Suggestions on Confucianism

[Anonymous No.18973883]

What should I read after the Four Classics and Five Books? Is there any chart? Pretty hard coming across suggestions.
You hear a lot about neo-Confucianism and its impact on Asian societies but never mentions of any books written by neo-Confucians. If anyone has any recommendations, please tell me!

[Anonymous No.18973894]

Reflections on Things at Hand, A Neo Confucian Anthology

[Anonymous No.18973926]

Part of the problem is how Westerners have little way to put important events into context. Additionally, the Chinese often did philosophy "piecemeal", which is to say in letters, commentaries, poetry, and in verbal conversations. Remember, the Chinese aren't concerned with abstract intellectualism but the formation of a pragmatic system to be used for very real ends. The result is that you don't end up with nice big treatises where they explain everything in one go.

To that end, you almost have to look at individuals and piece together their collected works (this is already done for you, the reader, by scholars). Two really big thinkers in Neo-Confucianism are Zhu Xi and Wang Yangming.

Zhu Xi was hugely influential on Chinese political philosophy; he's the one that got the Imperial Exams to use the Four Books instead of the I Ching as the principal text of study. Secondly, he introduced the Qi-Li monism to Neo-Confucianism (which is totally not a ripoff of the Buddhist Li-Shi system, no sir, not at all!), essentially creating a Confucian metaphysical tradition where there was none. How does he do this? Why, he turns to the I Ching, of course, and compares it to the Four Books (remember, traditionally, Confucius had a hand in writing the I Ching).

Wang Yangming took Zhu Xi's already monistic thought and made it even more monist (as with Hinduism, "Dualism" has a technical meaning in Neo-Confucianism). He's super important in Chinese epistemology, and for what it's worth, is one of Xi Jinping's most important influences.

In Japan, Motoori Norinaga is the intellectual founder of the East Asian Coprosperity sphere. He's really important to Japanese nationalism as he essentially takes the Chinese Neo-Confucian view of China as a pit into which ontology falls and inverts it, turning Japan into a mountain from which reality and metaphysics flow.

[Anonymous No.18973931]

Feng Youlan

[Anonymous No.18973950]

>>18973926
I spotted a "Selected Works" of Zhu Xi by some Philip J. Ivanhoe, do you have any comment on that?
Wang Yangming sounds mega interesting, is there any book there you could recommend? Ideally a translation
>>18973894
Checking this, thx

[Anonymous No.18974260]

>>18973883
New Confucianism