Hui Wang
- Published in print:
- 2000
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520219236
- eISBN:
- 9780520924413
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520219236.003.0007
- Subject:
- History, Asian History
This chapter re-examines the political and philosophical ideas of Zhang Taiyan and addresses the question concerning the place of the individual in modern Chinese political thinking. It argues that ...
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This chapter re-examines the political and philosophical ideas of Zhang Taiyan and addresses the question concerning the place of the individual in modern Chinese political thinking. It argues that implicit in Zhang's rejection of the collectivity was a much broader rejection of the ontological assumptions and epistemological positions that naturalized the rise of nation-states as a universal historical process for all people. It shows that Zhang's individuated self was freed from the materially determined collectivity only to be subsumed in a broader stream of subjectivity.Less
This chapter re-examines the political and philosophical ideas of Zhang Taiyan and addresses the question concerning the place of the individual in modern Chinese political thinking. It argues that implicit in Zhang's rejection of the collectivity was a much broader rejection of the ontological assumptions and epistemological positions that naturalized the rise of nation-states as a universal historical process for all people. It shows that Zhang's individuated self was freed from the materially determined collectivity only to be subsumed in a broader stream of subjectivity.
James D. Frankel
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- November 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780824834746
- eISBN:
- 9780824871734
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Hawai'i Press
- DOI:
- 10.21313/hawaii/9780824834746.003.0003
- Subject:
- Religion, Religious Studies
This chapter delves into the contents of Liu Zhi's work, focusing on his use of specific Chinese terms and concepts, their origins and meanings in Chinese thought, and their correspondence to Islamic ...
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This chapter delves into the contents of Liu Zhi's work, focusing on his use of specific Chinese terms and concepts, their origins and meanings in Chinese thought, and their correspondence to Islamic principles. It places Liu Zhi's work within the larger context of the Han Kitāb texts, as readers of his work were expected to have read his other writings, if not the other texts of the Han Kitāb. In addition, any literate Chinese reader of the time would also have been intimately familiar with the texts of the classical Confucian canon that informed and influenced these writings. Thus it is with these contexts in mind that the chapter reads the Tianfang dianli, singling it out from the rest of Liu Zhi's Tianfang trilogy.Less
This chapter delves into the contents of Liu Zhi's work, focusing on his use of specific Chinese terms and concepts, their origins and meanings in Chinese thought, and their correspondence to Islamic principles. It places Liu Zhi's work within the larger context of the Han Kitāb texts, as readers of his work were expected to have read his other writings, if not the other texts of the Han Kitāb. In addition, any literate Chinese reader of the time would also have been intimately familiar with the texts of the classical Confucian canon that informed and influenced these writings. Thus it is with these contexts in mind that the chapter reads the Tianfang dianli, singling it out from the rest of Liu Zhi's Tianfang trilogy.
M. A. Aldrich
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9789622097773
- eISBN:
- 9789882207585
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Hong Kong University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5790/hongkong/9789622097773.003.0018
- Subject:
- History, Asian History
This chapter provides a historical overview of Peking. Peking first emerges in Chinese records of the Western Zhou dynasty (1027 to 770 BC). Starting in 403 BC, the Warring States period marked the ...
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This chapter provides a historical overview of Peking. Peking first emerges in Chinese records of the Western Zhou dynasty (1027 to 770 BC). Starting in 403 BC, the Warring States period marked the final collapse of the nominal authority of the Zhou dynasty. This era also inculcated a deeply rooted fear of chaos in Chinese social thinking. Different dynasties of China are specifically described here. Chinese history seemed to slow down once Deng Xiao Ping inherited the Mandate of Heaven. Peking politics in the 1980s did not witness the dizzying volume of change as in prior years. By the 1990s, Peking had begun to experience economic growth that raised people's standard of living but snuffed out the remnants of Old Peking that somehow survived the brutality of the twentieth century.Less
This chapter provides a historical overview of Peking. Peking first emerges in Chinese records of the Western Zhou dynasty (1027 to 770 BC). Starting in 403 BC, the Warring States period marked the final collapse of the nominal authority of the Zhou dynasty. This era also inculcated a deeply rooted fear of chaos in Chinese social thinking. Different dynasties of China are specifically described here. Chinese history seemed to slow down once Deng Xiao Ping inherited the Mandate of Heaven. Peking politics in the 1980s did not witness the dizzying volume of change as in prior years. By the 1990s, Peking had begun to experience economic growth that raised people's standard of living but snuffed out the remnants of Old Peking that somehow survived the brutality of the twentieth century.
James D. Frankel
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- November 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780824834746
- eISBN:
- 9780824871734
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Hawai'i Press
- DOI:
- 10.21313/hawaii/9780824834746.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Religious Studies
Islam first arrived in China more than 1,200 years ago, but for more than a millennium it was perceived as a foreign presence. The restoration of native Chinese rule by the Ming dynasty (1368–1644), ...
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Islam first arrived in China more than 1,200 years ago, but for more than a millennium it was perceived as a foreign presence. The restoration of native Chinese rule by the Ming dynasty (1368–1644), after nearly a century of Mongol domination, helped transform Chinese intellectual discourse on ideological, social, political, religious, and ethnic identity. This led to the creation of a burgeoning network of Sinicized Muslim scholars who wrote about Islam in classical Chinese and developed a body of literature known as the Han Kitāb. This book examines the life and work of one of the most important of the Qing Chinese Muslim literati, Liu Zhi (ca. 1660–ca. 1730), and places his writings in their historical, cultural, social, and religio-philosophical context. His Tianfang danli (Ritual law of Islam) represents the most systematic and sophisticated attempt within the Han Kitāb corpus to harmonize Islam with Chinese thought. The book begins by situating Liu Zhi in the historical development of the Chinese Muslim intellectual tradition. Delving into the contents of Liu Zhi's work, it focuses on his use of specific Chinese terms and concepts, their origins and meanings in Chinese thought, and their correspondence to Islamic principles. A close examination of the Tianfang dianli reveals Liu Zhi's specific usage of the concept of Ritual as a common foundation of both Confucian morality and social order and Islamic piety. The challenge of expressing such concepts tested the limits of his scholarship and linguistic finesse.Less
Islam first arrived in China more than 1,200 years ago, but for more than a millennium it was perceived as a foreign presence. The restoration of native Chinese rule by the Ming dynasty (1368–1644), after nearly a century of Mongol domination, helped transform Chinese intellectual discourse on ideological, social, political, religious, and ethnic identity. This led to the creation of a burgeoning network of Sinicized Muslim scholars who wrote about Islam in classical Chinese and developed a body of literature known as the Han Kitāb. This book examines the life and work of one of the most important of the Qing Chinese Muslim literati, Liu Zhi (ca. 1660–ca. 1730), and places his writings in their historical, cultural, social, and religio-philosophical context. His Tianfang danli (Ritual law of Islam) represents the most systematic and sophisticated attempt within the Han Kitāb corpus to harmonize Islam with Chinese thought. The book begins by situating Liu Zhi in the historical development of the Chinese Muslim intellectual tradition. Delving into the contents of Liu Zhi's work, it focuses on his use of specific Chinese terms and concepts, their origins and meanings in Chinese thought, and their correspondence to Islamic principles. A close examination of the Tianfang dianli reveals Liu Zhi's specific usage of the concept of Ritual as a common foundation of both Confucian morality and social order and Islamic piety. The challenge of expressing such concepts tested the limits of his scholarship and linguistic finesse.
Joel Jay Kassiola
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- January 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780262028059
- eISBN:
- 9780262325264
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262028059.003.0016
- Subject:
- Environmental Science, Environmental Studies
Focusing on the writings of Confucius and the Confucian tradition, Joel Jay Kassiola argues that looking beyond the Western political thought makes obvious sense in an era of globalization and ...
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Focusing on the writings of Confucius and the Confucian tradition, Joel Jay Kassiola argues that looking beyond the Western political thought makes obvious sense in an era of globalization and planetary environmental crisis; moreover, such a move enables us to escape the narrow perspectives that have contributed to our ecological predicament. Confucius and Confucianism provide a particularly valuable understanding of our times: Confucius wrote in response to a society that, like our own, was confused and bewildered by a transformative moment in history and widespread sense of perceived crisis; Confucius valued past teachings and thus offered an intergenerational perspective; and the later Confucian tradition advanced a cosmology attuned to an ecological perspective. While Western religious cosmology envisions a discrete moment of creation by a divine creator, a view that fosters a dualism of humanity and nature, Neo-Confucian thought sees nature as always existing in an endless, ongoing process of creation. Furthermore, the Confucian tradition is non-anthropocentric, as it posits a fundamental continuity and unity among humanity, Heaven, and Earth, a view that, in turn, entails respect and care for nonhuman nature.Less
Focusing on the writings of Confucius and the Confucian tradition, Joel Jay Kassiola argues that looking beyond the Western political thought makes obvious sense in an era of globalization and planetary environmental crisis; moreover, such a move enables us to escape the narrow perspectives that have contributed to our ecological predicament. Confucius and Confucianism provide a particularly valuable understanding of our times: Confucius wrote in response to a society that, like our own, was confused and bewildered by a transformative moment in history and widespread sense of perceived crisis; Confucius valued past teachings and thus offered an intergenerational perspective; and the later Confucian tradition advanced a cosmology attuned to an ecological perspective. While Western religious cosmology envisions a discrete moment of creation by a divine creator, a view that fosters a dualism of humanity and nature, Neo-Confucian thought sees nature as always existing in an endless, ongoing process of creation. Furthermore, the Confucian tradition is non-anthropocentric, as it posits a fundamental continuity and unity among humanity, Heaven, and Earth, a view that, in turn, entails respect and care for nonhuman nature.
Leigh Jenco
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- October 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780190263812
- eISBN:
- 9780190263843
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190263812.003.0001
- Subject:
- Political Science, Comparative Politics, Political Theory
Both Chinese thinkers of a century ago and contemporary scholars struggle with the realization that their received modes of viewing the world derive not from universally accessible and transparent ...
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Both Chinese thinkers of a century ago and contemporary scholars struggle with the realization that their received modes of viewing the world derive not from universally accessible and transparent foundations but from local, historically situated traditions of thought. These parallels suggest that the Western Learning conversations examined in this book can be read as more than simply the instrumental rhetoric of self-colonization or the mark of the inevitable demise of “Confucian China” in the face of Western modernity. Rather, these conversations offer more general methodological lessons about how individuals and societies might confront their own ethnocentrism by learning from cultural others in radically self-transformative ways, contributing to debates in comparative political theory and postcolonial studies.Less
Both Chinese thinkers of a century ago and contemporary scholars struggle with the realization that their received modes of viewing the world derive not from universally accessible and transparent foundations but from local, historically situated traditions of thought. These parallels suggest that the Western Learning conversations examined in this book can be read as more than simply the instrumental rhetoric of self-colonization or the mark of the inevitable demise of “Confucian China” in the face of Western modernity. Rather, these conversations offer more general methodological lessons about how individuals and societies might confront their own ethnocentrism by learning from cultural others in radically self-transformative ways, contributing to debates in comparative political theory and postcolonial studies.
Leigh Jenco
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- October 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780190263812
- eISBN:
- 9780190263843
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190263812.001.0001
- Subject:
- Political Science, Comparative Politics, Political Theory
Even as globalization has exposed the Eurocentric character of the academic theories used to understand the world, most scholarship continues to rely on the same parochial vocabulary it critiques. ...
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Even as globalization has exposed the Eurocentric character of the academic theories used to understand the world, most scholarship continues to rely on the same parochial vocabulary it critiques. Against those who insist our thinking cannot escape the dominant terms of Euro-American modernity, this book shows how methods for understanding cultural others can take theoretical guidance from those very bodies of thought typically excluded by political and social theory. Examining a Chinese conversation over “Western Learning” from the 1860s to the 1920s, the book argues that we might follow these Chinese thinkers in viewing foreign knowledge as a theoretical resource—as a body of knowledge that formulates methods of argument, goals of inquiry, and criteria of evidence that may be generalizable to other places and times. The call of reformers such as Liang Qichao and Yan Fu to bianfa—literally “change the institutions” of Chinese society and politics in order to produce new kinds of Western knowledge—was simultaneously also a call to “change the referents” those institutions sought to emulate, and from which participants might draw their self-understanding. They show that the institutional and cultural contexts supporting the production of knowledge are not prefigured givens that constrain cross-cultural understanding but dynamic platforms for learning that are tractable to concerted efforts over time to transform them. These thinkers point us beyond acknowledgment of cultural difference toward reform of the social, institutional, and disciplinary spaces in which the production of knowledge takes place.Less
Even as globalization has exposed the Eurocentric character of the academic theories used to understand the world, most scholarship continues to rely on the same parochial vocabulary it critiques. Against those who insist our thinking cannot escape the dominant terms of Euro-American modernity, this book shows how methods for understanding cultural others can take theoretical guidance from those very bodies of thought typically excluded by political and social theory. Examining a Chinese conversation over “Western Learning” from the 1860s to the 1920s, the book argues that we might follow these Chinese thinkers in viewing foreign knowledge as a theoretical resource—as a body of knowledge that formulates methods of argument, goals of inquiry, and criteria of evidence that may be generalizable to other places and times. The call of reformers such as Liang Qichao and Yan Fu to bianfa—literally “change the institutions” of Chinese society and politics in order to produce new kinds of Western knowledge—was simultaneously also a call to “change the referents” those institutions sought to emulate, and from which participants might draw their self-understanding. They show that the institutional and cultural contexts supporting the production of knowledge are not prefigured givens that constrain cross-cultural understanding but dynamic platforms for learning that are tractable to concerted efforts over time to transform them. These thinkers point us beyond acknowledgment of cultural difference toward reform of the social, institutional, and disciplinary spaces in which the production of knowledge takes place.
Philip J. Ivanhoe
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- June 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780804761284
- eISBN:
- 9780804772884
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Stanford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.11126/stanford/9780804761284.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, History of Philosophy
Zhang Xuecheng (1738–1801) has primarily been read as a philosopher of history. This volume presents him as an ethical philosopher with a distinctive understanding of the aims and methods of ...
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Zhang Xuecheng (1738–1801) has primarily been read as a philosopher of history. This volume presents him as an ethical philosopher with a distinctive understanding of the aims and methods of Confucian self-cultivation. Offered in English translation for the first time, this collection of Zhang's essays and letters should challenge our current understanding of this Qing dynasty philosopher. This book also contains translations of three important essays written by Tang-dynasty Confucian Han Yu and shows how Zhang responded to Han's earlier works. Those with an interest in ethical philosophy, religion, and Chinese thought and culture will find still relevant much of what Zhang argued for in his own day.Less
Zhang Xuecheng (1738–1801) has primarily been read as a philosopher of history. This volume presents him as an ethical philosopher with a distinctive understanding of the aims and methods of Confucian self-cultivation. Offered in English translation for the first time, this collection of Zhang's essays and letters should challenge our current understanding of this Qing dynasty philosopher. This book also contains translations of three important essays written by Tang-dynasty Confucian Han Yu and shows how Zhang responded to Han's earlier works. Those with an interest in ethical philosophy, religion, and Chinese thought and culture will find still relevant much of what Zhang argued for in his own day.
Robin McNeal
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- November 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780824831202
- eISBN:
- 9780824869441
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Hawai'i Press
- DOI:
- 10.21313/hawaii/9780824831202.003.0004
- Subject:
- History, Asian History
This chapter demonstrates that military power and its purpose of legalizing civil rule were topics of particular interest to intellectuals and statesmen from the fourth through first centuries BCE. ...
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This chapter demonstrates that military power and its purpose of legalizing civil rule were topics of particular interest to intellectuals and statesmen from the fourth through first centuries BCE. Contrary to some long-standing characterizations of early Chinese thought as pacifist, there was a sophisticated and broadly based discourse during these centuries on the nature of warfare, its cosmological and moral underpinnings, its role in history, and its importance to the stability of the state. This discourse developed alongside a more technical discourse on such topics as mobilization, weaponry, defensive strategies, and deployment of formations—some of which were recorded in the early military treatises that survive to this day.Less
This chapter demonstrates that military power and its purpose of legalizing civil rule were topics of particular interest to intellectuals and statesmen from the fourth through first centuries BCE. Contrary to some long-standing characterizations of early Chinese thought as pacifist, there was a sophisticated and broadly based discourse during these centuries on the nature of warfare, its cosmological and moral underpinnings, its role in history, and its importance to the stability of the state. This discourse developed alongside a more technical discourse on such topics as mobilization, weaponry, defensive strategies, and deployment of formations—some of which were recorded in the early military treatises that survive to this day.
Edward Slingerland
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780190842307
- eISBN:
- 9780190922955
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190842307.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Religious Studies
Drawing upon cutting-edge knowledge and techniques from the sciences and digital humanities, Mind and Body in Early China employs the lens of mind-body concepts to critique Orientalist accounts of ...
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Drawing upon cutting-edge knowledge and techniques from the sciences and digital humanities, Mind and Body in Early China employs the lens of mind-body concepts to critique Orientalist accounts of early China. Views of China as the radical, “holistic” Other are unsupportable for a variety of reasons. The idea that the early Chinese saw no qualitative difference between mind and body (the “strong” holist view) has long been contradicted by traditional archaeological and qualitative textual evidence. New digital humanities methods, such as large-scale textual analysis, make this position even less tenable. Finally, a large body of empirical evidence suggests that “weak” mind-body dualism is a psychological universal, and that human sociality would be fundamentally impossible without it. More broadly, this book argues that the humanities need to move beyond social constructivist views of culture and embrace instead a view of human cognition and culture that integrates the sciences and the humanities. Methodologically, it attempts to broaden the scope of humanistic methodologies by employing team-based qualitative coding and computer-aided “distant reading” of texts, while also drawing upon current best understanding of human cognition to transform the basic interpretative starting point. It has implications for anyone interested in comparative religion, early China, cultural studies, digital humanities, or science-humanities integration.Less
Drawing upon cutting-edge knowledge and techniques from the sciences and digital humanities, Mind and Body in Early China employs the lens of mind-body concepts to critique Orientalist accounts of early China. Views of China as the radical, “holistic” Other are unsupportable for a variety of reasons. The idea that the early Chinese saw no qualitative difference between mind and body (the “strong” holist view) has long been contradicted by traditional archaeological and qualitative textual evidence. New digital humanities methods, such as large-scale textual analysis, make this position even less tenable. Finally, a large body of empirical evidence suggests that “weak” mind-body dualism is a psychological universal, and that human sociality would be fundamentally impossible without it. More broadly, this book argues that the humanities need to move beyond social constructivist views of culture and embrace instead a view of human cognition and culture that integrates the sciences and the humanities. Methodologically, it attempts to broaden the scope of humanistic methodologies by employing team-based qualitative coding and computer-aided “distant reading” of texts, while also drawing upon current best understanding of human cognition to transform the basic interpretative starting point. It has implications for anyone interested in comparative religion, early China, cultural studies, digital humanities, or science-humanities integration.
