عنوان

Cultural and Political Authority in Fourteenth Century China: Song Lian (1310-1381) as Practitioner of the Dao and Architect of the Ming Empire

Number

TL51404

.Language of Text, Soundtrack etc

انگلیسی

Title Proper

Cultural and Political Authority in Fourteenth Century China: Song Lian (1310-1381) as Practitioner of the Dao and Architect of the Ming Empire

General Material Designation

[Thesis]

First Statement of Responsibility

Lu, Chentong

Name of Publisher, Distributor, etc.

The Chinese University of Hong Kong (Hong Kong)

Date of Publication, Distribution, etc.

2019

Text of Note

235 p.

Dissertation or thesis details and type of degree

Ph.D.

Body granting the degree

The Chinese University of Hong Kong (Hong Kong)

Text preceding or following the note

2019

Text of Note

This thesis aims to study Song Lian's intellectual trajectory and political engagement in the fourteenth century. As a reputable literatus in the late Yuan and a major counselor of Ming Taizu at the Ming founding, Song Lian represented both the daotong (moral authority) and the zhengtong (political authority) of his time. On the one hand, he continued his teachers' work of defining the Wuzhou neo-Confucians as the orthodox inheritors of Zhu Xi's moral authority. On the other hand, he was engaged in continuous negotiation between moral and political authority, and assisted Taizu in becoming a "sovereign-teacher". His tragic death was a result of the rising tension between the two authorities. Three major aspects of the fourteenth century are revised over the course of Song Lian's life. Above all, Song Lian lived most of his life in the Yuan, under the alien Mongol rule and through the enduring turbulences attendant on dynastic change. Although marginalized in modern scholarship, the Yuan bridged the Song and the Ming, and formed a continuity between the three dynasties. Second, in the Yuan intellectual world, Cheng-Zhu neo-Confucianism was recognized as the state orthodoxy, while the Three Teachings increasingly converged. The Dao of Song Lian and a number of contemporary literati was not just elitist Cheng-Zhu Daoxue. It was also inclusive of Daoism and Buddhism. Under the construction of Song Lian and other scholar-officials, the Hongwu regime embodied a dualistic structure, with Confucian rituals in the seen world and spirits and ghosts in the unseen world, which corresponded with Taizu's populist focus on the vast rural area. Finally, the unity of the Three Teachings in intellectual world and in state ideology was legitimized in Confucian discourse by the literati effort to restore antiquity. Open-minded literati like Song Lian invoked the ancient classics centered on the moral-metaphysical concept xin (heart-mind), a key notion in all Three Teachings, and in this way enriched and vitalized fourteenth century neo-Confucianism.

Subject Term

Asian history

Subject Term

Asian studies

Lu, Chentong

The Chinese University of Hong Kong (Hong Kong)

Electronic name

p

[Thesis]

276903

a

Y