Chinese Thought and Transcendentalism: Ecology, Place and Conservative Radicalism

Abstract

My central claim is that resonances between Transcendentalist and Chinese philosophies are so strong that the former cannot be adequately appreciated without the latter. I give attention to the Analects, the Mengzi and the Tiantai Lotus Sutra, which Transcendentalists read. Because there was conceptual sharing across Chinese traditions, plus evidence suggesting Transcendentalists explored other texts, my analysis includes discussions of Daoism and Weishi, Huayan and Chan Buddhism. To name just some similarities between the targeted outlooks, Transcendentalists adopt something close to wu-wei or effortless action; though hostile to hierarchy, they echo the Confucian stress on rituals or habits; Thoreau’s individualistic libertarianism is moderated by a radical causal holism found in many Chinese philosophies; and variants of Chinese Buddhism get close to Transcendentalist metaphysics and epistemologies, which anticipate radical embodied cognitive science. A specific argument is that Transcendentalists followed some of their Chinese counterparts by conserving the past and converting it into radicalism. A meta-argument is that ideas were exchanged via trade from Europe through North Africa to Western Asia and India into the Far East, and contact with Indigenous Americans led to the same. This involved degrees of misrepresentation, but it nonetheless calls upon scholars to adopt more global approaches.

Selective permeability, multiculturalism and affordances in education

“…Though any cultural account is already an overgeneralization (Ess, 2014) scholars have documented differences between Western vs. Non-Western cognitive styles (e.g., Markus & Kitayama, 1991;Mpofu, 1994;Purdie & McCrindle, 2004;Waters 2004;Kiuchi 2006;Shell & Flowerday, 2019;Crippen, 2021bCrippen, , 2023bDudgeon et al, 2022;Ren & Kuai, 2023). Westerners, according to this body of research, tend to stress independence, separateness and personal autonomy, with clear boundaries between "me" and "not me."…”

Beauty and Dao: The Transcendental Expressions of Nature from Emerson’s Prose and the Zhuangzi

“…Emerson indeed expressed a certain degree of recognition of the oriental culture in 1844 when his meditations about nature were published, but he only mentioned Confucianism without referring to Daoism 6 . However, some scholars, such as Matthew Crippen, believe that Emerson may have read the French version of Daodejing 道德经 (see Crippen 2023). Therefore, it still must be further testified as to whether Emerson obtained access to the Chinese Daoist classics in his lifetime.…”