Erica Brindley

Why Use an Ox-Cleaver to Carve a Chicken? The Sociology of the Junzi Ideal in the Lunyu

Central to Confucian teachings in the Analects is the ideal of self-cultivation—in particular that of the junzi 君子 (“gentleman” “nobleman”) ideal. At the same time that Confucius recommends that individuals follow such an ideal, he also places limits on who actually might attain it. By examining statements involving such terms as the junzi, the “petty man” (xiao ren 小人), and the “masses” (min 民, or zhong 眾), or common people, this essay highlights the sociopolitical and gender restrictions informing one of the most basic, yet lofty, ethical goals of the text. A new means is also offered of discussing these socially delimited discrepancies in moral cultivation by referring to leading, or self-determining agency in association with junzi on the one hand, and to conformist agency for women and common people on the other.

The Cosmic Power of Sound in the Late Warring States and Han Periods

Writings that link sound to the cosmos became prominent in Warring States and early imperial times, as scholars began to elaborate on systems of intricate, resonant connections among objects in the cosmos. According to the systems of spontaneous resonance that they proposed, innate linkages among objects or phenomena not only existed, but they exerted causal effects in the world. Objects were categorized according to a system of correlations assigned on the basis of such properties as colors, tastes, bureaucratic office, virtues, numbers, directions (center, north, south, east, and west), sounds, and more. As one of the many

Cultural Identity and the Canonization Of Music in Early China

This article shows that over the course of the Warring States period (479–221 BCE) authors began to organize and categorize music in a manner that helped define and reinforce their conceptions of themselves as a distinct cultural or ethnic group: variously referred to as the Huaxia, Zhuxia, and Zhou. By examining how Ruist (Confucian) authors articulated distinctions among various types of music, and by showing how such identifications denigrated nefarious forms not associated with the Zhou court and its culture, I show how authors endeavored in a process of musical canonization while also consolidating a sense of an ethno-cultural self. The fact that these writings distinguished among and evaluated musical types not primarily through a discussion of musical form or theory but via a morally-laden language rooted in the civilizing rhetoric of the day suggests that music was a primary site for formulating, expressing, and promoting cultural identity.

Spontaneous Arising: Creative Change in the Hengxian

Abstract: This paper explains how, in a relatively short, newly excavated bamboo text called the Hengxian, the author provides an intriguing version of what it means for humans to act in accordance with the creative forces of the cosmos. I show that, rather than focus on effortless action per se, the author presents an account of the creation of the entire cosmos, which lays the foundation for understanding the central process of creative change in the cosmos: that of spontaneous arising. He then uses his cosmological account of spontaneous arising to serve as the basis for a fundamental ethics of creative change, applicable to the human world of politics and individual action, thought, and belief. After outlining the meaning and importance of creative change in the early cosmos, I show how the author’s version of spontaneous arising serves as a positive formulation of wuwei in the human world. I also show how this particular, positive manner of articulating a Daoist ideal of action is philosophically subtle, insofar as it presupposes a certain ever-changing concept of the self in space and time.