Confucianism and Its Critics

Catalog description

This course confronts the changing historical phenomenon we call “Confucianism” on its own terms, as represented by its advocates, as well as from the perspective of its interlocutors and critics. It is an opportunity to become familiar not only with the Confucian canon and its main commentarial traditions, which undergirded education in East Asia into the nineteenth century, but also with the ways in which these ideas were rejected, adjusted, and reconfigured in early Daoist discussions, Neo-Confucian debates with Buddhists, and modern disputes over their socioeconomic, political, and/or gender impact. Readings are drawn from primary Chinese, Korean, and Japanese texts in translation, and from modern interpretations of Confucianism and its legacy. The course format is primarily discussion and short lecture. No prerequisites. Counts for concentration credit in East Asian Studies and Religious Studies.