1st Edition

Moral Exemplars in the Analects The Good Person is That

By Amy Olberding Copyright 2012
242 Pages
by Routledge

252 Pages
by Routledge

242 Pages
by Routledge

In this study, Olberding proposes a new theoretical model for reading the Analects . Her thesis is that the moral sensibility of the text derives from an effort to conceptually capture and articulate the features seen in exemplars, exemplars that are identified and admired pre-theoretically and thus prior to any conceptual criteria for virtue. Put simply, Olberding proposes an "origins myth" in... Read more

Acknowledgements  1. Introduction  I. Theory  2. An Origins Myth for the Analects  3. The Analects’ Silences  4. Exemplarist Elements in the Analects  II. People  5. A Total Exemplar: Confucius  6. A Partial Exemplar: Zilu  7. A Partial Exemplar: Zigong  8. Conclusion  Bibliography  Index   Index Locorum

Biography

Amy Olberding is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Oklahoma. She is the author of several journal articles in early Chinese philosophy and the co-editor, with Philip J. Ivanhoe, of Mortality in Traditional Chinese Thought.

'In this elegantly written book on Confucius and his Analects, Amy Olberding does a splendid job of explaining how the narrative depictions of Confucius in diverse circumstances collected in the Analects make a necessary complement to the more theoretically or conceptually oriented components of the book.' – Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews