Drawing on the core values of western civilization, the author refines the counterparts in Chinese civilization, summarized as four core principles: duty before freedom, obedience before rights, community before individual, and harmony before conflict. Focusing on guoxue or Sinology as the basis of his approach, the author provides detailed explanations of traditional Chinese values. Recent scholars have addressed the concept of guoxue since the modern age, sorting through it and piecing it together, which has produced an extremely abundant range of information. However, given that the concepts and theories involved have been left largely unanalyzed, this book develops a theoretical treatment of them in several important respects. First, it analyzes the mindset of guoxue, examining the dominant ideas and values of the era from which the term “guoxue” arose, focusing on its connection to early changes and trends in society and culture, and distinguishing three key phases of development. Past scholars mainly had in mind the range of objects studied in guoxue when defining it, and what this book underscores is the meaning of guoxue as a modern body of research. Secondly, it assesses several phases in the modern evolution of the body of guoxue research from the beginning to the end of the 20th century, i.e., ending with the later phase of the National Heritage movement. Third and lastly, the book explores the various main modes of modern guoxue, which correspond step by step with the evolutionary phases of guoxue research.

Donald MacLean takes us through the 11th chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews. He shows what faith is and what it looks like in action. He draws out the theological and practical significance of the lives of Old Testament heroes of the faith, from Abel to Sarah to Joseph. This book will support and motivate today's believers as they too walk on towards the heavenly country.

The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Religion is an indispensable guide and reference source to the major themes, movements, debates and topics in philosophy of religion. A team of renowned international contributors provide sixty-five accessible entries organized into nine clear parts: philosophical issues in world religions key figures in philosophy of religion religious diversity the theistic conception of God arguments for the existence of God arguments against the existence of God philosophical theology christian theism recent topics in philosophy of religion. Covering key world religions including Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam, and key figures such as Augustine, Aquinas and Kierkegaard, the book explores the central topics in theism such as the ontological, cosmological and teleological arguments for God's existence. Three final parts consider Catholicism, Protestantism, Eastern orthodoxy and current debates including phenomenology, reformed epistemology, religious experience, and religion and science. This is essential reading for anyone interested in philosophy, religion and related disciplines.

Beyond Oneness and Difference considers the development of one of the key concepts of Chinese intellectual history, Li. A grasp of the strange history of this term and its seemingly conflicting implications—as oneness and differentiation, as the knowable and as what transcends knowledge, as the good and as the transcendence of good and bad, as order and as omnipresence—raises questions about the most basic building blocks of our thinking. This exploration began in the book's companion volume, Ironies of Oneness and Difference, which detailed how formative Confucian and Daoist thinkers approached and demarcated concepts of coherence, order, and value, identifying both ironic and non-ironic trends in the elaboration of these core ideas. In the present volume, Brook Ziporyn goes on to examine the implications of Li as they develop in Neo-Daoist metaphysics and in Chinese Buddhism, ultimately becoming foundational to Song and Ming dynasty Neo-Confucianism, the orthodox ideology of late imperial China. Ziporyn's interrogation goes beyond analysis to reveal the unsuspected range of human thinking on these most fundamental categories of ontology, metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1856.

This collection of seventeen essays by James R. Hightower and Florence Chia-ying Yeh contains three chapters on shih poetry, ten chapters on Sung tz'u, and four chapters on the works of Wang Kuo-wei. It includes ten previously unpublished works, including Hightower's now classic work on T'ao Ch'ien and Yeh's studies of Subg tz'u, as well as seven important additions to the literature on Chinese poetry. The essays treat individual poets, particular poetic techniques (for example, allusion), and general issues of period style and poetry criticism. The previoulsy published items have been updated to include the Chinese texts of all poems presented in translation. Although authored separately by Professors Hightower and Yeh, the essays presented here are the result of theor thirty years of collaboration in working on Chinese poetry. Through close readings of individual texts, the two authors explicate the stylistic and psychological components of the work of the poets they study and present compelling interpretations of their poems.