Chu Hsi and the Ta-hsueh


Book Description

Preliminary Material -- Introduction -- From the Five Classics to the Four Books: A Schematic Overview -- The Ta-hsueh before Chu Hsi -- Chu Hsi's Work on the Ta-hsueh -- Chu Hsi's Reading of the Ta-hsueh -- Notes -- Preface to the Greater Learning in Chapters and Verses -- Chinese Text of the Ta-Hsueh Chang-Chü and the "Chi Ta-Hsueh Hou" -- Bibliography -- Glossary -- Index -- Harvard East Asian Monographs.




Chu Hsi and the “Ta Hsueh”: Neo-Confucian Reflection on the Confucian Canon


Book Description

In 1190, Chu Hsi published an edition of the Four Books, which he ragarded as the basic curriculum for Confucian eduction. Of the four, he recommended that the Ta-hsueh be read first, calling it the "outline for learning." This is a study of the Ta-hsueh text, its history prior to the Sung dynasty, its new prominence in the Sung, and the reasons why Chu Hsi found the text so intellectualy and philosophically compelling. Includes an original annotated translation of the text.




Chu Hsi and the Ta-hsueh


Book Description

Preliminary Material -- Introduction -- From the Five Classics to the Four Books: A Schematic Overview -- The Ta-hsueh before Chu Hsi -- Chu Hsi's Work on the Ta-hsueh -- Chu Hsi's Reading of the Ta-hsueh -- Notes -- Preface to the Greater Learning in Chapters and Verses -- Chinese Text of the Ta-Hsueh Chang-Chü and the "Chi Ta-Hsueh Hou" -- Bibliography -- Glossary -- Index -- Harvard East Asian Monographs.




Learning to Be A Sage


Book Description

Students and teachers of Chinese history and philosophy will not want to miss Daniel Gardner's accessible translation of the teachings of Chu Hsi (1130-1200)—a luminary of the Confucian tradition who dominated Chinese intellectual life for centuries. Homing in on a primary concern of our own time, Gardner focuses on Chu Hsi's passionate interest in education and its importance to individual development. For hundreds of years, every literate person in China was familiar with Chu Hsi's teachings. They informed the curricula of private academies and public schools and became the basis of the state's prestigious civil service examinations. Nor was Chu's influence limited to China. In Korea and Japan as well, his teachings defined the terms of scholarly debate and served as the foundation for state ideology. Chu Hsi was convinced that through education anyone could learn to be fully moral and thus travel the road to sagehood. Throughout his life, he struggled with the philosophical questions underlying education: What should people learn? How should they go about learning? What enables them to learn? What are the aims and the effects of learning? Part One of Learning to Be a Sage examines Chu Hsi's views on learning and how he arrived at them. Part Two presents a translation of the chapters devoted to learning in the Conversations of Master Chu.




Zhu Xi's Reading of the Analects


Book Description

This text explains the significance of Zhu Xi's interpretation of the Confucian tradition and of the genre of commentary in Eastern philosophy.




The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Confucianism: N-Z


Book Description

Covers topics related to the understanding of Chinese Confucianism. Includes entries in the following categories: arts, architecture, and iconography; astrology, cosmology, and mythology; biographical entries; ceremonies, practices, and rituals; concepts; dynasties, official titles, and rulers; geography and historical events; groups and schools; literature, language, and symbols; and texts.




Imagining Boundaries


Book Description

Imagining Boundaries explores the mapping of the intellectual tradition of Confucianism in Chinese history. The authors show that the Confucian tradition is not a neatly packaged organic whole in which the constitutive parts fall naturally into place, but rather that it displays the ruptures of all cultural constructions. Accordingly, Confucianism has been configured and reconfigured in time in response to changing intellectual and historical circumstances. This anthology addresses the constant negotiation of the boundaries of Confucianism within itself and in relation to other intellectual traditions, the fluidity of the Confucian canon, the dialogical relations between text and discourse in establishing boundaries for the Confucian tradition, and the textual and discursive strategies employed in the imagining of boundaries, which expanded or restricted the intellectual space of Confucianism. Rejecting an interpretation of Confucianism as a homogenous master-narrative and worldview, the book uses the variegated histories of Confucianism to interrogate the tradition itself, unpacking and highlighting its complexity and diversity. "Imagining Boundaries is an excellent anthology. The time is long overdue to read Confucian texts as historical artifacts, yet still appreciate the philosophical complexity of them." — Matthew Levey, Birmingham-Southern College "This work is more than sound...it is on the leading edge of the best work being done in the field." — John Berthrong, author of All Under Heaven: Transforming Paradigms in Confucian-Christian Dialogues [Contributors include Kai-wing Chow; Kandice Hauf; John B. Henderson; Tze-ki Hon; Hsiung Ping-chen; Yuet Keung Lo; On-cho Ng; Michael Nylan; and Lauren Pfister]




The Korean Neo-Confucianism of Yi Yulgok


Book Description

This book explores the philosophical and religious dimensions of Korean Neo-Confuciansim as expounded by one of the foremost Korean Neo-Confucian thinkers, Yi Yulgok (1536-1584). Yulgok's creative interpretations reformulate some fundamental issues of Confucian philosophy. This book explores the significance of the fundamental assumption which underlies the entire system of Yulgok's Confucian thought. That philosophical assumption is characterized by the author as 'non-dualistic' and 'anthropocosmic'. It is a unique aspect of Korean Neo-Confucianism which leads to a new way of understanding the Confucian world view and spirituality. This 'non-dualistic' vision sheds a new and critical light on the dialectical framework of thinking at work in Western formulations of understanding the ultimate reality, nature, the universe, and human being. The 'anthropocosmic' vision in this respect will challenge fundamental assumptions of Western theological formulation and suggest a new understanding of human nature and the universe. A 'non-dualistic' and 'anthropocosmic' interpretation of Yulgok's thought is a fruitful way of approaching the Korean way of thinking and of coming to grips with one Neo-Confucian mode of attaining human self-understanding.




Classics and Interpretations


Book Description

In recent years in the "West," scholars have attempted to unravel old constructs of interpretation and understanding, using the discipline of hermeneutics, or the scientific study of textual interpretation. Borrowed from students of the ever growing body of biblical interpretive literature that originated in the early Christian era, theoretical hermeneutics has given many contemporary scholars potent tools of textual interpretation. Classics and Interpretations applies this method to Chinese culture. Several essays focus on hermeneutic traditions of Neo-Confucianism. Others move outside of these traditions to attempt an understanding of the role of hermeneutics in Taoist and Buddhist textual interpretation, in Chinese poetics and painting, and in contemporary Chinese culture. This volume makes a concerted effort to remedy our ignorance of the Chinese hermeneutical tradition. Part 1, "The Great Learning and Hermeneutics," demonstrates the use of commentary to define how the individual creates his social self, and discusses differing interpretations of the Ta-hsueh text and its treatment as either canonical or heterodox. Part 2, "Canonicity and Orthodoxy," considers the philosophical touchstones employed by Neo-Confucian canonical exegetes and polemicists, and discusses the Han canonization of the scriptural Five Classics, while illuminating a double standard that existed in the hermeneutical regime of late imperial China. Part 3, "Hermeneutics as Politics," discusses the transformation of both the classics and scholars, and explores the dominant hermeneutic tradition in Chinese historiography, the scriptural tradition and reinterpretation of the Ch'un-ch'iu, and reveals the pragmatism of Chinese hermeneutics through comparison of the Sung debates over the Mencius. The concluding sections include essays on "Chu Hsi and Interpretation of Chinese Classics," "Hermeneutic Traditions in Chinese Poetics and Non-Confucian Contexts," "Reinterpretation of Confucian Texts in the Ming-Ch'ing Period," and "Contemporary Interpretations of Confucian Culture." Through these literate and brilliantly written essays the reader witnesses not merely the great breadth and depth of Chinese hermeneutics but also its continuity and evolutionary vigor. This volume will excite scholars of the Confucian, Buddhist, and Taoist systems of thought and belief as well as students of history and hermeneutics.




The Four Books


Book Description

In this engaging volume, Daniel Gardner explains the way in which the Four Books--Great Learning, Analects, Mencius, and Maintaining Perfect Balance--have been read and understood by the Chinese since the twelfth century. Selected passages in translation are accompanied by Gardner's comments, which incorporate selections from the commentary and interpretation of the renowned Neo-Confucian thinker, Zhu Xi (1130-1200). This study provides an ideal introduction to the basic texts in the Confucian tradition from the twelfth through the twentieth centuries. It guides the reader through Zhu Xi's influential interpretation of the Four Books, showing how Zhu, through the genre of commentary, gave new coherence and meaning to these foundational texts. Since the Four Books with Zhu Xi's commentary served as the basic textbook for Chinese schooling and the civil service examinations for more than seven hundred years, this book illustrates as well the nature of the standard Chinese educational curriculum.




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