Thursday, June 28, 2007

Who or What is a New Confucian?

A New Confucian, in my view, is someone who believes the West can learn from Confucianism. Here is a Wikipedia article on New Confucianism. John Berthron, Robert Cummings Neville, and Tu Wei-Ming are considered New Confucians.

John Berthrong wrote a book, All Under Heaven, Transforming Paradigms in Confucian-Christian Dialogue where he discusses academic Theology along with Confucianism.

Robert Cummings Neville wrote Boston Confuciansim: Portable Tradition in the Late-Modern World where he expresses the thought that one can be a Confucian and a Christian. Neville's book introduced me to the work of Tu Wei-ming.

So a New Confucian believes Confucianism has much to offer the whole world and would probably be a classical or Neo-Confucian.

One American intepretation of Confucianism is called the Timeless Way, which has a website and a blog. I would say the Timeless Way is a sub-set of New Confucianism.

Robert

The Sixteen Word Message of the Mind

In my studies I ran across a reference to a "sixteen word message of the mind." The book would not tell me what those words were.

I found the words and posted those words at this link.

Robert