Chinese Metaphysics and its Problems

Chenyang Li is Associate Professor of Philosophy and the Founding Director of the Philosophy program at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. His publications include The Confucian Philosophy of Harmony (2013), The Tao Encounters the West: Explorations in Comparative Philosophy (1999), The East Asian Challenge for Democracy: Political Meritocracy in Comparative Perspective (edited with Daniel Bell, Cambridge, 2013), and Moral Cultivation and Confucian Character: Engaging Joel J. Kupperman (edited with Peimin Ni, 2014). Franklin Perkins is Professor of Philosophy at DePaul University, Chicago, and Visiting Professor in Philosophy at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. His publications include Leibniz and China: A Commerce of Light (Cambridge, 2004), Leibniz: A Guide for the Perplexed (2007), and Heaven and Earth Are Not Humane: The Problem of Evil in Classical Chinese Philosophy (2014).

• Introduction Chenyang Li and Franklin Perkins; 1. Yinyang narrative of reality: Chinese metaphysical thinking Robin R. Wang; 2. In defense of Chinese qi-naturalism JeeLoo Liu; 3. What is a thing (wu 物)? The problem of individuation in early Chinese metaphysics Franklin Perkins; 4. The Mohist conception of reality Chris Fraser; 5. Reading the Zhongyong 'metaphysically' Roger T. Ames; 6. Logos and Dao: conceptions of reality in Heraclitus and Laozi Jiyuan Yu; 7. Constructions of reality: metaphysics in the ritual traditions of classical China Michael Puett; 8. Concepts of reality in Chinese Mahāyāna Buddhism Hans-Rudolf Kantor; 9. Being and events: Huayan Buddhism's concept of event and Whitehead's ontological principle Vincent Shen; 10. Harmony as substance: Zhang Zai's metaphysics of polar relations Brook Ziporyn; 11. A lexicography of Zhu Xi's metaphysics John Berthrong; 12. Xiong Shili's understanding of the relationship between the ontological and the phenomenal John Makeham; Works cited; Index.

'As the publisher's blurb states, this is 'the first English-language anthology devoted to Chinese metaphysics'. With its twelve meaty chapters and a helpful introduction it is an extremely solid and welcome addition to the rapidly growing body of literature on comparative philosophy … Anyone with an interest in Chinese or comparative philosophy, with or without prior exposure to the Chinese side, will learn much from it.' Joseph A. Adler, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews