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Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Foreword by Professor Ying-shih Yü
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations
- 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 exemplary Lu-Wang scholar in the Ch'ing dynasty (1): His life
- 5 Li Fu: an exemplary Lu-Wang scholar in the Ch'ing dynasty (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 the K'ang-hsi emperor's governance
- Conclusion
- Chinese glossary
- Bibliography
- Index
Introduction
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 September 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Foreword by Professor Ying-shih Yü
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations
- 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 exemplary Lu-Wang scholar in the Ch'ing dynasty (1): His life
- 5 Li Fu: an exemplary Lu-Wang scholar in the Ch'ing dynasty (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 the K'ang-hsi emperor's governance
- Conclusion
- Chinese glossary
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
This study will explain the general intellectual climate of the early Ch'ing period and explore the political and cultural characteristics of the Ch'ing regime at the time. To achieve these ends I have focused on the Lu-Wang school, but will pay special attention to Li Fu (1675–1750), the most outstanding representative of this school in the early Ch'ing. By the early Ch'ing, the Lu-Wang doctrines had undergone several transformations. Li Fu's thought can be seen as the final Lu-Wang response to the Ch'eng-Chu school. Early Ch'ing rulers and scholars generally blamed the left wing of the Wang Yang-ming school for the fall of the Ming dynasty. Yet Li Fu demonstrated successfully that a Lu-Wang scholar could still lead a viable intellectual life even after the Ming. In other words, the Lu-Wang school did not end with the fall of the Ming.
Stressing the transformative power that the mind has upon moral cultivation, the Lu-Wang scholar takes a critical stance toward book learning (tu-shu), even if he does not necessarily exclude it from the process of moral perfection. One among many distinctions between the Lu-Wang school and its rival, the Ch'eng-Chu school, resides in their differing attitudes toward the role book learning plays in their moral programs. For the Ch'eng-Chu school, book learning has an inherent positive value in the course of moral cultivation.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Philosophy, Philology, and Politics in Eighteenth-Century ChinaLi Fu and the Lu-Wang School under the Ch'ing, pp. 1 - 3Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1995