Articles and Chapters

1. Wong, DB, One Body, in Metaphor and Analogy in Chinese Thought Governance within the Person State and Society (January, 2025), pp. 133-164 [doi].
   (last updated on 2026/01/09)

   Abstract:
   This lecture begins with a discussion of the metaphor of forming one body with the ten thousand things. It explores the meaning of the concept of value in neo-Confucian texts and uses this as an occasion for discussing how one can admire and deeply respect a philosophical tradition and at the same time start down an alternative branch of development than the ones that developed from the tradition. It then specifies what it means “to be of one body with other things,” a famous neo-Confucian metaphor for our interdependency with all things. The lecture further argues that this is an important rationale for the ideal of harmony and in particular the dimensions of accommodation and contest. Then it moves on to bring out a second dimension of this metaphor, namely the emphasis on zhōng, which is translated as “doing one’s best in serving others,” and shù, which is translated as “sympathetic understanding.” Furthermore, the lecture explains the neo-Confucian conception of lǐ (“pattern”) and then finally draws out further implications of the neo-Confucian conception of interdependence.