Against Individualism
A Confucian Rethinking of the Foundations of Morality, Politics, Family, and Religion
By (author) Henry Rosemont Jr.
Not available to order
Publication date:
25 March 2015Length of book:
226 pagesPublisher
Lexington BooksISBN-13: 9780739199817
The first part of Against Individualism: A Confucian Rethinking of the Foundations of Morality, Politics, Family, and Religion is devoted to showing how and why the vision of human beings as free, independent and autonomous individuals is and always was a mirage that has served liberatory functions in the past, but has now become pernicious for even thinking clearly about, much less achieving social and economic justice, maintaining democracy, or addressing the manifold environmental and other problems facing the world today.
In the second and larger part of the book Rosemont proffers a different vision of being human gleaned from the texts of classical Confucianism, namely, that we are first and foremost interrelated and thus interdependent persons whose uniqueness lies in the multiplicity of roles we each live throughout our lives. This leads to an ethics based on those mutual roles in sharp contrast to individualist moralities, but which nevertheless reflect the facts of our everyday lives very well. The book concludes by exploring briefly a number of implications of this vision for thinking differently about politics, family life, justice, and the development of a human-centered authentic religiousness. This book will be of value to all students and scholars of philosophy, political theory, and Religious, Chinese, and Family Studies, as well as everyone interested in the intersection of morality with their everyday and public lives.
In the second and larger part of the book Rosemont proffers a different vision of being human gleaned from the texts of classical Confucianism, namely, that we are first and foremost interrelated and thus interdependent persons whose uniqueness lies in the multiplicity of roles we each live throughout our lives. This leads to an ethics based on those mutual roles in sharp contrast to individualist moralities, but which nevertheless reflect the facts of our everyday lives very well. The book concludes by exploring briefly a number of implications of this vision for thinking differently about politics, family life, justice, and the development of a human-centered authentic religiousness. This book will be of value to all students and scholars of philosophy, political theory, and Religious, Chinese, and Family Studies, as well as everyone interested in the intersection of morality with their everyday and public lives.
The unique contribution of Henry Rosemont Jr.’s Against Individualism lies not only in criticizing individualism, which has been done by others, but in doing it through comparing individualism with Confucianism…. Rosemont spends three chapters (ch.3-5) on demonstrating, from philosophical, neuro-scientific, social, political and moral angles, that this individualism is fundamentally untenable and unjust, or ‘at best a confused one [idea]’ (57). I found his arguments convincing and clear, but see the following chapters as even more interesting because they provide a genuine theoretical and empirical alternative to individualism in Confucianism…. In sum, this is an insightful and timely book that addresses the main source of many tough problems faced by the modern individual, and brings to them a family-rooted Confucian morality, philosophy, and religion in arts. Some historians and scientists have hoped that Confucianism can help human beings have a brighter future, and this book enhances that hope.