On Michael Nylan’s “Learning and Emulation in the Early Empires in China”

Abstract

The essay examines the tension between dependence and authority in the discourse on “learning” (xue) as developed in Michael Nylan’s lecture, “Learning and Emulation in the Early Empires in China.” “Learning” points in two different directions. On the one hand, it suggests subjection to the authority of the learned (dependence). On the other hand, however, learning transforms the self into an authoritative person (authority). Nylan helpfully outlines how certain texts in the early empires argued, somewhat counterintuitively, that subjecting oneself to authority is to have authority. The essay concludes by examining how the discourse of xue relates to ongoing discussions about “exemplarity” in Chinese intellectual and political history and points to possible new directions for research.

Notes

1 Li Ling 李零, Guodian chujian jiaoduji 郭店楚簡校讀記 (Beijing: Zhongguo renmin daxue chubanshe, 2007).

2 Analects 3.15.

3 see Zuozhuan, Lord Xiang 31.

4 Ci Jiwei, Moral China in an Age of Reform (Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 3.

5 Ibid., 101n12.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Trenton Wilson

Trenton Wilson is assistant professor of Chinese intellectual history in the departments of East Asian Studies and History at Princeton University. His current book project focuses on trust, suspicion, and the ethics of knowing in early Chinese intellectual and institutional history.