DOCSLIB.ORG

Taoism As a Lmng Philosophy

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Taoism As a Lmng Philosophy TANG YI TAOISM AS A LMNG PHILOSOPHY The difficulty in taking a survey of living Taoism lies in the virtual impossibility of frnding a generally accepted view as to what exactly Tao or Taoism is. From the first interpreter in the times of the Warring States down to the contemporary commentator, unanimity has never been reached in respect of the nature of Tooa as depicted in the major classic of Taoism. Han Fei Tzub , the earliest critic of Lao Tzu', finds in Tao an entity involving definite principles that govern the universe.' After Chuang Tzud and the Yin Yange school, the church Taoists made use of the precept of 'long life and lasting vision' in the Lao Tzu and developed somethin quite alien to the Taoist philosophy. In the early Han Dynasty Liu An B interpreted Taoism in terms of the art of rulership.' Wang Pig, in the times of the Three King- doms, reinterpreted the Taoist Non-being as ben tih, which is in tune with l? (the Principle), thus opening the road for the Sung Confucians.' The Neo-Confucians, in their turn, borrowed the Taoist Being and Non-being to form their concepts of the Great Ultimate and Non-ultimate, and borrowed the concept of Tuo to postulate their universal Principle of Existence. Among the modern scholars, Hu Shd calls Lao Tzu a rebel: Fung Yu-lank emphasizes the cyclical pattern of change: whereas Hou wai-lu 1 believes Lao Tzu to be an advocate of primitive communal life. The interpreters of Taoism are no less divergent in the West. James Legge is baffled by its obscurity and declares that 'there has been a tendency to overestimate rather than underestimate its value as a scheme of thought and a discipline for the individual and society . .We must judge of Lao Tzu that, with all his power of thought, he was only a dreamer." Arthur Waley. on the other hand, discovers Lao Tzu to be a practitioner of trance mysticism? Northrop analyses the Loo Tzu in the light of his own theory of aesthetic contin~um.~Joseph Needham equates Tuo with the order of nature." Homer Dubs compares Tuo with Einstein's space-time." Wing- Journal of Chinese Philosophy 12 (1985) 39741 7 Copyright 0 1985 by Dialogue Publishing Company, Honolulu. Hawaii, U.S.A. 398 TANG YI bit Chanm likens Taoism to Whitehead's Organicism.'' Holmes Welch compares the doctrine of Non-being with the modern quantum 'hole theory' of Dirac.13 H. G. Creel interprets the Taoist as an inhuman monster beyond good and evil;'4 Holmes Welch ascribes to him compassion and love; while Lin Tungchi" subdivides him into the rebel, the recluse, the rogue and the returnist .Is Now, in the face of such divergent opinions, what are we to make of Taoism as a living philosophy? Fortunately most of the commentators seem to have some common ground. If we look more closely at the foregoing appraisals, for instance, we will find that there is a basic conception at the root of most of the explications, and that is wu wez' or nonaction. The universe as the Taoist sees it works by nonaction rather than by action; the mystic grasps the meaning of Tao by means of Ulthdte vacuity and tran- quility; the compassionate sage tries to save the world from the vicious circle of aggression by practising nonaction; the rebel personifies the initial stage of the negation of too much government, and so forth. Since whichever way you look at the matter there is no escaping the central idea of nonaction, we may be justfied in using it as the starting-point in our brief survey of Taoism as living thought. The fist thing that catches my eye, as I look around for living Taoism in China, is the large extent to which the Chinese are speaking a sort of Taoistic language. There are in current Chinese so many phrases and sayings that stress the value of nonaction, the negative, the weak, the way things revert to the- opposite where overaction is involved. Let us examine the following : Wu ji bi fa# (hrshed to one extreme, a thing will go to the other extreme). Xiang fan xiang chengq (The contraries complete each other). Yu su bu dar (The more you hurry up a thing, the less likely you are to get it). Yi.yi dai laos (Wait at ease for the opponent to exhaust himself). ' An zhi ruo sut (Bear it with equanimity). Duo ci yi ju' (Don't make an unnecessary move). .
Load more

Recommended publications
  • The Role of Qing Æ…–In the Huainanziâ•Žs Ethics
    Susquehanna University Scholarly Commons Religious Studies Faculty Publications 9-2015 The Role of Qing 情in the Huainanzi’s Ethics Matthew L. Duperon Susquehanna University Follow this and additional works at: http://scholarlycommons.susqu.edu/reli_fac_pubs Part of the Chinese Studies Commons, and the Religion Commons Recommended Citation Duperon, Matthew L., "The Role of Qing 情in the Huainanzi’s Ethics" (2015). Religious Studies Faculty Publications. Paper 1. http://scholarlycommons.susqu.edu/reli_fac_pubs/1 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by Scholarly Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Religious Studies Faculty Publications by an authorized administrator of Scholarly Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. The Role of Qing 情 in the Huainanzi’s Ethics Matthew Duperon Susquehanna University The second-century BCE text Huainanzi purports to be an exhaustive compendium of all knowledge needed to successfully govern a vast, diverse empire like the one administrated by the early Han dynasty. As such, it addresses topics from a range of theoretical and applied fields like military theory, politics and the administration of government, economics, geography, ritual practice, and much more, all within the metaphysical framework of correlative cosmology in vogue at the time. In developing an overall program for how the Han empire should be administered, the Huainanzi authors take normative stances on these issues, and the text consequently includes a great deal of ethical content. The authors’ syncretic vision based in correlative cosmology provides the meta-ethical foundation upon which they build this ethical program. Thus, their program of ethical self-cultivation—how humans can move from a state of imperfection toward one of sagely perfection—partakes of the same theoretical framework that shapes the argument of the text as a whole.
    [Show full text]
  • “Daoism and Confucianism” In: Liu X. (Eds) Dao Companion to Daoist Philosophy
    Lai Karyn. (2015) “Daoism and Confucianism” In: Liu X. (eds) Dao Companion to Daoist Philosophy. Dao Companions to Chinese Philosophy, vol 6. Springer, Dordrecht, pp. 489-511. This is the post-print version. The definitive version is to be found at: https://link-springer- com.wwwproxy1.library.unsw.edu.au/chapter/10.1007/978-90- 481-2927-0_21 This chapter relies on a distinction between Confucianism and Daoism made during the Han dynasty (漢朝: 206 BCE–220 CE) and further perpetuated in Chinese intellectual history. It examines the connections between pre-Qin (秦朝: 221– 206 BCE) Daoist and Confucian philosophies, focusing on their differences as well as similarities. While it has been traditionally accepted that there are many tensions, and even antagonism, between concepts and approaches in Daoist and Confucian thought, the discussion here also focuses on the historical linkages and philosophical continuities that at times blur the distinction between the two. The primary comparison here will be conducted at three levels: the individual within its environment, the socio-political world, and the cultivation of the self. These three levels of analysis are organized in three sections, from the more inclusive to the more specific. However, the sections are only theoretical divisions, since both Daoist and Confucian philosophies emphasize a concept of selfhood that focuses on an individual’s relationships with others, within a larger natural and cosmic environment. To more fully understand these comparisons, it is important also to examine the intellectual climate within which interactions between so- called Daoism and Confucianism took place. These details, including information gleaned from relatively recently discovered texts, are not merely tangential to our understanding of both philosophies.
    [Show full text]
  • Foreigners and Propaganda War and Peace in the Imperial Images of Augustus and Qin Shi Huangdi
    Foreigners and Propaganda War and Peace in the Imperial Images of Augustus and Qin Shi Huangdi This thesis is presented by Dan Qing Zhao (317884) to the School of Historical and Philosophical Studies in total fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in the field of Classics in the School of Historical and Philosophical Studies Faculty of Arts University of Melbourne Principal Supervisor: Dr Hyun Jin Kim Secondary Supervisor: Associate Professor Frederik J. Vervaet Submission Date: 20/07/2018 Word Count: 37,371 TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgements i Translations and Transliterations ii Introduction 1 Current Scholarship 2 Methodology 7 Sources 13 Contention 19 Chapter One: Pre-Imperial Attitudes towards Foreigners, Expansion, and Peace in Early China 21 Western Zhou Dynasty and Early Spring and Autumn Period (11th – 6th century BCE) 22 Late Spring and Autumn Period (6th century – 476 BCE) 27 Warring States Period (476 – 221 BCE) 33 Conclusion 38 Chapter Two: Pre-Imperial Attitudes towards Foreigners, Expansion, and Peace in Rome 41 Early Rome (Regal Period to the First Punic War, 753 – 264 BCE) 42 Mid-Republic (First Punic War to the End of the Macedonian Wars, 264 – 148 BCE) 46 Late Republic (End of the Macedonian Wars to the Second Triumvirate, 148 – 43 BCE) 53 Conclusion 60 Chapter Three: Peace through Warfare 63 Qin Shi Huangdi 63 Augustus 69 Conclusion 80 Chapter Four: Morality, Just War, and Universal Consensus 82 Qin Shi Huangdi 82 Augustus 90 Conclusion 104 Chapter Five: Victory and Divine Support 106 Qin Shi Huangdi 108 Augustus 116 Conclusion 130 Conclusion 132 Bibliography 137 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to offer my sincerest thanks to Dr Hyun Jin Kim.
    [Show full text]
  • Tilting Vessels and Collapsing Walls—On the Rhetorical Function Of
    View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by OpenEdition Extrême-Orient Extrême-Occident 34 | 2012 Political Rhetoric in Early China Tilting Vessels and Collapsing Walls—On the Rhetorical Function of Anecdotes in Early Chinese Texts Vases qui basculent, murs qui s’effondrent — De la fonction rhétorique des anecdotes en Chine ancienne 欹器與壞城——論中國古代軼事文學的修辭功效 Paul van Els Electronic version URL: http://journals.openedition.org/extremeorient/259 DOI: 10.4000/extremeorient.259 ISSN: 2108-7105 Publisher Presses universitaires de Vincennes Printed version Date of publication: 1 November 2012 Number of pages: 141-166 ISBN: 978-2-84292-352-5 ISSN: 0754-5010 Electronic reference Paul van Els, « Tilting Vessels and Collapsing Walls—On the Rhetorical Function of Anecdotes in Early Chinese Texts », Extrême-Orient Extrême-Occident [Online], 34 | 2012, Online since 01 November 2015, connection on 01 May 2019. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/extremeorient/259 ; DOI : 10.4000/ extremeorient.259 © PUV Extrême-Orient, Extrême-Occident, 34 – 2012 Tilting Vessels and Collapsing Walls—On the Rhetorical Function of Anecdotes in Early Chinese Texts 1 Paul van Els Introduction Texts from early China (roughly: the irst half a millennium BCE) are teeming with anecdotes. They tell us what happened to a foolish farmer, an adulterous spouse, or other unnamed people, but more often they relate events involving actual historical persons, mentioned by name. Take, for instance, this anecdote about Duke Huan of Qi (7th c. BCE) and his wise wheelwright, as recorded in the book Master Zhuang (Zhuangzi): Duke Huan was reading a book in his hall when a wheelwright named Flat, who was chiseling a wheel in the courtyard below the hall, put aside his mallet and chisel, walked up to the duke and asked him: “That book you are reading, may I ask whose words it contains?” Duke Huan replied: “These are the words of sages.” “Are these sages still alive?” asked wheelwright Flat.
    [Show full text]
  • A History of Chinese Letters and Epistolary Culture
    A History of Chinese Letters and Epistolary Culture Edited by Antje Richter LEIDEN | BOSTON For use by the Author only | © 2015 Koninklijke Brill NV Contents Acknowledgements ix List of Illustrations xi Abbreviations xiii About the Contributors xiv Introduction: The Study of Chinese Letters and Epistolary Culture 1 Antje Richter PART 1 Material Aspects of Chinese Letter Writing Culture 1 Reconstructing the Postal Relay System of the Han Period 17 Y. Edmund Lien 2 Letters as Calligraphy Exemplars: The Long and Eventful Life of Yan Zhenqing’s (709–785) Imperial Commissioner Liu Letter 53 Amy McNair 3 Chinese Decorated Letter Papers 97 Suzanne E. Wright 4 Material and Symbolic Economies: Letters and Gifts in Early Medieval China 135 Xiaofei Tian PART 2 Contemplating the Genre 5 Letters in the Wen xuan 189 David R. Knechtges 6 Between Letter and Testament: Letters of Familial Admonition in Han and Six Dynasties China 239 Antje Richter For use by the Author only | © 2015 Koninklijke Brill NV vi Contents 7 The Space of Separation: The Early Medieval Tradition of Four-Syllable “Presentation and Response” Poetry 276 Zeb Raft 8 Letters and Memorials in the Early Third Century: The Case of Cao Zhi 307 Robert Joe Cutter 9 Liu Xie’s Institutional Mind: Letters, Administrative Documents, and Political Imagination in Fifth- and Sixth-Century China 331 Pablo Ariel Blitstein 10 Bureaucratic Influences on Letters in Middle Period China: Observations from Manuscript Letters and Literati Discourse 363 Lik Hang Tsui PART 3 Diversity of Content and Style section 1 Informal Letters 11 Private Letter Manuscripts from Early Imperial China 403 Enno Giele 12 Su Shi’s Informal Letters in Literature and Life 475 Ronald Egan 13 The Letter as Artifact of Sentiment and Legal Evidence 508 Janet Theiss 14 Infijinite Variations of Writing and Desire: Love Letters in China and Europe 546 Bonnie S.
    [Show full text]
  • The Qin/Han Unification of China Course Description in Geography
    Hum 231 Spring 2018 The Qin/Han Unification of China Course description In geography and cultural advances, the Qin and Han dynasties surpassed their predecessors, and together they number among the world’s greatest empires. This course examines their heritage through a selection of primary texts including the Confucian Analects, the enigmatic Dao de Jing, the cosmological Book of Changes, and the historical narrative tradition of Sima Qian’s Shi Ji. It samples cultural expression ranging from the poetic discourse of rhapsodies and pentasyllabic verse to the religious endeavors manifested in funerary artifacts. Alongside textual studies, this course explores the Han’s physical remains, including the ruins of its capitals, the Wu Liang shrine, and its important tombs. The Qin/Han portrays itself as a territorial, political, and cultural unifier, and it sets the benchmark against which all later dynasties must measure themselves. Course requirements 1. Reading and pondering all assigned readings before conferences. This will include regularly writing reading responses, discussion questions, poetic analyses, visual exploratories, and the like. 2. Attending all conferences, including regular, active and substantive conference participation. 3. Attending all lectures (which also means keeping 10:00-10:50 a.m. open on Wednesdays and Fridays for additional lectures or activities). All lectures meet in Biology 19, 10:00-10:50. 4. Three short (5-7 pages) analytical papers; deadlines & format will be set by conference leaders. 5. One group project; parameters to be established by individual conference leaders. Faculty Ken Brashier Conference leader ETC 203 x 7377 Alexei Ditter Lecturer E 114 x 7348 Jing Jiang Chair E 119 x 7376 Tiffany Lee Lecturer Lib 323 x 7824 Lara Netting Conference leader VOL 124 x 4848 Hyong Rhew Conference leader E 122 x 7392 Required texts Lewis, Mark E.
    [Show full text]
  • Concubinage Was a Deeply Entrenched Social Institution in The
    Hsiang Lectures on Chinese Poetry Volume 5 Grace S. Fong Editor Chris Byrne Editorial Assistant Centre for East Asian Research McGill University Copyright © 2010 by Centre for East Asian Research, McGill University 3434 McTavish Street McGill University Montreal, Quebec, Canada H3A 1X9 Calligraphy by: Han Zhenhu For additional copies please send request to: Hsiang Lectures on Chinese Poetry Centre for East Asian Research McGill University 3434 McTavish Street Montreal, Quebec Canada H3A 1X9 A contribution of $5 towards postage and handling will be appreciated. This volume is printed on acid-free paper. Lost in Tradition: The Classic of Poetry We Did Not Know Martin Kern Princeton University Prelude Like no other poetic text in world literature, the Shijing 詩經, or Classic of Poetry, has a continuous history of some twenty-five centuries of reciting, singing, reading, teaching, memorizing, printing, quoting, and interpreting. True to Goethe’s definition of a classic, it is a text forever inexhaustible in its meaning. At the end of the Chinese empire, however, the text could barely carry the weight of its own commentarial tradition. When this weight was finally removed in the wake of May Fourth, little seemed left: a body of archaic, bombastic court hymns next to simple, formulaic songs that purportedly express—in however monotonous a fashion—the sentiments of commoners some time before Confucius. One may find these songs charm- ing and innocent, folk songs in Herder’s sense of song as the simple—and simple-minded—original language when civilization was still a child. But today, few lovers of poetry will read them for pleasure or inspiration.
    [Show full text]
  • Han Dynasty Classicism and the Making of Early Medieval Literati Culture
    University of Pennsylvania ScholarlyCommons Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations 2013 In Pursuit of the Great Peace: Han Dynasty Classicism and the Making of Early Medieval Literati Culture Lu Zhao University of Pennsylvania, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations Part of the Ancient History, Greek and Roman through Late Antiquity Commons, and the Asian History Commons Recommended Citation Zhao, Lu, "In Pursuit of the Great Peace: Han Dynasty Classicism and the Making of Early Medieval Literati Culture" (2013). Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations. 826. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/826 This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/826 For more information, please contact [email protected]. In Pursuit of the Great Peace: Han Dynasty Classicism and the Making of Early Medieval Literati Culture Abstract This dissertation is focused on communities of people in the Han dynasty (205 B.C.-A.D. 220) who possessed the knowledge of a corpus of texts: the Five Classics. Previously scholars have understood the popularity of this corpus in the Han society as a result of stiff ideology and imperial propaganda. However, this approach fails to explain why the imperial government considered them effective to convey propaganda in the first place. It does not capture the diverse range of ideas in classicism. This dissertation concentrates on Han classicists and treats them as scholars who constantly competed for attention in intellectual communities and solved problems with innovative solutions that were plausible to their contemporaries. This approach explains the nature of the apocryphal texts, which scholars have previously referred to as shallow and pseudo-scientific.
    [Show full text]
  • "School" Affiliation of the Huainanzi
    rethinking ‘school’ affiliation sarah a. queen Inventories of the Past: Rethinking the “School” Affiliation of the Huainanzi INTRODUCTION uring the last several decades, our understanding of the text of the D important Western Han work known as Huainanzi ෢ত՗has ad- vanced markedly. This has come about with the publication of several noteworthy translations and studies that have brought new and compel- ling insights. For example, Roger Ames and Paul Goldin have raised for consideration the political message contained in Huainanzi, chapter 9; Charles Le Blanc has clarified the concept of resonance (ganying ტᚨ) in chapter 6; John Major has decoded the complex cosmology of chap- ters 3, 4, and 5; Michael Puett has drawn our attention to the themes of self-divinization and theomorphic rulership in chapters 1, 6, and 7; Harold Roth has published a textual history and explored the text’s “inner-cultivation” practices; and Griet Vankeerberghen has examined the moral philosophy in connection with the political annihilation of kingdom.1 With a complete English translation on the ڜLiu An’s Ꮵ horizon, Huainanzi studies have come of age.2 No longer is it tenable This article is based on a paper first presented at the conference “Approaches to Under- standing the Han Dynasty,” Harvard University, May 18–19, 2002. The author thanks Paul Goldin, John Major, Michael Puett, Kidder Smith, and Griet Vankeerberghen for their criti- cal comments and helpful suggestions. A particular debt of gratitude is owed to Nathan Sivin, whose rigor and erudition deepened the critique contained in the following pages. 1 See Roger T.
    [Show full text]
  • The Liu Clan's
    chapter 9 The Liu Clan’s ‘Flesh and Bone’: The Foundation of Liu An’s Vision of Empire Judson B. Murray One pressing matter the authors of the Huainanzi 淮南子 address in compos- ing this encyclopedic cosmological and political treatise concerns the proper and most effective sociopolitical configuration of the Han 漢 Empire. Debates on Qin 秦 dynasty (221–206 BCE) centralization, Western Zhou 西周 (1045– 771 BCE) enfeoffment, and an integrative model combining elements of both approaches arose in response to the historical events and circumstances of the late third and second centuries BCE. This study outlines the particular model of empire envisioned and proposed by King Liu An 劉安 (179?–122 BCE) of Huainan and his scholar-retainers in response to Western Han 西漢 dynasty (202 BCE–9 CE) imperial unification, and it analyzes one of the rhetorical strategies they use to promote their vision in several chapters of the work. Specifically, one compelling image they employ in attempting to sway the imperial throne to their view is ‘flesh and bone’ (gurou 骨肉, literally ‘bone and flesh’), signifying the ‘kinship’ or ‘blood ties’ between the Han emperors and their royal kinsmen enfeoffed in kingdoms throughout the empire. Thus, the Huainanzi fundamentally concerns a family and family relations. Because of the momentum of imperial measures seeking not only to diminish the territories of these fiefs but also to weaken the autonomy and authority of the royal relatives who administered them, Liu An viewed the empire both as a dysfunctional family and as a house divided in need of internal reconciliation.
    [Show full text]
  • Cosmic Resonance Theory Andy Edited
    1 Cosmic Resonance Theory The concept of ganying (literally "stimulus-response," and hereafter referred to as "cosmic resonance"), is an ancient and unique element of Chinese cosmology and natural philosophy. In its barest essence cosmic resonance is a theory of simultaneous, non-linear causality. It posits that events taking place at the same time, but separated in space, may exert a subtle effect on one another. For example, a chess game going on in a house and a softball game being played at the same time in the street just outside might be portrayed as influencing one another's outcome (e.g. the team in black uniforms scoring a run whenever a white piece was taken), even though none of the respective participants had any knowledge of or contact with one another. It would not matter if we put our chess players in a sound proof, windowless room or removed the baseball game to the next county, state, or continent, since such contingencies have no effect on the operation of cosmic resonance. To a believer, there is nothing mysterious about these effects, although they occur invisibly; cosmic resonance explains them as fundamental workings of the universe. Basic Cosmic Resonance Theory A theory of cosmic resonance was first explicitly articulated in a work of Chinese philosophy in the third century B.C. The earliest example we have of such a work is the Lüshi chunqiu, an encyclopedic text commissioned by the prime minister of the state of Qin (the kingdom that would eventually unify China in 221 B.C. and found a dynasty of the same name) and published in 240 B.C.
    [Show full text]
  • An Exploration of the Cultural Landscape Model of Zhuge Village
    sustainability Article An Exploration of the Cultural Landscape Model of Zhuge Village Li Xu 1,2,* and Shang-Chia Chiou 1 1 Graduate School of Design, National Yunlin University of Science & Technology, Yunlin 64002, Taiwan; [email protected] 2 Shang Institute of Design, China Academy of Art, Hangzhou 310002, China * Correspondence: [email protected]; Tel.: +886-965-642-484 Received: 6 July 2018; Accepted: 31 August 2018; Published: 5 September 2018 Abstract: Since ancient times, China has adhered to designing human settlement based on the concept of “defending the emperor and safeguarding the ordinary”. With its spatial structure in accordance with the Chinese ancient strategist Zhuge Liang’s art of war “the Diagram of the Eight-Sided Battle Formation” and in line with the terrain of natural landscape, Zhuge Village, the settlement of Zhuge Liang’s descendants in middle Zhejiang Province, has formed a landscape model featuring cultural characteristics. Using literature research, field research, schema cognition and analysis method, this paper investigates and analyzes aspects such as the siting of settlement, spatial layout, landscape images, ritual activities, and landscape changes so as to explore the concepts from ancient art of war to spatial design as well as analyze its landscape forms and the construction of its landscape model. The paper aims to reveal how the designer of Zhuge Village transformed the spatial deployment of the battle formation in the ancient art of war into the spatial landscape model of “living and working in peace and contentment”. In addition, this paper intends to explore the cultural landscape model of the traditional settlement on the basis of Chinese traditional cultural symbol, “the Eight Trigrams”, in hope that it will provide some inspiration for urban public landscape design in China.
    [Show full text]