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The Sung Neo-Confucian synthesis is one of the two great formative
periods in the history of Confucianism. Shao Yung (1011-77) was a
key contributor to this synthesis, and this study attempts to make
understandable the complex and highly theoretical thought of a
philosopher who has been, for the most part, misunderstood for a
thousand years. It is the first full-length study in any language
of Shao Yung's philosophy.
Using an explicit metaphilosophical approach, the author examines
the implicit and assumed aspects of Shao Yung's thought and shows
how it makes sense to view his philosophy as an explanatory theory.
Shao Yung explained all kinds of change and activity in the
universe with six fundamental concepts that he applied to three
realms of reality: subsensorial "matter," the phenomenal world of
human experience, and the theoretical realm of symbols.
The author also analyzes the place of the sage in Shao's
philosophy. Not only would the sage restore political and moral
unity in society, but through his special kind of knowing he also
would restore cosmological unity. Shao's recognition that the
perceiver had a critical role in making and shaping reality led to
his ideal of the sage as the perfect knower. Utilizing Shao's own
device of a moving observational viewpoint, the study concludes
with an examination of the divergent interpretations of Shao's
philosophy from the eleventh to the twentieth century.
Because Shao took very seriously numerological aspects of Chinese
thought that are often greatly misunderstood in the West (e.g., the
I Ching), the study is also a very good introduction to the
epistemological implications of an important strand of all
traditional Chinese philosophical thought.
This study offers a methodological approach for comparative
philosophy on the level of the philosophical system, examines
Confucian philosophy as a philosophical system, with emphasis on
its epistemological dimensions, and uses the thought of a
particular thinker as an example of how the Confucian tradition was
appropriated by individual thinkers.
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