The Emotions in Early Chinese Philosophy by Virág Curie;

Author:Virág, Curie;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oxford University Press USA - OSO
Published: 2017-06-15T00:00:00+00:00

NATURALIZING THE HUMAN IN THE FOURTH CENTURY BCE

A significant development in ethical debates around the fourth century BCE was the emergence of the human being as an object of naturalistic inquiry. This can be seen in the detailed accounts of self-cultivation that were proposed during this period, in which such concepts as xing 性 (human nature), xin 心 (the heart/mind), and qing 情 (emotions/patterned dispositions/underlying reality) came into currency as basic terms of discussion. The preoccupation with such concepts in this period exemplifies a basic shift in concern towards the ethical and psychological dimensions of life.1 This interest was part of a more general endeavor to understand reality in terms of its underlying patterns, processes, and mechanisms. The two realms of inquiry—the human and the cosmic—shared a common logic, structure, and orientation that would give a distinct shape to the conception of emotions in early China, and profoundly mark thinking about the self and the human being more generally. For, although moral philosophers like Mencius were not necessarily concerned with the technical details of naturalistic investigation, they nevertheless assumed that the workings of the natural world were relevant for understanding the workings of human beings as well. Mencius’s appeal to natural imagery to ground his moral theory was thus more than analogical or illustrative; it also presupposed that ethics had to be grounded on a proper understanding of what things were like.

The quest to understand the workings of the world presupposed that the world was indeed knowable. This was itself a major step, and it corresponded to new standards of knowing that were more systematic and methodical, and geared toward revealing the patterned workings of the world.2 In the fields of astronomy and calendar making, for instance, it is precisely between the fifth and third centuries BCE that we find detailed observations and models plotting the regular movements of the constellations, as well as their temporal charting in the form of elaborately worked-out calendars. There also emerged during this period the practice of hemerology, about which new evidence has recently come to light in form of recently excavated almanacs from the fourth and third centuries BCE. These texts suggest an interest in schematizing time and predicting the future in ways that were methodical and systematic. As Donald Harper summarizes this development:

It was in the context of the almanacs that new ideas took shape and changed how the elite viewed their world. They still sought guidance in turtle and milfoil divination, but hemerology routinized decision making in ways that older forms of divination had not. The cycle of time expressed in the numerological systems of the calendar made fortune and misfortune predictable even without divination, and the calendar encouraged belief in a knowable world.3

While the movements of the celestial bodies and the passage of time were being charted with greater precision and regularity, other developments were taking place during this period that reflected an interest in rendering the world more comprehensible. The Zhou yi 周 易 (The Changes of Zhou) was

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