A Toolbox Perspective on Chinese-Self

DOI

10.2991/assehr.k.210519.120How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Chinese-self, Confucianism, Neo-Confucianism, Role-relations, Self-Determination Theory, Attributional Theory, Fung Yu-lan, Recognition, Resonance

Abstract

Chinese self-understanding is one of the major themes with the rising of Neo-Confucianism. After Zhu Xi and Wang Yangming, many generations of Confucian scholars have proposed different models concerning the topic. They challenge, develop from, contradict each other, and sometimes with minor consensus; their approaches occasionally intend to solve the issue metaphysically while sacrifice their practicality. In this paper, it will firstly identify the problems of the model proposed by the currently most famous role-relational school. This model, on the one hand, due to the unpopularity of Confucianism in Post-modern China, suffers from a practical predicament; on the other hand, since it heavily relies on moral exemplary and intuition, the method of being a role-bearing person is vague. The two types of role-dilemma are examples of the symptoms caused by the above obscurity. To diagnose these issues, it will adopt motivational theories in psychology to point out their pathological dynamics. The Self-Determination theory and the attributional theory might delineate two illustrations, both cognitively and emotively, on how the Chinese-self gets stuck in cold principles thus loses its creativity. Therefore, in the Third part of this paper, it will propose a toolbox approach to combine several recognized models on Chinese-self since the revival of neo-Confucianism: the rational concept of Li in Zhu Xi’s theory; the sentimental Xin in Wang Yangming’s doctrine; the focus-field relation from Roger Ames’ terminology and the genealogical self in Wang Qingjie’s reconstruction. To unify them harmoniously, it will review Fung Yu-lan’s two types of mythology, the positive method and the negative method, on Chinese philosophy, and indicates its metaphysical limits in his four spheres. To ameliorate his idea, this paper suggests a dialectic solely within the ethical or interpersonal sphere through his two methods, by which two rules on the formation of the Chinese-self are the natural results: one is on a cognitive aspect; another is on an emotive aspect. The guiding lines of them are from the previous concept of Li and Xin; the dynamics of them is through the focus-field interaction; and the boundary of them is demonstrated by the analogy of genealogy on Chinese-characters.

Copyright

© 2021, the Authors. Published by Atlantis Press.

Open Access

This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).

Download article (PDF)

TY  - CONF
AU  - Yumeng Tong
PY  - 2021
DA  - 2021/05/20
TI  - A Toolbox Perspective on Chinese-Self
BT  - Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Humanities and Social Science Research (ICHSSR 2021)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 610
EP  - 617
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/assehr.k.210519.120
DO  - 10.2991/assehr.k.210519.120
ID  - Tong2021
ER  -