Tu Weiming Research Articles

Governance of Life in Chinese Moral Experience: The Quest for an Adequate Life. Edited by Everett Zhang, Arthur Kleinman, and Tu Weiming. London; New York: Routledge, 2011. xv, 278 pp. $155.00 (cloth); $54.95 (paper).

Governance of Life in Chinese Moral Experience: The Quest for an Adequate Life. Edited by Everett Zhang, Arthur Kleinman, and Tu Weiming. London; New York: Routledge, 2011. xv, 278 pp. $155.00 (cloth); $54.95 (paper).

Understanding the Sources of the Sino-Islamic Intellectual Tradition: A Review Essay on The Sage Learning of Liu Zhi: Islamic Thought in Confucian Terms, by Sachiko Murata, William C. Chittick, and Tu Weiming, and Recent Chinese Literary Treasuries

A discussion of the approaches to Sino-Islamic texts and an outline of new approaches for future studies.

Reconceiving Women's Equality in China: A Critical Examination of Models of Sex Equality (review)

Reviewed by: Reconceiving Women's Equality in China: A Critical Examination of Models of Sex Equality Li-Hsiang Lisa Rosenlee (bio) Lijun Yuan . Reconceiving Women's Equality in China: A Critical Examination of Models of Sex Equality. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2005. xi, 137 pp. Hardcover $66.00, ISBN 0-7391-1005-5. Paperback $22.95, ISBN 0-7391-1228-7. Following her "Ethics of Care and Concept of Jen" (2002)—a provocative response to Chenyang Li's "The Confucian Concept of Jen and the Feminist Ethics of Care" (1994)—Lijun Yuan in her Reconceiving Women's Equality in China (2005) restates her definitive rejection of Confucianism as a positive model for gender equity. In Yuan's examination of four historical models of sex equality—Confucianism, formal equality of the May Fourth era, substantive equality under Mao's directives, and equal opportunity in the post-Mao free market—Confucianism offers countless rationales for women's inferiority (p. 103). In her concluding chapter, "A Democratic Conception of Women's Equality," Yuan's proposed solution, as the title indicates, is by and large a liberal democracy of the Western model. Furthermore, according to Yuan, only within this liberal model is the Confucian concept of reciprocity useful to women at all. In short, to Yuan, the solution to women's oppression in China must be framed in the Western model of liberal democracy and Confucianism qua Confucianism offers primarily the oppression of women. Yuan's dichotomizing contrast between the progressive Western liberal tradition and the anachronistic, oppressive Confucian tradition, in my view, is unfortunate, since it only feeds into this already poisonous attitude of Western imperialism with the West offering the only progressive future for the rest of the inferior societies plagued by their own sexist traditions. If feminists and scholars alike are to be conscious of this sort of neocolonial discourse in a feminist disguise, a greater [End Page 288] attention must be paid to the reappropriation of non-Western traditions as viable alternatives for women's liberation. In her historical journey into Confucianism in chapter 1, "Confucius, Confucianism, and the Confucian Rationale for Women's Inequality," Yuan decisively rejects the possibility of a progressive future within a Confucian framework. As Yuan writes in reference to three contemporary revivals of Confucianism in the modern context of feminism offered by Chenyang Li, David Hall and Roger Ames, and Tu Weiming, "I will challenge these interpretations by arguing that Confucius and Neo-Confucians converge in a unified line that contributes to the notion of the inferiority of women" (p. 2). In Yuan's estimation, Confucianism is synonymous with oppressive social roles for women, and its ethical ideal of ren is only achievable for men. In particular, in restating her 2002 rejection to Chenyang Li's claim of the compatibility between Confucianism and feminist care ethics, Yuan argues that Confucian ren differs from feminist care ethics in that the later aims at eradicating the oppression of women while the former is not applicable to women who are relegated to the category of the moral inferior. As she writes, "The category of women, just like the category of small men in the The Analects, is different from the category of junzi (gentlemen). Women simply do not count in Confucius's mind" (p. 15). Differing from Li who relegates sexism in Confucianism to Dong Zhong-shu and the Cheng-Zhu school, Tu Weiming advocates a gender-neutral understanding of Neo-Confucianism in which the moral achievement of self-cultivation is available to both genders. Yuan repudiates Tu's claim by pointing to the empirical evidence in China's past (p. 16). Yuan, once again, rejects this alternative view of Confucianism as well. To Yuan, the Confucian concept of correlative dependency or reciprocity is inseparable from the concept of hierarchy, which, in turn, is incompatible with her proposed democratic model of sexual equality. As she writes, "In my view, the issue of women's equality is inevitably related to issues of democracy that oppose a value of hierarchy" (p. 22). In short, to Yuan, Confucianism seems to have nothing useful to offer to a progressive world, especially in regards to the issue of feminism and democracy. In fact...

Dwelling in the Nearness of Gods: The Hermeneutical Turn from Mou Zongsan to Tu Weiming

This article argues that, as far as the problem of Confucian religiosity is concerned, there is an interpretative turn from Mou Zongsan’s moral metaphysics to Tu Weiming’s religious hermeneutics. Some concluding remarks are made: First, Tu’s hermeneutics is rooted in the ontology of self as interrelatedness, which is completely different from Mou’s theory of true self as transcendental subjectivity. Second, Tu’s hermeneutics of self can be better illuminated with the help of Heidegger’s notion of Dasein as Being-with (Mitsein). For Tu and Heidegger, self cannot be seen as something separate from community. This article also points out that the paradigmatic shift is evidenced in another similarity between the four categories of self, community, nature, and the transcendent in Tu’s hermeneutics on the one hand, and the four symbols of earth, sky, divinities, and mortals employed by Heidegger to interpret the meaning of dwelling, on the other. In such a primordial situation of dwelling, gods are not supposed to be intellectually known; they are rather to be neighbors in community.

Confucianism between Tradition and Modernity, Religion, and Secularization: Questions to Tu Weiming

The article discusses central assumptions of Tu Weiming’s program of overcoming the “enlightenment mentality” and throws a critical light on his conceptions of religious or spiritual Confucianism, of a Confucian modernity, and of the “multiple modernities” theory in general. It defends a unitary rather than multiple concept of modernity in terms of the realization of a morally controlled “principle of free subjectivity” and tries to show how Confucianism, understood as a secular ethics, could contribute to this goal.

The Viability of Confucian Transcendence: Grappling with Tu Weiming’s Interpretation of the Zhongyong

This essay assesses Tu Weiming’s notion of transcendence in terms both of its legitimacy as an interpretation of Confucianism and of its viability as an answer to modern challenges. An examination of Tu’s hermeneutical assumptions in his Zhongyong commentary leads to a discussion of his locating transcendence in the subjectivity of the junzi, the profound person. Calling the self-cultivation “self-knowledge,” Tu makes explicit the religious character of the xin, the basis of self-cultivation, and its transcendent character, because it is endowed from heaven. However, because the xin is irreducibly human, this transcendence is also immanentized. From the xin a fiduciary community is formed, hence the “covenantal” nature of Confucian religiousness. The essay ends with the question: Because Tu does not elaborate on cultivating a community’s intersubjectivity, does it make the realization of the transcendent xin a “deferred potentiality,” without mooring in the actual formation of human community?

Selfhood and Fiduciary Community: A Smithian Reading of Tu Weiming’s Confucian Humanism

Tu Weiming, as a leading spokesman for contemporary New Confucianism, has been reinterpreting the Confucian tradition in the face of the challenges of modernity. Tu takes selfhood as his starting point, emphasizing the importance of cultivating the human mind-and-heart as a deepening and broadening process to realize the anthropocosmic dao. He highlights the concept of a “fiduciary community” and advocates that, because of it, Confucianism remains a dynamic “inclusive humanism.” Tu’s mode of thinking tallies well with Wilfred C. Smith’s vision of religion, specifically the latter’s exposition of faith as a universal human quality and proposal of “corporate critical self-consciousness.” This article details the theories of both scholars, highlights their similarities, and contrasts their differences. It argues that Smith’s world theology provides a heuristic framework through which one understands how Tu has advanced his Confucian humanism from a Chinese philosophical or cultural tradition to the midst of world religions.

The Confucian Self and Experiential Spirituality

Since the publication of his book on Zhongyong (Tu 1976), Tu Weiming has worked for more than 30 years on an anthropocosmic reconstruction of the Confucian universe, in which self-transformation is defined both as the starting point and as the necessary vehicle for one’s spiritual journey. This article is primarily intended to examine Tu’s attempts to reconstruct Confucian spirituality but further to take a step forward to argue that in the spiritual world as construed by Confucius and Mencius, the experiential functions as transcendental by which the self initiates and empowers the transformative process. Through exploring the spiritual significance of Confucian experiences, this essay will conclude that although “transcendental experience” is only one of many dimensions in other religious or intellectual traditions, it is the most important path for Confucians by which the self is enabled to become fully integrated with ultimate reality.

Riding the Third Wave: Tu Weiming’s Confucian Axiology

Du Weiming (Tu Weiming) has assisted in defining the New Confucian movement, a philosophical discourse that depends on axiological themes and traits based on an exegesis and defense of the revival and reform of traditional Confucian discourse inherited from the Classical and Neo-Confucian waves in East Asia. Thomas A. Metzger’s discussion of the profound difference between modern Western post-Enlightenment discourse and New Confucian discourse challenges many of Du’s primary assumptions. My conclusion is that Du is both a citizen of the modern Western academy and a Confucian public intellectual dedicated to mediating the great debate that now spans the Pacific ocean between the West and a revived East Asian cultural complex, including New Confucianism as a major dialogue partner at the beginning of the new millennium by continuing the historic Confucian commitment to a theory of values.

Pain and Its Transformations. The Interface of Biology and Culture

1. Introduction Sarah Coakley 2. Opening Remarks Arthur Kleinman Response from Anne Harrington Part I: Pain at the Interface of Biology and Culture 3. Deconstructing Pain--A Deterministic Dissection of the Molecular Basis of Pain Clifford Woolf 4. Setting The Stage For Pain: Allegorical Tales From Neuroscience Howard Fields Response from Anne Harrington: Is Pain Differentially Embodied? Response from Elaine Scarry: Pain and the Embodiment of Culture Discussion: Is There Life Left in the Gate Control Theory? Discussion: The Success of Reductionism in Pain Treatment Part II: Beyond Coping: Religious Practices of Transformation 5. Palliative or Intensification? Pain and Christian Contemplation in the Spirituality of the 16th-Century Carmelites Sarah Coakley 6. Pain and the Suffering Consciousness: The Alleviation of Suffering in Buddhist Discourse Luis Gomez Response from Arthur Kleinman: The Incommensurable Richness of Experience Response from Jon Levenson: The Theology of Pain and Suffering in the Jewish Tradition Discussion: The Relaxation Response: Can it Explain Religious Transformation? Discussion: Reductionism and the Separation of Suffering and Pain Discussion: The Instrumentality of Pain in Christianity and Buddhism Part III: Grief and Pain: The Mediation of Pain in Music 7. Voice, Metaphysics, and Community: Pain and Transformation in the Finnish Karelian Ritual Lament Elizabeth Tolbert 8. Music, Trancing and the Absence of Pain Judith Becker Response from John Brust: Music as Ecstasy and Music as Trance Response from Kay Shelemay: Thinking About Music and Pain Discussion: The Presentation and Representation of Emotion in Music Discussion: Neurobiological Views of Music, Emotion, and the Body Discussion: Ritual and Expectation Part IV: Pain, Ritual and the Somatomoral: Beyond the Individual 9. Pain and Humanity in the Confucian Learning of the Heart-and-Mind Tu Weiming Response from Laurence Kirmayer: Reflections from Psychiatry on Emergent Mind and Empathy 10. Painful Memories: Ritual and the Transformation of Community Trauma Jennifer Cole Response from Stanley Tambiah: Collective Memory as a Witness to Collective Pain Discussion: Pain, Healing, and Memory Part V: Pain as Isolation or Community? Literary and Aesthetic Representations 11. Physical Pain and the Ground of Creating Elaine Scarry 12. The Poetics of Anaesthesia: Representations of Pain in the Literatures of Classical India Martha Ann Selby Response from Richard Wolf: Doubleness, matam, and Muharram Drumming in South Asia Discussion: The Dislocation, Representation, and Communication of Pain Part VI: When Is Pain Not Suffering and Suffering Not Pain?: Self, Ethics and Transcendence 13. On the Cultural Mediation of Pain Laurence Kirmayer Discussion: The Notion of Face 14. The Place of Pain in the Space of Good and Evil Nicholas Wolterstorff Response from Charles Hallisey: The Problem of Action 15. Afterword Sarah Coakley

Bhaskar's Philosophy as Anti-Anthropism

This article aims to contribute to the understanding of Roy Bhaskar's philosophical evolution from critical realism to the philosophy of meta-Reality. Following Bhaskar's own terminology, I define his intellectual journey as the ‘identification of dualism and duality within non-duality’ by proposing that anti-anthropism plays a key role in the developmental consistency of his system from critical realism via dialectical critical realism to meta-Reality. For this purpose, I compare Bhaskar's philosophy with Andrew Collier's theory of human rationality and spiritual emancipation based on Christianity and Tu Wei-Ming's anthropocosmic understanding of human beings and nature based on Confucianism.

Lost Soul: "Confucianism" in Contemporary Chinese Academic Discourse (review)

Reviewed by: Lost Soul: "Confucianism" in Contemporary Chinese Academic Discourse Sor-hoon Tan (bio) John Makeham. Lost Soul: "Confucianism" in Contemporary Chinese Academic Discourse. Harvard-Yenching Institute Monographs 64. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2008. xii, 397 pp. Hardcover $49.95, isbn 978-0-674-02811-1. This study of the revival of Confucianism in Chinese academic discourse will be welcomed by those who do not have easy access to Chinese-language materials or lack the time to keep up with that vast literature as well as the institutional developments and key events that have shaped that discourse since the 1980s. The story begins with "the Singapore experiment" — the introduction of "Confucian Ethics" into the school curriculum, the establishment of the Institute of East Asian Philosophies, and efforts towards a wider revitalization movement which eventually failed. However, the focus on creative transformation of ruxue and the rujia capitalism thesis made popular during this episode remain relevant for subsequent ruxue revivalism in China. Tu Weiming was a key figure in this experiment; his Singapore experience became a part of his strategy of revitalizing ruxue in mainland China by "exporting it and then importing it" (p. 41). During the 1980s, interest in the relevance of the rujia capitalism thesis to China's modernization grew, and a discursive space opened up in both Taiwan and mainland China for ruxue as "the mainstay of Chinese traditional culture" (p. 54). The revival gained momentum in the following decade with increased interaction among academics in mainland China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong; establishment of organizations such as the International Confucian Association; and conscription of ruxue into the patriotic education campaign in the People's Republic of China (PRC). A major research project funded under the seventh five-year plan (1986–1990) provided resources and opportunities for research in ruxue, and by the 1990s Chinese academics in mainland China, such as Guo Qiyong and Zheng Jiadong, began to identify personally with ruxue as a system of values, practices, and cultural norms. The relation of ruxue to Chinese culture became a bone of contention in the critical debates between National Studies proponents and Marxist scholars. Rivalry developed between mainland and Taiwanese academics over the proprietary claim to both interpretation and future direction of ruxue, especially New Confucianism. Taiwanese academics shifted their focus to developing an "East Asian" ruxue in the second half of the 1990s, and National Taiwan University began a major project to develop a ruxue hermeneutics. However, the claim that ruxue has "become the common property of East Asian civilization" (p. 94) is in tension with certain exclusivist tendencies of ruxue-centered cultural nationalism. The author sets out to develop four key themes: [End Page 576] 1. academic interest in ruxue has been sustained by intellectual cross-fertilization and rivalry between scholars in China and overseas Chinese scholars; 2. contrary to conventional wisdom, party-state support on the mainland for programs to promote patriotic education and "traditional virtues" does not underpin continuing academic interest in ruxue; 3. cultural nationalism rather than state nationalism better explains the nature of contemporary discourse on ruxue; 4. academic discourse on ruxue in China and Taiwan provides little evidence of a sustained or robust philosophical creativity in ruxue philosophy. (pp. 6–7) It is difficult to evaluate Makeham's last theme as he does not engage the more difficult philosophical issues in sufficient depth, with the possible exception of chapter 8 examining Lin Anwu's critique of Mou Zongsan's moral metaphysics. It would probably be wise not to take Makeham's assessment for granted without some serious reading of the works of philosophers participating in this discourse, even though it seems to be echoed by some of the participants themselves. One should also ask what standards of philosophical robustness and creativity are being applied, and whether these are legitimate or even relevant to the Chinese discourse on ruxue revival. This is the least important theme, and one does not have to agree with it to appreciate the book. The greatest strength of this work lies in the clear and engaging account of diverse views and debates fighting over the "lost soul" of ruxue. Distinctions among different ruxue — politicized versus vulgar...

Is Tu Wei-ming Confucian?

Tu Wei-ming’s discourse has been badly understood by some Western philosophers who study Confucianism. I suggest that this misunderstanding stems from the fact that these philosophers fail to realize that Confucian discourse is in an entirely different register from Western philosophical discourse. I then propose my own preliminary definition of Confucian discourse in five points and present a structural analysis of a text by Tu Wei-ming. Finally, I consider which features of Tu’s discourse can properly be called Confucian. The answer to this question reflects not only on Tu but also on Confucian discourse and the study of Confucianism in general.

Chinese Thought from an Evolutionary Perspective

One of the more noticeable trends in the study of premodern Chinese thought in the past couple of decades has been increased specialization: scholars generally tend to eschew broad generalizations concerning long historical spans in favor of more detailed and historically and philologically specific case studies. This approach has given us, among other things, a picture of the development of Chinese thought that is much more nuanced than the received, official Neo-Confucian account, which sees Chinese thought as coterminous with ‘‘Confucianism,’’ and Confucianism as an unbroken lineage from Confucius to Zi Si and Mencius, through Zhu Xi, and down to contemporary representatives such as Tu Wei-ming. This is surely a positive development, allowing us to see how anachronistic school designations and post hoc lineage constructions have, in many important respects, distorted our picture of the development of Chinese thought. One could also argue, however, that in the rush to distance ourselves from overly broad generalizations or philologically unsupported conjectures, we have perhaps run too far—losing the sort of generosity of vision that would allow us to tie our specialized labors in the sinological trenches into the framework of larger humanistic concerns. Donald Munro remains one of the leaders of a generation of scholars who, in addition to their role as sinologists and historians, also wear the hat of public intellectuals, unafraid to address broad contemporary concerns or tackle large issues spanning the entire history of Chinese thought. The lectures and essays collected in A Chinese Ethics for the New Century chart the latest developments in Munro’s remarkable career, and show him to be, as always, at the vanguard of some of the most exciting conceptual innovations in the study of Chinese thought. Throughout his career Munro has displayed an almost preternatural ability to anticipate—or perhaps, in many cases, to initiate—important trends in the study of traditional Chinese Confucian thought. His classic The Concept of Man in Early China (1969) argued that competing conceptions of human nature were at the very heart of early Chinese philosophical debates, and that even when it came to thinkers without explicitly stated views on the subject, it was the job of scholars to extract the implicit theories of human nature lurking in the background. As Liu Xiaogan notes in his helpful introduction to this volume, Munro was the first Western scholar to make

Culture, Identity, Commodity: Diasporic Chinese Literatures in English (review)

Reviewed by: Culture, Identity, Commodity: Diasporic Chinese Literatures in English Timothy Yu (bio) Tseen Khoo and Kam Louie, editors. Culture, Identity, Commodity: Diasporic Chinese Literatures in English McGill-Queen’s University Press. xiv, 313. $75.00 Since the 1970s, Asian Americans and Asian Canadians have largely been studied in individual national contexts, as racial minorities within Canada or the United States. Over the past decade, however, scholars have increasingly viewed such populations as diasporas, linked by ancestral, cultural, and economic ties that cross national boundaries. This volume itself is evidence of the advantages of such transnational thinking: edited by two Australian academics, it contains essays by Canadian, American, and Australian critics, surveying authors of Chinese descent in all three countries. Such juxtapositions can create greatly expanded intellectual contexts. The poetry of Chinese-Canadian poet Fred Wah is read in the light of Harvard professor Tu Wei-ming's theory of 'cultural China' and of Hong Kong director Wong Kar-wai's film In the Mood for Love. Chinese-Australian novelists Brian Castro and Simone Lazaroo are compared to American counterparts such as Amy Tan and Maxine Hong Kingston. From essay to essay, readers are encouraged to think beyond national borders, encountering new work by new writers that may provide a fresh perspective on their own research. Based on this collection, it would seem that Canadian scholars are in the forefront of diasporic thinking. Essays by Lily Cho, Guy Beauregard, and Donald C. Goellnicht – all well-known scholars of Asian-Canadian literature – offer sophisticated accounts of what a concept of 'diasporic Chinese literature' can offer interpreters of Canadian writing. Cho links the poetry of Fred Wah to a broader trend in the diaspora towards 'deconstructing Chineseness,' while also finding in Wah a struggle towards diasporic connection, a 'longing for something that defies the binds of historicism.' Beauregard assesses the current 'problem of diaspora' and its confrontation [End Page 621] with ethnic studies, while arguing that Wah and video artist Richard Fung develop a 'poetics of diaspora' that emphasizes practical agency. And Goellnicht describes a shift in Asian-Canadian writing from 'immigrant' to 'disaporic' narratives, a shift that has also opened up Asian-Canadian literature to explorations of queer sexuality. Elsewhere in the book, however, the concept of diaspora is theorized only tentatively. Few of the authors explain how the diasporic paradigm differs from the older mode of ethnic studies, or account for what is distinctively diasporic in their analyses. The majority of the essays focus only on one national literature, and many do not provide enough context to allow, say, a Canadian reader to understand the situation of a Chinese-Australian writer. Perhaps this volume's greatest service to North American readers is its introduction of the work of Ouyang Yu, a provocative Chinese-Australian poet who is the subject of one essay by Wenche Ommundsen and is mentioned in at least two others. Ouyang, a relatively recent immigrant whose work includes fiction, criticism, and translation in both Chinese and English, has earned the label 'the angry Chinese poet' for his scathing critiques of Australian racism; but his rhetoric is also tinged with a moving, melancholy lyricism. If Ouyang Yu is the face of the new diasporic Chinese literature in English, the field has an exciting future indeed. Timothy Yu Timothy Yu, Department of English, University of Toronto Copyright © 2007 University of Toronto Press Incorporated

A cognitive analysis of confucian self-knowledge: According to Tu Weiming’s explanation

Modern science and democracy, which have dramatically changed human lifestyles, have both developed from the Western philosophical approach. Based on the new developments of cognitive science, however, we can now consider what we can learn from the Chinese philosophical approach. We can see that there are at least two different ways to obtain knowledge. The first is theoretical: we learn through factual statements and rules, such as “the Earth is round.” We learn this by being told. This type of knowledge is easily organized into a logical system. Scientific (also called factual or theoretical) knowledge is based on these logical systems. The second is practical: we learn through practice. Through practice, we may acquire new experiences, and based on these new experiences, we know something new.1 These two approaches involve different cognitive processes; neither of them can be used to obtain both types of knowledge. However, we can still use a scientific view to analyze both cognitive processes.2 Unlike Western philosophy, Chinese philosophy mainly adopts the second approach to obtaining knowledge. One of the main concerns in Chinese philosophy is about the self: how to develop oneself, how to know oneself, and even how to perfect oneself. Practice, not logical reasoning, is the primary route for achieving these goals. In one respect, Confucianism is considered to be a theory

New Confucian Political Philosophy - Tu Wei-Ming’s Fiduciary Community

This paper engages with the thought of the contemporary New Confucian and Harvard scholar Tu Wei-ming. Its particular focus is on what could be termed “New Confucian Political Philosophy.” Yet, is it appropriate to speak of a specific political philosophy within Confucianism, or, more specifically, within its 20th century successor New Confucianism? Is it fit to use familiar categories of political philosophy such as liberal-communitarian, individual-society, or democratic-authoritarian in order to scrutinise New Confucianism? Taking questions such as these seriously, this paper starts with some important methodological issues and only then turns to Tu Wei-ming’s proposal of a fiduciary community, that is, of a community of trust. Among other issues, the Confucian family, self-cultivation, and the concept of politics as rectification are discussed. At the end, Tu Wei-ming’s ideas of how to make this Confucian sense of politics and of community contribute to contemporary political philosophy are briefly addressed.

Chinese Aesthetics and Literature: A Reader (review)

Reviewed by: Chinese Aesthetics and Literature: A Reader Karl S. Y. Kao (bio) Corinne H. Dale, editor. Chinese Aesthetics and Literature: A Reader. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2004. xxi, 247 pp. Hardcover $81.50, ISBN 0-7914-6021-5. Paperback $27.95, ISBN 0-7914-6022-3. As explained in its Preface, this book is modeled after Japanese Aesthetics and Culture: A Reader, edited by Nancy Hume (State University of New York Press, 1995), a book designed for use by non-Asianist college instructors in their teaching of Japanese literature. Like Hume, Dale is a professor of English, and she has done a similar volume on Chinese literature, likewise intended for nonspecialists. Although most readers of China Review International probably would not be "non-Asianists" in Hume's sense—most are probably specialists of Chinese studies or avowed students of it in one related area or another—this volume could be of interest to them as a source book for a class in Chinese literature. The book contains eleven essays selected from various sources on Chinese philosophy and literature. In addition, there are an Introduction by the editor that explains the selections, an outline history of Chinese literature, and ancillary material such as the headnote that precedes each essay and the annotated classified bibliography, which includes a bibliography of bibliographies, general reference books, studies on various genres, et cetera. The title of the book is indeed an attractive one for students of Chinese literature in general. But it should be pointed out that one of the words featured in it, "aesthetics," is itself not a focus of inquiry; no essays in the collection are specifically devoted to the topic. Dale's Introduction explains that aesthetics is here understood in a general sense of "artistic values or preferences" based on a "philosophically informed understanding of human experience." In other words, philosophy is assumed to play a role in the shaping of literature and could help explain its properties and values. Organized apparently with this understanding, the selection includes, besides essays on Chinese literature itself, philosophical writings concerning the traditional Chinese worldview, cosmogony, and cultural outlook. The selections are taken from existing sources, mostly by scholars eminent in their own fields, and many of them may in fact give students in different fields of Chinese studies, including literature, a feeling of déjà vu. The first three essays are by Pauline Yu and Theodore Huters (joint authors), Roger Ames, and Tu Wei-ming, and they all go back to the early philosophical or mythological sources to find the origins of Chinese conceptions of cosmology and the world and of the Chinese cultural outlook. Students of sinology will reencounter such ideas as the one that the Chinese worldview is organic, characterized by a correlational thinking about all things in the universe—ideas that Joseph Needham and his collaborators in their work on Chinese science and civilization [End Page 302] have made widely known. Frederick Mote's notion of the "uncreated world" of Chinese cosmogony is also often reiterated. These concepts are here best described in Ames' essay, the second in the collection, titled "Language and Interpretive Contexts" (adapted from his introduction to Ames et al., eds., Interpreting Culture Through Translation: A Festschrift for D. C. Lau [1991]). In concise, lucid language, Ames explains from a comparative perspective the fundamental differences between the Western and Chinese worldviews. Tu Wei-ming approaches the question of Chinese cosmogony through the concept of ch'i (qi) in his "The Continuity of Being" (originally included in Leroy S. Rouner, ed., On Nature [1984]). Drawing from both early Confucianism and Neo-Confucian writings, Tu argues that qi in these traditions is at once the "basic stuff" that makes up the cosmos and the "vital force" that energizes all modalities of being, thus making it possible to see matter and spirit as one and the same, undifferentiated and undifferentiable. Tu further emphasizes the concept of "transformation" in place of creation; according to this view, humanity is but part of a great continuum of being. The first essay, Yu and Huters' "The Imaginative Universe of Chinese Literature" (originally an introductory essay to Chinese literature for the book Masterworks...

Australia the Land of Similes: The Feminine Economy

Mircea Elaide has argued that the crucial task of people newly arrived in a country hitherto unknown is imaginative, even spiritual, “the transformation of chaos into cosmos”. The failure to do so may result in what the Chinese call “the dialogue with heaven” and may lead to a loss of humanity. It could be argued that something like this has happened in Australia. Here the culture of colonisation has been essentially “masculine” in the sense in which Helene Cixous uses the term, a culture of domination and control. It has lead to a suspicion of the “feminine” which is prepared to give to and receive from the other and thus, I argue, to the problematic relationship of our relations with the land and its First Peoples. This paper looks at the ways in which Gail Jones' novel Black Mirror explores ways in which the “feminine” might help transform the chaos which faces us into cosmos. Bibliography Drusilla Modjeska, The Orchard . Sydney, Pan Macmillan, 1994. Gail Jones, Black Mirror , Sydney, Pan Macmillan, 2002. H.P.Heseltine, (ed), The Penguin Book Of Australian Verse . Ringwood, Penguin, 1979. Ian Turner, (ed), The Australian Dream . Melbourne, Sun Books, 1968. Mircea Eliade, The Myth Of The Eternal Return . Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1974. Toril Moi, Sexual/Textual Politics . London, Routledge, 1991. Tu Wei-Ming, Centrality And Community . Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989.

Book Reviews

Books Reviewed:Melissa Schrift, Biography of a Chairman Mao Badge: the Creation and Mass Consumption of a Personality CultWm. Theodore De Bary and Tu Weiming (eds), Confucianism and Human RightsMichael B. McElroy, Chris P. Nielsen and Peter Lydon (eds), Energizing China: reconciling Environmental Protection and Economic GrowthShumei Shih, The Lure of the Modern: writing Modernism in Semicolonial China 1917–1937Susan Mann and Yu‐Yin Cheng (eds), Under Confucian Eyes: writings on Gender in Chinese HistoryArun Agrawal and K. Sivaramakrishnan (eds), Agrarian Environments: Resources, Representation, and Rule in IndiaK. J. Joseph, Industry under Economic Liberalization: the Case of Indian ElectronicsPeter P. Mollinga (ed), Water for Food and Rural Development: approaches and Initiatives in South AsiaM. Ramesh with Mukul G. Asher, Welfare Capitalism in Southeast Asia: social Security, Health and Education PoliciesDavid M. Ayres, Anatomy of a Crisis: education, Development and the State in Cambodia, 1953–1998Martin Stuart‐Fox, Historical Dictionary of Laos, second editionSinith Sittirak, The Daughters of Development: women in a Changing EnvironentWen‐Hsin Yeh (ed), Becoming Chinese: passages to Modernity and BeyondClaire Huot, China's New Cultural Scene: a Handbook of ChangesPang‐Yuan Chi and David Der‐Wei Wang (eds), Chinese Literature in the Second Half of a Modern Century: a Critical SurveyRichard John Lynn (trans), The Classic of the Way and Virtue: a New Translation of the Tao‐te Ching of Laozi as Interpreted by Wang BiKenneth G. Henshall, Dimensions of Japanese Society: gender, Margins and MainstreaKenneth G. Henshall, A History of Japan. From Stone‐Age to SuperpowerRoger Buckley, Japan Today, 3rd editionSusan Orphett Long (ed), Lives in Motion: composing Circles of Self and Community in JapanDewi Anggraeni, Neighbourhood Tales: a Bilingual Collection of Short StoriesKandice Chuh and Karen Shimakawa (eds), Orientations: mapping Studies in the Asian DiasporaHarold D. Roth, Original Tao: inward Training (Nei‐yeh) and the Foundations of Taoist MysticismChiang Yee, The Silent Traveller in London