Great Readings: Chinese Philosophy
A curated collection of field-defining monographs, seminal essays, and transformative paradigm shifts in Chinese and comparative philosophy.
Reading Index
- Foundations & Classical Reconstructions (Pre-Qin & Han)
- Medieval Ontology, Xuanxue, & Buddhist Dialectics (Wei-Jin to Tang)
- Neo-Confucian Metaphysics & Moral Psychology (Song to Qing)
- Seminal Essays & Interpretive Breakthroughs
- Modern Reconstructions, Role Ethics, & Contemporary Political Theory
Foundations & Classical Reconstructions (Pre-Qin & Han)
Landmark analytical and historical works that transformed modern understandings of ancient Chinese disputation, cosmological emergence, and semantic theory.
| Title | Author(s) |
|---|---|
| Disputers of the Tao: Philosophical Argument in Ancient China | A. C. Graham |
| The World of Thought in Ancient China | Benjamin I. Schwartz |
| Thinking Through Confucius | David L. Hall & Roger T. Ames |
| A Daoist Theory of Chinese Thought: A Philosophical Interpretation | Chad Hansen |
| To Become a God: Cosmology, Sacrifice, and Self-Divinization in Early China | Michael Puett |
Medieval Ontology, Xuanxue, & Buddhist Dialectics (Wei-Jin to Tang)
Field-defining philosophical investigations into post-Han ontology, Chinese Madhyamaka, Tiantai dialectics, Huayan mereology, and Chan deconstruction.
| Title | Author(s) |
|---|---|
| The Penumbra Unbound: The Neo-Taoist Philosophy of Guo Xiang | Brook Ziporyn |
| Being and Ambiguity: Philosophical Experiments with Tiantai Buddhism | Brook Ziporyn |
| Hua-Yen Buddhism: The Jewel Net of Indra | Francis H. Cook |
| Buddhist Phenomenology: A Philosophical Investigation of Yogacara Buddhism and the Ch'eng Wei-shih Lun | Dan Lusthaus |
| Seeing through Zen: Encounter, Transformation, and Genealogy in Chinese Chan Buddhism | John R. McRae |
Neo-Confucian Metaphysics & Moral Psychology (Song to Qing)
Foundational works analyzing the theoretical synthesis of Song, Yuan, Ming, and early Qing thinkers.
| Title | Author(s) |
|---|---|
| Sagehood: The Contemporary Significance of Neo-Confucian Philosophy | Stephen C. Angle |
| Confucian Moral Self-Cultivation | Philip J. Ivanhoe |
| Waiting for the Dawn: A Plan for the Prince (Mingyi Daifanglu) | Huang Zongxi (trans. Wm. Theodore de Bary) |
| Centrality and Commonality: An Essay on Confucian Religiousness | Tu Wei-ming |
| The Trouble with Confucianism | Wm. Theodore de Bary |
Seminal Essays & Interpretive Breakthroughs
Influential short monographs, essay collections, and breakthrough papers that altered modern scholarly discourse.
| Title | Author(s) |
|---|---|
| Confucius: The Secular as Sacred | Herbert Fingarette |
| Confucian Thought: Selfhood as Creative Transformation | Tu Wei-ming |
| Mencius and Early Chinese Thought | Kwong-loi Shun |
| Essays on Skepticism, Relativism, and Ethics in the Zhuangzi | Paul Kjellberg & Philip J. Ivanhoe (eds.) |
| Ritual and Deference: Extending Chinese Philosophy in a Comparative Context | David L. Hall & Roger T. Ames |
Modern Reconstructions, Role Ethics, & Contemporary Political Theory
Major twentieth-century syntheses and twenty-first-century applied political and ethical frameworks.
| Title | Author(s) |
|---|---|
| Nineteen Lectures on Chinese Philosophy and World Philosophy | Mou Zongsan (trans. Jason Cliver & Bryan W. Van Norden) |
| Confucian Role Ethics: A Vocabulary | Roger T. Ames |
| Confucian Perfectionism: A Deliberative Stance | Joseph Chan |
| The China Model: Political Meritocracy and the Limits of Democracy | Daniel A. Bell |
| Contemporary Confucian Political Philosophy: Toward Progressive Confucianism | Stephen C. Angle |