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Books > Philosophy > Non-Western philosophy > Oriental & Indian philosophy
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Mencius
(Paperback)
Mencius; Translated by D.C. Lau, Irene Bloom; Edited by Philip Ivanhoe; Introduction by Philip Ivanhoe
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R755
R716
Discovery Miles 7 160
Save R39 (5%)
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Ships in 12 - 17 working days
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Known throughout East Asia as Mengzi, or "Master Meng," Mencius
(391-308 B.C.E.) was a Chinese philosopher of the late Zhou
dynasty, an instrumental figure in the spread of the Confucian
tradition, and a brilliant illuminator of its ideas. Mencius was
active during the Warring States Period (403-221 B.C.E.), in which
competing powers sought to control the declining Zhou empire. Like
Confucius, Mencius journeyed to one feudal court after another,
searching for a proper lord who could put his teachings into
practice. Only a leader who possessed the moral qualities of a true
king could unify China, Mencius believed, and in his defense of
Zhou rule and Confucian philosophy, he developed an innovative and
highly nuanced approach to understanding politics,
self-cultivation, and human nature, profoundly influencing the
course of Confucian thought and East Asian culture. Mencius is a
record of the philosopher's conversations with warring lords,
disciples, and adversaries of the Way, as well as a collection of
pronouncements on government, human nature, and a variety of other
philosophical and political subjects. Mencius is largely concerned
with the motivations of human actors and their capacity for mutual
respect. He builds on the Confucian idea of ren, or humaneness, and
places it alongside the complementary principle of yi, or
rightness, advancing a complex notion of what is right for certain
individuals as they perform distinct roles in specific situations.
Consequently, Mencius's impact was felt not only in the thought of
the intellectual and social elite but also in the value and belief
systems of all Chinese people.
Imperiled Destinies examines the evolution of Daoist beliefs about
human liability and redemption over eight centuries and outlines
ritual procedures for rescuing an ill-starred destiny. From the
second through the tenth century CE, Daoism emerged as a liturgical
organization that engaged vigorously with Buddhism and transformed
Chinese thinking about suffering, the nature of evil, and the aims
of liberation. In the fifth century, elements of classical Daoism
combined with Indian yogic practices to interiorize the quest for
deliverance. The medieval record portrays a world engulfed by evil,
where human existence was mortgaged from birth and burdened by
increasing debts and obligations in this world and the next.
Against this gloomy outlook, Daoism offered ritual and sacramental
instruments capable of acting on the unseen world, providing
therapeutic relief and ecstatic release from apprehensions of
death, disease, war, spoilt harvests, and loss. Drawing on prayer
texts, liturgical sermons, and experiential narratives, Franciscus
Verellen focuses on the Daoist vocabulary of bondage and
redemption, the changing meanings of sacrifice, and metaphoric
conceptualizations bridging the visible and invisible realms. The
language of medieval supplicants envisaged the redemption of an
imperiled destiny as debt forgiveness, and deliverance as healing,
purification, release, or emergence from darkness into light.
This volume constitutes the first critical edition and translation
into any modern language of a dananibandha, a classical Hindu legal
digest devoted to the culturally and religiously important topic of
gifting. Specifically, it is a critical edition-based upon all
identifiable manuscripts-and complete, annotated translation of the
Danakanda ("Book on Gifting"), the fifth section of the
encyclopedic Krtyakalpataru (c. 1114-1154) of Laksmidhara and the
earliest extant dananibandha. David Brick has included an extensive
historical introduction to the text and its subject matter.
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Mencius
(Hardcover)
Mencius; Translated by D.C. Lau, Irene Bloom; Edited by Philip Ivanhoe; Introduction by Philip Ivanhoe
|
R2,203
R2,085
Discovery Miles 20 850
Save R118 (5%)
|
Ships in 12 - 17 working days
|
|
Known throughout East Asia as Mengzi, or "Master Meng," Mencius
(391-308 B.C.E.) was a Chinese philosopher of the late Zhou
dynasty, an instrumental figure in the spread of the Confucian
tradition, and a brilliant illuminator of its ideas. Mencius was
active during the Warring States Period (403-221 B.C.E.), in which
competing powers sought to control the declining Zhou empire. Like
Confucius, Mencius journeyed to one feudal court after another,
searching for a proper lord who could put his teachings into
practice. Only a leader who possessed the moral qualities of a true
king could unify China, Mencius believed, and in his defense of
Zhou rule and Confucian philosophy, he developed an innovative and
highly nuanced approach to understanding politics,
self-cultivation, and human nature, profoundly influencing the
course of Confucian thought and East Asian culture.
"Mencius" is a record of the philosopher's conversations with
warring lords, disciples, and adversaries of the Way, as well as a
collection of pronouncements on government, human nature, and a
variety of other philosophical and political subjects. Mencius is
largely concerned with the motivations of human actors and their
capacity for mutual respect. He builds on the Confucian idea of
"ren," or humaneness, and places it alongside the complementary
principle of "yi," or rightness, advancing a complex notion of what
is right for certain individuals as they perform distinct roles in
specific situations. Consequently, Mencius's impact was felt not
only in the thought of the intellectual and social elite but also
in the value and belief systems of all Chinese people.
An exploration of the central role of indirect modes of expression
in ancient China. In what way do we benefit from speaking of things
indirectly? How does such a distancing allow us better to
discover-and describe-people and objects? How does distancing
produce an effect? What can we gain from approaching the world
obliquely? In other words, how does detour grant access? Thus
begins Francois Jullien's investigation into the strategy,
subtlety, and production of meaning in ancient and modern Chinese
aesthetic and political texts and events. Moving between the
rhetorical traditions of ancient Greece and China, Jullien does not
attempt a simple comparison of the two civilizations. Instead, he
uses the perspective provided by each to gain access into a culture
considered by many Westerners to be strange-"It's all Chinese to
me"-and whose strangeness has been eclipsed through the assumption
of its familiarity. He also uses the comparison to shed light on
the role of Greek thinking in Western civilization. Jullien rereads
the major texts of Chinese thought-The Book of Songs, Confucius's
Analects, and the work of Mencius and Lao-Tse. He addresses the
question of oblique, indirect, and allusive meaning in order to
explore how the techniques of detour provide access to subtler
meanings than are attainable through direct approaches. Indirect
speech, Jullien concludes, yields a complex mode of indication,
open to multiple perspectives and variations, infinitely adaptable
to particular situations and contexts. Concentrating on that which
is not said, or which is spoken only through other means, Jullien
traces the benefits and costs of this rhetorical strategy in which
absolute truth is absent.
The modern imagination of classical Chinese thought has long been
dominated by Confucius, Mozi, Mencius, and other so-called
"Masters" of the Warring States period. Michael Hunter argues that
this approach neglects the far more central role of poetry, and the
Shijing (Classic of Poetry) in particular, in the formation of the
philosophical tradition. Through a new reading of its ideology and
poetics, Hunter reestablishes the Shijing as a work of major
intellectual-historical significance. The Poetics of Early Chinese
Thought demonstrates how Shi poetry weaves a vision of society
united at every level by the innate and universal impulse to come
home. The Shi immersed early thinkers in a world of movement and
flow in order to teach them that the most powerful current of all
was the gravitational pull of a virtuous king, without whom people
can never truly feel at home. Hunter traces the profound influence
of the Shi ideology across numerous sources of classical Chinese
thought, which he recasts as a network centered on the Shi.
Reframing the tradition in this way reveals how poetry shaped
ancient Chinese thinkers' conception of the world and their place
within it. This book offers both a sweeping critique of how
classical Chinese thought is commonly understood and a powerful new
way of studying it.
This is one of the most justly celebrated texts of the Chinese
tradition - impressive for both its bold philosophical imagination
and its striking literary style. Accepting the challenge of
translating this captivating classic in its entirety, Burton Watson
has expertly rendered into English both the profound thought and
the literary brilliance of the text.
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