Emerson and Neo-Confucianism ― Crossing Paths over the Pacific

Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote in Nature, 'The moral law lies at the centre of nature and radiates to the circumference' The great Chinese synthesizer of Neo-Confucian philosophy Zhu Xi expressed a similar idea in the twelfth century: 'In the realm of Heaven and Earth it is this moral principle alone that flows everywhere.' Emerson and Zhu Xi, though living in different ages and cultures, traced the human morality to the same source in the ultimately moral nature of the universe, and developed theories of the interrelation of universal law and the human mind. This book offers a comparative investigation of Emerson's Transcendental thought and Zhu Xi's Neo-Confucianism.

Yoshio Takanashi is Professor of English and American Literature and Culture at Nagano Prefectural College, Japan. His articles have appeared in numerous journals, including ESQ: A Journal of the American Renaissance and The Japanese Journal of American Studies. He has also published a Japanese translation of Stephen E. Whicher's Freedom and Fate: An Inner Life of Ralph Waldo Emerson.