John Makeham – författare

Zhu Xi (1130-1200) is the most influential Neo-Confucian philosopher and arguably the most important Chinese philosopher of the past millennium, both in terms of his legacy and for the sophistication of his systematic philosophy. The Buddhist Roots of Zhu Xi's Philosophical Thought combines in a single study two major areas of Chinese philosophy that are rarely tackled together: Chinese Buddhist philosophy and Zhu Xi's Neo-Confucian philosophy. Despite Zhu Xi's importance as a philosopher, the role of Buddhist thought and philosophy in the construction of his systematic philosophy remains poorly understood. What aspects of Buddhism did he criticize and why? Was his engagement limited to criticism (informed or otherwise) or did Zhu also appropriate and repurpose Buddhist ideas to develop his own thought? If Zhu's philosophical repertoire incorporated conceptual structures and problematics that are marked by a distinct Buddhist pedigree, what implications does this have for our understanding of his philosophical project? The five chapters that make up The Buddhist Roots of Zhu Xi's Philosophical Thought present a rich and complex portrait of the Buddhist roots of Zhu Xi's philosophical thought. The scholarship is meticulous, the analysis is rigorous, and the philosophical insights are fresh. Collectively, the chapters illuminate a greatly expanded range of the intellectual resources Zhu incorporated into his philosophical thought, demonstrating the vital role that models derived from Buddhism played in his philosophical repertoire. In doing so, they provide new perspectives on what Zhu Xi was trying to achieve as a philosopher, by repurposing ideas from Buddhism. They also make significant and original contributions to our understanding of core concepts, debates and conceptual structures that shaped the development of philosophy in East Asia over the past millennium.

Zhu Xi (1130-1200) is the most influential Neo-Confucian philosopher and arguably the most important Chinese philosopher of the past millennium, both in terms of his legacy and for the sophistication of his systematic philosophy. The Buddhist Roots of Zhu Xi''s Philosophical Thought combines in a single study two major areas of Chinese philosophy that are rarely tackled together: Chinese Buddhist philosophy and Zhu Xi''s Neo-Confucian philosophy. Despite Zhu Xi''s importance as a philosopher, the role of Buddhist thought and philosophy in the construction of his systematic philosophy remains poorly understood. What aspects of Buddhism did he criticize and why? Was his engagement limited to criticism (informed or otherwise) or did Zhu also appropriate and repurpose Buddhist ideas to develop his own thought? If Zhu''s philosophical repertoire incorporated conceptual structures and problematics that are marked by a distinct Buddhist pedigree, what implications does this have for our understanding of his philosophical project? The five chapters that make up The Buddhist Roots of Zhu Xi''s Philosophical Thought present a rich and complex portrait of the Buddhist roots of Zhu Xi''s philosophical thought. The scholarship is meticulous, the analysis is rigorous, and the philosophical insights are fresh. Collectively, the chapters illuminate a greatly expanded range of the intellectual resources Zhu incorporated into his philosophical thought, demonstrating the vital role that models derived from Buddhism played in his philosophical repertoire. In doing so, they provide new perspectives on what Zhu Xi was trying to achieve as a philosopher, by repurposing ideas from Buddhism. They also make significant and original contributions to our understanding of core concepts, debates and conceptual structures that shaped the development of philosophy in East Asia over the past millennium.

Zhu Xi (1130-1200) is the most influential Neo-Confucian philosopher and arguably the most important Chinese philosopher of the past millennium, both in terms of his legacy and for the sophistication of his systematic philosophy. The Buddhist Roots of Zhu Xi''s Philosophical Thought combines in a single study two major areas of Chinese philosophy that are rarely tackled together: Chinese Buddhist philosophy and Zhu Xi''s Neo-Confucian philosophy. Despite Zhu Xi''s importance as a philosopher, the role of Buddhist thought and philosophy in the construction of his systematic philosophy remains poorly understood. What aspects of Buddhism did he criticize and why? Was his engagement limited to criticism (informed or otherwise) or did Zhu also appropriate and repurpose Buddhist ideas to develop his own thought? If Zhu''s philosophical repertoire incorporated conceptual structures and problematics that are marked by a distinct Buddhist pedigree, what implications does this have for our understanding of his philosophical project? The five chapters that make up The Buddhist Roots of Zhu Xi''s Philosophical Thought present a rich and complex portrait of the Buddhist roots of Zhu Xi''s philosophical thought. The scholarship is meticulous, the analysis is rigorous, and the philosophical insights are fresh. Collectively, the chapters illuminate a greatly expanded range of the intellectual resources Zhu incorporated into his philosophical thought, demonstrating the vital role that models derived from Buddhism played in his philosophical repertoire. In doing so, they provide new perspectives on what Zhu Xi was trying to achieve as a philosopher, by repurposing ideas from Buddhism. They also make significant and original contributions to our understanding of core concepts, debates and conceptual structures that shaped the development of philosophy in East Asia over the past millennium.

Xiong Shili (1885-1968) is widely recognized as a founding figure of the modern New Confucian school of philosophy and seen by many as one of the most important and creative Chinese philosophers of the twentieth century. His ultimate concern throughout his long intellectual career was to show that "Reality (ti) and function (yong) are non-dual." Reality is the "locus" that ontologically grounds the phenomenal yet is not different from the phenomenal. His onto-cosmology draws syncretically on a diverse range of resources in the Chinese philosophical tradition to construct his own overarching metaphysical vision, articulated within the broader context of advancing a systematic critique of both Madhyamaka and Yogācāra Buddhist thought, the culmination of nearly four decades of critical engagement.Treatise on Reality and Function (Ti yong lun) is the mature expression of Xiong's signature metaphysical doctrine. Published in 1958, Xiong considered it to be his most important philosophical achievement, but it has never before appeared in English. This annotated translation by John Makeham presents the text along with the original foreword attributed to Han Yuankai, and Xiong's original preface.

Xiong Shili (1885-1968) is widely recognized as a founding figure of the modern New Confucian school of philosophy and seen by many as one of the most important and creative Chinese philosophers of the twentieth century. His ultimate concern throughout his long intellectual career was to show that "Reality (ti) and function (yong) are non-dual." Reality is the "locus" that ontologically grounds the phenomenal yet is not different from the phenomenal. His onto-cosmology draws syncretically on a diverse range of resources in the Chinese philosophical tradition to construct his own overarching metaphysical vision, articulated within the broader context of advancing a systematic critique of both Madhyamaka and Yogācāra Buddhist thought, the culmination of nearly four decades of critical engagement.Treatise on Reality and Function (Ti yong lun) is the mature expression of Xiong's signature metaphysical doctrine. Published in 1958, Xiong considered it to be his most important philosophical achievement, but it has never before appeared in English. This annotated translation by John Makeham presents the text along with the original foreword attributed to Han Yuankai, and Xiong's original preface.

Zhang Zai 張載 (1020–1077) was a seminal figure in the early development of Neo-Confucian philosophy and Zheng meng 正蒙 (Rectifying the Ignorant) is his representative philosophical work. This annotated translation is the first English translation of the book. The "ignorant" in the title is a critical reference to followers of Daoism and Buddhism. The book's positive agenda—developed in response to what Zhang saw as the philosophical flaws in Daoist and Buddhist teachings—is devoted to outlining key ideas informing Zhang's metaphysics and moral philosophy, in which his philosophical revitalization of the concept of qi 氣 (vital stuff) plays a key role, and subsequently provided an important contribution to the development of Neo-Confucian thought, as evidenced in philosophical discourse on the relationship between li 理 (principle) and qi. For Zhang, qi is the vital stuff that constitutes all things but is by no means limited to physical substantiality. Yet equally important in Zhang's metaphysics is the concept of taixu 太虛 (Supreme Void). The relationship between the Supreme Void and qi embodies the principle that "fundamental state and function" (ti yong 體用) are inseparable. The aphoristic and cryptic style that Zhang adopted for Zheng meng undoubtedly stimulated the development of the rich body of exegesis on Zheng meng in the Ming and Qing periods, as well as in contemporary mainland China and Taiwan, where prominent scholars continue to diverge widely about how key concepts in the book should be interpreted.

Transforming Consciousness forces us to rethink the entire project in modern China of the "translation of the West." Taken together, the chapters develop a wide-ranging and deeply sourced argument that Yogacara Buddhism played a much more important role in the development of modern Chinese thought (including philosophy, religion, scientific thinking, social, thought, and more) than has previously been recognized. They show that Yogacara Buddhism enabled key intellectuals of the late Qing and early Republic to understand, accept, modify, and critique central elements of Western social, political, and scientific thought. The chapters cover the entire period of Yogacara's distinct shaping of modern Chinese intellectual movements, from its roots in Meiji Japan through its impact on New Confucianism. If non-Buddhists found Yogacara useful as an indigenous form of logic and scientific thinking, Buddhists found it useful in thinking through the fundamental principles of the Mahayana school, textual criticism, and reforming the canon. This is a crucial intervention into contemporary scholarly understandings of China's twentieth century, and it comes at a moment in which increasing attention is being paid to modern Chinese thought, both in Western scholarship and within China.

Transforming Consciousness forces us to rethink the entire project in modern China of the "translation of the West." Taken together, the chapters develop a wide-ranging and deeply sourced argument that Yogacara Buddhism played a much more important role in the development of modern Chinese thought (including philosophy, religion, scientific thinking, social, thought, and more) than has previously been recognized. They show that Yogacara Buddhism enabled key intellectuals of the late Qing and early Republic to understand, accept, modify, and critique central elements of Western social, political, and scientific thought. The chapters cover the entire period of Yogacara's distinct shaping of modern Chinese intellectual movements, from its roots in Meiji Japan through its impact on New Confucianism. If non-Buddhists found Yogacara useful as an indigenous form of logic and scientific thinking, Buddhists found it useful in thinking through the fundamental principles of the Mahayana school, textual criticism, and reforming the canon. This is a crucial intervention into contemporary scholarly understandings of China's twentieth century, and it comes at a moment in which increasing attention is being paid to modern Chinese thought, both in Western scholarship and within China.

Yogacara is one of the most influential philosophical systems of Indian Buddhism. Competing traditions of Yogacara thought were first introduced into China during the sixth century. By the Yuan dynasty (1271-1368), however, key commentaries of this school had ceased being transmitted in China, and it was not until the end of the nineteenth century that a number of them were re-introduced from Japan where their transmission had been uninterrupted. Within a few short years Yogacara was being touted as a rival to the New Learning from the West, boasting not only organized, systematized thought and concepts, but also a superior means to establish verification. This book accomplishes three goals. The first is to explain why this Indian philosophical system proved to be so attractive to influential Chinese intellectuals at a particular moment in history. The second is to demonstrate how the revival of Yogacara thought informed Chinese responses to the challenges of modernity, in particular modern science and logic. The third goal is to highlight how Yogacara thought shaped a major current in modern Chinese philosophy: New Confucianism. Transforming Consciousness illustrates that an adequate understanding of New Confucian philosophy must include a proper grasp of Yogacara thought.

Since the mid-1980s, Taiwan and mainland China have witnessed a sustained resurgence of academic and intellectual interest in ruxue—“Confucianism”—variously conceived as a form of culture, an ideology, a system of learning, and a tradition of normative values. This discourse has led to a proliferation of contending conceptions of ruxue, as well as proposals for rejuvenating it to make it a vital cultural and psycho-spiritual resource in the modern world.This study aims to show how ruxue has been conceived in order to assess the achievements of this enterprise; to identify which aspects of ru thought and values academics find viable, and why; to highlight the dynamics involved in the ongoing cross-fertilization between academics in China and Taiwan; and to examine the relationship between these activities and cultural nationalism.Four key arguments are developed. First, the process of intellectual cross-fertilization and rivalry between scholars has served to sustain academic interest in ruxue. Second, contrary to conventional wisdom, party-state support in the PRC does not underpin the continuing academic discourse on ruxue. Third, cultural nationalism, rather than state nationalism, better explains the nature of this activity. Fourth, academic discourse on ruxue provides little evidence of robust philosophical creativity.

This collection of essays explores the development of the New Confucianism movement during the twentieth-century and questions whether it is, in fact, a distinctly new intellectual movement or one that has been mostly retrospectively created. The questions that contributors to this book seek to answer about this neo-conservative philosophical movement include: 'What has been the cross-fertilization between Chinese scholars in China and overseas made possible by the shared discourse of Confucianism?'; 'To what extent does this discourse transcend geographical, political, cultural, and ideological divides?'; 'Why do so many Chinese intellectuals equate Confucianism with Chinese cultural identity?'; and 'Does the Confucian revival of the 1990s in China and Taiwan represent a genuine philosophical renaissance or a resurgence in interest based on political and cultural factors?'.

This innovative volume demonstrates how and to what ends the writings of Xiong Shili, Ma Yifu, Tang Junyi and Mou Zongsan adopted and repurposed conceptual models derived from the Buddhist text Treatise on Awakening Mahāyāna Faith. It shows which of the philosophical positions defended by these New Confucian philosophers were developed and sustained through engagement with the critical challenges advanced by scholars who attacked the Treatise. It also examines the extent to which twentieth-century New Confucians were aware of their intellectual debt to the Treatise and explains how they reconciled this awareness with their Confucian identity.

Explaining Mind is a representative text of Xiong Shili’s mature onto-cosmology, moral psychology, and epistemology, in which he develops an extended account of mind, as both a moral concept and a metaphysical concept, while critically engaging key aspects of Buddhist, Daoist and Confucian thought. The book covers a diverse range of topics and themes, including the non-duality of Reality and function, philosophical psychology, the inherent mind and the habituated mind, the mind of humaneness, the inseparability of mind and matter, learning concerned with increasing knowledge daily (modern science) and learning concerned with removing ignorance daily (ancient philosophy), cultivation practices of Confucians and Buddhists, wisdom and knowledge, and the origin of badness and wrongdoing.

John Makeham Early in 2007, HUANG Yong approached me to see if I might be interested in editing a volume on Neo-Confucian philosophy as part of the new Springer book series, ‘‘Dao Companions to Chinese Philosophy. ’’ Unhampered by any realistic sense of what such a task might entail, somewhat naively I accepted the invitation and began to approach potential contributors to solicit advice on how the volume might be structured. The question of whether the volume should be arranged on the basis of philosophical themes and topics or organized on the basis of the philosophical thought of individual thinkers proved to be the first challenge. Intellectually the first option seemed to be the most rewarding (and difficult); it was also the one on which there was little consensus among contributors to the project about just how a thematic volume might be structured. The eventual decision to structure the volume on the basis of the philosophical thought of individual thinkers, in addition to being organizationally more straightforward, had the benefit of enabling authors to address issues of historical context more directly, and also to explore more systematically how individual thinkers had used particular combinations of concepts to frame their philosophical views. The choice of which thinkers to include was made through a combination of inviting the participation of contributors with acknowledged expertise on particular thinkers and also allowing contributors to choose the thinkers and ideas they wanted to introduce.

John Makeham Early in 2007, HUANG Yong approached me to see if I might be interested in editing a volume on Neo-Confucian philosophy as part of the new Springer book series, ‘‘Dao Companions to Chinese Philosophy. ’’ Unhampered by any realistic sense of what such a task might entail, somewhat naively I accepted the invitation and began to approach potential contributors to solicit advice on how the volume might be structured. The question of whether the volume should be arranged on the basis of philosophical themes and topics or organized on the basis of the philosophical thought of individual thinkers proved to be the first challenge. Intellectually the first option seemed to be the most rewarding (and difficult); it was also the one on which there was little consensus among contributors to the project about just how a thematic volume might be structured. The eventual decision to structure the volume on the basis of the philosophical thought of individual thinkers, in addition to being organizationally more straightforward, had the benefit of enabling authors to address issues of historical context more directly, and also to explore more systematically how individual thinkers had used particular combinations of concepts to frame their philosophical views. The choice of which thinkers to include was made through a combination of inviting the participation of contributors with acknowledged expertise on particular thinkers and also allowing contributors to choose the thinkers and ideas they wanted to introduce.

John Makeham Early in 2007, HUANG Yong approached me to see if I might be interested in editing a volume on Neo-Confucian philosophy as part of the new Springer book series, ‘‘Dao Companions to Chinese Philosophy. ’’ Unhampered by any realistic sense of what such a task might entail, somewhat naively I accepted the invitation and began to approach potential contributors to solicit advice on how the volume might be structured. The question of whether the volume should be arranged on the basis of philosophical themes and topics or organized on the basis of the philosophical thought of individual thinkers proved to be the first challenge. Intellectually the first option seemed to be the most rewarding (and difficult); it was also the one on which there was little consensus among contributors to the project about just how a thematic volume might be structured. The eventual decision to structure the volume on the basis of the philosophical thought of individual thinkers, in addition to being organizationally more straightforward, had the benefit of enabling authors to address issues of historical context more directly, and also to explore more systematically how individual thinkers had used particular combinations of concepts to frame their philosophical views. The choice of which thinkers to include was made through a combination of inviting the participation of contributors with acknowledged expertise on particular thinkers and also allowing contributors to choose the thinkers and ideas they wanted to introduce.

Learning to Emulate the Wise is the first book of a three-volume series that constructs a historically informed, multidisciplinary framework to examine how traditional Chinese knowledge systems and grammars of knowledge construction interacted with Western paradigms in the formation and development of modern academic disciplines in China. Within this volume, John Makeham and several other noted sinologists and philosophers explore how the field of "Chinese philosophy" (Zhongguo Zhexue) was born and developed in the early decades of the twentieth century, examining its growth and relationship with European, American, and Japanese scholarship and philosophy. The work discusses an array of representative institutions and individuals, including FengYoulan, Fu Sinian, Hu Shi, Jin Yuelin, Liang Shuming, Nishi Amane, Tang Yongtong, Xiong Shili, Zhang Taiyan, and a range of Marxist philosophers. The epilogue discusses the intellectual-historical significance of these figures and throws into relief how Zhongguozhexue is understood today.