This chapter surveys the culture, knowledge, practice, and experience of sex in Chang’an (modern Xi’an), capital of Tang dynasty China, during the eighth and ninth centuries. It discusses courtesans and candidates, medical and religious texts, sex in literature, and ideals and practices of marriage. The era coincided with the height of the examination culture, whereby all government officials were expected to demonstrate high literacy skills and knowledge of Confucian classics. As the Tang administration increasingly relied on the civil service examinations to recruit high-ranking officials, so Chang’an became the site where examination candidates and graduates mingled with courtesans and flaunted their sensual pleasures. The changing religious landscape throughout China also reshaped how sex was understood and experienced in Chang’an in the Tang era: while Daoist sexologists continued to produce writings about the art of the bedchamber, Tantric Buddhist ideals of sexuality as a source of spiritual energy took root. Meanwhile Tang medical texts discussed sex extensively, providing a theoretical basis for treating symptoms related to intercourse and pregnancy and prescribing aphrodisiacs. The very first wave of erotica in Chinese history appeared. Aspects of Chang’an sexuality exerted a strong influence on sexuality in China for centuries to come.

This chapter begins with a discussion of the terminology and conceptual frameworks that are useful for contextualizing pre-modern Chinese sources about sex and sexuality. It then surveys several well-studied institutions and practices, including sex manuals, concubinage, female chastity, illicit sex, and literary representations of homoeroticism. The second half of the chapter reflects on three phenomena in works on the history of sexuality in pre-modern China, namely retrospective sexology, the censorship hypothesis, and the assumption of sex as a given. The author argues that while historians now no longer characterize sex culture in ancient China as either ‘liberated’ or ‘repressed’, as old sexologists did, we still tend to assume that the history of sexuality should primarily be about sexual practice and behaviour, despite the acknowledged lack of sources. The lack of sources, in turn, is often assumed to be the result of political and ideological censorship. More attention is needed to questioning scholars’ definition of the very subject matter, sex. The chapter concludes with a short review of scholarly approaches to comparing China with other cultures and a proposal of the ways in which a comparative history of sexuality can be productive.

Daoist philosophy takes as axiomatic that the constant transformation of things in the world is not to be deprecated, but rather celebrated as the basis for the mutual flourishing of the myriad things. This view contains both cyclical and linear conceptions of time and is predicated on a view of a porous body that does not simply occupy blank space or time, but rather is transformed by and also transforms space and time. The porosity and pliability of our cosmos suggests that we should value what is soft and weak rather than what is conventionally hard and strong. This leads to the formulation of an ethic of “plasticity” that governs our responsible engagement with our planetary context.

This chapter explores the concept of virtue (de) in Confucianism and Daoism, which are the two prominent indigenous traditions in ancient China. It is argued that virtue, from an ancient Chinese paradigm, is essentially about moral excellence and influence. In the Confucian traditions, virtue is manifested in the exaltation of moral goodness and ethical charisma of exemplary persons. In the Daoist traditions, virtue is encapsulated in the emptying of one’s heart-mind and in noncoercive action. Chinese ethics in the ancient past stress the utmost importance of (inter)personal cultivation of virtues and role-modeling. School leaders, teachers, students, and other educational stakeholders should develop themselves and others morally so as to collectively achieve dao (the Way), which is a shared vision of human excellence.

After a general survey of the situation in China, attention turns to Daoism and Confucianism and the conflicting interpretations of their key concepts of ‘the Way’ and ‘Heaven.’ A number of reasons are given for considering their approach religious. With Daoism the specific case considered is how Christianity might learn from its approach to the beginning and end of life, in critique of the traditional doctrine of the Fall at the beginning and too tenacious a desire for permanence at its end. With Confucianism the social value of ritual is considered. The work of Daniel Bell and Stephen Angle are used to argue the need for the sacred underpinning of contemporary democracy. Finally, the extent of the change in Buddhism as it adopted the Mahayana position is considered. Here most attention is devoted to the type of arguments deployed for the necessity of change from Shakyamuni’s original message, particularly as presented in the Lotus Sutra.

Religion between the tenth and thirteenth centuries is a rich fabric of Buddhist and Daoist institutional warp threads interwoven with the weft of manifold local deities and religious practices. This period witnessed dramatic sectarian developments in institutionalized Buddhism and Daoism as well as an explosion of popular beliefs and practices.Official scrutiny of such religious activities at times led to suppression of what the state labeled “profane cults.” But there were few, if any, impermeable barriers between so-called “elite” and “popular” religions: clerical religions intersected with localized beliefs, and both personal and professional relationships between clergy and the scholar-official elite were commonplace. The economic and social transformations of the Song created new needs and relationships between spirits and supplicants, leading to what one scholar has called the “vernacularization” of religious practice. Buddhism intersected with empire, especially among the Khitan Liao and Tangut Xi Xia, the rulers of which promoted and patronized Buddhism. As new sectarian developments in Buddhism drew masses to congregational, faith-based practices, Chan monastic institutions also flourished. Daoism acquired influence at the Song court through patronage by more than one emperor, and experienced a renaissance through ritual reform and the transmission and canonization of religious texts.

Chapter 7, “The Northern Song Technocratic State,” surveys the history of technocratic governance during the Northern Song period (960–1127). The early Song emperors adapted Five Dynasties’ institutional features and wedded them to their own utilitarian and eclectic ideology to achieve the “Great Peace” (Taiping 太平), a project whose achievement Emperor Zhenzong 真宗 (968–1022; r. 997–1022) proclaimed at the great sacrifices to Heaven and Earth in 1008. Simultaneously under Zhenzong, the major administrative and financial structures of the Song technocratic state attained their early maturity. This chapter contains an extended discussion of imperial Daoism, demonstrating how the monarchy utilized Daoist religious ideas to legitimize the emperor’s position as a supreme political leader with unique, unilateral decision-making authority. The rise of Confucian institutionalism in the 1020s and 1030s challenged these claims and sought to move away from the founders’ vertical conception of the state as an extended “private” family toward a more horizontal conception of the state as a “public” body or system of interdependent political actors, of which the emperor was but one component. These two visions of the state co-existed in tension through the middle of the eleventh century. This chapter concludes by examining how Emperor Huizong 徽宗 (1082–1135; r. 1100–1125) returned again to imperial Daoism to justify a renewed and more autocratic system of unified vertical control.

Tolstoy had a sustained interest in a number of religions other than Christianity. This interest became urgent and comprehensive in the 1880s after his so-called conversion. In this chapter, I examine Tolstoy’s relation to Buddhism, Daoism, and Hinduism in terms of a crucial question that preoccupied the later Tolstoy: What is the good life? Indeed, I suggest that Tolstoy turned to these other religions precisely because of his concern to identify a universal wisdom about the good life. My examination proceeds through texts, such as War and Peace and A Confession, that exploit tropes, imagery, and parables drawn from Daoism, Buddhism, and the Hindu tradition. The upshot is to reveal the extent to which Tolstoy’s advocacy of self-resignation, the principal element in his attitude to nonviolent resistance, has roots in his investigation of these other religions, and not only in his interpretation of the Christian tradition.

The Art of War and Sunzi’s modern image outside China must be placed within their original Chinese context. The mythical author and “his” text served a specific function in Sima Qian’s Records of the Grand Historian that, given the seminal nature of the Records of the Grand Historian in creating many of the categories and interpretations of pre-imperial and very early imperial history, have persisted until the present. Samuel Griffith connected Sunzi to Mao Zedong, the great Chinese military genius of the twentieth century, in order to make Sunzi relevant to Western readers. He also connected Sunzi back to ancient Chinese history to establish that, if Mao was the most recent manifestation of strategic acumen, the foundation of that thought was basic to Chinese culture. Sunzi was an ancient classic that was not only an enduring piece of strategic truth, but also a description of warfare in premodern China.

This concluding chapter suggests a new approach to realigning the corporate-political ecosystem toward an ecologically friendly approach to development. Basing its proposals on a combination of traditional Chinese philosophical principles drawn from Daoism and Confucianism, especially channeling "vital energy" (qi), and contemporary ecological science and behavioral economics, the chapter suggests expanding intraparty democracy within the Chinese Communist Party, altering official incentive systems, and testing a more transparent approach to official entrepreneurialism. Combining these reforms will continue to allow the incredible energy of Chinese people and private firms (not to mention pragmatic and competent government officials) to improve their living standards and quality of life, while channeling that energy in less harmful directions with the aim of preventing ecological and climate change catastrophe.

Philosophers throughout history have pondered the relationship between emotions, rationality, and morality, and their implications for education. This chapter presents an overview of basic points and issues of contention within and across philosophical perspectives related to these topics. It considers particularly deontology, consequentialism, virtue ethics, care ethics and other relational views, and existentialism. A significant part of the chapter explores virtue ethics, as virtue ethics is seen to philosophically undergird the majority of morally-oriented social and emotional learning and character education approaches in western societies . The role in virtue ethics of emotions in moral and social life overlaps in some cases with those found in the social sciences, as well as those seen within some eastern traditions. Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism will also be discussed here. The chapter thus summarises major insights and points of debate across philosophies related to educating emotions.

Focusing on Confucianism and Daoism, Yao suggests that religious experience in these Chinese traditions falls into two broad categories: the human-centered and the transcendent-centered. Even so, he finds that the traditions agree in their tending to include an ultimate concern about human life and human destiny reflected in personal, familiar, and social matters, and that they typically associate their religious experiences with practices that, via self-cultivation, nourish a good human life.

Imperial Chinese society accepted and even lauded certain types of violence. Ideas about sanctioned violence developed largely in response to ideas about masculinity. In ancient China’s prevailing honour culture, elite men often used violence to win public approbation. They undertook hunting and warfare in order to construct a positive masculine identity. Up through the medieval era, the elite considered vengeance a legitimate response to shame. This value system fostered instability, so the government strove to limit sanctioned violence to representatives of the state. Over time, Chinese society reassessed traditional ideas about violence. Officials and thinkers deliberately sought to curtail violent behaviour in order to reduce the threat of chaos. Instead of glorifying bellicose heroes, historians reserved the highest praise for rulers and officials who fostered ethics, order, and harmony. From the tenth century onward, literati became China’s primary administrative class. These educated men prized scholarship and high culture, and they belittled violent behaviour as demonstrating a person’s embarrassing lack of self-control. The political and cultural pre-eminence of refined literati caused Chinese to further question the legitimate role of violence. Over time, Chinese behavioural norms became increasingly benign.

By the middle of the first millennium CE in China the notion that the unseen world, while capable of offering respite from the perils of our world, was itself full of danger was shared both by Daoists drawing on earlier local ways of thinking and by Buddhists who incorporated beliefs originating in South Asia. In reality the this-worldly economic success of the monastic establishments of the latter tradition attracted occasional episodes of forced, often violent laicization at the hands of the state, while eschatological ideas drawn from both traditions nourished for some alternative visions of the future that also triggered violent clashes with the authorities. Exhortations to devoutness meanwhile could spur self-inflicted violence, whereas the summoning of demons to injure others was recognised and forbidden in the legal code. As our sources become more plentiful from the end of the first millennium onward, we learn more of the sometimes sanguinary content of popular religious eschatology, while it also becomes clear that the imagery of violence was commonplace in a wide range of religious contexts and that in situations such as those of foreign invasion or political collapse fear of demons could prompt unrestrained and merciless violence against outsiders.