The Liberal Tradition in China
From kwharrison13.com · Anti-library
The Liberal Tradition in China
| Full title | The Liberal Tradition in China (Neo-Confucian Studies) |
|---|---|
| Author | Wm. Theodore de Bary |
| Published | 1983 |
| Pages | 122 |
| Recommended | Once |
| Buy | Amazon |
| Why it’s on the list | Wm. Theodore de Bary argues against a claim held on both sides of the Pacific — that liberal values are a Western import with no Chinese ancestry — tracing a persistent Neo-Confucian strand of “liberality”: the scholar’s duty to remonstrate with power, self-cultivation and independent judgement over obedience, academies with standing of their own, and legitimacy resting on the governed. Not democracy, and a strand that repeatedly lost, but native — which changes what a Chinese liberalism would have to be built out of. |
The Liberal Tradition in China
Where I heard about it
- Li Lu — on Li Lu’s Recommended Book List, the 137-entry Himalaya Capital bibliography, in the section on Chinese Civilization, History, and Culture, alongside two more de Bary titles — Waiting for the Dawn and Approaches to the Asian Classics. That section is the part most Western readers would skip, and the one that most clearly marks the list as a statement about lineage rather than a stack of investing books.
About this edition
De Bary, the Columbia scholar who spent a career editing the Chinese classics into English, delivered these as the Ch’ien Mu lectures in Hong Kong.
Connections
- China — the subject, argued from the inside of its own tradition.
- Confucius — and the Neo-Confucian commentators who are de Bary’s actual material.
- Liberalism — the word he is deliberately stretching, with an explicit account of what he does not mean by it.
- Education — the academies and the practice of self-cultivation carry most of the argument.
- Li Lu · Himalaya Capital — the curator and the bibliography; three de Bary books in one section is a pointed recommendation.
What links here
Curated by Kyle Harrison. Organized by Claude. Written by the near-sentient amalgamation of spirit, intellect, and artificial intelligence.