Confucius

289 Pages·2013·2.69 MB·English

by  Tan

Confucius
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Titles in the Bloomsbury Library of Educational Thought Series:
St Th omas Aquinas, Vivian Boland OP Maria Montessori, Marion O’Donnell
Aristotle, Alexander Moseley A. S. Neill, Richard Bailey
St Augustine, Ryan N. S. Topping John Henry Newman, James Arthur and Guy
Pierre Bourdieu, Michael James Grenfell Nicholls
Jerome Bruner, David R. Olson Robert Owen, Robert A. Davis and Frank
O’Hagan
Confucius, Charlene Tan
R. S. Peters, Stefaan E. Cuypers and Christopher
John Dewey, Richard Pring
Martin
Michel Foucault, Lynn Fendler
Jean Piaget, Richard Kohler
Paulo Freire, Daniel Schugurensky
Plato, Robin Barrow
John Holt, Roland Meighan
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Jürgen Oelkers
John Locke, Alexander Moseley Rudolf Steiner, Heiner Ullrich
Loris Malaguzzi and the Reggio Emilia Leo Tolstoy, Daniel Moulin
Experience, Kathy Hall, Mary Horgan, Anna Lev Vygotsky, René van der Veer
Ridgway, Rosaleen Murphy, Maura Cunneen E. G. West, James Tooley
and Denice Cunningham Mary Wollstonecraft, Susan Laird
Series Editor: Richard Bailey is a writer and researcher in education and sport. A former teacher
in both primary and secondary schools and a teacher trainer, he has been Professor at a number of
leading Universities in the UK. He now lives and works in Germany.
Members of the Advisory Board
Robin Barrow, Professor of Philosophy, Gary McCulloch, Head of Department of
Simon Fraser University, Canada. Humanities and Social Sciences at the Institute
of Education, University of London, UK.
Peter Gronn, Professor of Education, Head of
Jürgen Oelkers, Professor of Education at the
Faculty, University of Cambridge, UK.
University of Zurich, Switzerland.
Kathy Hall, Professor of Education and
Richard Pring, Emeritus Professor at the
Head of the School of Education at
Department of Education, and Emeritus
University College Cork, Ireland.
Fellow of Green Templeton College,
Stephen Heyneman, Professor of International University of Oxford, UK.
Educational Policy at the College of Education Harvey Siegel, Professor and Chair of the
and Human Development, Vanderbilt Department of Philosophy, University of
University, USA. Miami, USA.
Yung-Shi Lin, President Emeritus and Richard Smith, Professor of Education,
Professor, Department of Education and University of Durham, UK.
Institute of Graduate Studies, Taipei Zhou Zuoyu, Professor, Faculty of Education,
Municipal University of Education, Beijing Normal University, People’s Republic
Republic of China, Taiwan. of China.
Confucius
CHARLENE TAN
B Cloonomtinsubuumry LLiibbrraarryy ooff EEdduuccaattiioonnaall ThTh oouugghhtt
Series Editor: Richard Bailey
Volume 20
LONDON • NEW DELHI • NEW YORK • SYDNEY
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Bloomsbury Academic
An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
50 Bedford Square 1385 Broadway
London New York
WC1B 3DP NY 10018
UK USA
www.bloomsbury.com
First published 2013 by Continuum International Publishing Group
Paperback edition fi rst published 2014 by Bloomsbury Academic
© Charlene Tan, 2013
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted
in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,
recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior
permission in writing from the publishers.
Charlene Tan has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988,
to be identifi ed as Authors of this work.
No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on
or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be
accepted by Bloomsbury Academic or the author.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN: PB: 978-1-4725-1498-1

Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
Design by Newgen Knowledge Works (P) Ltd., Chennai, India
To my husband Lim Pin (twb)
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Contents
Series Editor’s Preface i x
Foreword x i
Acknowledgements x v
Introduction 1
Part 1 Intellectual Biography
1 Confucius’ Life, Personality and Infl uence 17
Part 2 Critical Exposition of Confucius’ Work
2 Th e Concept of L i 3 1
3 Th e Concepts of D ao and He 51
4 Th e Concept of R en 7 4
5 Th e Concept of J unzi 1 03
6 Th e Concepts of X ue , W en and Si 1 23
Part 3 Th e Relevance of Confucius’ Work Today
7 Confucius and Twenty-First-Century Education 191
8 Conclusion 2 19
References 2 41
Index 2 59
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Series Editor’s Preface
Most of the books in this series take the form of what might be called
‘philosophical biography’ in the area of educational studies. Th eir shared
purpose, simply put, is to understand the thoughts and practices of cer-
tain educational philosophers.
Straightaway, this project is confronted with some potential diffi cul-
ties. As even a cursory reading of the list of thinkers whose names pro-
vide the titles within the series will testify, many are not ordinarily
considered philosophers. Some can be more sensibly located in other
areas of the academy – sociology, economics, psychology and so on.
Others seem unsuited to the label because their contribution to educa-
tion is primarily in terms of its practice. In the narrow, disciplinary sense,
then, many of the subjects of this series are clearly not philosophers. In
another sense, however, and this is the sense employed by Jean-Paul
Sartre in his own attempts in the genre, a philosophical biography can
be written about anyone whose thought is important and interesting. In
this sense, I suggest, each of the thinkers acknowledged in this series are
philosophers.
Implicit within the BClooonmtisnbuuurym LLiibbrraarryy ooff EEdduuccaattiioonnaall ThTh oouugghhtt is
an assertion that theories and the practices that follow from them (and
equally, practices and the theories that lie implicitly within them) are
vitally important for education. By gathering together the ideas of some
of the most important and interesting educational thinkers, from the
Ancient Greeks to contemporary scholars, the series has the ambitious
task of providing an accessible yet authoritative resource for a genera-
tion of students and practitioners.
It will always be possible to question the list of key thinkers that are
represented in this series. Some may question the inclusion of certain
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