BrianGriffith
Posted December 29, 2012
This collection of excerpts from the greatest Chinese writing is like a museum for philosophy through the centuries. The editor's excellent introductions are like statements of museum curators. And the full tour delivers a far more powerful encounter with Chinese history than any museum of artifacts. It gives direct experience of the breadth, style, and intensity of thought as it evolved age by age.
These writings are selected on the basis of their historical importance more than their entertainment value, and some enormously influential pieces from the past seem overly abstract or pedantic to modern Western tastes. Also, this collection of "sources" is almost entirely philosophical. The collection highlights serious philosophy, leaving aside popular myth, folklore, poetry, drama, or fictional literature, which are also sources of tradition.
--author of A Galaxy of Immortal Women: The Yin Side of Chinese Civilization
Anonymous
Posted August 15, 2003
I'll make this short...For anyone interested in Chinese history, literature, or culture, this volume is an absolutely essential collection of primary sources, and includes prefaces and explanations by China scholars. There is no one better than de Bary, and this new edition includes everything from the 1960 edition up through the Jiang Zemin era.
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More About This Textbook
Overview
Editorial Reviews
Yingshih Yu
The selections are excellent, translations faithful and elegant, and introductions terse and to the point. If I were asked to recommend only one book for anyone who wishes to know something about Chinese culture, I would name, without a moment of hesitation, this new edition of Sources of Chinese Tradition.Booknews
Second edition of an anthology of primary sources on Chinese history features new translations of more than half the works which appeared in the first (1960) edition, and adds new selections as well. Texts are arranged chronologically, with this volume spanning from the earliest literate Chinese societies through the 17th century Ming dynasty. The book, and each individual chapter, features an introduction by the editors contextualizing the material. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)Product Details
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Meet the Author
Wm. Theodore de Bary is John Mitchell Mason Professor Emeritus and provost emeritus of Columbia University, where he currently holds the title of Special Service Professor. He is the author of many books, including Waiting for the Dawn, Message of the Mind, and Learning for One's Self, and the editor of Sources of Japanese Tradition and Sources of Korean Tradition, as well as (with Tu Weiming) Confucianism and Human Rights, all published by Columbia.Irene Bloom is Wm. Theodore and Fanny de Bary and Class of 1941 Associate Professor of Asian Humanities at Columbia University, associate professor and chair of the Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Cultures at Barnard College, and program director of the Columbia University Committee on Asia and the Middle East. She is the editor and translator of Knowledge Painfully Acquired: The K'un-chih chi of Lo Ch'in-shun and editor, with Joshua A. Fogel, of Meeting of Minds, both published by Columbia.
Columbia University Press
Table of Contents
The Chinese Tradition in Antiquity
1. The Oracle-Bone Inscriptions of the Late Shang Dynasty; David N. Keightley
2. Classical Sources of Chinese Tradition; Burton Watson, David S. Nivison, Irene Bloom
3. Confucius and the Analects; Irene Bloom
4. Mozi: Utilitarianism, Uniformity, and Universal Love; Burton Watson
5. The Way of Laozi and Zhuangzi
6. The Evolution of the Confucian Tradition in Antiquity
7. Legalists and Militarists
8. The Han Reaction to Qin Despotism
9. Daoist Syncretisms of the Late Zhou, Qin, and Early Han
10. The Imperial Order and Han Syntheses
11. The Economic Order; Burton Watson, Wm. Theodore deBary
12. The Great Han Historians; Burton Watson
Later Taoism and Mahyana Buddhism in China
13. Learning of the Mysterious; Richard John Lynn, Wing-tsit Chan, Irene Bloom
14. Daoist Religion; Franciscus Verellen, Nathan Sivin, et al.
15. The Introduction of Buddhism
16. Schools of Buddhism
17. Schools of Buddhism
The Confucian Revival and Neo-Confucianism
18. Social Life and Political Culture in the Tang
19. The Confucian Revival in the Song
20. Neo-Confucianism: The Philosophy of Human Nature and the Way of the Sage
21. Zhu Xi's Neo-Confucian Program; Wm. Theodore deBary
22. Ideological Foundations of Late Imperial China
23. Neo-Confucian Education
24. Continuity and Crisis in the Ming