A Philosophy of Hedonism in Early China: Understanding Yang Zhu in Ancient and Medieval Texts
This talk outlines the ways in which “hedonism” as a term can aptly be used to describe doctrines from ancient China. I first excavate evidence of reliable textual attributions to the forgotten philosopher Yang Zhu (5th -4th c. BCE), whom Mencius claims followed a doctrine of weiwo 為我, or “acting in service of the self.” Then I analyze the most extensive, collected materials concerning the figure of Yang Zhu, found in Chapter Seven of the Liezi, a reputedly forged text that dates to approximately 6-7 centuries later. I show that the so-called hedonistic parts of the Liezi seem to be an overlay in a deeper outlook that does not describe a simple hedonism – or a philosophy of exclusively carnal pleasures. In fact, I argue, the compiler/author of the chapter is obsessed with life as a function of death. He paints a picture that idealizes both nourishing and finding joy or pleasure (樂) in life according to one’s natural lifespan. This conceptual framework can be fruitfully compared to Daoist writings on joy found in both the Liezi and the earlier compilation, Zhuangzi. While any attempt to disentangle post-Han writings from potentially earlier, Warring States layers is fraught with difficulties, it is nonetheless productive to use the Yang Zhu chapter of the Liezi as a basis for understanding philosophical hedonism and joy-in-life philosophies linked to ancient and medieval forms of Daoism.
This is a virtual event. Please regiser here.
About the Speaker:
Erica Brindley, Professor of Asian Studies, History and Philosophy at Pennsylvania State University, is an intellectual and cultural historian of early China. She has published extensively on a wide range of topics concerning ancient Chinese intellectual history, as well as on issues related to identity and imperialism in the southern borderland regions of now China and Vietnam. Her first three books all explore the many ways thinkers envisioned the self and other in the world: Individualism in Early China: Human Agency and the Self in Thought and Politics (University of Hawaii Press, 2010); Music, Cosmology, and the Politics of Harmony in Early China (State University of New York Press, 2012); and Ancient China and the Yue: Perceptions and Identities on the Southern Frontier, c.400 BCE – 50 CE (Cambridge University Press, 2015). Currently, she is working on a dedicated study of the Later Mohists, an intellectual movement that developed quasi-military, religious groups and trained men in technical sciences, disputation, and ethics. She is also co-editing the Cambridge Elements series, Ancient East Asia, and developing research on Yang Zhu and joy-in-life philosophies in early and medieval times.