The paper follows and elaborates on a line of argument in my book The Confucian Political Imagination, which was published by Palgrave Macmillan this summer. I do not address the main argument of the book, but sum up a line of thought that has gradually taken form since I began to read Confucian texts. I explain what I learned about reading Confucianism from my teacher Tu Weiming, and why I could not follow the philosophical turn in American Confucian studies. I point to the importance of reading in an emphatic sense, and argue that the philosophical approaches to Confucian texts often leads to an impoverished reading of these texts. Then I provide my own suggestions towards a definition Confucian discourse. I briefly point to the historical reasons Confucian discourse is not philosophy, and finally I ask if all this really matters.
THE COLUMBIA SOCIETY FOR COMPARATIVE PHILOSOPHY
Welcomes:
Eske Møllgaard (University of Rhode Island)
With a response from:
Andrew Lambert (College of Staten Island, CUNY)