better. Master practitioner and teacher Sophia Delza has thoroughly revised her original guide to include ...