Confucianisms for a changing world cultural order / edited by Roger T. Ames and Peter D. Hershock.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Introduction -- Part I : Confucianisms in a Changing World Cultural Order -- Chapter 1: Rethinking Confucianism’s Relationship to Global Capitalism -- Chapter 2 : Confucianism as an Antidote for Liberal Self-Centeredness -- Chapter 3 : Toward Religious Harmony -- Chapter 4 : The Special District of Confucian Culture, the Amish Community, and the Confucian Pre-Qin Political Heritage -- Part II Different Confucianisms : Chapter 5 Why Speak of “East Asian Confucianisms”? -- Chapter 6 The Formation and Limitations of Modern Japanese Confucianism -- Chapter 7 Historical and Cultural Features of Confucianism in East Asia -- Chapter 8 Animism and Spiritualism -- Chapter 9 The Noble Person and the Revolutionary -- Part III Clarifying Confucian Values -- Chapter 10 The Ethics of Contingency -- Chapter 11 Zhong in the Analects with Insights into Loyalty -- Part IV Limitations and the Critical Reform of Confucian Cultures -- Chapter 12 Whither Confucius? Whither Philosophy? -- Chapter 13 Euro-Japanese Universalism, Korean Confucianism, and Aesthetic Communities -- Chapter 14 State Power and the Confucian Classics -- Chapter 15 Striving for Democracy

In a single generation, the rise of Asia has precipitated a dramatic sea change in the world's economic and political orders. This reconfiguration is taking place amidst a host of deepening global predicaments, including climate change, migration, increasing inequalities of wealth and opportunity, that cannot be resolved by purely technical means or by seeking recourse in a liberalism that has of late proven to be less than effective. The present work critically explores how the pan-Asian phenomenon of Confucianism offers alternative values and depths of ethical commitment that cross national and cultural boundaries to provide a new response to these challenges. When searching for resources to respond to the world's problems, we tend to look to those that are most familiar: Single actors pursuing their own self-interests in competition or collaboration with other players. As is now widely appreciated, Confucian culture celebrates the relational values of deference and interdependence--that is, relationally constituted persons are understood as embedded in and nurtured by unique, transactional patterns of relations. This is a concept of person that contrasts starkly with the discrete, self-determining individual, an artifact of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Western European approaches to modernization that has become closely associated with liberal democracy. Examining the meaning and value of Confucianism in the twenty-first century, the contributors--leading scholars from universities around the world--wrestle with several key questions: What are Confucian values within the context of the disparate cultures of China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam? What is their current significance? What are the limits and historical failings of Confucianism and how are these to be critically addressed? How must Confucian culture be reformed if it is to become relevant as an international resource for positive change? Their answers vary, but all agree that only a vital and critical Confucianism will have relevance for an emerging world cultural order.