Fusion of Intellectual Horizons in Chinese and Western Thought

Ming Dong Gu is the Katherine R. Cecil Professor in the School of Arts, Humanities, and Technology at the University of Texas at Dallas. His research areas include comparative literature, critical theory, comparative thought, and cultural studies. He is the author of The Nature and Rationale of Zen/Chan and Enlightenment (Routledge 2024), Fusion of Critical Horizons in Chinese and Western Language, Poetics, Aesthetics (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021), Sinologism: An Alternative to Orientalism and Post-colonialism (Routledge, 2013), Chinese Theories of Reading and Writing (SUNY Press 2005), Chinese Theories of Fiction (SUNY Press 2006) as well as more than 190 articles in English and Chinese.

This new monograph by senior scholar Mingdong Gu is nothing less than the distillation of his own lifetime-long reflection on the intellectual and critical possibilities available to us, both East and West, in the fusion of our philosophical horizons. Gu begins by guiding us through the history of our cultural encounters and then offers us a rigorous and insightful account of the substance of our importantly different narratives. The story he tells is prescriptive rather than simply descriptive, searching out ways in which activating our philosophical differences from each other can make a profound difference in enriching the intellectual lives for each other. Indeed, his unwavering goal is the mutual intellectual empowerment that comes with giving each tradition its own voice and allowing it to engage the other on its own terms.

• List of FiguresPrefaceIntroduction: Two Intellectual HorizonsPart I: Intellectual Divide between China and the West1. Western-Centrism and Chinese Thought2. Metaphysical Dialogues as an Intellectual Bridge3. How Can East Meet West as Intellectual Equals?Part II: First Principles in Chinese and Western Metaphysics4. Dao, Taiji and Trans-Cultural Meta-sign5. Dao, Taiji and Metaphysics of the Mind6. Dao, Logos, and One: A Common Conceptual GroundPart III: From Metaphysics to Issues of Ethics7. Confucian Ethics and Spirit of World Order8. Individualism and Confucian Self-Cultivation9. Modernizing Confucianism for the Global AgeConclusion: Toward Transcultural UniversalismBibliographyIndex