Work · East Asian Philosophy
Confucian Thought: Selfhood as Creative Transformation
Essays on the Confucian self as a centre of relationships rather than an isolated individual, transformed through learning in widening circles from family to the cosmos.
Introduction
This collection of essays, published in 1985, brings together Tu Weiming’s studies of the Confucian idea of the self. The self, he argues, is not an isolated individual but a centre of relationships, and self-cultivation is a “creative transformation” that extends from the body through family and community to humanity and heaven. The essays discuss the Analects, Mencius, the Doctrine of the Mean and Neo-Confucian thinkers, and compare Confucian with Western ideas of the person. The book became a standard reference for the interpretation of Confucianism as an ethics of relational selfhood.
Connections
Builds on
- Analects (Lunyu)c. 450 BCE · Confucius
- Neo-Confucian Thought in Action: Wang Yang-ming’s Youth (1472–1509)1976 · Tu Weiming
More works by Tu Weiming
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