Chinese Intellectual History

An Extended Bibliography

General Studies

Goldin, Paul. The Art of Chinese Philosophy. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2020.

Littlejohn, Ronnie L. Chinese Philosophy and Philosophers: An Introduction. London and New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2022.

Ames, Rogers T. and David Hall. Thinking Through Confucius. Albany: SUNY Press, 1987.

Ames, Rogers T. Confucian Role Ethics: A Vocabulary. Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 2011.

Coutinho, Steve. An Introduction to Daoist Philosophies. New York: Columbia University Press, 2013.

Liu, Xiaogan. Dao Companion to Daoist Philosophy. Dordrecht: Springer, 2015.

Kohn, Livia. Cosmos and Community: The Ethical Dimension of Daoism. Cambridge: Three Pines Press, 2004.

Allen, Barry. Vanishing into Things: Knowledge in Chinese Tradition. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2015.

Jullien, Francois. The Propensity of Things: Toward a History of Efficacy in China. New York: Zone Books, 1995.

Olberding, Amy and Philip J. Ivanhoe, eds. Mortality in Traditional Chinese Thought.  Albany: State University of New York Press, 2011.

Angle, Stephen and Justin Tiwald. Neo-Confucianism: A Philosophical Introduction. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2017.

Ivanhoe, Philip J. Oneness: East Asian Conceptions of Virtue, Happiness and How We Are All Connected. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017.

Angle, Stephen C. Sagehood: The Contemporary Significance of Neo-Confucian Philosophy. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2009.

Early Thought

Ziporyn, Brook. Ironies of Oneness and Difference: Coherence in Early Chinese Thought; Prolegomena to the Study of Li. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2012.

Slingerland, Edward. Mind and Body in Early China: Beyond Orientalism and the Myth of Holism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018.

Lenk, Hans and Gregor Paul, edited. Epistemological Issues in Classical Chinese Philosophy. Albany: SUNY Press, 1993.

Makeham, John. Name and Actuality in Early Chinese Thought. Albany : State University of New York Press, 1994.

Virág, Curie. The Emotions in Early Chinese Philosophy. New York: Oxford University Press, 2017.

Nylan, Michael. The Chinese Pleasure Book. New York: Zone Books, 2018.

Slingerland, Edward. Effortless Action: Wu-wei as Conceptual Metaphor and Spiritual Ideal in Early China. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.

Csikszentmihalyi, Mark. Material Virtue: Ethics and the Body in Early China. Leiden : Brill, 2004.

Raphals, Lisa. Sharing the Light: Representations of Women and Virtue in Early China. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998.

Kwong-Loi Shun and David Wong, eds. Confucian Ethics: A Comparative Study of Self, Autonomy, and Community. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.

Jiang, Tao. Origins of Moral-Political Philosophy in Early China: Contestation of Humaneness, Justice, and Personal Freedom. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021.

Puett, Michael. To Become a God: Cosmology, Sacrifice, and Self-Divinization in Early China. Cambridge: Harvard University Asia Center, 2002.

Van Norden, Bryan W., ed. Confucius and the Analects: New Essays. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.

Ivanhoe, Philip J. Ethics in the Confucian Tradition: The Thought of Mengzi and Wang Yangming. Hackett Publishing, 2002.

Cua, A. S. Ethical Argumentation: A Study in Hsün Tzu's Moral Epistemology. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1985.

Ill, T. C. Kline and Justin Tiwald. Ritual and Religion in the Xunzi. Albany: State of New York University Press, 2014.

Rand, Christopher C. Military Thought in Early China. Albany: SUNY Press, 2017.

Roth, Harold. Original Tao: Inward Training (Nei-yeh) and the Foundations of Taoist Mysticism. New York: Columbia University Press, 2004.

Moeller, Hans-Georg and Paul D’Ambrosio. Genuine Pretending: On the Philosophy of the Zhuangzi. New York: Columbia University Press, 2017.

Middle Period Thought

Chai, David, ed. Dao Companion to Xuanxue 玄學 (Neo-Daoism). Cham: Springer, 2020.

Wagner, Rudolf G.. Language, Ontology, and Political Philosophy in China: Wang Bi's Scholarly Exploration of the Dark (Xuanxue). Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003.

Lusthaus, Dan. Buddhist Phenomenology: A Philosophical Investigation of Yogacara Buddhism and the Ch'eng Wei-shih lun. London and New York: Routledge Curzon, 2002.

Swanson, Paul L. Foundations of T'ien-T'ai Philosophy: The Flowering of the Two Truths Theory in Chinese Buddhism. Berkeley: Asian Humanities Press, 1989.

Ziporyn, Brook. Beyond Oneness and Difference: Li and Coherence in Chinese Buddhist Thought and Its Antecedents. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2013.

Bol, Peter K. “On Shao Yong’s Method for Observing Things.” Monumenta Serica, vol. 61 (2013), 287-299.

Kasoff, Ira E. The Thought of Chang Tsai (1020-1077). Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1984.

Birdwhistell, Anne D. Transition to Neo-Confucianism: Shao Yung on Knowledge and Symbols of Reality. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1989.

Graham, A. C. Two Chinese Philosophers: Ch'eng Ming-tao and Ch'eng Yi-ch'uan. London: Lund Humphries, 1959.

Chan, Wing-tsit, ed. Chu Hsi and Neo-Confucianism. Honolulu : University of Hawaii Press, 1986.

Chan, Wing-tsit. Chu Hsi: New Studies. Honolulu : University of Hawaii Press, 1989.

Gardner, Daniel K. Chu Hsi and the Ta-hsueh: Neo-Confucian Reflection on the Confucian Canon. Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 1986.

Peterson, Willard. "Another Look at Li." Bulletin of Sung-Yuan Studies, vol. 18, (1986): 13-32.

Keenan, Barry C. Neo-Confucian Self-Cultivation. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2011.

Late Imperial Thought

Ching, Julia. To Acquire Wisdom: The Way of Wang Yang-ming. New York: Columbia University Press, 1976.

Cua, Antonio. Unity of Knowledge and Action: A Study in Wang Yang-ming’s Moral Psychology. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1982.

De Bary, Wm. Theodore. Learning for One’s Self: Essays on the Individual in Neo-Confucian Thought. New York: Columbia University Press, 1991.

Lederman, Harvey. “The Introspective Model of Genuine Knowledge in Wang Yangming.” The Philosophical Review 131, no. 2 (2022): 169-213.

Lee, Pauline. Li Zhi: Confucianism and the Virtue of Desire. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2012.

Black, Alison. Men and Nature in the Thought of Wang Fu-chih. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1989.

Birdwhistell, Anne. Li Yong (1627-1705) and Epistemological Dimensions of Confucian Philosophy. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996. 

Tiwald, Justin. “Acquiring ‘Feelings that Do not Err’: Moral Deliberation and the Sympathetic Point of View in the Ethics of Dai Zhen.” PhD Diss., The University of Chicago, 2006.

Fung, Edmund S. K. The Intellectual Foundations of Chinese Modernity: Cultural and Political Thought in the Republican Era. New York : Cambridge University Press, 2010.