Geir Sigurosson offers a reconsideration of li, often translated as "ritual" or "ritual propriety," one of the most controversial concepts in Confucian philosophy. Strong associations with the Zhou period during which Confucius lived have put this concept at odds with modernity's emphasis on progressive rationality and liberation from the yoke of tradition. Sigurosson notes how the Confucian perspective on learning provides a more balanced understanding of li. He goes on to discuss the limitations of the critique of tradition and of rationality's claim to authority, referencing several Western sources, notably Hans-Georg Gadamer, John Dewey, and Pierre Bourdieu. An exposition of the ancient Chinese worldview of time and continuous change further points to the inevitability of li's adaptable and flexible nature. Sigurosson argues that Confucius and his immediate followers did not endorse a program of returning to the Zhou tradition, but rather of reviving the spirit of Zhou culture, involving active and personalized participation in tradition's sustention and evolution.

Product Description: This international collection of critical and creative work offers compelling responses to the specifics of `tradition' and `place' in the face of formal and thematic challenges. Pointing to the ongoing transatlantic influence exerted by the American poetic tradition on contemporary Irish writers, and responding to current developments in literary studies, it includes new poetry by established poets working in Ireland and the US...read more

Product Description: Offers a new interpretation of medieval Islamic philosophy, one informed by Platonic mysticism.In this innovative work, Salman H. Bashier challenges traditional views of Islamic philosophy. While Islamic thought from the crucial medieval period is often depicted as a rationalistic elaboration on Aristotelian philosophy and an attempt to reconcile it with the Muslim religion, Bashier puts equal emphasis on the influence of Plato’s philosophical mysticism...read more

The Greeks have long been regarded as innovators across a wide range of fields in literature, culture, philosophy, politics and science. However, little attention has been paid to how they thought and felt about novelty and innovation itself, and to relating this to the forces of traditionalism and conservatism which were also present across all the various societies within ancient Greece. What inspired the Greeks to embark on their unique and enduring innovations? How did they think and feel about the new? This book represents the first serious attempt to address these issues, and deals with the phenomenon across all periods and areas of classical Greek history and thought. Each chapter concentrates on a different area of culture or thought, while the book as a whole argues that much of the impulse towards innovation came from the life of the polis which provided its setting.

Product Description: Traditions: The ‘Real’, the Hyper, and the Virtual in the Built Environment is a continuation of Nezar AlSayyad’s engagement with the subject of tradition in the built environment. In it he attempts to unsettle the belief that tradition is simply a product of history and transmission...read more

Tradition is a central concern for a wide range of academic disciplines interested in problems of transmitting culture across generations. Yet, the concept itself has received remarkably little analysis. A substantial literature has grown up around the notion of 'invented tradition,' but no clear concept of tradition is to be found in these writings; since the very notion of 'invented tradition' presupposes a prior concept of tradition and is empty without one, this debunking usage has done as much to obscure the idea as to clarify it. In the absence of a shared concept, the various disciplines have created their own vocabularies to address the subject. Useful as they are, these specialized vocabularies (of which the best known include hybridity, canonicity, diaspora, paradigm, and contact zones) separate the disciplines and therefore necessarily create only a collection of parochial and disjointed approaches.Until now, there has been no concerted attempt to put the various disciplines in conversation with one another around the problem of tradition. Combining discussions of the idea of tradition by major scholars from a variety of disciplines with synoptic, synthesizing essays, Questions of Tradition will initiate a renewal of interest in this vital subject.

Rooted in real world observations, this book questions the concept of tradition - whether contemporary globalization will prove its demise or whether there is a process of simultaneous ending and renewing. In his introduction, Nezar Alsayyad discusses the meaning of the word 'tradition' and the current debates about the 'end of tradition'. Thereafter the book is divided into three parts. The three chapters in part I explore the inextricable link between 'tradition' and 'modern', revealing the geopolitical implications of this link. Part II looks at tradition as a process of invention and here the three chapters are all concerned with the making of landscapes and landscape myths, showing how the spectacle of history can be aestheticized and naturalized. Finally, Part III shows how traditionis a regime, programmed and policed and how it has been deployed, resisted, and reworked through hegemonic struggles that seek to create both built environments and citizen-subjects.

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Product Description: Tradition(s) IIHermeneutics, Ethics, and the Dispensation of the GoodStephen H. WatsonExamines concepts of tradition in 20th-century Continental philosophy.In Tradition(s) II, Stephen H. Watson engages post-Kantian Continental philosophy in his continuing investigation into the concept of tradition which he began in his work, Tradition(s)...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: Tradition(s) IIHermeneutics, Ethics, and the Dispensation of the GoodStephen H. WatsonExamines concepts of tradition in 20th-century Continental philosophy.In Tradition(s) II, Stephen H. Watson engages post-Kantian Continental philosophy in his continuing investigation into the concept of tradition which he began in his work, Tradition(s)...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: This book argues that tradition is not dissociable from processes of self-consciousness involving our capacity to situate ourselves in a world that includes a rich legacy of predecessors and precedents. It explores how language, the body, experience, imagination, desire, and affect are not dissociable from tradition as transference in the Freudian sense...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

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Product Description: Considers the topic that there appear to be fundamental and irreconcilable differences of opinion about how humans should live. The author discusses the factors which infleunce human actions but stipulates that there is no set of innate propositions common to all.

Product Description: Book by Allan, George (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)