The rehabilitation of Confucian tradition raised new challenges to Chinese feminist thinkers. Can a Confucian ideal of reciprocity help women realize their equality? What is the hope for Chinese women seeking a social ideal of equality given the growing gender gap in the current economic development of China? Yuan argues Confucianism cannot help unless it is integrated with feminism. In this book, Yuan explores why gendered stratifications perpetuated so deeply in today’s China through the influences of Confucian cultural tradition, but reading early Confucian texts as a cosmological vision of Ren with Dao and ontological oneness as a whole that is the unity of heaven, earth, and humanism, we might reclaim Confucian egalitarian aspects to develop its openness for gender equity with integration of feminist critical care ethics. Throughout the book, Yuan provides multiple perspectives of comparison: relational self vs. power differentials, gender roles differences vs. political demand for equality, and individual reciprocity vs. connection based reciprocity, etc. to embrace inclusive methodology and caring democracy. We see a great hope to break through stereotypes of binary thinking of Minben (people oriented) and Minzhu (autonomous democracy), gender division of labor, reason and emotion, etc. Yuan argues we should integrate feminist critical thoughts of global justice/care with early Confucianism, since both traditions emphasize caring relationships in humanity and interdependency between social individuals within and beyond their communities in a global scale. Importantly, the integration enlarges our philosophical visions of how cultural traditions can be undeniable sources for strengthening contemporary social ideas of humanity, democracy, equality, and freedom for all.

For much of the twentieth century, Confucianism was condemned by Westerners and East Asians alike as antithetical to modernity. Internationally renowned philosophers, historians, and social scientists argue otherwise in Confucian Political Ethics. They show how classical Confucian theory--with its emphasis on family ties, self-improvement, education, and the social good--is highly relevant to the most pressing dilemmas confronting us today. Drawing upon in-depth, cross-cultural dialogues, the contributors delve into the relationship of Confucian political ethics to contemporary social issues, exploring Confucian perspectives on civil society, government, territorial boundaries and boundaries of the human body and body politic, and ethical pluralism. They examine how Confucianism, often dismissed as backwardly patriarchal, can in fact find common ground with a range of contemporary feminist values and need not hinder gender equality. And they show how Confucian theories about war and peace were formulated in a context not so different from today's international system, and how they can help us achieve a more peaceful global community. This thought-provoking volume affirms the enduring relevance of Confucian moral and political thinking, and will stimulate important debate among policymakers, researchers, and students of politics, philosophy, applied ethics, and East Asian studies. The contributors are Daniel A. Bell, Joseph Chan, Sin Yee Chan, Chenyang Li, Richard Madsen, Ni Lexiong, Peter Nosco, Michael Nylan, Henry Rosemont, Jr., and Lee H. Yearley.

Confucianism and Women argues that Confucian philosophy—often criticized as misogynistic and patriarchal—is not inherently sexist. Although historically bound up with oppressive practices, Confucianism contains much that can promote an ethic of gender parity. Attacks on Confucianism for gender oppression have marked China's modern period, beginning with the May Fourth Movement of 1919 and reaching prominence during the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s and 1970s. The West has also readily characterized Confucianism as a foundation of Chinese women's oppression. Author Li-Hsiang Lisa Rosenlee challenges readers to consider the culture within which Confucianism has functioned and to explore what Confucian thought might mean for women and feminism. She begins the work by clarifying the intellectual tradition of Confucianism and discussing the importance of the Confucian cultural categories yin-yang and nei-wai (inner-outer) for gender ethics. In addition, the Chinese tradition of biographies of virtuous women and books of instruction by and for women is shown to provide a Confucian construction of gender. Practices such as widow chastity, footbinding, and concubinage are discussed in light of Confucian ethics and Chinese history. Ultimately, Rosenlee lays a foundation for a future construction of Confucian feminism as an alternative ethical ground for women's liberation.

The author assesses the ethics of care as a promising alternative to the familiar moral theories that serve so inadequately to guide our lives. Held examines what we mean by care and focuses on caring relationships. She also looks at the potential of care for dealing with social issues and global problems.

This work builds on earlier works, which defend Confucianism against charges of sexism and present interpretations of Confucianism compatible with Feminism, but contributors go beyond the much discussed care ethics, and common arguments of how ren (humaneness) can ground an egalitarian humanism that include gender equality. Besides ethics and political philosophy topics, this volume includes discussions in other philosophical areas such as epistemology, metaphysics, and applied philosophy. Through the encounter of Feminism and Confucius’s perspectives, each contributor generates novel answers to the questions addressed. In some cases, authors raise new questions about the chosen topic, inadequacies in how it has been addressed in previous Confucian or Feminist discourse, and/or challenges for either or both Confucianism and Feminism.

This volume presents the first English translation of the Confucian classics, Four Books for Women, with extensive commentary by the compiler, Wang Xiang, and introductions and annotations by translator Ann A. Pang-White. Written by women for women's education, the Confucian Four Books for Women spanned the 1st to the 16th centuries, and encompass Ban Zhao's Lessons for Women, Song Ruoxin's and Song Ruozhao's Analects for Women, Empress Renxiaowen's Teachings for the Inner Court, and Madame Liu's (Chaste Widow Wang's) Short Records of Models for Women. A female counterpart to the famous Sishu (Four Books) compiled by Zhu Xi, Wang Xiang's Nü sishu provides an invaluable look at the long-standing history and evolution of Chinese women's writing, education, identity, and philosophical discourse, along with their struggles and triumphs, across the millennia and numerous Chinese dynasties. Pang-White's new translation brings the authors of the Four Books for Women to life as real, living people, and illustrates why they wrote and how their work empowered women.

This collection of essays by noted scholars in the fields of Asian studies & feminist thought sheds new light on the connections between Confucianism & feminist ethics.

Political leadership has made a comeback. It was studied intensively not only by political scientists but also by political sociologists and psychologists, Sovietologists, political anthropologists, and by scholars in comparative and development studies from the 1940s to the 1970s. Thereafter, the field lost its way with the rise of structuralism, neo-institutionalism, and rational choice approaches to the study of politics, government, and governance. Recently, however, students of politics have returned to studying the role of individual leaders and the exercise of leadership to explain political outcomes. The list of topics is nigh endless: elections, conflict management, public policy, government popularity, development, governance networks, and regional integration. In the media age, leaders are presented and stage-managed--spun--DDLas the solution to almost every social problem. Through the mass media and the Internet, citizens and professional observers follow the rise, impact, and fall of senior political officeholders at closer quarters than ever before. This Handbook encapsulates the resurgence by asking, where are we today? It orders the multidisciplinary field by identifying the distinct and distinctive contributions of the disciplines. It meets the urgent need to take stock. It brings together scholars from around the world, encouraging a comparative perspective, to provide a comprehensive coverage of all the major disciplines, methods, and regions. It showcases both the normative and empirical traditions in political leadership studies, and juxtaposes behavioural, institutional, and interpretive approaches. It covers formal, office-based as well as informal, emergent political leadership, and in both democratic and undemocratic polities.

As a comparative study of the virtue ethics of Aristotle and Confucius, this book explores how they each reflect upon human good and virtue out of their respective cultural assumptions, conceptual frameworks, and philosophical perspectives. It does not simply take one side as a framework to understand the other; rather, it takes them as mirrors for each other and seeks to develop new readings and perspectives of both ethics that would be unattainable if each were studied on its own.

This volume surveys the major philosophical concepts, arguments, and commitments of the Confucian classic, the Analects. In thematically organized chapters, leading scholars provide a detailed, scholarly introduction to the text and the signal ideas ascribed to its protagonist, Confucius. The volume opens with chapters that reflect the latest scholarship on the disputed origins of the text and an overview of the broad commentarial tradition it generated. These are followed by chapters that individually explore key areas of the text’s philosophical landscape, articulating both the sense of concepts such as ren, li, and xiao as well as their place in the wider space of the text. A final section addresses prominent interpretive challenges and scholarly disputes in reading the Analects, evaluating, for example, the alignment between the Analects and contemporary moral theory and the contested nature of its religious sensibility. Dao Companion to the Analects offers a comprehensive and complete survey of the text's philosophical idiom and themes, as well as its history and some of the liveliest current debates surrounding it. This book is an ideal resource for both researchers and advanced students interested in gaining greater insight into one of the earliest and most influential Confucian classics.