From Han to Tang : Wang Bi, Guo Xiang, He Yan and others

In the first lecture, we begin in the earlier period of imperial China from the Han to the Tang with the "authorized" commentators on the Annals of Spring and Autumn(Chunqiu): He Xiu (129-182) and Xu Yan (late ^9th and ^10th centuries). Without looking at the main character of this text as the locus classicus of political morality, they grasp the opening word yuan ("the first"), which functions here merely as a chronological milestone, and launch into a penetrating reflection on the phenomenology of time. We then turn to the unrivalled master-exegetes of classical Taoist texts: Wang Bi (226-249) and Guo Xiang (-312), two great thinkers who developed their profound metaphysical arguments exclusively through commentary. In his speculative discussions on the ontology of nothingness, Wang Bi goes far beyond Laozi's musings on non-being(wu), just as Guo Xiang applies himself to his polemical responses against Wang Bi in terms that do not always accord with Zhuangzi's ideas. The first lecture concludes with the two leading voices in the renewal of Confucian thought at the end of the Tang dynasty: Han Yu (768-824) and Li Ao (772-841). Although neither of them were commentators in the strict sense of the word, the landmark essays in which they advocate a return to the ideology of the ancestors are based on a reinterpretation of the canonical texts: the Daxue and the Zhongyong.