Roger T. Ames

Self as person in Asian theory and practice

Instructor’s Course Description: This course examines the nature of the self through readings of classical and contemporary sources. Topics include: the Western construction of soul; nonWestern notions of self and no-self; the unconscious and consciousness; relation of mind and body; self and society; and self and nature. The approach will be historical and comparative in nature and will map out the construction of the Western concept of self and counter-pose that conception with Indian, Chinese, and Japanese versions as well as bringing those traditions into counterpoint with each other.

Chinese Philosophy: A Philosophical Essay on the “State-of-the-Art”

Etat actuel de la philosophie chinoise, etude de ses differentes etapes historique, sociologique et culturelle

Family Reverence (xiao 孝) in the Analects: Confucian Role Ethics and the Dynamics of Intergenerational Transmission

We begin this chapter on family reverence (xiao 孝) from the assumption that within the interpretive framework of the Analects, associated, interpersonal living is taken to be an uncontested, empirical fact. Every person lives and every event takes place within a vital natural, social, and cultural context. Association being a fact, our different roles lived within family and society are nothing more than the stipulation of specific modes of associated living: mothers and grandsons, teachers and neighbors. While we must take associated living as a simple fact, however, the consummate conduct that comes to inspire and to produce virtuosity in the roles lived in family, community, and the cultural narrative broadly—what we have called Confucian role ethics—is an achievement; it is what we are able with imagination to make of the fact of association.

On How to Construct a Confucian Democracy for Modern Times (or Why Democratic Practices Must Not Lose Sight of the Ideal)

In his Confucian Perfectionism, Joseph Chan observes that Confucianism from its inception has suffered from a severe discrepancy between its strong and resilient regulative ideals and a persistent pattern of traditionally weak social and governmental institutions and their practices. To overcome this historical disparity, Chan argues that contemporary Confucians should draw upon Western liberal institutions to the extent that they can provide effective measures of governance. At the same time these modern democratic resources should be modified in such a way and to the extent needed to keep alive the compelling spirit of the Confucian ideal. While I, too, want to advocate for a Confucian democracy, I think this effort has to be guided by a philosophically clear understanding of the several “ideas” or “ideals” that are at issue: “Confucianism,” “Perfectionism,” and “Democracy.”

The Eighth East-West Philosophers' Conference, "Technology and Cultural Values: On the Edge of the Third Millennium"

Recent history makes clear that the quantum leaps being made in technology are the leading edge of a groundswell of paradigm shifts taking place in science, politics, economics, social institutions, and the expression of cultural values. Indeed it is the simultaneity and interdependence of these changes occurring in every dimension of human experience and endeavor that makes the present so historically distinctive. The essays gathered here give voice to perspectives on the always improvised relationship between technology and cultural values from Africa, the Americas, Asia, Australia, Europe, and the Pacific.