China's Philological Turn

Ori Sela is an associate professor in the Department of East Asian Studies at Tel Aviv University.

Ori Sela clearly and persuasively argues for the importance of the philological turn in the late eighteenth century, explaining fully the larger moral and intellectual justification for the turn and its significance for the whole course of Chinese intellectual history. This book also treats an extremely important figure in the history of Chinese scholarship, Qian Daxin. Sela makes clear both the remarkable range and depth of Qian’s philological scholarship and the crucial moral and ethical importance that Qian saw in what has often been dismissed as dry pedantry.

• Preface and AcknowledgmentsIntroduction: The Way and Its CrossroadsPart I. The Way of Man: Scholarly Networks and the Social History of Scholarship 1. Learning to Be a Scholar2. Official Scholars and the Growing Philologists’ Networks3. Private Scholars, Private Academies, and the Community of KnowledgePart II. The Way of Antiquity: Searching for the True Way in the Past4. The Way of Ancient Learning: Philology, Antiquity, and Ru Identity5. Philology and the Message of the Sages: The Classics and the Four Books6. Historical Philology: Navigating the SourcesPart III. The Way of Heaven and Earth: The Mandate of Scholarship and the Search for Order 7. Astronomy, Mathematics, and Calendar: Historical Perspective8. Ancient Learning Encounters Western Learning: Scientific Knowledge and Its Cultural Baggage9. Fate, Ritual, and Ordering All Under HeavenConclusion: The Consequences of the Eighteenth-Century Intellectual TurnsAppendix A: Selections from Qian Daxin’s 1754 Palace Examination AnswerAppendix B: Major Shuowen and Erya Studies of the Qian-Jia Period (and Related Works)Appendix C: Qian Daxin’s Letter to Dai ZhenAppendix D: Questions and Answers About AstronomyAppendix E: Essay on the Value of Pi ΠAppendix F: Qian Daxin’s Writings on Mathematics, Astronomy, and DivinationAppendix G: On SaṃsāraAppendix H: Sources for the Works of Qian DaxinNote on Abbreviations and CitationsNotesSelected Bibliography of Chinese and Japanese TitlesIndex