The Tang has often been considered the historical high point of Chinese “cosmopolitanism.” Recent scholarship, however, has been divided on the questions of just how tolerant the era actually was of ethnocultural difference and of whether it represented a turning point in Chinese history toward increasing xenophobia or, on the contrary, toward a less exclusive conception of Chinese identity. This essay suggests that surviving evidence is susceptible to contradictory interpretations on account of its preservation in textual genres characterized by complex (...) motivations that, moreover, changed dramatically over the course of the dynasty. We should not, therefore, uncritically accept statements concerning ethnocultural identity and difference in preserved texts as representative of the thoughts or feelings of even the literati class. A better understanding of the evolution of Chinese attitudes on these questions, instead, will require attention to the ways Tang ideas about texts shaped the attitudes literati felt worthy of expression in them, and how they did so differently in different periods. (shrink)

Abstract:Wei-Jin era Xuanxue is often discussed as an ontological or metaphysical discourse with political and ethical entailments. The present essay, however, argues that if "ontology" and "metaphysics" are taken in their usual senses—as concerning the nature of reality prior to and irrespective of human action—then this description does not make good sense of a significant number of passages in Guo Xiang's (252–312) commentary on the Zhuangzi. Though this commentary contains much that appears to present an "ontological" or "metaphysical" vision, Guo (...) frequently presents this vision not as the way things are, but rather as exemplifying the sort of rhetoric that is necessary for stabilizing the state. Rather than taking ontology as a basis for deriving and justifying his politics, therefore, Guo instead offers his ontological vision as premised upon the pragmatics of political life. (shrink)

Often considered China's greatest poet, Du Fu (712-770) came of age at the height of the Tang dynasty, in an era marked by confidence that the accumulated wisdom of the precedent cultural tradition would guarantee civilization's continued stability and prosperity. When his society collapsed into civil war in 755, however, he began to question contemporary assumptions about the role that tradition should play in making sense of experience and defining human flourishing. In this book, Lucas Bender argues that Du Fu's (...) reconsideration of the nature and importance of tradition has played a pivotal role in the transformation of Chinese poetic understanding over the last millennium. In reimagining his relationship to tradition, Du Fu anticipated important philosophical transitions from the late-medieval into the early-modern period and laid the template for a new and perduring paradigm of poetry's relationship to ethics. He also looked forward to the transformations his own poetry would undergo as it was elevated to the pinnacle of the Chinese poetic pantheon. (shrink)