Humanism in East Asian Confucian Contexts

評《東亞儒家脈絡中的人文精神》

There are very few scholars in the world today capable of writing informed and sophisticated work on East Asian Confucianism as found in its many expressions through history and across the cultures of China, Korea, and Japan, and none who can do so with the authority and insight of Professor Huang Chunchieh. Humanism in East Asian Confucian Contexts collects, refines, and extends a set of essays and themes representing Huang's research in recent years and focuses these through the lens of seeking to define a distinctive East Asian Confucian form of humanism. One of the greatest virtues of this work is Huang's ability to paint in both broad strokes and fine detail: he makes and defends large claims about the nature of East Asian Confucianism and how it differs from other forms of humanism, but he also provides precise and elegant detail that both offers evidence for and elaborates upon the larger claims he makes. In presenting his case, Huang draws upon a magisterial command of original sources and secondary literature in Chinese, Korean, and Japanese as well as secondary sources in English. While he pays careful attention to historical detail and offers a number of fascinating observations about the nature of East Asian historical writing, this book is a synthetic and constructive piece of scholarship: he fashions a particular conception of what East Asian Confucian humanism is or can be.