Social Ethics in a Changing China

“In Social Ethics in a Changing China, distinguished scholar He Huaihong seeks to respond to and relieve the moral malaise of a contemporary China reeling from the stresses and strains of having transitioned from the nineteenth to the twenty-first century in a single generation. Offering a clinic on the archeology of culture, he excavates the rich veins of ethical thinking buried in the history and culture of this antique civilization to present a bold vision for a revitalized egalitarian social ethic to guide the trajectory of China’s continuing economic and political ascent.”—Roger T. Ames, professor of philosophy, University of Hawai;

“We should thus be very grateful for the Thornton Center Chinese Thinkers Series which, like the Princeton-China Series, presents Anglophone readers with translations of representative writings by leading Chinese intellectuals. The latest volume in the series collects 19 essays by the ethicist and social critic He Huaihong, together with an outstanding introductory essay by Cheng Li. The translation is excellent and He's insights and arguments deserve a broad audience—an audience not just of people who want to understand contemporary China, but also of those who want to engage with and learn from it.”—Stephen C. Angle, The China Quarterly;

“All societies need a “moral foundation.” Today's China especially needs to rebuild its ethical base, given society's rapid changes and development. This rebuilding not only needs to suit modern Chinese society, but must also be based on the intrinsic traditions of Chinese culture. This volume by He Huaihong explains this need from the perspective of ethics more pointedly and profoundly than any other.”—Chen Lai, professor of philosophy and dean of the Academy of Chinese Learning, Tsinghua University;

“Social Ethics in a Changing China identifies the universal moral foundations of Confucian values in order to suggest ways in which those values can be realized in contemporary Chinese society. His knowledge and candor about China, old and new, is impressive and will illuminate China even for non-specialists. Because Professor He investigates the foundations of morality, his book is a significant contribution to political theory in general.”—Aloysius Patrick Martinich, Roy Allison Vaughan Centennial Professor of Philosophy, University of Texas at Austin