Repository | Book | Chapter
(2018) The Confucian political imagination, Dordrecht, Springer.
This chapter describes the salient features of Confucian discourse and then turns to a paradigmatic example of this discourse found in a dialogue in Mencius (born around 380 BCE). In this dialogue Mencius submits the king to the Confucian political imaginary; once the king, through the dialogue, has accepted this imaginary he is entirely at the mercy of Mencius, who is then able to speak the one good word (yi shanyan) that reveals the king's humanity, which legitimizes imperial expansionism. It is argued that Confucian discourse is not philosophy in the Western sense but a search for the one word that in context will change the entire situation and reveal the normative pattern of the world.
Publication details
DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-74899-3_3
Full citation:
Møllgaard, E. (2018). The discourse, in The Confucian political imagination, Dordrecht, Springer, pp. 49-76.
This document is unfortunately not available for download at the moment.