East Asian Confucianisms: Texts in Contexts

Chun-Chieh Huang 著

This volume tells the story of the importance of the Confucian traditions and why and how Confucian texts were reinterpreted within the different ambiances and contexts around East Asia. The vitality of East Asian Confucianisms stems from the desire of Confucian thinkers to interpret the core values of the Confucian classics in line with conditions and changes in their own times and location. Although all the interpretations that were advanced in China, Korea and Japan were specific to their own era, they do still share some themes in common. This book reveals that “East Asian Confucianisms” forms an intellectual community that is transnational and multi-lingual and has evolved in interaction between Confucian “universal values” and the local conditions present in each East Asian country.

Prof Dr Chun-chieh Huang is Dean of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Humanities and Social Sciences, National Taiwan University, and Research Fellow at the Institute of Chinese Literature and Philosophy, Academia Sinica, Nangang, Taiwan.

Preface
Prologue

Part Ⅰ New Perspectives on East Asian Confucianisms

Introduction

Chapter One: On the Relationship between Interpretations of the Confucian Classics and Political Power in East Asia: An Inquiry into the Analects and Mencius

Chapter Two: On the “Contextual Turn” in the Tokugawa Japanese Interpretation of the Confucian Classics: Types and Problems

Chapter Three: East Asian Conceptions of the Public and Private Realms

Chapter Four: The Role of Dasan Learning in the Making of East Asian Confucianisms: A Twenty-First-Century Perspective

Part II Confucian Texts in East Asian Contexts

Introduction

Chapter Five: Zhu Xi’s Comments on Analects 4.15 and 15.3, and His Critics: A Historical Perspective

Chapter Six: The Reception and Reinterpretation of Zhu Xi’s Treatise on Humanity in Tokugawa Japan

Chapter Seven: The Confucian World of Thought in Eighteenth-Century East Asia: A Comparative Perspective

Chapter Eight: Itō Jinsai on the Analects

Chapter Nine: Shibusawa Ēichi on the Analects

Chapter Ten: What is Ignored in Itō Jinsai’s Interpretation of Mencius?

Chapter Eleven: Yamada Hōkoku on Mencius’ Theory of Nurturing Qi: A Historical Perspective

Chapter Twelve: The Idea of Zhongguo and Its Transformation in the Contexts of Early Modern Japan and Contemporary Taiwan

Epilogue

Appendix: Some Observations on the Study of the History of Cultural Interactions in East Asia

Indexes
Bibliography
Index of Names
Index of Terms