Paul R Goldin | University of Pennsylvania (original) (raw)

Videos by Paul R Goldin

June 21, 2021, on "Against the Grain," KPFA 94.1 FM. The Chinese philosophical text Laozi, also ... more June 21, 2021, on "Against the Grain," KPFA 94.1 FM.

The Chinese philosophical text Laozi, also known as the Tao Te Ching, has inspired and intrigued readers for more than two millennia. What is the Dao, typically translated as the Way? What does the text say about how we should behave, what we should value, what traditional ways of thinking we should reconsider or reject? Paul Goldin explains and interprets the text.

https://kpfa.org/episode/against-the-grain-june-21-2021/

169 views

Dec 21, 2020, New Books Network Paul Goldin's book The Art of Chinese Philosophy: Eight Classica... more Dec 21, 2020, New Books Network

Paul Goldin's book The Art of Chinese Philosophy: Eight Classical Texts and How to Read Them (Princeton UP, 2020) provides an unmatched introduction to eight of the most important works of classical Chinese philosophy--the Analects of Confucius, Mozi, Mencius, Laozi, Zhuangzi, Sunzi, Xunzi, and Han Feizi. Combining accessibility with the latest scholarship, Paul Goldin, one of the world's leading authorities on the history of Chinese philosophy, places these works in rich context as he explains the origin and meaning of their compelling ideas.

https://newbooksnetwork.com/the-art-of-chinese-philosophy

309 views

Ep. 59 of Betwixt the Sheets, hosted by Kate Lister. How did the people of Ancient China think... more Ep. 59 of Betwixt the Sheets, hosted by Kate Lister.

How did the people of Ancient China think about sex? From sexual vampirism to unrealistic representations of courtesan culture, from wife lending to avoiding *ahem* finishing: in this episode Kate and Paul R. Goldin from the University of Pennsylvania delve into the beds and sexual beliefs of Ancient China.

248 views

Papers by Paul R Goldin

Bochumer Jahrbuch zur Ostasienforschung, 2023

Shangjun shu, a text that is especially rich in nuanced keywords, coordinates different types of ... more Shangjun shu, a text that is especially rich in nuanced keywords, coordinates different types of power in significant sequences. Comprehending the philosophy of the text therefore requires comprehending the semantics and etymologies of these keywords. The present article is not a comprehensive discussion of power in Shangjun shu but affords a glimpse of the value of historical linguistics for a deeper understanding of philosophy and conceptual history.

Chinese Philosophy and Its Thinkers: From Ancient Times to the Present Day, ed. Dawid Rogacz & Selusi Ambrogio, 2024

Defining the Bronze Age: Sources and Limitations Oracle-Bone Inscriptions: Fallibility and Interp... more Defining the Bronze Age: Sources and Limitations
Oracle-Bone Inscriptions: Fallibility and Interpretation
“The Deity’s Command” and “Heaven’s Mandate”
Looking for Philosophy in the Documents
The End of the Bronze Age and the Rise of Doubt

The Routledge Handbook of Chinese Language and Culture, 2024

A relatively small number of keywords are so important to the study of classical Chinese philosop... more A relatively small number of keywords are so important to the study of classical Chinese philosophy that any insight into their etymology and semantic range would amply repay the effort of inquiry. The familiar difficulties of Chinese historical linguistics have impeded the comprehension of these keywords just as they have impeded the comprehension of every other aspect of the language. Philosophical texts in other languages rarely present commensurate hurdles. Most keywords of classical Greek and Roman philosophy, for example, are well understood from a linguistic point of view. Even Sanskrit philosophical terms usually pose fewer linguistic problems than Chinese ones. As research in the history of the Chinese language progresses, however, some keywords are slowly but surely beginning to reveal their mysteries. Decades having passed since the pioneering research by linguists such as Peter A. Boodberg (1979: 26-40) and Mei Tsu-lin (1994), the time is ripe for review. The following aperçu relies primarily on the Old Chinese reconstruction system of William H. Baxter and Laurent Sagart (2014), but many of the relevant phenomena would be discernible in competing systems as well.

Dao Companion to the Philosophy of Mencius, 2023

This chapter reviews the aspects of Mencius that did and did not interest Han-dynasty writers. Wi... more This chapter reviews the aspects of Mencius that did and did not interest Han-dynasty writers. With the help of digital concordances, it is easy to discover that many of the passages considered crucial today were rarely, if ever, cited in the Han. These include the parable of the infant about to fall into a well (2A.6), the debate with a Mohist named Yi Zhi 夷之 (3A.5), and the concept of liangzhi 良知 (7A.15), which, since Wang Yangming 王陽明 (1472–1528), has been considered a cornerstone of Mencian ethics. The chapter discusses other key passages that are never mentioned in Han sources. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, and thus one cannot simply infer that these passages were unknown in the Han dynasty, but it remains significant that they were not regarded as essential to understanding Mencius’s philosophy. The conclusion will explore the differences between Mencius’s reception in the Han dynasty and his Neo-Confucianized reception today.

Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy, 2023

Ten years after the publication of "Heng Xian and the Problem of Studying Looted Artifacts" in Da... more Ten years after the publication of "Heng Xian and the Problem of Studying Looted Artifacts" in Dao, this rejoinder to critics begins by recapitulating my original argument, then considers the leading objections that have appeared in the interim. After dispensing with two trivial and ad hominem responses (that I am a hypocrite and an imperialist), the discussion focuses on the one serious objection, namely, that the benefits of studying looted artifacts outweigh the costs. I conclude with my reasons for disagreeing with this judgment.

Hiding the World in the World, 2003

Journal of Chinese Studies, 2022

This is our response to Jens Østergaard Petersen’s review of our book Lu Jia’s New Discourses: A ... more This is our response to Jens Østergaard Petersen’s review of our
book Lu Jia’s New Discourses: A Political Manifesto from the Early Han Dynasty.

Nanyang Journal of Chinese Literature and Culture, 2022

After decades of attempts, comparisons between classical Chinese and Greco-Roman philosophy have ... more After decades of attempts, comparisons between classical Chinese and Greco-Roman philosophy have had limited success. While there have been some productive lines of inquiry (for example, comparing early Confucian ethics to virtue ethics as represented by Aristotle), the overall record is disappointing because concepts such as Plato's theory of forms or Aristotle's emphasis on syllogism have proved incommensurable with most classical Chinese ways of thinking. But much of the problem can be attributed to the habit of comparing Chinese thinkers to Plato and Aristotle without asking whether they are the most suitable philosophers for this purpose. For most of the twentieth century, Hellenistic philosophy was scarcely considered. Yet very recently, provocative similarities have been identified between Chinese philosophy and Stoicism, especially Epictetus. In this paper, I argue that these parallels are even more significant than previous scholarship has recognized (I hope to convince the reader that some of them are staggering), and conclude by asking why we find such parallels in the first place. My claim will not be direct or even indirect transmission; this is a case, to borrow a distinction from evolutionary biology, of analogous rather than homologous development.

Between Command and Market: Economic Thought and Practice in Early China, 2022

A study of economic cycles and price theory in early Chinese texts, especially Yuejue shu 越絕書 and... more A study of economic cycles and price theory in early Chinese texts, especially Yuejue shu 越絕書 and Guanzi 管子.

How to Read Chinese Prose: A Guided Anthology, 2022

Readers sometimes wonder why China’s first philosophical burgeoning took place during a singularl... more Readers sometimes wonder why China’s first philosophical burgeoning took place during a singularly chaotic period, the aptly named Warring States. Would people really have taken a break from killing each other to engage in refined philosophical debate? The truth is that the people who were doing the refined philosophizing were not the people doing the killing: they were advising the people doing the killing, usually for a good salary. We may like to think of ancient Chinese philosophers as high-minded gentlemen rather than venal careerists, but even high-minded gentlemen need to eat, and the necessities of life were most readily obtained by serving a ruler who wished to profit from their expertise.

T'oung Pao, 2021

Recent studies of the canonical Five Ranks (wudeng 五等, known from Mencius 5B.2 and related texts)... more Recent studies of the canonical Five Ranks (wudeng 五等, known from Mencius 5B.2 and related texts) by Li Feng and Yuri Pines contain many useful observations, but neither one discusses the etymologies. Most of the titles can be shown to originate in kinship terms and reflect the early Chinese conception of political power as supervening on lineage status. Traditional Sinology, both in East Asia and in the West, has unjustifiably contented itself with examining usage and graphic variation, without considering etymology, which is possible only by considering the forms in Old Chinese. Etymology being an inexact science, the ideas offered below are necessarily tentative, but I hope they will help us overcome the fusty renderings "duke, marquis, earl, viscount, and baron," which vary from occasionally defensible (marquis) to wholly preposterous (viscount).

Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy, 2020

Invited response to Paul J. D'Ambrosio et al., “Incongruent Names: A Theme in the History of Chin... more Invited response to Paul J. D'Ambrosio et al., “Incongruent Names: A Theme in the History of Chinese Philosophy,” Dao 17.3 (2018), 305-30.

T'oung Pao, 2018

This article uses evidence from digital databases to re-examine two controversial issues regardin... more This article uses evidence from digital databases to re-examine two controversial issues regarding the “Six Criteria” (liufa 六法) of painting listed by Xie He 謝赫 (d. after 532) in the preface to his Gu huapin lu 古畫品錄: (1) their syntax and phrasing, and (2) the origin and connotations of qiyun 氣韻, the most famous of the six. Despite recent claims to the contrary, the series of six numbered clauses taking the form “X, Y shi ye 是也” is unremarkable for the language of the time; moreover, the application of the Six Criteria in the subsequent biographies discloses that they are listed in decreasing order of importance. While the meaning and connotations of qiyun are impossible to state succinctly because they vary from one source to another, it is used (like similar phrases, such as yayun 雅韻 and shenyun 神韻) both to praise people’s character and as an aesthetic quality pertaining to music, literature, and art.

Published in Michael Hunter and Martin Kern, eds., Confucius and the Analects Revisited (2018).

Sexuality in China : histories of power and pleasure, 2018

characterize Chinese society for millennia had already taken hold: polyg yny at the top of the so... more characterize Chinese society for millennia had already taken hold: polyg yny at the top of the social pyramid; and competition for women, frequently leading to violence, at the bottom.* Many aspects of traditional Chinese society become comprehensible if one bears this fact in mind. Pure arith metic makes it impossible for all men in a society to engage in polygyny, so one can use the number of women sexually available to a man as a rough but telling index of his social standing. For the overwhelming majority of males, this number would have been zero or one, but even those with one wife might have considered themselves fortunate. One of the most impor tant milestones in a man's life would have been attaining the requisite wealth and stability to support a wife; the thousands, if not millions, of men who could never afford a family became a permanent source of social unrest. It stands to reason that almost all healthy females were partnered at least once during their lifetimes, typically at an early age-either as wives {qi), if their families were relatively prosperous, or as concubines {qie), if their families needed the cash that would be offered for them.

Entry on Xunzi for the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Introduction to A Concise Companion to Confucius (Wiley Blackwell, 2017)

June 21, 2021, on "Against the Grain," KPFA 94.1 FM. The Chinese philosophical text Laozi, also ... more June 21, 2021, on "Against the Grain," KPFA 94.1 FM.

https://kpfa.org/episode/against-the-grain-june-21-2021/

169 views

Dec 21, 2020, New Books Network Paul Goldin's book The Art of Chinese Philosophy: Eight Classica... more Dec 21, 2020, New Books Network

https://newbooksnetwork.com/the-art-of-chinese-philosophy

309 views

Ep. 59 of Betwixt the Sheets, hosted by Kate Lister. How did the people of Ancient China think... more Ep. 59 of Betwixt the Sheets, hosted by Kate Lister.

248 views

Bochumer Jahrbuch zur Ostasienforschung, 2023

Chinese Philosophy and Its Thinkers: From Ancient Times to the Present Day, ed. Dawid Rogacz & Selusi Ambrogio, 2024

The Routledge Handbook of Chinese Language and Culture, 2024

Dao Companion to the Philosophy of Mencius, 2023

Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy, 2023

Hiding the World in the World, 2003

Journal of Chinese Studies, 2022

Nanyang Journal of Chinese Literature and Culture, 2022

Between Command and Market: Economic Thought and Practice in Early China, 2022

How to Read Chinese Prose: A Guided Anthology, 2022

T'oung Pao, 2021

Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy, 2020

T'oung Pao, 2018

Published in Michael Hunter and Martin Kern, eds., Confucius and the Analects Revisited (2018).

Sexuality in China : histories of power and pleasure, 2018

Entry on Xunzi for the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Introduction to A Concise Companion to Confucius (Wiley Blackwell, 2017)

Introduction to the newly published Routledge Handbook of Early Chinese History (2018)

One longstanding criticism of Chinese thought is that is not truly “philosophical” because it la... more One longstanding criticism of Chinese thought is that is not truly “philosophical” because it lacks viable protocols of argumentation. Thus it qualifies at best as “wisdom”; Confucius, for example, might provide valuable guidance, or thoughtful epigrams to ponder, but nothing in the way of formal reasoning that would permit his audience to reconstruct and reconsider his arguments in any conceivable context.
This criticism seems to be based on the tacit premise that acceptable argumentation must be deductive, whereas most famous Chinese arguments tend to be non-deductive. This paper will survey the types of non-deductive argumentation commonly found in Chinese philosophy. One of the most prolific is appeal to example, which is the basis of the strong interest in anecdotes as a genre of philosophical literature from the Springs and Autumns at least through the Six Dynasties.
There are important examples of deductive argument as well, which will be briefly reviewed.
Whether these observations are sufficient to rescue Chinese thought from the wilderness of “wisdom” and enshrine it in the halls of “philosophy” will be left for the reader to decide, but a conception of “philosophy” that can account for Chinese thought is naturally more interesting than one that cannot.

“氣”作爲一個含義豐富的字，與相當多的概念相互關聯，表現出極爲複雜的内涵。但“氣”是中國哲學中的重要命題，所以歷來的研究者都希望梳理出“氣”的概念史。最近白一平（ＷｉｌｌｉａｍＨ．Ｂａｘｔ... more “氣”作爲一個含義豐富的字，與相當多的概念相互關聯，表現出極爲複雜的内涵。但“氣”是中國哲學中的重要命題，所以歷來的研究者都希望梳理出“氣”的概念史。最近白一平（ＷｉｌｌｉａｍＨ．Ｂａｘｔｅｒ）和沙加爾（ＬａｕｒｅｎｔＳａｇａｒｔ）重構“氣”爲Ｃ．ｑｈｐｓ，其中Ｃ表示不確定的輔音，與“吸”顯示出明顯的聯繫；而ｑｈｐ則表示呼吸。毫無疑，“氣”的基本含義是“呼吸”（ｂｒｅａｔｈ），而所有其他感官
（ｓｅｎｓｅｓ）都從它派生出來。本文在此基礎上繼續對“氣”及其相關概念如陰陽、五行等進行研究，闡述“氣”之所以在中國上古時期能夠作爲重要概念的三個主要原因
及其積極意義：（１）“氣”以“神靈”的形式允許了疾病的概念化；（２）“氣”能賦予“天命”政治承襲理論合法性的地位；（３）傳統認爲可藉學習控制“氣”以獲得非凡力量。最後爲求使研究更完整，本文亦對“氣”的局限性作一討論。

This bibliography contains nearly 850 items and will be continuously updated.

This bibliography comprises ca. 1,800 entries and will be continuously updated.

This bibliography, which contains approximately 15,500 entries, aims to be inclusive from the Neo... more This bibliography, which contains approximately 15,500 entries, aims to be inclusive from the Neolithic through the pre-Buddhist era and is continuously updated.

A response to misrepresentations of my work in Michael R. Slater, “Xunzi on Heaven, Ritual, and t... more A response to misrepresentations of my work in Michael R. Slater, “Xunzi on Heaven, Ritual, and the Way,” Philosophy East and West 68.3 (2018), 887-908.

Originally published in Warring States Papers 1 (2010), 75-78. I have been slowly updating it ov... more Originally published in Warring States Papers 1 (2010), 75-78. I have been slowly updating it over the years.

Originally published in Journal of the American Oriental Society 121.4 (2001), and revised over t... more Originally published in Journal of the American Oriental Society 121.4 (2001), and revised over the years.

A corrected version of the article that was published with editorial mistakes in Journal of Chine... more A corrected version of the article that was published with editorial mistakes in Journal of Chinese Philosophy 38.1 (2011)

The Worlds of Classical Chinese Aesthetics, 2024, 2024

This book presents the foundations of classical Chinese aesthetic discourse--roughly from the Bro... more This book presents the foundations of classical Chinese aesthetic discourse--roughly from the Bronze Age to the early Middle Ages--with the following animating questions:

What is art?

Why do we produce it?

How do we judge it?

The arts that garnered the most theoretical attention during this time period were music, poetry, calligraphy, and painting, and the book considers the reasons why these four were privileged. Whereas modern artists most likely consider themselves musicians or poets or calligraphers or painters or sculptors or architects, the pre-modern authors who produced the literature that established Chinese aesthetics prided themselves on being wenren, “cultured people,” conversant with all forms of art and learning. Other comparisons with Western theories and works of art are presented at due junctures.

Ancient Chinese economic thought has never been related to the evidence of economic practice. We ... more Ancient Chinese economic thought has never been related to the evidence of economic practice. We know how state economies were supposed to be run in theory, but not the degree to which economic thought re ected everyday economic activity. Moreover, it is still not clear to what extent economic thought constituted a separate eld of inquiry and was independent of fundamental cultural notions or political considerations. Finally, why was there so much more sustained interest in political economy in China than anywhere else? This book sets out to consider such questions through contextualised analyses of both received and newly excavated sources on economic thought and practice.

Acknowledgments
Notes on Contributors

Introduction
Elisa Levi Sabattini and Christian Schwermann

1 Economic Cycles and Price Theory in Early Chinese Texts
Paul R. Goldin

2 Agriculturalism and Beyond: Economic Thought of The Book of Lord Shang
Yuri Pines

3 Situating the “Qingzhong” 輕重 Chapters of the Guanzi 管子
Hans van Ess

4 Feng Xuan Buys Rightness, Gongyi Xiu Expels His Wife: Economic Exemplars in the Warring States and Early Han
Andrew Meyer

5 Between Command and Market: Credit, Labour, and Accounting in the Qin Empire (221–207 BCE)
Maxim Korolkov

6 The Economic Activities of a Qin Local Administration: Qianling County, Modern Liye, Hunan Province, 222–209 BCE
Robin D.S. Yates

7 To Ban or Not to Ban: Jia Yi on Copper Distribution and Minting Coins
Elisa Levi Sabattini

8 The First Chinese Economic Impact on Asia: Distribution and Usage of Monies in Early China in Synchronic and Diachronic Perspective
Yohei Kakinuma

Index

Lu Jia's New Discourses: A Political Manifesto from the Early Han Dynasty, 2020

Lu Jia's New Discourses: A Political Manifesto from the Early Han Dynasty is a readable yet accur... more Lu Jia's New Discourses: A Political Manifesto from the Early Han Dynasty is a readable yet accurate translation by Paul R. Goldin and Elisa Levi Sabattini.

Celebrated as “a man-of-service with a mouth [skilled] at persuasion”, Lu Jia (c. 228-140 BCE) became one of the leading figures of the early Han dynasty, serving as a statesman and diplomat from the very beginning of the Han empire. This book is a translation of Lu Jia’s New Discourses, which laid out the reasons for rise and fall of empires. Challenged by the new Emperor to produce a book explaining why a realm that was conquered on horseback cannot also be ruled on horseback, Lu Jia produced New Discourses, to great acclaim.

The Art of Chinese Philosophy: Eight Classical Texts and How to Read Them, 2020

Forthcoming from Princeton University Press

The subject of sex was central to early Chinese thought. Discussed openly and seriously as a fund... more The subject of sex was central to early Chinese thought. Discussed openly and seriously as a fundamental topic of human speculation, it was an important source of imagery and terminology that informed the classical Chinese conception of social and political relationships. This sophisticated and long-standing tradition, however, has been all but neglected by modern historians. In The Culture of Sex in Ancient China, Paul Rakita Goldin addresses central issues in the history of Chinese attitudes toward sex and gender from 500 B.C. to A.D. 400.
A survey of major pre-imperial sources, including some of the most revered and influential texts in the Chinese tradition, reveals the use of the image of copulation as a metaphor for various human relations, such as those between a worshiper and his or her deity or a ruler and his subjects. In his examination of early Confucian views of women, Goldin notes that, while contradictions and ambiguities existed in the articulation of these views, women were nevertheless regarded as full participants in the Confucian project of self-transformation. He goes on to show how assumptions concerning the relationship of sexual behavior to political activity (assumptions reinforced by the habitual use of various literary tropes discussed earlier in the book) led to increasing attempts to regulate sexual behavior throughout the Han dynasty. Following the fall of the Han, this ideology was rejected by the aristocracy, who continually resisted claims of sovereignty made by impotent emperors in a succession of short-lived dynasties.
Erudite and immensely entertaining, this study of intellectual conceptions of sex and sexuality in China will be welcomed by students and scholars of early China and by those with an interest in the comparative development of ancient cultures.

After Confucius is a collection of eight studies of Chinese philosophy from the time of Confucius... more After Confucius is a collection of eight studies of Chinese philosophy from the time of Confucius to the formation of the empire in the second and third centuries B.C.E. As detailed in a masterful introduction, each essay serves as a concrete example of "thick description"--an approach invented by philosopher Gilbert Ryle--which aims to reveal the logic that informs an observable exchange among members of a community or society. To grasp the significance of such exchanges, it is necessary to investigate the networks of meaning on which they rely. Paul R. Goldin argues that the character of ancient Chinese philosophy can be appreciated only if we recognize the cultural codes underlying the circulation of ideas in that world. Thick description is the best preliminary method to determine how Chinese thinkers conceived of their own enterprise.
Who were the ancient Chinese philosophers? What was their intended audience? What were they arguing about? How did they respond to earlier thinkers, and to each other? Why did those in power wish to hear from them, and what did they claim to offer in return for patronage? Goldin addresses these questions as he looks at several topics, including rhetorical conventions of Chinese philosophical literature; the value of recently excavated manuscripts for the interpretation of the more familiar, received literature; and the duty of translators to convey the world of concerns of the original texts. Each of the cases investigated in this wide-ranging volume exemplifies the central conviction behind Goldin's plea for thick description: We do not do justice to classical Chinese philosophy unless we engage squarely the complex and ancient culture that engendered it.

BNU-HKBU United International College, Zhuhai

Lecture for Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.

A recording is now available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DSUf2z9jw8k The Chinese ... more A recording is now available here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DSUf2z9jw8k

The Chinese Bronze Age corresponds roughly to two dynasties, Shang 商 (ca. 1600-ca. 1045 B.C.) and Western Zhou 西周 (ca. 1045-771 B.C.). The name Bronze Age is defensible because these were bronze-using societies whose artifacts evince a high degree of metallurgical skill, and who left behind some of their most important documents as inscriptions on bronze vessels. Conspicuously, the surviving textual sources derive from the world of the elite, if not the very apex of power in the form of the King and his closest ministers. One of the major questions is the extent to which they believed what they wrote and transmitted. How much confidence did they have in their oracles? Did the King believe that Heaven would reward him for virtue and punish him for vice? If anyone in the Bronze Age harbored doubts about these convictions, no such record has survived. Accordingly, the Bronze Age may seem barren to philosophers, for I do not think there can be “philosophy” without doubt: the awareness that there can be other perspectives, that a moral life requires thinking for oneself and not simply living up to the expectations of some unquestioned authority. But what can be inferred? This paper will survey questions such as the interpretation of oracles, the doctrine of Heaven’s Mandate (tianming 天命), the concept of learning from history, ideals of jurisprudence, and the reasons for the collapse of Bronze Age ideology in later centuries.

This set of invited lectures will be based on my recent book, The Art of Chinese Philosophy: Eigh... more This set of invited lectures will be based on my recent book, The Art of Chinese Philosophy: Eight Classical Texts and How to Read Them. Zoom login information is on the flyer. Please note that BJT stands for Beijing Time 北京時間, i.e. China Standard Time.

For most of the twentieth century, Hellenistic philosophy was scarcely considered. Yet very recently, provocative similarities have been identified between Chinese philosophy and Stoicism, especially Epictetus. I shall argue that these parallels are even more significant than previous scholarship has recognized (I hope to convince the reader that some of them are indeed staggering), and conclude by asking why we find such parallels in the first place. My claim will not be direct or even indirect transmission; this is a case, to borrow a distinction from evolutionary biology, of analogous rather than homologous development.

The Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations at the University of Pennsylvania will h... more The Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations at the University of Pennsylvania will host a one-day workshop on approaches to classical Chinese philosophical texts on Oct. 5. The event is free and open to the public, but please register using the link below (which includes a program):

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/classical-chinese-philosophical-texts-tickets-71300157691

Hope to see you there!

China Studies International, 2024

Nan Nü: Men, Women and Gender in China, 2024

Journal of Asian Studies, 2021

Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, Reviews, 2020

T'oung Pao, 2017

韓非子), with an emphasis on law and politics (bespeaking the author's in terests),1 bookended by a ... more 韓非子), with an emphasis on law and politics (bespeaking the author's in terests),1 bookended by a tendentious "Prologue" and "Epilogue"-and all vitiated by inadequate engagement with relevant scholarship. The bibliography consists almost entirely of famous books in Chinese, with a minuscule number of works in English, and absolutely nothing in any other language. At a minimum, the University of Edinburgh Press should have demanded a more robust scholarly apparatus.

Dao, 2013

Shizi 尸子, or Master Shi, is a lost text attributed to SHI Jiao 尸佼 (alive 338 BCE; see QIAN Mu, Ch... more Shizi 尸子, or Master Shi, is a lost text attributed to SHI Jiao 尸佼 (alive 338 BCE; see QIAN Mu, Chronology of Pre-Qin Philosophers 先秦諸子繫年, 2nd edition, Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1956, §90), with surviving fragments that have occasionally been noticed for their philosophical import. Paul Fischer is to be commended for offering the first complete translation of this material, positioning it, one hopes, for wider attention. There are still far too few translations of classical Chinese literature, and any scholar who tackles a previously untranslated text deserves special gratitude. (Presses might cooperate by commissioning translations of crucial texts that remain untranslated-for example, Lost Documents of Zhou 逸周書, Speeches of the States 國語, and Springs and Autumns of Master Yan 晏子春秋, not to mention the Gongyang 公羊 and Guliang 穀梁 commentaries to the Springs and Autumns 春秋-instead of offering yet another specimen of Analects 論語 or Laozi 老子.)

Journal of Chinese Studies, 2011

Journal of the American Oriental Society, 2012

Frontiers of History in China, 2013

Please note that the inane translations of titles (such as "The superfluous of The Book of Zhou")... more Please note that the inane translations of titles (such as "The superfluous of The Book of Zhou") were inserted by the editors without my knowledge.

Early Medieval China, 2001

Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 2018

Orientalistische Literaturzeitung, 2018

Journal of the American Oriental Society, 2008

Dao, 2007

Whiteheadean process of creativity or any other end. The dynamic character of the pre-Qin outlook... more Whiteheadean process of creativity or any other end. The dynamic character of the pre-Qin outlook is rooted in the plethora of particular foci that maintain a complex network of processes in and through their mutual interaction. In the context of this work the word 'organic' should not be thought of in terms of traditional Western organic theory in which the whole organism is greater than the sum of its parts or organs. With these caveats in mind, I will employ the term organic as a shorthand for the foci-field net, that is, the complex network of particulars, made up of other particulars, contributing to coherent organizations or 'fields,' which in turn are parts of other 'fields'" (5).

Xunzi 荀子 (séc. III AEC) foi um filósofo confuciano, por vezes considerado o terceiro dos três gra... more Xunzi 荀子 (séc. III AEC) foi um filósofo confuciano, por vezes considerado o terceiro dos três grandes confucianos clássicos (após Confúcio e Mêncio). Durante a maior parte da história imperial chinesa, entretanto, Xunzi foi uma ovelha negra, alguém normalmente citado como um exemplo de confuciano que se extraviou ao rejeitar as convicções de Mêncio. Somente nas últimas décadas que Xunzi foi amplamente reconhecido como um dos maiores pensadores da China.