Confucius/Confucianism
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Why lie?
The typhoon that hit Fujian province last month was likely much worse than originally reported by the Chinese government: Clearly, this fishing village and others near the mouth of a bay on China’s southeast coast suffered catastrophic damage… Continue reading
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The Rui’an Microcosm
About three weeks ago a high school teacher in China, Ms. Dai Haijing, was found dead. She was determined, by local officials, to have committed suicide. Her students found this unbelievable and they started asking questions and demonstrating,… Continue reading
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How Modern Can Confucius Be?
A rather ambivalent editorial in the People’s Daily: Needless to say, Confucius is the most attractive symbol in Chinese traditional culture. But when a rapidly growing China is trying to build a new image and engage in greater… Continue reading
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Technology does not Solve our Ethical Dilemmas
It is widely reported that a new type of brain scan has detected mental awareness in a women who had been diagnosed as being in a "persistent vegetative state:" According to all the tests, the young woman was… Continue reading
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Confucius to Bush: Speak Less Please
Bush gives a big speech yesterday, telling us that torture is not really torture, and that one long-time captive in our secret jails is a "big clever fish" in global terrorist networks, when, it seems, he is merely… Continue reading
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Family History
A good post over at Crooked Timber: Harry Brighouse summarizes and critiques a paper by David Vellman (PDF!) on the genetic basis of parenthood and children’s identity. Vellman, according to Brighouse (I have only started the ful 22… Continue reading
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Mao is Dead – Again
Education officials in Shanghai are downgrading the Mao myth in the high school curriculum: When high school students in Shanghai crack their history textbooks this fall they may be in for a surprise. The new standard world history… Continue reading
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Edmund Burke channels Confucius
I am reading Kwame Anthony Appiah’s book Cosmopolitanism. It raises many good questions, though I am not sure it provides as clear a set of answers as I had hoped. In any event, I just came across this… Continue reading
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This is Not what Confucius had in mind!
A story from the BBC (original Xinhua story here): China acts on funeral strippers Five people have been detained in China for running striptease send-offs at funerals, state media say. The once-common events are held to boost the… Continue reading
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The Best Way to Care for the Aged: Put them to Work?
Two articles in People’s Daily raise some interesting questions when read together. First, we have "China expects communities to take more care of elderly people," which tells us: China is encouraging communities to provide services for… Continue reading
The Useless Tree 