Willard J. Peterson

Xunzi : a translation and study of the complete works

Coming at the end of the great flowering of philosophical inquiry in Warring States China, when the foundations for traditional Chinese thought were laid, Xunzi occupies a place analogous to that of Aristotle in the West. The collection of works bearing his name contains not only the most systematic philosophical exposition by any early Confucian thinker but also accounts of virtually every aspect of the intellectual, cultural, and social life of his time. This is the last of three volumes that consitute the first complete translation of the Xunzi into English.

Dictionary of Ming biography, 1368-1644

Based largely upon original Ming documents, the Dictionary explores the lives of nearly 650 representative figures, both Chinese and foreign, who influenced the course of almost three hundred years of Chinese history. The articles span all classes, professions, and fields of endeavor, from emperors to artists, soldiers to missionaries, concubines, physicians, and pirates.

Confucian learning in late Ming thought

From 1604 to 1626 was the period dominated by the Tung-lin Academy movement, from its formal founding to its destruction. Its leaders and associates, numbering in the hundreds, sought to reintegrate Wang Yang-mings teachings with the imperially sanctioned version of Neo-Confucianism and to reject decades of misinterpretations of Wangs message at a time when the government was beset by problems. Literati of various persuasions sought to identify ideas which would somehow promote order when they were initiated by the emperor, but none succeeded in time. This chapter explores the development in the late Ming of internal tensions within the main strand of Confucian thinking. Within this strand, there was a proliferation of views as well as attempts to reintegrate a literati ethos that some contemporaries held was a disintegrating one. At the end of the Ming period, the Learning of the Way originally systematized by Chu Hsi remained the officially sanctioned doctrine for the purposes of education and examinations.