It is around 1200 B.C.E. We are in the royal

ancestral temple in the capital city of the Shang

Dynasty. King Wu Ding looks on as diviner Que picks

up the flat, bottom half of a carefully prepared

turtle shell. Que holds a burning stick against one

side of the shell while intoning a "charge" to the

spirits of the king’s ancestors: "We will receive a

millet harvest." The shell cracks under the heat.

Que then applies the burning stick to the opposite

side of the shell and intones a contradictory

"charge": "We will perhaps not receive a millet

harvest." The shell cracks again. Using the intuitive

insight that is a sign of his royal Virtue, Wu Ding

reads the cracks, and pronounces, "Auspicious! We

will receive this harvest." The royal scribes

carefully inscribe onto the shell the facts of the

prognostication, both as evidence of the king’s

spiritual power, and also in case there is a need to

refer later to the results. (After all, such

ceremonies often involve performing ritual sacrifices

to appease the spirits of deceased ancestors, and the

royal house may need to know which spirits have been

angry in the past and why.) The scribes are careful

to arrange the two charges so that they are mirror

images of each other on the shell -- with one set of

columns running from right to left (as Classical

Chinese was later written), and the set on the

opposite side of the shell running from left to right.

The preceding account is an imaginative reconstruction (based on the

work of David Keightley) of some events in the

earliest Chinese dynasty we know of so far.

We can see already -- from the use of contradictory "charges"

and the mirror arrangement of the inscriptions -- the

importance of opposites in Chinese culture. However,

it is also possible to overestimate or misunderstand

the role of opposition in Chinese thought.

Consequently, we must proceed carefully.

Let’s start by getting a clearer understanding of

what the different kinds of opposites are.

Contradictories are pairs like "living" and "not

living." Everything has to be either living or not

living, but nothing can be both (at least not in the

same way and at the same time). Contraries are pairs

like "right" and "wrong." Something cannot be both

right and wrong in the same respect, but it does not

have to be either: something might be morally neutral.

Some contraries, like "hot" and "cold," admit of

degrees: a cup of tea can be very hot, lukewarm, cold,

etc. Complements are much like contraries. But if

two properties are complementary for something, then

that thing’s proper functioning depends on achieving

the right balance between them. Some philosophers

have thought that "masculine" and "feminine" are

complementary.

Can one thing ever have contradictory or contrary

properties? Aristotle greatly influenced many later

Western philosophers when he claimed "Nothing can both

be and not be at the same time in the same respect."

We might call the kind of contradiction Aristotle has

in mind here a formal contradiction. Many Chinese

thinkers seem to agree that formal contradictions do

not make any sense. It would not do, for example, for

King Wu Ding to pronounce that there both will and

will not be a millet harvest next year. Furthermore,

the following famous anecdote, told by the ancient

philosopher Han Feizi, shows that Chinese thinkers

recognized that a formal contradiction could never be

true:

To this day, the phrase for "contradiction" in Chinese

is literally "spear-shield."

But what makes formal contradictions an impossibility

is the specification that we are talking about

contradictories being present in the same thing, at

the same time, and in the same aspect or way. Some

Western philosophers (like Hegel) and many Chinese

philosophers have argued for the importance of

understanding dialectical opposition. In a

dialectical contradiction, contradictories or

contraries are present in the same thing but in

different aspects or in different ways. For example,

it might be a dialectical contradiction that Bill

Clinton both was and was not a good President. He was

not, because he foolishly made himself vulnerable to a

scandal that took time and energy away from serious

political work. But many would say that Clinton also

was a good President, because of his role in promoting

policies that led to economic prosperity. (Clinton

bashers may select an example more to their liking.)

Dialectical opposition is central to one of the most

famous Chinese classics, the Yi Jing ("Classic of

Changes," also spelled I Ching). The Yi Jing began as

a divination text that was easier to use and interpret

than the animal bones used by the Shang kings.

(Indeed, one possible meaning of "yi" is easy.) The

Yi Jing replaces a crack on a bone with a "hexagram":

a series of six lines, each of which may be broken or

unbroken. (In addition, each hexagram is composed of

two "trigrams," groups of three lines.) The following sample

hexagram (which is named bi in Chinese) happens to have all broken lines,

except for the fifth line from the bottom:

(This hexagram is, incidentally, composed of the trigram for earth

on the bottom, and the trigram for water on the top.)

When confronted with a difficult decision, a Chinese

diviner would take a group of stalks of the milfoil

herb and divide them up in a seemingly random way that

resulted in a set of numbers that determined the lines

of a hexagram. This hexagram would represent the

situation the diviner faced. Each line had to be

either broken or unbroken -- seemingly a formal

contradiction. However, the hexagram as a whole

manifests dialectical opposition, because one hexagram

can be both broken in some lines yet unbroken in

others. This allows for representations of quite

complex circumstances. Further complexity follows

from the fact that a line can be either "fixed" or

"moving." A moving line represents the potential to

shift from broken to unbroken, or vice versa.

Consequently, one had to consult not only the hexagram

one initially got, but also the hexagram(s) it might

transform into.

It seems likely that, over the years, diviners began

to record their interpretations of particular

hexagrams so as to make future divination easier.

Consequently, each hexagram has a name, and connected

with it is a "judgement," or interpretation of the

hexagram as a whole. Furthermore, there is a "line

statement" that explains the significance of each

individual line in the hexagram.

Let’s look at how this works in a particular case.

In 530 B.C.E., a certain Nankuai was considering

rebelling against his ruler. He consults the Yi Jing,

and the result is the hexagram below, which is called

kun:

The judgment on this hexagram says (in part),

"originating; penetrating; advantageous; the fortitude

of a mare." The divination Nankuai performs indicates

that the fifth line from the bottom is a moving line,

so he pays special attention to the corresponding line

statement, part of which says, "Profoundly

auspicious!" Taking the divination to be favorable to

his plan, Nankuai proceeds with his rebellion, but

ends up dead. What went wrong? With its moving line,

kun would tend to transform into the hexagram, bi

(which we saw earlier). Part of the judgment on this

hexagram says, "Auspicious. But divine whether one is

originating, unremitting, and has fortitude. Then

there will be no disaster." Had the rebellious

Nankuai examined himself, he might have seen that he

lacked the qualities the Yi Jing told him would be

needed for there to be "no disaster."

Does the Yi Jing actually predict the future? It

seems hard for us today to say that it does, unless we

wish to succumb to superstition. However, the famous

psychoanalyst Carl Jung argued that faith in

scientific causality as the only mode of explanation

has been discredited. He suggested that the Yi Jing

makes use of "synchronicity," a meaningful, acausal

correlation between events that occur at the same

time.

For those who find this explanation too

metaphysically daring, Angus Graham, a brilliant

interpreter of Chinese thought, suggested that the Yi

In other words, Graham suggests that the Yi Jing, by

means of ambiguous but evocative statements, frees the

mind to see old situations in new ways.

Confucius is supposed to have said, "If I were given

a few more years, so that by the age of fifty I could

complete my studies of the Changes, this might enable

me to be free of major faults." However, there is

remarkably little evidence of interest in the Yi Jing

in early Confucian texts. What we do find throughout

Confucianism is a concern with achieving an ethical

mean between contraries. Thus, Confucius said,

"Acquiring virtue through use of zhong, ‘the mean’ --

is this not best? And yet for some time now such

virtue has been quite hard to find among the people."

"The mean" does not refer to some sort of bland

equanimity. Rather, following the mean involves

finding the action and feeling in each specific

situation that neither falls short nor is excessive.

For example, if my pet cat dies, I should be somewhat

sad. However, to be overwrought in such a situation

would be inappropriate. The mean emotion in a

different situation may be very strong, though. Thus,

Confucius tells us that, when mourning the death of a

relative, "it is better to be overwhelmed with grief

than overly composed." Virtues are also means between

vices, which are extreme states. Thus, Confucius

warns us against cowardice by saying, "To see what is

right but not do it is to lack courage." However, he

also warns a disciple against foolhardy rashness by

saying, "A gentleman who possessed courage but lacked

a sense of rightness would create great disorder,

while a petty person who possessed courage but lacked

a sense of rightness would become a thief or a

robber."

We do not find in early Confucianism, or even in the

early portions of the Yi Jing, a worked out cosmology

of opposition. It is in the Dao de jing (Tao Te Ching) attributed

to the semi-mythical Laozi (Lao Tzu), that we find one of the

first developments of such a cosmology:

What does this mean? Consider the following diagram:

Suppose this circle represents the universe prior to

any human distinctions. Here there is neither good

nor bad, beautiful nor ugly, easy nor difficult.

Suppose I identify something as good, though:

Notice that, by recognizing certain things as good, I

must recognize other things as bad (or, at least,

not-good). Similarly, having generates lacking

because as soon as I categorize one person as having

some good (wealth, beauty, status), I automatically

create the category of lacking by contrast, and

thereby condemn someone else to a deprived status.

What is easy gives form to what is difficult, because

my perception of some task as easy is possible only if

I contrast it with some task that I perceive as

difficult. Making these oppositional distinctions

leads to suffering and conflict. For example, I am

unhappy because I label you as "beautiful" and myself

as "ugly." One strategy that the Dao de jing offers us

for responding to this fact is to recognize the value

in the member of an opposition that is conventionally

seen as being less valuable:

The Dao de jing also suggests that opposites are

unstable. A state characterized by one opposite tends

to transform into a state characterized by the other:

This idea came to be represented by the "Diagram of

Great Unity." We see it here (surrounded by four of

the eight trigrams) on the South Korean flag:

The "Great Unity" has become a symbol so common around

the world that it has almost lost its meaning for many

who use it, but its significance is profound. Imagine

a line sweeping from the center of the circle to the

periphery (like the second hand on a clock). The line

moves through regions dominated by one of the two

shades, but gradually the contrary shade grows until

it overwhelms the other, only to be gradually replaced

by the first shade again.

Because opposites tend to transform into one another

like this, the best strategy is often paradoxical:

We see this strategy employed in some of the East

Asian martial arts, such as judo, which uses an

opponent’s weight and force against him. We also

encountered it in the Vietnam War: the guerrillas

never won a battle, yet won the war, by making the

size and strength of the U.S. military into a

liability.

Ultimately, though, the sage attempts to completely

transcend the opposites that categorize "common

sense":

The Dao de jing is one of the most famous texts in

the world. However, cognoscenti of Chinese thought

admire the writings of Zhuangzi (Chuang Tzu, 4th century B.C.E.)

at least as much. Zhuangzi illustrates the dependence

of opposites through a homonym. In Classical Chinese,

the word shi is both the relative pronoun "this"

(as in "this and that") and is also the verb "to

regard as right." Zhuangzi notes that, when people

debate,

We can illustrate Zhuangzi’s point with an example.

Suppose I were giving a lecture and referred to "this

lectern" in front of me. You, sitting in the

audience, refer to it as "that lectern." If you and I

got into a heated debate over whether it was really

"this lectern" or "that lectern," everyone would

realize that our argument was a pointless verbal

disagreement. From my perspective, it is "this

lectern"; from your perspective, it is "that lectern."

And that is that. (Pardon the expression.)

Similarly, Zhuangzi argues, debates on ethical or

philosophical topics are pointless disagreements over

whether to label this right and that wrong, or this

wrong and that right. Every scheme of labeling is

true relative to its own perspective and false

relative to an alternative one. This makes Zhuangzi

sound like a Western relativist. And some

interpreters have thought this was his whole message.

However, Western relativists often hold that the

recognition of relativity is of only theoretical

interest, since we must eventually go back to using a

conceptual scheme anyway, and -- as Harvard

philosopher Hilary Putnam charmingly put it -- "We

should use somebody else’s conceptual scheme?!"

In contrast, Zhuangzi and the Dao de jing seem to

hold out hope of some mystical way of living beyond

all conceptual schemes and the distinctions of

language. After explaining the mutual birth of "this"

and "that," "right" and "wrong," Zhuangzi concludes,

It may come as a disappointment to many Westerners to

learn that Zhuangzi and the Dao de jing seldom employ

two of the most famous Chinese cosmological terms of

opposition, yin and yang. In their earliest use, yin

and yang refer to the shady and sunny sides of a hill.

Next, they became technical terms in Chinese

medicine. Typical of this use is when Zhuangzi says

of a man wasting away from illness that "his yin and

yang qi were fouled." (I’ll explain what qi is a

little later.) Eventually, though, these terms were

used to describe two complementary aspects of any

situation. Day, above, old, masculine, speech,

Heaven, etc. are yang; night, below, young, feminine,

silence, Earth, etc. are yin. (In addition, the

broken and unbroken lines of the Yi Jing were

eventually associated with yin and yang,

respectively.)

The first philosopher to work out a developed

cosmology of yin and yang was apparently Zou Yan (Tsou Yen), who

lived around 300 B.C.E. But even more important in

Zou Yan’s thought were the wu xing, or "five phases":

wood, metal, fire, water, and earth. These bear a

superficial similarity to Aristotle’s "four elements":

earth, water, fire, and air. However, the similarity

is largely specious. Aristotle, following a long

tradition in Greek philosophy, was concerned with the

question of what the fundamental constituents of

material objects were. The four elements were

Aristotle’s answer to this question. (It is probably

no accident that Western scientists were led to pursue

this question over the centuries, leading to the

atomic theory of our own era. If Einstein was the

father of the atomic bomb, Aristotle was its

great-great-grandfather.) However, the question of

what the constituents of material objects are did not

grip early Chinese philosophers to the same extent.

(We might say that the early Greek philosophers were

concerned with what something is, while the early

Chinese philosophers were concerned with how things

are related to each other.) So Zou Yan conceived of

the wu xing not as elements, but as phases that showed

the correlations between an immense range of

phenomena, as in the following samples:

Notice that in cases where a correlation with four

items is needed (as with the four compass directions

or the four seasons), earth serves as an uncorrelated

"intermediate" between the other phases.

These correlations are not purely theoretical, but

indicate resonances among phenomena. For example,

Chinese philosophers noted that if a string

corresponding to a certain note is plucked on one

instrument, the corresponding string on a nearby

instrument will begin to vibrate. In addition, a

mirror in the sun (especially if it is concave) can

stimulate the yang of a nearby piece of wood and start

a fire, while a mirror put out at night can respond to

the yin of the moon by drawing water to its surface

(i.e., what we call condensation).

Two aspects of Zou Yan’s theory made it especially

interesting to rulers in his own time. First, the

phases follow each other in sequence. There were

various sequences, depending on the relevant

correlation being examined, but Zou Yan was

particularly interested in the "overcoming sequence":

earth is overcome by wood (because trees grow out of

it), wood is overcome by metal (because axes cut down

trees), metal is overcome by fire (which melts it),

fire is overcome by water (which extinguishes it), and

water is overcome by earth (which absorbs it), thereby

starting the cycle again. Second, royal dynasties

were associated with particular phases, and there was

a widespread sense in Zou Yan’s era that the current

Zhou Dynasty was on its last legs. (It would, in

fact, last less than a century after Zou Yan’s time.)

Now, the Zhou Dynasty was correlated with the fire

phase and the color red (among other things).

Consequently, the wise would-be king would associate

himself with the water phase, and do things (such as

dressing himself and his court in black) that were

associated with the water phase. (Qin Shihuang Di,

who became ruler of the next dynasty, did exactly

that.)

Unfortunately, we know little about what Zou Yan’s

views on yin and yang were. However, some time around

200 B.C.E., appendices were written to the Yi Jing

that attempted to present it as a coherent yin-yang

cosmology. According to this cosmology, everything

has its source in an ultimate unity: "Hence, in the

Changes there is the Great Ultimate. This creates the

two Modes" of yin and yang (symbolized by the broken

"- -" and unbroken "---" lines), and "the two Modes

create the four Images" (i.e., the four possible

combinations of two lines, each of which can be either

broken or unbroken). "The yin and yang in alternation

are the Way" of the universe. "That which keeps it

going is goodness. That which brings it to completion

is a thing’s nature. The benevolent see it and call

it benevolent. The wise see it and call it wise."

These brief lines suggest that everything in the

universe has a common source, and exists through the

interplay of complementary opposites. Furthermore,

the pattern of alternating opposition is not (as the

Western science of the Enlightenment would have it)

morally neutral, but has a proper "Way" of moral

development that the virtuous can see and help

propagate. This differs from the view of opposition

suggested by the Dao de jing, in that the goal of the

sage is not to transcend the world of opposition, but

rather to respond appropriately to opposition.

About the same time that the Yi Jing appendices were

being composed, qi (ch'i) came to prominence as a

cosmological concept. This term has been variously

translated: "vital energies," "ether," "material

force," "psychophysical stuff," and others. But there

is no term in English that precisely corresponds to

it. It seems that qi was originally conceived of as

mist and human breath. Since our rate of breathing is

related to our emotions, qi came to refer to a fluid,

found in both the atmosphere and in the body, that is

responsible for one’s emotional state. For example,

the Confucian Mengzi spoke of the restorative effect

on a person of breathing the morning qi. Eventually,

though, qi came to mean a sort of spontaneously

moving, tenuous "stuff," which could condense to form

concrete material objects. In the 11th century C.E.,

the philosopher Zhang Zai (Chang Tsai) explicated the Yi Jing using

just such a conception of qi:

So everything in the universe condenses from an

original, invisible, tenuous qi, and the qi of each

thing eventually disperses and returns again to its

tenuous state. (Creation is, thus, conceived of as an

ongoing process, rather than something that happened

once, "in the beginning.") Zhang held that these

processes occur in accordance with the oppositional

principles explained in the appendices to the Yi Jing.

He used these principles to help explain the

structure of the cosmos:

Zhang’s conception of material objects as condensing

out of qi is paradigmatic of later Chinese thought.

However, the classic synthesis of the yin-yang and

five phases theories was given, not by Zhang Zai, but

by his contemporary Zhou Dunyi (Chou Dun-yi). Zhou based his theory

on the "Diagram of the Great Ultimate," shown below:

Explaining this diagram, Zhou says,

The language here is strange to us, but we must not

dismiss the text as gibberish, nor should we give in

to the equally dangerous temptation to revel in the

text’s obscurity instead of straining to understand

it.

Here, as in the Yi Jing, the Great Ultimate is the

source of everything in the universe. Zhou tells us

that it is also the ultimate of qualitylessness

(literally, the ultimate of "lacking"). Like Zhang

Zai’s Great Vacuity, this is not pure nothingness, but

is rather the original state of qi in its

undifferentiated unity. (This is represented in the

diagram by the empty circle at the top.)

Spontaneous movement in this great unity is yang.

However, every state tends to transform into its

opposite. (As the Dao de jing put it, "Turning back

is how the Way moves.") Consequently, the movement

will eventually reach an ultimate point, after which

it will become still. This stillness is yin.

Following the same pattern of return, the stillness

will ultimately begin to move again, so that movement

and stillness become the basis for one another. (This

is represented in the diagram by the second circle,

with concentric semicircles of alternating black and

white.)

Zhou says that, after the two Modes of yin and yang

are established, the five phases are created. We know

from the Yi Jing that the two Modes combine to produce

the four Images, so Zhou probably thought of the

phases as being created according to the following

standard correlation:

Since Zhou was explaining the origin of the universe,

he most likely assumed that the phases were linked in

the "production sequence" (rather than the "overcoming

sequence" used by Zou Yan). Note that the lines on

the diagram mirror the sequence of the phases: earth

produces metal (since metal is mined from the earth),

metal produces water (because it liquifies when

heated), water produces wood (since it stimulates it

to grow), wood produces fire (since it burns), and

fire produces earth again (in the form of ash).

Zhou explains the bottom two circles in the diagram

by appealing to the qian and kun hexagrams of the Yi

Jing. Qian consists of only unbroken lines;

consequently, it is the ultimate of yang and of

masculinity (among other things). Kun (which we

encountered above) is composed only of broken lines;

consequently, it is the ultimate of yin and of

femininity.

Thus femininity and masculinity, working as

complementary contraries, produce the living things of

the world. And humans are the most exalted of living

things, because they are endowed with the greatest

understanding. But with the honor of being human

comes a responsibility to live up to our potential,

and to live in harmony with one another and with the

natural world around us. As Zhou and his fellow

Confucians knew, most of us do fail to do so -- and

that is a tragedy.

Zhou Dunyi gave traditional Chinese thought a

brilliant synthesis of cosmology and ethics, based on

a view of complementary opposition, and drawn from

sources as diverse as the Yi Jing, Zou Yan’s five

phases theory, the Dao de jing, and Confucian ethics.

It is no wonder that his views became so influential.

But was their influence always a good one? Joseph

Needham was a great scientist-historian who applauded

the many achievements of Chinese science: the

compass, gunpowder, and movable type were all in use

in China long before they were in the West. However,

Needham dismissed correlative cosmologies like that of

Zhou Dunyi as "psuedo-science." Part of the problem

is that the five phases theory is so flexible that it

can accommodate anything. This might seem to be a

strength. However, science often advances when a

theory makes predictions that are shown to be false

and we are forced to develop a new theory to

accommodate the recalcitrant evidence. (The problems

that Aristotelian physics faced in explaining

projectile motion led to the theories of Galileo and

Newton.) A cosmology like that of Zhou Dunyi that can

encompass nearly any outcome does not similarly force

innovation.

Zhou Dunyi’s cosmology could and did lead to

ennobling views of ethics, though. Zhang Zai wrote

the famous "Western Inscription," an ethical manifesto

based on a cosmological view similar to Zhou Dunyi’s:

We would do well to try to live up to Zhang Zai’s

ethical vision.

As we have seen, the Chinese philosophical tradition

shows constant and complicated development (in

contrast with the stereotype of Chinese culture as

monolithic and static). However, this gradual

development was interrupted by a violent rupture in

the 19th century, when China was brutally and

decisively defeated by Great Britain in the Opium War.

Confidence in indigenous Chinese philosophy

deteriorated and the last Chinese dynasty broke down

as China was, in the words of one diplomat, "carved up

like a melon" by foreign powers. Eventually, Mao

Zedong (Mao Tse-tung) led the Chinese communists to

victory, and re-established China as a strong,

independent power. Traditional Chinese thought was

condemned as a remnant of "feudalism." However, it is

impossible to make a complete break with the past.

Liu Shaoqi, a brilliant communist philosopher, applied

Confucian ethical self-cultivation philosophy to the

problem of producing good Communist Party members. In

addition, the official philosophy of "Mao-Zedong-thought" contains

surprisingly many elements of traditional views on opposition.

For example, in his essay, "On Contradiction," Mao

makes a number of familiar claims: everything in the

universe is characterized by a tension between

opposites; these opposites are mutually dependent;

they co-exist in one entity; they transform into one

another. But these traditional-sounding claims are

used as the basis for Marxist political analyses. For

example, traditional Chinese society is characterized

by the opposition between the landowner class and the

peasant class; neither class would exist without the

other; together they constitute traditional society;

but after the land reforms the peasant class becomes

the landowners, and the landowners become

dispossessed.

Ironically, the greatest contradiction under Mao’s

rule was that between his lofty rhetoric and his harsh

exercise of power. He preached, "Let a hundred

flowers bloom; let a hundred schools of thought

contend," yet he oppressed those who dared disagree

with him. "On Contradiction" warns against dogmatism,

but Mao’s inflexible adherence to unrealistic

agricultural and industrial policies led to economic

disaster and widespread starvation. It is significant

that Liu Shaoqi, who preached ethical cultivation, was

publicly humiliated and forced to recant during the

Cultural Revolution.

More than twenty years after Mao’s unlamented death,

China is still a land of contradiction. This was

brought home to me on a recent visit to China. In

this officially Marxist country, I walked into a mall

filled with upscale stores. I felt strangely at home

amid the bustling crowd of shoppers wearing

Western-style clothing. But a display in a toy store

caught me off-guard. It was a detailed model, made

out of Lego® blocks, of a May Day military parade in

front of the Gate of Heavenly Peace.

China today is a country in which yuppies with cell

phones walk beside horse-drawn carts led by poor

farmers from the countryside; a nation in which

cabdrivers freely express their opinions on any topic

to foreign visitors, while all publications are

censored. What philosophy will guide China through

these contradictions and into the 21st century? I

asked several leading Chinese intellectuals this

question. One told me that traditional Chinese

thought was as irrelevant as Marxism to China today,

since neither had any hold on the minds of most

people. But another told me of the recent founding of

a university dedicated to the study and propagation of

Confucianism.

It seems that the contradictions will never cease.

___________________________________________

For Further Reading

• Angus C. Graham, Disputers of the Tao (La Salle, IL: Open Court Press, 1989), 502 pp. Weak on Confucianism, but otherwise a challenging philosophical interpretation of early Chinese philosophy.
• Donald Harper, "Warring States Natural Philosophy and Occult Thought." Pp. 813-884 in Michael Loewe and Edward Shaughnessy, eds., The Cambridge History of Ancient China (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999). An excellent overview covering part of the ancient period; the general reader may be intimidated by Harper’s scholarship, though.
• Philip J. Ivanhoe, Confucian Moral Self Cultivation, reprint (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 2000), 125 pp. A readable and reliable introduction to several of the major Confucian philosophers over 2,000 years.
• Philip J. Ivanhoe and Bryan W. Van Norden, eds., Readings in Classical Chinese Philosophy (New York: Seven Bridges Press, 2001). All translations used in this essay were either done by the contributors to this anthology, or were done by the author.
• David N. Keightley, "Shang Divination and Metaphysics," Philosophy East and West 38:4 (October 1988), pp. 367-397. Interesting speculation about the roots of Chinese oppositional thinking; differs in some important respects from this essay.
• James Legge, trans., I Ching, reprint (New York: Dover Publications, 1963), 448 pp. A classic translation.
• Richard John Lynn, The Classic of Changes (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), 596 pp. A translation based on, and including, the classic commentary of Wang Bi.
• Isabelle Robinette, "The Place and Meaning of the Notion of Taiji in Taoist Sources Prior to the Ming Dynasty," Journal of the History of Religions 29:4 (1990), pp. 372-411.
• Edward L. Shaughnessy, trans., I Ching (New York: Ballantine Books, 1997), 348 pp. A new translation based on alternative, recently discovered versions of the text.
• Kidder Smith, Jr., Peter K. Bol, Joseph A. Adler, and Don J. Wyatt, Sung Dynasty Uses of the I Ching (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), 275 pp. An overview of some of the major interpretations of this text.
• Benjamin I. Schwartz, The World of Thought in Ancient China (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 1985), 490 pp. A broadly humanistic interpretation of early Chinese philosophy.
• Richard Wilhelm, trans., The I Ching, or Book of Changes, trans. from German by Cary F. Baynes, 3rd. ed. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967), 802 pp. A classic translation with extensive interpretive comments and a forward by Carl Jung.