EDWARD'S LECTURE NOTES:
More notes at http://tanguay.info/learntracker
C O U R S E
Chinese Thought: Ancient Wisdom Meets Modern Science
Edward Slingerland, University of British Columbia
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C O U R S E L E C T U R E The Guodian Laozi Notes taken on February 2, 2017 by Edward Tanguay |
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archeological texts
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some are versions of the Daodejing
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texts that we have uncovered in their original written form
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most written on bamboo with ink
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some are silk text
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Mawangdui, central China
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manuscript on silk, 2nd century BC
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some on paper where caves are particularly dry
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Dunhuang
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typically these come from tombs
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debate on what the relationship was between the text and the person who died, perhaps
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they liked these texts
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used these texts professional
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they were thought to be important to them in the after-life
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archeologists like archeological texts because they are the best of both words in terms of reliability and accuracy
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received
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examples
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First Song of the Book of Odes
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advantages
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longer
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give you more information
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disadvantages
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don't know when they were written
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don't know when they were copied
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tend to be elite texts
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archeological
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advantages
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we can date them
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some bronze vessels have a date on them
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not changed, direct communication
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combine informational richness with historical reliability
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are often everyday texts, not from the elite or studied class necessarily
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disadvantages
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short
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don't give us too much information
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since the beginning of the 20th century, we are finding more and more
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they revolutionized our understanding of early China
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legal texts
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a judge who was buried with his complete court cases
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can be quite dry topics to read, e.g. some guy stole a chicken, what do we do
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but for historians, it's gold
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it gives you accurate and detailed information
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both the legal system of early China
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the daily lives of people
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simpler texts
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farmer's almanacs
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day books
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people trying to figure out why they are getting sick
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a more accurate picture of everyday life on the ground
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new philosophical and religious texts
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the Guodian Laozi
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unearthed in Guodian (Hubei) in 1993
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near the former Chu capital
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one of the southernmost Warring States
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tomb was sealed in about 300 BCE
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so we know these texts have not been changed since then
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bamboo strips
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water had entered the tomb
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strips covered with mud
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different length
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the strings that held them together had degenerated
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archeologists had to put them together
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beveled the same way
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the same length
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string marks
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line them up
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handwriting is similar
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conceptually which go together
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like a jigsaw and crossword puzzle
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written in Chu script
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diversity of pre-standardization script styles
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every state had their own script styles
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types of texts
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philosophical and religious
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copies of received texts
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Dao De Jing
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a chapter of the Liji, or Book of Rites
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copies of texts that we know about, that were listed in bibliographies but were lost
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Wu xing (Five Types of Conduct)
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new texts we had never heard of
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seem to represent a lost school of Confucianism
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Guodian Daodejing
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three bundles
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different handwriting and sizes
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Laozi A
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Laozi B
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Laozi C, Taiyi Shengshui
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creation story
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doesn't correspond to anything in the received Daodejing
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published in 1998
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still debated who these documents relate to each other
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random order
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partial chapters
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the Daodejing was probably a kind of central text which people could mix and match
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texts were fluid
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using different parts of text for different purposes
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wording is different
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received version:
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"Cut off sageliness, abandon wisdom, and the people will benefit one hundred fold. Cut off benevolence, abandon righteousness, and the people will return to being filial and kind. Cut off cleverness, abandon profit, and robbers and thieves will be no more."
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get rid of explicit morality and Confucianism
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a clear anti-Confucian slant to this passage
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Guodian version:
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"Cut off wisdom, abandon distinctions, and the people will benefit one hundred fold. Cut off cleverness, abandon profit, and the people will return to being filial and kind. Cut off artifice, abandon reflection, and robbers and thieves will be no more."
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no mention of Confucianist terminology
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there is no doubt that there were differences between Daoism and Confucianism in the Warring States period
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the Daodejing is picking metaphors which are explicitly against metaphors in the Analects
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the concepts are different
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the concept of de is almost the opposite
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this divide probably gets more pronounced later in Chinese history
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Warring States period
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a ramping up of these differences
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clearly in place by this time was the Zhuangzi "primitivist", chapters 8-10
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different from the inner chapters
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represent a primitivist school that looks a lot like the Daodejing school
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but were produced at the end of the Warring States
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talk about utopias where there is no morality or technology
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webbed toes
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horrible things that Confucianism does to warp our nature
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horses hooves
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people who put horse shoes on horses
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potters
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people who mutilate nature
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Robber Chih
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echoes passages from the Daodejing
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put them in an anti-Confucian context
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Confucians as grave robbers
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the anti-Confucian trope gets emphasized at the end of the Warring States