Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-7bb8b95d7b-dvmhs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-10-05T15:31:46.248Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

4 - A Decentralized Republic of Virtue

True Way Learning in the Southern Song Period and Beyond

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 March 2020

Melissa S. Williams
Affiliation:
University of Toronto
Get access

Summary

Youngmin Kim’s scholarly engagement with the history of Chinese political thought has led him to grapple with a problem that is central to the project of deparochializing political theory: how to delineate the boundaries of a thought tradition such that it is tractable as an object of study and deepened understanding. Rather than looking to geographic regions or broad intellectual traditions to provide the requisite boundaries for units of comparison, Kim turns to the self-identification of individuals as bearers of “a collective identity that they themselves construct.” In this chapter, Kim argues that the tradition of True Way Learning (TWL), a branch of Confucian tradition that became dominant in mid- to late imperial China, constitutes a sufficiently well-bounded community of thought and practice to serve as a useful comparator with similarly bounded traditions in other historical contexts. The chapter develops a comparison between TWL and the Kantian and Madisonian republican traditions in Euro-American thought and holds out the possibility that TWL might still serve as an ideational resource for twenty-first-century Chinese reformers, just as Enlightenment republicanism has inspired reimaginings of anti-despotic political order among American and European thinkers.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×