Confucianism

The Second Annual Transpersonal Research Colloquium (TRC) was held in Northampton, UK on September 15-16, 2016. This document is the final program with presenters abstracts, bios, and contact information. For further information, see www.transpersonalresearchnetwork.com.

In this chapter, I reflect on the implications of Mencius' conception of compassion for one of the most important problems that defines the Western philosophical tradition: the relationship between reason on the one hand and desire and emotion on the other, especially in the development of moral character. I articulate what philosophers working within the Western tradition could learn from the Mencius text, drawing from some contemporary scientific studies to support my suggestions that this text provides fruitful directions of thought. Western philosophers and many psychologists continue a tendency to construe reason, desire, and emotion in dichotomous and overgeneralized terms. I argue that we need to take a more particularized and discriminating approach to the phenomena covered by these terms. Finally, I discuss what I believe are some limitations in Mencius' approach and then show how the Analects and the Xunzi indicate ways the early Confucian tradition pointed beyond Mencius' limitations.

According to a survey on the religious landscape in Korea, about half of the total population of Korea (53.4%) declared practicing religion. This number has shown a steady increase since the Gallup Korea conducted a survey in this field in 1984. 1 In understanding religion, religious phenomena, and religious practices in Korea, we should consider that the concept and expression of religion is relatively new in Korean culture. In this context, at least two preliminary remarks need to be made before we begin our discussion on the religions in Korea. The first is about the term religion. The expression religion did not exist in the vocabulary of East Asian languages until the late 19 th century. One origin of the modern term religion (Kor, chonggyo; Jan. shūkyō) can be traced to a trade document between Japan and Germany signed in 1869, in which the European term religion was translated into Japanese language, which was adopted by Koreans. 2 This does not mean that what is denoted by the term religion in English language did not exist in East Asia before the adoption of the expression. Instead of religion, traditional Korean religions such as Confucianism and Buddhism (which we will discuss in this chapter) were called teachings (Kor. kyo) or school (Kor. ga). This also indicates that the commonly known distinction between philosophy and religion in Western tradition does not strictly apply to Korean religious and philosophical traditions. The second issue to consider is the scope of religious phenomena. Religion is frequently and sometimes uncritically identified with religion as an institution. Institutionalized (or organized) religion features religious texts (sacred books), religious structure (church or temples), religious group (priesthood and believers), and moral and ethical codes (precepts). Religion is also often considered to be about God. Most of the major religions in the world share these components of religion, but religious phenomena are not limited to them, nor is what we denote by each of the above categories as clear as we might think. Several suggestions have been made for a comprehensive understanding of religious phenomena. One such example is to expand our concept of religion, from a singular-form religion to its plural form, religions. The pluralization of religious tradition enables us to further expand the scope of religions so that we can consider what constitutes the religious. 3 This paradigm can be applied to other concepts that are associated with religion. For example, we can expand our investigation from the concept of God to plural gods and then to the concept of the sacred (or the holy); from churches/temples to the place of worship and to the concept of the sacred space; and from examining precepts of a particular religion to the relationship between the finite and the infinite, and then to the issue of construction of value systems in human life. This is a process of creating a generic form (e.g., the sacred) from the collection of particular phenomenon (e.g., God). This process is necessary in order to have a comprehensive understanding of different religious traditions without privileging one religious tradition. This is especially relevant to our attempt to understand and evaluate Korean religious traditions. More often than not, students in the West ask how either Buddhism or Confucianism can be called a religion when these traditions do not have concepts that match what they find in Western religious traditions. Before we attempt to answer these questions, we should understand that such questions arise because we set a specific religious tradition as a standard for other religious traditions. In our discussion of Korean religions, we will divide them into three groups for the sake of convenience: the first is indigenous religions (Shamanism); the second is foreign-origin religions that became Koreanized (Buddhism and Confucianism); and the third is new religions that emerged during the late 19 th and early 20 th centuries (Tonghak and Won Buddhism).

Poceski, Mario. Introducing Chinese Religions. New York and London: Routledge, 2009. Also available in an e-book format, as Chinese Religions: The eBook (published by JBE Online Books), and in a Portuguese translation: Introdução às religiões chinesas, published by Fundação Editora da UNESP, Brazil, 2013.

This is a Chinese book that introduces and reflects on Chinese family culture and morality.

筆者原先是讀電腦工程的，其後去研讀神學、宗教和哲學時有機會接觸中國文化科目，內容都是講中國儒、釋、道思想、中國的文學、藝術、心理等，上課時除了討論家庭和心理外，其他內容都有一份莫名的陌生感；自小長輩常告訴我﹕「我們中國人深受儒家思想影響」，但我自小並沒有讀儒家經典，當我成年後研讀時便出現莫名的陌生感，為甚麼我對這些內容如此陌生？難道我身處文化並非中國文化？直至過去幾年在香港理工大學專業及持續教育學院教通識科目「中國家庭與文化」，才突然有種強烈親切感：「這就是自小到大影響著我的中國文化！」很多討論中國文化或中西文化比較書籍都會討論哲學宗教、文學藝術、政治經濟等，但事實上一般人對儒家典籍、詩詞歌賦都認識不多，所以如果從哲學文學去討論中國文化，讀者會感到很陌生，甚至懷疑自己是否真的受中國文化影響，又或中國文化是否依然有價值。筆者在教導「中國家庭文化」的過程中深深體會到：我們不一定熟悉中國歷史和傳統典籍，但中國文化就在我們的家庭中，一代一代潛移默化地傳承下來，深深影響著我們的處事、思想和價值觀；另外有部分中國文化亦因近年西方現代文化和工商業化影響而作出了調適和轉變。這些教學經驗亦令筆者重新認識和反思自我和所處的文化。
筆者在備課時發覺找有關中國家庭文化參考書籍並不容易，大多都只是歷史進路，如家庭史或婚姻史，大多資料陳述，較少對傳統價值進行反思；又或只是社會學進路，多討論中國家庭現代化轉變和適應，對傳統家庭觀念只簡單概括及批評，缺乏對傳統的歷史視野和欣賞；至於中國家庭對於個人的價值觀、社會文化、甚至政治經濟文化影響的探討就更少。筆者原本只是想出版一本資料性的書籍，但因筆者的哲學訓練和教學背景的影響，在教授這一科目時總喜歡進一步發問、思考傳統價值和現代社會文化的優點和不足，以獨立批評性角度思考傳統和現代化問題，故一邊教學一邊進一步研究中國家庭文化。由於課堂需要每位同學交一份「家庭個案分析」，透過閱讀超過一千位同學的功課和課堂上的討論，再加上筆者過去在教會和一些非牟利團體結識的朋友，以及與中外學者的交流等等，都讓筆者有機會認識到很多真實家庭故事和文化，有助筆者對中國家庭文化進一步反思和產生一些看法。本書不單只是從歷史和社會學角度，亦涉及人類學、心理輔導、宗教和哲學的分析，偶然亦會與西方文化作比較分析，以及討論包含中國大陸、香港、台灣家庭現代化的發展分別，可謂一跨科際的進路，同時也有筆者不少獨特的研究心得，希望本書對有關議題能有所貢獻。筆者亦很感激羅國洪先生和蔣瑋茵女士對本書提出寶貴意見，若本書有甚麼錯漏，責任仍在筆者。
一般寫傳統中國家庭的書籍亦會討論到古代婚姻家庭起源、煩瑣的婚禮、父母之命、媒妁之言、三妻四妾、三從四德、貞烈觀等，這些觀念都備受現代人批評，但筆者發覺很多有關批評都太片面，並非不對，只是未能多角度去思考；但由於篇幅所限，未能在此討論。筆者不敢自跨書中內容有甚麼過人之處，只期望透過本書可與不同學人對中國家庭文化一起進行反思和交流。

The article discusses uses of xiu shen, one among a number of terms referring to practices of moral and mental discipline in early China. It sketches out the contexts and discourses in which the term appears and hopes thus to contribute, albeit in a limited way, to eventual broader assessments of the role which different concepts, ideals, and practices of self-discipline played in political and social thought.

Çin yükselen ekonomisi ve siyasi etkisi ile küresel bir güç konumundadır. Çin bu konuma sadece askeri gücünü kullanarak değil yumuşak gücünü kullanarak gelmiştir. Yumuşak güç bir ülkenin kültürünün, siyasi fikirlerinin ve politikalarının cezbediciliğinden kaynaklanmaktadır. Yumuşak güç küre-sel konumunu korumak adına Çin için vazgeçilmez bir politika aracıdır. Bu çalışmada Çin'in yumuşak güç unsurları incelenmektedir. Çalışmada Çin'in yumuşak güç yöntemi ve bu yöntemin etkinliği sorgulanmaktadır. Çin'in yumuşak gücü ile ekonomik gelişimi arasındaki bağlantı incelenmektedir. İnceleme sırasında Çin'in yumuşak gücüne dair anketlerden yararlanılmıştır. Çin'in dünyadaki yatırımlarına dair ekonomik veriler kullanılmıştır. Çin dostane şekilde diplomatik ilişkilerini genişletmeyi ve dünya ile ekonomik entegrasyonunu artırmayı amaçlamaktadır. Çin'in barışçıl ekonomik yükselişi kültür, siyasi değerler ve diplomasiyi içeren yumuşak güç ile birlikte gerçekleşmektedir. Çin güç kullanmak yerine Konfüçyus felsefesi ile birlikte razı etme anlayışı ve gönüllü bir yayılmacılık içerisindedir. Konfüçyüsçülük Çin'in küresel politikaları açısından çatışmacı yerine barışçıl güç geçişlerine yardımcı olabilir. Çin ABD gibi bir küresel güç olmak istediğine dair algıyı yönetmek için yumuşak gücü uygulamaktadır. Çin'in yumuşak güç politikaları küresel güç mücadelesi içerisinde olduğu ABD'ye karşıtlık oluşturmaktadır. Çin'in yumuşak gücü artmış ancak henüz başta ABD olmak üzere Batılı devletlerinki kadar etkin hale gelmemiştir. Çin gelişmekte olan ülkelerde yaygın bir şekilde ekonomik bir ortak olarak görülse de Çin'in kültürü-nün ve değerlerinin yayılması aynı hızda ilerlememiştir.

It is not possible to provide a comprehensive account of the educational philosophies and theories that fall within the wide-ranging rubric of 'Eastern philosophy of education'. This disclaimer acknowledges the need to be selective, and so in what follows we have chosen to focus on certain Eastern traditions that have seemed to provide the most enduring and substantive contributions to educational thinking. This inclusionary/exclusionary task should not be understood as disavowing other potentially important contributions and traditions (e.g. Shintoism, Sikhism, Jainism, Baha'i) nor that the categories 'Eastern' and 'tradition' can be offered without significant reservation. Furthermore, the reader would be faced with a bewildering array of ideas without a conceptual frame with which to interpret less familiar contexts. We employ Plato's allegory of the cave as the methodological and pedagogical vehicle to frame and to drive the discussion that follows because it allows us to explore certain key ontological,epistemological and ethical features within our selected Eastern pedagogies, providing the balance between meaningful encounter and coherent interpretation. If philosophy is concerned with what it means to be human, then philosophers of education are sometimes said to take up the question of what it means to become human: humanization. Our traditions define humanization through a set of practices and/or understandings. Thus, we will focus our attention both on the goal and the practices and processes by which the goal might be achieved. Our chapter includes three parts: the first part will briefly introduce key elements of Plato’s allegory of the cave. Part two will include four sections that examine Buddhism, Hinduism, Daoism and Confucianism in turn. It is important to note however, that each of these traditions is more of a tree with several branches, reflecting diverse schools of thought. This general difficulty becomes severe when discussing Buddhism and Hinduism (the former more appropriately conceived as Buddhisms and the latter a broad term that includes several belief systems), requiring us to select specific teachings/aspects within each tradition. Part three will offer some brief statements that may be surmised from our analysis, pointing to shared features of an ‘Eastern philosophy of education’.

"In my study "Prestigegüter entlang der Seidenstraße? Archäologische und historische Untersuchungen zu Chinas Beziehungen zu Kulturen des Tarimbeckens vom zweiten bis frühen fünften Jahrhundert nach Christus (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2010)," I developed a method to identify genuine prestige goods in the context of burials. Whenever members of social groups were unable to obtain desired artifacts – be it on account of insufficient financial means or because they were prohibited to acquire them –, they resorted to a rather simple solution: imitations.
As early as the 8th century BCE, people in China began to emulate ritual bronzes. These were the ultimate status symbols at the time and possession of such valuable bronze objects clearly was restricted to the social élite. Various types of bronze vessels and bells constituted a so-called ritual set; the more different objects and the more specimens of each single type of object an individual could call his (sometimes her) own, the higher his / her social rank. At least this much we learn from several prescriptive texts dating from the 2nd through 1st centuries BCE. The ritual bronzes were an integral part of ritual ceremonies held at the ancestral shrines of one’s lineage. They were, however, not only employed to demonstrate one’s social achievements to the ancestors, but ultimately found their way into tombs and hoards where ritual sets are a common sight.
This paper is going to show how sumptuary rules grew less rigid with the factual decline of the Zhou. Earlier, expressing ones social rank through ritual bronzes was the prerogative of dignitaries with close ties to the royal house. Now, even politically rather insignificant local potentates made use of (substandard) replicas in attempts to signal their social position. The prestige of authentic ritual bronzes finally fostered the diffusion of an initially extremely elitist phenomenon. How strongly the association of ritual bronzes with social rank penetrated ancient Chinese thought and practices – that is to say, Chinese culture – is obvious in the fact that imitations of ritual bronzes remained a staple in tomb assemblages at least until the 2nd century CE."

Author: Amos Yong
Publisher: CBE International

Is there a way forward beyond the dominant complementarian discourse at this nexus where a predominantly white North American evangelical Christianity has met racial and ethnic others, especially East Asians in the contemporary milieu?

This paper is divided into two parts. Part 1 discusses the
Confucian idea of moral knowledge in the context of Ryle's classical distinction between knowing-that and knowing-how, showing that while Confucian moral knowledge does includes both knowing-that and knowing-how (which also indi cates that these two are not separate), it also has something not included in either of the two types of knowledge inclination to act accordingly. This introduces the issue to be discussed in Part 11 of this paper. Contemporary Humeans would regard Confucianism as confused in regarding inclination to act, which is basically an element of desire, as part of knowledge, which appears as belief, since desire and belief are two entirely different mental states with the opposite directions of fit with the world. Part II shows that there
can be a single mental state, that of “ besire," that includes both belief and desire and Confucian moral knowledge is precisely one example of such a besire. In this Confucian bes ire, since the belief is a normative belief, which is different from the descriptive belief, its direction of fit with the world is consistent with the direction of fit between the desire and the world: from the mind to the world. So besire is not bizarre as claimed by contemporary Humeans.

This paper engages the Analects from multiple perspectives. The Deleuzean read reveals its function as a cogwheel in the feudal social machine serving the purpose of overcoding. The Flusserian read brings into relief a meta-program that works to perpetuate the feudal social order, and a functionalism that has been revived in the post-historical era. From an interological perspective, Confucian ritual formalizes and normalizes interality. In terms of rhetorical and performance studies, the Analects has the gentleman as its second persona, inculcates a role aesthetics, and models a sense of decorum. From a Daoist viewpoint, the Analects contains an autobiography that documents Confucius's personal development as a spiritual adventurer and his becoming-Daoist later in life. From a Chan perspective, Confucius was a virtuosic performer of upaya, and the Analects feels like a precursor of the mondo or question-and-answer books that flourished in the Chan community in later historical periods. Moreover, a Chan-minded heterodox hermeneutics regarding the Analects has taken shape over time. The paper ends by pointing to Ouyi's Chan-spirited reinterpretation of the Analects as an exciting project to take on. Although the Buddha expounded the Dharma in a single voice, each of all living beings attained understanding according to its kind.-JIANG Qian 江 谦 (translated by Richard John Lynn) A Taoist hat, Confucian shoes, and a Buddhist robe combine the three houses into one. (Hori, 2003, p. 555) Three men gathered around a vat of vinegar. Each dipped a digit in and then touched it to his tongue. To Confucius, the taste was sour; to Gautama Buddha, the taste was bitter; to Laozi, the taste was sweet. All three different; all three one. This exploration approaches the Analects of Confucius with a nomadic sensibility. "Nomadic" invokes multiple strands of philosophical currents, including the treatise on nomadology developed by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari in A Thousand Plateaus, the species of nomad thought Deleuze perceives in Friedrich Nietzsche, the kind of nomadism Vilém Flusser associates with post-history in The Freedom of the Migrant, the emerging philosophical paradigm that has coalesced around the term "interology," and Daoism and Chan Buddhism, which have had a long history of co-evolution, rivalry, complementarity,

" Everyone will readily agree that it is of the highest importance to know whether we are not duped by morality, " says Emmanuel Levinas in the preface to Totality and Infinity. Why is ethical inquiry a meaningful and necessary task? This is a universal question with which all contemplation of ethics should grapple. This paper aims to show that both the Other in Levinas and the " Heavenly-command (tianming 天命) " in the Zhong Yong 中庸 indicate that human beings are called to be passively ethical. The passivity of ethical responsibility is, however, not caused by a divine moral power, but can be seen in three characteristics that mark ethics: 1) the exposure to the other, 2) the time of diachrony and 3) the aporetic moment of ethical response. Ethical responsibility is commanded before one's initiative to be ethical and is therefore prior to moral subjectivity. Moreover, a moral life is accomplished only in sincerely responding to this command of ethical responsibility. This opens up a kind of activity called " sincerity (cheng 誠). " The source of responsibility therefore lies in a passive ethical situation that calls upon an active ethical response. This ethical responsibility is the foundation of all ethical inquiry.

What can remain unchanged while the Ru tradition (Confucianism) is continually passed down generationally and passed on geographically to non-Chinese Asian countries and beyond? Does the answer to this question hinted by the tradition itself, viz., the ethic of Three Guides and Five Constant Virtues, still work in contemporary society? As intrigued by these fundamental questions on Ruism, scholars have debated on the nature of the ethic and its adaptability to the contemporary world. One side of scholars condemned it as an outdated, premodern ethic of power which urges unconditional obedience to hierarchy, while another side championed it as a modern ethic which aims to strengthen the autonomy of each individual in reciprocal relationships. While presenting two cases of Ru business practice, viz., Shibusawa Eiichi in Meiji Japan and Peter Drucker in the contemporary U.S., the article treats the controversial ethic as a hypothesis, and assesses it using an empirical method to reinforce views of scholars who have furnished a favorable interpretation of the ethic.

The Confucian-Christian dialogue began with the Jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci in sixteenth-century China. As Ricci found a theological ally in the Confucian tradition, he devoted years in China to the study of the Confucian classics in order to foster deeper religious exchanges between the native Chinese traditions and the new religion Christianity. Despite his limited understanding of Chinese thought, Ricci's legacy represents an effort to express the Christian faith in ways appropriate to Confucian cultures. This article attempts to follow Ricci's tradition of Confucian-Christian dialogue by examining the theological anthro pology of Karl Rahner (1904-84) in relation to the classical Confucian thought on the human person as presented in the Analects of Confucius and the Book of Mencius. In choosing to focus on the human person as the subject of inquiry, I intend to initiate a dialogue that potentially leads to a discourse fostering a humanization of modernity in a globalized world. As the starting point, my work will focus on the importance of the human person which serves as a com mon ground for both Confucianism and Christianity. Before putting the two traditions in dialogue, I will first present Rahner's theo logical anthropology followed by the classical Confucian understanding of the human person. Then I will focus on a brief comparative study of both traditions in terms of worldview, soteriology, and ethical concerns. Since my intended audi ence is Christians who may or may not be familiar with the Confucian tradition, in the section on Confucianism, I will provide more explanation of and texts from the Confucian literature. In contrast, I will be briefer on Rahner's theology, since I assume the audience is somewhat familiar with his thought through a number of excellent studies of his anthropology available widely.

The socio-cultural conditioning practiced in a society has a direct impact in the perspective of the people of the society. South Korea is one of the developing countries that is rooted in a traditional and social practice that attained transformation over time. This research attempts to analyse the influence of the Neo-Confucianism ideologies which controlled the socio-cultural aspects of South Korea and its prevalence in the dynamics of gender roles in different generation. The study is attempted through South Korean writer Kyung Sook Shin’s two novels, Please Look After Mom (2011) and The Girl Who Wrote Loneliness (2015). The gender role transformation is analysed through cultural and gender studies focusing through South Korea’s traditional gender roles, changes in gender roles through modernisation and the status of women in contemporary South Korea which are reflected in the two novels. The research is limited to the study of the transformation of gender roles in relation to the changing socio-cultural practices of South Korea as a result of industrialisation and westernisation.

While philosophy and religion were never sharply distinguished in China, what we now call Chinese philosophy incorporated, theorized, and sometimes opposed practices and views that can reasonably be called religious. These included questions about cosmogony, the problem of evil, and the relationship between human beings and the divine. Philosophers were also concerned with common aspects of religion that are now often neglected in philosophy, such as ritual and divination. Finally, the disagreements between different ways and different philosophies led to reflection on pluralism and its value. All of these fit generally into the category of philosophy of religion.

An 8 page essay which looks over and analyses the close relationship that the Korean Koryŏ Dynasty had with Medieval China, especially the Song Dynasty. Examples of war alliances, religions, artworks, politics, and education are analyzed to prove the thesis.

The Daoist Zhuangzi argues against a Confucian conception of “normality” that, like Aristotelianism, is teleological: A higher power, Heaven, decrees what “human nature” is, and human nature determines all the normative facts, such as how many limbs a human should have, standards of physical beauty, tastes in food and music, and morality. This view implies that to be “different” is to be defective. However, Zhuangzi pushed back against the idea that “normal” is good and difference is bad, including when it comes to what we would call "disabilities" today.