Seminars

Despite its importance in Chinese culture, the Book of Changes (Yijing 易經, Zhouyi 周易), one of Five Classics of Confucianism, often eludes our understanding, either in Chinese or in translation. Fortunately, newly excavated texts and advances in historical linguistics have facilitated reconstruction of the early Western Zhou (ca. 1046-771 BCE) meanings. By explaining seemingly ancient cultural aspects such as omens, and also explicating archaic linguistic properties such as polysemy, parataxis, and isolating syntax, the presentation will show how the texts can be understood as based on the experiences of everyday life in early China.

Dai Zhen 戴震 (1724-1777) believes the set of contested desires called “human desires” (renyu 人欲), which are deemed ethically problematic by the lights of the moral orthodoxy of his time, are in fact important constituents of virtuous character. Dai proposes that there is a better moral epistemology and metaethics (his own and Mengzi’s) which doesn’t trivialize them. The paper is an attempt to offer the first close reading and careful assessment of his argument that orthodox (Zhu Xi-style) Neo-Confucianism trivializes human desires to negative effect.