I GRATEFULLY ACKNOWLEDGE the help of many colleagues and friends in the writing of this book. I am especially grateful to those who read and commented on the entire manuscript, including three reviewers for Columbia University Press. I owe a special debt of gratitude to P. J. Ivanhoe for encouraging me to write this book in the first place and for reading and commenting on numerous drafts. In addition to his indispensable feedback at every stage of the project, I am grateful for the friendship of P. J. and his wife, Hong, and for their inspiring model of loving, supportive parenting. I also owe special thanks to Bryan Van Norden, who offered detailed comments and suggestions on the manuscript, which resulted in a much stronger book. I am also grateful for his encouragement and for the excellent model of careful scholarship that his work has provided over the years. I am also particularly grateful to Michael Puett, whom I admire in more ways that I can enumerate here and whose suggestions and encouragement were immensely helpful.
I presented material from this book in many different forums over the years, and I am grateful to audiences at the conference on Confucian and Liberal Perspectives on Family, State, and Civil Society at the City University of Hong Kong, the Oregon Humanities Center, and the annual meetings of the American Philosophical Association and the American Academy of Religion for helpful comments and questions, which influenced this work. I also want to thank those who read parts of the manuscript and/or offered helpful feedback on the various philosophical, textual, and historical issues connected with this project, including Eric Hutton, Mark Unno, Pauline Lee, Leigh Jenco, Justin Tiwald, Hagop Sarkissian, and Chenyang Li.
I am grateful for the generous support of Georgetown University, the Oregon Humanities Center, and the University of Oregon for grants and fellowships that provided the time and the resources essential to the completion of this project. I am particularly thankful to the Theology Department at Georgetown University and my wonderful department chair, Chrisopher Steck, S.J., for providing the support that made this book possible. I am fortunate to have a truly wonderful group of colleagues and friends at Georgetown who support and encourage me in numerous ways. While I cannot mention all of them here, I am particularly grateful to Jonathan Ray and Daniel Madigan, S.J., for their interest in this project and for their encouragement. I also want to thank Kevin O’Brien, S.J., for kindling in me a devotion to the Ignatian tradition and for patient, astute, and generous guidance and encouragement in all things. I am truly grateful to my friends in the Society of Jesus for showing me meaning and beauty in another kind of family.
I want to express my appreciation to the entire editorial team at Columbia University Press. I am particularly grateful to Wendy Lochner, my editor, for her advice and encouragement and to Christine Dunbar for her invaluable assistance.
Most importantly, I am grateful to my family for showing me the meaning of all the things I write about in this book. My parents, my brother, Kelly, and his wife, Jamie, and their children have been a constant source of support and love. My husband, Michael—my perfect complement in all endeavors—read every draft and provided invaluable feedback and encouragement and helped me find the right publisher. He also cared for our children for many hours while I worked on this book. Our children, Patrick and Bridget, inspired me with firsthand experiences of many of the things I write about in these pages and most of all with their spontaneous outpourings of love and affection.