108–31). Confucian and Chinese are distinct categories’ (Tu et al, 1992: 5). The volume also includes essays addressing the broader question of the value of comparative philosophy generally and of studying early Chinese ethics in particular. This is not because Confucianism implemented policies that were downright inhibitive of commercial activities. But there were other reasons for Confucianism’s failure to contribute to a rationalized capitalist system. Confucianism developed during the Spring and Autumn Period from the teachings of the Chinese philosopher Confucius (551–479 BCE), who considered himself a retransmitter of Zhou values. Viewed from another perspective, the miracle of China has been its astonishing unity. According to Confucius, all people, no matter their station, are capable of possessing ren, which is manifested when one’s social interactions demonstrate humaneness and benevolence toward others. This was not the first time Confucianism was discussed along with capitalism, nor was it to be the last. Which of the following explains what the Dao actually represents? As counterevidence Gerschenkron brings the cases of eighteenth-century France's fermiers généraux and of nineteenth-century Russia's emancipated serfs, who became entrepreneurs in spite of an unfavorable cultural environment. It either explains the structure of certain kinds of state in terms of the structure of the family (as a model or as a claim about the historical growth of the state), or it attempts to justify certain types of state by appealing to the structure of the family. Confucianism, also known as Ruism, is a system of philosophical and "ethical-sociopolitical teachings" sometimes described as a religion. While not exactly a neoliberal, Kahn believed that there were no limits to the progress that capitalism (and technology) could produce, and he felt that too many people in the United States were too critical of capitalism and its social influences. Social scientists have taken up the cultural analysis of modernity (Hooker 1995). This diversity was analyzed in detail in earlier anthropological studies (Koentjaraningrat 1985, Boon 1977, Lombard 1990, and many others). In contrast, Aristotle drew a sharp distinction between the economic relationships of the family and the political relationships of the state (Schochet, 1975), while Confucius integrated the relationship of family and state. The book should have a wide readership among professional scholars and graduate students in Chinese philosophy, specifically Confucian ethics, Daoist ethics, and comparative ethics. Whereas Soek regards Confucian ethics as generally operating with an emotion-based model, Slingerland categorizes Xunzi’s moral psychology as a theory that presumes what he calls the “high reason model.” This model significantly resembles the reason-based model developed in Soek’s account. A lover of antiquity, Confucius broadly attempted to revive the learning, cultural values, and ritual practices of the early Zhou kingdom (beginning in the 11th century BCE) as a means of morally renewing the violent and chaotic society of his day (that of the Spring and Autumn Period) and of promoting individual self-cultivation—the task of acquiring virtue (ren, or “humaneness”) and of becoming a moral exemplar (junzi, or “gentleman”). According to Kant, and Socrates as well, we cannot judge something moral just because we deem it so, or have been told so. It is, for instance, interesting that in the 1970s and into the mid-1980s, the Singapore leadership praised and encouraged ‘rugged individualism’ until it suddenly began endorsing its exact opposite, namely a Confucian kind of collectivism, duty, and self-sacrifice (Englehart, 2000). In the writings produced in this process, however, Tu is most cautious when making comparisons between the Confucian and Protestant Ethic in light of Max Weber’s thesis. He states that the key contributing factor for the rapid growth in these countries is Confucian cultural values of ‘dedicated, motivated, responsible and educated individuals and enhanced sense of commitment, organizational identity, and loyalty to various institutions’ (Kahn, 1979: 128). Thus, we have Lai’s attempt at articulating a Confucian ethics that is normative, in contrast with a Daoist ethics which is meta-ethical in character . Whatever the validity of Kahn’s thesis may be, his notion of the Confucian economic ethic began spreading, eventually reaching the very civilizations to which it was meant to apply. Brian Duignan is a senior editor at Encyclopædia Britannica. Duty thus reflects precisely how the moral is that which is universally necessary and commanded by the power of our reason. Both traditions have permeated Chinese culture for some 2,500 years. Second, the concept of culture is often stretched so far as to include social interaction in general and all sorts of social networks, without paying attention to structural variables like patterns of solidarity, class, status and power relations, legal norms, and state arrangements and policies, which fundamentally affect social interaction. The partial reprivatisation of land and the deregulation of the economy introduced, however, new social processes from rural–urban migration to corruption of government officials and the formation of a group of newly rich businessmen. Most of the relevant books and articles are still produced by foreign scholars, affiliated to universities or research institutions around the globe, but an increasing proportion of works are written by Southeast Asian nationals or by scholars, attached to Southeast Asian universities. An epistemic culture of local Southeast Asianists is emerging, contributing to a further construction of Southeast Asia as a sociocultural unit. According to Kant in his Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, there is only one categorical imperative, which he formulates in this way: “Act only in accordance with that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it become a universal law.” Moral acts are only those that can be universalized. The book is written in a decade of severe economic problems in the West, including the oil crisis, trade deficits, and rising inflation, while the economies of Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and South Korea were able to overcome rising oil prices and the general economic crisis in the world, enjoying far higher growth rates than the United States and Western European countries. His advocate, Derk Bodde (Fung, 1948) further affirmed in the foreword of the book that the Chinese are not a people for whom religious ideas and activities constitute an all-important and absorbing part of life. Both Confucius and Aristotle shared the same theory of the family as a model for the organisation of the state. The pattern of strategic group formation differed from country to country. Or is it pious because it’s loved?” (Euthyphro 10a). Edition ), 2008 morality than the power of self-legislated duty travel well an epistemic culture of local Asianists! 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