Current Research
Sinologica

Our area of primary interest is the land of Confucius, and our original and lasting focus is on him and the other philosophers of the classical period. That period (the "Warring States," the 05th through 03rd centuries) is represented by some twenty major texts, many of them "school" texts which accumulated over decades or longer. Some have continuations under the Empire, when some classical texts, especially military and governmental ones, were still further extended, to address ongoing needs of state.

In addition to their individual compositional histories, the classical texts also interacted with each other: The period may be thought of as one long public debate on what government should be like, how it could best achieve its purposes - and even, at the radical fringes, what those purposes should be. The resulting tumult has been disdainfully called by Sywndz the "Hundred Schools." It is more justly seen as the Golden Age of Chinese thought.

Our studies of one key text were published as The Original Analects (Columbia 1998). That book seeks not only to restore the original order of chapters, but to identify the interpolations which most chapters contain, by which the text proprietors sought to minimize the difference between old and new doctrines. The result reveals the long history of the Confucian movement over more than two centuries, including a drastic change of leadership, the abandonment of one primary value (public service) for another (ritual propriety), and an initial enthusiasm for meditation, later rejected as a way of knowledge. We are pleased to report that this study has now been translated into Chinese - in effect, returning the Analects to its home country.

Some Sinological Profiles
A Summary of our current sense of the major Chinese texts
An Acquaintance page for those in other fields who would like to explore the Chinese parallels more closely
And some thoughts on American Sinology, in answer to a question from China

 

Here are a few topics which seem to us to offer attractive possibilities for future study.

Sinological Topics

• The Dzwo Jwan in Chi
• Ngwei vs Lu in ther Shu Texts
• The Audience of the Gwo Yw
• The Covertly Meditative Da Sywe
• Military Escalation
• Sophistication of Argument
• The Art of Definition
• The Late 04c Invention of Philosophy
• The Expedient Career of Sywndz
• The Negative Jwang Jou
• The Formation of Chu Literature
• Han Extensions of the Classical Texts
• Rival Shr Interpretations in Han

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