Just Awakening
Yogācāra Social Philosophy in Modern China
Seiten
2025
Columbia University Press (Verlag)
978-0-231-21603-6 (ISBN)
Columbia University Press (Verlag)
978-0-231-21603-6 (ISBN)
- Noch nicht erschienen (ca. März 2025)
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Just Awakening uncovers a forgotten philosophy of social democracy inspired by Yogācāra—an ancient, nondualistic Buddhist philosophy—arguing that it offers new vocabularies with which to reconceptualize equality and freedom.
Just Awakening uncovers a forgotten philosophy of social democracy inspired by Yogācāra, an ancient, nondualistic Buddhist philosophy that claims everything in the perceptible cosmos is mere consciousness and consists of multiple karmically connected yet bounded lifeworlds. This Yogācāra social philosophy emerged in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries among Chinese intellectuals who struggled against the violent Social Darwinist logic of the survival of the fittest. Its proponents were convinced that the root cause of crisis in both China and the West was epistemic—an unexamined faith in one common, objective world and a subject-object divide. This dualistic paradigm, in their view, had dire consequences, including moral egoism, competition for material wealth, and racial war. Yogācāra insights about plurality, interdependence, and intersubjectivity, however, had the capacity to awaken the world from these deadly dreams.
Jessica X. Zu reconstructs this account of modern Yogācāra philosophy, arguing that it offers new vocabularies with which to reconceptualize equality and freedom. Yogācāra thinking, she shows, diffracts the illusions of individual identity, social categories, and material wealth into aggregated, recurring karmic processes. It then guides the reassembly of a complex society through nonhierarchical, noncoercive, and collaborative actions, sustained by new behavior patterns and modes of thought. Demonstrating why Chinese Buddhist social philosophy offers powerful resources for social justice and liberation today, Just Awakening invites readers to think with modern Yogācāra philosophers about other ways of building egalitarian futures.
Just Awakening uncovers a forgotten philosophy of social democracy inspired by Yogācāra, an ancient, nondualistic Buddhist philosophy that claims everything in the perceptible cosmos is mere consciousness and consists of multiple karmically connected yet bounded lifeworlds. This Yogācāra social philosophy emerged in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries among Chinese intellectuals who struggled against the violent Social Darwinist logic of the survival of the fittest. Its proponents were convinced that the root cause of crisis in both China and the West was epistemic—an unexamined faith in one common, objective world and a subject-object divide. This dualistic paradigm, in their view, had dire consequences, including moral egoism, competition for material wealth, and racial war. Yogācāra insights about plurality, interdependence, and intersubjectivity, however, had the capacity to awaken the world from these deadly dreams.
Jessica X. Zu reconstructs this account of modern Yogācāra philosophy, arguing that it offers new vocabularies with which to reconceptualize equality and freedom. Yogācāra thinking, she shows, diffracts the illusions of individual identity, social categories, and material wealth into aggregated, recurring karmic processes. It then guides the reassembly of a complex society through nonhierarchical, noncoercive, and collaborative actions, sustained by new behavior patterns and modes of thought. Demonstrating why Chinese Buddhist social philosophy offers powerful resources for social justice and liberation today, Just Awakening invites readers to think with modern Yogācāra philosophers about other ways of building egalitarian futures.
Jessica X. Zu is assistant professor of religion and East Asian languages and cultures at the University of Southern California, Dornsife.
Preface
Introduction: Changing Referents
Part I: When Dharma Meets Darwin
1. Lü Cheng and the Birth of Yogācāra Social Philosophy
2. Karma, Evolutionism, and Buddhist Social Consciousness
3. Karma, Science, and a Just Society
Part II. Liberation Buddhology
4. Buddhability as Humanity
5. Bodhisattva of Democracy
6. Scholarship for Salvation
Not a Coda: Bending the Arc Together
Notes
Bibliography
Index
| Erscheint lt. Verlag | 18.3.2025 |
|---|---|
| Verlagsort | New York |
| Sprache | englisch |
| Maße | 156 x 235 mm |
| Themenwelt | Geisteswissenschaften ► Philosophie ► Östliche Philosophie |
| Geisteswissenschaften ► Religion / Theologie ► Buddhismus | |
| ISBN-10 | 0-231-21603-3 / 0231216033 |
| ISBN-13 | 978-0-231-21603-6 / 9780231216036 |
| Zustand | Neuware |
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