The "Zhongyong" - translated here as "Focusing the Familiar" has been regarded as a document of enormous wisdom for more than two millennia and is one of Confucianism's most sacred and seminal texts. It achieved truly canonical preeminence when it became one of the Four Books compiled and annotated by the Southern Song dynasty philosopher Zhu Xi (1130-1200). Within the compass of world literature, the influence of these books (Analects of Confucius, Great Learning, Zhongyong, and Mencius) on the Sinitic world of East Asia has been no less than the Bible and the Qu'ran on Western civilization. With this translation David Hall and Roger Ames seek to provide a distinctly philosophical interpretation of the Zhongyong, remaining attentive to the semantic and conceptual nuances of the text to account for its central place within classical Chinese literature. They present the text in such a way as to provide Western philosophers and other intellectuals access to a set of interpretations and arguments that offer insights into issues and concerns common to both Chinese and Western thinkers.

Joseph Grange's beautifully written book provides a unique synthesis of two major figures of world philosophy, John Dewey and Confucius, and points the way to a global philosophy based on American and Confucian values. Grange concentrates on the major themes of experience, felt intelligence, and culture to make the connections between these two giants of Western and Eastern thought. He explains why the Chinese called Dewey "A Second Confucius," and deepens our understanding of Confucius's concepts of the way (dao) of human excellence (ren). The important dimensions of American and Chinese cultural philosophy are welded into an argument that calls for the liberation of what is finest in both traditions. The work gives a new appreciation of fundamental issues facing Chinese and American relations and brings the opportunities and dangers of globalization into focus.

Sun Bins' Art of Warfare is an essential text of Chinese military philosophy and of strategy in general. This book, lost for over two thousand years and rediscovered only in 1972, has not yet reached the prominence of Sunzi's (Sun-tzu) The Art of Warfare, which is the best-known military treatise in the world. Sun Bin's work is an indispensable companion to the work of Sunzi, who is believed to be his ancestor, but deserves to be better known in its own right, both philosophically and historically. Here, noted sinologists D.C. Lau and Roger T. Ames offer an admirably lucid translation, and provide an introduction examining the life, times, and original philosophical contributions of Sun Bin. Sun Bin, advisor to King Wei of the state of Qi, worked and wrote during the mid-fourth century B.C.E. during China's Warring States period. It was a time of unprecedented violence; without a central national authority, nation-states fought fiercely amongst one another. New technologies made fighting more deadly, so that between the mid-fourth and mid-third centuries B.C.E, the number of battlefield casualties increased tenfold. Sun Bin's work is the key to understanding the physical and intellectual revolution that made such "progress" in the efficiency of warfare possible.

This book continues a comparative project begun with the authors' Thinking Through Confucius and Anticipating China. It continues the comparative discussions by focusing upon three concepts -- self, truth, transcendence -- which best illuminate the distinctive characters of the two cultures. "Self" specifies the meaning of the human subject, "truth" considers that subject's manner of relating to the world of which it is a part, and "transcendence" raises the issue as to whether the self/world relationship is grounded in something other than the elements resourced immediately in self and world. Considered together, the discussions of these concepts advertise in a most dramatic fashion the intellectual barriers currently existing between Chinese and Western thinkers. More importantly, these discussions reformulate Chinese and Western vocabularies in a manner that will enhance the possibilities of intercultural communication.

In the light of Chinese prosody and various mutually illuminating major cases from the original English, Chinese, French, Japanese and German classical literary texts, the book explores the possibility of discovering "a road not taken" within the road well-trodden in literature. In an approach of "what Wittgenstein calls criss-crossing," this monographic study, the first ever of this nature, as Roger T. Ames points out in the Foreword, also emphasizes a pivotal "recognition that these Chinese values [revealed in the book] are immediately relevant to the Western narrative as well"; the book demonstrates, in other words, how such a "criss-crossing" approach would be unequivocally possible as long as our critical attention be adequately turned to or pivoted upon the "trivial" matters, a posteriori, in accordance with the live syntactic-prosodic context, such as pauses, stresses, phonemes, function words, or the at once text-enlivened and text-enlivening ambiguity of "parts of speech," which often vary or alter simultaneously according to and against any definitive definition or set category a priori. This issue pertains to any literary text across cultures because no literary text would ever be possible if it were not, for instance, literally enlivened by the otherwise overlooked "meaningless" function words or phonemes; the texts simultaneously also enliven these "meaningless" elements and often turn them surreptitiously into sometimes serendipitously meaningful and beautiful sea-change-effecting "les mots justes." Through the immeasurable and yet often imperceptible influences of these exactly "right words," our literary texts, such as a poem, could thus not simply "be" but subtly "mean" as if by mere means of its simple, rich, and naturally worded being, truly a special "word picture" of das Ding an sich. Describable metaphorically as "museum effect" and "symphonic tapestry," a special synaesthetic impact could also likely result from such les-mots-justes-facilitated subtle and yet phenomenal sea changes in the texts.

This work asks, Will democracy figure prominently in China's future?, and, If so, what kind of democracy?. The authors draw upon the ideas of Dewey and Confucius to help address these questions. They suggest that it is a mistake to equate modernization for China with westernization.

In this book philosophers, scholars of religion, and activists address the theme of responsibility. Barbara Darling-Smith brings together an enlightening collection of essays that analyze the ethics of responsibility, its relational nature, and its global struggle. With references to Homer's the Iliad and Buddhist teachings, these essays demonstrate that while selfhood is an illusion, there is still a conventional self that must be held responsible. This book finds the underlying distinctions between ultimate and conventional understandings of selfhood, which lead to variations on the role of responsibility in the community and government. With essays from CEOs to historical theologians, Responsibility offers a variety of perspectives that will captivate the interest of philosophers and scholars of ethnics and religion.

In this book philosophers, scholars of religion, and activists address the theme of responsibility. Barbara Darling-Smith brings together an enlightening collection of essays that analyze the ethics of responsibility, its relational nature, and its global struggle. With references to Homer's the Iliad and Buddhist teachings, these essays demonstrate that while selfhood is an illusion, there is still a conventional self that must be held responsible. This book finds the underlying distinctions between ultimate and conventional understandings of selfhood, which lead to variations on the role of responsibility in the community and government. With essays from CEOs to historical theologians, Responsibility offers a variety of perspectives that will captivate the interest of philosophers and scholars of ethnics and religion.