A History of Chinese Classical Scholarship, Volume I, Zhou

A History of Chinese Classical Scholarship, Volume I, Zhou
Author: David M. Honey
Publisher:
Total Pages: 260
Release: 2021-08
Genre: History
ISBN: 9781680539608

The first volume of David M. Honey's comprehensive history of Chinese thought offers a close study of Confucius, that tradition's proto-classicist. This opening volume examines Confucius traditions that largely formed the views of later classicists, who regarded him as their profession's patron saint. Honey's survey begins by examining how these views informed the Chinese classicists' own identities as textual critics and interpreters, all dedicated to self-cultivation for government service. It focuses on Confucius's methods as a proto-classical master and teacher, and on the media in which he worked, including the spoken word and written texts. As Honey explains, Confucius's immediate motivations were twofold: the moral development of himself and his disciples and the ritual application of the lessons from the classics. His instruction occurred in ritualized settings in the form of a question and answer catechism between master and disciples. This pedagogical approach will be analyzed through the interpretive paradigm of "performative ritual," borrowed from recent studies of Greek classical drama. The volume concludes with a detailed treatment of a trio of Confucius's disciples who were most prominent in transmitting his teachings, and with chapters on his intellectual inheritors, Mencius and Xunzi.

A History of Classical Chinese Thought

A History of Classical Chinese Thought
Author: Zehou Li
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 340
Release: 2019-08-15
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1000651134

Li Zehou is widely regarded as one of China’s most influential contemporary thinkers. He has produced influential theories of the development of Chinese thought and the place of aesthetics in Chinese ethics and value theory. This book is the first English-language translation of Li Zehou’s work on classical Chinese thought. It includes chapters on the classical Chinese thinkers, including Confucius, Mozi, Laozi, Sunzi, Xunzi and Zhuangzi, and also on later eras and thinkers such as Dong Zhongshu in the Han Dynasty and the Song-Ming Neo-Confucians. The essays in this book not only discuss these historical figures and their ideas, but also consider their historical significance, and how key themes from these early schools reappeared in and shaped later periods and thinkers. Taken together, they highlight the breadth of Li Zehou’s scholarship and his syncretic approach—his explanations of prominent thinkers and key periods in Chinese intellectual history blend ideas from both the Chinese and Western canons, while also drawing on contemporary thinkers in both traditions. The book also includes an introduction written by the translator that helpfully explains the significance of Li Zehou’s work and its prospects for fostering cross-cultural dialogue with Western philosophy. A History of Chinese Classical Thought will be of interest to advanced students and scholars interested in Chinese philosophy, comparative philosophy, and Chinese intellectual and social history.

Printing and Book Culture in Late Imperial China

Printing and Book Culture in Late Imperial China
Author: Cynthia J. Brokaw
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 559
Release: 2005-03-07
Genre: History
ISBN: 0520927796

Despite the importance of books and the written word in Chinese society, the history of the book in China is a topic that has been little explored. This pioneering volume of essays, written by historians, art historians, and literary scholars, introduces the major issues in the social and cultural history of the book in late imperial China. Informed by many insights from the rich literature on the history of the Western book, these essays investigate the relationship between the manuscript and print culture; the emergence of urban and rural publishing centers; the expanding audience for books; the development of niche markets and specialized publishing of fiction, drama, non-Han texts, and genealogies; and more.

History of Chinese Philosophy

History of Chinese Philosophy
Author: Fung Yu-Lan
Publisher:
Total Pages: 1304
Release: 1953-01-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9780691020242

Dealing with the subject of Chinese philosophy, this two-volume set covers the period of the philosophers, from the beginnings to around 100 BC, a philosophical period as remarkable as that of ancient Greece. It also discusses a period lesser known in the West - the period of classical learning, from the second century BC to the twentieth century.

The Invention of Madness

The Invention of Madness
Author: Emily Baum
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 281
Release: 2018-11-02
Genre: History
ISBN: 022655824X

Throughout most of history, in China the insane were kept within the home and treated by healers who claimed no specialized knowledge of their condition. In the first decade of the twentieth century, however, psychiatric ideas and institutions began to influence longstanding beliefs about the proper treatment for the mentally ill. In The Invention of Madness, Emily Baum traces a genealogy of insanity from the turn of the century to the onset of war with Japan in 1937, revealing the complex and convoluted ways in which “madness” was transformed in the Chinese imagination into “mental illness.” ​ Focusing on typically marginalized historical actors, including municipal functionaries and the urban poor, The Invention of Madness shifts our attention from the elite desire for modern medical care to the ways in which psychiatric discourses were implemented and redeployed in the midst of everyday life. New meanings and practices of madness, Baum argues, were not just imposed on the Beijing public but continuously invented by a range of people in ways that reflected their own needs and interests. Exhaustively researched and theoretically informed, The Invention of Madness is an innovative contribution to medical history, urban studies, and the social history of twentieth-century China.

Before Confucius

Before Confucius
Author: Edward L. Shaughnessy
Publisher: SUNY Press
Total Pages: 276
Release: 1997-01-01
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9780791433775

Examines the original composition of China's oldest books, the Classic of Changes, the Venerated Documents, and the Classic of Poetry, and attempts to restore their original meanings.

The Gender of Memory

The Gender of Memory
Author: Gail Hershatter
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 481
Release: 2011-08-05
Genre: History
ISBN: 0520950348

What can we learn about the Chinese revolution by placing a doubly marginalized group—rural women—at the center of the inquiry? In this book, Gail Hershatter explores changes in the lives of seventy-two elderly women in rural Shaanxi province during the revolutionary decades of the 1950s and 1960s. Interweaving these women’s life histories with insightful analysis, Hershatter shows how Party-state policy became local and personal, and how it affected women’s agricultural work, domestic routines, activism, marriage, childbirth, and parenting—even their notions of virtue and respectability. The women narrate their pasts from the vantage point of the present and highlight their enduring virtues, important achievements, and most deeply harbored grievances. In showing what memories can tell us about gender as an axis of power, difference, and collectivity in 1950s rural China and the present, Hershatter powerfully examines the nature of socialism and how gender figured in its creation.