Abstract
This chapter is devoted to the introduction of several key specific conceptualizations of the human self that defined the image of man in the Chinese intellectual tradition. It addresses the notion of the so-called relational person and then proceeds to a clarification of the traditional Chinese understanding of the relationship between the empirical and the transcendental Self, which manifested itself in the traditional binary category of the so-called “inner sage and external ruler.” On this basis, the chapter moves to a detailed explanation of the notions of the transformative and integrative self, which are typical of the Daoist tradition of thought.
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Notes
- 1.
Modern New Confucians (Xiandai xin rujia 现代新儒家) are (for the time being) divided into three generations. The pioneers of this movement, i.e., the first generation, are considered by contemporary sinologists to be all the major Chinese philosophers who, in the first half of the twentieth century, sought to actualize the central methodological and theoretical aspects of the Chinese tradition, especially the premodern philosophy that emerged after the Neo-Confucian theoretical renewal. In addition to Xiong Shili and Feng Youlan, who are certainly the most prominent representatives of this movement, Liang Shuming, Zhang Junmai, and He Lin are also worth mentioning in this context. The second generation, who emigrated from the newly established communist People’s Republic of China after 1949, produced their works in Hong Kong and Taiwan in the second half of the twentieth century. Its members were Mou Zongsan, Fang Dongmei, Xu Fuguan, and Tang Junyi. Most of the members of the third group live and work in the USA and include Cheng Chung-Ying, Tu Wei-ming, Yu Ying-shi, and Liu Shu-hsien.
- 2.
This is particularly the case with the theories of Mou Zongsan and Tang Junyi.
- 3.
The concepts of xinti and xingti are concepts that developed in the context of the Neo-Confucianism of the Song and Ming dynasties, whose heirs were the Modern New Confucians.
- 4.
For a more detailed explanation of non-substantial cosmology as it developed in the Chinese tradition of ideas and of Chinese philosophy as a discourse of the absence of substance, see Rošker (2021b, 89–94).
- 5.
The interpretations of the two stories below, i.e., the story of the butterfly’s dream and the story of Zhuangzi’s encounter with the skull, are largely taken from the relevant parts of my book Finding the Way 1 (see Rošker, 2005).
- 6.
The interpretation of the hair story is based on my analysis published in the article “Yang Zhu: The Enfant Terrible of Philosophical Taoism and His Concept of Privatism” (see Rošker, 2017b).
- 7.
According to Li, this includes classes, organizations, nations, states, etc.
- 8.
In his essay “A Survey of Kant’s Philosophy and the Construction of Subjectality,” Li pointed out that he himself sees the main contribution of Kant’s philosophy precisely in his treatment of the notion of the subject and its a priori system, rather than in his pure epistemology, which is concerned with the thing-in-itself (Li, 1994, 461).
- 9.
子曰:「唯女子與小人為難養也，近之則不孫，遠之則怨.
- 10.
As is well known, the relationship between men and women or the (superior) husband and (subordinated) wife was one of the five fundamental, rigidly hierarchical relationships within these teachings. During the Han Dynasty, that is, during the period of the consolidation of a new social system which was based upon a linkage of political and economic power, the position of women was still relatively strong. It was not until the Song Dynasty and the second reform of Confucianism that the prevailing morality began to exclude women from education and to cripple their feet with binding.
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Rošker, J.S. (2023). The Human Being as the Core of Humanism. In: Humanism in Trans-civilizational Perspectives. Emerging Globalities and Civilizational Perspectives. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-37518-7_4
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