This sequence of four courses will propose a multi-disciplinary approach to the study of Chinese cultural history conceived of as a succession of modes of rationality (philosophical, bureaucratic, and economic). The focus will be on the moments of paradigm shift from one mode of rationality to another. For each of these moments, cultural facts and artifacts—thought, literature, ritual—will be examined in relationship to changing social, political, and economic systems. The first two courses will cover the periods of the Warring States (481-256 BCE) and the Period of Division (220-589 CE), with a brief excursion into the Han (206 BCE-220 CE). The Warring States laid the social and cultural foundations for the emergence of the imperial mode of rationality; the Period of Division saw the Buddhist “conquest” of China and the emergence of a rationality defined by the opposition of the Three Teachings to shamanism, that is, of a clear contrast between elite and popular culture. The third and fourth courses will focus on the emergence of modern China in the Song-Yuan (960-1368) and of today’s China 1850 to the present. We will see how the modern attack on religion, redefined as "superstition", led not only to religious reform movements but also to a society in which science and the nation became the primary value systems promoted by the state. The courses are listed below: A Critical Cultural History of China - Early China I: Intellectual Change in the Warring States and Han (481 BCE-220 CE) A Critical Cultural History of China - Early China II: Religious Transformation in the Period of Division (220-589 CE) A Critical Cultural History of China - Modern China I: Religion and Thought in the Song, Jin, and Yuan (960-1368) A Critical Cultural History of China - Modern China II: Structuring Values (1850-2015)
M02.2 Ethics and Cosmology
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Del curso dictado por The Chinese University of Hong Kong
Intellectual Change in Early China: Warring States and Han
27 calificaciones
The Chinese University of Hong Kong
27 calificaciones
De la lección
MODULE 02: The Emergence of Self-Cultivation Practice
This module presents two forms of self-cultivation—Confucian and Daoist—that emerged during the Warring States.
Conoce a los instructores
Prof. John LagerweyResearch Professor
Centre for China Studies
As we move towards the end of the period, of the royal period,
the end of the Warring States and the preparation of the imperial bureaucratic system
—we've already talked about it
—we see the emergence of a new cosmology that shows up in absolutely everything.
It shows up in medicine. It shows up also in self-cultivation.
In a moment, we'll be talking about that further.
But I want to talk about it not in the context so much of Confucianism but as general,
to of all Chinese culture of the elite at this period.
And I'm going to read to you a text that comes from the <i>Yueji</i> 樂記 or the <i>Treatise on Music</i>.
This <i>Treatise on Music</i> has disappeared; it's now no longer
in the <i>Book of Rites</i>, but this is a portion of it.
"Creating in spring and maturing in summer, this is benevolence."
Now did you hear that? Spring and summer, on the one hand, the seasons, two of the four seasons,
associated with the ethical value of being benevolent, being Ren 仁, being humane.
"Gathering in autumn and storing in winter on the other hand, this is righteousness."
So two other of the four, autumn and winter,
associated with another ethical virtue: righteousness.
But now things are going to become ever more dense.
In fact, we'll come back to this to look at it on a table and listen to this once again in a moment.
"Benevolence is close to music, righteousness is close to ritual.
Music is a matter of honesty and harmony, and so one leads the spirits by following Heaven."
The word spirits here is the word translated gods frequently.
"Ritual is a matter of segregation or distinction"
—it's the same word that we just saw—
"in what way is that any different from feeding animals?" Same word:
segregation, separating things out, distinguishing things.
So ritual is a matter of separating things out, segregation, and what is appropriate.
"And so one lodges the demons by following Earth."
The word demons here is the other term that, ghost, <i>gui</i> 鬼, that is often translated ghost.
In just a moment, on the table, in fact that's the way I'm going to translate them: gods and ghosts.
"Thus when the sages created music, they did it by echoing Heaven,
and, when they designed the rites they did it to match the Earth."
Now we're going to take this same passage and while you'll be looking at a table,
we will read it again and you can see how everything
is being organized into poles of Yang 陽 and Yin 陰.
That is to say how these categories, which are cosmological
categories, of Yangqi 陽氣 and Yinqi 陰氣, Yang and Yin energies,
also serves to think about ethics, to think about ritual, to think about music,
to think about the relation between heaven and earth.
Okay, so now,
we're going to be looking at the table that summarizes what we've just read and I'm going to read it again,
and we'll look at the table and comment on it. So this new cosmology of Dao, Qi, the vital energy,
Yin and Yang forms of Qi
And I've entitled this table "ontological monism or mitigated dualism".
Why? Because there are many people who looking at China and contrasting it with the West,
where dualistic oppositions between body and soul are so prominent,
who say that there's no such dualism in China,
there's maybe a duality of Yin and Yang, but they're all part of the Dao, okay?
And in what we've just read,
we can see where that idea comes from, that there's an ontological monism.
What we mean by ontological [monism]? Simply that the being of
the universe and our own being is in the end singular, not dual.
But I think that this is a little bit too quick to speak of an ontological monism.
And so I suggest that maybe "mitigated dualism" is perhaps a better way, because it's when
we see that there is that duality and that that duality runs through absolutely everything,
and that the opposition, rather the relationship between the two poles
—heaven and earth, male and female, spring and winter, harmony and segregation
—that as we go through history, the alternating complementarity,
complementary character of these two poles, will become frequently more dramatically dualistic, okay?
So: if we don't start out with an understanding that if all within this monistic Dao,
that the duality is not also just as important as in the West
—body/soul, ethics/physics, okay?
—then we cannot understand the later evolution of Chinese thought,
and in fact we can't even understand the difference between these two kinds of
what I've called Confucian self-cultivation for the persuaders and the thinkers
engaged in government and politics, and the more individualistic self-cultivation
that we associate and the Chinese have associated with Daoism on the other hand, okay?
So: now let's look once again, listen once again to that text from the <i>Treatise on Music</i>:
"Creating in spring and maturing in summer."
What are these? These are the two Yang, summer and spring, the two periods of growth,
the two periods of Yangqi, that is to say of life-giving energy.
This then is equivalent of benevolence.
Like I say, Ren can be translated as benevolence, as charity, as humaneness.
And again when we get to the Song 宋, we'll see that this becomes the core concept of Confucianism.
Here it is still in alternance with that other concept of righteousness and they form a pair,
but a pair which is nonetheless contrasting,
because righteousness is associated with gathering in autumn,
the harvest, and then storing it up,
storing the grains up over winter so that you have to eat during the long winter months.
This is righteousness. So the two ethical terms,
key ethical terms of Confucius and the Confucian tradition are here associated with the seasons,
the cycle of the seasons.
But now we then bring this cycle of the seasons to bear on ritual.
"Benevolence is close to music and righteousness to ritual."
Both of them, of course, are inseparable, because there's no ritual without music,
and the music is related to ritual: it's ritual music, okay?
Now why does he say that benevolence or Ren or humanity is closer to music, well,
it's because music is about honesty. But let's focus here especially on harmony.
Of course, you say, music is harmony.
But, harmony is this idea of heaven and earth,
the upper class and the lower class living in harmony rather than being in opposition,
class warfare, or gender warfare, or whatever it may be.
How do you achieve harmony in society?
And of course, this remains to this day a constant theme of government policy, government thinking.
Okay, so: this is related to music.
This is related to spring and summer, to the Yang months.
And then he says, "and so one leads the spirits"—the gods
—"by following heaven." So that all belongs to Yang,
it belongs to heaven, it belongs to vitality and growth.
Ritual by contrast is a matter of segregation,
separating out and appropriateness.
Appropriateness here is one of the standard translations of another word for ritual which is Yi 儀.
They say <i>yi yi ye</i> 儀宜也. Yi 儀 ritual is this <i>yi</i> 宜,
that is to say what is appropriate. Ritual is that which is appropriate to the circumstances, okay?
So: you have to distinguish. Oh! This situation requires this ritual,
that situation requires that ritual, okay?
"And so one lodges the demons by following earth."
How do we get from ritual to demons? Well, the text is very very abstract.
It's precisely a perfect example of this process of rationalization,
how we come to think everything—whether it's the seasons,
whether it's the body viewed from the point of view of a doctor,
from the point of view of self-cultivation,
from the point view of government—we think them all in these same abstract terms.
And so just as the spirits
—especially the spirits of the ancestors from the point of view
of the elite—are associated with heaven,
there are those other spirits that we've talked about,
the ones that are associated with earth, that have to be controlled.
Okay? So: you want to lodge the demons.
You want to keep them in place so that they don't come back to haunt.
So this is about earth and following earth. "Thus when the sages"—
and here we see that there's a third term:
Heaven/earth, Ren 仁/Yi 儀; Tian 天, Di 地, Ren 人, Heaven, earth, humans.
We can still say "man" because of course these are all male thinkers.
And it's males who still run the government, okay?
Still today, so patriarchy is very much present.
But we can still translate Ren 人, humans, as humans and not just us man, okay?
So: this is called in Chinese the <i>sancai</i> 三才,
or the three virtualities, the three capacities of Heaven, earth, and the humans.
And what unites Heaven and earth is precisely the third term.
I like to say 1 plus 2 equals 3.
One: why one for Heaven? Because one, if we think about the trigrams,
for example, that are associated with the <i>Yijing</i> 易經,
the Yang line is a solid line, an unbroken line.
The Yin line is a broken line, split into two.
So 1, Yang, heaven; plus 2, earth, broken; equals 3, the human.
And notice that the 3 is like 1:
it's something which cannot be divided.
It is an integer, a whole that cannot be divided unless you use fractions.
And so in fact 3, which is once again a male number, a Yang number,
is very intimately associated with that first Yang number of 1.
We'll be talking much more about this numerology, because this is absolutely essential to
how Daoism thinks the universe and how self-cultivation is carried out later on, but we'll come back to that.
But anyway what I really want to underline here is
that we have a nice table here of the alternates of Yin and Yang,
music and ritual, the gods in Heaven, the ghosts under the earth.
But who joins these two opposites, this duality, into a unity?
It's the human being. Of course, it's not every human being.
And of course that is what we'll have to come back to
shortly when we talk further about Daoist self-cultivation.
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