Centrality and Commonality: An Essay on Chung-yung (Monograph of the Society for Asian and Comparative Philosophy) - Softcover

Chung-yuung, commonly known as the Doctrine of the Mean, is a central document in the Confucian tradition. For more than two thousand years, as an important chapter in one of the Five Classics. Although the significance of Chung-yung is widely acknowledges, however, few systematic attempts have been made to analyze the text as a whole. Through a symbolic analysis of the three core ideas in the text - chun-tzu (superior man, or profound person), cheng (politics), and ch'eng (sincerity) - I hope to demonstrate that such familiar dichotomies as the tension between self and society and the conflict between ethics and religion are alien to Chung-yung's spiritual orientation. Chung-yung's reflections on the "profound person" who is engaged in a continual process toward an ever-deepening subjectivity, on society as a fiduciary community, rather than as an adversary system, and on sincerity as a primary concept in the construction of a moral metaphysics will suggest an exceedingly interesting approach to some of the perennial human concerns.