Abstract
Ever since the concerns and vocabulary of Marxism entered the mainstream of Chinese intellectual life in the 1920’s, Chinese books and journals, scholarly and otherwise, have been aswarm with accounts of the role of idealism (li-hsiang chu-i) and materialism (wei-wu-chu-i) in the development of China’s 4000 year history. Taking their cue from Engels, most Chinese writing in this vein has labelled all Chinese thinkers as idealist or materialist depending on whether their writings have given primacy to the spirit or the natural world. Not surprisingly, the present government has officially conferred praise on the “materialists” and disdain on the “idealists.”1
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References
Albert Feuerwerker, ed., Histpry in Communist China(Cambridge, Mass., 1968) is the best Western- language treatment of this theme.
Max Weber, The Religion of China, trans. H.H. Gerth (New York, 1951 ), p. 63.
James F. Cahill, “Confucian Elements in the Theory of Painting,”p. 128, in The Confucian Persuasion, ed. A.F. Wright (Stanford, 1960 ).
Paul Wheatley, The Pivot of the Four Quarters (Edinburgh, 1971), pp. 45ff, is an especially brilliant discussion of early Chinese city planning along what he calls “co-ordinate” design between the cosmos and the secular city. For a study of Chinese sexual theory and practice, the classic remains Robert van Guilk, Sexual Practice in Ancient China (Leiden, 1961), which passim argues eloquently for the mutuality of sexual benefit for the two parties in sexual relations. For verbal parellelisms, see the discussion and numerous examples in David Hawkes, A Little Primer of Tu Fu (Oxford, 1967). I would like to mention here that I have deliberately chosen not to discuss the role of yin and yang in Chinese life and thought, since they have already been discussed by many scholars before, most recently by Michael Loewe, Ways to Paradise: The Chinese Quest for Immortality (London, 1979), pp. 6–8.
Chao I, Kai-yu ts’ung-k’ao, 21.6a–9a.
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E.g., Nelson Wu, Chinese and Indian Architecture(New York, 1963), pp. 29–44; and, Liang Ssu-ch’eng, Chung-kuo chien-chu shih.
E.g., Teng Su, Ping-lu hsien-sheng wen-chi, 25.1b– 4a, for the twelfth century.
Suto Yoshiyuki, “Sodai Setsusei chiho no iden no hatten,” Sodaishi kenkyu (Tokyo, 1970), pp. 305–436; and Peter Purdue, “Population Growth and Dike Building around Tung-t’ing Lake, Hunan, 1500–1800”, unpublished talk at the 1980 meeting of the Assoication of Asian Scholars in Washington, D.C.
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E.g., Fan Chih-ming, Yueh-yang feng-t’u chi, 13a. Yet, as is well known, from the eleventh century on, if not earlier, an increasing number of Chinese women had their feet bound and their movement outside the house severely restricted (Howard S. Levy, Chinese Footbinding: The History of a Curious Erotic Custom, (New York, 1967)).
K’un-hsin liang-hsien hsiu ho-chih (1880), 1.17b, for the fifteenth century.
E.g., Cao Xuequin, The Story of the Stone, (trans. D. Haukes) v.l, pp. 223–5.
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The best comprehensive study of this issue remains Wada Sei, Chugoku chiho jisei hattatsu shi (Tokyo, 2nd. ed., 1975).
D.C. Twitchett, “The Fan Clan’s Charitable Estate, 1050–1760,” pp. 97–133, in Confucianism in Action, ed. D. Nivison and A.F. Wright (Stanford, 1959); Shimizu Morimitsu, Chugoku zokusan seido (Tokyo, 1948); and Hilarie Beattie, Land and Lineage in China (Cambridge, England, 1978), for a detailed view of how local officials had to deal gingerly with powerful clans they had been sent to govern.
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E.g., Doctrine of the Mean, chapter 20, in The Chinese Classics, (trans. James Legge) v. 1, p. 406–7.
J.P. McDermott, Land Tenure and Rural Control in the Liangche Region During the Southern Sung (unpublished Ph.D., Cambridge U., 1979 ), pp. 150–62.
J.P. McDermott, “Bondservants in the Late Ming: A Case of Mistaken Identity,” unpublished article.
John B. Starr, Continuing the Revolution: The Political Thought of Mao, (Princeton, 1979), pp. 3–45.
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McDermott, J.P. (1982). Dualism in Chinese Thought and Society. In: Adelmann, F.J. (eds) Contemporary Chinese Philosophy. Boston College Studies in Philosophy, vol 9. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-7689-4_1
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