Origins of Moral-Political Philosophy in Early China

Jiang always succeeds in providing interesting examples to make his point. It will attract nonacademic but well-informed readers as well as intelligent undergraduates who love Chinese history. It should be read by graduate students who intend to become specialists in Chinese philosophy and pre-imperial China. More important, Origins of Moral-Political Philosophy in Early China promises to be a valuable resource for those teaching courses that cover to various degrees pre-imperial Chinese thought, politics, and culture at both undergraduate and graduate levels. Instructors teaching survey courses on China or East Asia can refer to the basic information and interesting anecdotes contained in the book to introduce essential ancient Chinese texts and their main ideas. * Hung-Yok Ip, Oregon State University, H-Buddhism *
A distinct feature of this book is synthesizing Sinological studies into its philosophical interpretation. The author acutely recognizes the regretful gap between Sinology and the study of Chinese philosophy. In this book, the comprehensive Sinological references and intimate engagements with contemporary scholarship (particularly in English) of Chinese philosophy are admirable. * Fan He, Dao *
A grand and well argued history of early Chinese philosophy. * Taisu Zhang, Yale Law School *
In this very important book, Tao Jiang provides a dynamic model of the development of moral political philosophy in early China (ca. 551â221 BCE), which embodies a new approach to thinking about freedom in complicated socio-political realities. It convincingly demonstrates that thinkers of early China are important for philosophical studies today not only because they cover the themes that remain fundamental in contemporary debates but also because their argumentations came out of intellectual exchanges that were no less robust than their 'Western' counterparts. * British Journal for the History of Philosophy *
Jiang's book as a whole is a brilliant work on early Chinese philosophy that reflects on big issues from fresh perspectives. I would strongly recommend it to anyone who is interested in pre-Qin thoughts. * Zemian Zheng, Journal of Chinese Philosophy (JCP) *
Tao Jiang has provided a coherent and sweeping narrative of the development of moral and political philosophy in the classical period of Chinese philosophy. He integrates many plausible insights gleaned from sinology and philosophy to argue provocatively that the classical period can be understood in terms of a struggle to deal with conflicts between the values of humaneness (pertaining to the personal and familial realms) and of justice (pertaining to the political realm). This book is highly recommended both to specialists and to those with a more general interest in Chinese moral and political philosophy. * David Wong, Duke University *
Tao Jiang in this hugely intelligent monograph provides his readers with an interpretive context twice. First, his project of rehearsing the story of the origins of Chinese moral-political philosophy is located within a state-of-the-art account of the politics of the Western academy and the best efforts of its Sinologists and philosophers to make sense of the complex textual narrative of pre-Qin China in all of its parts. Again, appealing to a cluster of seminal themes—humaneness, justice, and personal freedom—he recounts the way in which different philosophical voices advocated for their own disparate and competing models of structuring and construing personal, familial, and political relations within the overarching context of what are fundamentally different valorizations of the notion of Heaven. * Roger T. Ames, Peking University *
Jiang ranges over the entire foundational period of Chinese philosophy with effortless erudition, unfailing intellectual sympathy, and, above all, a brilliantly economical conception that shines a uniquely revealing and integrating light on all the major figures and schools of thought. The result is that rare kind of book which has the potential to change the way Chinese philosophy is viewed and practiced, and has all the scholarly and philosophical attributes that should make it a classic in due course. * Jiwei Ci, The University of Hong Kong, and author of Democracy in China: The Coming Crisis *