New Life for Old Ideas：Chinese Philosophy in the Contemporary World

　　Over five decades, Donald J. Munro has been one of the most important voices in sinological philosophy. Among other accomplishments, his seminal book The Concept of Man in Early China influenced a generation of scholars. His rapprochement with contemporary cognitive and evolutionary science helped bolster the insights of Chinese philosophers and set the standard for similar explorations today.

　　In this festschrift volume, students of Munro and scholars influenced by him celebrate Munro’s body of work in articles that extend his legacy, exploring their topics as varied as the ethics of Zhuangzi’s autotelicity, the teleology of nature in Zhu Xi, and family love in Confucianism and Christianity. They also reflect on Munro’s mentorship and his direct intellectual influence. Through their breadth, analytical excellence, and philosophical insight, the articles in this volume exemplify the spirit of intellectual inquiry that marked Donald Munro’s career as scholar and teacher.

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　　“Munro was unstinting with his praise and encouragement of all my forays into maverick topics and along almost heretical lines of thought about Chinese philosophy. His hallmark as a teacher was the absence of an official ideology and an open and welcoming tolerance to differences of opinion.”―Chad Hansen, Department of Philosophy, The University of Hong Kong

　　“Munro was more than an intellectual mentor. He has been an unfailing source of wisdom, inspiration, and support.”―Robert Eno, Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, Indiana University
 

1. Introduction: Donald Munro―Scholar, Mentor, Friend 1
Chad Hansen and Robert Eno
2. My “Investigation of Things” 13
Donald Munro
3. Neo-Confucianism As Philosophy 43
Stephen C. Angle
4. Why Does Confucianism Prefer Compassion to Empathy? 71
Sin Yee Chan
5. The Quest for Uncertainty: 105
Ethics and Autotelic Action in the Zhuangzi
Robert Eno
6. Ethical Naturalism: Three Lessons from Donald Munro 139
Chad Hansen
7. The Goodness in Human Nature: 183
New Perspectives on Mencian Theory
Xiaogan Liu
8. It’s a Jungle Out There: 225
Zhuangzi and the Rhetoric of Political Persuasion
Yuet Keung Lo
9. Left and Right, East and West: Are “Conservative” and 253
“Liberal” Universal Human Categories?
David Moser
10. What Does a Chinese Master Know? 275
Toward a Gongfu Epistemology
Peimin Ni
11. Image, Clustering, and Interality: Probing Alternative Ways 317
of Understanding Chinese Philosophy
Geling Shang
12. Zhu Xi on the Consciousness and Unconsciousness 345
of the Mind of Heaven and Earth:
Cross-Cultural Considerations of Ontological Theism
and Atheism in Honor of the Work of Donald Munro
Brook Ziporyn
13. Family Love and Its Extension: A Comparative Evaluation 367
Yanming An
Contributors 393
Biography of Donald Munro 401
Index 407

 

作者簡介



　　Yanming An is Professor of Chinese and Philosophy at Clemson University. The academic fields in which he has worked include classical Confucianism and Daoism, the influence of Buddhism on the formation of Neo-Confucianism, and comparative philosophy. He is the author of The Idea of Cheng (Sincerity/Reality) in the History of Chinese Philosophy and the Chinese translator of Wilhelm Dilthey’s The Formation of the Historical World in the Human Sciences. He has published extensively in both Chinese and English, in original writing and in translation.

　　Brian Bruya is Professor of Philosophy at Eastern Michigan University and Center Associate at the University of Michigan’s Lieberthal-Rogel Center for Chinese Studies. His work focuses on bringing insights from Chinese philosophy into contemporary action theory, with implications for the fields of psychology, aesthetics, ethics, and education. His other edited volumes are The Philosophical Challenge from China and Effortless Attention: A New Perspective in the Cognitive Science of Attention and Action.