Boston Confucianism: Portable Tradition in the Late-Modern World

by Robert Cummings Neville

Book Overview

Robert Cummings Neville is Professor of Philosophy, Religion, and Theology at Boston University and Dean of the School of Theology. He is past president of the International Society for Chinese Philosophy, the American Academy of Religion, and the Metaphysical Society of America. Neville is the author and editor of many books, including most recently The Recovery of Philosophy in America: Essays in Honor of John Edwin Smith, also published...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0791447189
• ISBN13: 9780791447185
• Release Date: September 2000
• Publisher: State University of New York Press
• Length: 294 Pages
• Weight: 0.80 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.9" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Intellectually interesting, but lacking in practical applications

I very much enjoyed this book. What I liked best was being introduced to the work of Dr. Tu Wei-Ming. The references gave me many works to study, which I appreciated. I became very interested in how an American could apply Confucianism to his or her life, but this book is not about practical applications of Confucianism. For that I recommend another book: "Achieve Lasting Happiness, Timeless Secrets to Transform Your Life" by Robert Canright.

Can you be a Christian and a Confucian?

The author is attempting to define a form of Confucianism for non-Chinese. One of the main problems is translating the Confucian notion of ritual/etiquette into Western ideas. Neville relies on Fingarette's study, "Confucius The Secular as Sacred" to do this: basically by using a much wider concept of ritual, referring to all the *signs* in our relationships: signs of friendship, love, commitment... it goes beyond courtesy, to a definition of roles in relationships, although these can be very flexible.Next Neville, who is a Christian, attempts to reconcile Confucianism and Christianity, and to do this he looks for some form of transcendence (an absolute beyond the perceptible phenomena) in Confucianism to match the transcendent Christian God: Hall & Ames have shown that such a transcendence does not exist in early Confucianism and I don't think that Neville succeeds in proving that they are wrong. He does point though to the Neo-Confucian concept of "principle" that is transcendent since it structures all things and man. This then could be a bridge towards Christianity.Well the great thinkers (Neville, Hall & Ames) have given us a green light: we can be Western Confucians!Thomas