CEACOP East Asian Comparative Ethics, Politics and Philosophy of Law – serie

Nishida Kitaro (1870-1945) is considered Japan’s greatest modern philosopher. As the founder of the Kyoto School, he initiated a rigorous philosophical engagement with Western philosophy, including the work of Karl Marx. Bradley Kaye explores the political aspects of Nishida’s thought, placing his work in connection with Marxism and Zen. Developing concepts of self-awareness, Basho, dialectical materialism, circulation, will, nothingness, and the state. Nishida’s thought offers an ethics of personal will that radical awakening that offers clarity in a seemingly hopeless world.

Nishida Kitaro (1870-1945) is considered Japan’s greatest modern philosopher. As the founder of the Kyoto School, he initiated a rigorous philosophical engagement with Western philosophy, including the work of Karl Marx. Bradley Kaye explores the political aspects of Nishida’s thought, placing his work in connection with Marxism and Zen. Developing concepts of self-awareness, Basho, dialectical materialism, circulation, will, nothingness, and the state. Nishida’s thought offers an ethics of personal will that radical awakening that offers clarity in a seemingly hopeless world.

Can we endorse valuable rights and freedoms—the cherished forms of equality and liberty we might call liberality—without liberalism? This book outlines such a possibility. Humane liberality upholds and deliberates equality, freedom, and justice through the Mencian virtue of humaneness, based in care and compassion. In positing humaneness to be the first virtue of government, Mencius directs us to formulate policies that are responsive to and promote the wellbeing of the people understood in terms of their actual lived and felt experience—their feelings and their flourishing. Rights and freedoms can and should be affirmed in ways that facilitate that flourishing. This pushes against the usual approaches to valuing rights and liberties of both Confucians and liberals, who tend to reason from abstract first principles rather than through care for people and responsiveness to their actual wants and needs. In setting out this vision, Humane Liberality first critically analyzes the broader problems and possibilities of affirming freedom, equality, and pluralism through Confucianism. It then outlines and promotes an underappreciated concrete humanist account of Mencian morality and politics, which has been overshadowed by more metaphysical orthodox interpretations of Mencius. Concrete humanism insists we adjudicate what is right not through eternal abstractions but instead through situated assessment of human emotions. In this way, humaneness offers a unique and uniquely compelling approach to reasoning about rights and liberties, and humane liberality recasts how we understand and practice Confucian values, liberal principles, and the promise and potential of incorporating the two.

Can we endorse valuable rights and freedoms—the cherished forms of equality and liberty we might call liberality—without liberalism? This book outlines such a possibility. Humane liberality upholds and deliberates equality, freedom, and justice through the Mencian virtue of humaneness, based in care and compassion. In positing humaneness to be the first virtue of government, Mencius directs us to formulate policies that are responsive to and promote the wellbeing of the people understood in terms of their actual lived and felt experience—their feelings and their flourishing. Rights and freedoms can and should be affirmed in ways that facilitate that flourishing. This pushes against the usual approaches to valuing rights and liberties of both Confucians and liberals, who tend to reason from abstract first principles rather than through care for people and responsiveness to their actual wants and needs. In setting out this vision, Humane Liberality first critically analyzes the broader problems and possibilities of affirming freedom, equality, and pluralism through Confucianism. It then outlines and promotes an underappreciated concrete humanist account of Mencian morality and politics, which has been overshadowed by more metaphysical orthodox interpretations of Mencius. Concrete humanism insists we adjudicate what is right not through eternal abstractions but instead through situated assessment of human emotions. In this way, humaneness offers a unique and uniquely compelling approach to reasoning about rights and liberties, and humane liberality recasts how we understand and practice Confucian values, liberal principles, and the promise and potential of incorporating the two.

This important new book identifies the distinctive characteristics of the ideological terrain in contemporary (South) Korean politics and reexamines the political thought of Park Chung-hee (1917–1979), the most revered, albeit the most controversial, former president in the history of South Korea, in light of those characteristics. Jung In Kang articulates “simultaneity of the nonsimultaneous” and the “sanctification of nationalism” as the most preeminent characteristics of the Korean ideological topography, which are distinct from those of modern Western Europe, while acknowledging the overwhelming and informing influence of modern Western civilization in shaping contemporary Korean politics and ideologies. He goes on to analyze the political thought of Park Chung-hee, in this way investigating and confirming the academic validity and relevance of those ideological characteristics in more specific terms. The book assesses how nonsimultaneity and sanctification are interwoven with Park’s thought, while reconstructing the political thought of President Park in terms of four modern ideologies: liberalism (liberal democracy), conservatism, nationalism and radicalism. Kang concludes by tracing the changes undergone by simultaneity and sanctification in the three decades since democratization, with some speculation on their future, and by examining the ideological legacy and ramifications of Park Chung-hee’s authoritarian politics in the twenty-first century.

Skill and Mastery: Philosophical Stories from the Zhuangzi presents an illuminating analysis of skill stories from the Zhuangzi, a 4th century BCE Daoist text. In this intriguing text that subverts conventional norms and pursuits, ordinary activities such as swimming, cicada-catching and wheelmaking are executed with such remarkable efficacy and spontaneity that they seem like magical feats. An international team of scholars explores these stories in their philosophical, historical and political contexts. Their analyses’ highlight the stories’underlying conceptions of agency, character and cultivation; and relevance to contemporary debates on human action and experience. The result is a valuable collection, opening up new lines of inquiry in comparative East-West philosophical debates on skill, cultivation and mastery, as well as cross-disciplinary debates in psychology, cognitive science and philosophy.