This book introduces into the current global ethics debate models of humanism developed in classical Chinese traditions, which have not yet been comprehensively presented to Western scholarship or integrated into the framework of global discourses on social ethics and morality. It creates new paradigms for an understanding of humanism that meets the demands of our time. It begins by presenting European descriptions and critical assessments of this discourse, and then moves to an exploration of humanistic ideas shaped through historical developments in Asia, with a focus on the Chinese tradition. In this sense, the book is written from a transcivilizational perspective. The methods used in the research transcend---that is, surpass and overcome---the rigid, isolating, and essentialist concept of civilization. At the same time, the book points to the possibility of transformation through the exchange of knowledge and ideas between different civilizations. Within this framework, the book starts from the assumption that the ontology of civilizations and cultures is not based on immutable substances, but on the relations between different factors that constitute them as categories. The transcivilizational perspective rooted in transcultural dialogues between philosophies that originated in different cultures and civilizations is particularly valuable because of the globalized world in which we live today. This means that the problems that affect people in different parts of the world and the issues that are embedded in different geopolitical and developmental frameworks also affect all of humanity.
This book is of particular interest to scholars and students of global ethics, globalization, Asian philosophy and Sinology.
Author(s): Jana S. Rošker
Series: Emerging Globalities and Civilizational Perspectives
Edition: 1
Publisher: Springer Nature Switzerland
Year: 2023
Language: English
Pages: ix; 178
City: Cham
Tags: Social Sciences; Globalization; Philosophy, general; Sociology of Culture; Ethics; Asian Culture
Acknowledgments
Contents
About the Author
Chapter 1: Introduction: Human Beings and the Meaning of Humanity
Homo Mensura
Problems and Critique of Humanism
Chapter 2: Methodological and Historical Background
The Civilizational Perspective
Problems of (Post)-Comparative Transcultural Philosophy
Fusion and Sublation
Historical Framework
Conceptual Foundations and Research Design
Beyond Orientalist and Eurocentric Approaches: Different Frameworks of Reference and Questions of Transcultural Hermeneutics
Chapter 3: Humanisms of Ancient China
The Relationship Between the Individual and Society
Humanism as the Spirit of Human Culture
Three Kinds of Harmony and the True Person
A Critique of Confucian Normativity and Ecological Humanism
Mo Di and the Pacifist Humanism of Universal Love
All Under Heaven
Chapter 4: The Human Being as the Core of Humanism
Relational Self
The Inner Sage and the Outer Ruler
Transformative and Integrative Self
The Concept of Subjectality
Confucian Humanism and Women
Chapter 5: Humanist Ethics
Categorical Imperative
Free Will
The Question of Good and Evil and the Sustainable Preservation of Humanity
Relational Ethics and Relationism
The Authenticity of the Moral Life Beyond Deontological Ethics
Chapter 6: Invented Traditions: From Harmony to Asian Values
Harmonious Society
Harmony and Law
Traditional Evolution of the Concept of Harmony: From Original Confucianism to the Works of Mengzi and Xunzi
Confucian Humanism Through the Lens of Two Contemporary Interpretations: Asian Values vs. Modern New Confucian Revival
The Political and Ideological Background of ``Asian Values´´
Modern New Confucian Reactions
Political Theories of Confucian Humanism and the Problem of Hierarchy
Chapter 7: Conclusion: Essentialist View of Human Self or Panhumanist Universalism?
Glossary of Chinese Names and Terms
Bibliography
Index
