Lead Them with Virtue (eBook)

A Confucian Alternative to War

Kurtis Hagen (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2021
192 Seiten
Lexington Books (Verlag)
978-1-7936-3971-4 (ISBN)

Infos

Recent scholarship has framed early Confucians as just war theorists with relatively permissive criteria for the just use of violence. Lead Them with Virtue: A Confucian Alternative to War makes the case that such interpretations conflict with what Mencius and Xunzi were trying to do. Kurtis Hagen argues that they both strove to prevent war by contrasting the situations of their day with idealized versions of the semi-mythic activities of sage-kings, which represent appropriate use of the military. These stories imply support for the offensive use of the military only when actual war-with its characteristic horrors-would not ensue. Following this logic, military interventions are just only in circumstances that do not actually occur. Confucians advocate, instead, a long-term strategy of ameliorating unjust circumstances by leveraging the credibility and influence that stems from consistently practicing genuinely benevolent governance. Passages that imply pacifistic readings of these texts are routinely dismissed by scholars as too naive to be taken seriously. Hagen argues that the relatively pacifistic position implied by these passages is not in fact naive, but is rather reasonable, and indeed should be supported, at least by contemporary Confucians.

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 24.8.2021
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Philosophie ► Allgemeines / Lexika
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Religion / Theologie
• Themenwelt: Naturwissenschaften
• Themenwelt: Sozialwissenschaften ► Politik / Verwaltung
• Themenwelt: Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie ► Spezielle Soziologien
• Themenwelt: Technik
• Schlagworte: American foreign policy • Asian philosophy • Chinese philosophy • Classical Confucianism • Comparative Philosophy • confucian ethics • Confucianism • Dao • ethics • humanitarian intervention • International Relations • Just War Theory • kongzi • Mencius • Mengzi • Pacifism • Peace and Conflict Studies • Peace studies • Political Philosophy • Ren • Social and political philosophy • Xunzi • Xun Zi
• ISBN-10: 1-7936-3971-X / 179363971X
• ISBN-13: 978-1-7936-3971-4 / 9781793639714