Origins of Chinese Political Philosophy: Studies in the Composition and Thought of the Shangshu (Classic of Documents)

Editors:
Martin Kern, and Dirk Meyer

Publisher:
Brill

Publication Date:
May 2017

Abstract:

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.


Table of Contents:

Introduction 1
Martin Kern and Dirk Meyer

1 Language and the Ideology of Kingship in the “Canon of Yao 堯典” 23
Martin Kern

2 Competing Voices in the Shangshu 62
Kai Vogelsang

3 Recontextualization and Memory Production: Debates on Rulership as
Reconstructed from “Gu ming” 顧命 106
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 逸周書 146
Joachim Gentz

5 The Qinghua “Jinteng” 金縢 Manuscript: What It Does Not Tell Us about
the Duke of Zhou 193
Magnus Ribbing Gren

6 “Shu 書” Traditions and Text Recomposition: A Reevaluation of “Jinteng”
金縢 and “Zhou Wu Wang you ji” 周武王有疾 224
Dirk Meyer

7 The Yi Zhoushu and the Shangshu: The Case of Texts with
Speeches 249
Yegor Grebnev

8 The “Harangues” (Shi 誓) in the Shangshu 281
Martin Kern

9 Speaking of Documents: Shu 書 Citations in Warring States Texts 320
David Schaberg

10 A Toiling Monarch? The “Wu yi” 無逸 Chapter Revisited 360
Yuri Pines

11 Against (Uninformed) Idleness: Situating the Didacticism of “Wu yi”
無逸 393
Michael Hunter

12 “Bi shi” 粊誓, Western Zhou Oath Texts, and the Legal Culture of Early
China 416
Maria Khayutina

13 Concepts of Law in the Shangshu 446
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 475
Robin McNeal

Index 497