Expanding Process: Exploring Philosophical and Theological Transformations in China and the West (SUNY series in Chinese Philosophy and Culture) - Softcover

Berthrong, John H.

9780791475164: Expanding Process: Exploring Philosophical and Theological Transformations in China and the West (SUNY series in Chinese Philosophy and Culture)

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0791475166 ISBN 13: 9780791475164

Publisher: State University of New York Press, 2009

Brings Chinese Daoist and Confucian thought into conversation with Western process, pragmatic, and naturalist philosophy and theology.

Expanding Process explores how comparative philosophy expands our understanding of the critical themes of process, change, and transformation. John H. Berthrong examines how notions of process manifest and shape the classical Confucianism of Xunzi, the early medieval Daosim of the Liezi, and Zhu Xi’s Song Dynasty daoxue (Teaching of The Way). Berthrong links these various Chinese views of process and transformation to contemporary debates in the American process, pragmatic, and naturalist philosophical movements. Stressing how our pluralistic world calls for comparing and even appropriating insights from diverse cultural traditions, Berthrong contends that comparative philosophy and theology can broaden the intellectual frontiers and foundations of any serious student of contemporary global thought.

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From the Back Cover:

Expanding Process explores how comparative philosophy expands our understanding of the critical themes of process, change, and transformation. John H. Berthrong examines how notions of process manifest and shape the classical Confucianism of Xunzi, the early medieval Daosim of the Liezi, and Zhu Xi's Song Dynasty daoxue (Teaching of The Way). Berthrong links these various Chinese views of process and transformation to contemporary debates in the American process, pragmatic, and naturalist philosophical movements. Stressing how our pluralistic world calls for comparing and even appropriating insights from diverse cultural traditions, Berthrong contends that comparative philosophy and theology can broaden the intellectual frontiers and foundations of any serious student of contemporary global thought.

"This is one of the best examples of comparative philosophy that I have seen in a very long time. It is an eminently readable exposition that puts Chinese philosophy into a global and contemporaneously relevant context, while also deftly drawing on the very best scholarship on the history of Chinese thought and American philosophy." -- Judith A. Berling, author of Understanding Other Religious Worlds: A Guide for Interreligious Education

"Berthrong aspires not just to compare but also to use each pole of the comparison to reconfigure and reconceptualize the other, which is a much more demanding enterprise." -- John B. Henderson, author of The Construction of Orthodoxy and Heresy: Neo-Confucian, Islamic, Jewish, and Early Christian Patterns

About the Author:

John H. Berthrong is Associate Professor of Comparative Theology at Boston University School of Theology. He is the author of several books, including Concerning Creativity: A Comparison of Chu Hsi, Whitehead, and Neville and All Under Heaven: Transforming Paradigms in Confucian-Christian Dialogue, both also published by SUNY Press.

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