Cultivating a Good Life in Early Chinese and Ancient Greek Philosophy

Karyn Lai is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the School of Humanities and Languages at the University of New South Wales, Australia. Rick Benitez is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Sydney, Australia. Hyun Jin Kim is Senior Lecturer in Classics in the Discipline of Classics and Archaeology at the University of Melbourne, Australia.

Introduction (Karyn Lai, Rick Benitez, Hyun Jin Kim)

Part I: Harmony, Balance, Beauty: Understanding Conceptions of Cultivation
1. Cultivation and Harmony: Plato and Confucius (Rick Benitez, University of Sydney, Australia)
2. Cultivating Noble Simplicity: Plato (L.M.J. Coulson, University of Sydney, Australia)
3. The Beauty Ladder and the Mind-heart Excursion: Plato and Zhuangzi (Wang Keping, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing)
4. Awareness and Spontaneity: Three Perspectives in the Zhuangzi (Lisa Raphals, University of California, Riverside, USA)
5. Understanding “Dao’s Patterns”: Han Fei (Barbara Hendrischke, Sydney University, Australia)

Part II: Doubt, Predicament, Conflict: Cognitive, Affective and Epistemic Difficulties
6. Skepsis and Doubt: Ancient Greece and the East (Yasuhira Yahei Kanayama, Nagoya University, Japan)
7. Wisdowm and Cognitive Conflict: Outlines for Scepticism (Per Lind, Lund University, Sweden)
8. Understanding Fortune and Misfortune in a Good Life: ‘Solon’ and ‘Confucius’ (Hyun Jin Kim, University of Melbourne, Australia and Karen Hsu, University of Melbourne, Australia)
9. Emotion and Self-Cultivation: Marcus Aurelius and Mengzi (Jesse Ciccotti, Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong)
10. Dislodging Mundane Wisdom: the Inner Chapters of the Zhuangzi and the New Testament Gospels (Lauren Pfister, Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong)

Part III. Here, Now, Ever-after: How to Achieve and Practice a Good Life
11. Knowing How to Act: Aristotle (Sophie Grace Chappell, Open University, UK)
12. Learning to be Reliable: Confucius’ Analects (Karyn Lai, University of New South Wales, Australia)
13. Auditory Perception and Cultivation: the Wenzi (Andrej Fech, Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong)
14. Cultivation and the Arts of Writing: Liu Xie, (Will Buckingham, Open University, UK)
15. Death and Happiness: Han China (Mu-chou Poo, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong)

Bibliography
Index