Del i serien Studies of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University

China's Philological Turn

Scholars, Textualism, and the Dao in the Eighteenth Century

Inbunden, Engelska, 2018

839 kr

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In eighteenth-century China, a remarkable intellectual transformation took place, centered on the ascendance of philology. Its practitioners were preoccupied with the reliability of sources as evidence for restoring ancient texts and meanings and with the centrality of facts and truth to their scholarship and identity. With the power to construct the textual past, philology has the potential to shape both individual and collective identities, and its rise to prominence consequently deeply affected contemporaneous political, social, and cultural agendas.Ori Sela foregrounds the polymath Qian Daxin (1728–1804), one of the most distinguished scholars of the Qing dynasty, to tell this story. China’s Philological Turn traces scholars’ social networks and the production of knowledge, considering the texts they studied along with their reading practices and the assumptions about knowledge, facts, and truth that came with them. The book considers fundamental issues of eighteenth-century intellectual life: the tension between antiquity’s elevated status and the question of what antiquity actually was; the status of scientific knowledge, especially astronomy, mathematics, and calendrical studies; and the relationship between learned debates and cultural anxieties, especially scholars’ self-characterization and collective identity. Sela brings to light manuscripts, biographies, letters, handwritten notes, epitaphs, and more to highlight the creativity and openness of his subjects. A pioneering book in the cultural history of intellectuals across disciplinary boundaries, China’s Philological Turn reconstructs the history of eighteenth-century Chinese learning and its long-lasting consequences.

Produktinformation

Utgivningsdatum2018-04-03
Mått156 x 235 x 31 mm
Vikt686 g
FormatInbunden
SpråkEngelska
SerieStudies of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University
Antal sidor328
FörlagColumbia University Press
ISBN9780231183826
UtmärkelserCommended for Pre-1900 Joseph Levenson Book Prize, Association for Asian Studies 2020

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Preface and AcknowledgmentsIntroduction: The Way and Its CrossroadsPart I. The Way of Man: Scholarly Networks and the Social History of Scholarship 1. Learning to Be a Scholar2. Official Scholars and the Growing Philologists’ Networks3. Private Scholars, Private Academies, and the Community of KnowledgePart II. The Way of Antiquity: Searching for the True Way in the Past4. The Way of Ancient Learning: Philology, Antiquity, and Ru Identity5. Philology and the Message of the Sages: The Classics and the Four Books6. Historical Philology: Navigating the SourcesPart III. The Way of Heaven and Earth: The Mandate of Scholarship and the Search for Order 7. Astronomy, Mathematics, and Calendar: Historical Perspective8. Ancient Learning Encounters Western Learning: Scientific Knowledge and Its Cultural Baggage9. Fate, Ritual, and Ordering All Under HeavenConclusion: The Consequences of the Eighteenth-Century Intellectual TurnsAppendix A: Selections from Qian Daxin’s 1754 Palace Examination AnswerAppendix B: Major Shuowen and Erya Studies of the Qian-Jia Period (and Related Works)Appendix C: Qian Daxin’s Letter to Dai ZhenAppendix D: Questions and Answers About AstronomyAppendix E: Essay on the Value of Pi ΠAppendix F: Qian Daxin’s Writings on Mathematics, Astronomy, and DivinationAppendix G: On SaṃsāraAppendix H: Sources for the Works of Qian DaxinNote on Abbreviations and CitationsNotesSelected Bibliography of Chinese and Japanese TitlesIndex

Ori Sela clearly and persuasively argues for the importance of the philological turn in the late eighteenth century, explaining fully the larger moral and intellectual justification for the turn and its significance for the whole course of Chinese intellectual history. This book also treats an extremely important figure in the history of Chinese scholarship, Qian Daxin. Sela makes clear both the remarkable range and depth of Qian’s philological scholarship and the crucial moral and ethical importance that Qian saw in what has often been dismissed as dry pedantry.

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