Download or read book Music Cosmology and the Politics of Harmony in Early China written by Erica Fox Brindley and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2012-09-07 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the 2013 Reading Committee Accolade for a Specialist Publication in the Humanities presented by the International Convention of Asia Scholars In early China, conceptions of music became important culturally and politically. This fascinating book examines a wide range of texts and discourse on music during this period (ca. 500–100 BCE) in light of the rise of religious, protoscientific beliefs on the intrinsic harmony of the cosmos. By tracking how music began to take on cosmic and religious significance, Erica Fox Brindley shows how music was used as a tool for such enterprises as state unification and cultural imperialism. She also outlines how musical discourse accompanied the growth of an explicit psychology of the emotions, served as a fundamental medium for spiritual attunement with the cosmos, and was thought to have utility and potency in medicine. While discussions of music in state ritual or as an aesthetic and cultural practice abound, this book is unique in linking music to religious belief and demonstrating its convergences with key religious, political, and intellectual transformations in early China.
Download or read book Music Cosmology and the Politics of Harmony in Early China written by Erica Fox Brindley and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 2012-09-01 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explores the religious, political, and cultural significance attributed to music in early China. In early China, conceptions of music became important culturally and politically. This fascinating book examines a wide range of texts and discourse on music during this period (ca. 500100 BCE) in light of the rise of religious, protoscientific beliefs on the intrinsic harmony of the cosmos. By tracking how music began to take on cosmic and religious significance, Erica Fox Brindley shows how music was used as a tool for such enterprises as state unification and cultural imperialism. She also outlines how musical discourse accompanied the growth of an explicit psychology of the emotions, served as a fundamental medium for spiritual attunement with the cosmos, and was thought to have utility and potency in medicine. While discussions of music in state ritual or as an aesthetic and cultural practice abound, this book is unique in linking music to religious belief and demonstrating its convergences with key religious, political, and intellectual transformations in early China.
Download or read book The Bloomsbury Research Handbook of Early Chinese Ethics and Political Philosophy written by Alexus McLeod and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2019-02-21 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Focusing on early Chinese ethical and political thought across multiple schools and thinkers, this book presents a comprehensive overview of the research being done in Chinese comparative ethics and political philosophy. In addition to chapters on Chinese comparative and interpretative thought, The Bloomsbury Research Handbook of Early Chinese Ethics and Political Philosophy brings early Chinese ethics and political philosophy into conversation with Western and Indian Philosophy, as well as Western Theology. Contributors discuss numerous texts and schools in Pre-Qin and Han Philosophy, including Confucianism, Daoism, Mohism, the Xunzi, the Liyun, and the Zhuangzi. The volume also shows how early Chinese ethical and political theories can be used to contextualise contemporary philosophical issues, such as metaethics, human rights, emotions, and the connection between ethics and metaphysics. The Bloomsbury Research Handbook of Early Chinese Ethics and Political Philosophy is an ideal resource for undergraduate and postgraduate students encountering early Chinese ethics and political philosophy for the first time.
Download or read book Textual Patterns and Cosmic Designs in Early China written by Benoît Vermander and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-05-30 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Via a hermeneutics focused on Chinese numerology and concentric arrangements, this book offers a novel construal of the textual universe proper to early China writings. The author lays bare distinguishable patterns of textual composition while relating them to corresponding patterns of thinking. He differentiates rhetorical variants through detailed studies of the Zhuangzi’s Inner chapters, the Laozi, the Analects, and the Huainanzi. The philosophical depth and relevance of the Chinese ancient worldview appear in a fresh light when one unearths the patterns into which its content is embedded. The focus on textual patterns and rhetorical arrangements also facilitates the reading of Chinese classics alongside other traditions. The book will be a valuable reference for scholars and graduate students studying Chinese literary criticism, Chinese philosophy, and comparative philosophy.
Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Early China written by Elizabeth Childs-Johnson and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2020 with total page 825 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A chronological and interdisciplinary study of early China from the Neolithic through Warring States periods (ca 5000-500BCE).
Download or read book Powerful Arguments written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2020-03-02 with total page 633 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The essays in Powerful Arguments reconstruct the standards of validity underlying argumentative practices in a wide array of late imperial Chinese discourses, from the Song through the Qing dynasties. The fourteen case studies analyze concrete arguments defended or contested in areas ranging from historiography, philosophy, law, and religion to natural studies, literature, and the civil examination system. By examining uses of evidence, habits of inference, and the criteria by which some arguments were judged to be more persuasive than others, the contributions recreate distinct cultures of reasoning. Together, they lay the foundations for a history of argumentative practice in one of the richest scholarly traditions outside of Europe and add a chapter to the as yet elusive global history of rationality.
Download or read book Ancient China written by John S. Major and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-09-22 with total page 418 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ancient China: A History surveys the East Asian Heartland Region – the geographical area that eventually became known as China – from the Neolithic period through the Bronze Age, to the early imperial era of Qin and Han, up to the threshold of the medieval period in the third century CE. For most of that long span of time there was no such place as "China"; the vast and varied territory of the Heartland Region was home to many diverse cultures that only slowly coalesced, culturally, linguistically, and politically, to form the first recognizably Chinese empires. The field of Early China Studies is being revolutionized in our time by a wealth of archaeologically recovered texts and artefacts. Major and Cook draw on this exciting new evidence and a rich harvest of contemporary scholarship to present a leading-edge account of ancient China and its antecedents. With handy pedagogical features such as maps and illustrations, as well as an extensive list of recommendations for further reading, Ancient China: A History is an important resource for undergraduate and postgraduate courses on Chinese History, and those studuing Chinese Culture and Society more generally.
Download or read book Chinese Thought written by Roel Sterckx and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2019-03-28 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shortlisted for the PEN Hessel-Tiltman Prize 'A terrific book, rich and endlessly thought provoking. . . If you are looking for one book to understand the core ideas of Chinese civilisation, read this' - Michael Wood An engrossing history of ancient Chinese philosophy and culture from an eminent Cambridge expert We are often told that the twenty-first century is bound to become China's century. Never before has Chinese culture been so physically, digitally, economically or aesthetically present in everyday Western life. But how much do we really know about its origins and key beliefs? How did the ancient Chinese think about the world? In this enlightening book, Roel Sterckx, one of the foremost experts in Chinese thought, takes us through centuries of Chinese history, from Confucius to Daoism to the Legalists. The great questions that have occupied China's brightest minds were not about who and what we are, but rather how we should live our lives, how we should organise society and how we can secure the well-being of those who live with us and for whom we carry responsibility. With evocative examples from philosophy, literature and everyday life, Sterckx shows us how the ancient Chinese have shaped the thinking of a civilization that is now influencing our own.
Download or read book Ritual Performance in Early Chinese Thought written by Thomas Radice and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2024-10-17 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examining early Chinese ritual discourse during the Warring States and early Western Han Periods, this book reveals how performance became a fundamental feature of ritual and politics in early China. Through a dramaturgical lens, Thomas Radice explores the extent to which performer/spectator relationships influenced all aspects of early Chinese religious, ethical, and political discourse. Arguing that the Confucians conceived ritual as primarily a dramaturgical matter, this book demonstrates not only that theatricality was necessary for expression and deception in a community of spectators, but also how a theatrical 'presence' ultimately became essential to all forms of public life in early China. Thomas Radice illuminates previously unexplored connections between early Chinese texts, aesthetics, and traditions.
Download or read book Handbook of Divination and Prognostication in China written by Michael Lackner and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2022-05-20 with total page 570 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first book that systematically explores the manifold aspects of divination and prognostication in traditional and modern China.
Download or read book Heaven Is Empty written by Filippo Marsili and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 2018-11-01 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Offers a new perspective on the relationship between religion and the creation of the first Chinese empires. Heaven Is Empty offers a new comparative perspective on the role of the sacred in the formation of Chinas early empires (221 BCE9 CE) and shows how the unification of the Central States was possible without a unitary and universalistic conception of religion. The cohesive function of the ancient Mediterranean cult of the divinized ruler was crucial for the legitimization of Romes empire across geographical and social boundaries. Eventually reelaborated in Christian terms, it came to embody the timelessness and universality of Western conceptions of legitimate authority, while representing an analytical template for studying other ancient empires. Filippo Marsili challenges such approaches in his examination of the reign of Emperor Wu of the Han (14187 BCE). Wu purposely drew from regional traditions and tried to gain the support of local communities through his patronage of local cults. He was interested in rituals that envisioned the monarch as a military leader, who directly controlled the land and its resources, as a means for legitimizing radical administrative and economic centralization. In reconstructing this imperial model, Marsilire interprets fragmentary official accounts in light of material evidence and noncanonical and recently excavated texts. In bringing to life the courts, battlefields, markets, shrines, and pleasure quarters of early imperial China, Heaven Is Empty provides a postmodern and postcolonial reassessment of religion before the arrival of Buddhism and challenges the application of Greco-Roman and Abrahamic systemic, identitary, and exclusionary notions of the sacred to the analysis of pre-Christian and non-Western realities. Heaven Is Empty is a tour de force. It reveals Marsilis bold vision of early Chinese religion and his deft use of critical theory. The book will inspire scholars of early China for generations to come. Miranda Brown, author of The Politics of Mourning in Early China and The Art of Medicine in Early China: The Ancient and Medieval Origins of a Modern Archive
Download or read book Cultivating a Good Life in Early Chinese and Ancient Greek Philosophy written by Karyn Lai and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2018-12-13 with total page 451 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book engages in cross-tradition scholarship, investigating the processes associated with cultivating or nurturing the self in order to live good lives. Both Ancient Chinese and Greek philosophers provide accounts of the life lived well: a Confucian junzi, a Daoist sage and a Greek phronimos. By focusing on the processes rather than the aims of cultivating a good life, an international team of scholars investigate how a person develops and practices a way of life especially in these two traditions. They look at what is involved in developing practical wisdom, exercising reason, cultivating equanimity and fostering reliability. Drawing on the insights of thinkers including Plato, Confucius, Han Fei and Marcus Aurelius, they examine themes of harmony, balance and beauty, highlight the different concerns of scepticism across both traditions, and discuss action as an indispensable method of learning and, indeed, as constitutive of self. The result is a valuable collection opening up new lines of inquiry in ethics, demonstrating the importance of philosophical ideas from across cultural traditions.
Download or read book Gender and Friendship in Chinese Literature written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2024-09-26 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Canvasing a range of materials that include early tales of exemplarity, medieval song lyrics, Ming-Qing poetry and plucked rhymes, twentieth century writings about revolutionaries, opera stars, missionaries, and contemporary fiction, this volume illustrates the discourse and representation of friendship in which women gain agency and participate in broader arguments about ethics, politics, and religious transcendence. Friendship prompts reflections on gender roles, becomes the venue of literary self-consciousness, and heightens the sense of literary community. Gender and community function in new ways through the public dimension of friendship, and most importantly, the intersections of gender and friendship enable us to rethink other relationships.
Download or read book Transcendence and Non Naturalism in Early Chinese Thought written by Alexus McLeod and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2020-09-03 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Contemporary scholars of Chinese philosophy often presuppose that early China possessed a naturalistic worldview, devoid of any non-natural concepts, such as transcendence. Challenging this presupposition head-on, Joshua R. Brown and Alexus McLeod argue that non-naturalism and transcendence have a robust and significant place in early Chinese thought. This book reveals that non-naturalist positions can be found in early Chinese texts, in topics including conceptions of the divine, cosmogony, and apophatic philosophy. Moreover, by closely examining a range of early Chinese texts, and providing comparative readings of a number of Western texts and thinkers, the book offers a way of reading early Chinese Philosophy as consistent with the religious philosophy of the East and West, including the Abrahamic and the Brahmanistic religions. Co-written by a philosopher and theologian, this book draws out unique insights into early Chinese thought, highlighting in particular new ways to consider a range of Chinese concepts, including tian, dao, li, and you/wu.
Download or read book Music and Diplomacy from the Early Modern Era to the Present written by R. Ahrendt and published by Springer. This book was released on 2014-12-10 with total page 407 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How does music shape the exercise of diplomacy, the pursuit of power, and the conduct of international relations? Drawing together international scholars with backgrounds in musicology, ethnomusicology, political science, cultural history, and communication, this volume interweaves historical, theoretical, and practical perspectives.
Download or read book Metaphor and Meaning written by Constance A. Cook and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2024-07-01 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Metaphor and Meaning, scholars from China, the United States, and Europe draw on Sarah Allan's groundbreaking application of conceptual metaphor theory to the study of early Chinese philosophy and material culture. Conceptual metaphor theory treats metaphors not just as linguistic expressions but as fundamental structures of thought that define one's conceptual system and perception of reality. To understand another culture's worldview, then, hinges upon identifying the right metaphors, through which it then becomes possible to navigate between shared and unshared experiences. The contributors pursue lines of argument that complement, enhance, or challenge Allan's prior investigations into these root metaphors of early Chinese philosophy, whether by explicitly engaging with conceptual metaphor theory or, more indirectly, by addressing meaning construction in a broader sense. Like Allan's interpretative works, Metaphor and Meaning interrogates both transmitted traditions and newly unearthed archaeological finds to understand how people in early China thought about the cosmos, society, and themselves.
Download or read book Rulers and Ruled in Ancient Greece Rome and China written by Hans Beck and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2021-02-04 with total page 481 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Situated on opposite flanks of Eurasia, ancient Mediterranean and Han-Chinese societies had a hazy understanding of each other's existence. But they had no grounded knowledge about one another, nor was there any form of direct interaction. In other words, their historical trajectories were independent. In recent years, however, many similarities between both cultures have been detected, which has energized the field of comparative history. The present volume adds to the debate a creative method of juxtaposing historical societies. Each contribution covers both ancient China and the Mediterranean in an accessible manner. Embarking from the observation that Greek, Roman, and Han-Chinese societies were governed by comparable features, the contributors to this volume explain the dynamic interplay between political rulers and the ruled masses in their culture specific manifestation as demos (Greece), populus (Rome) and min (China).
