A History of Classical Chinese Thought (Routledge Studies in Contemporary Chinese Philosophy)

Li Zehou is widely regarded as one of China’s most influential contemporary thinkers. He has produced influential theories of the development of Chinese thought and the place of aesthetics in Chinese ethics and value theory. This book is the first English-language translation of Li Zehou’s work on classical Chinese thought. It includes chapters on the classical Chinese thinkers, including Confucius, Mozi, Laozi, Sunzi, Xunzi and Zhuangzi, and also on later eras and thinkers such as Dong Zhongshu in the Han Dynasty and the Song-Ming Neo-Confucians. The essays in this book not only discuss these historical figures and their ideas, but also consider their historical significance, and how key themes from these early schools reappeared in and shaped later periods and thinkers. Taken together, they highlight the breadth of Li Zehou’s scholarship and his syncretic approach―his explanations of prominent thinkers and key periods in Chinese intellectual history blend ideas from both the Chinese and Western canons, while also drawing on contemporary thinkers in both traditions. The book also includes an introduction written by the translator that helpfully explains the significance of Li Zehou’s work and its prospects for fostering cross-cultural dialogue with Western philosophy. A History of Chinese Classical Thought will be of interest to advanced students and scholars interested in Chinese philosophy, comparative philosophy, and Chinese intellectual and social history.

Li, Zehou

Reference

Routledge

Four Essays on Aesthetics: Toward a Global Perspective

A classic in Chinese Philosophy of Aesthetics for the last twenty years, Li Zehou's Four Essays on Aesthetics (Meixue-sijiang) is finally translated in English to bring philosophical insight to Western readers. Li's seminal work focuses on the widely debated philosophies in China concerning the origins, manifestations, importance, and transformative power of beauty, art, and aesthetic experiences. Drawing upon the influences of both Eastern and Western philosophers and writers, Li discusses the origination of the practices of beauty and aesthetics, and the origins of art credited to Shamanistic rituals, while rejecting the concepts of Western aesthetics and embracing the traditional Chinese purpose for art: to mold human minds. He stresses the importance of the involvement of aesthetic philosophers to advocate technology and aspects of society that will contribute to the harmony among individuals, environments, and social relationships.

Politics & Social Sciences

Cauvel, Jane

Philosophy

Lexington Books

A classic in Chinese Philosophy of Aesthetics for the last twenty years, Li Zehou's Four Essays on Aesthetics (Meixue-sijiang) is finally translated in English to bring philosophical insight to Western readers. Li's seminal work focuses on the widely debated philosophies in China concerning the origins, manifestations, importance, and transformative power of beauty, art, and aesthetic experiences. Drawing upon the influences of both Eastern and Western philosophers and writers, Li discusses the origination of the practices of beauty and aesthetics, and the origins of art credited to Shamanistic rituals, while rejecting the concepts of Western aesthetics and embracing the traditional Chinese purpose for art: to mold human minds. He stresses the importance of the involvement of aesthetic philosophers to advocate technology and aspects of society that will contribute to the harmony among individuals, environments, and social relationships. Begun as a series of engaging conversations, Li Zehou and Jane Cauvel reveal their philosophical presuppositions and expose a deeper, cross-cultural understanding of the philosophy of aesthetics. Their ground breaking work creates a bridge between the traditional and the modern, the East and the West, and brings us one step closer to understanding the beauty in human nature.

Jane Cauvel

Li Zehou (b. 1930) has been an influential thinker in China since the 1950s. Before moving to the U.S. in the wake of the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, Li published works on Kant and traditional and contemporary Chinese philosophy. The present volume, a translation of his Huaxia meixue (1989), is considered among Li’s most significant works. Apart from its value as an introduction to the philosophy of one of contemporary China’s foremost intellectuals, The Chinese Aesthetic Tradition fills an important gap in the literature of Chinese aesthetics in English. It presents Li’s synthesis of the entire trajectory of Chinese aesthetic thought, from ancient times to the early modern period, incorporating pre-Confucian and Confucian ideas, Daoism, Chan Buddhism, and the influence of Western philosophy during the late-imperial period. As one of China’s As one of China's major contemporary philosophers and preeminent authority on Kant, Li is uniquely positioned to observe this trajectory and make it intelligible to today’s readers. The Chinese Aesthetic Tradition touches on all areas of artistic activity, including poetry, painting, calligraphy, architecture, and the "art of living." Right government, the ideal human being, and the path to spiritual transcendence all come under the provenance of aesthetic thought. According to Li this was the case from early Confucian explanations of poetry as that which gives expression to intent, through Zhuangzi’s artistic depictions of the ideal personality who discerns the natural way of things and lives according to it, to Chan Buddhist-inspired notions that nature and words can come together to yield insight and enlightenment. In this enduring and stimulating work, Li demonstrates conclusively the fundamental role of aesthetics in the development of the cultural and psychological structures in Chinese culture that define "humanity."

The Chinese Aesthetic Tradition

History

Asia

University of Hawaii Press

Li Zehou is widely regarded as one of China’s most influential contemporary thinkers. He has produced influential theories of the development of Chinese thought and the place of aesthetics in Chinese ethics and value theory. This book is the first English-language translation of Li Zehou’s work on classical Chinese thought. It includes chapters on the classical Chinese thinkers, including Confucius, Mozi, Laozi, Sunzi, Xunzi and Zhuangzi, and also on later eras and thinkers such as Dong Zhongshu in the Han Dynasty and the Song-Ming Neo-Confucians.\nThe essays in this book not only discuss these historical figures and their ideas, but also consider their historical significance, and how key themes from these early schools reappeared in and shaped later periods and thinkers. Taken together, they highlight the breadth of Li Zehou’s scholarship and his syncretic approach―his explanations of prominent thinkers and key periods in Chinese intellectual history blend ideas from both the Chinese and Western canons, while also drawing on contemporary thinkers in both traditions. The book also includes an introduction written by the translator that helpfully explains the significance of Li Zehou’s work and its prospects for fostering cross-cultural dialogue with Western philosophy.\nA History of Chinese Classical Thought will be of interest to advanced students and scholars interested in Chinese philosophy, comparative philosophy, and Chinese intellectual and social history.

Li Zehou's thought has achieved wide popularity and influence among both academic readers and the broader Chinese-reading public. His culminating views on ethics are collected here in a series of essays that highlight the importance of Confucian philosophy today. Li's groundbreaking ethics presents a powerful contemporary theory--one that inventively reconciles longstanding oppositions between relativism and absolutism, emotions and rationalism, and relationality and individuality. Seeing ethical values and principles as embedded in human psychology, society, and history, Li affirms their relativity; he also affirms the objective rightness and wrongness of beliefs, norms, and acts through their contribution to human progress and flourishing. Li thereby endorses modern Enlightenment liberal values, including individualism, rights, and freedoms, but from an original philosophical foundation. By drawing on classical Confucianism to prioritize the situated, relational, emotional constitution of human life, this concrete brand of humanism offers unique modern conceptions of the nature of reason, the source of morality, selfhood, virtue, and much more.

The Humanist Ethics of Li Zehou (Translating China)

State University of New York Press

The Path of Beauty (Chinese Edition)

Arts & Photography

People's Literature Publishing House

Makesi zhu yi zai Zhongguo =: Makesizhuyi zai Zhongguo (Mandarin Chinese Edition)

Foreign Language Study & Reference

Xin hua shu dian jing xiao

Since it was first published in Chinese in 1981, The Path of Beauty has been read widely and translated into several languages, becoming a classic in the study of Chinese aesthetics. The author, a noted philosopher and aesthetician, draws on examples of sculpture, painting, calligraphy, and poetry, among other sources, from throughout China's history to build a cogent and engaging argument concerning the nature of Chinese artistic values. While providing an historical overview of Chinese art from antiquity to modern times, he examines as well the evolution of the sociological, psychological, philosophical, and spiritual underpinnings of Chinese culture.

Path of Beauty: A Study of Chinese Aesthetics

China Books & Periodicals

The Path of Beauty: A Study of Chinese Aesthetics

Morning Glory Publisher

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