China's Philological Turn by Ori Sela - 9780231183826

Columbia University Press

China's Philological TurnScholars, Textualism, and the Dao in the Eighteenth Century\nAuthor(s): Ori Sela\nFormat: Hardback\nPublisher: Columbia University Press, United States\nImprint: Columbia University Press\nISBN-13: 9780231183826, 978-0231183826\nSynopsis\nIn eighteenth-century China, a remarkable intellectual transformation took place, centered on the ascendance of philology. Its practitioners were preoccupied with the reliability of sources as evidence for restoring ancient texts and meanings and with the centrality of facts and truth to their scholarship and identity. With the power to construct the textual past, philology has the potential to shape both individual and collective identities, and its rise to prominence consequently deeply affected contemporaneous political, social, and cultural agendas.\n\nOri Sela foregrounds the polymath Qian Daxin [tel], one of the most distinguished scholars of the Qing dynasty, to tell this story. Chinas Philological Turn traces scholar.