Adapting

Mercedes Valmisa's Adapting: A Chinese Philosophy of Action uses the canonical texts themselves to make her cogently argued corrective on persisting interpretive studies, studies that would begin from foundational individualism as an uncritical and yet highly problematic assumption. In this Chinese version of philosophy of action that is grounded in an irreducibly relational notion of both agency and action, everything that persons do, including the construction of their own identities, is the outcome of their relations with others. This gerundive conception of persons who are always 'adapting' and thus making affordances in their doings and undergoings gives full register to the reflexivity and interpenetration of agency, requiring as it does a sociology of efficacious action. * Roger T. Ames, Professor of Chinese Philosophy, Peking University * Valmisa takes on the challenge to investigate what adapting is, how to adapt, and why to adapt in early Chinese philosophy. This distinctive and multifaceted study of the greatest source of our ontological and epistemological anxieties presents a variety of Chinese philosophical strategies to cope with uncertainty and unpredictability in ordinary life, and to recover control and existential competence in becoming a successful adaptive agent that embodies a particular philosophy of life and action. It is truly a joy to turn each page! * Robin R Wang, Professor of Philosophy and Director of Asian Pacific Studies, Loyola Marymount University Author of Yinyang: The Way of Heaven and Earth in Chinese Thought and Culture (Cambridge University Press, 2012) * Mercedes Valmisa places action at the heart of the Chinese philosophical tradition. Her masterly analysis of ancient Chinese texts generates fresh ways to understand humanity and relationality, and agency, orientation and initiative. Challenging the entrenched western philosophical categories of metaphysics, epistemology and ethics, Valmisa makes Chinese philosophy shine. * Karyn Lai, Professor of Philosophy, The University of New South Wales, Sydney *