[New Entry by Li-Hsiang Rosenlee on February 27, 2023.]
The study of gender in Confucian philosophy is a complicated task, since there is no conceptual equivalent of “gender” in the Chinese linguistic construct. Instead of deriving from a set of natural dispositions or bodily functions, man and woman in the Confucian textual tradition are kinship- and ritual-dependent. The process of genderization where a person becomes a socially recognizable “man” (nan 男) or “woman” (nu 女) is concomitant with…

Originally appeared on Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Read More