Toward a Confucian Notion of Human Dignity

This essay discusses the possibility of conceptualizing a Confucian notion of human dignity. Previous discussions on this topic have been either historical or reconstructive, the former discussing mainly how Confucianism considers dignity and the latter exploring the possibility of conceptualizing a Confucian human dignity as an alternative to Kant’s Menschenwürde. This essay focuses on mainly the latter effort. Specifically, I critically evaluate professor Ni Peimin’s celebrated attempt at reconstructing Confucian dignity in the context of Kant’s Menschenwürde, arguing that Ni’s work offers us novel and original insights on human dignity but fails to be coherent in several senses. On the other hand, Kant’s Menschenwürde may well lack motivation in particular circumstances, and gives no credit to moral efforts. Building upon this criticism, I further Ni’s discussion of the “four hearts” and propose a revised version of Confucian dignity.     

Approaching Laozi.Comparing a Syncretic Reading to a Synthetic One

Is Laozi a syncretic text whose primary body of ideas were cobbled together from multiple and various sources,none of which can reasonably be identified as Daoist,or is it a synthetic text whose ideas emerged from a single source that for all intents embodies the core elements of a tradition that meets the standards of inclusion for a tradition of early Daoism? The present work examines the key points of Hongkyung Kim's sophisticated account of Laozi's origins as a syncretic text.It then goes on to present the key points of what would have to be involved in its original circulations as a synthetic text.It concludes by suggesting a middle ground that is able to explain why an originally synthetic Laozi is all too easily read by modern scholars as a syncretic text.