Confucian Questions To Augustine

In Confucian Questions to Augustine, Park compares the works of Confucius and Mencius with those of Saint Augustine. His purpose in so doing is to show Confucian Augustinianism as a new theological perspective on Confucian-Christian ethics and Augustinianism by discovering analogies and differences in their respective understandings of the formation of moral self, particularly the acquisition of virtue, and how they believe this leads to happiness. Using the method of inter-textual reasoning, and assuming continuity between Augustine’s early and later works, he compares Confucius and Mencius’s xue, si, li, and yue with Augustine’s moral learning, contemplation, sacrament, and music, respectively. Confucian Augustinianism shows how to enjoy God, follow Jesus, and live in the Holy Spirit.

This volume focuses on ‘fittingness’ as an ethical-aesthetical idea, and in particular examines how the concept is beneficial for environmental ethics. It brings together an innovative set of contributions to argue that fittingness is a significant but under-investigated facet of human ethical deliberation with both ethical and aesthetic dimensions. In widely diverse matters – from architecture to table manners – individuals and communities make decisions based on ‘fittingness’, also expressed in related terms, such as appropriateness, prudence, temperance, and mutuality. In the realm of environmental ethics, fittingness denotes a relation between conscious embodied persons and their habitats and is of relevance to judgements about how humans shape, and take up with, the non-human environment, and hence to ethical decisions about the development and use of the environment and non-human creatures. As such, fittingness can be of great benefit in reframing human relationships to the non-human, stimulating a way of living in the world that is fitting to the preservation of its fruitfulness, goodness, beauty, and truth.

The moral dimensions of how we conduct business affect all of our lives in ways big and small, from the prevention of environmental devastation to the policing of unfair trading practices, from arguments over minimum wage rates to those over how government contracts are handed out. Yet for as deep and complex a field as business ethics is, it has remained relatively isolated from the larger, global history of moral philosophy. This book aims to bridge that gap, reaching deep into the past and traveling the globe to reinvigorate and deepen the basis of business ethics. Spanning the history of western philosophy as well as looking toward classical Chinese thought and medieval Islamic philosophy, this volume provides business ethicists a unified source of clear, accurate, and compelling accounts of how the ideas of foundational thinkers—from Aristotle to Friedrich Hayek to Amartya Sen—relate to wealth, commerce, and markets. The essays illuminate perspectives that have often been ignored or forgotten, informing discussion in fresh and often unexpected ways. In doing so, the authors not only throw into relief common misunderstandings and misappropriations often endemic to business ethics but also set forth rich moments of contention as well as novel ways of approaching complex ethical problems. Ultimately, this volume provides a bedrock of moral thought that will move business ethics beyond the ever-changing opinions of headline-driven debate.

Is it possible to be a Confucian without being East Asian, as so many philosophers have been Platonists without being Greek? Strangely enough, many scholars would answer in the negative, citing the inextricable connection between Confucianism and East Asian culture. Boston Confucianism argues to the contrary, maintaining that Confucianism can be important to the contemporary global conversation of philosophy and should not be confined to an East Asian context. It promotes a multicultural philosophy of culture and makes a contribution to Confucian-Christian dialogue, showing that the relations among the world's great civilizations today is not a "clash," as Samuel Huntington has argued, but an entanglement whose roots are worth sorting and whose contemporary mutual developments are worth promoting.

Dr. Huang's complete exploration of the whole Confucian-Christian dialogue history is the first systematic analysis ever comparing the central religious doctrinal aspects of Christianity with those in Confucianism. His explanation of the idea of transcendence is new and unique. It is a must for anyone interested in the Sino-Western cultural encounter.

The three methods of doing mission, namely conquista, accommodation, kenosis need to be seen not so much as historical events that took place in a particular time and space, but rather as deeply engraved mind structures and personal attitudes as we confront many of the modern time issues such as mass poverty and its relationship to the churches, interreligious and ecumenical dialogue, relationship with Islam, Catholic education in public institutions, moral and ethical problems regarding the treatment of embryos for eugenic purposes, issues concerning the end of life, social debate on alternative lifestyles and the role of women in ecclesial institutions, to mention but a few.

This 1934 collection of lectures considers the tensions between ancient philosophy and the New Culture Movement in the Chinese Republic.