The classical Greeks give us a substance ontology grounded in ‘being qua being’ or ‘being per se’ (to on he on) that guarantees a permanent and unchanging subject as the substratum for the human experience. With the combination of eidos and telos as the formal and final cause of independent things such as persons, this ‘substance’ necessarily persists through change. This substratum or essence includes its purpose for being, and is defining of the ‘what-it-means-to-be-a-thing-of-this-kind’ of any particular thing in setting a closed, exclusive boundary and the strict identity necessary for it to be this, and not that.

In the Yijing 易經 or Book of Changes we find a vocabulary that makes explicit cosmological assumptions that are a stark alternative to this substance ontology, and provides the interpretive context for the Confucian canons by locating them within a holistic, organic, and ecological worldview. To provide a meaningful contrast with this fundamental assumption of on or ‘being’ we might borrow the Greek notion of zoe or ‘life’ and create the neologism ‘zoe-tology’ as ‘the art of living’. This cosmology begins from ‘living’ (sheng 生) itself as the motive force behind change, and gives us a world of boundless ‘becomings’: not ‘things’ that are, but ‘events’ that are happening, a contrast between an ontological conception of the human ‘being’ and a process conception of what I will call human ‘becomings’.

One important benefit of the Guodian and Shanghai Museum slips is the new insights they are providing in our understanding of the early intellectual evolution of classical Chinese philosophy. But there is a second important opportunity that the newly recovered documents provide. Beyond what is new in them, these same materials can be used to qualify, corroborate, and reiterate perhaps old but still undervalued insights into the interpretive context within which we construct our understanding of early China. Indeed, our best interpreters of classical Chinese philosophy are explicit in rejecting the idea that Chinese cosmology begins from some independent, transcendent principle and entails the metaphysical reality/appearance distinction and the plethora of dualistic categories that arise from such a worldview. In fact, the recently recovered Guodian materials provide us with both the resources and the occasion to revisit three related cosmological issues: What is distinctive about classical Chinese cosmogony and its notion of origins? What is the Chinese alternative to the assumptions about our own familiar creatio ex nihilo source of meaning? And how is “creativity” expressed in the Chinese philosophical vocabulary?

In recent years China has entered the international human rights debate, consistently making the case for cultural diversity in the formulation of human rights policy. Ames follows this argument of cultural relativism, emphasizing China's cultural differences and critiquing the concept of universal human rights, particularly as presented by Jack Donnelly in his book Universal Human Rights. Discussing the history of universal human rights and Confucian values, Ames asserts that a growing dialogue between China and the United States would benefit China in terms of political and individual rights and the United States in terms of a greater sense of civic virtue.

There is no easy answer to the question: What is the status of Chinese philosophy? On the Chinese side, philosophy is much more than a professional commentary on and the extension of a canonical tradition constituted by philosophical systems and theories. Chinese philosophers have traditionally been scholar-officials whose theoretical reflections have been tempered by practical responsibilities—fully, the daily workings of government and society. “Philosophy” in the contemporary Chinese context, then, despite the avowedly Marxist orientation of the state, continues to range over the relationship between cultural values and the social and political life of the people. Philosophers have been and still are the intellectual leaders of society. Hence, a “state-of-the-art” reflection on Chinese philosophy from an internal Chinese perspective would be primarily practical: a survey of the intellectual discourse as it has driven and shaped recent social, political, and cultural developments.

Since the publication of my review of To acquire wisdom by Julia Ching in BSOAS, XL, 2, 1977, 419–20, my attention has been drawn to the fact that the unusual number of printing errors cannot be laid at the door of the author but are, in fact, exclusively the fault of the printers. This has been acknowledged in writing by the publishers.