Chinese History 251: Confucian Ethics: Conference Course

Course last offered in Spring 2004.

I. Introduction

February 4: Confucian Ethics in Perspective

Tu Weiming, “Confucianism” in Arvind Sharma (ed.), Our Religions (S.F.: Harper and Row, 1993), pp. 139-227.

II. Core Values: The Classical Legacy

February 11: Humanity and Reciprocity

D. C. Lau, trans., The Analects (Penguin Classic);
H. Fingarette, Confucius—The Secular as Sacred (New York: Harper and Row, 1972).

February 18: Rightness and Courage

D. C. Lau (trans.), The Book of Mencius (Penguin Classic);
Lee H. Yearley, Mencius and Aquinas: Theories of Virtue and Conceptions of Courage (Albany: State University Press, 1990).

February 25: Ritual and Civility

John Knoblock (trans.), Xunzi: a translation and study of the complete works (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988, 1990), vols. I and II;
Burton Watson (trans.), Hsun Tzu (N.Y.: Columbia University Press, 1967).

March 3: Immanent Transcendence

Wing-tsit Chan (trans. and comp.), A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963), pp. 84-114;
Tu Weiming, Centrality and Commonality: An Essay on Confucian Religiousness (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989).

March 10: The Confucian Way

A. C. Graham, Disputers of the Tao: Philosophical Argument in Ancient China (La Salle, Ill.: Open Court, 1989).

III. The Learning of the Heart-and-Mind: Neo-Confucian Thought

March 17: Self-Cultivation

Wing-tsit Chan (trans. and comp.), A Source Book, pp. 460-653;
D. Gardner (trans. with a commentary), Learning to be a sage: Selections from the Conversations of Master Chu, Arranged Topically (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990).

March 24: Embodying the Universe

Wing-tsit Chan (trans. and comp.), A Source Book, pp. 654-691;
Wing-tsit Chan (trans.), Instructions for Practical Living and Other Neo-Confucian Writing by Wang Yangming (N.Y.: Columbia University Press, 1963).

April 7: Learning to Become a Sage

Michael C. Kalton (trans.), To Become a Sage: the Ten diagrams on Sage Learning by Yi T’oegye (N.Y.: Columbia University Press, 1988);
Philip J. Ivanhoe, Confucian Moral Self Cultivation (Indianapolis: Hackett Publication, 2000).

IV. Modern Transformation

April 14: The Liberal Democratic Critique

Wm. T. de Bary, The Trouble with Confucianism (Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press, 1991);
Chenyang Li, The Sage and the Second Sex (Chicago: Open Court, 2000).

April 21: Confucian Ethics and Ecology

Mary Evelyn Tucker, Confucianism and Ecology: The Interrelation of Heaven, Earth and Humans (Harvard University Press, 1998).

April 28: Confucian Humanism and East Asian Modernity

Tu Weiming (ed.), Confucian Traditions in East Asian Modernity: Exploring Moral Education and Economic Culture in Japan and the Mini-Dragons (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996).

All the readings are reserved at the Harvard-Yenching Library (2 Divinity Avenue).