Unit name | Classical Chinese Philosophy |
---|---|
Unit code | PHIL30128 |
Credit points | 20 |
Level of study | H/6 |
Teaching block(s) |
Teaching Block 2 (weeks 13 - 24) |
Unit director | Dr. Tho |
Open unit status | Not open |
Pre-requisites |
N/A |
Co-requisites |
N/A |
School/department | Department of Philosophy |
Faculty | Faculty of Arts |
This unit is designed to introduce Classical Chinese philosophy in the age of the “Hundred Schools of Thought” (诸子百家) that flourished from the 6th to the 3rd century BCE. Against the caricature of “timeless wisdom” usually attributed to so-called “Eastern thought”, the unit will introduce this period of Chinese philosophy as having developed as systematic, pragmatic, and theoretical responses to concrete intellectual, social and political problems in a particular historical period. The unit will present material both historically and thematically. Among the schools, we shall examine the four main ones (Confucianism, Daoism, Legalism, Mohism) by examination and contextualizing their central texts.
We will examine four crucial questions for these thinkers:
The course is a survey and aims to immerse students in the intellectual world of the “Hundred Schools” that served as an important paradigm of Chinese intellectual development until the current day. It will allow students to be introduced to the mutually incompatible claims among the schools and master the basic aims, motivations and context of Classical Chinese intellectual culture and its stakes.
On successful completion of the unit students will be able to:
1. Demonstrate sophisticated knowledge of classical Chinese philosophy and its role in the intellectual roots of Chinese society
2. Demonstrate skills in critical and logical reasoning, the construction and evaluation of arguments, and in written communication, with a sophistication appropriate to level H/6.
3. Demonstrate the ability to interpret historical philosophical texts with a sophistication appropriate to level H/6 including the use of contextual and comparative methodologies.
2 x 1-hour lecture + 1 x 1-hour seminar per week
30% In-class group presentation designed to test ILOs 1-3
70% 4000 word essay designed to test ILOs 1-3
1. The I Ching, or, Book of Changes, Trans. RJ Lynn, Columbia University Press, 2004.
2. Readings in Classical Chinese Philosophy, Ed. P.J. Ivanhoe and B. Van Norden, Seven Bridges Press, 2001.
3. Selections from: Bryan W. Van Norden, Introduction to Classical Chinese Philosophy, Hackett Publishing, 2011.
4. Hellmut and Richard Wilhelm, Understanding the I Ching: The Wilhelm Lectures on the Book of Changes, trans. by Cary F. Baynes and Irene Eber, Princeton University Press, 1995.