Boston Confucianism

Robert Cummings Neville is Professor of Philosophy, Religion, and Theology at Boston University and Dean of the School of Theology. He is past president of the International Society for Chinese Philosophy, the American Academy of Religion, and the Metaphysical Society of America. Neville is the author and editor of many books, including most recently The Recovery of Philosophy in America: Essays in Honor of John Edwin Smith, also published by SUNY Press.

Foreword by Tu Weiming


Preface


1. The Short Happy Life of Boston Confucianism


1.1. Portable Confucianism: Roots and Branches
1.2. Ritual Propriety
1.3. Pragmatism
1.4. Confucian Critique for Boston
1.5. Bostonian Modifications of Confucianism


2. Confucianism on Culture


2.1. Philosophy of Culture
2.2. An Elementary Theory of Culture and Nature in Xunzi
2.3. Chinese Orientations to Culture: Confucian, Daoist, Legalist, Moist, and Buddhist
2.4. Confucius, Mencius, and Xunzi Compared
2.5. Confucian Contributions to a Contemporary Philosophy of Culture


3. Confucianism in the Contemporary Situation


3.1. Historical Background
3.2. Interpretive, Bridging, and Normative Philosophers
3.3. Roger T. Ames and David L. Hall
3.4. Cheng Chungying
3.5. Wu Kuangming

4. Confucian Spirituality


4.1. Philosophy and Religion
4.2. Spirituality and Ultimate Reality: Defining Hypotheses
4.3. Self, Truth, and Transformation
4.4. Confucian Spirituality in a Scientific Society
4.5. Confucian Spirituality in a Global Moral Democracy and Ecology


5. Tu Weiming's Confucianism


5.1. Conversation and Existential Choice: Way of the Sage
5.2. The Question of Conversion
5.3. The Question of Ritual
5.4. The Question of Love (Ren)
5.5. The Question of Evil


6. Motif Analysis East and West


6.1. Motif Analysis
6.2. Comparison
6.3. Ancient Cultural Motifs and Their Development
6.4. Relations of Motifs to Deeper Imaginative Artifacts
6.5. Motifs and Their Sequelae


7. Motifs of Being


7.1. The Trouble with Being
7.2. Philosophy as Engagement
7.3. Western Motifs for Being
7.4. The Dialectic of Being
7.5. South and East Asian Motifs for Being


8. Motifs of Transcendence


8.1. Transcendence as a Category
8.2. Transcendence in Ancient Confucianism
8.3. Transcendence in Neo-Confucianism
8.4. God and the Imago Dei
8.5. John Wesley and the Image of God

9. Resources for a Conception of Selfhood


9.1. Problems with the Self
9.2. The Self as Contradictory and Self-Deceived in Western Thought
9.3. The Self in Confucian Thought
9.4. Self-Deception in Confucian Thought
9.5. The Self as Orientation and Poise


10. Confucianism, Christianity, and Multiple Religious Identity


10.1. Engaging Problematic Cases
10.2. Filial Piety as Holy Duty
10.3. Ritual Propriety
10.4. Jesus as Model
10.5. Multiple Religious Identity


Notes


Bibliography


Index