The Pleasure of Learning: An Introduction; Roland Reichenbach and Duck-Joo Kwak -- 1. Confucian Education as Life Education and its Modern Relevance; Chung Yi Cheng -- 2. Educational Relationship in the Analects of Confucius; Jeong-Gil Woo -- 3. Ritual, Virtue, and Education: An interpretation of Xunzi’s philosophy of ritual; Morimichi Kato -- 4. Ogyû Sorai on the Content and Intent of Learning; Paulus Kaufmann -- 5. Enlightenment and Freedom in a Confucian Way 萬物一體 (wanwu yiti) – A Philosophical Concept and its Educational relevance; Niklaus Schefer -- 6. “When the Heart/Mind is lost…” The Metaphysics of Educational Theory; Roland Reichenbach -- 7. A Vietnamese Reading of the Master’s Classic: Phạm Nguyễn Du’s Humble Comments on The Analects – An Example of Transformative Learning; Nguyen Nam -- 8. Self-Cultivation with Brushes: From the Perspective of Graphocentrism; Ruyu Hung -- 9. Zhu Xi’s Ethics of Reading;Duck-Joo Kwak.

This book bridges the regions of East Asia and the West by offering a detailed and critical inquiry of educational concepts of the East Asian tradition. It provides educational thinkers and practitioners with alternative resources and perspectives for their educational thinking, to enrich their educational languages and to promote the recognition of educational thoughts from different cultures and traditions across a global world. The key notions of Confucian and Neo-Confucian philosophy directly concern the ideals, processes and challenges of learning, education and self-transformation, which can be seen as the western equivalences of liberal education, including the German concept of Bildung. All the topics in the book are of fundamental interest across diverse cultures, giving a voice to a set of long-lasting and yet differentiated cultural traditions of learning and education, and thereby creating a common space for critical philosophical reflection of one's own educational tradition and practice. The book is especially timely, given that the vocabularies in educational discourse today have been dominantly “West centred” for a long time, even while the whole world has become more and more diverse across races, religions and cultures. It offers a great opportunity to philosophers of education for their cross-cultural understanding and self-understanding of educational ideas and practices on both personal and institutional levels.