Max Weber as a Researcher of Confucian Ethics

Max Weber Programme

Authors like Francis Fukuyama or Robert Putnam claim that modern societies suffer from a decline of trust. On the other hand political scientists like Margaret Levi or Susan Stokes and sociologists like Karen Cook contend that as nice as trust might be, we can easily do without it. Especially in political life, distrust, vigilance and scepticism seem to be healthier and more fruitful than trust...

Holding an Aristotelian Mirror to Confucian Ethics?

It is an honor to be part of this book symposium on YU Jiyuan’s splendid book. The best way of repaying the honor, I believe, is to engage actively and critically with the issues Yu has raised. However, in this essay I will only be able to discuss selected aspects of this extremely rich, ambitious, erudite, and inspiring book. I shall focus on three of its most impressive achievements. The book...

Dao, Harmony and Personhood: Towards a Confucian Ethics of Technology

A closer look at the theories and questions in philosophy of technology and ethics of technology shows the absence and marginality of non-Western philosophical traditions in the discussions. Although, increasingly, some philosophers have sought to introduce non-Western philosophical traditions into the debates, there are few systematic attempts to construct and articulate general accounts of et...

From Max Weber to Public Sociology

Growing up in a political as well as an intellectual environment, Max Weber not only sought to comprehend the world but also to change it. Arguably, he took Karl Marx’s 11th. Thesis on Feuerbach that “philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point, however, is to change it,” far more seriously than its author. Marx, after all, did not reflect, in any systematic fashion...

“Of What Use Are the Odes?― Cognitive Science, Virtue Ethics, and Early Confucian Ethics