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While the customary path to achievement in traditional China was
through service to the state, from the earliest times certain
individuals had been acclaimed for repudiating an official career.
This book traces the formulation and portrayal of the practice of
reclusion in China from the earliest times through the sixth
century, by which time reclusion had taken on its enduring
character.
Those men who decided to withhold their service to state governance
fit the dictum from the "Book of Changes" of a man who "does not
serve a king or lord; he elevates in priority his own affairs."
This characterization came to serve as a byword of individual and
voluntary withdrawal, the image of the man whose lofty resolve
could not be humbled for service to a temporal ruler. Men who
eschewed official appointments in favor of pursuing their own
personal ideals were known by such appellations as "hidden men"
("yinshi"), "disengaged persons" ("yimin"), "high-minded men"
("gaoshi"), and "scholars-at-home" ("chushi").
What distinguished these men was a particular strength of character
that underlay their conduct: they received approbation for
maintaining their resolve, their mettle, their integrity, and their
moral and personal values in the face of adversity, threat, or
temptation. This book reveals that those who opted for a life of
reclusion had a variety of motivations for their decisions and
conducted widely divergent ways of life. The lives of these men
epitomize the distinctive nature of substantive reclusion,
differentiating them from those of the intelligentsia who, on
occasion, voiced their desire for disengagement or for retreat, but
who nevertheless found or retained their places in government
office. Throughout, the author places the recluse and reclusion
within the social, political, intellectual, religious, and literary
contexts of the times.
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