Comparative Philosophy
Unlocking the Chinese Gate
Offers an innovative analysis of gates—as architectural components, visual images, and mental constructs—in early Chinese thought and material culture.
Freedom's Frailty
Draws on Guo Xiang's commentary on the Zhuangzi to construct an account of freedom that is both metaphysical and political.
Grounding God
Looks at how different religious traditions (Christian, Buddhist, neopagan, and animist) have attempted to resacralize the earth and provide new values that include the more-than-human world.
A Sourcebook in Classical Confucian Philosophy
Applies a method of comparative cultural hermeneutics to let the tradition speak on its own terms.
Daoism, Dandyism, and Political Correctness
Argues that Daoism and dandyism, linked by likeminded philosophies of “carefree wandering,” deconstruct the puritanism and political correctness sought by Confucianism, Victorianism, and contemporary neoliberal culture.
The Philosophy of Change
An analysis of the philosophy of the Yijing in comparison to modern Western philosophies.
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
Presents Li Zehou's culminating views on ethics in a series of works that highlight the importance of Confucian philosophy today.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Self-Cultivation in Early China
An introduction to ancient Chinese ideas on how to live a good life.
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.
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.
The Primary Way
A unique work on the underlying ontology, cosmology, and moral philosophy of the Yijing.
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.
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.
Confucianism's Prospects
Challenges descriptions of East Asian societies as Confucian cultures and communitarian Confucian models as a political alternative to liberal democracy.
Merleau-Ponty and Nishida
Places the phenomenologies of Merleau-Ponty and Nishida in dialogue and uncovers a demand for a motor-perceptual form of faith in both philosophers’ meditations on artistic expression.
Global Origins of the Modern Self, from Montaigne to Suzuki
Explores how writers across five continents and four centuries have debated ideas about what it means to be an individual, and shows that the modern self is an ongoing project of global history.
Zhuangzi and the Becoming of Nothingness
Investigates the cosmological and metaphysical thought in the Zhuangzi from the perspective of nothingness.
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.
Nothingness in the Heart of Empire
Reveals the complicity between the Kyoto School’s moral and political philosophy, based on the school’s founder Nishida Kitarō’s metaphysics of nothingness, and Japanese imperialism.
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.
Following His Own Path
Critically introduces the philosophical system of Li Zehou, one of the most significant modern scholars of Chinese history and culture.
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.
Life as Insinuation
A holistic reinterpretation of Santayana’s thought in terms of a dramatic philosophy of life.
Inoue Enryō
The first comprehensive treatment of Inoue Enryō, a pioneer of modern Buddhism and a key figure in the reception of Western philosophy in East Asia.
Effing the Ineffable
A meditation on how religious language tries to limn the liminal, conceive the inconceivable, speak the unspeakable, and say the unsayable.
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.
Atmospheres of Breathing
Attempts to think anew about philosophical questions from the perspective of breath and breathing.
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.
The Art of Gratitude
Explores how the emotional experience of gratitude has been enlisted in neoliberal governance through the language of debt.
Shimmering Mirrors
A study of comparative metaphysics that explores the concepts of Reality and Appearance and their relevance to contemporary religious consciousness.
Confucianism and American Philosophy
A comparative analysis of Confucianism and the American Transcendentalist and Pragmatist traditions.
Fundamentals of Comparative and Intercultural Philosophy
Discusses the conditions of possibility for intercultural and comparative philosophy, and for crosscultural communication at large.
The Deep Ecology of Rhetoric in Mencius and Aristotle
Discusses philosophers Mencius and Aristotle as socio-ecological thinkers.
Encounters of Mind
Discusses the journey of Buddhist ideas on awareness and personhood from India to China.
Michael Oakeshott and the Conversation of Modern Political Thought
A fresh reading of Oakeshott’s contributions to the ongoing conversation of modern political thought.
Confucian Propriety and Ritual Learning
A reconsideration of the Confucian concept li (ritual or ritual propriety), one that references Western philosophers as well as the Chinese context.
Moral Cultivation and Confucian Character
A consideration of Confucian ethics that employs the work and concerns of the eminent comparative ethicist Joel J. Kupperman.
Moral Relativism and Chinese Philosophy
A wide ranging consideration of the work of contemporary ethicist David Wong.
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.
Valuing Diversity
Uses Buddhist philosophy to discuss diversity as a value, one that can contribute to equity in a globalizing world.
Ironies of Oneness and Difference
Explores the development of Chinese thought, highlighting its concern with questions of coherence.
Reason Unbound
A critique of the modern receptions of Islamic Peripatetic philosophy and a validation of the importance of Islamic philosophy for modern philosophy
Religious Philosophy as Multidisciplinary Comparative Inquiry
Argues that philosophy, as multidisciplinary comparative inquiry, is essential to the contemporary academic study of religion.
What Is Enlightenment
A cross-cultural work which reinvigorates the consideration of enlightenment.
Methodologies of Comparative Philosophy
A much-needed consideration of methodology in comparative philosophy.
The End of Comparative Philosophy and the Task of Comparative Thinking
A work of and about comparative philosophy that stresses the importance of language in intercultural endeavors.
Meditations of Global First Philosophy
Traces the roots of logos in different cultural milieux.
Ritual and Deference
Brings Confucianism and Daoism into conversation with contemporary philosophy and the contemporary world situation.
Chinese Theories of Reading and Writing
A groundbreaking work that uncovers an implicit system of hermeneutics in traditional Chinese thought and aesthetics.
John Dewey, Confucius, and Global Philosophy
Bringing together the philosophies of John Dewey and Confucius, this work illustrates a means for cultural interaction and provides a model of global philosophy.
Confucian Democracy
Using both Confucian texts and the work of American pragmatist John Dewey, this book offers a distinctly Confucian model of democracy.
Neoplatonism and Indian Philosophy
Explores connections between Neoplatonism and Indian philosophy.
Boston Confucianism
Argues that Confucianism can be important to the contemporary, global conversation of philosophy and should not be confined to an East Asian context.
Classical Indian Philosophy of Mind
Addresses the psycho-physical dualism of the Nyaya school of Indian philosophy with references to both Indian and Western philosophy.
Interpreting Neville
Distinguished scholars provide the first book-length consideration of the work of philosopher and theologian Robert Cummings Neville, including a response from Neville himself.
Education/Technology/Power
With a focus on educational computing, this book examines how technological practices align with or subvert existing forms of dominance. Examines the important question: Is the enormous financial investment school districts are making in computing technology a good idea?
Amoral Politics
After exploring the theory and practice of politics in ancient China, ancient India, and modern Europe, Scharfstein argues that the justification for deception and force is inseparable from political life and assesses the chances for a better political future.
Emotions in Asian Thought
Treats the nature and ethical significance of emotions from a comparative cultural perspective emphasizing Asian traditions.
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 ...