The Emotions in Early Chinese Philosophy

Curie Virág

Emotions of the Past

First book-length study of conception of emotions in early Chinese philosophical tradition
Challenges existing approaches to the study of Chinese thought
Explores larger implications of thinking about emotions
Points to alternative ways of thinking about emotions, cognition, self, and ethics that are relevant to contemporary discussions of these topics.
Provides an accessible account of early Chinese thought that does not exoticize it or present it as a timeless fountain of wisdom

The Emotions in Early Chinese Philosophy

Curie Virág

Description

In China, the debate over the moral status of emotions began around the fourth century BCE, when early philosophers first began to invoke psychological categories such as the mind (xin), human nature (xing), and emotions (qing) to explain the sources of ethical authority and the foundations of knowledge about the world. Although some thinkers during this period proposed that human emotions and desires were temporary physiological disturbances in the mind caused by the impact of things in the world, this was not the account that would eventually gain currency. The consensus among those thinkers who would come to be recognized as the foundational figures of the Confucian and Daoist philosophical traditions was that the emotions represented the underlying, dispositional constitution of a person, and that they embodied the patterned workings of the cosmos itself.

Curie Virág sets out to explain why the emotions were such a central preoccupation among early thinkers, situating the entire debate within developments in conceptions of the self, the cosmos, and the political order. She shows that the mainstream account of emotions as patterned reality emerged as part of a major conceptual shift towards the recognition of natural reality as intelligible, orderly, and coherent. The mainstream account of emotions helped to summon the very idea of the human being as a universal category and to establish the cognitive and practical agency of human beings. This book, the first intensive study of the subject, traces the genealogy of these early Chinese philosophical conceptions and examines their crucial role in the formation of ethical, political and cultural values in China.

The Emotions in Early Chinese Philosophy

Curie Virág

Emotions of the Past

Table of Contents

Preface
Introduction
1. Emotions and the Integrated Self in the Analects of Confucius
2. Reasons to Care: Redefining the Human Community in Mozi
3. Cosmic Desire and Human Agency in the Daodejing
4. Human Nature and the Pattern of Moral Life in Mencius
5. The Multiple Valences of Emotions in the Zhuangzi
6. The Composite Self and the Fulfillment of Human Nature in Xunzi
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index

The Emotions in Early Chinese Philosophy

Curie Virág

Emotions of the Past

Author Information

Curie Virág is an Assistant Professor in the Department of East Asian Studies at the University of Toronto and Visiting Faculty in the Department of Philosophy and Medieval Studies at the Central European University in Budapest.

The Emotions in Early Chinese Philosophy

Curie Virág

Emotions of the Past

Reviews and Awards

"... this is in many ways an excellent and enlightening book. The level of argument is uniformly high: Virág both engages with previous scholarship, and is not afraid to move beyond it, giving her own (often radically) new interpretations of texts, and in the process rehabilitating at least one philosopher into the 'mainstream'." --Ed Sanders, Bryn Mawr Classical Review

"This is a brilliantly reasoned and insightful book. Virág weaves the classical era's great thinkers and their regard for the emotions into an exciting and exquisitely argued narrative. Not only does the book find intriguing commonalities between disparate ancient thinkers, it also offers a welcome corrective to philosophical studies of the emotions in China that rely on entrenched, Western dichotomies, such as those between reason and affect, or objective reality and subjective experience." --Erica Brindley, Professor of Asian Studies, Pennsylvania State University

"An outstanding analysis of the complex explorations of the emotions in early Chinese philosophy. Through beautiful, close readings of the relevant texts, Curie Virág does a wonderful job of showing how and why, over the course of the early period, emotions came to occupy such a central place in the Chinese philosophical tradition. A tremendously important and exciting work." --Michael Puett, Professor of Chinese History, Harvard University