Origins of Chinese Political Philosophy is the first book in any Western language to explore the composition, language, thought, and early history of the Shangshu (Classic of Documents), one of the pillars of the Chinese textual, intellectual, and political tradition. In examining the text from multiple disciplinary and intellectual perspectives, Origins of Chinese Political Philosophy challenges the traditional accounts of the nature and formation of the Shangshu and its individual chapters. As it analyzes in detail the central ideas and precepts given voice in the text, it further recasts the Shangshu as a collection of dynamic cultural products that expressed and shaped the political and intellectual discourses of different times and communities.
Contributors are: Joachim Gentz, Yegor Grebnev, Magnus Ribbing Gren, Michael Hunter, Martin Kern, Maria Khayutina, Robin McNeal, Dirk Meyer, Yuri Pines, Charles Sanft, David Schaberg, Kai Vogelsang.
Martin Kern, Ph.D. (1996) is Professor of East Asian Studies at Princeton University. His publications include The Stele Inscriptions of Ch’in Shih-huang: Text and Ritual in Early Chinese Imperial Representation (American Oriental Society, 2000) and Text and Ritual in Early China (ed., Univ. of Washington Press, 2005).
Dirk Meyer, PhD. (2008) is Associate Professor of Chinese Philosophy, and Fellow of The Queen’s College, University of Oxford. He publishes on meaning production and the history of thought. His monograph, Philosophy on Bamboo, appeared with Brill in 2012.
Introduction - Martin Kern and Dirk Meyer
1 Language and the Ideology of Kingship in the “Canon of Yao” - Martin Kern
2 Competing Voices in the Shangshu - Kai Vogelsang
3 Recontextualization and Memory Production: Debates on Rulership as Reconstructed from “Gu ming” 顧命 - Dirk Meyer
4 One Heaven, One History, One People: Repositioning the Zhou in Royal Addresses to Subdued Enemies in the “Duo shi” 多士 and “Duo fang” 多方 Chapters of the Shangshu and in the “Shang shi” 商誓 Chapter of the Yi Zhoushu - Joachim Gentz
5 The Qinghua “Jinteng” 金縢 Manuscript: What It Does Not Tell Us about the Duke of Zhou - Magnus Ribbing Gren
6 “Shu” Traditions and Text Recomposition: A Reevaluation of “Jinteng” 金縢 and “Zhou Wu Wang you ji” 周武王有疾 - Dirk Meyer
7 The Yi Zhoushu and the Shangshu: The Case of Texts with Speeches - Yegor Grebnev
8 The “Harangues” (Shi 誓) in the Shangshu - Martin Kern
9 Speaking of Documents: Shu Citations in Warring States Texts - David Schaberg
10 A Toiling Monarch? The “Wu yi” 無逸 Chapter Revisited - Yuri Pines
11 Against (Uninformed) Idleness: Situating the Didacticism of “Wu yi” 無逸 - Michael Hunter
12 “Bi shi” 粊誓, Western Zhou Oath Texts, and the Legal Culture of Early China - Maria Khayutina
13 Concepts of Law in the Shangshu - Charles Sanft
14 Spatial Models of the State in Early Chinese Texts: Tribute Networks and the Articulation of Power and Authority in Shangshu “Yu gong”
禹貢 and Yi Zhoushu “Wang hui” 王會 - Robin McNeal
Index
All interested in the political and intellectual history of ancient China, anyone interested in the textual history of the Shangshu (Classic of Documents), as well as early Chinese textuality more broadly.