Representing an unprecedented collaboration among international scholars from Asia, Europe, and the United States, this volume rewrites the history of East Asia by rethinking the contentious relationship between Confucianism and women. The authors discuss the absence of women in the Confucian canonical tradition and examine the presence of women in politics, family, education, and art in premodern China, Korea, and Japan.
What emerges is a concept of Confucianism that is dynamic instead of monolithic in shaping the cultures of East Asian societies. As teachers, mothers, writers, and rulers, women were active agents in this process. Neither rebels nor victims, these women embraced aspects of official norms while resisting others. The essays present a powerful image of what it meant to be female and to live a woman's life in a variety of social settings and historical circumstances. Challenging the conventional notion of Confucianism as an oppressive tradition that victimized women, this provocative book reveals it as a modern construct that does not reflect the social and cultural histories of East Asia before the nineteenth century.

Engaging in existential discourse beyond the European tradition, this book turns to Asian philosophies to reassess vital questions of life's purpose, death's imminence, and our capacity for living meaningfully in conditions of uncertainty. Inspired by the dilemmas of European existentialism, this cross-cultural study seeks concrete techniques for existential practice via the philosophies of East Asia. The investigation begins with the provocative writings of twentieth-century Korean Buddhist nun Kim Iryop, who asserts that meditative concentration conducts a potent energy outward throughout the entire karmic network, enabling the radical transformation of our shared existential conditions. Understanding her claim requires a look at East Asian sources more broadly. Considering practices as diverse as Buddhist merit-making ceremonies, Confucian/Ruist methods for self-cultivation, the ritual memorization and recitation of texts, and Yijing divination, the book concludes by advocating a speculative turn. This 'speculative existentialism' counters the suspicion toward metaphysics characteristic of twentieth-century European existential thought and, at the same time, advances a program for action. It is not a how-to guide for living, but rather a philosophical methodology that takes seriously the power of mental cultivation to transform the meaning of the life that we share.

This unique book brings a fresh interdisciplinary approach to the analysis of ancient Chinese history, creating a historical model for the emergence of cultural mainstays by applying recent dramatic findings in the fields of neuroscience and cultural evolution. The centrality in Chinese culture of a deep reverence for the lives of preceding generations, filial piety, is conventionally attributed to Confucius (551-479 B.C.), who viewed hierarchical family relations as foundational for social order. Here, Porter argues that Confucian conceptions of filiality themselves evolved from a systemized set of behaviors and thoughts, a mental structure, which descended from a specific Neolithic mindset, and that this psychological structure was contoured by particular emotional conditions experienced by China's earliest farmers. Using case study analysis from Neolithic sky observers to the dynastic cultures of the Shang and Western Zhou, the book shows how filial piety evolved as a structure of feeling, a legacy of a cultural predisposition toward particular moods and emotions that were inherited from the ancestral past. Porter also brings new urgency to the topic of ecological grief, linking the distress central to the evolution of the filial structure to its catalyst in an environmental crisis. With a blended multidisciplinary approach combining social neuroscience, cultural evolution, cognitive archaeology, and historical analysis, this book is ideal for students and researchers in neuropsychology, religion, and Chinese culture and history.

The I Ching has influenced thinkers and artists throughout the history of Chinese philosophy. This new, accessible translation of the entire early text brings to life the hidden meanings and importance of China's oldest classical texts. Complemented throughout by insightful commentaries, the I Ching: A Critical Translation of the Ancient Text simplifies the unique system of hexagrams lying at the centre of the text and introduces the cultural significance of key themes including yin and yang, gender and ethics. As well as depicting all possible ethical situations, this new translation shows how the hexagram figures can represent social relationships and how the order of lines can be seen as a natural metaphor for higher or lower social rank. Introduced by Hon Tze-Ki, an esteemed scholar of the text, this up-to-date translation uncovers and explains both the philosophical and political interpretations of the text. For a better understanding of the philosophical and cosmological underpinning the history of Chinese philosophy, the I Ching is an invaluable starting point.

In the mid-20th century, Korea was dubbed the last custodian of Confucianism, but it is now very hard to even call the country a truly Confucian society. Following this argument, Quo Vadis Korea? explores critically how some five decades of breakneck industrialization and unbridled modernization could ineluctably change the nation so fundamentally that their repercussions now sharply negate many basic principles of Confucianism in one way to another. This study is a critical overview of the politico-economic as well as socio-cultural characteristics of modern Korea from a rather different perspective. It discusses why many key objectives of industrialization and economic development projects were not really delivered as they were initially promised to the nation. They all had, consequently, significant ramifications for the entire Korean society, the way it functions now, and its peculiar reactions to strangers both inside and outside the peninsula. Shaped largely by academic studies, constant observation, and personal experiences, this book is tantamount to a detailed survey of lengthy and protracted fieldwork in which the author explains with rare candid clarity an appreciable chasm between the Korea he knew before landing on the peninsula and the one he studied incessantly and practically as a detached investigator in the place. By engaging this book, many unbiased and unprejudiced readers would have to acknowledge that the modern Korea is not all about certain brands or economic statistics that we often hear, but there are also many other social and cultural developments which the modernity project has imposed, somewhat arbitrarily, upon the nation.

Few individuals have shaped their country's civilization more profoundly than the Master Kong (Confucius, 551-479 BC). Compulsory reading in the late Imperial period for all who wished to enter the Civil Service or Government, his sayings and those of his disciples form the foundation of a distinct social, ethical, and intellectual system. They have retained their freshness and vigour throughout the two and a half millennia of their currency, and are still admired even in today's China. This lively new translation with clear explanatory notes by one of the foremost scholars of classical Chinese provides the ideal introduction to the Analects for readers who have no previous knowledge of the Chinese language and philosophical traditions. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

This book, the first English translation of what many consider to be the most original work of Chinese philosophy produced in the twentieth century, draws from Buddhist and Confucian philosophy to develop a critical inquiry into the relation between the ontological and the phenomenal. This annotated edition examines Xiong Shili's complex engagement with Buddhist thought and the legacy of Xiong's thought in New Confucian philosophy. It will be an indispensable resource for students of Eastern philosophy and Chinese intellectual history, as well as for philosophers who may not be familiar with the Chinese tradition.

A wonderfully enjoyable storehouse of ancient Chinese history and legends, which also has an important role in understanding 21st-century China 'And remember: Heaven's blessing will cease forever if there's despair and poverty in your lands' The Most Venerable Book (also known as The Book of History) is one of the Five Classics, a key work of Chinese literature which preserves some of the most ancient and dramatic chronicles of the history, both real and mythological, of the Chinese state. For many centuries it was a central work for anyone wishing to work for the Imperial administration, preserving as it does a fascinating mixture of key Confucian concepts as well as page after page of heroes, benevolent rulers, sagacious ministers, and struggles against flood, corruption and vicious, despotic rulers. The First Emperor tried in 213 BC to have all copies of the book destroyed because of its subversive implication that 'the Mandate of Heaven' could be withdrawn from rulers who failed their people. For similar reasons it was also banned by Chairman Mao. Extraordinarily, the values of The Most Venerable Book have been revived by the Chinese government of the 2010s.

Modernist troublemaker in the 1890s, Nobel Prize winner in 1920, and indefensible Nazi sympathiser in the 1930s and 40s, Knut Hamsun continues to provoke condemnation, apologia and critical confusion. Informed by the works of Jacques Derrida and Sigmund Freud, Troubling Legacies analyses the heterogeneous and conflicted legacies of the enigmatic European writer, Hamsun. Moving through different phases of his life, this study emphasises the dislocated nature of Hamsun's works and the diverse and conflicting responses his fiction elicited from such figures as Franz Kafka, Katherine Mansfield, Walter Benjamin and Martin Heidegger. Close readings of the major novels Hunger, Mysteries, Pan and Growth of the Soil are presented alongside lesser known writings, including his early polemic on America, his turn-of-the-century travelogue through Russia, his fascist polemics of the 1930s and 40s, and his controversial post-war testimony, On Overgrown Paths. Troubling Legacies links past debates with contemporary literary theory and deconstruction in a way that contributes to critical thinking about political responsibility.

El Chu-King o Shujing, "El Libro Canonico de la Historia," es el mas importante de los libros Los Cinco Clasicos de la antigua China, que durante generaciones han formado no solo la base del derecho publico chino, sino de la instruccion de los letrados de aquel pais. Traducido, prologado y anotado por Juan Bautista Bergua. Los Cinco Clasicos son producto de las tareas de estudio y recopilacion que realizo el mismo Confucio (Kung-Fu-Tse) para rescatar la sabiduria y los conocimientos acumulados por sus ancestros durante siglos. Un libro moral, practico, de ejemplos, de normas a seguir para poder ser virtuoso y por ello feliz. Una elevada idea de la divinidad preside toda la obra, y esta felicisima union entre lo metafisico y lo practico impregna sus diversos tratados de sana y acertada filosofia. El confucianismo es el conjunto de doctrinas morales y religiosas predicadas por Confucio que tiene una gran influencia sobre China, Corea, Vietnam y Japon. Fue la religion oficial de China hasta el siglo VII. Ediciones Ibericas y Clasicos Bergua fue fundada en 1927 por Juan Bautista Bergua, critico literario y celebre autor de una gran coleccion de obras de la literatura clasica. Las traducciones de Juan B. Bergua, con sus prologos, resumenes y anotaciones son fundamentales para el entendimiento de las obras mas importantes de la antiguedad. LaCriticaLiteraria.com ofrece al lector a conocer un importante fondo cultural y tener mayor conocimiento de la literatura clasica universal con experto analisis y critica.

El canon de la filosofia confuciana lo componen Los Cuatro Libros de Confucio (Kung-Fu-Tse o Kung-Tse) y de su principal discipulo, Mencio (Mengtse). Traducido, prologado y anotado por Juan Bautista Bergua. Los Cuatro Libros son el conjunto de las obras escritas por los discipulos de Confucio que ilustran las principales ensenanzas del maestro sobre cuestiones politicas, morales, filosoficas y practicas. 1. El "Ta-Hio," El Gran Estudio o Gran Saber, dedicado al camino para alcanzar la virtud y la armonia. 2. El "Tchung-Yung," o Doctrina del Medio, contiene recomendaciones para alcanzar la perfeccion mediante la instruccion en las reglas morales y la ensenanza de las mismas. 3. El "Lun-Yu," o Comentarios Filosoficos, tambien conocido como las Analectas, es considerado el documento que mas autenticamente refleja el pensamiento del maestro. 4. El "Meng-Tseu" (Meng-Tse), o Libro de Mencio, es la interpretacion del Confucianismo por Mencio, quien vivio un siglo despues que Confucio, pero es considerado su mas celebre discipulo y quien mejor ha sabido explicar las maximas del Confucianismo. Ediciones Ibericas y Clasicos Bergua fue fundada en 1927 por Juan Bautista Bergua, critico literario y celebre autor de una gran coleccion de obras de la literatura clasica. Las traducciones de Juan B. Bergua, con sus prologos, resumenes y anotaciones son fundamentales para el entendimiento de las obras mas importantes de la antiguedad. LaCriticaLiteraria.com ofrece al lector a conocer un importante fondo cultural y tener mayor conocimiento de la literatura clasica universal con experto analisis y critica.