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Humanitas Taiwanica, No. 94
Item
Title
Author

1

The Annotations of Wen Xuan by Five Ministers and the Tradition of Politicized “Bi and Xing” Ideas in the Tang Dynasty

    Aiming at Li Shan’s annotations which did not reveal the objectives of the literary works in Wen xuan, the five ministers attempted to understand the poets’ hidden intentions. Later critics viewed their annotations as strained. However, the five minsters’ annotations were approved by Emperor Xuanzong of the Tang (712-756) and had a large influence throughout the Tang dynasty. While revealing the poetic ideas of politicized “bi and xing” (explicit comparisons and metaphor), the five minsters’ annotations showed the trend of thought advocated by Chen Zi’ang to revive the xingji (the poetic device to express emotions and thoughts) tradition. Different from the criticism proposed by Cheng Zi’ang, that xingji tradition was lost in poetry after Wei and Jing dynasties, the five ministers tried to prove that there still existed a xingji tradition after Han and Wei dynasties. Their annotations absorbed Wang Yi’s interpretation system of yinleipiyu (categorical analogy), and built a mode to explain poetry from the point of view of politicized bi and xing. The idea of xingji poetics thus continued. The interpreting tradition represented by the five ministers’ annotations was developed in some poetic theories in the late Tang and had an important influence on poetics after the Song dynasty.

Lu, Chia-hui

2

Qian Mu’s Interpretations towards Song Xue: Focus on a Reflection on Western Constitutionalism

    Existing literature has barely pointed out Qian Mu’s (1895-1990) interpretations towards Song Xue (Song dynasty academic thought) based on the context of the impacts that Western Constitutionalism was brought up since early years of the Republic of China. This research emphasizes that Song Xue is an integrated academic system of self-cultivation (xiu shen) and country governance (zhi guo). Scholars in the Song dynasty developed the theories of Xing Ji Li (goodness in human nature) and Xin Ji Li (goodness in the heart) to enhance the concept of Tian Ren He Yi (integration of heaven and human) and to affirm a political utopia of Tian Xia You Dao (ideal politics). Since Tian Dao (the highest principle in the universe) and Tian Li ( the rules of the operation of everything in the world) are naturally operated within individuals, which enlightening educational functions that religions provided were accordingly included in Chinese politics. The reinterpretations of the Song Xue’s crisis consciousness by Qian Mu mainly focus on the educational functions offered by the religions other than the legal check and balance from the Western societies; the whole society could be dominated by the legal check and balance system and lack a push for growth if Western Constitutionalism is greatly introduced to replace Song Xue that is able to purify politics with education.
Hsu, Hui-chi

3

The Poetic Topic on “Imitation” by the Revivalist School in the Ming Dynasty


    Remaining influential for more than a century, the dominant Revivalist School in the Ming dynasty proved an indisputably significant poetic tradition with its myriad adherents—except for a suspicion of “overindulging in imitation,” which it had frequently provoked to ignore such a negative label. By reviewing the Revivalist poetics with a special attention paid to its self-examination, in combination with in-depth reading and analyses of related poetry, this article attempts to investigate into the topic systematically. The article begins with a survey of the use of the term “imitation” and other related phrases in the Revivalist literature, and manages to identify the very “authors” and “works” criticized by the Revivalists for their flaw of imitation. The flaw, categorized into four types: “farraginous verbiage,” “minor modification,” “blind mimicry” and “repetitive paraphrase.” This article argues throughout the history of its imitation of classical writings, the Revivalist School had gone beyond superficial mimicry to reach a higher sphere, which features a harmonious absorption of the classics both corporeally and spiritually. Finally, it may be termed “spiritual imitation” which is in this imitation at a higher level that the greatest value of Revivalist poetry lies. In summary, the Revivalist view in imitation consisted not only of a strict vigilance but of a persistent pursuit of its lofty ideal, mapping a manifold and multifaceted structure of conception, which overran the scope of any simple stigmatizing labeling.
Chen, Ying-chieh

4

The Posthuman Throw of the Dice in Cixin Liu’s Three-Body Problem

    This article aims to read Liu Cixin’s science-fiction trilogy, The Three-Body Problem, to inquire whether humans are just by-products of technology in a cosmic catastrophe, whether, contrarily, human beings can ponder a posthuman overcoming of human morality when being in space makes them no longer human. In the trilogy, cosmological sociology teaches survival, expansion and mass conservation as necessary laws. But Luo Ji and Cheng Xin, facing desperate situations, make decisions that seem to subvert such laws. This means that human beings are evolving into nonhumans or posthumans, escaping from their established harmonious world, as if throwing the dice to evolve a new cosmic ethics. The dice throw is a metaphor from Nietzsche, elaborated by Deleuze to refer to the power to world: to move beyond the dogmatic image of thought formed by the morality of the old world and to tap into the movement of internal differentiation and the potentialities of diverging series. This article explicates Deleuze’s appropriation of Leibniz’s monadology and of Nietzsche’s metaphor of the dice throw to explore how posthumans may respond to catastrophe in ways that resonate with their potentialities, restore their agencies, and form a performative relationship with other beings. Such a reading will allow us to see that the Three-Body Problem trilogy points to the possibility to develop a new cosmic ethical outlook that supersedes human morality.
Cheng, Ju-yu

5

The Purple Han-Aborigine Line: Study on the Han-Aborigine Boundary in Northern Taiwan and Local Administration during the Qianlong Period

    This article employs “ the Map and Description of Reclaimed and Prohibited Paddy and Dry Land in Taiwan” in the forty-ninth year of the Qianlong reign (1784) as a primary source to inspect the execution of policies along the Han-aborigine line by local government during the Qianlong reign. Furthermore, through the case of Tamsui prefecture, the article demonstrates the cultivation along the Purple Han-aborigine boundary, and examines the administrative issues regarding taxation and boarder control in Northern Taiwan. Since setting boarder frontiers is a common method of the Qing Empire to govern multi-ethnicity areas, there the so-call aborigine lines occurred in Taiwan, though boarder walls were more found in Hunan. Both utilized the insulation approach to sustain stability in border areas through the establishments of frontiers. Thus this article will address the issues of Han-aborigine boundary in Taiwan, examine the execution process of Qing aborigine boundaries in Taiwan, demonstrate the influence of border policies upon local administration, and set a comparative foundation for border policies in different regions. As oppose to the usual focus on ethnic policies in previous publications in discussion of aborigine boundaries in Taiwan, this article investigates from the perspective of local agencies to explain how officials attempted to gradually constitute regional power through executions of Han-aborigine boarder policies of the Qing Empire, and established border defense dominated by the local government.
Chen, Chih-hao
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