Abstract
This article examines the reasons early Confucians offer to support the belief that clothing is formative of its wearer’s character, as well as the arguments other early Chinese texts raise to object to it. It focuses on early Confucian discourses about three representative items of clothing, including the cap (guan 冠) used in the coming-of-age ceremony, the accessories made by jade (yu 玉), and a style of clothing named shenyi 深衣 (deep clothing). These cases demonstrate that, in early Confucian thought, clothing is said to be able to shape the wearer’s character by registering in the wearer its moral symbolism with both psychological-cognitive and bodily means. While this emphasis on symbolism also invites objections that undermine the normative status early Confucians want to ascribe to a specific style of clothing, their discourses still enrich the current understanding of Confucian self-cultivation, in terms of both its method and goals.
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Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Dr. Michael D. K. Ing for giving many helpful comments on earlier versions of this article. I would also like to thank the two anonymous reviewers for their insightful suggestions.
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Hsu, N. Dressing as a Sage: Clothing and Self-cultivation in Early Confucian Thought. Dao 20, 567–588 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11712-021-09799-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11712-021-09799-4