Reform in the Balance, livre ebook

Presents the intellectual milieu of mid-Tang China, particularly the conservative defense of literary pursuits and cultural tradition in the face of political and social uncertainty.

Presents the intellectual milieu of mid-Tang China, particularly the conservative defense of literary pursuits and cultural tradition in the face of political and social uncertainty.

Anthony DeBlasi offers a remapping of China's intellectual landscape during the late eighth and early ninth centuries. Recreating a world of intense philosophical debate, influenced by political uncertainty and social disorder, he reveals the logic behind the period's most popular philosophical positions.

Reform in the Balance casts aside traditional evaluations of the predominance of the Ancient Style Movement (guwen) during this era. Building on recent scholarship and his own reading of Tang sources, the author argues that the period's dominant intellectual position advocated moderately conservative cultural reform designed to defend literary pursuits and the broader cultural tradition from more strident critics.

Acknowledgments
Prelude: The Changing World in Eighty-Century China
Intellectual Culture in the Mid-Tang Mainstream
Defining the Mid-Tang Mainstream
Politics and Social Change in the Mid-Tang
The Confucian Revival
The Plan of This Study
1. The Literary Response to the Mid-Tang Crisis
Literary Decline and the Roots of Disorder
The Continuing Promise of Literary Pursuits
The Nature of the Literary Man
Completeness and Balance in Mainstream Thought
The Evolution of the Literary Mainstream
Conclusion
2. Literary Education in the Mid-Tang Mainstream
Educational Assumptions in Medieval China
Mid-Tang Literary Learning and the Tradition
The Guiding Tradition
Learning Broadly in the Mid-Tang
Alternative Visions
Conclusion
3. Literary Politics in the Mid-Tang
The Elements of Mainstream Political Thought
Bai Juyi and His Celin
Liu Yuxi's Accomodative Political Philosophy
Conclusion
4. Moral Choices in the Literary Mainstream
Literature and the Self
Models for the Moral Man
Desire and Morality in Quan Deyu's Thought
A Remedy for Desires
Conclusion
5. The Guwen Alternative
Guwen Literary Theory
Guwen
Approaches to Learning
The Basis of Morality in Guwen
Ideology
The Politics of Individual Responsibility
Conclusion
Final Considerations
The Vitality of Tang Literary Conservatism
The Legacy of the Mainstream
Notes

Bibliography
Index