Book Review: Roger T. Ames and Peter D. Hershock, eds., Confucianisms for a Changing World Cultural Order

At the threshold of the 21st century, East Asian societies began to change the existing schemes of progress: the balance of economic and political power shifted from the Euro-American to the Asian region. This reversal brought to the forefront numerous problems related to the transformation of material and ideational foundations that not only determine the development of Asian societies, but are also relevant for international relations and intercultural dialogues on the global level. We have entered a period in which non-Western cultures are no longer merely the subjugated receivers of technologies, ideas and political systems derived from “Western civilizations,” but have become important actors in the shaping and developing of global history. Confucianism, which originated in ancient China, belongs to the ideational common threads and shared spiritual legacies which connect East Asian regions to the broader cohesive culture. It is a vital and ever-changing product of the long-lasting cultural exchanges in the region. Hence, it is by no means an abstract, monolithic system, but an inherently diversified, yet coherent and continuously evolving set of various intellectual traditions based upon a common foundation of specifically East Asian humanism. Therefore, one should not consider Confucianism as a solid and uniform model of thought and social norms. Instead, we can understand it as a manifold treasury of diverse social, philosophical and axiological resources that should be denoted in a plural form as Confucianisms.