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Asian Philosophy > Chinese Philosophy > Chinese Neo-Confucianism > Song-Ming Neo-Confucianism > Zhou Dunyi
Zhou Dunyi
About this topic
| Summary | Zhou Dunyi (Chou Tun-I 周敦頤, 1017-1073) is standardly regarded as the originator of Neo-Confucianism, but his thought stirred up much controversy in the history of Chinese philosophy. Many philosophers and scholars accused him as being a closet Daoist, in that his short treatise on the Taiji Diagram seems to be a clone of a Daoist Taiji diagram and his allusion to the Boundless (wuji 無極) has often taken to be in reference to nonbeing (wu無) in Daoist philosophy. There are hundreds of debates and articles written in Chinese on this diagram, both from the perspective of intellectual history and from the angle of philosophical analysis. |
| Key works | In English, Wang 2005 gives a good summary of the controversy and offers a credible explanation of this particular diagram, while Gu 2003 takes the issue to a broader context to reconstruct the diagram as a “mega-sign” in Chinese philosophy. |
| Introductions |
Gu 2003 takes a Peircean approach (separating the signifier and the signified) to reconstruct the Taiji Diagram as a sign of representation, and further reconstruct the Chinese sign system of Taiji and Dao. It is a rich paper that can help Western readers understand why Zhou’s brief analysis of the Diagram matters so much in the history of Chinese philosophy. Wang 2005 deals with the various interpretations of Zhou Dunyi’s Diagram of the Supreme Ultimate Explained (taijitu shuo). It is a good introduction to the historical controversy surrounding Zhou’s usage of the term “wuji,” as it carries a Daoist connotation. |
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Related
Siblings
- Shao Yong (7)
- Zhang Zai (23)
- Cheng Hao (16)
- Cheng Yi (21)
- Lu Xiangshan (11)
- Zhu Xi (108)
- Wang Yangming (94)
- Wang Fuzhi (9)
- Song-Ming Neo-Confucianism, Misc (100)
Contents
9 found
Order:
- Reconstructing the Confucian Dao: Zhu Xi's Appropriation of Zhou Dunyi.Joseph Alan Adler - 2014 - Albany, NY, USA: State University of New York Press.
- Cosmogony as political philosophy.Youngmin Kim - 2008 - Philosophy East and West 58 (1):108-125.: This essay examines the Diagram of the Supreme Ultimate and its shifting interpretations—those of Zhu Xi (1130–1200) and Wang Tingxiang (1474–1544) in particular—and by doing so explores the significance of ‘‘cosmogony’’ in the Confucian tradition and its significance for the change of political philosophy from the Song dynasty through the Ming. First, through a close reading of Zhu Xi’s commentaries on the Diagram, it is argued that they should be interpreted primarily as a statement of political philosophy rather than (...)
- To Broaden the Way: A Confucian-Jewish Dialogue.Galia Patt-Shamir - 2006 - Lexington Books.To Broaden the Way suggests that the texts of both the Jewish and Confucian tradition talk in riddles of a special kind: riddles which are introduced-and answered-by religious forms of life. Using a "dialogue of riddles," Galia Patt-Shamir presents a comparative perspective of Confucianism and Judaism regarding the relatedness between contradictory expressions in texts and living conflicts.
- The status of cosmic principle (li) in neo-confucian metaphysics.Jeeloo Liu - 2005 - Journal of Chinese Philosophy 32 (3):391-407.In this paper, I attempt to make use of Western metaphysical taxonomy to explicate the cosmological variances in Chinese philosophical schools, especially with regard to the debates among the Neo-Confucian thinkers. While I do not presume that Chinese philosophers dealt with the same Western issues, I do believe that a comparative study of this nature can point to a new direction of thinking concerning the metaphysical debates in Neo-Confucianism. This paper is divided into three parts. In Part I, I employ (...)
- Zhou Dunyi's Diagram of the Supreme Ultimate Explained (Taijitu shuo) : A Construction of the Confucian Metaphysics.Robin Wang - 2005 - Journal of the History of Ideas 66 (3):307-323.
- Flowing Within the Text: A Discussion on He Lin’s Explanation of Zhu Xi’s Method of Intuition.Xianglong Zhang - 2005 - Frontiers of Philosophy in China 1 (1):60-65.The author examines He Lin's interpretation of Zhu Xi's method of intuition from a phenomenological-hermeneutical perspective and by exposing Zhu's philosophical presuppositions. In contrast with Lu Xiangshan's intuitive method, Zhu Xi's method of reading classics advocates "emptying your heart and flowing with the text" and, in this spirit, explains the celebrated "exhaustive investigation on the principles of things (ge wu qiong li)." "Text," according to Zhu, is therefore not an object in ordinary sense but a "contextual region" or "sensible pattern" (...)
- Moral world, ethical terminology: The moral significance of metaphysical terms in Zhou dunyi and Zhu XI.Galia Patt-Shamir - 2004 - Journal of Chinese Philosophy 31 (3):349–362.
- The taiji diagram: A meta-sign in chinese thought.Ming Dong Gu - 2003 - Journal of Chinese Philosophy 30 (2):195–218.
- Chou Yüan-kung hsüan chi.Dunyi Zhou - 1977 - Edited by Jiuyuan Lu.
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