Neiwai, Civility, and Gender Distinctions

The spatial bipolar of neiwai, that marks proper gender distinctions in the Chinese world, is often assumed to be congruous with the Western dualistic concept of private/ public. However, the neiwai binary in the Chinese imaginary is rather a shifting boundary between what is perceived as central and peripheral, or civil and barbaric. In the following, we will explore the philosophical roots of the term neiwai whose ritual, symbolic functions in the process of genderization are extended beyond gender and are intrinsically intertwined with the very defining features of a civilized society

Confucian Authority and the Politics of Caring

This is an Accepted Manuscript of a book chapter published by Routledge/CRC Press in Political Theory on Death and Dying on September 6th, 2021, available online: https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/edit/10.4324/9781003005384 It is inarguable that Confucianism is the most prominent intellectual tradition in Chinese civilization, whose earliest dynastic records stretch back to the Xia dynasty founded by three sage-kings: Yao, Shun, and Yu. Confucius was born in the state of Lu to a minor knight who in his old age took in a young maiden as his concubine. As a political philosophy, the teaching of Confucianism hinges on actualizing benevolent governance, which starts with the self-cultivation of a moral personhood at home; one’s sphere of moral influences is then concentrically radiated from one’s own family, community, state, to the world at large. This chapter offers a Confucian take on what constitutes a legitimate political authority and its accompanying obligations to care for its political constituents, especially the vulnerable—the young, the old, the sick, and the disabled—as a mitigating measure in shifting our attitude toward caring for others

Constitutivism

A brief explanation and overview of constitutivism

The twilight of the Liberal Social Contract? On the Reception of Rawlsian Political Liberalism

This chapter discusses the Rawlsian project of public reason, or public justification-based 'political' liberalism, and its reception. After a brief philosophical rather than philological reconstruction of the project, the chapter revolves around a distinction between idealist and realist responses to it. Focusing on political liberalism’s critical reception illuminates an overarching question: was Rawls’s revival of a contractualist approach to liberal legitimacy a fruitful move for liberalism and/or the social contract tradition? The last section contains a largely negative answer to that question. Nonetheless the chapter's conclusion shows that the research programme of political liberalism provided and continues to provide illuminating insights into the limitations of liberal contractualism, especially under conditions of persistent and radical diversity. The programme is, however, less receptive to challenges to do with the relative decline of the power of modern states

Symposium: Why Historicize the Canon?

In her anchor-piece on historicizing the canon, Li-Hsiang Lisa Rosenlee appeals to professional philosophers to develop several tools that can be implemented in historicizing the canon. Amy Donahue, David H. Kim, Nelson Maldonado-Torres, and Kris Sealey tessellate different aspects of this call. Donahue augments Rosenlee’s argument by braiding together Dharmakīrti’s “anyāpoha” theory and Charles Mills’ ruminations about “white ignorance”; Kim explores some of the nuances of Rosenlee’s account for a post-Eurocentric philosophy; Maldonado-Torres ruminates about the larger social context in which thinking can be decolonized; and Sealey uses the work of Kristie Dotson to acknowledge the possibility of multiple canons. In putting on the table a number of questions, concepts, and approaches to canon-building, the symposium aims to contribute to what is by now a large array of similar reflections and engagements in different parts of the world

Philosophy of action

The philosophical study of human action begins with Plato and Aristotle. Their influence in late antiquity and the Middle Ages yielded sophisticated theories of action and motivation, notably in the works of Augustine and Aquinas.1 But the ideas that were dominant in 1945 have their roots in the early modern period, when advances in physics and mathematics reshaped philosophy

A Comparative Feminist Reflection on Race and Gender

Modified from original published version to conform to ADA standards.Bryan W. Van Norden's Taking Back Philosophy is a long-awaited and much-needed manifesto on multicultural curricula in the academic discipline of philosophy, which has up to now been stubbornly persistent in its monolithic approach to the teaching of its own self-defined genealogy, its origin, its methodology, and its very essence. As Van Norden points out, philosophy has a serious diversity problem. Only a handful of graduate programs have full-time faculty teaching non-Western philosophy.1 No other discipline in the humanities or social sciences, other than those specifically designated as Anglo-European area studies, has been so lopsided in its curricula and student makeup as the resolutely and decisively Anglo-Europecentered discipline of philosophy. Eighty-six percent of its Ph.D.s are granted to non-Hispanic whites.2 Compounding this Anglo-European identity is philosophy's phallic-centrism: among all the Humanities disciplines, philosophy has the lowest percentage of female doctoral students. Philosophy manages to graduate even fewer female Ph.D.s than math, chemistry, or economics—a stunning revelation that the academic discipline of philosophy has a problem not only of cultural inclusion but also of gender inclusion to a much greater degree than other academic disciplines that are perceived as inherently "masculine.

Confucianism and the Lives of Women

Abstract The connections between Confucianism and the lives of women have been a subject of interest since the turn of the 19th century, taken up, first, by missionaries and travelers as part of their anthropological observations of the “natives”; then by the Reform Movement and the May Fourth Movement, culminating in the Cultural Revolution as part of the nationalistic discourse; and lastly by the contemporary feminists as part of their “outreach” effort to form a global sisterhood. In all these three approaches, Confucianism is portrayed as a negative force in the lives of women. Up to the mid-1990s, the notion of universal victimhood of women overshadowed the notion of female agency in Chinese gender studies. Now with the rise of the field of comparative feminist philosophy exploring positive feminist space within Confucianism, the theoretical construction of Confucian feminism emerges as the latest attempt to reconceptualize the complex connections between Confucianism and the lives of women.</jats:p