Heaven and Earth Are Not Humane

Franklin Perkins

Description

Human flourishing and the limits of heaven and earth

That bad things happen to good people was as true in early China as it is today. Franklin Perkins uses this observation as the thread by which to trace the effort by Chinese thinkers of the Warring States Period (c.475-221 BCE), a time of great conflict and division, to seek reconciliation between humankind and the world. Perkins provides rich new readings of classical Chinese texts and reflects on their significance for Western philosophical discourse.

Acknowledgements
Note on Abbreviated Citations
Introduction: Philosophy in a Cross-Cultural Context
1. Formations of the Problem of Evil
2. The Efficacy of Human Action and the Mohist Opposition to Fate
3. Efficacy and Following Nature in the Dàodéjīng
4. Reproaching Heaven and Serving Heaven in the Mèngzĭ
5. Beyond the Human in the Zhuāngĭ
6. Xúnzĭ and the Fragility of the Human
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Sujets

• Philosophie
• Éthique et morale
• PHILOSOPHY
• Philosophie et théologie
• Good & Evil
• Eastern

Informations

• Publié par: Indiana University Press
• Date de parution: 23 mai 2014
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780253011763
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

HEAVEN AND EARTH ARE NOT HUMANE
WORLD PHILOSOPHIES
Bret W. Davis, D. A. Masolo, and Alejandro Vallega, editors
HEAVEN AND EARTH ARE NOT HUMANE
The Problem of Evil in Classical Chinese Philosophy
Franklin Perkins
This book is a publication of
Indiana University Press
Office of Scholarly Publishing
Herman B Wells Library 350
1320 East 10th Street
Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA
iupress.indiana.edu
Telephone orders 800-842-6796
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2014 by Franklin Perkins
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition.
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Perkins, Franklin.
Heaven and earth are not humane : the problem of evil in classical Chinese philosophy / Franklin Perkins.
pages cm. - (World philosophies)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-253-01168-8 (cloth) - ISBN 978-0-253-01172-5 (pbk.) - ISBN (ebook) 978-0-253-01176-3 (ebook) 1. Philosophy, Chinese-To 221 B.C. 2. Good and evil. I. Title.
B126.P54 2014
170.931-dc23
2013043038
1 2 3 4 5 19 18 17 16 15 14
Dedicated to JoAnn Perkins
1947-2004
Heaven and earth are not humane,
They take the myriad things as straw dogs.
Sagely people are not humane,
They take the people as straw dogs.
-D od j ng
Contents
Acknowledgments
Note on Abbreviated Citations
Introduction: Philosophy in a Cross-Cultural Contex
1 Formations of the Problem of Evil
2 The Efficacy of Human Action and the Mohist Opposition to Fate
3 Efficacy and Following Nature in the D od j ng
4 Reproaching Heaven and Serving Heaven in the M ngz
5 Beyond the Human in the Zhu ngz
6 X nz and the Fragility of the Human
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgments
I NEVER FORMALLY STUDIED Chinese philosophy or Sinology, so I have accumulated many, many teachers over the past dozen years. A list of everyone who has given me some crucial bits of guidance, feedback, or assistance would encompass almost everyone working on any related topics. I can only single out a few who have had the most profound effect on the work presented here. On-cho Ng was the first scholar of Chinese thought I had the chance to work with, and he has been helping me ever since he served on my dissertation committee on Leibniz and China. The person most responsible for my move into Chinese philosophy is Bryan W. Van Norden, who took a chance and hired me as a sabbatical replacement and then generously spent time getting me oriented in the field. My occasional disagreements with his readings here should not obscure how deeply he shaped my whole approach to early Chinese philosophy. Hans-Georg Moeller also has been a guide and a friend since I was a complete beginner, and many of my views took shape through discussions with him. More recently, my interpretations of many texts have been deeply influenced by years of discussions with Chris Fraser and Dan Robins, and even more recently by many long talks with Brook Ziporyn. Roger T. Ames and Henry Rosemont Jr. have given me generous support at several crucial points. My teacher on the Sinology side has been Esther Klein, who helped me develop the skills needed for this book and who carefully corrected many of its mistakes. I am deeply grateful to all of you for your guidance and friendship.
A number of people read earlier (even longer!) versions of this manuscript, and gave me crucial feedback and encouragement: Roger T. Ames, David Jones, Colin Klein, Esther Klein, Hans-Georg Moeller, Graham Parkes, Michael W. Pelczar, Michael J. Puett, Aaron Stalnaker, Robin R. Wang, and Brook Ziporyn. Others gave me important feedback on individual chapters, or articles that developed into chapters: Chung-ying Cheng, Kelly James Clark, Chris Fraser, David Farrell Krell, Philip J. Ivanhoe, and Liu Xiaogan. This book would not be what is without their suggestions. I have also benefited from presenting versions of many parts of this book at conferences, particularly years of attending the Midwest Conference on Chinese Thought and the Comparative and Continental Philosophy Circle. I owe a great debt to my colleagues, not only for supporting me in such a radical change in research areas but also for their philosophical insights, many of which appear in this book. I am particularly grateful to Sean D. Kirkland for his assistance with various Greek terms. My students also have allowed me to refine my ideas, and to absorb some of theirs. Finally, I would like to thank Indiana University Press, particularly Nancy Lightfoot and Dee Mortensen for guiding me through the whole process; Dawn Ollila for her careful copyediting; and Bret Davis, the Asia editor for the World Philosophy Series, for encouraging me to submit the manuscript in the first place. I am grateful to Cyndy Brown for creating the index.
One of the most important elements of support throughout the writing of this book has been my friendship with Robin R. Wang, whose magical powers have helped me in almost every possible way-from initially attaining the Fulbright grant that got this started to correcting the Chinese in the final version of the manuscript-but most of all by being a constant source of support and joy. I will always be grateful. On a personal level, I owe the greatest debt to my parents, who encouraged me to pursue whatever I was most interested in, whether that led me to philosophy or to China or both.
This research would not have been possible without generous financial support from a number of sources. Two grants from the Blakemore Foundation allowed me to develop the necessary language abilities. A paid research leave from DePaul University allowed me to lay some of the foundations for this work, and I began the actual writing with a Fulbright research grant that enabled me to spend a year in affiliation with the Philosophy Department at Peking University. An earlier version of the project began through an NEH summer fellowship for the seminar Individual, State, and Law in Ancient China, Greece, and Rome, held at University of California Berkeley. Finally, I could not be where I am now without generous help in financing my college education, particularly with a Dean s Select scholarship from Vanderbilt University and scholarships from the Richardson Foundation and the Citizens Foundation. I will always be grateful for the opportunities those scholarships made possible.
Parts of two previously published articles have been incorporated into various chapters of this book: Wandering beyond Tragedy with Zhuangzi, published in Comparative and Continental Philosophy 3.1 (Spring 2011): 79-98, and, The Moist Criticism of the Confucian Use of Fate, published in Journal of Chinese Philosophy , 35.3 (September 2008): 421-36. I am grateful for permission to include parts of these articles.
Note on Abbreviated Citations
A LL TRANSLATIONS FROM the Chinese are my own. I have used standard Pinyin romanization throughout, and have converted other forms of romanization into Pinyin except in published titles and author names. For citations of classical texts, in general, I have cited the chapter number and the page number in a standard Chinese edition, along with some way of locating the passage in a readily available English translation. Frequently used Chinese texts are cited according to the following abbreviated format:
D od j ng . Cited by chapter number according to the order of the received text. I have followed the M w ngdu text in Li Xi og n 2006, unless otherwise noted.
H nf iz . Cited by chapter number and page in Ch n Q y u 2000.
L nh ng (W ng Ch ng). Cited by chapter number and page in Hu ng 1990.
L ny . Cited by chapter and passage, using the numbering system of Y ng 2002 (which is followed by most recent translations), based on the text in Li B on n 1990.
L sh ch nqi . Cited by book/section and page number in Ch n Q y u 1984. The book and section numbers correspond to those in the English translation by Knoblock and Reigel 2000.
M ngz . . Cited by book (1-7), part (A or B), and passage number, following the numbering of passages in Y ng 2003 (which is followed by most recent translations), based on the text in Ji o 1987.
M z . Cited by chapter number and page in S n Y r ng 2001.
Sh j (S m Qi n). Cited by chapter number and page in S m Qi n 1959.
Sh j ng . Cited by the traditional Mao numbers, following the text in Zh u Zh nf 2002.
X nz . Cited by chapter number and page in W ng Xi nqi n 1988.
Zhu ngz . Cited by chapter number and page in Gu Q ngf n 1978.
HEAVEN AND EARTH ARE NOT HUMANE
Introduction
Philosophy in a Cross-Cultural Context
B AD THINGS HAPPEN to good people. This sad fact was at least as true in early China as it was for Leibniz or Voltaire and still is today. This book takes this simple observation as a thread by which to trace the tensions and reconciliations between human beings and nature or the divine (in Chinese terms, ti n ). While focusing on Chinese thought, it is ultimately an attempt to do philosophy by bringing together ideas from different traditions and cultures, particularly ideas rooted in Warring States China and early modern Europe. It could thus be labeled as a work in comparative philosophy, world philosophy, or intercultural philosophy.
Intercultural approaches to philosophy are by no means new. What we call Western philosophy originated in the mixing of cultures around the Mediterranean. Medieva