Abstract
The third generation Confucian Tu Weiming is introduced in this chapter along with an account of his biographical formation as a scholar of and global activist for Confucianism, including a discussion of whether one can meaningfully distinguish between an earlier phase of exegesis and a later phase of advocacy. The source of his commitment to Confucianism is shown to lie in his understanding of philosophy as religiophilosophy. The underlying explanatory framework for the presentation of Tu’s Confucianism is drawn from a sociological approach to philosophy. It is thus argued that Tu has refashioned Confucianism in terms of a worldview and developed a specific vocabulary to make it fit for joining a global debate across academic disciplines but within the macro-sociological parameters of a dialogue among religions, civilizations and modernities.
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References
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———. 1973b. “Wang Yangming’s Five Unpublished Letters to Zhou Daotong 王陽明答周道通書五封.” 大陸雜誌 47.2: 7–13.
———. 1973c. “On the Spiritual Development of Confucius’ Personality.” Thought and Language 思與言 11.3: 29–37.
———. 1976a. Centrality and Commonality: An Essay on Chung-yung. Honolulu: The University Press of Hawai’i. (This is one of Tu Weiming’s most popular texts, in which he lays out his reading of the Zhongyong along the interrelated dimensions of the profound person, the fiduciary society and moral metaphysics. Later, in the re-edition of 1989, he would add a chapter on Confucian religiousness.)
———. 1976b. Neo-Confucian Thought in Action: Wang Yang-ming’s Youth (1472–1509). Berkeley: University of California Press. (This book traces the intellectual development of young Wang Yangming as a search for sagehood, which Tu Weiming in this book understands and defines as a dynamic process of self-transformation).
———. 1976c. “Wang Yangming’s Youth: A Personal Reflection on the Method of My Research.” Ming Studies 3: 11–17.
———. 1979. Humanity and Self-Cultivation: Essays in Confucian Thought. Berkeley: Asian Humanities Press. (A collection of essays published between 1968–1978, which deals with classical Confucianism and Neo-Confucianism mainly, but also features an essay on Xiong Shili. Tu Weiming presents Confucianism in these essays as a spiritual tradition.)
———. 1982. “T’oegye’s Creative Interpretation of Chu Hsi’s Philosophy of Principle.” Korea Journal 22.2: 4–15.
———. 1983. “Yi T’oegye’s Intellectual Self-Definition: An Exploration.” In International Conference on the T’oegye School of Neo-Confucianism, vol. 1. Korea Institute: Harvard University, 1–35.
———. 1984. Confucian Ethics Today: The Singapore Challenge. Singapore: Federal Publications. (This volume includes material pertaining to Tu Weiming’s visit in 1982 to Singapore as part of a delegation of scholars to help the government draw up a syllabus of a Confucian ethics course for secondary students. It includes Tu’s speeches with transcripts of question and answers sessions, discussions with members of parliament and ministers, and a report by Tu on the contents of such a course.)
———. 1985. Confucian Thought: Selfhood as Creative Transformation. Albany: State University of New York Press. (A second collection of essays on classical Confucianism and Neo-Confucianism published between 1978 and 1985 together with an epilogue added in a later edition. The volume also features an introduction by Tu Weiming himself and a preface by Robert C. Neville.)
———. 1988. “A Confucian Perspective on the Rise of Industrial East Asia.” Bulletin of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1687th State Meeting Report) 42.1: 32–50.
———. 1989a. The Problematik Of the Development of the Third Epoch of Confucian Learning 儒學第三期發展的前景問題. Taibei: Lianjing Press.
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———. 1991a. “The Search for Roots in Industrial East Asia: The Case of the Confucian Revival.” In Martin E. Marty and R. Scott Appleby, eds., Fundamentalisms Observed. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 740–781.
———. 1991b. “Cultural China: The Periphery as the Center.” Daedalus: Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (The Living Tree: The Changing Meaning of Being Chinese Today) 120.2: 1–32. (One of Tu Wei-ming’s most frequently cited texts. He defines cultural China as a field constituted by three interacting symbolic universes, i.e. 1) the societies populated mainly by ethnic Chinese, 2) Chinese communities throughout the world and particularly the diaspora, and 3) non-Chinese individuals who try to understand China intellectually and bring their conceptions of China to their own linguistic communities.)
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———. 1993a. “Confucianism.” In Arvind Sharma, ed., Our Religions: The Seven World Religions Introduced. New York: HarperCollins, 141–227. (This chapter represents one of Tu’s rare attempts at depicting the Confucian tradition comprehensively for the lay reader. The volume presents Confucianism as one of seven world religions.)
———. 1993b. Way, Learning and Politics: Essays on the Confucian Intellectual. Albany: State University of New York Press. (A third collection of essays on Confucianism from classical to modern times originally published between 1982 and 1987, featuring a foreword by Frederick W. Mote and including an important essay on the 20th century Chinese intellectual trajectory leading in Tu Weiming’s view to an ideological crossroads with the possibility of a “creative interaction between Confucian humanism and democratic liberalism in a socialist context.”)
———. 1993c. “Beyond the Enlightenment Mentality.” Bucknell Review 38.2: 19–29.
———. 1994. “Beyond Specialized Philosophy Circles – Approaching and Discussing Rorty 走出專業哲學圈 – 既與談羅蒂.” Contemporary Monthly 當代 (Taiwan) 94: 16–21.
———, ed. 1996a. Confucian Traditions in East Asian Modernity: Exploring Moral Education and Economic Culture in Japan and the Four Mini-Dragons. Harvard: Harvard University Press. (A collection of essays edited by Tu Weiming and originating in a conference devoted to the question whether Confucian ethics has contributed to the rise of industrial East Asia. The volume includes sections on Japan, South Korea and Taiwan as well as Hong Kong, Singapore and overseas Chinese communities.)
———, ed. 1996b. “Beyond the Enlightenment Mentality: A Confucian Perspective on Ethics, Migration, and Global Stewardship.” International Migration Review 30.1: 58–75.
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———, ed. 1998b. “Beyond the Enlightenment Mentality.” In Mary Evelyn Tucker and John Berthrong, eds., Confucianism and Ecology: The Interrelation of Heaven, Earth, and Humans. Cambridge: Harvard University Centre for the Study of World Religions, 3–21. (This essay has been reprinted several times since its original publication. The topic has become one of Tu’s four major on-going research concerns.)
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———, ed. 2000. “Implications of the Rise of ‘Confucian’ East Asia.” Daedalus: Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 129.1: 195–218. (This is Tu’s contribution to the groundbreaking issue of Daedalus on multiple modernities, joining Shmuel N. Eisenstadt, Björn Wittrock, Johann P. Arnason, Nilüfer Göle, Sudipta Kaviraj and others to offer his take on a Confucian modernity.)
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———, ed. 2001b. “Mutual Learning as an Agenda for Social Development.” In Jacques Baudot, ed., Building a World Community. Globalisation and the Common Good. Seattle and London: Royal Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs in association with University of Washington Press, 253–260.
———, ed. 2001c. “The Context of Dialogue: Globalization and Diversity.” In Crossing the Divide: Dialogue among Civilizations. South Orange: School of Diplomacy and International Relations, Seton Hall University, 51–96.
———, ed. 2001d. “Tasan Lecture #1: The Ecological Turn in New Confucian Humanism.” Formerly available online: http://tuweiming.net/activities/other/.
———, ed. 2002a. “Confucian Humanism and the Western Enlightenment.” In Barbara Sundberg Baudot, ed., Candles in the Dark: A New Spirit for a Plural World. Manchester: New Hampshire Institute of Politics at Saint Anselm College, 123–135.
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———, ed. 2004. Interviewed by Ralph Weber at the Harvard-Yenching Institute, 14 September 2004.
———, ed. 2010. “Confucian Encounter with the Enlightenment Mentality of the Modern West.” Oriens Extremus 49: 249–308. (A comprehensive article on the fate of Confucianism based on Tu’s speech at a conference entitled “Confucianism for the 21st Century?” held at the occasion of the 100th anniversary of Sinology in Hamburg.)
———, ed. 2012. “A Spiritual Turn in Philosophy: Rethinking the Global Significance of Confucian Humanism.” Journal of Philosophical Research, Special Supplement 56: Selected Papers from the XXII World Congress of Philosophy, 389–401.
———, ed. 2014. “Multiple Modernities: A Preliminary Inquiry into the Implications of the East Asian Modernity.” In Leonid E. Grinin, Ilya V. Ilyin, and Andrey V. Korotayev, eds., Globalistics and Globalization Studies. Volgograd: ‘Uchitel’ Publishing House, 104–111.
Tu, Weiming, Milan Hejtmanek and Alan Wachman, eds. 1991. The Confucian World Observed: A Contemporary Discussion of Confucian Humanism in East Asia. Honolulu: East-West Center. (Presents the summarized statements made at a workshop on Confucian humanism with the participation of a multidisciplinary and cross-cultural group of roughly 30 scholars.)
Tu, Weiming and Ikeda, Daisaku. 2011. New Horizons in Eastern Humanism: Buddhism, Confucianism and the Quest for Global Peace. London: I.B. Tauris. (This volume contains the English translation of transcribed dialogues between Tu Weiming and the Buddhist philosopher Ikeda Daisaku, first published in Japan and in China in 2007).
Weber, Ralph. 2007. Confucianism in a Pluralistic World: The Political Philosophy of Tu Wei-ming. PhD thesis. University of St. Gallen. (A doctoral dissertation studying Tu Weiming’s texts for his social and political thought).
———. 2015a. “What Is ‘Modernities’ a Plural of? – A Rhetorical Analysis of Some Recent Uses.” In: Sven Trakulhun and Ralph Weber, eds., Delimiting Modernities: Conceptual Challenges and Regional Responses. Lanham: Lexington Books, 25–48.
———. 2015b. “Confucian Political Philosophy for Non-Confucians.” Frontiers of Philosophy in China 10.4: 547–567. (This essay discusses recent literature on Confucian political philosophy in light of how they deal with the fact of pluralism).
———. 2016. “Representing Tradition: An Analysis of Tu Weiming’s Confucianism.” International Communication of Chinese Culture 3.2: 229–260. (This article uses recent discussions in social epistemology for a detailed analysis of how Tu Weiming represents the Confucian tradition and the ways and means he uses to construct that tradition).
———. 2018. “Philosophy, Tu Weiming and Tu Weiming’s ‘The Continuity of Being (1984)’.” In Raji C. Steineck and Ralph Weber, eds., Concepts of Philosophy in Asia and the Islamic World. Vol. 1: China and Japan. Leiden: Brill, 428–456. (This chapter offers a close reading of a seminal text by Tu Weiming in order to understand and describe his conception of philosophy).
Yue, Hua 岳華 and Guan, Dong 關東. 2001. “Tu Weiming and the Modern Transformation of the Confucian Tradition 杜維明與儒家傳統的現代轉化.” In Zhu Hanmin 朱漢民 and Xiao Yongming 肖永明, eds., TuWeiming on the Clash and Dialogue of Civilizations 杜維明文明的衝突與對話. Changsha: Hunan University Press, 196–211. (This text is a reprint of a preface Yue and Guan had written for a 1993 volume on Tu Weiming’s New Confucianism. It gives some general themes of Tu’s works and proposes a division of his writings into different phases).
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Weber, R. (2021). Tu Weiming: The Global Confucian. In: Elstein, D. (eds) Dao Companion to Contemporary Confucian Philosophy. Dao Companions to Chinese Philosophy, vol 15. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56475-9_16
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