Curie Virág

New Compilation of the Four-Seven Debate ( Sachil Sinpyeon 四七新編) cut across previously held distinctions between the Four Beginnings and the Seven Feelings and carved out a greater role for emotions as a normative force in moral life. This not only unsettled the traditional normative hierarchy of gong and sa but also provided an alternative conceptual mapping of these terms and their relations based on a more materialistic and embodied psychological account of emotions. This article examines the naturalistic foundations of Seongho's theory of emotions and argues that Seongho offers a distinctive account of how first-personal, bodily experience could be reconciled with objective engagement with the world, taking us beyond the dualities of private versus public, partial versus impartial, and self-regarding versus other-regarding of standard conceptions.

This chapter offers a selection of writings concerning Zhu Xi’s account of the psychological workings of human beings that explains how their nature (_xing_ 性 ), heart-mind (_xin_ 心 ), and the feelings (_qing_ 情 ) are integrated with one another. It also includes material that addresses Zhu’s naturalistic explanation of moral capacity of humans and the proper course and method of self-cultivation. Zhu’s moral psychology presents a “synthesis” of the various cosmological and ethical ideas forwarded by his Northern Song neo-Confucian predecessors. He argued that by conceptualizing and embodying the all-pervading pattern-principle of things in the world one achieved integrity and unity in one’s own person, thereby fully realizing one’s humanity.

This chapter examines what I call affective bimodality in the writings of two prominent eleventh century Chinese literati, Guo Xi (c. 1020-1090) and Su Shi (1037-1101). Although the idea of perspectival “wandering” had long been a feature of Daoism-inspired conceptions of enhanced cognition, in the eleventh century, the possibility of occupying dual, and often multiple, standpoints became a prominent feature of philosophical, literary and aesthetic writings, as well as in artistic practice. Outlining the distinct ways in which these two thinkers conceptualized the possibilities and tensions of affective, evaluative and perceptual engagement and detachment, this chapter investigates why affective bimodality as a feature of our relationship to the world might have been such a preoccupation for these Song Dynasty figures and how their distinct ways of construing this idea might offer alternative possibilities for thinking about the ways in which different affective states can come together in a single subjectivity.

Seven Debate ( Sachil Sinpyeon 四七新編) cut across previously held distinctions between the Four Beginnings and the Seven Feelings and carved out a greater role for emotions as a normative force in moral life. This not only unsettled the traditional normative hierarchy of gong and sa but also provided an alternative conceptual mapping of these terms and their relations based on a more materialistic and embodied psychological account of emotions. This paper examines the naturalistic foundations of Seongho’s theory of emotions and argues that Seongho offers a distinctive account of how first-personal, bodily experience could be reconciled with objective engagement with the world, taking us beyond the dualities of private vs. public, partial vs. impartial, and self-regarding vs. other-regarding of standard conceptions.

This is a study of the diverse, intriguing ways in which thinkers in China, from the sixth to the twelfth centuries, understood and made sense of the emotions. It traces the role of emotions in their ethical visions and seeks to construct an intelligible history of how, in this period of profound change, prominent thinkers conceived of the self and the sources of order, meaning and value in human life. Methodologically, I have attempted to open a space for intellectual history that goes beyond the search for the social, cultural, and political contexts of thought, on the one hand, and the history of "philosophical doctrines" and intellectual lineages, on the other---approaches that have dominated the historical study of past thought. ;My inquiry proceeds through an examination of the shifting philosophical discourse surrounding the concept of qing---the term in Chinese most commonly rendered as "emotion." Rather than tracing the history of meanings of qing per se, I examine the notion in terms of the ethical and conceptual predicaments of individual thinkers. I begin with Liu Xie's ambitious literary treatise, the Wenxin Diaolong and the early Tang collection of Classics commentaries, the Wujing Zhengyi . These early visions serve as the backdrop to my discussion of Tang and Song thinkers: Han Yu , Ouyang Xiu , Shao Yong , Zhang Zai , Su Shi and Zhu Xi . ;Historically, my study shows that the intellectual landscape of the Tang and Song periods was composed of vastly different ethical visions of thinkers who, faced with the reality of an uncertain, fragmented world, put forth a diverse range of proposals to reconcile the sense of division between inner and outer, personal experience and objective meaning. Philosophically, it demonstrates the deep ambivalences and complexities that characterize thinking about emotions, providing further insight into the ways in which emotions are linked to the processes of conferring meaning and value

Both Confucius and Xúnzǐ take for granted that contempt, in certain situations, is an appropriate and justified response for a person of virtuous character. But Xúnzǐ departs from his predecessor in his insistence on drawing clear boundaries around contempt so as to diminish its destructive and destabilizing potential. This article argues that Xúnzǐ's efforts to circumscribe contempt reflect a shift in the vision of the ritual community from one based on affective ties to one based on an impersonal, universalist state. It also traces the implications of this connection for how we might confront the problem of toxic contempt that has pervaded our political landscape today.