Confucian Pragmatism as the Art of Contextualizing Personal Experience and World - Hardcover

In this far-reaching and nuanced work, Wen Haiming juxtaposes Chinese philosophy with the American traditions of pragmatic naturalism and process philosophy....this work is simultaneously a piece of critical scholarship and an original contribution to Chinese and comparative philosophy.... In short, the moment to inaugurate a "newborn Chinese philosophical narrative" has arrived (219). This book serves as both an invitation and a rich, suggestive beginning to that project. * Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy, (Published By Springe * Haiming Wen has provided a lucid and perceptive discussion of the creative dimension of the Confucian tradition by correlating American pragmatism and Chinese thinking. The book is an outstanding contribuiton to comparative philosophy. -- Jiyuan Yu, State University of New York at Buffalo The publication of Haiming Wen's new book, Confucian Pragmatism as the Art of Contextualizing Personal Experience and the World, is a major contribution to Confucian scholarship....the book brings an entirely fresh and promising new look to Confucian material.

This engaging work of comparative philosophy brings together American pragmatism and Chinese philosophy in a way that generates new interpretations of Chinese philosophy and a fresh perspective on issues in process philosophy. Through an analysis of key terms, Haiming Wen argues that Chinese philosophical terminology is not simply a retrospective language that through a process of stipulation promises us knowledge of an existing world, but is also an open, prospective vocabulary that through productive associations allows philosophers to realize a desired world. Relying on this productive power of Chinese terminology, Wen introduces a new term: 'Confucian pragmatism.' Wen convincingly shows that although there is much that distinguishes American pragmatism from Confucian philosophy, there is enough conceptual overlap to make Confucian pragmatism a viable and exciting field of study.