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Considering, Questioning and Re-Imagining Harmony
Multicultural, Multihistorical and Multidisciplinary Reflections
Considering, Questioning and Re-Imagining Harmony
Multicultural, Multihistorical and Multidisciplinary Reflections
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Description
Are harmony and disruption mutually exclusive? This collection critically examines the concept of harmony and its association with perfection.
Harmony is pursued by individuals, families, societies and nations as a fundamental value. Yet it often comes at the cost of freedom, creativity and individuality. This book explores ways in which it may be misleading to regard harmony as opposed to difference or to think that harmony and disruption are independent.
Featuring examples of historically and culturally diverse perspectives of harmony, an international line-up of contributors reflect on ideas from ancient Greek, Chinese, Indian and Japanese thought. They draw on modern and contemporary thinkers and from music and design perspectives. The range of historical and cultural reflections make it possible to re-imagine the concept and practice of harmony, either by incorporating a role for disruption, or by recognising a dynamic in which disruption balances the overreach of harmony.
By including historically and culturally diverse perspectives of harmony to widen the horizons of consideration, this collection present a more inclusive understanding of this major philosophical and political concept.
Table of Contents
Part One: Considering Harmony
1: The Bow and the Lyre: Disruption and Harmony in Heraclitus, Rick Benitez (Sydney University, Australia)
2: The Relation between He ? and Tong ? in Early Chinese Thought, Fan He (Sichuan University, China)
3: Aesthetics of Harmony in Indian thought: the Santa Rasa, Meera Baindur (RV University, Bangalore, India)
4: Zhu Xi and Harmony, Yat-hung Leung (East China Normal University)
Part Two: Questioning Harmony
5. Why does the Zhuangzi problematise and disrupt harmony? Karyn Lai (University of New South Wales, Australia)
6: Aristotle and Kaibara Ekken on the Ethics of Disagreement, Matthew Walker (Yale-NUS College, Singapore)
7: Harmony and Hegemony: Enactivism and Oppressive Equilibriums, Lilith Lee (Vrije Universiteit, Netherlands)
8: A (Critical, Radical) Buddhist Take on the Dangers of Harmony, James Mark Shields (Bucknell University, US)
9: Flow and Two-fold Being in the World, Yuko Ishihara (Ritsumeikan University, Japan) and Katsunori Miyahara (Hokkaido Universit, Japan)
Part Three: Re-Imagining Harmony
10: An Explicative Definition of Harmony, Chenyang Li (Nanyang Technological University, Singapore)
11: Harmonizing by Design: the Role of Dissonance, Tension and Dilemma in Design Practice, Derek Lomas and Haian Xue (Delft University of Technology, Netherlands)
12: Music and the Existential Significance of Harmony, Goetz Richter (Sydney University, Australia)
13: “Where Justice is a Game”: Does Active Harmony Offer a Model of Democratic Conflict? Avery Kolers (University of Louisville, US)
14: Constitutional Dialogue as Active Harmony: A Confucian Democratic Perspective, Sungmoon Kim (City University, Hong Kong)
Product details
| Published | 27 Nov 2025 |
|---|---|
| Format | Hardback |
| Edition | 1st |
| Extent | 320 |
| ISBN | 9781350453210 |
| Imprint | Bloomsbury Academic |
| Dimensions | 234 x 156 mm |
| Publisher | Bloomsbury Publishing |
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