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Item Details
| Title:
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EFFORTLESS ACTION
WU-WEI AS CONCEPTUAL METAPHOR AND SPIRITUAL IDEAL IN EARLY CHINA |
| By: |
Edward Slingerland |
| Format: |
Hardback |
| List price:
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£95.00 |
| Our price: |
£95.00 |
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| ISBN 10: |
0195138996 |
| ISBN 13: |
9780195138993 |
| Availability: |
Usually dispatched within 1-3 weeks.
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| Stock: |
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| Publisher: |
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS INC |
| Pub. date: |
1 March, 2003 |
| Pages: |
364 |
| Description: |
This study argues that the concept of 'wu-wei' or 'effortless action' serves as a spiritual ideal for a group of five early Chinese thinkers - Confucius, Laozi, Mencius, Shuangzi, and Xunzi - who share what might be called the 'mainstream' Chinese worldview, which is characterised by the belief that there is a normative order to the cosmos (the "Way"), within which humans have a proper place and mode of behaviour. Humans once existed in a state of accord with thisorder, but have since fallen out of this harmonious state. Wu-wei, Slingerland contends, serves as a soteriological goal that can only be understood within this worldview. It represents a re-establishment of this original ideal state, and a person who has regained this state will acquire a type ofcharismatic virtue or inner power. In its most basic form, the paradox is that wu-wei is a state of effortless action that must be regained through a process of self-cultivation: it is hard to see how one can try not to try. The most revealing way to understand the five thinkers under consideration, Slingerland believes, is to see them as responding in various ways both to the paradox of wu-wei and to previous thinkers' proposed solutions. |
| Synopsis: |
This book presents a systematic account of the role of the personal spiritual ideal of wu-wei-literally "no doing," but better rendered as "effortless action"-in early Chinese thought. Edward Slingerland's analysis shows that wu-wei represents the most general of a set of conceptual metaphors having to do with a state of effortless ease and unself-consciousness. This concept of effortlessness, he contends, serves as a common ideal for both Daoist and Confucian thinkers. He also argues that this concept contains within itself a conceptual tension that motivates the development of early Chinese thought: the so-called "paradox of wu-wei," or the question of how one can consciously "try not to try." Methodologically, this book represents a preliminary attempt to apply the contemporary theory of conceptual metaphor to the study of early Chinese thought. Although the focus is upon early China, both the subject matter and methodology have wider implications. The subject of wu-wei is relevant to anyone interested in later East Asian religious thought or in the so-called "virtue-ethics" tradition in the West.Moreover, the technique of conceptual metaphor analysis-along with the principle of "embodied realism" upon which it is based-provides an exciting new theoretical framework and methodological tool for the study of comparative thought, comparative religion, intellectual history, and even the humanities in general. Part of the purpose of this work is thus to help introduce scholars in the humanities and social sciences to this methodology, and provide an example of how it may be applied to a particular sub-field. |
| Publication: |
US |
| Imprint: |
Oxford University Press Inc |
| Returns: |
Returnable |
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