Essentials of Contemporary Neo-Confucian Philosophy

Shu-hsien Liu

• Publisher: Praeger
• Year: 2003
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9780313058752
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

This volume is the follow-up to Understanding Confucian Philosophy: Classical and Sung-Ming, which presented the first two Epochs of Confucian philosophy. The third Epoch, presented in this book, is that of Contemporary Neo-Confucian philosophy. It notes a paradigm shift from the late Ming to the early Ch'ing, which shows us how the line of Sung-Ming Neo-Confucian philosophy was broken. Then, background information is given to answer the question of how the phoenix was reborn from the ashes; at the height of the iconoclast May Fourth Movement in 1919, Liang Sou-ming, the forerunner of the movement, developed his ideas about East-West cultures and their philosophies.

During the darkest moments of Chinese history, three generations of New Confucian scholars developed their ideas and achieved great scholarship. Shu-hsien Liu presents a framework of four groups to portray the movement. And, the philosophies of Fung Yu-lan, Hsuing Shih-li, Thome H. Fang, T'ang Chun-I, and Mou tsung-san are reviewed and analyzed. The international dimension of the third generation of New Confucians is also introduced. In the conclusion, Shu-hsien Liu comments on the relevance of this trend of thought today with a view toward the future.

Table of contents

• Editor’s Note
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• 1. Paradigm Shift in the Transitional Period from the Late Ming to the Early Ch’ing
• 2. Background for the Emergence of Contemporary New Confucianism
• 3. Fung Yu-lan’s New Learning of Principle
• 4. The Spiritual World of Hsiung Shih-li
• 5. Thomé Fang’s Grand Scheme of Comparative Philosophy
• 6. The Spiritual Spheres of T’ang Chün-i
• 7. Mou Tsung-san’s Affirmation of Intellectual Intuition
• 8. The International Dimension of the Third-Generation New Confucians
• Epilogue
• Appendix
• Bibliography
• Index