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[Expositions 9.2 (2015) 99–102]  Expositions (online) ISSN: 1747–5376 
 
 

De Bary, Wm. Theodore. The Great Civilized Conversation: Education for World Community. 

New York: Columbia University Press, 2013. 416 pages. $35.00 (cloth). ISBN 978-0-231-

16276-0. 

 

In 2014 President Obama presented Professor William Theodore “Ted” de Bary with the National 

Humanities Award. In doing so, he gave ritual form to a judgment that many had long held: Ted 

de Bary is a national treasure, a teacher and scholar who has made the world a better place by 

deepening understanding between West and East. He can justly be called the founding father of 

Asian Great Books, which recognizes the invaluable ways that philosophers, historians, and poets 

from China, Japan, and Korea have enriched our common human understanding. The Great 

Civilized Conversation: Education for World Community offers an excellent introduction to the 

life’s work of this great man and an overview of a vocation fulfilled. 

Early in his book, de Bary relates the genesis of his vocation. In 1937, a first-year Columbia 

student, he was “attending [his] first class in the core course Contemporary Civilization taught by 

Harry J. Carman (later Dean of the college), [and] almost the first thing he said was, ‘Of course 

you realize that when we talk about contemporary civilization, it is just Western civilization. Some 

of you should start to think about how we can expand this to Asia.’ I took him up on that 

suggestion, and almost everything on this book flows from it” (vii). How deeply de Bary has lived 

out his vocation! The book’s Appendix provides an overview of his “Life in Consultation and 

Conversation,” from his graduate studies, interrupted by service in Naval Intelligence during 

World War II, to his ongoing work at the age of 96, where he continues to teach, pro bono, as 

Special Service Professor in Columbia’s Core Courses.  

In Part One, de Bary presents essays in which he argues for carefully integrating Asian great 

books into the core curriculum of undergraduate education. Each essay sharply reasoned, and 

marked by clarity and good sense—the reader can imagine de Bary tactfully and persuasively 

making his case on the many Columbia curricular committees on which he served. In a 1964 essay, 

he presciently warns that the term “non-Western studies” “tends to perpetuate whatever 

isolationism or parochialism we have suffered from by suggesting that the significance of other 

civilizations lies primarily in their difference from European and North American civilization” 

(14). He reminds his readers that the classic works that comprise the “great civilized conversation” 

are never static, but perennially read within the context of change: “‘liberal learning’ has always 

been conscious of change yet at its best has responded to it without being swept away by it” (4). 

And yet he is well aware that saying “yes” to those classic works that speak enduringly to the 

human condition will mean saying “no” to others that will likely prove ephemeral: “Education in 

the twenty-first century […] will find itself constrained to make choices within the much stricter 

limits […]. Education will have to [make hard choices]—make judgments as to what is most 



Review of The Great Civilized Conversation  100 
 

essential. Without closing the door on intellectual growth, we will have to prepare people to make 

qualitative judgments as to what is most conducive in the longer run to ‘the good life’ and to what 

human goods are sustainable” (39). Twenty-five years ago, as a new professor at Christ College, 

the interdisciplinary honors college of Valparaiso University, two young colleagues and I were 

charged with presenting a rationale for integrating Asian classic works into the first-year “Texts 

and Contexts” curriculum. We successfully made our case: Mencius and Zhuangzi remain part of 

that splendid curriculum. But back in 1991, I wish we’d had ready access to de Bary’s essays, now 

gathered coherently in this book. 

Part Two, “Liberal Learning in Confucianism” brings us to the heart of de Bary’s scholarly 

work on Neo-Confucian thought. Most prominent among these is Zhu Xi (1130–1200), who 

himself developed the core “Four Books of the Confucian Tradition”: Analects, Mencius, Great 

Learning, the Mean. Zhu’s wisdom and contemporary relevance become increasingly evident, as 

de Bary highlights the personalist dimension of his thought. As did Socrates, Zhu Xi taught 

through discussion and interpersonal interaction, rather than lecture, and emphasized the way the 

learner must inquire, “weigh and sift” the words of the master until she feels they have become 

her own. In the Confucian tradition, learning is always a matter of the intellect and emotions—

“the thinking heart”—and the moral compass provided by the Tao leads one from “individual 

perceptivity” (108) to disciplining selfish desires through ritual to heartfelt service of others, be it 

governmental or familial. Confucius affirms “this concept of fully realized personhood” in one of 

the most famous passages of the Analects: 

 

At fifteen I set my heart on learning. 

At thirty I was established [stood on my own feet]. 

At forty I had no perplexities. 

At fifty I learned what Heaven commanded of me. 

By sixty my ear had become attuned to it. 

At seventy I could follow my heart’s desire without transgressing. (138) 

 

The personalist dimension of Zhu Xi reminds me of Jacques Maritain’s Thomist classic The 

Person and the Common Good. As de Bary explains, “‘personalism’ expresses the worth and 

dignity of the person, not as a raw, ‘rugged’ individual but as a self shaped and formed in the 

context of a given cultural tradition, its own social community, and natural environment to reach 

full personhood” (139). In writing this review, I was delighted to discover a new book by Catherine 

Hudak Klancer, Embracing Our Complexity (SUNY Press: 2015) which brings St. Thomas 

Aquinas and Zhu into dialogue, highlighting their mutual emphasis upon “humble authority.” 

Surely Zhu would have agreed with his Christian contemporary, St. Bernard of Clairvaux, who 

wrote: “There are many who seek knowledge for the sake of knowledge: that is curiosity. There 



101  Contino 
 

are others who desire to know in order that they themselves might be known: that is vanity. But 

there are those some who seek knowledge in order to serve and edify others: that is love.” For Zhu 

Xi, service to others remain the telos of “learning for the sake of one’s self”; “self-cultivation [is] 

the starting point for reaching out to others” (111).  

A later thinker, Wang Yangming (1472–1529) shied away from the comprehensive complexity 

of Zhu, and “long[ed] for the simplicity of the ancient sage” (213). Wang suffered banishment, 

and, “pushed to the limit of his spiritual resources” (215), brought Confucian ideas into critical 

dialogue with the mysticism of Taoism and Chan Buddhism (both of which Zhu saw as 

corrupting). Wang avoids facile syncretism, yet forges a more contemplative Confucianism, 

avowing the value of non-attachment and “quiet sitting.” Nevertheless, for both Zhu and Wang, 

“the role of the mind as self-critical and self-renewing” is vital; both “call for man to achieve 

utmost discrimination and oneness of mind in order to keep himself morally and spiritually attuned 

to the Way” (105), and thus more effectively serve others.  

Later in Part Two, de Bary addresses “the almost revolutionary impact of Neo-Confucianism 

on the rest of East Asia ” (229), especially in Korea, where the implementation of “Zhu Xi’s 

political and social thought often [went] beyond anything attempted in China and Japan” (276). 

Two essays illumine the way Confucian precepts can enrich our understanding of universal human 

rights and liberalism. These are especially pertinent given China’s increasingly restrictive regime 

in which, for example, many human rights lawyers and activists have been arrested. Xi Jinping 

might be inclined to temper his authoritarian impulses by reflecting upon this dialogue between 

Mencius and King Xuan regarding the fate of tyrant Zhou: 

 

King Xuan of Qi asked, “Is it true that Tang banished Jie and King Wu marched against 

Zhou?” 

“It is so recorded,” answered Mencius. 

“Is regicide permissible?” 

“A man who mutilates benevolence is a mutilator, while one who cripples rightness is a 

crippler. He who is both a mutilator and a crippler is an ‘outcast.’ I have indeed heard of 

the punishment of the ‘outcast Zhou,’ but I have not heard of any regicide.” (286) 

 

In Part Three, de Bary presents four essays, each drawn from lectures he was invited to give on 

distinguished scholars, teachers, and friends. The fourth of these, “Thomas Merton, Matteo Ricci, 

and Confucianism,” will be of special interest to the readers of Expositions. De Bary knew the 

slightly older Merton during his Columbia days; they hung out in jazz clubs and shared a mutual 

admiration for Dorothy Day. And, as the young men matured, both shared a deep love for Asian 

thought and literature. And here is where de Bary critiques Merton, who “did not engage [world 

religions] too much on other levels than the contemplative” (353), and, in a “striking omission” 



Review of The Great Civilized Conversation  102 
 

(354), never engaged Confucianism with the attention he gave to Taoism and Buddhism. Merton 

did acknowledge Confucianism’s “personalist doctrine” (357) and, in an essay entitled “The 

Jesuits in China,” credits “the sympathetic efforts of Matteo Ricci to achieve a genuine 

understanding of Confucianism” (359). But as de Bary observes, Ricci, unlike Merton, “did not 

just dismiss or sidestep [the educated Chinese leadership]” and, in his “extraordinary effort to learn 

and master classical Chinese,” even “attempt[ed] to reconcile Confucianism and Christianity at the 

highest level” (360). 

I wonder if the same might be said of Ted de Bary. In his Preface, he implies his own Christian 

commitments in paying tribute to his wife, Fanny, and his mother, Mildred, both of whom “were 

notable exemplars of keen intelligence, generosity of spirit, leadership ability, and Christian self-

giving in service to family and community” (viii). In the brief time that I spent with Professor de 

Bary, at a conference at Columbia in 2008, I discerned his practice of these Christian virtues. One 

of the happiest (and surprising) moments in my own academic career occurred a couple of years 

later, when Ted generously invited me to contribute an essay on the Taoist writer Zhuangzi 

(beloved by Merton) to his edited collection Finding Wisdom in East Asian Classics (Columbia 

University Press, 2011). I do not read or speak Chinese, but Ted wanted an essay that reflected the 

experience of teacher and students encountering the existential claims works like these make upon 

the reader. Each essay in this fine book offers rich evidence of de Bary’s own nearly century-long 

encounter with these classic works, and the countless students whom he has guided, sagely, along 

the way. 

 

 PAUL J. CONTINO 

 Pepperdine University 

 


