Persons Emerging

<p><b>Offers three neo-Confucian understandings of broadening the Way as broadening oneself through an ongoing process of removing self-boundaries.</b></p><p><i>Persons Emerging</i> explores the renewed idea of the Confucian person in the eleventh-century philosophies of Zhou Dunyi Shao Yong and Zhang Zai. Galia Patt-Shamir discusses their responses to the Confucian challenge that the Way as perfection can be broadened by the person who travels it. Suggesting that the three neo-Confucian philosophers undertake the classical Confucian task of broadening the way each proposes to deal with it from a different angle: Zhou Dunyi offers a metaphysical emerging out of the infinitude-finitude boundary Shao Yong emerges out of the epistemological boundary between in and out and Zhang Zai offers a pragmatic emerging out of the boundary between life and death.</p><p>Through the lens of these three Song-period China philosophers the idea of transcending self-boundaries places neo-Confucian philosophies within the global philosophical context. Patt-Shamir questions the Confucian notions of person Way and how they relate to human flourishing to highlight how the emergence of personhood demands transcending metaphysical epistemological and moral self-boundaries.</p>