Description
Believing that a classical liberal education is more necessary than ever, Wm. Theodore de Bary outlines in these essays a plan to update existing core curricula by incorporating classics from both Eastern and Western traditions, thereby bringing the philosophy and moral values of Asian civilizations to American students and vice versa. He establishes a concrete link between teaching the classics of world civilizations and furthering global humanism, joining Islamic, Indian, Chinese, Japanese, and Western sources into a single? revised curriculum that privileges humanity and civility. De Bary also explores the tradition of education in China and its reflection of Confucian and Neo-Confucian beliefs. He contemplates history's great scholar-teachers and what their methods can teach us today, and he dedicates three essays to the power of The Analects of Confucius, The Tale of Genji, and The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon in the classroom.
About the Author
Wm. Theodore de Bary is the John Mitchell Mason Professor Emeritus and Provost Emeritus of Columbia University and past president of the Association for Asian Studies. He has written extensively on Asian civilizations and is the coeditor of Sources of East Asian Tradition, Sources of Chinese Tradition, Sources of Japanese Tradition, and Sources of Korean Tradition. In 2014, he was awarded the President's Medal for Distinction in the Humanities.
Reviews
Though it is a collection of previously published articles, it attains a coherence and concentration such collections seldom achieve...[a] rich and rewarding book. -- Robert N. Bellah First Things Perhaps [The Great Civilized Conversation's] most striking feature is the care, and indeed passion, with which core concepts from different epochs of the Confucian educational tradition in East Asia are articulated and interpreted for a wider world community... [A] lifetime of sustained and cumulative effort... is represented in this remarkable volume.Sino Western Journal Sino Western Journal
Book Information
ISBN 9780231162777
Author Wm. Theodore De Bary
Format Paperback
Page Count 432
Imprint Columbia University Press
Publisher Columbia University Press