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Dr. Roger T. Ames is recognized internationally as the foremost leader of the comparative philosophy movement which emerged in the last thirty years and which has pushed back the boundaries of provincialism and Anglo-European centrism in philosophy and humanistic studies more broadly. His scholarly production and untiring efforts have made his University of Hawai’i the acknowledged world center for comparative philosophy and the model for the new efforts to do the same at institutions in Hong Kong and Europe. His name has become synonymous with research in Chinese philosophy both in China and the West and the present generation of younger scholars seldom find an area of research on which he has not already written.

Professor Ames’s more than 30 monograph length publications fall into three main categories: interpretive studies of Chinese philosophy, translations of the Chinese philosophical classics, and edited volumes of the most recent research in Chinese philosophy and culture in which he has assembled the finest cohorts of scholars working today. In addition to the monographs, his 70 book chapters, 90 articles in refereed journals, the many entries in dictionaries and encyclopedias, and several documentary films add to the reach and influence of his research.

Not to be overlooked, we should also include the profound influence he has had on developing the disciplines of Chinese and comparative philosophy globally through his efforts to further the career scholarship not only of his graduate students, but also through the inspiration and instruction he has given to philosophers trained largely in the Western philosophical traditions, but who have refocused their work under his influence. Indeed, Professor Ames has led in the establishment and growth of several professional organizations to further just such a cause: The Society for Asian and Comparative Philosophy, The Asian Studies Development Program, and the East-West Philosophers’ Conference series.

Almost all of Professor Ames’s books—including both interpretive studies and translations—have been translated into Chinese by a generation of Chinese scholars who have engaged his work. Indeed, it may be said that no Western philosopher living today has exerted as much influence on Chinese philosophy in China as has Professor Ames. His works have been published by China’s leading university and trade publishing houses. His English translations retained within the Chinese publications have introduced a new form of commentary on the Chinese philosophical canons for this generation of Chinese scholars who have a high competence in English. In 2013 a jury of prominent Chinese scholars awarded for the first time to a Western scholar the Confucius Culture Prize sponsored by the Chinese Ministry of Culture and the Shandong Provincial Government, the birthplace of Confucius. A volume of his work in Chinese entitled Roger Ames: A Confucius Prize Winner’s Special Collection was published in 2015. And in 2016 another jury of scholars has just awarded him the Huilin Culture Prize sponsored by Beijing Normal University.

The many interpretive studies of Chinese philosophy published by Professor Ames have been recognized with national and international panels on his research work. In May 2009, in China the Shandong provincial government sponsored an international conference at Qufu, the birthplace of Confucius, entitled “A Symposium Celebrating the Contribution of Professor Roger T. Ames to Confucian Philosophy.” In addition to many of China’s most distinguished Confucian scholars, ten of his former PhD students now teaching at universities around the world were invited to participate at conference expense, and 150 graduate students from China’s best universities were given a special lecture program on Chinese philosophy by this cadre of visiting scholars. A special issue of the journal, Contemporary Chinese Thought is entitled “Roger Ames: Confucian Philosopher and Teacher,” and is dedicated to the publication of the articles from this Shandong conference.

Professor Ames has authored many books that have interpreted Chinese philosophy and culture for Western scholars and students: Thinking Through Confucius (1987), Anticipating China: Thinking Through the Narratives of Chinese and Western Culture (1995), and Thinking From the Han: Self, Truth, and Transcendence in Chinese and Western Culture (1997) (all with D.L. Hall) are often referred to as “the Hall and Ames trilogy.” Works from this trilogy are among the most cited in the last ten years of new scholarship on Chinese and comparative philosophy and we can surely say neglecting to consult them will only diminish the product produced.

Being a public philosopher is a role that many research scholars never quite find themselves able to embrace. However, Professor Ames has turned his focus in just such a direction, working specifically on the contemporary social and political construction of a new appropriation of Chinese philosophy for worldwide humanistic civic values. The story of his contribution as a public philosopher begins decades ago with his early promotion of a conversation between American pragmatism and Confucianism, the recognition of which is validated in his invitation to the board of the John Dewey Center and a series he co-edits with Peking University Press of translations of works on John Dewey. His Democracy of the Dead: Dewey, Confucius, and the Hope for Democracy in China (with D.L. Hall) (1999) represents another stage in this effort. His most recent publication, Confucian Role Ethics: A Vocabulary, based upon his set of 2008 Ch’ien Mu Lectures at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, is a highly original and creative effort to articulate a Confucian role ethics as a sui generis vision of the moral life.

Professor Ames’s translations of Chinese classics are for the most part based upon the recently recovered archaeological finds that have prompted a reevaluation of the formative period of Chinese philosophy and culture. His mastery of the classical language under the tutelage of D.C. Lau has made him one of the preeminent classicists of his generation. His translations have made available to the current generation of philosophers works not previously available. Making the best use of the exciting new archaeological finds in China, he has also been retranslating the canons of Chinese philosophy as specifically “philosophical translations” to allow these seminal texts to speak with their own voice after centuries of being overwritten with Western religious and philosophical assumptions. Ames’s translations include Sun-tzu: The Art of Warfare (1993); Sun Pin: The Art of Warfare (1996) and Tracing Dao to its Source (1997) (both with D.C. Lau); the Confucian Analects: A Philosophical Translation (1998) and the Chinese Classic of Family Reverence: A Philosophical Translation of the Xiaojing (2009) (with Henry Rosemont, Jr.), Focusing the Familiar: A Translation and Philosophical Interpretation of the Zhongyong, and A Philosophical Translation of the Daodejing: Making This Life Significant (with D.L. Hall) (2001). His publications in this category are among the most widely used texts in classrooms across the country. Random House has now marketed more than 110,000 copies of the English version of Sun-tzu: The Art of Warfare, over 30,000 copies of the Analects of Confucius, and over 20,000 copies of the Daodejing.

Many universities have recognized and honored Professor Ames and celebrated his works in doing so. The popularity of Ames’s Sun-tzu as the definitive translation of this canonical text, a Book-of-the-Month selection, was the stated reason for the Honorary Doctorate that he received from the University of British Columbia. He has been a Fulbright professor at Peking University and at Wuhan University, and the distinguished “Eu Tong Sen” professor at Chinese University of Hong Kong.

Over the years, Professor Ames has not only taught at many Chinese universities, but has also been appointed an honorary advisor and faculty member at these same institutions—Qingdao University, Shandong University, Tianjin University, Beishida, Beiwai, Sungkyunkwan University.

He has been an advisor to the new Confucian Academy at the Birthplace of Confucius from its inauguration, and for the past four summers has conducted month long institutes for both foreign and Chinese professors. He is a principal in the ongoing University of Tokyo-University of Hawai’i Residential Institute in Comparative Philosophy held every summer.

In America, Professor Ames has for a quarter of a century been the co-director of the Asian Studies Development program. Over these 25 years, some 500 institutions with 2000 faculty have participated in seminars and institutes he has directed and organized in collaboration with the National Endowment of Humanities, the Freeman Foundation, and the East-West Center. With multiple residential institutes in Hawai’i every summer, field seminars in Asia, and workshops across the country, this program has changed American higher education in promoting literacy on Chinese philosophy and culture not only among philosophers, but also with faculty in the humanities and social sciences more generally.

Professor Ames has fostered the research and writing of philosophers, humanists and social scientists through the internationally known and respected journals he has edited and founded. He has served for the past 29 years as the Editor of Philosophy East and West, one of the oldest and most prestigious journals on comparative philosophy now in its 66nd year of publication. He is also the founding Editor of China Review International, a dedicated review journal of recent scholarship on China now in its 21th year of publication. In this editorial capacity he has facilitated the publication of new knowledge by his American and international colleagues. Professor Ames is also the editor of a book series with State University of New York Press entitled “Chinese Philosophy and Culture,” and after thirty years of his leadership this series has over 150 titles that promote literacy on Chinese culture within the Western academy.

After his lifetime of commitment to philosophical scholarship and its public employment in civic affairs, there are perhaps three distinguishing characteristics of Professor Ames’s legacy which can be identified in summary.

First, in his interpretive work and in his translations of the Chinese philosophical canons, Professor Ames has tried with imagination to allow this tradition to speak with its own voice. He has argued vociferously that we have to reinstate a Chinese tradition that was introduced into the Western academy as an “eastern religion” parallel to and sharing a vocabulary with the Western Abrahamic traditions, complete with “Heaven” and “the Way” and “ritual” and “righteousness” and “filial piety”—cultural translations that are fundamental distortions of the original Chinese vocabulary. Ames argues that Chinese philosophy as a tradition has its own identity and integrity without reference to Western theories and categories.

Secondly, perhaps the most important international relation in the second decade of the 21st century is that between the United States and China. If these two cultures can find common ground, the world will be a stable place. Ames has promoted and been directly involved in a Confucian-American Pragmatism dialogue to identify a vocabulary that can conduce to a better understanding of shared values and purposes between China and the U.S.

And thirdly, Ames has argued that Confucianism as a philosophy is not only Chinese or East Asian, but belongs to a world repository of culture. Beethoven is not only German music, it is world music. And Confucianism is not just Chinese culture, but a global resource for a newly emerging world culture. In 2014 at the inaugural meeting of the World Consortium for Research in Confucian Cultures, Ames was elected its first president.