The major intellectual interest throughout this book is to offer a study on China's legal legacy, through Liang Shu-ming's eyes. The book follows the formula of the parallel between Life and Mind (人生与人心), Physis and Nomos, and compares Liang Shu-ming's narrative with his own practical orientation and with the theories of other interlocutors. The book puts Liang Shu-ming into the social context of modern Chinese history, in particular, the context of the unprecedented crisis of meaning in the legal realm and the collapse of a transcendental source for Chinese cultural identity in the light of modernity. The evaluation provided by this narrative could be helpful in clarifying the deep structures and significance of the present Chinese legal system through historically exploring Liang Shu-ming's misgivings. The book is intended for academics of legal, history and cultural studies. The book is unique in that it is the first book to explore New Confucian's considerations on reconstruction of Chinese legal system in the modern era. It presents a comprehensive systematical comparison of Liang Shu-ming's narrative about constitutional government in China against other schools of thought.
This book provides an analysis of the complex philosophy of Liang Shuming. This twentieth-century thinker opened up a number of paths that were to become central components of modern Chinese philosophy. For the first time, experts are brought together to analyze the complexity of his philosophy, which continues to exert a considerable influence today. This edited volume covers Liang’s multifaceted thought as informed by his many identities as a Buddhist, a Confucian, a Bergsonian, a rural reformer, and a philosopher. The volume will appeal to students, scholars, and general-interest readers.
Democracy is a dominant principle and practice to legitimate political power in the modern world, and yet its relationship with other moral traditions is not well understood. some but not all commitments with it (feminism, Classical and Egalitarian variants of Liberalism). Ethical theories, by their very nature, are universal theories, and tend to be suspicious of democratic legitimacy arguments – since ‘the people’ who are the source of democratic legitimacy might support some things that are contrary to justice, as described in the tradition. Yet, appeal to democracy remains one of the most powerful appeals to legitimize political power in the contemporary world. This volume is interested in the relationship between democracy and moral traditions whose origins either precede the democratic ideal of legitimacy (Buddhism, Christianity, Confucianism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, Natural Law) or developed in some sense along side the democratic ideal and share some of its commitments. This volume explores the relationship between these moral traditions and democracy, including the way in which the moral and religious perspectives have adapted in their encounter with democratic ideals, and have themselves modified democratic theory and practice. This is a work in comparative ethics. The contributors each an expert in one of these traditions, show how that traditions has confronted democracy – and considers different dimensions in which the traditions have engaged with the tradition. To orient the engagement between democratic principles and the moral traditions, the contributors focus on various dimensions in which the two have engaged. The contributors consider their tradition’s views of participation, including eligibility for participation and opportunities to do so, including people with quite different world-views; the scope of democracy, as conceived by the tradition, including how the democratic ‘people’ interact or ought to interact with adherents of other traditions, and whether some of the pillars of moral tradition have themselves helped to inform democratic principles and practices in communities where the ethical tradition is dominant. For example, if there are traditions of consultation and of appropriate authority in a moral tradition, does this operate as a resource for democracy itself, and if so, has it changed the way democracy is practiced in these societies? What emerges is a rich and nuanced tapestry that testifies to the interaction of moral traditions and democracy, and the various relationships between these traditions and democratic theory and practice.
Ongoing debates among political theorists revolve around the question of whether the overarching goal of Confucianism--serving the people's moral and material wellbeing--is attainable in modern day politics without broad democratic participation. One side of the debate, voiced by Confucian meritocrats, argues that only certain people are equipped with the moral character needed to lead and ensure broad public wellbeing. The other side, voiced by Confucian democrats, argues that unless all citizens participate equally in the public sphere, a polity cannot attain the moral growth that Confucianism emphasizes. Written by one of the leading voices of Confucian political theory, Confucian Constitutionalism presents a constitutional theory of democratic self-government that is normatively appealing and politically practicable in East Asia's historically Confucian societies, which are increasingly pluralist, multicultural, and rights sensitive. While Confucian political theorists are preoccupied with how to build a Confucianism-inspired institution that would make a given polity more meritorious, Sungmoon Kim offers a robust normative theory of Confucian constitutionalism--what he calls "Confucian democratic constitutionalism"--with special attention to value pluralism and moral disagreement. Building on his previous theory of Confucian democracy, Kim establishes egalitarian human dignity as the underlying moral value of Confucian democratic constitutionalism and derives two foundational rights from Confucian egalitarian dignity--the equal right to political participation and the equal right to constitutional protection of civil and political rights. He then shows how each of these rights justifies the establishment of the legislature and the judiciary respectively as two independent constitutional institutions equally committed to the protection and promotion of the people's moral and material wellbeing, now reformulated in terms of rights. Aiming to contribute to both political theory and comparative law, Confucian Constitutionalism explains how Confucian democratic constitutionalism differs from and improves upon liberal legal constitutionalism, political constitutionalism, and Confucian meritocratic constitutionalism.
A history of traditional Chinese knowledge, thought and belief from the seventh through the nineteenth centuries with a new approach that offers a new perspective. It appropriates a wide range of source materials and emphasizes the necessity of understanding ideas and thought in their proper historical contexts. Its analytical narrative focuses on the dialectical interaction between historical background and intellectual thought. While discussing the complex dynamics of interaction among the intellectual thought of elite Chinese scholars, their historical conditions, their canonical texts and the "worlds of general knowledge, thought and belief," it also illuminates the significance of key issues such as the formation of the Chinese world order and its underlying value system, the origins of Chinese cultural identity, foreign influences, and the collapse of the Chinese world order in the 19th century leading toward the revolutionary events of the 20th century.
The essays in Powerful Arguments reconstruct the standards of validity underlying argumentative practices in a wide array of late imperial Chinese discourses, from the Song through the Qing dynasties. The fourteen case studies analyze concrete arguments defended or contested in areas ranging from historiography, philosophy, law, and religion to natural studies, literature, and the civil examination system. By examining uses of evidence, habits of inference, and the criteria by which some arguments were judged to be more persuasive than others, the contributions recreate distinct cultures of reasoning. Together, they lay the foundations for a history of argumentative practice in one of the richest scholarly traditions outside of Europe and add a chapter to the as yet elusive global history of rationality.
Since the mid-1980s, Taiwan and mainland China have witnessed a resurgence of academic and intellectual interest in ruxue--"Confucianism"--variously conceived as a form of culture, an ideology, a system of learning, and a tradition of normative values. This study shows how ruxue has been conceived in order to assess its achievements.
