Chinese Metaphysics and its Problems

Chenyang Li, Franklin Perkins

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781107093508
• eBook ISBN: 9781316310403
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Eastern Philosophy

This volume of new essays is the first English-language anthology devoted to Chinese metaphysics. The essays explore the key themes of Chinese philosophy, from pre-Qin to modern times, starting with important concepts such as yin-yang and qi and taking the reader through the major periods in Chinese thought - from the Classical period, through Chinese Buddhism and Neo-Confucianism, into the twentieth-century philosophy of Xiong Shili. They explore the major traditions within Chinese philosophy, including Daoism and Mohism, and a broad range of metaphysical topics, including monism, theories of individuation, and the relationship between reality and falsehood. The volume will be a valuable resource for upper-level students and scholars of metaphysics, Chinese philosophy, or comparative philosophy, and with its rich insights into the ethical, social and political dimensions of Chinese society, it will also interest students of Asian studies and Chinese intellectual history.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Contributors
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1 Yinyang narrative of reality: Chinese metaphysical thinking
• 2 In defense of Chinese qi-naturalism
• 3 What is a thing (wu 物)?: The problem of individuation in early Chinese metaphysics
• 4 The Mohist conception of reality
• 5 Reading the Zhongyong “metaphysically”
• 6 Logos and dao: conceptions of reality in Heraclitus and Laozi
• 7 Constructions of reality: Metaphysics in the ritual traditions of classical China
• 8 Concepts of reality in Chinese Mahāyāna Buddhism
• 9 Being and events: Huayan Buddhism’s concept of event and Whitehead’s ontological principle
• 10 Harmony as substance: Zhang Zai’s metaphysics of polar relations
• 11 A lexicography of Zhu Xi’s metaphysics
• 12 Xiong Shili’s understanding of the relationship between the ontological and the phenomenal
• Works cited
• Index