The Useless Tree

Confucius/Confucianism

  • Legal v. Moral

         This story came across the news wires today: Judge Dismisses Lawsuit Against Rumsfeld WASHINGTON — Former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld cannot be tried on allegations of torture in overseas military prisons, a federal judge said Tuesday in… Continue reading

  • Humane Treatment of Animals

        An op-ed in today’s NYT discusses the issue of humane treatment of animals, especially farm animals destined for slaughter and human consumption.  The author, Nicolette Hahn Niman, draws upon her personal experience to make the key point: As… Continue reading

  • President Giuliani? Confucius Would Say “No”

         Rudy Giuliani’s personal life – especially his very public second divorce – is getting a lot of attention: Larry Sabato, a political scientist at the University of Virginia, said that a messy personal life can raise questions about… Continue reading

  • Flexible Family Values

         A good op-ed in today’s Washington Post gets at the ways in which globalized modernity (or modernized globalization) undermines traditional family structures and engenders new social practices.  The author, Harold Meyerson, focuses on the divergent experiences of different… Continue reading

  • Yu Dan’s Errors

         It seems we have a bit of a controversy on our hands.  Yu Dan, the scholar who I praised for her popularizing efforts to bring ancient Chinese thought to a wider audience, is being attacked.  Critics say she… Continue reading

  • Lei Feng as Confucius

        Danwei has a great post today about Lei Feng.  For those of you new to Chinese revolutionary propaganda, Lei Feng was a fellow who was said to have served in the PLA in the early 1960’s.  He died… Continue reading

  • What She Said

        I have mentioned professor Yu Dan before.  She is a media scholar at Beijing Normal University who has published a very popular book in China about the modern applications of the Analects.  She has apparently now done some… Continue reading

  • China Daily: Confucianism Without Marriage

        My most recent China Daily commentary is up.  You can find it here.  For regular readers of The Useless Tree, you will notice that it is an amalgam of several past posts about how modern Confucianism might relate… Continue reading

  • Why Put Off Democracy?

          Premier Wen Jiabao wrote an article that has attracted some attention: The Communist Party cautioned China’s increasingly impatient reformers and intellectuals Tuesday that political liberalization and democracy are still a long way off despite the rapid pace of… Continue reading

  • Why Modern Confucianism Must Embrace Gender Equality

       The gender bias usually associated with Confucianism, at least in its institutionalized traditional social orthopraxy, can be understood, in a modern context, to be inconsistent with its highest virtue of Humanity.  Quite simply, on its own terms, Confucianism should… Continue reading