Good Confucianism book (pdf) - Department of Physics

238 Notesof charges is that it is so easily harnessed by politicians to lend respectabilityto their tyrannical ways. … Philosophy usually loses its moral worth whendrafted for dubious political purpose and Confucianism, which has much thatis humanist, deserves better than that. ’ However, political leaders in mainlandChina and Singapore are prone to using Confucianism selectively to supporttheir own desire for power, and in the process give Confucianism generallya bad name ” ; Tamney, Modernization , 80. John Makeham argues that theChinese government ’ s promotion of Chinese cultural or traditional values isnot actually closely related to New Confucianism. New Confucianism, he says,is a separate phenomenon. The equation of traditional culture = Chinese - ness= Confucianism is to a large extent a response to perceived threats from theWest and a way to define all these things as different from the West. For asummary, see Makeham, Lost , 342f. He goes on to say that “ Academic discourseon ruxue [New Confucianism] in China and Taiwan bears little evidenceof a sustained or robust philosophical creativity in ruxue philosophy ” (344).38 For a description of the criticism of Zheng Kezhong see Lee Seung - hwan,Topography 55; for a description of the criticism by Zhu Riayao, see ibid., 56.39 The Beijing Olympics in 2008 made no mention of Mao Zedong, but leanedheavily on the figure of Confucius, particularly in the opening ceremonies.Notes to Chapter 131 “ Confucian discourse has been couched under the same rubric of ‘ Confucianism ’which inadvertently produces a vast range of different meanings for thisone term. … Although expressed by the identical signifier Confucianism, themeaning of Confucian discourse cannot be the same; it is carried out by differentagents in different contexts. What really matters is ‘ who ’ wants to select,distribute, and use ‘ what part of the tradition for which purpose ’ ” ; Lee, Seung -hwan Topography, ix – xi.2 See Makeham, Lost , 2.3 See Tu Wei - ming et al., eds., The Confucian World Observed: a ContemporaryDiscussion of Confucian Humanism in East Asia (Honolulu: University ofHawai ’ i Press, 1992 ), 17.4 For Tu Wei - ming see chapter 12. Robert Neville is Dean of the Boston School ofTheology, see his Boston Confucianism (Albany: SUNY, 2000 ). See also JohnBerthrong, “ Boston Confucianism: the Third Wave of Global Confucianism, ”Journal of Ecumenical Studies Winter/Spring, 2003 .5 For a fascinating and lively discussion of Confucianism in present - day China,its relationship to society, and the possibilities for its development, see DanielA. Bell, China ’ s New Confucianism: Politics and Everyday Life in a ChangingSociety (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008 ).6 Lee Kuan Yew, The Economist , April 27, 1994, 5. Quoted in Richard Madsen,Democracy ’ s Dharma: Religious Renaissance and Political Developments inTaiwan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007), xx.7 Along with this is a view that one can still frequently encounter, namely thatthe jury system is a terrible idea. It is much better, elitists argue, to be judged