Tradition
Chinese
Chinese philosophy is the thought of China, from Confucius, Laozi and Mozi to the Neo-Confucians, centred on ethics, government and the way of nature.
It took shape in the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods, when Confucians, Daoists, Mohists, Legalists and the School of Names, among them Mencius, Xunzi, Zhuangzi, Han Feizi and Hui Shi, debated human nature, government and language. Buddhism entered China and was transformed there, and from the eleventh century Neo-Confucians such as Zhu Xi and Wang Yangming built new systems, carried on by Wang Fuzhi, Dai Zhen and, in the twentieth century, Mou Zongsan. It answers questions on how to live, human nature, character, government and nature.
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What do fa, shu and shi mean in Han Feizi?
Zhuangzi sat unread on my father's shelf for most of my life. Next to him was a battered copy of Han Feizi, which I've now started on as well. I'm not a scholar, so please be patient with me. I keep meeting…
Started by Liu Mingqiao4 replies -
Where do Ubuntu and Confucian role ethics fit, if they are neither utilitarian, Kantian nor virtue ethics?
I teach capoeira Angola in Salvador, and I am new to academic ethics. In a free course online, the lecturer said there are three main moral theories: consequences, duties and virtues. Then, in a footnote, she said Ubuntu and Confucian ethics “don't…
Started by Jorge Bonfim4 replies -
At my office “Confucian values” means obey the boss. Where did the reciprocity go?
I translate for a publishing house in Hanoi. When managers here want staff to stay late without complaint, they speak of Confucian values: respect for seniors, loyalty, harmony. We have a common saying about honouring teachers and respecting the Way. I grew…
Started by Vũ Quốc Bảo4 replies -
Margaret Cavendish’s thinking matter: a forgotten alternative to laws imposed from outside
Reading about Sor Juana and women claiming the right to think in the seventeenth century, I keep meeting her English contemporary Margaret Cavendish. I want to make a case that Cavendish's natural philosophy deserves attention not just as a curiosity but as…
Started by Valentina Ríos4 replies -
The last person and the kelp forest: does nature matter when no one is left to value it?
Last month, on a long dive in the kelp, I found myself thinking about Richard Routley's "last man" thought experiment from 1973. Imagine you are the last human being. You're dying; nobody will come after you. Before you go, you set out…
Started by Ignacio Cárcamo4 replies -
Wang Chong against the omen-readers: a naturalist in the Han dynasty
Among the classics my father left me is one I did not expect to enjoy. Recently I have been reading Wang Chong's Lunheng, and I think he deserves to be far better known outside China. In the Han dynasty a powerful theory…
Started by Liu Mingqiao4 replies -
Does knowing what a kelp forest is make it more beautiful, or just different?
When I take visitors down into the kelp, most of them see brown weed swaying in murky water and come up politely bored. When I take students who have studied the system, who know that the kelp can grow astonishingly fast, that…
Started by Ignacio Cárcamo4 replies -
The Four-Seven Debate: what a sixteenth-century exchange of letters teaches about disagreeing well
My students know Toegye's face, not his argument. This year I tried teaching the Four-Seven Debate not as doctrine but as a model of how to disagree. The basics: from 1559 Yi Hwang (Toegye), already the most respected scholar in Korea, exchanged…
Started by Ji-woo Ryu4 replies -
Does Sunzi have an ethics of war, or only an economics of it?
We read The Art of War in the army as a manual, which is how most soldiers meet it. Rereading it in retirement, I am struck by how much of it counsels restraint. It opens by calling war a matter of life…
Started by Choi Byeong-hun4 replies -
Xunzi on “obsession” and modern cognitive bias: the same diagnosis of irrationality?
I study psychology, and this term we covered heuristics and biases: anchoring, availability, confirmation bias, all the ways judgement goes systematically wrong. In the same month I read the chapter of the Xunzi usually translated "Dispelling Obsession" or "Undoing Fixation", and I…
Started by Elif Yıldız4 replies -
Ji Kang argued that music holds neither sorrow nor joy, sixteen centuries before Hanslick
My taiji group practises to recordings of the guqin, and one morning someone asked whether the music was sad. I said what my father would have said: sound has no sorrow or joy. It turns out that is not just my father's…
Started by Liu Mingqiao4 replies -
Heidegger’s standing-reserve and Zhuangzi’s machine heart are two different worries
People often put two passages side by side as if they said the same thing, and I think the comparison hides more than it shows. In chapter 12, Confucius's disciple Zigong meets an old man watering his garden by carrying jars from…
Started by Liu Mingqiao4 replies -
Hui Shi’s Ten Theses: paradoxes for their own sake, or a theory of space?
I spend most of my reading time on the Later Mohist canons, and I keep being drawn sideways to Hui Shi, Zhuangzi's friend and sparring partner. Almost nothing of his own survives. What we have is a list of ten theses preserved…
Started by Chen Yuting4 replies -
What exactly was new about al-Khwarizmi’s algebra?
The word "algorithm" comes from the Latin form of al-Khwārizmī's name. “Algebra” comes from the al-jabr in the title of his book. So he is everywhere in my working vocabulary. But when I read about him, I get two stories. One says…
Started by Nur Aisyah Rahman4 replies -
The Abhidharma was the most thorough reductionism ever attempted. Was it right?
I taught chemistry for years, and when I first studied the Abhidhamma I recognised something familiar: a periodic table of experience. The Abhidharma traditions analyse everything a person is into ultimate constituents, dhammas: momentary events of consciousness, mental factors, material qualities. In…
Started by Nirmala Jayasekara4 replies -
Zhu Xi’s commentaries became the exam syllabus a century after he died. Did that betray his idea of learning?
Every year I teach the Four Books course to senior high students in Taipei, and every year I watch them memorise Zhu Xi's arrangement of the classics for a test. The history is a little painful. Zhu Xi grouped the Analects, the…
Started by Lin Pei-shan3 replies -
Zhuangzi’s happy fish: can we know what others feel?
In chapter 17 of the Zhuangzi, Zhuangzi and his friend the logician Huizi are strolling on a bridge over the river Hao. Zhuangzi remarks that the minnows darting about are happy. Huizi objects: you're not a fish, so how do you know…
Started by Claire Dubois3 replies -
Dream arguments East and West: Descartes, Zhuangzi and the Yoga Vasistha
Three treatments of the same worry. Descartes, Meditations I (1641): there are no sure signs to distinguish waking from dreaming, so the senses can't give certain knowledge. He uses it as a method, a step towards certainty. Zhuangzi, chapter 2: Zhuangzi dreams…
Started by Arjun Iyer3 replies -
My daughter asked what mosquitoes are for. Is there an honest answer?
We were swatting mosquitoes on the balcony in Penang and my eight-year-old asked, quite seriously, "What are mosquitoes for?" I said something vague about food for birds and she said, "But that's what they're for for the birds. What are they for…
Started by Thamarai Raman3 replies -
What were Mozi’s three tests for judging whether a doctrine is right?
I've been reading about early Chinese philosophy for fun. Several books mention that Mozi proposed "three tests" or "three standards" for judging a doctrine, and one claims this was the first explicit methodology in Chinese thought. I'd like to know what the…
Started by Vikram Sethi3 replies -
Filial duty, but whose? In most families I know, the daughter-in-law pays it
In my family, and in almost every family I know, when parents grow old the care is done by a woman who is not their daughter. The son has the duty; the son's wife does the work. Nobody says this out loud.…
Started by Thamarai Raman2 replies -
What were Mencius and Xunzi arguing about when they disagreed about human nature?
I'm writing an essay comparing moral development theories, and my tutor suggested the debate between Mencius and Xunzi as a classical example. I understand Mencius said human nature is good and Xunzi said it is bad, but I've read that this is…
Started by Elif Yıldız2 replies -
Reading group: Mencius and Gaozi on human nature (6A1–6A6), in one sitting
A short one, for anyone who wants a single sitting rather than a month. The first six sections of Mencius Book 6A are a debate with Gaozi about human nature, and they are some of the best arguments-by-image in any tradition. What…
Started by The Editors1 reply -
The rectification of names, from a translator’s desk: when words and things drift apart
In Analects 13.3 a disciple asks Confucius what he would do first if he were given charge of government. "Rectify names," he says. The disciple thinks this is impractical, and Confucius explains, in a famous chain: if names are not correct, speech…
Started by Vũ Quốc Bảo1 reply -
Wu wei for burnt-out founders: what did Laozi actually mean?
After Stoicism, I've been reading the Daodejing. One idea that hits hard is wu wei, usually translated "non-action" or "effortless action". Chapter 48 says that in pursuing learning you add something every day, but in pursuing the Dao you let something go…
Started by Rohan Desai1 reply -
I’ve stopped translating qi as “energy”, and Zhang Zai is the reason
In our taiji group in the park, the younger members say qi means "energy". It sounds scientific and it is easy to say. I used to say it too. After a winter with Zhang Zai, I have stopped. Zhang Zai, in the…
Started by Liu MingqiaoReply first (no replies yet) -
Xunzi
Xunzi was a Chinese Confucian philosopher of the late Warring States period, from Zhao, who taught at the Jixia Academy in Qi and later…
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Zhang Zai
Zhang Zai was a Song-dynasty Chinese philosopher, one of the founders of Neo-Confucianism, who taught at Hengqu in Shaanxi. He made qi, vital energy…
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Zhou Dunyi
Zhou Dunyi was a Song-dynasty Chinese philosopher and official, from Daozhou in Hunan, regarded by later tradition, especially Zhu Xi, as the pioneer of…
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Wang Bi
Wang Bi was a Chinese philosopher of the Wei state who died at about twenty-three yet became one of the most influential interpreters in…