New Life for Old Ideas: Chinese Philosophy in the Contemporary World: A Festschrift in Honour of Donald J. Munro

Over five decades, Donald J. Munro has been one of the most important voices in sinological philosophy. Among other accomplishments, his seminal book The Concept of Man in Early China influenced a generation of scholars. His rapprochement with contemporary cognitive and evolutionary science helped bolster the insights of Chinese philosophers and set the standard for similar explorations today.In this festschrift volume, students of Munro and scholars influenced by him celebrate Munro’s body of work in articles that extend his legacy, exploring their topics as varied as the ethics of Zhuangzi’s autotelicity, the teleology of nature in Zhu Xi, and family love in Confucianism and Christianity. They also reflect on Munro’s mentorship and his direct intellectual influence. Through their breadth, analytical excellence, and philosophical insight, the articles in this volume exemplify the spirit of intellectual inquiry that marked Donald Munro’s career as scholar and teacher.~~~~~~~~“Munro was unstinting with his praise and encouragement of all my forays into maverick topics and along almost heretical lines of thought about Chinese philosophy. His hallmark as a teacher was the absence of an official ideology and an open and welcoming tolerance to differences of opinion.”—Chad Hansen, Department of Philosophy, The University of Hong Kong“Munro was more than an intellectual mentor. He has been an unfailing source of wisdom, inspiration, and support.”—Robert Eno, Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, Indiana University Yanming An is Professor of Chinese and Philosophy at Clemson University. The academic fields in which he has worked include classical Confucianism and Daoism, the influence of Buddhism on the formation of Neo-Confucianism, and comparative philosophy. He is the author of The Idea of Cheng (Sincerity/Reality) in the History of Chinese Philosophy and the Chinese translator of Wilhelm Dilthey’s The Formation of the Historical World in the Human Sciences. He has published extensively in both Chinese and English, in original writing and in translation.Brian Bruya is Professor of Philosophy at Eastern Michigan University and Center Associate at the University of Michigan’s Lieberthal-Rogel Center for Chinese Studies. His work focuses on bringing insights from Chinese philosophy into contemporary action theory, with implications for the fields of psychology, aesthetics, ethics, and education. His other edited volumes are The Philosophical Challenge from China and Effortless Attention: A New Perspective in the Cognitive Science of Attention and Action. Read more