Encyclopedia of chinese philosophy pdf

In ontological language, this is called Idealism, which contrasts with the Realism of Tiantai. In its original context in India, the Consciousness-only teachings were direct contradictions to the prevailing Indian physics of reality that all things dharmas are constructed from the atoms of earth, water, fire and air.

It also stood in radical contrast to Chinese thought about qi and the five phases. Every deed that has ever been done and every idea that anyone has had is contained in this consciousness. No dharma experienced idea exists by itself, and any alteration in the way other ideas cause it to exist would be a different experience entirely.

Still, not all consciousness is of the same level of development; some forms are higher than others. Beginning in the early 11 th century, a group of interdependent philosophers began to reconstruct Chinese philosophy by using a new grammar.

They sought to merge Confucian thought with Daoist and Buddhist concepts. While they surely thought of themselves as Confucian, and valorized Confucius and Mencius c. This family of thought included philosophers such as Zhang Zai , Cheng Hao , and Cheng Yi Without doubt, Zhu Xi is the most influential of these thinkers.

His philosophy set the parameters of philosophical conversation on ontology throughout East Asia for over years. Western philosophers of the same stature would include Aristotle in the Classical period, Thomas Aquinas in the Medieval period, and Immanuel Kant in the Enlightenment period. Did he think of Principle s as singular or plural? What should be included in Principle s when he uses this as an ontological concept?

Does Principle s refer to something like the logical scaffolding of reality that is, its design, order, logical structure, or pattern?

Does Zhu Xi use Principle s to mean something like the natural laws discoverable by chemistry, physics, and the like? Zhu Xi sometimes uses Principle s in one of these senses and sometimes in another. It is not possible to reduce his remarks on Principle s to any one of these exclusively. Likewise, the term is sometimes used in a singular and sometimes as a plural in his writings.

But this is not a thing or a being. Rather, before shapes and things began to exist, the Supreme Ultimate from which they came had the principles of shape and order, but was not itself any shape or form. It cannot be said to exist yu as one thing alongside others.

It existed before Heaven and earth. It is not as though a brick is an expression of the Platonic Form of a brick. The Supreme Ultimate is a concept used for talking collectively about the Principle s governing the five phases and yin and yang. On this reading, Principle s enable concrete configurations of qi to yield the myriad things that furnish reality. The latter work offers a succinct summary of the main themes he developed throughout his life.

Wang is often understood to be an ontological Idealist. But he makes it clear that he is not an Idealist in a famous story where he points out to a friend the flowering trees on a cliff. He then challenges Wang by claiming the flowers are independent from his mind. He says that before the friend looked at the flowering trees, they were simply there in their vacancy, but when the friend experiences them, he thinks of them as a tree, a cliff, and flowers.

Why is this? For Wang, the reason is very clear. It is because human minds are inherently patterning. Known as the Human minds Principle li , this patterning that makes things as they are into a universe or reality. So, Wang is not denying the existence of concrete things as in Idealism but he is insisting that these things are not without the patterning that the mind brings to experience. When human minds do this patterning it is not always a conscious or deliberative process.

Wang does not set Principle s in a transcendent sense apart from concrete things. In fact, he gives them no existence apart from the human mind. Some interpreters hold that Dai Zhen was responsible for a major paradigm shift in Chinese thinking on ontology. Furthermore, Dai did not think that Principle s were independent of concrete things as Zhu did, but neither did he think they were an activity of the human mind as Wang believed.

Instead, he conceived of Principle s as the internal order tiao or pattern wen of things-in-themselves. Purpose, pattern, and design are not imposed on reality by human beings, but neither do they derive from a transcendent realm that is wholly other than the natural process itself. Instead, they are a part of the very nature of the stuff of reality itself. Some interpreters of Dai characterize his position by means of a rather distinctive Chinese example.

A method used to determine the authenticity of a piece of jade in China is to hold it up to the light and observe whether veins can be seen in its translucence. If so, the jade is authentic. If not, it is an imitation and a fake. Accordingly, Dai may be interpreted to be saying that concrete objects have such analogous striations and these are the Principle s that give order to reality. Hu specifically acknowledged the influence of Thomas Huxley and John Dewey on his thought, and he was a contemporary with some of the most prominent Western philosophers, including Ludwig Wittgenstein and Martin Heidegger.

He has been called the central figure in 20 th century Chinese academic thought. Hu studied in a Western-style system in Shanghai, being particularly impressed by the Darwinian theory of evolution. While still a young student in Shanghai, he summarized the changes in his conception of life in the universe from the Chinese ontology with which he was raised. Its includes the following points:. This work, which he saw as a turn from Chinese philosophy leading up to the 20 th century, illustrates his commitment to the experimental sciences.

He continued to embrace this credo throughout his life. Can we know something to be true, or do we only believe things to be true skepticism? Are all knowledge claims of the same sort? Are they justified in the same way? What are the tools we use to know something reason, senses, direct apprehension, and so forth? Do we possess innate knowledge? Is there a limit to what we can know? He insists that knowledge must be pursued by means of three criteria Mozi This is understood as what the historical records report.

He takes this to mean direct experiential testimony to the truth of a claim. His third test for determining truth is that the truth of a claim rests on observing whether acting on the claim yields the expected results, which should obtain if it is true.

Applying these three criteria leads Mozi to accept the claim that ghosts and spirits exist. He argues that received knowledge includes the intervention and existence of spirits as explanatory devices and that there is widespread testimony to the presence of such phenomena.

Most importantly, however, Mozi feels that the pragmatic implications of giving up such a belief would be disastrous; cruelty, robbery, and warfare, for Mozi, are common precisely because people have come to doubt whether ghosts and spirits exist or not. These thinkers have been variously classified as debaters, rhetoricians, dialecticians, logicians, and skeptics.

In the Warring States Period c. The approaches and arguments of the bianshi can be associated with the work of the so-called Later Mohist philosophers. We know this group of thinkers largely through the final six chapters of the Mozi text Chapters , which form an entirely different unit than the earlier sections of the work.

Outside the Mozi text, the ideas of two of the bianshi are known to us through sources which we may have some degree of confidence: Hui Shi ? Hui Shi shows up in nine chapters of the Zhuangzi. The text Gongsun Longzi is attributed to Gongsun Long. For an English translation see Mei Yi-Pao There is much in the Lao-Zhuang tradition that seems to suggest anti-intellectualism and anti-rationalism.

Moreover, wuwei as a distinctive form of conduct is a teaching without words DDJ 43 and comes through an experience of numinal vision and confirmation DDJ However, these passages do not set out a form of anti-intellectualism. Interpreted in their context, they are part of the Lao-Zhuang insistence that the distinctions and concepts by which reason works are of human design, which may mislead people about the nature of reality or tangle them in problems they create themselves.

Reason, evidence and argument have their place, but they do not extend to the fullness of freedom and happiness achieved in following the dao. The Zhuangzi, too, seems opposed to critical inquiry and application of reason and logic. People are cautioned not to wear out their brains with distinctions ZZ ch. The text uses many examples to point out that what a person thinks he knows is really relative to context and not absolute, and what a person knows is nothing compared to what he does not know ZZ ch.

Rhetoricians and logicians are compared to nimble monkeys and rat-catching dogs ZZ ch. They are skillful at rational gymnastics, but poor at realizing truth. Instead, truth comes through stillness, emptying oneself of rational and human distinctions that is, naturalness and direct receptivity of the presence of dao ZZ ch.

This is not the same as saying that the Lao-Zhuang teachers had no use for reason and sense evidence. Truth comes from oneness with dao. When realized, one flows in life spontaneously and effortlessly, without thought, just like the famous butcher of the Inner Chapters, Cook Ding, who cuts up an ox without ever hitting a bone or dulling his knife ZZ ch.

Although it is often said that classical Chinese philosophers did not place a premium on argumentation, Mencius was a master of the use and criticism of analogical argument.

This was the most prevalent method of approaching knowledge and establishing truth among 4 th century B. Chinese thinkers. Mencius often used this method in his criticisms of other philosophers such as Mozi, Gaozi, and Yangzi.

Analogical reasoning in this period included both the use of one thing to throw light on another and the use of one proposition known to be true to throw light on another of similar form, the truth of which was undetermined. Two advantages of this form of argument in the classical period have been identified. One is that an analogy is often as valuable epistemologically when it breaks down as when it works.

The second is that analogy is often the only tool available for exploring a subject that is obscure or one that eludes direct experience. Mencius and his interlocutors carry on their debates in the Mengzi largely through the method of analogy. While accepting the analogy between human nature and water, Mencius reminds Gaozi that although water does not prefer East to West, it most surely has the nature to flow downhill, rather than uphill. Likewise, Mencius concludes, human nature has the propensity to move toward the good, just as water seeks downhill.

According to Sima Qian, Xunzi was once the leader of the Jixia Academy, a site where thinkers of the schools baijia were represented. Xunzi made skillful appeals to both empirical and rational sources as necessary for arriving at knowledge. Yet, he held that discursive reason could not resolve quandaries if it excluded feeling and emotion, appealing to xin heart-mind as an arbiter of truth whenever it operated in a clear state da qingming , setting aside presuppositions and amok emotion.

He held that reasoning, whether analytically making distinctions or synthesizing diverse positions, operates by rules that approximate the way in which a geometer might judge a circle by using a compass. To know something is to be guided by these standards of reasoning to a conclusion.

In Chapters 21and 22 of Xunzi, he says the heart-mind draws distinctions among reasons, explanations, and desires similarly to how the eye draws distinctions among colors. Xunzi insists that we never cease learning and investigating. It is just such cumulative knowledge that can save us from obsessions and superstitions, leading us to focus instead on activities that will create a more humane world.

Wang Chong was a critic of many received views on ontology, morality, religion, and politics. His writings on these subjects were compiled into the work entitled Critical Essays Lunheng. Wang is keenly aware of the tensions between empirical and rational pursuits of truth, and he insists both must play a role in the advance of knowledge.

One cannot depend only on experience because it can be deceptive; thus reason xinyi must be involved. He says bluntly that the Mohists did not use their minds to verify things, but indiscriminately believed what common people reported to have experienced. Thereby, the Mohists fell into deception ch. Moreover, against the Daoists he holds that history never affords any instances of men knowing what is true without inquiry and reasoning ch.

However, Wang is also aware that one could make a coherent set of premises into a logical argument that nevertheless would contradict ordinary and uniform experience and thus be untrue. Wang believes that by adopting this tactic he can most easily reveal the logical flaws or evidential weaknesses of a position he thinks is false.

He frequently makes use of the reductio ad absurdum technique; that is, he shows that an untenable or absurd result follows from accepting the belief in question. Wang does not believe that all questions can be answered because he insists that one cannot find the truth on the basis of partial evidence alone. Here his approach brings into light the distinction between belief and truth.

Many more things can be believed than can be known. He held that claims shown to be false do not attract us. No one knowingly believes a falsehood. But xu beliefs have not been conclusively falsified and they have attractive features, such as making us feel better about life events, or ourselves, and thus they are difficult to give up believing. Wang has no patience with what he considers to be the superstitions of his day, and he does not hesitate to criticize his predecessors, including Confucius, Mozi, Mencius, and those thinkers involved in trying to create a synthesis with the five-phase cosmology and its related belief systems.

He uses argument and empirical evidence to criticize the worship of Confucius, to debunk belief in omens, to discount any evidential basis for fengshui, and to show the contradictions in a belief in ghosts and spirits.

Wang argues that Heaven tian is merely a name for natural physical processes, which are not powers to be assuaged by ritual or prayer. Rather, they are processes to be studied through observation and reason. The defining thesis of Tiantai is actually epistemological. As advanced by the philosopher Zhiyi, it is the teaching of Threefold Truth san di , which includes the following points. These truths are about things that exist and their interactions in a network of interdependent causes.

These are the truths of history, science, and so forth, about provisional existence. Everything in reality is devoid of any self-nature. This is truth as the Middle Way zhong di. Zhiyi thought that persons had varying epistemological capabilities, which put them on different levels of knowledge.

Some people are only able to grasp truth in its mundane expression. For them, truth enables engagement with the world and its pleasures, desires, and attachments. They suffer because of this, although they may resist desires through moral action, prayer, devotion and the like. Conversely, others express truth as per the Threefold teaching; that is, as emptiness. They detach from the mundane, living apart from it as much as possible. But for those who are capable of it, truth is seen for what it is, and yet they live in the mundane, knowing it is real; but also seeing its emptiness.

However, there is also knowledge that cannot be acquired or transmitted by discursive reasoning. When I first lectured on the subject, I knew you took it lightly and were not interested.

However, when one goes further and realizes this essential and wonderful thing personally to its depth, he will see that it becomes different every day [i. In liangzhi, one is impelled to act in a certain way. Following this, the person can be said to possess the knowledge of how to act. But there are not two events, one volitional and the other epistemological. The acting is the knowing. Nor is liangzhi the sort of knowledge by which one knows where to dig a well or when to plant crops.

One cannot know everything by liangzhi , for example, whether there is evidence of water on Mars. Yet, Wang says that when our heart-mind is operating by liangzhi , a person is moved irresistibly to act freely from all obstruction caused by desires; and within acting lies knowing what to do.

He does not think a claim is true if it corresponds to the way the world is; that is, if the claim expresses what humans see, feel, hear, and so forth. Rather, he thinks that saying a claim is true means that the claim may be employed as an instrument to deal with the environment and context of everyday life.

True beliefs enable people to deal with life situations effectively and consistently. Thus truth is not a minted coin that never changes. He specifically uses this approach to free himself from the views of ancient Chinese sages and their writings, which he feels should be studied largely as historical artifacts and much less so as viable philosophical options.

Instead of truth being something that is relative to the individual, Hu argues that a claim that something is true requires that it be demonstrated experimentally. He has, however, a very broad view of what counts as an experimental demonstration of a claim. This way of proceeding has specific implications for his social theory.

In the context of Chinese epistemologies, Hu stands out as opposing all kinds of authoritarianism and dogmatism; simply because Confucius or Zhu Xi or some other figure says something, it does not make it true in the current context. In the early half of the 20 th century, Zhang Dongsun was one of the most important philosophers in China, especially owing to his efforts to establish, in dialogue with Western philosophy, a unique philosophical epistemology in the Chinese context.

This approach has variously been labeled as Pluralistic Epistemology or Cultural Epistemology. For Zhang, what counts as evidence, what we seek to know, what we think it is possible to know, what we notice through our senses, how we interpret our sense perceptions, and what qualifies as a sufficient reason to say we know something all represent epistemological positions that are inevitably culturally defined and structured.

Persons are not merely acculturated to observe festivals, organize themselves socially, or valorize certain heroes. They are also shaped by their cultures to operate epistemologically in different ways.

The most obvious way in which all epistemology can be shown to be cultural is that knowledge is expressed in a particular language. Of course, language is a cultural product.

Languages have grammar and structure, and these embody logic and rules for reasoning. For example, Zhang argued that the structure of Western languages leads philosophers to look for the substance underlying the attributes predicated of an object. So, the investigation of the nature of substance itself became one of the central problems of Western philosophy but it did not arise in Chinese philosophy, because the language is differently constructed.

Knowledge is always mediated through culture. Knowledge and truth are functions of established criteria within a specific cultural epistemology. Moral theory and ethics are concerned with questions such as these: How should we live? Is the ultimate purpose of our lives to pursue happiness or pleasure, obey moral rules, please others or higher beings, or follow our own interests?

Insofar as the origin of our morality, do we invent morality and agree to it, is it inborn or part of our nature, or is it given by a higher being or intelligence?

Is something good or right to do depending on the consequences of the action, our duties, or our passionate feelings? Is morality universal, or relative to its culture or the individual? Are the most basic and important things in morality the actions we do or the sort of persons we are? Many of these questions are addressed directly and indirectly throughout the history of Chinese philosophy.

The first access that most people have into Chinese philosophy in general, and certainly into the thought of Confucius, is through the Analects Lunyu. This work is an anthology of selected sayings in which Confucius is often the main teacher. When speaking of morality, the term Confucius uses that is perhaps the closest in meaning is li , often translated as the rites that guide conduct.

Li refers to the manner of comporting oneself that helps people transcend animality, develop humaneness ren , and even exceed present ways of being human by raising themselves to higher expression. In the Analects, the humane ren person is able to endure hardship and enjoy happy circumstances 4. Being ren comes through self-cultivation and observing li, and it cannot be reduced to the dichotomy often found in Western moral theory between action doing and character being.

Confucius recognizes the importance of both what persons do and the sort of person one is. A person of ren character will act in a certain way; the construction of this character cannot occur without doing the li acts derived from and embodied in the lives of persons who have gone before as our exemplars junzi. Making oneself into such a person is the work of self-cultivation. There is no single word in the Analects for self-cultivation; but as a concept Confucius teaches, its imprint is present in the earliest stratum of his teachings.

In thinking of the dedication and commitment needed for cultivating oneself, Confucius calls on his disciples to give their utmost zhong 3. Confucius recognized that in the activity of self-cultivation everyone makes mistakes, but he taught that it is tragic to repeat a mistake or fail to reform after making one 9. Confucius thinks of human being development as taking a raw piece of jade and carving and polishing it until it is fully refined 9. Such a person always does what is appropriate yi 4.

Exemplary persons take the high road, not the low one Indeed, exemplary persons cherish their excellence of character over power, land, or thought of gain. Exemplary persons take as much trouble discovering what is right as lesser men take to learn what will pay 4. Mozi took the position that in order to achieve social order people must be concerned for each other, showing care for others and not merely for themselves or their own families.

Practically speaking, jian ai meant that in relationships with others, people should seek mutual benefit and express mutual respect. So, he argued that a coherent social order must rest on a common and coherent morality that is absolutely and universally true. He held that if pluralism of moral values is allowed to exist, conflict would be the inescapable result. Accordingly, two preeminent philosophical questions occupied Mozi.

What is the source of true morality? What is the content of true morality? Mozi praises Heaven tian as impartial, generous, wise, just and caring, and regards it as the source for true morality. Heaven cares for humans and benefits the worthy by providing resources and blessings, while judging and punishing the wicked. Mozi finds the reliance on elitist consensus as the source for morality, which he associates with Confucius and the ideal of the exemplary person junzi , to be both unconvincing and flawed.

He takes the view that even if a practice is traditional for example, received rites such as li it is not necessarily morally right. He makes a distinction between custom and morality, associating the Confucian li with custom, while advocating objective moral standards coming from Heaven that he calls fa.

For such moral norms, the analogy Mozi uses most often is the plumb line or the L-square. He points out that the function of these tools is to guide the performance of work.

They are reliable, objective, and even the novice can employ them. Specifically, Mozi argues that in human society prototypes, exemplars, and role models that exhibit correct judgments and true morality do so because they are following the will of Heaven or the standards fa specified by the Son of Heaven ruler who perceives and understands the divine source of morality.

While following these standards will yield the best and most efficacious results, Mozi is not strictly a utilitarian. He does not say that examining or quantifying the desirable consequences of an action determines moral right or good. The Daodejing teaches that when individuals try to make something happen in the world by their own reasoning, plans, and contrivances, they inevitably make a mess of it.

In Chapter 18 of the Daodejing , the ancient masters have transmitted the teaching that it was only when persons abandoned oneness with dao that they begin to make distinctions in morality.

The Daodejing makes this point by specifically mentioning in a critical manner several of the distinctions made in Confucian moral and social philosophy: humaneness ren ; appropriateness yi ; filiality xiao ; and kindness ci DDJ If humans had continued in their primal oneness with dao, they would not have needed to invent such moral discriminations. So, in the Lao-Zhuang traditions there is a call to return to human inner nature that moves with the dao and away from the conventions of morality.

In the Zhuangzi , making distinctions of these sorts is considered a disease that is condemned in several logia of the text ZZ chs. In the Lao-Zhuang traditions, struggling over these human-made distinctions represents the source of all strife in the world. The key is not to begin this process at all or to empty oneself of it by forgetting such distinctions and returning to the unity with dao , expressing its power de.

For both the Daodejing and Zhuangzi , the concept wuwei is used to report a kind of effortless, spontaneous conduct that invariably expresses moral efficacy without deliberation or calculating consequences. This is not an ability that is available to persons without preparation.

A person caught up in making moral distinctions should not expect to be able to wuwei as a verb without first entering into oneness with dao by forgetting those very distinctions. The holiness of wuwei conduct rests on the fact that moving in this manner accords in the situation with an efficacy that can only be attributed to the dao ; it could never have resulted from human wisdom, planning, or contrivance. This is not to say that such action might not correspond to conventional human moral belief.

Rather, the point is this: While moving in wuwei may look to the outside observer like moral conduct following human distinctions, its origin lies in empty stillness. It is a hopeless pursuit to invert this process and think that by following human morality one will come upon the dao or be able to wuwei.

The Zhuangzi compares the spontaneous and effortless action of wuwei to the kind of prehension Cook Ding experiences when he cuts up an ox without ever hitting a bone or dulling his knife ZZ ch. Another way of saying this is that humans moralize in a way analogous to how that a corn kernel yields corn and not tomatoes.

Mencius means that humans do not start out as blank slates having to learn to moralize. For Mencius, humans are good by nature. This view marks the beginning of his philosophy of anthropology.

When reading Mencius, the early Chinese ontology that he inherited must be kept in mind. For him, there is no object that is a self or soul as found in Western philosophy. Nevertheless, there is a sort of five-phase correlation of qi that has produced a human rather than something else. The four propensities are part of this structure, and they may be stated as follows: One whose heart-mind xin is devoid of compassion, shame, courtesy and modesty, and moral discretion is not human Mencius 2A6.

The fact that Mencius chooses agriculture metaphors when writing about human nature suggests he is being consistent with the early Chinese ontology that influenced him. Chinese philosophy does not insist on a thick understanding of essentialism. Yet, this does not mean that people are born without generally defining propensities. There are inborn, transitive, generational patterns that create bodies.

To be devoid of these or possess some other set might eventuate in some other creature, but not a human body. Likewise, for Mencius, anyone devoid of the four propensities of morality lacks a human nature xing and cannot become human. He does not mean that humans are innately programmed to be morally good, or that they will automatically grow into morally good beings. The kernel will produce corn, but not if it is deprived of cultivation.

Likewise, human nature is predisposed by means of inborn tendencies to act morally, but being morally good is not automatic. Evil and violent times can retard the youth, just as drought can harm the crops 6A7; 6A9. The great and luxuriant trees of Ox Mountain are beautiful, but if constantly lopped by axes, we cannot be surprised if the mountain appears bald and ugly. The same is true of a person who repeatedly cuts down the sprouts of his moral intuitions and follows a way of immorality 6A8.

On the other hand, Mencius thought that the incipient seeds of morality would grow, with cultivation by li , into the humane person ren. The cultivation of these seeds enables a person to increase in humaneness ren just as a fire that continually builds or a spring that has begun to vent will flow ever more strongly 6A6.

In taking this approach, Mencius is making the difference between his position and that of Mozi very clear. Unlike Mencius, Xunzi believes that human nature is disposed to self-interest and that, left alone without moral guidance and the restrictions of law, self-interest will degenerate into selfishness and breed disorder and chaos. Goodness will not grow from within like corn stalks from kernels because human inclinations are not the four propensities Mencius identified, but desires for beautiful sights and sounds, comfort and power.

Unless controlled, these and other desires become violence, willful violation of others, and destruction. Xunzi says that the sage-kings established moral rites, such as discriminations of right and wrong, and li , to shape, guide, and control people. For Xunzi, human beings invented morality; they did not discover it within Heaven Mencius or have it disclosed to them by Heaven Mozi.

Accordingly, if the sage-kings had not invented the rites, there would have been no civilization and no order. Subsequent generations must be transformed by the influence of teachers and models, and follow especially the guidance of morality and rituals of human conduct li handed down to them. Humans depend on the rites of morality created over generations by exemplary humans to shape and carve individual being into something worthwhile.

A way of extending the importance of this difference between Mencius and Xunzi is to notice the shift in metaphors that Xunzi makes. Where Mencius used agricultural metaphors, Xunzi employed craft analogies: woodworking, jade carving, home construction, and so forth. For Xunzi, humans by nature are like warped pieces of wood that must be steamed, put into a press, and forced to bend into a straight shape. He holds that even children must be taught to love their parents and be filial, a position contrary to that of Mencius, who thinks this is a natural inclination.

Xunzi believed that if Mencius was correct and human nature was such as to move persons toward the good like water flowing downhill, then there would be no necessity for the emergence of morality or li Xunzi ; Watson In Chapter 17 of the Xunzi , Xunzi makes the point that Heaven does not care about human behavior, or how the course of things affects humans. In this, he takes a view much different than that of Mozi.

Heaven cannot be appeased or persuaded to bring humans good fortune. If there is good fortune for humans, it is because persons make it happen through responsible government and well-ordered society. Neither does Heaven make people poor or bring calamities. Heaven has no will and no mind, and thus does not act to bring judgment or reward.

The well being of persons and societies is squarely in the hands of humans acting morally. In Chinese Buddhism, the moral life is understood in a way similar to the epistemological one. There are multiple levels. On the lowest level, that of the lay followers, Buddhist morality looks in many ways like a conventional moral system. Various Buddhist schools share the basic code of ethics called the Five Precepts for the guidance of life when a seeker is at this lowest level.

These entail abstinence from 1 killing, 2 stealing, 3 sexual misconduct, 4 lying, and 5 intoxication. Some Buddhist schools add three or five precepts to these. The so-called Ten Precepts form the conduct guides for monastic orders. The best-known companion concept to Buddhist morality at the level of precepts is the concept of karma. Author : Antonio S. Including coverage on the subject previously unavailable to English speakers, the Encyclopedia sheds light on the extensive range of concepts, movements, philosophical works, and thinkers that populate the field.

It includes a thorough survey of the history of Chinese philosophy; entries on all major thinkers from Confucius to Mou Zongsan; essential topics such as aesthetics, moral philosophy, philosophy of government, and philosophy of literature; surveys of Confucianism in all historical periods Zhou, Han, Tang, and onward and in key regions outside China; schools of thought such as Mohism, Legalism, and Chinese Buddhism; trends in contemporary Chinese philosophy, and more.

Cua Publisher: Routledge Format: PDF, ePub, Mobi Release: Language: en View Featuring contributions from the world's most highly esteemed Asian philosophy scholars, this important new encyclopedia covers the complex and increasingly influential field of Chinese thought, from earliest recorded times to the present Author : Dr Brian Carr Publisher: Routledge Format: PDF Release: Language: en View The Companion Encyclopedia of Asian Philosophy is a unique one-volume reference work which makes a broad range of richly varied philosophical, ethical and theological traditions accessible to a wide audience.

Shanghai: Shangwu yinshu guan, , pp. But the zang and fu organs can be further subdivided into yin and yang. The activity or function of each organ is its yang aspect, while its substance is its yin aspect. Yin should flow smoothly and yang should vivify steadily. They regulate themselves so as to maintain equilibrium. Yin and yang do not exist in isolation but are in a dynamic state in which they interact and fashion the complicated and intricate system of the human body.

There is no a clear and definite way to determine the exact date of origin or the person who created the popular yinyang symbol. No one has ever claimed specific ownership of this popular image. However, there is a rich textual and visual history leading to its creation. Inspired by a primeval vision of cosmic harmony, Chinese thinkers have sought to codify this order in various intellectual constructions. Whether to formulate this underlying pattern through words and concepts or numbers and visual images has been debated since the Han dynasty.

The question first surfaced in the interpretation of the Yijing. The Yijing is constructed around sixty-four hexagrams gua , each of which is made of six parallel broken or unbroken line segments yao. Each of the sixty-four hexagrams has a unique designation; its image xiang refers to a particular natural object and conveys the meaning of human events and activities. The Yijing thus has generated a special way to decipher the universe. It mainly incorporates three elements: xiang images , shu numbers , and li meanings.

They act as the mediators between heavenly cosmic phenomena and earthly human everyday life. From the Han dynasty through the Ming and Qing dynasties CE , there was a consistent tension between two schools of thought: the school of xiangshu images and numbers and the school of yili meanings and reasoning.

At issue between them is how best to interpret the classics, particularly the Yijing. For the school of Xiangshu the way to interpret the classics is to produce a figurative and numerological representation of the universe through xiang images and shu numbers.

It held that xiangshu are indispensable structures expressing the Way of heaven, earth and human being. The emphasis is on the appreciation of classics. In other word, the school of Yili treats all classics as supporting evidence for their own ideas and theories. The emphasis is more on idiosyncratic new theories rather than the explanation of the classics.

In what follows, our inquiry focuses on the legacy of the Xiangshu school. The most common effort of the Xiangshu school was to draw tu diagrams.

Generations of intellectuals labored on the formulation and creation of numerous tu. Tu often delineate structure, place, and numbers through black and white lines. They are not aesthetic objects but rather serve as a means of articulating the fundamental patterns that govern phenomena in the universe. Tu are universes in microcosm and demonstrate obedience to definite norms or rules.

During the Song dynasty CE , the Daoist monk Chen Tuan CE made an important contribution to this tradition by drawing a few tu in order to elucidate the Yijing. Though none of his tu were directly passed down, he is considered the forerunner of the school of tushu diagrams and writings. It is said that he left behind three tu ; since his death, attempting to discover these tu has become a popular scholarly pursuit.

Robin R. Wang Email: rwang lmu. Yinyang Yin-yang Yinyang yin-yang is one of the dominant concepts shared by different schools throughout the history of Chinese philosophy. They are the basic fabric of existence: Heaven and earth have their regular ways, and men like these for their pattern, imitating the brilliant bodies of Heaven, and according with the natural diversities of the Earth.

The Huainanzi offers more detailed explanation of the cosmological process of yin and yang : When heaven and earth were formed, they divided into yin and yang. As chapter 8 of the Huainanzi claims: Yinyang embodies the harmony of heaven and earth, manifests the forms of myriad things, contains qi to transform the things and completes various kinds of things; yinyang extends and penetrates to the deepest level; begins in emptiness then becomes full and moves in boundless lands.

Yinyang as Xingzi Concrete Substance Yinyang also has been understood as some concrete substance xingzhi , according to which yixing and yangxing define everything in the universe.

Yang was identified with the sun and yin with the moon: Heaven and earth correlate with vast and profound; four seasons correlate with change and continuity [ biantong ]; the significance of yin and yang correlate with sun and moon; the highest excellence [ zhide ] correlates the goodness of easy and simple.

The Yinyang Symbol There is no a clear and definite way to determine the exact date of origin or the person who created the popular yinyang symbol. Chan, Wing-tsit, ed. A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy. Bodde, Derk. Essays on Chinese Civilization. Dong, Zhongshu. Luxuriant Gems of the Spring and Autumn. Su Xing. Beijing: Chinese Press, Fung, Yu-lan. A Short History of Chinese Philosophy. Derk Bodde. New York: The Free Press, Graham, A.

Yin-Yang and the Nature of Correlative Thinking. Guan Bo. Beijing: Hua Xia Press, Guoyu Discourse of the States. Shanghai: Guji Press,