Philosophy 206

"Neo-Confucian" Chinese Philosophy

Chu Hsi Assignments

15 January 2001 

February 15

[Reading: Gardner, trans., Learning to Be a Sage [hereafter: Chu], chapters 1 and 2 (complete: pp. 88-115)]

• Introduction to Chu Hsi (and What's Happened Since Ch'eng Yi-ch'uan Died)
• "Learning (hsueh [xue])": The Basis for Ethical Cultivation and Sagehood
  • In these first two chapters we see a distinction between two phases of learning, the "lesser" and the "greater." What is the difference between the two? Why is "lesser learning" necessary?
  • Go-wu [gewu], which Graham translated as "investigation of things," is translated by Gardner as "apprehension of the principle in things" (e.g., in 1.1). Which is a better translation?
  • Consider the role of personal effort in the different kinds of learning that Chu discusses in these two chapters. Is it important at every stage?
  • Are the kinds of learning that Chu discusses here entirely alien to you? What relation, if any, do they have to the kinds of learning that you have experienced?

February 20

[Reading: Chu, chapter 3 (complete: pp. 116-27); 7.20]

• "Knowledge" and Action
  • Consider 3.19 and especially 7.20. Have you ever experienced failings of the kind that Chu describes here? Do these failings strike you as appropriately ascribed to a lack of the proper kind of knowledge?
  • In 3.1, Chu tells us that a person with eyes but no legs cannot walk, just as a person with legs but no eyes cannot see. Surely this is obvious...but Chu seems to think that he's illustrating an important point. What is that point? How do his examples help us to see it?

February 22

[Reading: Chu, chapters 4 and 5 (complete: pp. 128-62); 7.13]

• Reading the Texts
  • Why and how does Chu want students to read? List as many reasons and methods or techniques as you can, and rank them in terms of importance.
  • How is what Chu says about the need to make reading "personally meaningful" related to the tie he sees between knowledge and action (discussed in the previous class)? Does this mean that Chu believes that we all might take something different away from reading a particular text?

February 27

[Reading: Chu, "First Letter" (handout); chapters 6 and 7 (complete: pp. 163-96); review 3.12]

• The Mind
  • Ch'eng Yi-ch'uan, recall, believed that the mind (hsin) was li considered as present in humans, as controller of the body. He also said, as Chu quotes him in the "First Letter," that "whenever we talk about the mind, we refer to the state after the feelings are aroused."
  • The "state after the feelings are aroused" (yi fa) refers to the "functioning (yung)" side of the diagram from two weeks ago. It is contrasted with the "state before the feelings are aroused (wei fa)," which consists of li and hsing considered independently of contact with things (that is, t'i, which our translators have been rendering as "substance").
  • First, this suggests that our picture of how Ch'eng Yi-ch'uan (confusedly) understood the mind was somewhat mistaken. How?
  • More importantly, how does Chu feel that he has improved on Cheng's conception?
• The Puzzle of Reverence (or Inner Mental Attentiveness, or Seriousness, or Composure: ching [jing])
  • Notice that in his "First Letter," Chu writes that "...the state before the feelings are aroused cannot be sought and the state after they are aroused permits no manipulation" [p. 601]. This makes it hard to see where there's room for any kind of improvement via moral cultivation. Chu quite obviously believes, nonetheless, that reverence (seriousness in Chan's translation) of the "First Letter" can do us good.
  • Drawing on both the letter and (more importantly) the remaining chapters from Gardner, try to get an idea of what reverence is supposed to be all about, according to Chu. How does it help us? How might it change us? How, finally, does the contrast with "extension of knowledge" and "subduing the self" in [3.12] help us to understand what Chu has in mind?
• Second Paper Assigned