Abstract
Various passages in the Laozi and the Zhuangzi, the two most important texts of “philosophical Daoism,” critically mock Confucian sacrificial rites. Perhaps the best known of these criticisms refers to a practice involving straw dogs (Laozi 5, Zhuangzi 14). This article will attempt to expose the philosophical dimensions of these passages that show, in my reading, how Daoist philosophy looks at such sacrificial rituals as a sort of evidence of the Confucian misconceptions of time, of death and life, and of cosmic and social order.
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Notes
Analects 2.5. All passages from the Analects quoted herein are taken from Roger T. Ames and Henry Rosemont, Jr., The Analects of Confucius: A Philosophical Translation, New York: Ballantine, 1998.
Analects 1.2.
Analects 3.4.
Analects 3.26.
Mencius 3A2. Translation by Ames and Rosemont. See Roger T. Ames and Henry Rosemont, Jr., The Analects of Confucius: A Philosophical Translation, New York: Ballantine, 1998, p. 251, note 202.
Analects 7.10.
Analects 2.7.
Xunzi, chapter 20. See the translation by Burton Watson: Hsun Tzu: Basic Writings, New York: Columbia University Press, 1963, pp. 89-111.
Analects 3.17.
According to Zhu Xi’s commentary. See Roger T. Ames and Henry Rosemont, Jr., The Analects of Confucius: A Philosophical Translation. New York: Ballantine, 1998, p. 235, note 53.
Analects 17.21.
Analects 2.24.
Mengzi, 4A26. See the translation by D.C. Lau, Mencius, London: Penguin, 1970, p. 127.
Analects 1.19.
See the translation by A.C. Graham: Chuang-Tzu: The Inner Chapters, Indianapolis, Cambridge: Hackett, 2001, p.88.
Ibid., p.123.
Ibid.
See my translation: Dao De Jing, Chicago: Open Court, 2007, p.15
See A.C. Graham, Op. Cit., p.192.
See ibid., p.89.
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This article was originally published as: “Daoist Criticisms of Confucian Sacrificial Rites”, in Walter Schweidler (ed.), Opfer in Leben und Tod (Sacrifice Between Life and Death), Sankt Augustin: Academia, 2009, 121–131. Reprinted with permission from Academia Press.
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Moeller, HG. Daoist Criticisms of Confucian Sacrificial Rites. SOPHIA 51, 283–292 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-012-0302-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-012-0302-8