The Birth of Confucianism from Competition with Organized Mohism (original) (raw)
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Classical Daoism – Is There Really Such a Thing? Part 1 Daojia 道家 and Huang-Lao 黃老
Classical Daoism, Philosophical Daoism, Early Daoism: these terms are increasingly being seen as obsolescent by scholars in the last couple of decades. The general public – those who have heard of Daoism or have read a little bit of it – are largely unaware, despite the fact that for quite awhile writers have admitted that there were no “Daoists” in pre-Han China and that the two most famous “Daoists,” Laozi and Zhuangzi, surely never thought of themselves as Daoists. The more recent interest in what was once called “religious Daoism (Daojiao 道教),” as opposed to “philosophical Daoism (Daojia 道家),” has seen a shift towards using “Daoism” to refer only to the former. In this series of blog posts I am going to explore this matter. First, I will look at the oldest evidence for a “Daoist school” in the Historical Records (Shiji 史記) and the Han Documents (Hanshu 漢書). Next I will look into both the text and the legendary man Laozi 老子, followed by Zhuangzi 莊子. Texts that will be mentioned along the way will include: the Laozi 老子, Zhuangzi 莊子, Hanfeizi 韓非子 (esp. Jie Lao 解老, Yu Lao 喻老), Lüshi Chunqiu 春秋左傳, Mengzi 孟子, Xunzi 荀子, Guanzi 管子 (esp. Neiye 內業), Huainanzi 淮南子, Heguanzi 鶡冠子, and the Huangdi Sijing 黃帝四經. I will also survey various scholars’ views on early Chinese “schools of thought.”
Confucian Sectarianism and the Compilation of the Ming History
As part of the ideological consolidation of empire in China, the ruling house of each new dynasty summoned hundreds of scholars to court to form a History Commission to write the “true” history of the previous dynasty. The guiding principles in deliberating upon the many unresolved controversies left by their predecessors often transcended the conventional historian’s sense of truth as factual accuracy, for more fundamental political and moral considerations impinged upon the historians’ adjudication of the evidence. In the 1680s the History Commission of the Qing court decided not to separate the biographies of Cheng-Zhu proponents from other Confucians in the official Ming History. In doing so the court historians explicitly rejected the precedent set over three hundred years earlier by compilers of the Song History, who separated biographies of the “Dao School” (daoxue) from the “Forest of Confucians” (rulin) on explicitly sectarian grounds. At least as early as the eighteenth century, scholars have interpreted the Qing historians’ refusal to separate orthodox thinkers from their doctrinal opponents as a defeat of sectarian historiography. A careful examination of the Ming History and records of the History Commission, however, shows that the decision to compile a single “Forest of Confucians” section was not motivated by the aim of broadening the official conception of the Confucian tradition, but had the effect of effacing non-orthodox thinkers either by removing from the ranks of Confucians entirely or relegating them to a secondary category marked by the transmission of flawed teachings.
History of Chinese Daoism, Volume 1 (review)
China Review International, 2007
Until recently there were only a few book chapters and journal articles in English that even breached the subject of the history of Chinese Daoism. Two previous works that attempted to fill the void concerning the history of Daoism were Stephen R. Bokenkamp, Early Daoist Scriptures (Berkeley: University of California Press, 997) and Isabelle Robinet, Taoism: Growth of a Religion (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 997). David Yu's translation of volume of this four-volume work on the history of Daoism is very much welcomed. History of Chinese Daoism contains a table of Chinese dynasties, a preface, an introduction, and four long multisectioned chapters covering the early formative period of Daoism from the Warring States (403-22 b.c.e.) up to the reunification of the empire and founding of the Sui dynasty (58-68). The text also contains a "Glossary of Chinese Characters, " 40 pages of notes, 5 pages of bibliography, and 0 pages of index. Oddly enough the translator did not cite the Chinese title of the original work. He tells us that the History of Chinese Daoism, a four-volume work, is a joint project of faculty members at the Institute of Religious Studies at Sichuan University. The principal author and editor of the Chinese work is Qing Xitai. Other co-authors include Ding Peiren, Ding Yichuang, Zeng Zhaona, Zhan Shichuang, and Zhao Zongcheng. In the introduction, the authors take on three topics, namely, four stages in the historical development of Daoism, the significance of studying the history of Daoism, and their method. They divide the history of Daoism into four stages, which set the topics of the four volumes of the whole work. The first stage marks the period of inception and reform, which is covered in the text of volume I, beginning with Zhang Daoling in the Eastern Han (25-220 c.e.), going through the Wei and Jin dynasties (220-420 c.e.), and ending with the period of political disunion (386-58), commonly referred to as the period of the Northern and Southern dynasties. The second stage is the period of growth and expansion, during the Sui (58-68) and Tang (68-907). The rise of Daoist sects and continued development marks the third stage, covering the Song, Yuan, and early Ming dynasties. The gradual decline of Daoism, the final stage, occurs during the late Ming and the Qing dynasty (644-9). The authors discern four dominant reasons for studying the history of Daoism. First, Daoism impacts and interacts with the political history of China. Second, Daoism borrows from and in turn influences Confucianism and Buddhism. Third, the arts and literature of China are greatly influenced by Daoism. Finally, Chinese science and technology are
Dao, 2023
This volume examines how Neo-Confucianism (lixue 理學) became rooted in China, Korea, and Japan of the premodern periods, while both conflicting but harmonizing with other philosophies and local ideologies. To this end, the author investigates representative philosophers from each country, such as Zhu Xi 朱熹 (1130-1200) of China, Yi Hwang 李滉 (1501-1570) of Korea, and Satō Issai 佐藤一齋 (1772-1859) of Japan, and illuminates their ideas more clearly by uncovering issues that have not yet been addressed by other recent scholars. Departing from the unilateral view of the existing scholarship, the author looks at each philosopher's thought and literature with a three-dimensional viewpoint. Escaping from the frame of focusing on which school a given thinker belongs to, this volume explores what characteristics the intellectual's life and thought have. Specifically, in the case of China, the combination and separation of Neo-Confucianism and Daoism during the 11th and 12th centuries is considered. In the case of Korea and Japan, how contemporary scholars discussed and employed the study of Zhu Xi and the study of Wang Yangming 王陽明 (1472-1528) during the 16th to 18th centuries is explored. Also, the research methodology employed encompasses various disciplines such as linguistics, phonology, and bibliography. Through this, in the author's own terms, "over-local" (fenshu 分殊; specificity) and "localization" (liyi 理一; universality) (328), we are able to see the dynamics of Neo-Confucianism in East Asia-how Chinese Neo-Confucianists were entangled with each other not only within the mainland but also in Korea, Ryūkyū, and Japan. This volume also includes a discussion of the Western missionary Matteo Ricci's (1552-1610) understanding of Zhu Xi's thought among its themes. It shows that Neo-Confucianism was engaged with a critical view in the West as well as in East Asia.
2002 Foundations of Confucian Thought: Intellectual Life in the Chunqiu Period, 722–453 B.C.E.
2002
This book, based on my PhD dissertation, explores political, religious, and ethical thought during China’s aristocratic age: the Springs-and-Autumns period (Chunqiu 春秋, 770-453 BCE). I argue that the speeches scattered throughout Zuo zhuan 左傳, the major historical text that covers that period, can serve as a reliable source for tracing the mindset of contemporaneous statesmen. Pace the title, the book shows not only how amid the crisis of the aristocratic society ideas emerged that were eventually incorporated into the subsequent Confucian ideology, but also how much the ideas of the aristocratic age differed from the normative orientations of later Chinese political culture. It was the age when political fragmentation was considered a norm and not an aberration, when justifications were sought for powerful ministers’ sidelining of their rulers, when pedigree mattered more than abilities in determining the individual’s career, when the concept of the Mandate of Heaven had little to do with the notion of universal rule, and when the lineage’s cohesiveness was subversive of rather than conducive to preserving the sociopolitical order. In many respects, this period appears as an inversion of traditional Chinese political values rather than their affirmation. As a PhD dissertation product, this book shares strengths and weaknesses of other dissertation-based monographs. In the years after its completion I reconsidered and fine-tuned many of my original arguments. Nonetheless, I think I can stand behind most of my conclusions presented in this book and am glad to share it with Academia.edu community.
History of Chinese Philosophy Mozi — 2
2008
Though the Analects of Confucius mark the beginning of the “classical period” of Chinese philosophy, many consider Mozi the first true philosopher in ancient China. Whereas the Analects consist of the scattered sayings attributed to Confucius, it is in the Mozi that we first encounter any real philosophical argument. Though he may have studied with the followers of Confucius in his youth, Mozi attacks Confucius and the Confucians and argues for a different dao or way of governing the state. In his own time, the Mohist school founded by Mozi rivaled that of the Confucians. As Mozi was not of the literati class as was Confucius, but rather of the lower class knights, skilled in the technical arts of warfare, it is not surprising that the main thrust of Mozi’s dao was practicality. As the way for Mozi amounted to what is practical, he challenged the Confucian emphasis on the elaborate ceremonies and rites that constitute the li. His most original contribution was the notion of jian’ai,...
The Confucian Tradition in China
The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Chinese Religions, 2012
T oo often the Ru tradition, which is known to Westerners as Confucianism, is presented as a parade of philosophers, such as Confucius, Mencius, Dong Zhongshu, and Zhu Xi. Since the historical record does not have much information about many of these figures, most of what we know about them comes from the philosophical texts that either they or their disciples composed; hence, where the historical man ends and the philosophical text begins is hard to discern, Many accounts of Confucianism are thereby based on a collection of texts rather than flesh-and-blood people, Little wonder that most Westerners view Confucianism as stodgy and dry. Since scholars are principally concerned with the tradition's most prominent advocates, they have largely ignored those periods of the Confucian tradi tion in which there were no major thinkers-a number of accounts make a huge leap from the end of the Eastern Han (25-220 CE) to the Song (960-1279) Dynas ties, as if the Ru tradition was in hibernation during the medieval period, This chapter will argue that Confucianism was much more than its prominent thinkers and texts-it was often promoted and articulated through popular tales, history books, community compacts, images of exemplars, morality books, and ritual prac tices, Moreover, the Confucian conceptual framework was flexible enough that it was always possible to incorporate opponents' ideas and practices.