The Challenge of Teaching Chinese Philosophy: Some Thoughts on Method

In this essay I offer an alternative perspective on how to organize class material for courses in Chinese philosophy for predominately American students. Instead of selecting topics taken from common themes in Western discourses, I suggest a variety of organizational strategies based on themes from the Chinese texts themselves, such as tradition, ritual, family, and guanxi ( 關係 ), which are rooted in the Chinese tradition but flexible enough to organize a broad range of philosophical material.