Philosophy, Philology, and Politics in Eighteenth-Century China: Li Fu and the Lu-Wang School under the Ch'ing (Cambridge Studies in Chinese History, Literature and Institutions)
Cambridge University Press, 3/7/1996
EAN 9780521482257, ISBN10: 0521482259
Hardcover, 226 pages, 22.9 x 15.2 x 1.6 cm
Language: English
Originally published in English
This book explains the general intellectual climate of the early Ch'ing period, and the political and cultural characteristics of the Ch'ing regime at the time. Professor Huang brings to life the book's central characters, Li Fu and the three great emperors - K'ang-hsi, Yung-cheng, and Chien-lung - whom he served. Although the author's main concern is to explain the contributions of Li Fu to the Lu-Wang school of Confucianism, he also gives a clearly written account of the Lu-Wang and Ch'eng-Chu schools from the twelfth century to the eighteenth. In a clear, succinct style, Huang explains the historical differences between the Ch'eng-Chu and Lu-Wang schools without sacrificing the subtleties of either. The book culminates in a discussion of the hero-emperor K'ang-hsi's appropriation of the 'Tradition of the Way' from his intellectual officials, which denied them their traditional role as moral censors and critics of the emperor's exercise of authority.
Introduction
1. The original argument (1)
'Chu Hsi versus Lu Hsiang-shan' (Chu-Lu i T'ung)
a philosophical interpretation
2. The original argument (2)
Wang Yang-ming and the problematic of 'Chu Hsi versus Lu Hsiang-shan'
3. The critical dimension in the Confucian mode of thinking
the conception of the Way as the basis for criticism of the political establishment
4. Li Fu
an example of the Lu-Wang scholar in the Ch'ing (1)
his life
5. Li Fu
an example of the Lu-Wang scholar in the Ch'ing (2)
his thought
6. Li Fu and the philological turn
7. The price of having a sage-emperor
the assimilation of the Tradition of the Way by the political establishment in the light of Emperor K'ang-hsi's governance.