Confucian Traditions in East Asian Modernity: Moral Education and Economic Culture in Japan and the Four Mini-Dragons / Edition 1 available in
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Confucian Traditions in East Asian Modernity: Moral Education and Economic Culture in Japan and the Four Mini-Dragons / Edition 1
How Confucian traditions have shaped styles of being modern in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore presents a particular challenge to the intellectual community. Explorations of Confucian network capitalism, meritocratic democracy, and liberal education have practical implications for a sense of self, community, economy, and polity.
Seventeen scholars, of varying fields of study, here bring their differing perspectives to a consideration of the Confucian role in industrial East Asia. Confucian concerns such as self-cultivation, regulation of the family, social civility, moral education, well-being of the people, governance of the state, and universal peace provide a general framework for the study. The Confucian Problematik—how a fiduciary community can come into being through exemplary teaching and moral transformation—underlies much of the discussion. The contributors question all unexamined assumptions about the rise of industrial East Asia, at the same time exploring the ideas, norms, and values that underlie the moral fabric of East Asian societies.
Is Confucian ethics a common discourse in industrial East Asia? The answer varies according to academic discipline, regional specialization, and personal judgment. Although there are conflicting interpretations and diverging perspectives, this study represents the current thinking of some of the most sophisticated minds on this vital and intriguing subject.
Tu Wei-ming is Director of the Institute for Advanced Humanistic Studies, Peking University, and Harvard-Yenching Professor of Chinese History and Philosophy and of Confucian Studies, Emeritus, Harvard University. He directed the Harvard-Yenching Institute from 1996 to 2008.
Table of Contents
Preface
Introduction
I. Intellectual and Institutional Resources
Confucian Education in Premodern East Asia W.M. Theodore De Bary
Reflections on Civil Society and Civility in the Chinese Intellectual Tradition Edward Shils
The Intellectual Heritage of the Confucian Ideal of Ching-shih Chang Had
Confucian Ideals and the Real World: A Critical Review of Contemporary Neo-Confucian Thought Liu Shu-Hsien
II. Japan
"They Are Almost the Same as the Ancient Three Dynasties": The West as Seen through Confucian Eyes in Nineteenth-Century Japan Watanabe Hiroshi
Confucianism and the Japanese State, 1904-1945 Samuel Hideo Yamashita
The Japanese (Confucian) Family: The Tradition from the Bottom Up Robert J. Smith
Some Observations on the Transformation of Confucianism (and Buddhism) in Japan S. N. Eisenstadt
III. South Korea and Taiwan
Confucianism in Contemporary Korea Koh Byong-ik
The Reproduction of Confucian Culture in Contemporary Korea: An Anthropological Study Kim Kwang-ok
State Confucianism and Its Transformation: The Restructuring of the State-Society Relation in Taiwan Ambrose Y. C. King
Civil Society in Taiwan: The Confucian Dimension Thomas B. Gold
IV. Hong Kong, Singapore, and Overseas Chinese Communities
The Transformation of Confucianism in the Post-Confucian Era: The Emergence of Rationalistic Traditionalism in Hong Kong Ambrose Y. C. King
Promoting Confucianism for Socioeconomic Development: The Singapore Experience John Wong
Confucianism as Political Discourse in Singapore: The Case of an Incomplete Revitalization Movement Eddie C. Y. Kuo
Societal Transformation and the Contribution of Authority Relations and Cooperation Norms in Overseas Chinese Business S. Gordon Redding
The work is distinguished by its breadth and its multidisciplinary character as well as its depth, bringing together the work of philosophers, historians, sociologists, anthropologists, and economists, always with interesting results.
Irene Bloom
The work is distinguished by its breadth and its multidisciplinary character as well as its depth, bringing together the work of philosophers, historians, sociologists, anthropologists, and economists, always with interesting results. Irene Bloom, Barnard College
Henry Rosemont
The focus of this book is an important one. Those non-Western countries which have come the farthest in modernization during the twentieth century are all East Asian: Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Taiwan. All of these have been influenced significantly by Chinese culture, and Chinese culture has been influenced significantly by Confucianism. Hence the question: what role has Confucianism in general, and Confucian ethics in particular, played in the process of modernization in these countries? Tu Wei-ming is an internationally renowned Confucian scholar. These essays are first-rate contributions to scholarship that deserve a wide audience, and all of them are enhanced by being gathered together in a single volume.
Henry Rosemont, Jr., St. Mary's College of Maryland