The Philosophy of Qi: The Record of Great Doubts

Kaibara Ekken

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March, 2007
Cloth, 208 pages, 27 illustrations
ISBN: 978-0-231-13922-9
$45.00 / £31.00

"An important book for anyone interested in East Asian Confucianism and cosmology, and necessary reading for students of Japanese neo-Confucianism… Essential." — Choice

"Tucker's contribution to this discussion of qi is groundbreaking." — Philosophy East & West

"As one of the most prolific writers of premodern East Asia, Kaibara Ekken is noted for his erudition, inquisitiveness, and influence. The Record of Great Doubts, composed when he was eighty-four years old, clearly demonstrates his creativity and originality. This is an excellent annotated translation of Ekken's masterpiece. Mary Evelyn Tucker's book is a major contribution to Neo-Confucian thought and will be essential reading for students." — T. U. Weiming, Harvard-Yenching Professor of Chinese History and Philosophy and Confucian Studies, Harvard University

"The Philosophy of Qi will be of great interest to everyone studying traditional East Asia. This is a fascinating translation rendered into highly readable English. Mary Evelyn Tucker's introduction is a brilliant survey of the history of Confucian thought in China, Korea, and Japan, as well as an introduction to the specifics of this text." — John Berthrong, Boston University

"Kaibara Ekken's famous Record of Great Doubts demonstrates that the Confucian tradition, contrary to its conventional image, fosters independent, critical thinking. Mary Evelyn Tucker's lucid translation finally provides us with access to the full text of this pivotal work in the history of Japanese thought." — Janine Sawada, The University of Iowa

Related Subjects

• Asian Religion
• Asian/Islamic Philosophy

Series

• Translations from the Asian Classics

About the Author

Mary Evelyn Tucker is visiting professor at Yale in the Institution for Social and Public Policy and the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. She is also a research associate at the Harvard-Yenching Institute and the Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies at Harvard. She is the author of Moral and Spiritual Cultivation in Japanese Neo-Confucianism and is the coeditor of Confucianism and Ecology and of the two volume Confucian Spirituality. With John A. Grim, she is the director of the Forum on Religion and Ecology, an international project involving conferences, books, and a web site. Together the editors of the ten volume series World Religions and Ecology published by the Center for the Study of World Religions at Harvard.

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