Essentials of Contemporary Neo-Confucian Philosophy

(Hardback)

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This volume is the follow-up to Understanding Confucian Philosophy: Classical and Sung-Ming, which presented the first two Epochs of Confucian philosophy. The third Epoch, presented in this book, is that of Contemporary Neo-Confucian philosophy. It notes a paradigm shift from the late Ming to the early Ch'ing, which shows us how the line of Sung-Ming Neo-Confucian philosophy was broken. Then, background information is given to answer the question of how the phoenix was reborn from the ashes; at the height of the iconoclast May Fourth Movement in 1919, Liang Sou-ming, the forerunner of the movement, developed his ideas about East-West cultures and their philosophies. During the darkest moments of Chinese history, three generations of New Confucian scholars developed their ideas and achieved great scholarship. Shu-hsien Liu presents a framework of four groups to portray the movement. And, the philosophies of Fung Yu-lan, Hsuing Shih-li, Thome H. Fang, T'ang Chun-I, and Mou tsung-san are reviewed and analyzed. The international dimension of the third generation of New Confucians is also introduced. In the conclusion, Shu-hsien Liu comments on the relevance of this trend of thought today with a view toward the future.

Reviews

"It is always a noteworthy event when the history of an intellectual movement is written by an eminent and publicly recognized member of that movement ... [T]his is a work that is of great value and usefulness. It succeeds in presenting twentieth century Neo-Confucianism in a succinct, thumbnail form that will be comprehensible to interested comparative philosophers, sinologists, or survey course undergraduates who are curious to know what this modern Confucianism movement is all about. As the only English language presentation of much of the material between its covers, it provides an invaluable service. As the work of one of the representative members of the tradition of thought it presents, it is a work of historical significance in its own right."-Journal of Chinese Studies
It is always a noteworthy event when the history of an intellectual movement is written by an eminent and publicly recognized member of that movement ... [T]his is a work that is of great value and usefulness. It succeeds in presenting twentieth century Neo-Confucianism in a succinct, thumbnail form that will be comprehensible to interested comparative philosophers, sinologists, or survey course undergraduates who are curious to know what this modern Confucianism movement is all about. As the only English language presentation of much of the material between its covers, it provides an invaluable service. As the work of one of the representative members of the tradition of thought it presents, it is a work of historical significance in its own right.-Journal of Chinese Studies

Author Bio

SHU-HSIEN LIU is Chair Research Fellow at the Institute of Chinese Literature and Philosophy, Academia Sinica, Nankang, Taipei.