Teaching the I Ching (Book of Changes)

Geoffrey Redmond and Tze-Ki Hon

AAR Teaching Religious Studies

Provides the most up-to-date scholarship for non-specialists on cutting-edge research on recovery of early meanings and recently excavated manuscripts
Offers an accesible description of Chinese cosmology
Studies the politics of the Changes during the Cultural Revolution for the first time in English
Presents an innovative analysis of references to women

Teaching the I Ching (Book of Changes)

Geoffrey Redmond and Tze-Ki Hon

AAR Teaching Religious Studies

Description

Chinese traditional culture cannot be understood without some familiarity with the I Ching, yet it is one of the most difficult of the world's ancient classics. Assembled from fragments with many obscure allusions, it was the subject of ingenious, but often conflicting, interpretations over nearly three thousand years. Teaching the I Ching (Book of Changes) offers a comprehensive study at a time when interest in Asian philosophy and the culture of China is on the rise. Still widely read in China, it has become a countercultural classic in the West.

Recent scholarship has radically altered our understanding of this foundational work. Geoffrey Redmond and Tze-Ki Hon present an up-to-date survey of recent studies including reconstruction of the early meanings, excavated manuscripts, the New Culture Movement, and the Cultural Revolution. To facilitate introducing the classic to students, the necessary background is provided for university teachers and students, even non-China specialists. The teaching approaches described will foreground the otherness of the classic, yet engage the interests of twenty-first-century students. Rather than dismissing the text's popular association with divination, they explain why this mode of human thought has persisted for millennia. Thus, Redmond and Hon mediate between the two extreme views of the classic: a source of timeless ancient wisdom on the one hand, and a historical curiosity on the other.

Teaching the I Ching (Book of Changes) makes this important classic accessible to a broad readership, thus providing a crucial service for those interested in China, early civilization, and world religion. Now anyone with a serious interest can understand a text that continues to have a decisive influence on Chinese and world culture three thousand years after its original composition.

Teaching the I Ching (Book of Changes)

Geoffrey Redmond and Tze-Ki Hon

AAR Teaching Religious Studies

Preface
Acknowledgements
Chronology of Chinese Dynasties
Structure of the Yijing
List of Illustrations

Introduction: Studying an Ancient Classic
Chapter 1 Divination: Fortune-Telling and Philosophy
Chapter 2 Bronze Age Origins
Chapter 3 Women in the Book of Changes
Chapter 4 Excavated Manuscripts
Chapter 5 Ancient Meanings Reconstructed
Chapter 6 The Ten Wings
Chapter 7 Cosmology
Chapter 8 Moral Cultivation
Chapter 9 The Yijing in Modern China
Chapter 10 The Yijing's Journey to the West
Chapter 11 Reading the Book of Changes
Chapter 12 The Future of the Yijing

Bibliography
Index

Teaching the I Ching (Book of Changes)

Geoffrey Redmond and Tze-Ki Hon

AAR Teaching Religious Studies

Author Information

Geoffrey Redmond's dual background is in textual criticism, which he studied at the University of Virginia under the eminent philologist Fredson Bowers, and biomedical science, which he studied at Columbia and Rockefeller Universities. His research concerns systematic cosmological thought in the ancient and modern world, using the ancient Zhouyi as a primary source His six published books include Science and Asian Spiritual Traditions. He has lectured extensively in Asia, Europe, and North America.

Tze-ki Hon is Professor of History at the State University of New York at Geneseo. He is the author of The Yijing and Chinese Politics: Classical Commentary and Literati Activism in the Northern Song Period, 960-1127. His articles and book reviews have appeared in the American Historical Review, China Review International, Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy, Journal of Asian Studies, Journal of Chinese Philosophy, Journal of Chinese Studies, Modern China, Monumenta Serica, and Philosophy East and West

Teaching the I Ching (Book of Changes)

Geoffrey Redmond and Tze-Ki Hon

AAR Teaching Religious Studies

Reviews and Awards

"This balance between the critical and the nonjudgmental is one of the more distinctive features of this book. The stance continues in the sections "How Does the Yijing Work?" and sections on how the text has been compared with science, mathematics, and computers... It covers the major English translations, describes more fully the various layers of text, and provides very complete instructions on consulting the Yi and interpreting the results." -- Joseph A. Adler, Dao

"Teaching the I-Ching (Book of Changes) is a reliable road-map for students to navigate the intriguing intellectual terrain of the ancient Chinese Classic, detailing the historical background and the text's structure and content. Redmond and Hon's narratives are readable, and their scholarship underpins the accessible translation. This book should serve as an important reference book for undergraduates, graduates, and general readers, who want to explore the multifarious and mysterious world of 'Changes.'"--Dennis K. H. Cheng, Chair Professor of Cultural History, Hong Kong Institute of Education; European Chair of Chinese Studies, Leiden University; Professor of Chinese Literature, National Taiwan University

"A magnificent achievement, offering a well-written and judicious synthesis of existing scholarship on the origins, development, and transnational travels of the I Ching. In addition, Redmond and Hon offer their readers insightful suggestions about how to understand and productively use this fascinating document-not only in the classroom but also beyond."--Richard J. Smith, author of The I Ching: A Biography

"The uniqueness of this book is its combination of scholarly rigor with a willingness to explore the phenomenology of divination practice. It is an excellent history of the I Ching as a book, including the ways it has been interpreted both in China and the West up to the present day. The two chapters (1 and 11) that 'cross the great water' into divination practice do so without 'going overboard' into the trendy realm of popular I Ching enthusiasm."--Joseph A. Adler, author of Reconstructing the Confucian Dao: Zhu Xi's Appropriation of Zhou Dunyi

"These authors provide a judicious, illuminating account of this classic Chinese text. Teaching the I Ching is a valuable reference for scholars and students alike, and a superb sourcebook for teaching the I Ching at the undergraduate level."--Harold C. Washington Saint Paul School of Theology