Chinese Philosophies

As in the History section, there should be a hell of a lot of material in this section as well. So, my cop out, as it is, is to offer you another page of links into the world of Chinese philosophies.


There are actually a lot more sites on the WWW than my short list suggest. But Stephen Brown's site has an excellent links page to most of the worthy ones, so I won't reproduce all the links here.


Just remember this: although most Chinese will claim Confucianism as the most influential Chinese philosophy, in actual fact, the country has for thousands of years been ruled with the methods of Legalism. Also, Confucian ideals of a "perfect person" are very hard to achieve, and bred the type of hypocritical "kind, just" Confucianists that have, once they gained power, plagued China for hundreds of years.


Also, the original Confucians were basically protocol officers. Therefore, they were very big on ritual and proper conduct and such. Anything not approved by the mainstream were to be discarded. In second century B.C., the Western Han Dynasty discerdited all other philosophies and put Confucianism on a high pedestal, making it the main philosophy. Chinese thinking began to go into stasis. In the elventh and twlefth century, the emergence of neo-Confucianism brought the emphasis of protocol and morality to an extreme. According to the neo-Confucians, if one wasn't a saint, then one was a beast, and there was no in-between. The noblest deeds were to submit to authority, revere and worship the ancestors and their deeds. All inventions, desires, changes, physical labour, art, entertainment, music, literature such as poetry, novels, or proses, were all evil and participation in such were sins. As a result of such strict demands, many neo-Confucians became schizophrenics, where their code of morality only applied to others, and where others could not adhere to these inhuman demands, punishments were swift and severe. These were the main reasons why Chinese culture, under Confucian influences, hardly advanced at all for two thousand years, and why China became such a static society.





Overall Information



Stephen Brown's Chinese Philosophy Page - A most comprehensive site. The links page have most of the Chinese philosophy pages heavyweights on the WWW. Most recommended as a starting point.

Clapton Chan's Philosophy Page - There are elements of comparative philosophy (ie. Chinese vs Western) here as well.

Su Tzu's Chinese Philosophy Page - A pretty comprehensive site as well.



Others


The Temple - the Western Daoist. How Daoism applies to today's world

Wu Wei - a page on I Ching, the Book of Change







Skyfire's Homepage

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