Language, Ontology, and Political Philosophy in China : Wang Bi's Scholarly Exploration of the Dark (Xuanxue)

by Wagner, Rudolf G.

• ISBN13: 9780791453315
• ISBN10: 0791453316
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2003-01-01
• Publisher: State Univ of New York Pr

Author Biography

Rudolf G. Wagner is Professor of Chinese Studies at the University of Heidelberg. He is the author of several books, including The Craft of a Chinese Commentator: Wang Bi on the Laozi, also published by SUNY Press.

Table of Contents

Preface	vii
Introduction	1	(4)
Discerning the That-by-Which: The Language of the Laozi and the Lunyu	5	(78)
A Plea for a History of Understanding	5	(2)
The Consensus: The Ineffability of the Sage's Thinking	7	(3)
The Radical Position	10	(5)
Developing Reading Strategies	15	(29)
The Discussion about Language and the Thinking of the Sage in Wei	44	(12)
The Structural Contradiction of the Confucius Texts: Talking about That-Which-Is-Dark	56	(1)
The Logical Deduction of the Unnameability of That-by-Which the Ten Thousand Kinds of Entities Are	57	(3)
The Deduction of the Possibility of Limited but Sufficiently Grounded Propositions about That-by-Which the Ten Thousand Kinds of Entities Are	60	(2)
Traces of the That-by-Which Found by the Confucius Texts within the Structures of Discernible Entities: Antinomy and Negation	62	(7)
Grasping Aspects of the That-by-Which	69	(11)
An Explanation of the Images [Xiang of the Zhouyi]	80	(3)
Wang Bi's Ontology	83	(65)
The Framework of Analysis	83	(5)
Wang Bi's Inquiry into the That-by-Which	88	(3)
Wang Bi's Approach	91	(7)
The Binary Structural Organization of Entities	98	(10)
The Order of the Ten Thousand Kinds of Entities	108	(13)
The One and the Many	121	(4)
The Dao	125	(19)
The Dark	144	(4)
Wang Bi's Political Philosophy	148	(69)
The Actual and Perpetual Crisis of Human Society	148	(5)
The Causes of the Crisis	153	(24)
Operating the Return: The Sage	177	(22)
Sagely Politics as Public Performance	199	(14)
Wang Bi's Philosophy: An Ideology?	213	(4)
Notes	217	(26)
Bibliography	243	(12)
Index	255