Amy Olberding, "The Wrong of Rudeness: Learning Modern Civility from Ancient Chinese Philosophy" (Oxford UP, 2019)
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What is Amy Olberding’s book “The Wrong of Rudeness” about and why does it matter today?
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Amy Olberding's new book, The Wrong of Rudeness, Learning Modern Civility from Ancient Chinese Philosophy, is a joy to read, both entertaining and rich in ideas. The Wrong of Rudeness asks a key question for our times. How do we interact with each other, especially in politically contentious situations? Olberding addresses this and related issues by bringing our modern challenges into dialogue with thinkers from early China. Weaving together modern cultural references with innovative readings of classic Chinese texts, Olberding makes the argument that good manners are the way we practice core human values in everyday life. This is a book to read, share, and discuss.
How did Olberding become interested in early Chinese philosophy and ethics?
Hello, everybody, and welcome back to New Books in East Asian Studies. I'm Natasha Heller, one of the hosts of this channel. Today we'll be talking to Amy Olberding about her new book, The Wrong of Rudeness. Hi, Amy. Hi. So let's get started. You're a professor of philosophy at the University of Oklahoma with a focus on early Chinese philosophy and ethics. Could you tell us a little bit about how these interests developed?
Yeah. I was one of the fortunate undergraduates in philosophy in that I got to study Chinese philosophy when I was doing my bachelor's degree. And that spurred an interest in studying East Asian philosophy in general and I went to graduate school in Hawaii, which at the time Roger Ames was teaching there, a very dynamic teacher, and I just found it captivating. One of the things that drew me to it was that I found Confucian philosophy was much more captivated by everyday morality and by everyday experiences, the prosaic, the ordinary, and I think that Even now, we haven't fully, particularly in the Western Academy, tapped sort of all that's available there. So I wanted to be able to study that and able to communicate it to others.
Great. So today, as I mentioned, we'll be talking about your second book, The Wrong of Rudeness. Can you tell us a little bit about how you came to write this book?
Sure. I was interested in, my initial interest in early Confucian philosophy was about the philosophical literature that's available on ritual mourning for the dead. And once you start looking at ritual mourning for the dead, you see that it's part of this much bigger project, the project of Li, which we would see as a concept that encompasses both manners and civility. And I thought that it was, first of all, just interesting how much attention is given to that in Confucian philosophy. But also it struck me as that this is, this is an area of moral experience that we just don't think about very often. And then of course, um, public culture has declined in terms of how, uh, well, our political culture certainly has declined in terms of civility.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is Amy Olberding’s book “The Wrong of Rudeness” about and why does it matter today?
0:00–1:59
2
How did Olberding become interested in early Chinese philosophy and ethics?
1:59–5:05
3
What distinction does the book draw between good manners and civility?
5:05–10:44
4
Why does Olberding argue that modern political culture has lost civility?
10:44–22:45
5
What are the “temptations of incivility” and how does “critical, righteous incivility” work?
22:45–32:28
6
How does Confucian thought explain the importance of managing one’s face and bodily expression?
32:28–45:11
7
When is incivility justified according to Confucius and the book’s analysis?
45:11–53:57
8
What future projects does Olberding plan and what lasting take‑aways does she offer listeners?
53:57–55:37
Speakers
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Rivka Weinberg, "The Meaning of It All: Ultimate Meaning, Everyday Meaning, Cosmic Meaning, Death, and Time" (Oxford UP, 2026)
PJ DiPietro, "Sideways Selves Travesti and Jotería, "Struggles Across the Américas" (U Texas Press, 2025)