The first English-language contributory volume on Chinese metaphysics, covering all major traditions from pre-Qin to the modern period.

In Metaphorical Metaphysics in Chinese Philosophy: Illustrated with Feng Youlan's New Metaphysics, Derong Chen explores Chinese philosophy through a comprehensive study and critical analysis of Feng Youlan's new metaphysics, proposing a systematic analysis of meaning that differs from the approach of the comparative linguistic analysis that A.C. Graham and Chad Hasen employed in their studies of Chinese philosophy. This detailed analysis of Feng Youlan's new metaphysics demonstrates that Feng's system is not the completely Westernized philosophical system many scholars identify it as, nor is it the pure logical and analytical system Feng himself intended to construct. Rather, the essence and characteristics of the new metaphysics at the core of Feng's philosophical system expose his philosophy as a continuation of the Chinese philosophical tradition in a new era. This approach is most applicable to scholars of comparative philosophy and of any era of Chinese philosophy.

In this illustrated introduction Wen Haiming explores philosophers through Chinese history and distinguishes the 'Chinese philosophical sensibility' motivating their thoughts.

Professor Yang Guorong is one of the foremost living philosophers in China, and is widely known for the development of his “concrete metaphysics.” In Philosophical Horizons Yang offers penetrating discussions of some of the most important issues in modern philosophy—especially those topics related to comparative and Chinese philosophy. Drawing freely and adroitly on Confucian, Daoist, and Buddhist texts, while staging a dialogue with Western thinkers such as from Kant and Hegel to Marx, Heidegger, and Wittgenstein, Yang shows how contemporary Chinese philosophy has adopted, localized, and critically developed Western ideas alongside traditional Chinese concepts.

This book seeks to construct and establish the metaphysics of Chinese morals as a formal and independent branch of learning by abstracting and systemizing the universal principles presupposed by the primal virtues and key imperatives in Daoist and Confucian ethics.

Guo Qiyong’s edited volume on contemporary Chinese philosophy offers a detailed look at research on Chinese philosophy published from 1949-2009 in Mainland China and Taiwan. The chapters in this volume are broken down into either major themes or time periods in the history of Chinese philosophy. In each chapter after summarizing significant aspects of a particular theme or time period, lists are drawn up of the most important works, along with comments on their individual contributions. This volume allows readers to both familiarize themselves with specific texts and become immersed in the more general philosophical discourse surrounding the history of Chinese philosophy. It provides an in-depth look into serious debates and major discoveries in Chinese language philosophical scholarship from 1949-2009.

This comprehensive introductory textbook to early Chinese philosophy covers a range of philosophical traditions which arose during the Spring and Autumn (722-476 BCE) and Warring States (475-221 BCE) periods in China, including Confucianism, Mohism, Daoism, and Legalism. It considers concepts, themes and argumentative methods of early Chinese philosophy and follows the development of some ideas in subsequent periods, including the introduction of Buddhism into China. The book examines key issues and debates in early Chinese philosophy, cross-influences between its traditions and interpretations by scholars up to the present day. The discussion draws upon both primary texts and secondary sources, and there are suggestions for further reading. This will be an invaluable guide for all who are interested in the foundations of Chinese philosophy and its richness and continuing relevance.

The nine papers of this Supplement on these significant issues and important ideas are closely accentuated and critically discussed by well-established specialists, philosophers and historians, from various relevant disciplines of study.

"Chapter One lays out the dominant views of self, agency, and moral responsibility in early Chinese Philosophy. The reason for this is that these views inform the ways early Chinese thinkers approach mental illness, as well as the role they see it playing in self-cultivation as a whole (whether they view it as problematic or beneficial, for example). In this chapter I offer a view of a number of dominant conceptions of mind, body, and agency in early Chinese thought, through a number of philosophical and medical texts"--

If you are from the West, it is likely that you normally assume that you are a subject who relates to objects and other subjects through actions that spring purely from your own intentions and will. Chinese philosophers, however, show how mistaken this conception of action is. Philosophy of action in Classical China is radically different from its counterpart in the Western philosophical narrative. While the latter usually assumes we are discrete individual subjects with the ability to act or to effect change, Classical Chinese philosophers theorize that human life is embedded in endless networks of relationships with other entities, phenomena, and socio-material contexts. These relations are primary to the constitution of the person, and hence acting within an early Chinese context is interacting and co-acting along with others, human or nonhuman. This book is the first monograph dedicated to the exploration and rigorous reconstruction of an extraordinary strategy for efficacious relational action devised by Classical Chinese philosophers, one which attempts to account for the interdependent and embedded character of human agency-what Mercedes Valmisa calls "adapting" or "adaptive agency" (yin) As opposed to more unilateral approaches to action conceptualized in the Classical Chinese corpus, such as forceful and prescriptive agency, adapting requires heightened self- and other-awareness, equanimity, flexibility, creativity, and response. These capacities allow the agent to "co-raise" courses of action ad hoc: unique and temporary solutions to specific, non-permanent, and non-generalizable life problems. Adapting is one of the world's oldest philosophies of action, and yet it is shockingly new for contemporary audiences, who will find in it an unlikely source of inspiration to cope with our current global problems. This book explores the core conception of adapting both on autochthonous terms and by cross-cultural comparison, drawing on the European and Analytic philosophical traditions as well as on scholarship from other disciplines. Valmisa exemplifies how to build meaningful philosophical theories without treating individual books or putative authors as locations of stable intellectual positions, opening brand-new topics in Chinese and comparative philosophy.