Boston Confucians are a group of "New Confucians" from Boston, of whom the best known are Tu Wei-Ming of Harvard and Robert Neville of Boston University.
Neville coined the phrase to refer to those who hold that Confucianism could be successfully adapted to a western perspective, and does not have to be confined to Chinese culture and tradition. (Both Platonism and Christianity began as such portable traditions, which can be practiced outside of the Greek and Jewish roots which originally generated them.) However, this is a view that is common to New Confucians in general, whether from Boston, Beijing, Taipei, Hong Kong or Singapore. Indeed, there are contemporary advocates of Confucianism who are not New Confucians, but who would agree that Confucianism is not geographically or culturally parochial, any more than Buddhism or Islam have been. (Philip J. Ivanhoe, Joel J. Kupperman and David B. Wong would fall into this latter category.) Consequently, "Boston Confucian" is a term more closely linked to geography than intellectual content.
Famous quotes containing the word boston:
“Consider the China pride and stagnant self-complacency of mankind. This generation inclines a little to congratulate itself on being the last of an illustrious line; and in Boston and London and Paris and Rome, thinking of its long descent, it speaks of its progress in art and science and literature with satisfaction.... It is the good Adam contemplating his own virtue.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)