This article focuses on a method of moral self-cultivation advocated by the Chinese Neo-Confucian Zhu Xi: deep reading. To Zhu Xi, reading is not only an intellectual activity of learning knowledge, but also a spiritual exercise. Through meticulous, thorough, and unbiased reading, people can gradually cultivate their minds to have three virtues,…

How do people acquire modesty? A simple answer is: if people see that modesty is a worthy trait, they will incorporate it into their character. However, sometimes the knowledge that one is modest would undermine one's modesty. So, Driver claims that the modest person must not know his merits. If we are to accept Driver's claim, it would be…

In this article, the "Bild" or image of the sculptor used by Plotinus and adapted by his Christian follower Meister Eckhart forms the basis of a reflection on the religious or otherworldly dimension in ethics (as opposed to a reductionist or functionalist conception of ethics with its focus on human happiness in the sense of worldly…

In this article, I present a model of four dimensions for the idea of learning in the classical Confucian perspective. This model is intended to capture the most essential four aspects of learning which explain why self-cultivation of a human person toward an end of self-fulfillment and social transformation of humanity is possible. I shall also…

The contribution focuses on Neo-Confucian texts as collected by Zhu Xi (?? 1130-1200) and Lü Zuqian (1137-1181) and is a look from the "outside", from the perspective of German theories of Bildung ("self-cultivation"). It aims at demonstrating that among other insights that today's readers may gather from Neo-Confucian…

Few concepts in the German tradition of human studies--the so-called "Geisteswissenschaften"--have had the capacity to birth such intense expectations and hopes as the concept of "Bildung". There is general agreement that the concept of "Bildung" includes both an objective and a subjective component. The first refers to "culture" in its broadest…