Loubna El Amine
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691163048
- eISBN:
- 9781400873944
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691163048.003.0007
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Political Philosophy
This chapter analyzes the role of Heaven (tian) in the Confucian political vision. The resort to Heaven provides legitimacy for Confucians' political endeavors by supporting some other pursuits, like ...
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This chapter analyzes the role of Heaven (tian) in the Confucian political vision. The resort to Heaven provides legitimacy for Confucians' political endeavors by supporting some other pursuits, like the achievement and promotion of merit, and political engagement more generally, but also by shielding political actors from responsibility for events beyond their control. The chapter follows Robert Eno's scholarship, which argues that the early Confucians use Heaven as a legitimating device to justify political ideas that are not about Heaven per se. According to him, Heaven is not a “defining interest” for the Confucians, and that early Confucian philosophy seems directed away from metaphysics and religion.Less
This chapter analyzes the role of Heaven (tian) in the Confucian political vision. The resort to Heaven provides legitimacy for Confucians' political endeavors by supporting some other pursuits, like the achievement and promotion of merit, and political engagement more generally, but also by shielding political actors from responsibility for events beyond their control. The chapter follows Robert Eno's scholarship, which argues that the early Confucians use Heaven as a legitimating device to justify political ideas that are not about Heaven per se. According to him, Heaven is not a “defining interest” for the Confucians, and that early Confucian philosophy seems directed away from metaphysics and religion.
Henry Jr. Rosemont and Roger T. Ames
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- November 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780824832841
- eISBN:
- 9780824869953
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Hawai'i Press
- DOI:
- 10.21313/hawaii/9780824832841.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Religious Studies
Few if any philosophical schools have championed family values as persistently as the early Confucians, and a great deal can be learned by attending to what they had to say on the subject. In the ...
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Few if any philosophical schools have championed family values as persistently as the early Confucians, and a great deal can be learned by attending to what they had to say on the subject. In the Confucian tradition, human morality and the personal realization it inspires are grounded in the cultivation of family feeling. One may even go so far as to say that, for China, family reverence was a necessary condition for developing any of the other human qualities of excellence. On the basis of the present translation of the Xiaojing (Classic of Family Reverence) and supplemental passages found in other early philosophical writings, this book articulate a specifically Confucian conception of “role ethics” that, in its emphasis on a relational conception of the person, is markedly different from most early and contemporary dominant Western moral theories. This Confucian role ethics takes as its inspiration the perceived necessity of family feeling as the entry point in the development of moral competence and as a guide to the religious life as well. The introduction offers a perspective on the historical, philosophical, and religious dimensions of the Xiaojing. A lexicon of key terms presents a context for the Xiaojing and provides guidelines for interpreting the text historically in China as well as suggesting its contemporary significance for all societies. The inclusion of the Chinese text adds another dimension.Less
Few if any philosophical schools have championed family values as persistently as the early Confucians, and a great deal can be learned by attending to what they had to say on the subject. In the Confucian tradition, human morality and the personal realization it inspires are grounded in the cultivation of family feeling. One may even go so far as to say that, for China, family reverence was a necessary condition for developing any of the other human qualities of excellence. On the basis of the present translation of the Xiaojing (Classic of Family Reverence) and supplemental passages found in other early philosophical writings, this book articulate a specifically Confucian conception of “role ethics” that, in its emphasis on a relational conception of the person, is markedly different from most early and contemporary dominant Western moral theories. This Confucian role ethics takes as its inspiration the perceived necessity of family feeling as the entry point in the development of moral competence and as a guide to the religious life as well. The introduction offers a perspective on the historical, philosophical, and religious dimensions of the Xiaojing. A lexicon of key terms presents a context for the Xiaojing and provides guidelines for interpreting the text historically in China as well as suggesting its contemporary significance for all societies. The inclusion of the Chinese text adds another dimension.
