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1 results

  • 1 - Time out of Joint

  • Vincent S. Leung, Lingnan University, Hong Kong
  • Book:
    The Politics of the Past in Early China
    Published online:
    01 July 2019
    Print publication:
    18 July 2019, pp 20-74
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  • Summary

    This chapter describes the transformation in the uses of the past from the late Bronze Age dynasty of the Western Zhou to the early Warring States in the late sixth and the fifth centuries BCE. It begins with the observation, based on bronze inscriptions and transmitted poems and speeches, that the genealogical past dominated the historical imgination among the political elite of the Western Zhou. Then, it turns to a discussion of the early Warring States period, with a detailed analysis of the Confucian Analects and the Mozi. In both texts, we can observe similar departures from the genealogial focus of the Western Zhou, but divergent interpretations of the historical agency of the deliberative capacity of individuals. Both texts also presume a historical rupture between the past and the present, unlike the earlier late Bronze Age materials, and offer different remedies for its overcoming.