This book explains the general intellectual climate of the early Ch'ing period, and the political and cultural characteristics of the Ch'ing regime at the time. Professor Huang brings to life the book's central characters, Li Fu and the three great emperors - K'ang-hsi, Yung-cheng, and Chien-lung - whom he served. Although the author's main concern is to explain the contributions of Li Fu to the Lu-Wang school of Confucianism, he also gives a clearly written account of the Lu-Wang and (...) Ch'eng-Chu schools from the twelfth century to the eighteenth. In a clear, succinct style, Huang explains the historical differences between the Ch'eng-Chu and Lu-Wang schools without sacrificing the subtleties of either. The book culminates in a discussion of the hero-emperor K'ang-hsi's appropriation of the 'Tradition of the Way' from his intellectual officials, which denied them their traditional role as moral censors and critics of the emperor's exercise of authority. (shrink)

I believe the material should be utilized as supplemental data for exploring Ch'en Liang's intellectual development.Ch'en's thought evolved through a tao-hsueh ...

In a much-revised version of his 1980 doctoral dissertation in the history of science for Princeton University, Kim (history and philosophy of science, Seoul National U.) examines the knowledge about the natural world that informed Chu Hsi's renowned neo-Confucian synthesis. He sets out his basic concepts, reviews his understanding of the world, and examines the relationship between the two. He includes an extensive glossary with the English meaning and the Chinese characters. Annotation copyrighted by Book News Inc., Portland, OR.

Yung Sik Kim's new book is a welcome addition to the large number of studies of the thought of Chu Hsi, arguably the most important literati thinker in China since the Southern Song dynasty . Chu's ideas became orthodox empire‐wide during the early Ming dynasty , and during the Ming and Qing dynasties millions of candidates for the imperial civil service examinations mastered the “Learning of the Way” associated with Chu and his followers. With the exception of the pioneering (...) study by Yamada Keiji in 1978, nearly all previous accounts of Chu's ideas written by students of Chinese philosophy have emphasized the metaphysical, moral, and epistemological concerns in Chu's writings. Those more concerned with imperial dogma and state power in China since 1400 have tended to paint Chu Hsi's “Learning of the Way” as a monolithic, authoritarian ideology that legitimated the Ming and Qing dynasty rulers politically, socially, and culturally among gentry elites.Kim acknowledges that the core of Chu Hsi's grand intellectual synthesis was focused on moral and social philosophy, but in this book Kim provides compelling information that Chu was also concerned with natural knowledge about the three levels of reality: heaven and earth, the myriad things in the world, and the human realm. Humans thus formed a triad with heaven and earth as the most numinous living thing because they were endowed with the psycho‐physical stuff of ch'i that was most clear and complete. Recognizing no boundary between the physical and the spiritual, Chu Hsi equated human nature with the universe. The basic concepts that informed Chu's natural world were yin‐yang, the five evolutive phases, and the dualism of li and ch'i .Chu Hsi advocated a scholarly agenda that would explain why things and events were as they were. Through the “investigation of things,” the heavenly principle that inscribed the ch'i of each object and event could be discovered. Normally historians of Chinese philosophy stress the place of universal heavenly li in Chu's thought, but Kim makes a concerted effort not to overlook the important place of ch'i as the aggregated collection of stuff in the universe, some dense and falling like the earth, some airy and rising like heaven. Indeed, as important as li was for Chu Hsi's moral philosophy, ch'i was the most important concept he employed to explain natural phenomena, material changes, and earthly events. With no discontinuity between matter and life, or between materiality and mind, Chu's philosophy made no allowance for the Western distinctions between the material and spiritual spheres or between the physical and mental realms.It was precisely such views that troubled the Jesuits such as Matteo Ricci who came to China in the late sixteenth century. Ricci and his European cohort would be condemned in the early eighteenth century by French Jansenists and Spanish Franciscans for their overly accommodational compromises with traditional Chinese religious practices such as ancestor worship, which Ricci interpreted as a civil rite. Nonetheless, when Ricci studied Chu Hsi's moral philosophy and natural thought, he was appalled at its materialism and atheism, which he considered the fault of Buddhism and its impact on Song literati such as Chu Hsi.The “noninertness” of ch'i carried over from the dynamic materiality of all things, including the human mind, to the formless and unfathomable spirits and ghosts that existed in a border area outside the natural realm between heaven and human beings. The dispersion of ch'i upon death could take many forms but, according to Chu Hsi, in the end all such ch'i disaggregated, leaving no ongoing or abiding spiritual form for humans, plants, or animals. The ch'i of the ancestors could be prayed to because the materiality of their descendants was the same ch'i, but even this continuity could not survive more than a few generations. Again, the Jesuits were shocked at this atheistic view of the human soul and its eventual demise materially with no possible eternal life after death.Accordingly, Kim's careful study of what Chu Hsi thought about the natural world makes it evident that most modern studies have elided an essential aspect of traditional Chinese thought, particularly the centrality of ch'i in the dynamic processes of collection and dispersion that produce all things, whether living or inanimate. Students of Chinese philosophy have tended to prioritize those aspects of Chu Hsi's views on universal li and its instantiated forms that are more amenable to a Western, Judeo‐Christian‐Islamic reading drawn ultimately from the debate between Plato and Aristotle over the universal forms of particular things.Modern presentations, in other words, have failed to grasp why a generation of Jesuit scholars who spent their adulthood in China during the seventeenth century found Chu Hsi's views alien and dangerous. Kim deserves credit for going against the tide of twentieth‐century scholarly interpretation and restoring to Chu Hsi those aspects of his natural philosophy that have been conveniently repressed to make his views more palatable. Rather than just the builder of the orthodox brick wall of traditional Chinese moralism, we can see that Chu Hsi's natural philosphy challenged any view of the world that assumed theological differences between life and death, mind and body, or the spiritual and physical. (shrink)

The I Ching, or Book of Changes, has been one of the two or three most influential books in the Chinese canon. It has been used by people on all levels of society, both as a method of divination and as a source of essential ideas about the nature of heaven, earth, and humankind. During the eleventh and twelfth centuries, Sung dynasty literati turned to it for guidance in their fundamental reworking of the classical traditions. This book explores how four (...) leading thinkers--Su Shih, Shao Yung, Ch'eng I, and Chu Hsi--applied the I Ching to these projects. These four men used the Book of Changes in strikingly different ways. Yet each claimed to find in it a sure foundation for human values. Their work established not only new meanings for the text but also new models for governance and moral philosophy that would be debated throughout the next thousand years of Chinese intellectual history. By focusing on their uses of the I Ching, this study casts a unique light on the complex continuity-within-change and rich diversity of Sung culture. Originally published in 1990. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905. (shrink)

I am a worker. Not long ago I began to study Marxism-Leninism and Chairman Mao's works. In order to meet my needs in study and to follow lectures, I read several articles carried in Philosophical Research. I think I have been somewhat enlightened with regard to philosophy. Several articles on the identity between thinking and existence were carried in the latest issues of this journal. Issues Nos. 4 and 5 carried Comrade Chiang Li-ch'ün's article "Is There Identity Between Erroneous Thinking (...) and Existence?" After reading this article, I remembered many past events in work and production activity and then formed my views on this subject. Now I place my views before my comrades. As my cultural level is low, my views may be erroneous. I hope that they will spare no criticism of my views. In the following paragraphs I will take issue with Comrade Chiang Li-ch'ün primarily on the question of whether there is identity between erroneous thinking and existence. (shrink)

The I Ching, or Book of Changes, has been one of the two or three most influential books in the Chinese canon. It has been used by people on all levels of society, both as a method of divination and as a source of essential ideas about the nature of heaven, earth, and humankind. During the eleventh and twelfth centuries, Sung dynasty literati turned to it for guidance in their fundamental reworking of the classical traditions. This book explores how four (...) leading thinkers — Su Shih, Shao Yung, Ch’eng I, and Chu Hsi — applied the I Ching to these projects. These four men used the Book of Changes in strikingly different ways. Yet each claimed to find in it a sure foundation for human values. Their work established not only new meanings for the text but also new models for governance and moral philosophy that would be debated throughout the next thousand years of Chinese intellectual history. By focusing on their uses of the I Ching, this study casts a unique light on the complex continuity-within-change and rich diversity of Sung culture. (shrink)

Introduction: Confucianism as humanism. Confucianism as a religion. The spirit of Confucianism.--Confucius.--Mencius.--Hsün Tzu.--Ta hsüeh (The great learning)--Chung yung (The doctrine of the mean)--Hsiao ching (The classic of filial piety)--Li chi (The book of rites)--Tung chung-shu.

This study traces the impact of Ch'en Pei-hsi's Hsing-li tzu-i on the rise of philosophical lexicography in Tokugawa Japan . It suggests that the appearance of copies of the 1553 Korean edition of Pei-hsi's Tzu-i, brought to Japan in the wake of Toyotomi Hideyoshi's invasion of Korea , crucially influenced both understandings of and reactions to Neo-Confucianism in Tokugawa Japan. Pei-hsi's Tzu-i, the study relates, served as the literary template for several early Tokugawa works, including Fujiwara Seika's Kana seiri , (...) and Hayashi Razan's Shunkansho and Santokusho . The Tzu-i also went through several Japanese editions, beginning with the 1632 Sino-Japanese edition, based on Razan's kambun rendition of the Tzu-i, a vernacular explication of the text by Razan, the Seiri jigi genkai, published in 1659, an annotated edition of the 1632 Sino-Japanese edition, printed in 1670, and the 1668 publication of a later, significantly variant, Chinese edition of Pei-hsi's Tzu-i. ;Razan's Seiri jigi genkai promoted Neo-Confucian learning as expounded in the Tzu-i, but also called attention to etymologically problematic terms of that learning. The dissertation suggests that Razan's Genkai influenced both the literary form and the philosophical content of Yamaga Soko's Seikyo yoroku , Ito Jinsai's Gomo jigi , and Ogyu Sorai's Benmei , thus linking Razan's critical promotion of Pei-hsi's Tzu-i to a series of conceptually based "School of Ancient Learning" critiques of Neo-Confucianism. (shrink)

Ch'en Ch'un: An Introduction . CHEN CH'UN THE MAN Ch'en Ch'un (-), honored as Master of Pei-hsi (the river in the northern part of the prefecture) was one ...