“This Confucian conception of person makes no appeal to superordinate, substantive categories such as ‘soul,’ ‘self,’ ‘will,’ ‘faculties,’ ‘nature,’ ‘mind,’ ‘character,’ and so on, but instead locates person gerundively as the embodied, social activity of thinking and feeling within the manifold of relations that constitutes family, community , and the natural environment. ‘Person’ thus understood […]
Give me level earth, and there I shall build my home. There is something hopeful and also mulish in this sentiment, which embodies our noble determination to shape the world according to desire as well as our failure to live wholly within the natural systems that contain us. Such was my thinking when the carbon […]
“First, in our interactions, we must not look askance at each other (ni). We must get beyond viewing each other obliquely and with distrust. In the mutual shaping that occurs through both patterns of deference and the modeling that such patterns entail, we require the utmost focus and concentration and the fullest application of all […]
“The integrative nature of the moral experience means that a socially responsive ‘sense of shame’ (chi) is of high value in Confucian culture. As we have seen, shame is such a powerful expression of moral awareness that, when properly nurtured, can become a pervasive value that enables the community to be both inclusive and self-regulating […]
“[John] Dewey invests enormously in the centrality of language and other modes of communicative discourse (including signs, symbols, gestures, and social institutions) in explaining how the community grows its persons: Through speech a person dramatically identifies himself with potential acts and deeds; he plays many roles, not in successive stage of life but in a […]
“The Confucian claim that ‘everyone can become a sage’ is often read essentialistically as an assertion that the sage is some universally given potential in human nature that if actualized provides a person with those extraordinary talents through which to shape the world in some incomparable way. Some interpreters in searching for democratic elements in […]
I think it’s a fair assertion that anyone willing to eat the meat of another animal ought to also be willing to participate in that animal’s death. The experience of killing animals for sustenance, which has been commonplace for most humans throughout our history, is now just one item on the long list of productive […]
Last week, I experienced something that could only be considered “special” by someone from a generation out of touch with food production. It all began with Polly the goat. Polly is a beautiful and affable nanny from Tule Fog Farm; I milk her first thing when I arrive every Wednesday morning. When I first learned […]
“Within the web of Confucian relations, intimate friendships take on a transformative force that can only be adequately explained by understanding them as an extension and amplification of the family itself. As a dimension of a Confucian family-centered ethic, friendship serves as a definite, sometimes compensatory source of meaning and value. While immediate family relations […]
“The timelessness and broad appeal of the teachings of Confucius begins from the insight that the life of almost every human being, regardless of where or when, is played out within the context of his or her own particular family, for better or worse. For Confucius and for generations of Chinese that have followed after […]