Against Individualism: A Confucian Rethinking of the Foundations of Morality, Politics, Family, and Religion (Philosophy and Cultural Identity)

The first part of Against Individualism: A Confucian Rethinking of the Foundations of Morality, Politics, Family, and Religion is devoted to showing how and why the vision of human beings as free, independent and autonomous individuals is and always was a mirage that has served liberatory functions in the past, but has now become pernicious for even thinking clearly about, much less achieving social and economic justice, maintaining democracy, or addressing the manifold environmental and other problems facing the world today. In the second and larger part of the book Rosemont proffers a different vision of being human gleaned from the texts of classical Confucianism, namely, that we are first and foremost interrelated and thus interdependent persons whose uniqueness lies in the multiplicity of roles we each live throughout our lives. This leads to an ethics based on those mutual roles in sharp contrast to individualist moralities, but which nevertheless reflect the facts of our everyday lives very well. The book concludes by exploring briefly a number of implications of this vision for thinking differently about politics, family life, justice, and the development of a human-centered authentic religiousness. This book will be of value to all students and scholars of philosophy, political theory, and Religious, Chinese, and Family Studies, as well as everyone interested in the intersection of morality with their everyday and public lives.

Politics & Social Sciences

Rosemont Jr., Henry

Philosophy

Lexington Books

The first part of Against Individualism: A Confucian Rethinking of the Foundations of Morality, Politics, Family, and Religion is devoted to showing how and why the vision of human beings as free, independent and autonomous individuals is and always was a mirage that has served liberatory functions in the past, but has now become pernicious for even thinking clearly about, much less achieving social and economic justice, maintaining democracy, or addressing the manifold environmental and other problems facing the world today. In the second and larger part of the book Rosemont proffers a different vision of being human gleaned from the texts of classical Confucianism, namely, that we are first and foremost interrelated and thus interdependent persons whose uniqueness lies in the multiplicity of roles we each live throughout our lives. This leads to an ethics based on those mutual roles in sharp contrast to individualist moralities, but which nevertheless reflect the facts of our everyday lives very well. The book concludes by exploring briefly a number of implications of this vision for thinking differently about politics, family life, justice, and the development of a human-centered authentic religiousness. This book will be of value to all students and scholars of philosophy, political theory, and Religious, Chinese, and Family Studies, as well as everyone interested in the intersection of morality with their everyday and public lives.

"Henry Rosemont raises hard questions, commonly overlooked, and does so with sensitivity, compassion, and broad understanding. The questions focus on modern China, but extend far beyond, to general problems of development, the moral foundations of civilization, and the nature of a just society. It is a challenging and thoughtful enquiry."—Noam Chomsky

Chinese Mirror: Moral Reflections on Political Ecomy and Society

History

Asia

Open Court

This work examines how the world’s many religions contributed to humankind’s intellectual evolution and points out their value in the future. Rosemont also explains that all religion enhances our non-material lives by providing a sense of fully belonging.

Rationality and Religious Experience: The Continuing Relevance of the World's Spiritual Traditions (Master Hsüan Hua Memorial Lecture)

In this provocative volume two important scholars of religion, Huston Smith and Henry Rosemont, Jr., put forth their viewpoints and share a probing conversation. Though the two diverge considerably in their accounts of religious faith and practice, they also agree on fundamental points. Huston Smith, author of the important work The World’s Religions, has long argued for the fundamental equality of the world’s religions. Describing a universal grammar of religion,” he argues that fourteen points of similarity exist among all of the major religious traditions and that these similarities indicate an innate psychological affinity for religion within the human spirit. As Noam Chomsky has argued that humans are hardwired to use language, Smith similarly argues that humans are hardwired for religious experience. In response, Rosemont explicates his humanistic vision of the world, in which the homoversal” tendency to contemplate the infinite is part of our co-humanity that endures across time, space, language, and culture. Rosemont also elaborates upon Noam Chomsky’s theory of universal grammar and its relevance to Smith’s ideas about the similarities among religions. This insightful exploration of the most essential basis of religion provides a new direction for comparative-religion scholars everywhere.

Is There a Universal Grammar of Religion? (Master Hsüan Hua Memorial Lecture)

Smith, Huston

The Chinese Classic of Family Reverence: A Philosophical Translation of the Xiaojing

Few if any philosophical schools have championed family values as persistently as the early Confucians, and a great deal can be learned by attending to what they had to say on the subject. In the Confucian tradition, human morality and the personal realization it inspires are grounded in the cultivation of family feeling. One may even go so far as to say that, for China, family reverence was a necessary condition for developing any of the other human qualities of excellence. On the basis of the present translation of the Xiaojing (Classic of Family Reverence) and supplemental passages found in other early philosophical writings, Professors Rosemont and Ames articulate a specifically Confucian conception of "role ethics" that, in its emphasis on a relational conception of the person, is markedly different from most early and contemporary dominant Western moral theories. This Confucian role ethics takes as its inspiration the perceived necessity of family feeling as the entry point in the development of moral competence and as a guide to the religious life as well.In the lengthy introduction, two senior scholars offer their perspective on the historical, philosophical, and religious dimensions of the Xiaojing. Together with this introduction, a lexicon of key terms presents a context for the Xiaojing and provides guidelines for interpreting the text historically in China as well as suggesting its contemporary significance for all societies. The inclusion of the Chinese text adds yet another dimension to this important study. The Chinese Classic of Family Reverence is sure to appeal to specialists of comparative and Chinese philosophy and to all readers interested in the enduring importance of the family.

Ames, Roger T.

World

University of Hawaii Press

In this little book, Confucian scholar and philosopher Henry Rosemont, Jr. has summarized forty years of experience studying, translating, and teaching the Analects. For essential cross-referencing of textual passages in differing translations, Rosemont provides tables of variant spellings of Chinese terms, a finding list for students named in the text, a concordance of key philosophical and religious terms, and an annotated bibliography to guide the reader's further studies and reflections on the text.

A Reader's Companion to the Confucian Analects

Literature & Fiction

History & Criticism

Henry Rosemont Jr.

The essays collected in this volume establish Confucian role ethics as a term of art in the contemporary ethical discourse. The holistic philosophy presented here is grounded in the primacy of relationality and a narrative understanding of person, and is a challenge to a foundational liberal individualism that has defined persons as discrete, autonomous, rational, free, and often self-interested agents. Confucian role ethics begins from a relationally constituted conception of person, takes family roles and relations as the entry point for developing moral competence, invokes moral imagination and the growth in relations that it can inspire as the substance of human morality, and entails a human-centered, atheistic religiousness that stands in sharp contrast to the Abrahamic religions.

Confucian Role Ethics: A Moral Vision for the 21st Century? (Global East Asia)

V&R Academic

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Rosemont Jr., Henry. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Rosemont Jr., Henry

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Rosemont Jr., Henry. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Against Individualism: A Confucian Rethinking of the Foundations of Morality, Politics, Family, and Religion (Philosophy and Cultural Identity)

Against Individualism: A Confucian Rethinking of the Foundations of Morality, Politics, Family, and Religion (Philosophy and Cultural Identity)

Chinese Mirror: Moral Reflections on Political Ecomy and Society

Rationality and Religious Experience: The Continuing Relevance of the World's Spiritual Traditions (Master Hsüan Hua Memorial Lecture)

Is There a Universal Grammar of Religion? (Master Hsüan Hua Memorial Lecture)

The Chinese Classic of Family Reverence: A Philosophical Translation of the Xiaojing

A Reader's Companion to the Confucian Analects

Confucian Role Ethics: A Moral Vision for the 21st Century? (Global East Asia)