China Seminar public lecture series

Tuesday, April 4, 12:00 noon, in Moore Hall 109

“Recently Discovered Bamboo Texts and the Formation of Daoism in Early China”

Professor Franklin Perkins, UHM Philosophy

Précis: Against the backdrop of texts transmitted from the Pre-Qin Period, the Laozi (Daodejing) has appeared unique and almost foreign, introducing radically new concerns, terms, and ideals. Archeological discoveries in the past several decades, though, have radically expanded our knowledge of the Laozi and its context. These discoveries have given more evidence about the development and editing of the text itself, most of all through a partial version of the Laozi found at Guodian, buried around 300 BC. They have also unearthed other texts sharing a theoretical and discursive context with the Laozi: the Taiyi shengshui 太一生水 (Great One Generates Water), Heng xian 恆先 (Constancy First), and Fanwu liuxing 凡物流形 (All Things Flow into Form). All were buried around the same place and time as the Guodian Laozi materials. These texts cannot be taken as representing a single “school,” but the commonalities between them show that the Laozi was just one of several positions within a shared set of concerns and assumptions. Together, these texts represent a radical departure from the philosophies of the Ru (Confucians) or the Mohists, constituting what we might call a “cosmogonic turn” in Chinese Philosophy. This talk will introduce these texts and examine the commonalities and differences between them, with a particular focus on what they show about the origins of the Laozi and of what later came to be known as Daoism.

About the speaker: Franklin Perkins is Professor of Philosophy at UHM. His research is on comparative philosophy, including Early Modern European philosophy and Classical Chinese thought. He is the author of Leibniz and China: A Commerce of Light (Cambridge University Press, 2004; Chinese translation, Peking University Press, 2012) and Leibniz: A Guide for the Perplexed (Continuum Press, 2007), and he was coeditor of Chinese Philosophy in Early Excavated Bamboo Texts (Wiley-Blackwell, 2010). He has published numerous articles on Chinese and Comparative Philosophy, on topics ranging from excavated bamboo texts to human nature in the Mengzi to the role of laughter in the Journey to the West. His book, Heaven and Earth Are Not Humane: The Problem of Evil in Early Chinese Philosophy, is currently forthcoming from Indiana University Press.

Event Sponsor
Center for Chinese Studies, Mānoa Campus

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