This article examines the relationship between wu 無 and dao 道 in the Daodejing 道德經 to explore its resonances with decolonial thought––understood here first as the dismantling of colonial impositions within the philosophical imaginary, and subsequently as a resource for resisting new forms of monoculturalism. It argues that the prevailing tendency to interpret these terms through Western metaphysical frameworks––such as the transcendence/immanence dichotomy and the categories of “nothingness” and “being” ––perpetuates a long tradition of epistemological hegemony. This imposition cannot be dismissed as mere flawed hermeneutics. Though often well-intentioned, such an approach assimilates the text’s distinctive concepts into familiar paradigms, thereby neutralizing their disruptive potential and obscuring the Daodejing’s ethical-political core. The analysis demonstrates that characterizing wu as absolute nothingness, relative nonbeing, or Heideggerian being generates insurmountable conceptual contradictions and perpetuates a colonial reading of the text. Moving beyond this critique, the article proposes a decolonial reorientation by recovering wu not as a metaphysical ground but through its dynamic, lessening function within dao’s circular process. This approach takes the Daodejing as a text of strategic resistance, emphasizing practices of weakening, return, and unlearning. By framing its process of “decreasing daily” as a preparatory practice for epistemic humility, the article uncovers a profound resonance with María Lugones’s decolonial project of “living with uncertainty.” Ultimately, this reading situates the Daodejing as an interlocutor in decolonial philosophy, highlighting how its ancient strategy of self-weakening and open-ended engagement with the world offers a resource for challenging dominant, oppressive logics.
This paper examines translation-induced misinterpretations in comparative studies of Xunzi (sic)(sic), where poor word choices mislead readers unfamiliar with the text's cultural context. Such errors intensify when scholars uncritically adopt flawed translations and impose modern categories, notably Freudian ones, on ancient texts. A key example is misinterpreting Xunzi's ren (sic) (restraint) and bi (sic) (beclouding) as "repression" and "obsession." Although "repression" originally meant restraint and "obsession" denoted persistent thoughts, their post-Freudian connotations-unconscious suppression and compulsive behavior-psychologize ren and bi as neurotic mental states, unsupported by Xunzi's text. This approach further blurs the fundamental difference between Xunzi's theory of li (sic) (propriety, ritual), an endeavor aiming at ethical cultivation and social harmony, with Freud's theory of ritual as behaviors rooted in compulsive neurosis, overlooking the fact that Freudian ritual hinges on unconscious mental states, thus oversimplifying and distorting their respective frameworks. By addressing these translation-driven misconceptions, this paper clarifies the distinct ideas of Xunzi and Freud, advocating for translations and interpretations that respect Xunzi's Confucian context and ensure comparisons with thinkers like Freud are grounded in their unique philosophical frameworks.
This article addresses the troubling trend of political Confucianism in contemporary Confucian development, focusing exclusively on neo-Confucian doctrines that reject liberal neutrality, as represented by Sungmoon Kim. It first defines “liberal neutrality” and defends it against some of its Western critics. It then provides a critique of Kim’s notion of Confucian democracy, exposing its inherent inconsistencies. Further, it compares Kim’s “moderate” perfectionist proposals with Islamic constitutions that appear to accommodate other beliefs, suggesting that these seemingly moderate proposals are equally objectionable. Finally, it refutes the proposal that Confucian democracy is in essence akin to Christian democracy, a political faction that remains only one political party among many in a liberal democracy. The article ends by highlighting the indispensable significance of liberal neutrality for the Confucian revival.
Mou Zongsan's (sic)(sic)(sic) use of autonomy to reinterpret the history of Ruist ethics has been both profoundly influential and controversial in East Asian scholarship. In this paper, I examine why Mou felt autonomy was indispensable to morality, and how he transformed the concept of autonomy into something very different from how Kant understood it. Mou understood autonomy to mean the true self, identified as the fundamental mind or human nature in itself, acting in a manner free from sensible influence, though not necessarily determined by reason. After examining Mou's conception of autonomy, I turn to how he argues that intellectual intuition can provide knowledge of autonomy. Four aspects of intellectual intuition are especially crucial: (1) pleasure in moral action; (2) reflective verification of the fundamental mind; (3) giving rise to moral action; (4) unity with all existents. I analyze each of these, and illustrate how Mou provides no certain method of confirming intellectual intuition. Intellectual intuition is supposed to provide knowledge of autonomy, but an agent can't reliably tell if they've experienced it. That leaves autonomy still uncertain.
Wang Bi's (sic)(sic) Commentary on the Laozi (Laozizhu (sic)(sic)(sic)) has long been viewed as the standard traditional reading of that classic, the true representative of Chinese Laozegetics. One might assume it was always thus; however, a careful review of the history of Laozi commentaries suggests otherwise. This paper aims to overturn the common view that Wang Bi's reading of the Laozi was always most favored. It also offers an analysis of how and why the status of the Commentary on the Laozi achieved new heights in the last couple of centuries. By reviewing the Commentary on the Laozi's reception history, we are encouraged to reevaluate how the Laozi was read in the past and rethink how we read it today.
In China, the notion of shen 神 (spirit) has a long history and its connotation has had variations and controversies. Meanwhile, the idea of identity and subject in Chinese philosophy takes different forms in different contexts. By the seventh century, the concept of shen had been generally adopted by Chinese Buddhism and comprehended as responsible subject, but not without variations in line with its complicated relations with other concepts including heart, vijnana (consciousness), and Buddha-nature. This situation leads to the question of whether it is the same concept discussed in the historical contexts, and also leads to different standpoints and focuses of modern academic research. Although the concept of shen is a crux in the history of Chinese philosophy, its systematic studies are still rare, due to the uncertainty of its connotations and diversity of its contexts. This article, therefore, aims to analyze these previous studies in Sinophone academia and classify them into groups to present a relatively systematic account, and to highlight the core issues that attract academic focuses.
Throughout the history of Chinese-European comparative philosophy, pre-Qin (sic) Daoist and classical Christian metaphysics have been near uniformly contrasted, suggesting scarce common ground for substantive dialogue. The following essay challenges this presentation through a literary-critical examination of the core locus where the perceived contradiction between pre-Qin Daoist and classical Christian metaphysics plays out-the nature of time. First, the essay observes that both traditions' conceptions of time are underpinned by depictions of a posited ultimate origin's relation to it. Then, the essay demonstrates that, as it pertains to this relation between the ultimate origin and time, the two traditions in fact exhibit significant commonalities that have largely remained unexplored. The essay concludes by using these commonalities to reframe the relationship between pre-Qin Daoist and classical Christian understandings of reality, facilitating a more nuanced assessment of the underlying conceptual divergences that make European and Chinese metaphysics distinctive.
This article examines Confucian humility with a special focus on its political dimension, which is central to early Chinese conceptions of the virtue. Unlike the Western tradition, Confucian thinkers rarely challenged the normative status of humility as a political virtue for the ruling elite, particularly for the ruler. This article argues that the core of Confucian humility as a monarchical virtue lies in the ruler’s awareness of existential limitations. Far from implying diffidence and a lowering of self-estimation, it enables a ruler to exercise political agency through a realistic assessment of self and others, while serving as a constant reminder of vulnerability, contingency, and historicity—concerns universally relevant but especially pertinent to the ruler in the supreme position. By framing humility as a defining trait of the ideal ruler rather than of subordinates, which stands in sharp contrast to passive virtues aiming to cultivate docility among the non-elite, early Confucians underscore the political leader’s responsibility to respect the tradition, uphold the foundational principle of the Way, and seriously attend to the voices of both the political elite and the common people. Confucian humility, thus understood, is an essential political virtue that constitutes the moral foundation of Confucian rulership.
Hu Shi's (sic)(sic) (1891-1962) and other intellectuals' expositions of the conceptions of "things" (wu (sic)) and "investigation of things" (gewu (sic)(sic)) are thought-provoking, as they reflect their efforts and ambitions in addressing the impact from the West. However, those who attempt to find the "spirit of objective cognition" or "natural science" in Neo-Confucianism are applying their own understanding of modernity as the criterion to evaluate the value and significance of traditional culture and classical learning. This paper is devoted to elucidating that the conception of "things," in essence, is not epistemological; rather, it is a conception of practical philosophy, embodying the pursuit of ultimate order by Neo-Confucian thinkers. Through their emphasis on "things" and the "investigation of things," Neo-Confucian scholars affirmed the reality of the actual world as a necessary field or medium for realizing their ideal moral-political order.
Scholars often question how Zhu Xi's (sic)(sic) conception of gewu (sic)(sic) (the investigation of things) can lead to the cultivation of the heartmind and, therefore, to moral action. This article answers this question by reviewing how Zhu Xi's metaphysics originates from that of the Zhouyi (sic)(sic) (Classic of Changes), in which the principle of the Supreme Polarity bifurcates and constitutes everything. Gewu therefore does not mean to study the principle of things as external knowledge, but to cultivate a synthetic comprehension (guantong (sic)(sic)) of how principles in things are all connected and all related to the principles of one's heartmind. Such a hermeneutic intuition is the foundation to virtuous actions, as one would be able to intuit the principle at work in all complicated situations. To reach this hermeneutic intuition is also proof that one's heartmind has been cleared, and I argue that this state of knowing is not qualitatively different from the highest ideal of sympathetic correspondence (gantong (sic)(sic)) in the Zhouyi. To build my argument, I analyze Zhu Xi's method of reading the Zhouyi, as he urges the thinker to not merely study the orthodox commentaries of the Ten Wings (Shiyi (sic)(sic)), but to interpret for oneself the meaning of the hexagram specific to the situation-as a challenge of whether one can see how the principle manifests in a certain context. The import of my argument is that it offers a counterview to the disenchantment of the modern world. Whereas modern science has cut a chasm between objective facts and subject meanings, Zhuzi's (sic)(sic) gewu allows every individual to interpret for the manifestations of the principle, while our understanding must be personal.
Focusing on the methodological implications arising from contemporary studies of Confucian philosophy, this paper aims to critically assess Reshaping Confucianism: A Progressive Enquiry and its central theses that Confucian key concepts are relevant to contemporary philosophical discussion and that Confucian philosophy can be reshaped to make real contributions to the rational search for answers to the perennial problems that humanity is faced with. It will be argued that with such an ambitious plan of reconstruction in the context of the world’s philosophical diversity, the “reshaping” project inevitably involves methodological perspectives and evaluative criteria that are to be under scrutiny, and the “progressive enquiry” into the most significant issues of Confucian studies are equally subject to philosophical enquiries.
The term xing (sic), which frequently appears in Warring States philosophical discourses, has been conventionally interpreted and translated as "human nature," conveying the general sense of the essence or fundamental nature of humanity, and the "theory of human nature" has long been designated as a core theory of classical Confucian ethics. Following some scholars' challenge of this convention and applying the theoretical approaches of the division between ethics and morality and contemporary moral psychology, this essay argues that classical Confucians do not specifically emphasize a "theory of human nature" but instead focus on the construction of a prototype of moral psychology, which aims at the psychological constitution and development of moral agency, virtue, and ideal character. This project is completed mainly through two interrelated stages. The first is to internalize the social-ethical norms of the Zhou (sic) ritual tradition to become psychological-moral beliefs and virtues, and the second is to interpret moral values in relation to mental properties and activities. As a result, classical Confucians gradually formulate an interacted and integrated moral-psychological mode of xin (sic)-heart/mind governing xing (sic)-disposition and qing (sic)-emotion while si (sic)-thinking and zhi (sic)-intention directing xin, describing the dynamic process by which the moral agent cultivates moral dispositions, stimulates moral emotions, makes moral judgments, determines moral choices, motivates moral actions, and realizes moral character.
The frequent issuance of imperial amnesties, which extensively pardoned offenders, was a unique feature distinguishing early imperial China's legal practice from that of the rest of the world. In the Western Han (sic)(sic) Dynasty, these amnesties were issued frequently-approximately once every two years over its 200-year history-freeing many who had been condemned. Various complex factors contributed to this practice in the Western Han Dynasty. This paper will explore this intriguing phenomenon through a previously ignored lens of utopian discourse. Plato's Laws delineates a utopia where the primary objective of the lawgivers was the complete virtue of the citizens as a collective (Laws 630c3-6). Confucian thinkers shared a similar vision. Like Plato, Chinese scholars, particularly Confucians, articulated the ideal of a crime-free society as an intellectual foundation to support their teachings and critique contemporary politics. However, their theoretical construct was appropriated by the Han emperors, who embraced this philosophical discourse as both an aspiration and a benchmark for their governance. Self-congratulatory emperors extolled their reigns as golden ages by granting amnesties, thereby temporarily transforming a tainted world plagued by wickedness into a flawless realm devoid of criminals. On the other hand, self-reflective emperors used frequent amnesties to acknowledge their inability to attain ultimate peace, promising a fresh start for their era as a way to secure their legitimacy. The intervention of royal power directly canceled the authority of the law and rendered law enforcement inconsistent. The analysis of the crime-free utopia discourse and its application in Western Han will provoke thought on utopian thinking and its dangerous application in real politics.
This article offers a critical analysis of Li Chenyang's Reshaping Confucianism: A Progressive Inquiry, situating it within the broader discourse of progressive Confucianism. It explores how Li reinterprets classical Confucian concepts to address contemporary social, ethical, and political challenges through both historical and philosophical methodologies. The essay highlights Li Chenyang's principle of "progressive humanity," which integrates traditional moral insights with modern values. It further examines Li's intercultural and comparative strategies, exposing his dynamic reading of harmony (he (sic)) and gender equity through Confucian ethics. The author also engages with tensions between sentiment-based ethics and rational autonomy, especially in relation to feminist care ethics, drawing on Li Zehou's (sic)(sic)(sic) critiques. The analysis underscores the relevance of progressive Confucianism in shaping a globally inclusive ethical discourse and emphasizes its potential as a critical framework for addressing modern human and societal development.
