Adapting
A Chinese Philosophy of Action
Seiten
2021
Oxford University Press Inc (Verlag)
978-0-19-757296-2 (ISBN)
Oxford University Press Inc (Verlag)
978-0-19-757296-2 (ISBN)
If you are from the West, it is likely that you normally assume that you are a subject who relates to objects and other subjects through actions that spring purely from your own intentions and will. Chinese philosophers, however, show how mistaken this conception of action is. Philosophy of action in Classical China is radically different from its counterpart in the Western philosophical narrative. While the latter usually assumes we are discrete individual subjects with the ability to act or to effect change, Classical Chinese philosophers theorize that human life is embedded in endless networks of relationships with other entities, phenomena, and socio-material contexts. These relations are primary to the constitution of the person, and hence acting within an early Chinese context is interacting and co-acting along with others, human or nonhuman.
This book is the first monograph dedicated to the exploration and rigorous reconstruction of an extraordinary strategy for efficacious relational action devised by Classical Chinese philosophers, one which attempts to account for the interdependent and embedded character of human agency-what Mercedes Valmisa calls "adapting" or "adaptive agency" (yin) As opposed to more unilateral approaches to action conceptualized in the Classical Chinese corpus, such as forceful and prescriptive agency, adapting requires heightened self- and other-awareness, equanimity, flexibility, creativity, and response. These capacities allow the agent to “co-raise” courses of action ad hoc: unique and temporary solutions to specific, non-permanent, and non-generalizable life problems.
Adapting is one of the world's oldest philosophies of action, and yet it is shockingly new for contemporary audiences, who will find in it an unlikely source of inspiration to cope with our current global problems. This book explores the core conception of adapting both on autochthonous terms and by cross-cultural comparison, drawing on the European and Analytic philosophical traditions as well as on scholarship from other disciplines. Valmisa exemplifies how to build meaningful philosophical theories without treating individual books or putative authors as locations of stable intellectual positions, opening brand-new topics in Chinese and comparative philosophy.
This book is the first monograph dedicated to the exploration and rigorous reconstruction of an extraordinary strategy for efficacious relational action devised by Classical Chinese philosophers, one which attempts to account for the interdependent and embedded character of human agency-what Mercedes Valmisa calls "adapting" or "adaptive agency" (yin) As opposed to more unilateral approaches to action conceptualized in the Classical Chinese corpus, such as forceful and prescriptive agency, adapting requires heightened self- and other-awareness, equanimity, flexibility, creativity, and response. These capacities allow the agent to “co-raise” courses of action ad hoc: unique and temporary solutions to specific, non-permanent, and non-generalizable life problems.
Adapting is one of the world's oldest philosophies of action, and yet it is shockingly new for contemporary audiences, who will find in it an unlikely source of inspiration to cope with our current global problems. This book explores the core conception of adapting both on autochthonous terms and by cross-cultural comparison, drawing on the European and Analytic philosophical traditions as well as on scholarship from other disciplines. Valmisa exemplifies how to build meaningful philosophical theories without treating individual books or putative authors as locations of stable intellectual positions, opening brand-new topics in Chinese and comparative philosophy.
Mercedes Valmisa is Professor of Chinese and Global Philosophies at Gettysburg College. She earned her Ph.D. in Early Chinese Philosophy from Princeton University in 2017 and her M.A. from National Taiwan University in 2011.
Introduction
Chapter 1: What is Adaptive Agency?
Chapter 2: Locating Adaptive Agency
Chapter 3: Strategy and Control
Chapter 4: The Reifying Pattern
Chapter 5: Coping with Uncertainty
Chapter 6: The Unifying Pattern
| Erscheinungsdatum | 31.08.2021 |
|---|---|
| Verlagsort | New York |
| Sprache | englisch |
| Maße | 150 x 229 mm |
| Gewicht | 431 g |
| Themenwelt | Geisteswissenschaften ► Philosophie ► Geschichte der Philosophie |
| Geisteswissenschaften ► Philosophie ► Philosophie der Neuzeit | |
| Geisteswissenschaften ► Religion / Theologie | |
| ISBN-10 | 0-19-757296-0 / 0197572960 |
| ISBN-13 | 978-0-19-757296-2 / 9780197572962 |
| Zustand | Neuware |
| Haben Sie eine Frage zum Produkt? |
Mehr entdecken
aus dem Bereich
aus dem Bereich
die kolonialen Wurzeln der französischen Theorie
Buch | Hardcover (2024)
Matthes & Seitz Berlin (Verlag)
CHF 41,90
oder Das Leben Montaignes in einer Frage und zwanzig Antworten
Buch | Softcover (2023)
C.H.Beck (Verlag)
CHF 25,20
