Three Way Of Thought In Ancient China By Arthur Waley Doubleday Anchor Paperback

Description: Three Way Of Thought In Ancient China By Arthur WaleyDoubleday Anchor PaperbackCondition: Good. Cover has mild wear around the edges and spine. Pages are clean and in good condition. Binding is solid. In the fourth century B.C. three conflicting points of view in Chinese philosophy received classic expression: the Taoist, the Confucianist, and the "Realist." The Taoist were indifferent to society, morality, law, and order, and opposed to them a mystical self-fulfillment. The Confucianists, following the path of their great master, scurried from court to court, looking still for the philosopher king who would establish an order of goodness, righteousness, and morality. And then there were the "Realist," who believed in neither man nor god but simply that government must be based on "the actual facts of the world as they are," and who, following this principle, worked up a blueprint for a totalitarian society more thorough and more detailed than any the West was to know for two thousand years. The form in which these philosophies were expressed was peculiarly Chinese, legend, anecdote, parable, and maxim; what they had to say, however, was universal, and we find these points of view, or their equivalents, emerging wherever the fixed and unquestioned values of a great cultural tradition are disintegrating, which is why, perhaps, the three points of view strike a twentieth century Westerner as so remarkably modern. Arthur Waley, whose books and translations have done so much to bring literature and though of China and Japan to English readers, has created a charming book by weaving together the words of the Chinese philosophers themselves with background history and explanatory comment.

Price: 4.99 USD

Location: Vienna, Virginia

End Time: 2024-01-16T13:00:01.000Z

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