The Concept Of Man In Early China

A classic study of Chinese philosophy

Part of a trilogy exploring how ideas about human nature have shaped practices of social control and education over the course of Chinese history, this volume explores how the most striking political theories and policies of the contemporary period rest on distinctly Chinese theories of mind. Many of these contrast dramatically with long-held Western beliefs, key among them the insistence on the commingling of rational thought, the emotions, and motives. Focusing on the Maoist period (1940s through 1976), Munro reveals convergences between Confucian and Maoist theories of mind, and considers their application in both education and the practice of modern government. Donald J. Munro is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy and Chinese, University of Michigan. His work and career were recently profiled in Xifang Hanxuejia lun Zhongguo (Western sinologists on China), a review of seven key Western contributors to the study of Chinese culture and history.

Munro was more than an intellectual mentor. He has been an unfailing source of wisdom, inspiration, and support. Over five decades, Donald J. Munro has been one of the most important voices in sinological philosophy. His rapprochement with contemporary cognitive and evolutionary science helped bolster the insights of Chinese philosophers, and set the standard for similar explorations today. In this festschrift volume, students of Munro and scholars influenced by him celebrate Munro's body of work in essays that extend his legacy, exploring their topics as varied as the ethics of Zhuangzi's autotelicity, the teleology of nature in Zhu Xi, and family love in Confucianism and Christianity.

This richly illustrated book provides a glimpse into the belief system and the material wealth of the social elite in pre-Imperial China through a close analysis of tomb contents and excavated bamboo texts. The point of departure is the textual and material evidence found in one tomb of an elite man buried in 316 BCE near a once wealthy middle Yangzi River valley metropolis. Particular emphasis is placed on the role of cosmological symbolism and the nature of the spirit world. The author shows how illness and death were perceived as steps in a spiritual journey from one realm into another. Transmitted textual records are compared with excavated texts. The layout and contents of this multi-chambered tomb are analyzed as are the contents of two texts, a record of divination and sacrifices performed during the last three years of the occupant’s life and a tomb inventory record of mortuary gifts. The texts are fully translated and annotated in the appendices. A first-time close-up view of a set of local beliefs which not only reflect the larger ancient Chinese religious system but also underlay the rich intellectual and artistic life of pre-Imperial China. With first full translations of texts previously unknown to all except a small handful of sinologists.

Exploring the cultural perception of animals in early Chinese thought, this careful reading of Warring States and Han dynasty writings analyzes how views of animals were linked to human self perception and investigates the role of the animal world in the conception of ideals of sagehood and socio-political authority. Roel Sterckx shows how perceptions of the animal world influenced early Chinese views of man's place among the living species and in the world at large. He argues that the classic Chinese perception of the world did not insist on clear categorical or ontological boundaries between animals, humans, and other creatures such as ghosts and spirits. Instead the animal realm was positioned as part of an organic whole and the mutual relationships among the living species—both as natural and cultural creatures—were characterized as contingent, continuous, and interdependent.

By departing from traditional sinological approaches, this method uncovers a detailed picture of certain shared underlying views of sense perception in the Lun Yu, the Mozi (including the Neo Mohist Canons), the Xunzi, the Mencius, the Laozi and the Zhuangzi."--BOOK JACKET.

This book employs textual and archaeological material to reconstruct the various features of daily life in ancient China.

Hailed at its first release as "exceptional among studies of Chinese philosophy," a work "combining philosophical acumen with sinological competence that raises the study of early Chinese thought to a new level of sophistication," The Concept of Man in Early China remains a staple in the study of early Chinese civilization. Addressing the very roots of Chinese culture and thought, this path-breaking work frequently compares concepts from the Confucian and Taoist traditions with those from Western classical philosophy. Donald J. Munro clearly identifies key ideas about human nature and links these ideas within the intellectual universe of classical China.