Human Becomings: Theorizing Persons for Confucian Role Ethics
Offers an in-depth exposition of the Confucian conception of persons as the starting point of Confucian ethics.

2021 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title

In Human Becomings, Roger T. Ames argues that the appropriateness of categorizing Confucian ethics as role ethics turns largely on the conception of person that is presupposed within the interpretive context of classical Chinese philosophy. By beginning with first self-consciously and critically theorizing the Confucian conception of persons as the starting point of Confucian ethics, Ames posits that the ultimate goal will be to take the Confucian tradition on its own terms and to let it speak with its own voice without overwriting it with cultural importances not its own. He argues that perhaps the most important contribution Confucian philosophy can make to contemporary ethical, social, and political discourse is the conception of focus-field, relationally constituted persons as a robust alternative to the ideology of individualism with single actors playing to win.

1136989103
Human Becomings: Theorizing Persons for Confucian Role Ethics
Offers an in-depth exposition of the Confucian conception of persons as the starting point of Confucian ethics.

2021 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title

In Human Becomings, Roger T. Ames argues that the appropriateness of categorizing Confucian ethics as role ethics turns largely on the conception of person that is presupposed within the interpretive context of classical Chinese philosophy. By beginning with first self-consciously and critically theorizing the Confucian conception of persons as the starting point of Confucian ethics, Ames posits that the ultimate goal will be to take the Confucian tradition on its own terms and to let it speak with its own voice without overwriting it with cultural importances not its own. He argues that perhaps the most important contribution Confucian philosophy can make to contemporary ethical, social, and political discourse is the conception of focus-field, relationally constituted persons as a robust alternative to the ideology of individualism with single actors playing to win.

37.95 In Stock
Human Becomings: Theorizing Persons for Confucian Role Ethics

Human Becomings: Theorizing Persons for Confucian Role Ethics

by Roger T. Ames
Human Becomings: Theorizing Persons for Confucian Role Ethics

Human Becomings: Theorizing Persons for Confucian Role Ethics

by Roger T. Ames

Paperback

$37.95 
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Overview

Offers an in-depth exposition of the Confucian conception of persons as the starting point of Confucian ethics.

2021 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title

In Human Becomings, Roger T. Ames argues that the appropriateness of categorizing Confucian ethics as role ethics turns largely on the conception of person that is presupposed within the interpretive context of classical Chinese philosophy. By beginning with first self-consciously and critically theorizing the Confucian conception of persons as the starting point of Confucian ethics, Ames posits that the ultimate goal will be to take the Confucian tradition on its own terms and to let it speak with its own voice without overwriting it with cultural importances not its own. He argues that perhaps the most important contribution Confucian philosophy can make to contemporary ethical, social, and political discourse is the conception of focus-field, relationally constituted persons as a robust alternative to the ideology of individualism with single actors playing to win.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781438480800
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Publication date: 07/02/2021
Series: SUNY series in Chinese Philosophy and Culture
Pages: 446
Product dimensions: 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.00(d)
Age Range: 18 Years

About the Author

Roger T. Ames is Humanities Chair Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Peking University and Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of Hawai'i. His many books include Confucian Role Ethics: A Vocabulary; Confucian Cultures of Authority (coedited with Peter D. Hershock); and Xu Bing and Contemporary Chinese Art: Cultural and Philosophical Reflections (coedited with Hsingyuan Tsao), all published by SUNY Press.

Table of Contents

Preface

Introduction

1. The Question of Which Questions to Ask

2. How Do the Confucian Canons Say "Role Ethics"?

3. A Narrative Conception of Human Nature

4. Holography and the Focus-Field Conception of Persons

5. Relational Autonomy and Thick Choices

6. Holism, Democracy, and the Optimizing of the Human Experience

7. From Human "Becomings" to a Process Cosmology

Epilogue: Why Theorize Confucian Persons for a Changing World Cultural Order?

Bibliography
Index

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