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Cover of The Beginning of Empire: Ten Classics of the Han Dynasty
The Beginning of Empire: Ten Classics of the Han Dynasty
Reading the Chinese Classics, Season 3—from the Book of Rites to Discourses on Salt and Iron
Completed · 131 episodes
Buy for ¥198.00
Audio in Chinese
Yang Zhao: Why Spend Ten Years Teaching the Chinese Classics? Leung Man-tao: Begin Understanding Precocious “Imperial China” with These Ten Books Yang Zhao: How Did China's Imperial History Begin? 1.1 If You Lived in Antiquity, How Much Ritual Would You Need to Learn? 1.2 Book of Rites: Another Path to Understanding Confucius 1.3 Different Attitudes toward Ruler, Parent, and Teacher | Tan Gong I 1 1.4 How Should We Approach Funerals? | Tan Gong I 2 1.5 Observe Ritual without Forgetting Peace of Mind | Tan Gong I 3 1.6 Ritual Defines Who We Are | Tan Gong I 4 1.7 The Best Ritual Is Consistent Inside and Out | Tan Gong I 5 1.8 If Emotions Vary So Widely, Why Must Conduct Be Uniform? | Tan Gong I 6 1.9 In the Name of Love, Be All the More Cautious | Tan Gong I 7 1.10 Confucius's Thoughts on Ritual before His Death | Tan Gong I 8 1.11 Does Revenge Have Its Own Ritual? | Tan Gong I 9 Bonus | Yang Zhao: Ten Books That Accompanied Me, Now Passed on to You 1.12 Why Are the Funerary Objects in Every Tomb Different? | Tan Gong I 10 1.13 Did Antiquity Also Have Nine-Year Education? | Record of Learning 1 1.14 A Confucian Philosophy of Education Misunderstood for Millennia | Record of Learning 2 1.15 The Ideal Teacher–Student Relationship | Record of Learning 3 Naïve Café | Yang Zhao × Leung Man-tao: Reading during Quarantine 2.1 What Is the Difference between Confucianism and Buddhism? 2.2 Journey Inward and Know Yourself 2.3 Where Must the Mind Rest to Be at Home? 2.4 Ranking Eight Pursuits in Life 2.5 How Do You Cultivate the Character of a Junzi? 2.6 How Hard Is It to Correct Our Own Biases? 2.7 The Logic behind “Cultivate the Self, Regulate the Family, Govern the State” 2.8 Share the People's Likes and Dislikes to Win Their Hearts 2.9 What Kind of Person Deserves Greater Responsibility? 2.10 Keep Asking: Is This Root or Branch? 3.1 Rereading the Doctrine of the Mean Historically 3.2 Cultivating the Way: The Devil Is in the Details 3.3 The Mean Is Not Mediocre at All 3.4 How Can We Experience and Practice the Mean? 3.5 Why Was Yan Hui Confucius's Favorite Student? 3.6 Can the Doctrine of the Mean Measure All Things? 3.7 Four Things Even Confucius Could Not Achieve? 3.8 Taking Things in Stride vs. Blaming Heaven and Others 3.9 Spiritual Resonance between People—and between People and Spirits 3.10 Is Filial Piety Merely Emotion or Ritual? 3.11 Only When Forgotten Does a Loved One Truly Die 3.12 How Were Political Talents Chosen in an Age of Personal Rule? 3.13 Not Deceiving Oneself and Knowing Right from Wrong 3.14 What Realm Must One Reach to Be Called a “Divine Person”? 3.15 A Good Life without Showing Off 4.1 Why Can't the Rites of Zhou Be Read Closely? 4.2 An Imperial Plan's Obsession with Numbers 4.3 The Dynasty's Heart: How Ruler and Central Institutions Govern 4.4 How Many Palace Offices Served the Ancient Ruler? 4.5 An “Ideal State” Seeking a Perfect System 5.1 Four Ceremonies before an Ancient Wedding 5.2 The Wedding-Night Procession to Fetch the Bride 5.3 The Bride's Important Ritual of Greeting Her Parents-in-Law 5.4 The “Village Drinking Ceremony” Where One Hardly Drinks 5.5 The Real Reason Daoism and Confucianism Oppose Each Other 6.1 Are Prognostication and Divination Actually Different? 6.2 Changes Studies: A Chinese Course in Futurology 6.3 A Confucian Book Even More Daoist than Daoism 6.4 How Do We Understand Heaven, Earth, and All Things in the Changes? 6.5 How Can an Ominous Divination Be Neutralized? 6.6 Why Can “Change” Encompass All Things? 6.7 Learning the Sages' Principles through Simple “Change” 6.8 How Can We Understand Life Philosophy within Hexagrams and Lines? 6.9 The Book of Changes' Crucial Turn: From Divination to Moral Cultivation 6.10 A Philosophy of Life in Which Humans Can Participate 7.1 “Sixty Years after the Han Rose” and the Opening of a New Era 7.2 Why Did Spring and Autumn Studies Flourish under the Han? 7.3 Dong Zhongshu, the Hermeneutic “Homebody” Who Stayed In for Three Years 7.4 A Crucial Turn toward Confucian Chinese Politics 7.5 Spring and Autumn Annals: A “Code” for Reading the Truth of Imperial Power 7.6 Did “Honoring Confucianism Alone” Mean Rejecting Every Other School? 7.7 The Spring and Autumn Style: Highlighting Grave but Nearly Invisible Errors 7.8 How Should Status and Real Power Be Reconciled in Hierarchical Relations? 7.9 What Role Did Spring and Autumn Studies Play as Contemporary Han Political Thought? 7.10 The Contempt and Condemnation Hidden behind “Jin Attacks Xianyu” 7.11 Duke Zhao of Lu Was Refused Entry Four Times—Did He Bring It on Himself? 7.12 A Core Traditional Chinese Value: Respecting Differentiated Treatment 7.13 Spring and Autumn Studies Where Conviction and Reality Coexist 7.14 How Should a Ruler Obey Heaven and Respond to the People? 7.15 Inheritance or Transformation? The Link between the Spring and Autumn Annals and Records of the Grand Historian 8.1 How Do We Read Sima Qian's Purpose and Design in Records of the Grand Historian? 8.2 Where Did Sima Qian's Historical Convictions Come From? 8.3 Compared with Daoism, Were All Other Schools Too Complicated? 8.4 Why Was Writing the Records a Civilizational Responsibility? 8.5 History's Role: Tracing the Roots of Errors That Grow by a Thousand Miles 8.6 Using History to Understand the Present World 8.7 How Can We Distinguish Sima Qian's Direct and Ironic Words? 8.8 A “Last Testament” Hidden in the Preface 8.9 The Great Question in the Biography of Bo Yi: The Historian's Responsibility 8.10 The Historian as History's “Interpreter of Justice” 8.11 Why Did Sima Qian Write Biographies of Knights-Errant? 8.12 Guo Jie: The True Wandering Knight in Sima Qian's Mind 8.13 Is a Society with Many Laws a Good Society? 8.14 Why Could Harsh Officials Win Royal Approval? 8.15 Resisting a Ruler's Whim through Writing 9.1 How Did the Book of Han Inherit and Rewrite the Records of the Grand Historian? 9.2 Book of Han: Founder of the Dynastic-History Tradition 9.3 Ban Gu and Sima Qian's Different Historical Concerns 9.4 Wei Qing's Rise to Fame | Biography of Wei Qing and Huo Qubing 1 9.5 General Wei Qing's “Way” | Biography of Wei Qing and Huo Qubing 2 9.6 Huo Qubing, “Champion” of Warfare | Biography of Wei Qing and Huo Qubing 3 9.7 Those Favored by the Emperor | Biography of Wei Qing and Huo Qubing 4 9.8 Questionable Military Achievements under Emperor Wu | Biography of Wei Qing and Huo Qubing 5 9.9 Huo Guang's Wisdom and Character | Biography of Huo Guang and Jin Midi 1 9.10 Young Emperor Zhao's Insight and Resolve | Biography of Huo Guang and Jin Midi 2 9.11 Huo Guang, the General-in-Chief Who Deposed and Installed Emperors | Biography of Huo Guang and Jin Midi 3 9.12 Who Holds the Greatest Power? | Biography of Huo Guang and Jin Midi 4 9.13 How Emperor Xuan Took the Throne | Biography of Huo Guang and Jin Midi 5 9.14 Emperor Xuan's Power Struggle with the Huo Clan | Biography of Huo Guang and Jin Midi 6 9.15 Causes of the Western Han's Fall | Biography of Huo Guang and Jin Midi 7 10.1 A Neglected National Debate 10.2 Confronting the State's Ills: The Debate on Salt and Iron 10.3 Across Thirty-One Ancient–Modern Comparisons, How Is Wealth Squandered? 10.4 The Imperial Perspective behind a Great Economic Debate 10.5 Which Matters More, Agriculture or Commerce and Industry? 10.6 How Should the State Intervene in the Economy? 10.7 Conservation or Expansion: Which Is the Path to Wealth? 10.8 How Should Shang Yang's Historical Achievements and Faults Be Judged? 10.9 Are People Recorded in History Necessarily Worth Emulating? 10.10 How Should We Understand Qin's Fall? 10.11 Which Matters More, Principles or Results? 10.12 Mutual Criticism: Reality and Ideals Face Off 10.13 Is Money Earned through Ability or Power? 10.14 Courage to Fight—or Courage Not to Fight? 10.15 The End of Emperor Wu's Era Bonus | Why Must We Be Extremely Careful When Discussing Confucianism? Bonus | Why Introduce Such “Foolish” Books as the Rites of Zhou and Book of Etiquette and Ceremonial? Bonus | The Spirit of the Book of Rites: Knowing the Reason Why Bonus | The Pioneering Significance of the Great Learning and Doctrine of the Mean Supplement | Behind Discourses on Salt and Iron: The Final Act of Han Confucian–Legalist Rivalry Preview | The “Immortal Turn” in Chinese Intellectual History