Publisher's Synopsis
A contemporary of the ancient Greek philosophy, pre-Chin thought presents a non-religious and non-metaphysical perspective on ethics. In order to make Chinese ethics theoretically more accessible to the Western readers, the book offers a hermeneutico-semiotic interdisciplinar approach. The Analects of Confucius are being structurally analyzed in order to reveal the epistemological preconditions and pragmatic rationality implied in the unsystematically edited maxims of this important motivational ethics. The other related ethical thoughts discussed are Taoist nihilism, Legalist philosophy of power and the political turn of Mencian-Confucian ethics. All of these pre-Chin Chinese ethical thoughts form a complete picture of the original situation of human ethical relationship.
