The Cheng Yu Tung East Asian Library is pleased to announce a video recording for the lecture with Dr. Lianbin Dai (Oxonian), Sinologist and historian of late imperial China (1368-1911) is now available to watch on YouTube and MyMedia. Captions are available in English.
Abstract: Dr. Lianbin Dai discusses how Neo-Confucian learning is an elite academic knowledge system and matrix more than a philosophy. Its production was not merely fashioned by economic and political elements but also routinized in its own way independent of other social practices. Its concepts and practice are rooted in the Confucian Classics, corroborated by historical studies, and oriented to social and political engagement. Zhu Xi (1130-1200) systemized the norms for its construction, application, and evolution, which would have dominated the Neo-Confucian discourses of knowledge culture until its collapse in the mid-nineteenth century. His program saw controversies as ideologized in the fifteenth century, encountered challenges by the Yangming school in the sixteenth century, and eventually was recognized and revived in the late seventeenth century. Given its intellectualism and humanistic orientation, Neo-Confucian learning is hard to be defined with the hypothesis of inward turn.
The event took place virtually on Wednesday, February 1, 2023.
For more information click here to view the event page here.