This is a fascinating list, thank you! Maybe less didactic, the Cyropaedia is an entertaining variation/forerunner. Seneca's On Clemency is also a thoughtful, if somewhat narrow, example---though based on the subsequent career of its intended audience perhaps not wholly effective.
Oct 27, 2023·edited Oct 27, 2023Liked by Managing Editors- New Digest, Adrian Vermeule
Thank you for this great list, Prof Vermeule. Happy to see Confucius, Mencius and HanFeiZi on the list, inclusive of a source for translation. I particularly note the inclusion of Huang Liu-Hung's work on "Happiness and Benevolence"; it causes my heart to skip a beat.
Although I read the original Classical Chinese in this grouping of East-West thinking on the subject, I hardly am a studied enough scholar to speak with persuasive authority.
In a separate but related capacity - that of a lawyer trained in American jurisprudence and clinical psychologist trained in the American teaching curricula which include, in relevant parts, History & Systems in Psychology, the Scientific Method, Developmental Psychology, and Neurobiological bases of human behavior from norm to deviant.
I feel somewhat better at ease to speak in this even more circumscribed framework.
Accordingly, I note there is a lot of talk about “happiness” in contemporary American, but few inquire what “happiness” is.
So first, What is *Happiness*? Second, What is *Benevolence* on the part of “Princes” who are accountable actors in the second to enable (or disable) the first? This is a humongous “thought”subject that requires, as it were, the ploughing of the ocean of theologies east and west, philosophies east and west, and ultimately personal philosophy, belief and value system, just to harvest a spoon of sea water for distillation into crystals examinable under the lens of a microscope. And then there is the Q whose eyes are looking into that microscope.
Notwithstanding the impossibility, I shall offer a tiny thought on what constitute *Happiness*, It is, in my view, only after this Q is sufficiently addressed that the next Q What/Which “Prince" is *benevolent* can follow.
Will return with next segment of thoughts which I hope will be acceptably brief [will take me days, not hours]. But first, let me know if so far what I wrote makes sense. If yes, why, if no, why not. All questions will help what I hope will be a constructive joint effort to facilitate east-west intellectual exchange and mutual understanding. Bridges take many units of time to build, but only 1 second to blow up.
Oct 27, 2023·edited Oct 27, 2023Liked by Adrian Vermeule
I hope it is OK I am leaving a 2nd and separate comment.
Answering the invitation to leave readers' own favorites, I leave a pair to be read as comparative culture readings. They are both fictional work, but they reveal and reflect much about the milieu in which the stories took place and that of the authors who wrote them.
*Sherlock Holmes Series* (56 stories and short 4 short novels) by Sir Canon Doyle (1859-1930) British writer, ophthalmologist, physician and defender of Justice
*Judge Dee at Work: 8 Chinese Detective Stories (Judge Dee Mysteries)* by Robert van Gulik (1910–67) . Robert Can Gulik was a Dutch diplomat and an authority on Chinese history and culture. His many works include 16 Judge Dee mysteries, a study of the gibbon in China, and two books on the Chinese lute. The 8 short stories cover a decade during which the Judge Dee served in 4 different provinces of the T’ang Dynasty (618-960). From the suspected treason of a general in the Chinese army to the murder of a lonely poet in his garden pavilion.
The reader can discern myriad shades of grey, and other colors too, in the concepts of justice, crime and punishment, tort and remedy, contract and damages, and mostly importantly, the jurisprudence that undergirds them, and finally, their administration on the ministerial level - i.e., their "organizational chart" and "reporting relationships".
Oct 27, 2023Liked by Adrian Vermeule, Managing Editors- New Digest
Haha! Me too! He had a personality! Yes, and his cast of assistants too - most loyal and steadfast, of one mind and one heart, the open secret of how to get things done.
It occurred to me perhaps one to add to the list while we stay for HuangLiuHing is a book written by Matteo Ricci S. J. (1552-1610) *Essay on Friendship* published in same year as Shakespeare's *A Mid-Summer's Night Dream*. Ricci distilled the ideas on friendship from Renaissance Latin texts into one hundred Chinese maxims. According to historical account, it was an instant best-seller in late Ming literati.
This is a fascinating list, thank you! Maybe less didactic, the Cyropaedia is an entertaining variation/forerunner. Seneca's On Clemency is also a thoughtful, if somewhat narrow, example---though based on the subsequent career of its intended audience perhaps not wholly effective.
Excellent stuff thank you!
Thank you for this great list, Prof Vermeule. Happy to see Confucius, Mencius and HanFeiZi on the list, inclusive of a source for translation. I particularly note the inclusion of Huang Liu-Hung's work on "Happiness and Benevolence"; it causes my heart to skip a beat.
Although I read the original Classical Chinese in this grouping of East-West thinking on the subject, I hardly am a studied enough scholar to speak with persuasive authority.
In a separate but related capacity - that of a lawyer trained in American jurisprudence and clinical psychologist trained in the American teaching curricula which include, in relevant parts, History & Systems in Psychology, the Scientific Method, Developmental Psychology, and Neurobiological bases of human behavior from norm to deviant.
I feel somewhat better at ease to speak in this even more circumscribed framework.
Accordingly, I note there is a lot of talk about “happiness” in contemporary American, but few inquire what “happiness” is.
So first, What is *Happiness*? Second, What is *Benevolence* on the part of “Princes” who are accountable actors in the second to enable (or disable) the first? This is a humongous “thought”subject that requires, as it were, the ploughing of the ocean of theologies east and west, philosophies east and west, and ultimately personal philosophy, belief and value system, just to harvest a spoon of sea water for distillation into crystals examinable under the lens of a microscope. And then there is the Q whose eyes are looking into that microscope.
Notwithstanding the impossibility, I shall offer a tiny thought on what constitute *Happiness*, It is, in my view, only after this Q is sufficiently addressed that the next Q What/Which “Prince" is *benevolent* can follow.
Will return with next segment of thoughts which I hope will be acceptably brief [will take me days, not hours]. But first, let me know if so far what I wrote makes sense. If yes, why, if no, why not. All questions will help what I hope will be a constructive joint effort to facilitate east-west intellectual exchange and mutual understanding. Bridges take many units of time to build, but only 1 second to blow up.
I hope it is OK I am leaving a 2nd and separate comment.
Answering the invitation to leave readers' own favorites, I leave a pair to be read as comparative culture readings. They are both fictional work, but they reveal and reflect much about the milieu in which the stories took place and that of the authors who wrote them.
*Sherlock Holmes Series* (56 stories and short 4 short novels) by Sir Canon Doyle (1859-1930) British writer, ophthalmologist, physician and defender of Justice
*Judge Dee at Work: 8 Chinese Detective Stories (Judge Dee Mysteries)* by Robert van Gulik (1910–67) . Robert Can Gulik was a Dutch diplomat and an authority on Chinese history and culture. His many works include 16 Judge Dee mysteries, a study of the gibbon in China, and two books on the Chinese lute. The 8 short stories cover a decade during which the Judge Dee served in 4 different provinces of the T’ang Dynasty (618-960). From the suspected treason of a general in the Chinese army to the murder of a lonely poet in his garden pavilion.
The reader can discern myriad shades of grey, and other colors too, in the concepts of justice, crime and punishment, tort and remedy, contract and damages, and mostly importantly, the jurisprudence that undergirds them, and finally, their administration on the ministerial level - i.e., their "organizational chart" and "reporting relationships".
Love Judge Dee! And his cast of assistants.
Haha! Me too! He had a personality! Yes, and his cast of assistants too - most loyal and steadfast, of one mind and one heart, the open secret of how to get things done.
It occurred to me perhaps one to add to the list while we stay for HuangLiuHing is a book written by Matteo Ricci S. J. (1552-1610) *Essay on Friendship* published in same year as Shakespeare's *A Mid-Summer's Night Dream*. Ricci distilled the ideas on friendship from Renaissance Latin texts into one hundred Chinese maxims. According to historical account, it was an instant best-seller in late Ming literati.
https://doi.org/10.7312/ricc14924 Translated by TIMOTHY BILLINGS. Columbia Univeristy Press