The Dynamics of Masters Literature

by Denecke, Wiebke

• ISBN13: 9780674056091
• ISBN10: 0674056094
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2011-01-10
• Publisher: Harvard Univ Council on East Asian

Summary

The importance of the rich corpus of "Masters Literature" that developed in early China since the fifth century bce has long been recognized. But just what are these texts? Scholars have overwhelmingly approached them as philosophy, but these writings have also been studied as literature, history, and anthropological, religious, and paleographic records. How should we translate these texts for our times?This book explores these questions through close readings of seven examples of Masters Literature and asks what proponents of a "Chinese philosophy" gained by creating a Chinese equivalent of philosophy and what we might gain by approaching these texts through other disciplines, questions, and concerns. What happens when we remove the accrued disciplinary and conceptual baggage from the Masters Texts? What neglected problems, concepts, and strategies come to light? And can those concepts and strategies help us see the history of philosophy in a different light and engender new approaches to philosophical and intellectual inquiry? By historicizing the notion of Chinese philosophy, we can, the author contends, answer not only the question of whether there is a Chinese philosophy but also the more interesting question of the future of philosophical thought around the world.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Chinese Philosophy and the Translation of Disciplines	p. 1
The Faces of Masters Literature until the Eastern Han	p. 32
Scenes of Instruction and Master Bodies in the Analects	p. 90
From Scenes of Instruction to Scenes of Construction: Mozi	p. 128
Interiority, Human Nature, and Exegesis in Mencius	p. 153
Authorship, Human Nature, and Persuasion in Xunzi	p. 180
The Race for Precedence: Polemics and the Vacuum of Traditions in Laozi	p. 207
Zhuangzi and the Art of Negation	p. 231
The Self-regulating State, Paranoia, and Rhetoric in Han Feizi	p. 279
Epilogue: A Future for Masters Literature and Chinese Philosophy	p. 326
Reference Matter
Works Cited	p. 349
Index	p. 365
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