china | Pandaemonium

HISTORY, MORALITY AND THE CLASH OF CIVILIZATIONS

April 19, 2015 by Kenan Malik

The Quest for a Moral Compass is now out in paperback. And, to accompany the new edition. I am publishing a number of extracts from the book. This extract, from Chapter 19, ‘Confucianism, Communism and the Clash of Civilizations’, sets out many of the themes of the book against the background of the changing balance of power between China and the West. You can buy The Quest for a Moral Compass in most bookshops, through Amazon or from my Pandaemonium bookstore. From […]

Categories: History of moral thought, Philosophy & Ethics • Tags: china, chinese philosophy, clash of civilizations, confucianism, herder, history of moral thought, jiang qing, martin jacques, morality, romanticism, samuel huntington, universalism, west

A SNIPPET FROM THE QUEST: MO TZU, LOST IN HISTORY

September 14, 2014 by Kenan Malik

The North American edition of The Quest for a Moral Compass is published this week by Melville House. I am in New York and Toronto to talk about it. While I am away, I am publishing on Pandaemonium short extracts from the book. This first snippet on Monday was from Chapter 1, and discussed Aeschylus’ Oresteia. This second snippet is from Chapter 6 and explores the ideas of Mo Tzu, a Chinese philosopher lost in history but whose significance is […]

Categories: History, History of moral thought, Philosophy & Ethics • Tags: china, chinese philosophy, confucianism, history of moral thought, mo tzu, mohism, universalism, utilitarianism

A BOOK IN PROGRESS [PART 21]: COMMUNISM & CONFUCIANISM

March 27, 2013 by Kenan Malik

This is the last extract from my book in progress on the history of moral thought. The book is now, in fact, no longer in progress, as I have completed it. This might be the final extract, but it is not from the final chapter, but the penultimate one, Chapter 19 (I have already run an extract from chapter 20). Chapter 19 explores moral debate in modern China, particularly after the fall of the dynastic system, and the creation, first […]

Categories: History of moral thought • Tags: china, chinese philosophy, communism, confucianism, democracy, equality, ethics, jiang qing, mao

A BOOK IN PROGRESS [PART 20]: TWO CHINESE PHILOSOPHERS, TWO HISTORICAL FATES

February 28, 2013 by Kenan Malik

This is the penultimate extract from my almost-finished book on the history of moral thought. This is from chapter 6 – another of the chapters I am publishing out of sync – which explores early Chinese philosophy. This extract is about two philosophers, one of whom is well known as China’s most famous thinker – Kongzi, or Confucius as he is known in the West – and the other who has been almost forgotten, even in China, but who should not be […]

Categories: History of moral thought • Tags: china, chinese philosophy, confucianism, equality, ethics, history of moral thought, kong zu, universalism, utilitarianism

ORIENTAL ENLIGHTENMENT

February 10, 2013 by Kenan Malik

A book that I wish I had read many years ago. JJ Clarke’s Oriental Enlightenment is a superb study of ‘The encounter between Asian and Western thought’, as the subtitle puts it. It is primarily a historical study of Western perceptions of Chinese and Indian cultures and philosophies. Any exploration of the role of ‘Eastern’ thought in the Western intellectual tradition necessarily lies in the shadow of Edward Said’s 1978 work Orientalism, which has effectively set the terms of the […]

Categories: History • Tags: china, edward said, history of ideas, india, modernity, orientalism