|
Rel. 115: Religion and philosophy in pre-imperial China (Fall 2020) Are we “frogs in the bottom
of a well (井底之蛙)”? |
K.E. Brashier, ETC 203 Online office
hours: W 9-10 a.m., 12.10-1 p.m.; F 9-10 a.m. or by
appointment (with link atop
our Moodle page). |
More than a billion people in the world
today claim intellectual inheritance from ancient Greece. More than two billion
are the heirs of ancient Chinese traditions of thought.
– Richard E.
Nisbett (2003)
The other half of
the story…. Already
steeped in Hum 110 or tackling it just now, you might consider yourself
somewhat familiar with civilization’s building blocks, but did you realize
Reed’s worthy freshmen course is really just the
“minority report”? Furthermore, seventy percent of the global population will
be Asian by 2050 (with North American and European populations falling to a
mere eleven percent), and as the growing Chinese economy evolves to a level
permitting the leisure of self-reflection and cultural renaissance, the ancient
Chinese traditions of thought are not just a component of their past but also of our
future as a global community. This course may endeavor to analyze the idea
systems of religion and philosophy relative to the imperial unification of 221
B.C.E., but in a very real way, it’s also a course about the planet’s 21st
century as those idea systems now encounter and potentially eclipse their
Greco-Roman counterparts. Such statistics should be reason enough for taking
this course.
Yet there are better reasons. As products of
the Western tradition, most of you may have studied it without knowing you
share with the authors of that tradition certain assumptions on the basic
nature of self, time, space, knowledge and other conceptual fundamentals. That
is, you are habituated to seeing the world a certain way – their way – and
these habituations are called deutero-truths. Until you analyze a complex
tradition of which you are not a product, you can’t recognize the
deutero-truths within your own tradition. (In religious studies, we daily quote
Max Müller: “He who know one, knows none.”) Not only do you lack the grounds
for comparison and contrast, you can’t even realize you possess the conceptions
you have and thus can’t ask the right questions. Such an opportunity to better
understand the Western traditional
idea system by exploring the contrasting Chinese idea system should also be
reason enough for taking this course.
Yet there are still better reasons because the above
two justifications say nothing about the content
of religion and philosophy in pre-imperial China. In this course, you will
tackle the material culture, the canon, the philosophies and the cosmology of
an elaborate idea system. Material culture provides the earliest forms of
Chinese texts, namely the oracle bones and ritual bronzes of the Shang 商 and Zhou 周 dynasties, texts
that are religious in nature. As for the canon, every educated person in China
up until 1911 would have memorized at least one of the so-called Confucian
classics, one of the most popular being the Book
of songs that we will study in September. The golden age of Chinese
philosophy falls within our time period as well, and we will read the most
important texts of seven such thinkers as well as the entire text of the
greatest (and funniest) Daoist philosopher, Zhuangzi 莊子. Finally, we will
devote the last portion of this course to a compendium of all knowledge
compiled a couple generations after unification by the Han court around 139
B.C.E., a compendium focused on understanding this new, united empire via
cosmic unity. The cosmology of The Huainanzi 淮南子 was itself
intended as a comprehensive picture of the whole universe – heaven, earth and,
of course, humanity – thus giving us an appropriate conclusion to this
exploration of Chinese pre-imperial religious and philosophical idea systems
that ends in unification and the apex of imperial power. Such is how we begin
the other half of the story.
I. Objectives and outcomes
(I support crystallizing our goals and objectives, but I hope we don’t think of them as purchased commodities in the form of “The teacher sells X to the recipient student.” That downplays the student’s roll into being a consumer who eats the meal and pays the bill. I think education – and Reed education in particular – is about partners in search of knowledge, one guiding the hardworking other but at the same time benefiting from that hardworking other in a shared goal of learning. You teach me your ideas; you help me articulate my own. I don’t want you just in the dining room; I want you in the kitchen.)
Course objectives
A. You
will become familiar with the religious and philosophical idea
systems of early China up through its imperial unification (221 BCE) and apex
of court power (early first century BCE). That is, this course is about
ideas and the circumstances that shape them. For example, the Confucian
discourse assumed the existence of a stable universal pattern, and that meant
templates from the past could overlay circumstances of the present. Forefathers
were exemplars; ancestors were honored. Divination and portents were
legitimized because microcosm and macrocosm operated under the same rules.
Conversely, the Daoist discourse didn’t assume a universal pattern and instead
emphasized how each self is uniquely circumstanced without access to any
universals. They emphasized change – different sources arguing for and against predictable
change – and dismissed divination. Some scholars even justified a hands-off
government (i.e. fewer templates from above) as each thing should simply
develop within its own circumstances. While it would be wrong to think of these
two idea systems as juggernauts swinging at each other, each provided the
vocabulary for working out their justifications of actual practice. In this
course, you will become conversant in these kinds of arguments and their
reifications in history and material culture.
B. As
noted in the introduction, you will learn to question your own
habits of mind by encountering another culture’s very different
habits of mind. Neither the modern West nor early China spells out its
deutero-truths; they only dualistically crystallize through comparison and
contrast.
C. You
will hone certain tools of analysis,
from close reading to clear writing, from the formation of original ideas to
the structuring of arguments. This objective is not intended generically
because the medium of learning resonates with the content of learning. For example,
your early Chinese Confucian counterpart would have focused on memorizing and
reciting texts, and that fits the assumption of a universal pattern and hence a
need for preserving the templates of the past as accurately as possible. Today
we instead deconstruct and encourage lateral thinking by reconstructing the
bits, leading to innovative thinking. Your early Confucian counterparts
explicitly denounced innovative thinking in their quest for excavating the
stable (and stabilizing) pattern.
Learning outcomes
B.
Students will then be able to devise new questions
and develop original insights regarding those primary-text arguments.
C.
Finally, students will demonstrate the ability to persuasively
articulate the complex ideas of early Chinese religion and philosophy through
speaking and writing.
II. But how do we achieve those objectives and
outcomes … online?
On 6 June 2020, NPR’s Peter Sagal on the news quiz “Wait, wait … don’t tell me” described how education will look this semester because of the pandemic pause:
So school administrators are already thinking about rules for the fall. The LA school district has said that kids won't be eating lunch together in the cafeteria but alone in their seats in the classroom. Congratulations, nerds. You're not the only ones now eating with the teacher…. Every student at recess will be given their own ball and – think of the great games…. you can play when everyone has a ball. Like, everyone stares sadly at their ball…. Can you imagine the humiliation for the kids like me who are going to be picked last for holding their own ball?[1]
Even if you’re living on campus, it may feel like we’ll all be holding our own ball this semester, and I myself am not very coordinated when it comes to any sports, even just holding things. When it comes to Zoom’s digital medium, my PhD thesis was on Chinese tombstone epigraphy from two thousand years ago, about as far as you can get from Wi-Fi and ethernet. So I’m not an internet-first person (much to the chagrin of my husband who’s an Intel software engineer); I’ve long argued against screen-based learning because less is retained; and I idealize Reed’s conference system of education through direct contact because I like creating conditions in which students productively think on the spot. But … I’m simply not as young as I once was – I’m retiring at the end of the year – and Reed needs to thin out its interactive campus space to reduce risk. So … here’s your bouncing ball.
The student survey many of you filled out this past summer gave me lots of useful insights. You generally like synchronous learning on a regular schedule. You want smaller groups and shorter sessions for Zoom discussions. You don’t want group projects. If there are to be professorial video presentations, you like them recorded but not necessarily in long (i.e. boring) segments nor as voice-over PowerPoint presentations without seeing the teacher. You want departments to be relatively consistent in their online structure. You like handouts and outlines to go with the audio recordings. You want flexibility should the need arise.
I’ll try to do all of that, and in the process, maybe we can even generate a few pluses among the minuses. For example, in normal years I tend to talk too much and to micromanage conferences. But this retreat into the virtual world will encourage me to consign my longer and shorter presentations to streaming videos and audio podcasts, which I’m dubbing “coVideos” and “covAudios” respectively. (The coVideos and covAudios won’t be on the syllabus because I’m still in the process of making them all, but they’ll be on our Moodle page which you need to check in your preparations for every conference.) So there should be a net gain in your personal conference interaction because we’ll meet three times weekly in a regular schedule and leave the discussion largely in your hands. That’s not to say I won’t partake, but I’ll try to be more of a discussion starter and guide. So when it comes to what the survey recommends, I’ll try to do all that.[2]
“I’ll try to do all of that” … within reason. One thing I’m loathe to do is lower my standards, even if I’m willing to expand them a bit. That is, if you work hard, keep up with the readings and develop a sincere appreciation for learning this material – and you’ll quickly see how much I love this material – then you’ll get the full experience out of this material as you would in any normal year. Or at least I’ll try to make it so. I might “expand” my standards a bit by subjectively lowering the fail threshold a little if I see you legitimately struggling with the current situation, paying the very real costs of pandemic pressures. But before I lower that threshold, we’ll resort to making accommodations. For example, if it’s simply impossible to fully engage online for various reasons, we’ll find other ways for you to engage, such as through more writing assignments or even exams to ensure you’re up-to-speed and thinking about the material.[3] That is, I’ll be especially accommodating this year to get you to the finish line, but I still want everyone to cross the same finish line.
So …
some things I’ve been working on in this transition to online teaching:
·
As noted, there will sometimes be either coVideos or covAudios – some long, some short – added to the Moodle
listings for any particular day, the latter usually
accompanied by a handout. I’m moving many of my in-conference talks to
recordings, thereby making them accessible for people who can’t attend because
of pandemic-related matters. Please listen/view them before the relevant conference.
·
My hope is to start each conference with a five- to
seven-minute PowerPoint statement so when you arrive at the meeting, you’ll
first be greeted by a “slide” with the topic at hand (if I can figure out how
to do that), and that statement will end with a brief “chat” question to answer
relevant to the readings to get the conversation going. (In truth, your
answering the chat question gives me the chance to leave share-screen and enter
the communal view in the handover – very clunky in Zoom.) And you can take the
conversation from there.
·
I’ve been compiling a set of online discussion
protocols that I’d like you to review – they’re on our Moodle page – and I’d
appreciate your own input here.
·
And I’ve also scheduled our
own “fall break” of two sessions in the middle of the syllabus because I
realize that constant focus without some kind of pause will make zombies of all
of us.
This
semester, I’m just as much of a student as you are. I’ll try my best, and I’ll
need your help.
III. Resources
This course is rather heavy on
reading – I do not treat introductory courses any easier than upper-division
courses – and most of the readings are primary sources in translation.
Required books in
the bookstore
·
Dawson,
Raymond. The First Emperor: Selections
from the Historical records. Oxford: Oxford World’s Classics, 2009.
·
Ivanhoe,
Philip J. and Bryan W. van Norden. Readings
in classical Chinese philosophy. 2nd
ed. New York: Seven Bridges Press, 2005.
·
Major, Queen, Meyer and Roth, The Huainanzi.
New York: Columbia University Press, 2010. (Big
and a bit pricey, but we’ll spend three weeks and your last paper on
it.)
·
Waley, Arthur. The book of songs: The ancient Chinese classic of poetry. New York:
Grove Press, 1996. (Avoid older editions.)
·
Ziporyn, Brook. Zhuangzi: The essential writings.
Indianapolis: Hackett, 2009.
There
is also a small number of readings available on our Moodle page. (Always
check the Moodle page before doing a reading because, in addition to any
possible coVideos or covAudios
I’ve made to help you think about the material, I regularly create “reading
maps” to foster active [rather than passive] reading. Reading maps are my introductions to the readings, any
necessary background information and suggested themes you might consider
while reading – note the emphasis on “suggested” because I want you to take the
conference discussions where you want (within reason, of course) and I look
forward to you teaching me. But again: always consult the
reading map before doing the reading.)
Confucius
meets Covid-19
IV.
Requirements
Subject to modification as we adapt to our new circumstances, the course
requirements are currently envisioned as three P’s:
A.
Participation. Please
note that active participation every day is intrinsic to this course,
especially as this is a smaller course. (I might section it once we see how
many are taking it.) Please be prepared for each conference, preparation consisting of both reading and
thinking about the materials. Your full preparation really helps me out
a lot and makes conference much more pleasant all around, especially if I’m
going to invest so much preparation in making all those recordings outside of
conference. As we get a feel for our group dynamics, I might schematize that
participation in various ways:
1.
Discussion
sparkplugs. I might assign you a particular day
to get the conference started, asking you to develop your own argument with the
material at hand (for seven or eight minutes) and then follow that with
questions we might address and passages we might analyze. After that, we’ll
just let the conference range where it will go (with, of course, a bit of
light-handed guidance from me).
2.
Key passages. I like staying close to the text, and I might ask you to
each to be ready with what you think is a key passage in the text – perhaps the
best summary, or an example where your lightbulb suddenly flickered to bright,
or evidence of the thinker’s situatedness coloring the thought, or something
you didn’t understand and want us to discuss as a group. (As noted above, this
will be difficult if you don’t have physical copies or, less ideal, a second
screen.)
3.
Incisions. I might ask you to prep a question to pose to the
conference, a question for which you think you have the answer, thereby leading
the discussion for a while before then giving us your own answer to that
question. That’s how we can make small incisions into the text at hand.
4.
Exploratories. These are bigger than incisions. I might ask you to send me
your informal one-page arguments the night before conference, and I’ll then
direct the conversation to weave these arguments together. (There’s a fuller
explanation of exploratories in “Section VIII”
below.)
Note most of these strategies you could
employ on your own if you ever feel you want to come to conference better
prepared to contribute. That is, instead of passively reading a text and then
putting it aside, you should think of ways to actively read it (including by
marking it up as you read) and to partake in understanding it. If conference
isn’t going well for you, please reach out, and we can brainstorm strategies or
indeed try these various options.
B. Papers. You will be composing three short papers (4-6 pages).
Each
annotated formal paper will derive from a focal text, namely the Songs canon (a.k.a. The book of songs), the Zhuangzi (a.k.a. Chuang-tzu) and The Huainanzi. Closer to the time of each
paper, I may pose a general question, but if you find a particular issue of
interest in the text, you can pursue it if you clear it with me in advance.
Please note the paper due dates are all listed on the syllabus, namely 3 Oct (Songs canon), 7 Nov (Zhuangzi) and 11 Dec (Huainanzi). (The
last paper actually has two deadlines, and I’ll write comments on papers for those that meet the
first. The second is 5 p.m. [not midnight] of the semester’s last day, after
which the college allows no more work to be turned in.) Please do not
consult on-line resources because they’re not very good anyway. I can help you
brainstorm topics in advance of each and can give you a “paper conference”
afterward if desired.
C. Presentation. As you’ll see below, the Huainanzi dominates
our last couple weeks, which is appropriate because it was viewed as the
summation of cosmological knowledge presented to the emperor himself who would
go on to expand imperial power to its highest point in early Chinese history.
You and a colleague will be leading conference discussion on those days.
Unlike past
years, there will be no final group project because the pandemic would make the
logistics nearly impossible. If I can think of a worthy substitute, I’ll let
you know with plenty of advance warning. We must adapt.
V. Syllabus
(Please note that, in this shift to
online teaching, I’ve only included my new audio and video recordings for
the first few weeks [because that’s how far I got before putting this syllabus
on moodle]. Always check moodle
and the reading maps for later recordings.)
A. Introduction
|
31
Aug |
Introduction |
·
Course introduction video (in three parts). |
|
2
Sep |
Early
Chinese “religion”? |
·
The Western situatedness of “religion(s)” (audio). ·
Brashier, “The
early Chinese endeavor to interpret early Chinese religions” (moodle). ·
Campany. “On the very
idea of religions (in the modern West and in early medieval China),” 287-319 (moodle). |
|
4
Sep |
The historical context |
·
Gernet, A history of Chinese
civilization, 1-100 (moodle). |
B. Things: the earliest evidence
|
9
Sep |
Oracle
bones |
·
Rappaport, Ritual and the making of humanity,
263-76 (moodle). ·
Rappaport’s fourfold ritual scaffolding (audio). ·
Li Feng, Early
China: A social and cultural history, 90-111 (moodle). |
|
11
Sep |
Ritual
bronzes I |
·
Li Feng, Early
China: A social and cultural history, 112-139 (moodle). |
|
|
||
|
14
Sep |
Ritual
bronzes II |
·
Prown, “Mind in matter,” 1-19 (JSTOR). ·
Capon & Liu, Masks of mystery, 11-20, 49-109 (image
set on moodle). ·
First exploratory (All courts) |
C. Words: the
canon gets passed down
|
16
Sep |
The Songs Canon: Introductory context |
·
“Introduction to the Book
of songs” (audio). ·
Waley, The book of songs, 336-83
(book). ·
Minford and Lau, “The
book of songs,” Classical Chinese
literature, 69-97 (moodle). |
|
18
Sep |
The Songs Canon: Hymns |
·
Waley, The book of songs, xii-xxv,
287-323 (book). ·
Second exploratory (First court) |
|
|
||
|
21
Sep |
The Songs Canon: Airs |
·
Waley, The book of songs, 1-127 (book). ·
Second exploratory (Second court) |
|
23
Sep |
The Songs Canon: Minor odes |
·
Waley, The book of songs, 129-222
(book). ·
Second exploratory (Third court) |
|
25
Sep |
The Songs Canon: Major odes |
·
Waley, The book of songs, 223-86
(book). |
|
|
||
|
28
Sep |
The Chu lyrics |
·
Hawkes, Songs of the South, 191-238 (moodle). |
D. Mind: the ideality of a well-ordered world prior to
unification
|
30
Sep |
Confucius |
·
Ivanhoe & van
Norden, Readings in classical Chinese
philosophy, 1-57 (book). ·
Third exploratory (First court) |
|
2
Oct |
Mozi |
·
Ivanhoe & van
Norden, Readings in classical Chinese philosophy,
59-113 (book). ·
Third exploratory (Second court) |
|
|
First
paper due 3 Oct @ 11.59 p.m. via email. |
|
|
|
||
|
5 Oct |
Mencius |
·
Ivanhoe & van
Norden, Readings in classical Chinese
philosophy, 115-159 (book). ·
Third exploratory (Third court) |
|
7
Oct |
Commentaries
on Mencius |
·
Puett and Gross-Loh, The path,
55-85 (moodle). ·
Graham, Disputers
of the Tao, 123-132 (moodle). |
|
9
Oct |
Laozi |
·
Ivanhoe & van
Norden, Readings in classical Chinese
philosophy, 161-205 (book). ·
Fourth exploratory (First court) |
|
|
||
|
12
Oct |
Commentaries
on Laozi |
·
Brashier, “Reading the Daode
jing through the lens of the ancestral cult” (moodle). ·
Roth, “Third-person and
first-person approaches to the study of the Laozi,” 13-30 (moodle). |
|
14
Oct |
“Inward
training” |
·
Roth, Original
Tao: Inward training, 41-97 (moodle). ·
|
|
16
Oct |
Xunzi |
·
Ivanhoe & van
Norden, Readings in classical Chinese
philosophy, 255-309 (book). ·
Fourth exploratory (Second court) |
|
|
||
|
19
Oct |
Han Feizi |
·
Ivanhoe & van
Norden, Readings in classical Chinese
philosophy, 311-361 (book). ·
Fourth exploratory (Third court) |
|
21
Oct |
Thunderous
silence 1 |
Fall break. Rest. |
|
23
Oct |
Thunderous
silence 2 |
|
|
|
||
|
26
Oct |
Zhuangzi I |
·
Ziporyn, Zhuangzi, 1-24, 129-71 (book). |
|
28
Oct |
Zhuangzi II |
·
Ziporyn, Zhuangzi, 24-54, 171-212 (book). ·
Fifth exploratory (First court) |
|
30
Oct |
Zhuangzi (?) III |
·
Ziporyn, Zhuangzi, 55-92 (book). ·
Fifth exploratory (Second court) |
|
|
||
|
2
Nov |
Zhuangzi (?) IV |
·
Ziporyn, Zhuangzi, 93-125 (book). ·
Sima Tan, “Essentials of the six schools” (moodle). ·
Fifth exploratory (Third court) |
E. Empire:
Territorial unification
|
4 Nov |
A guide to unity |
·
Knoblock and Riegel, Lü shi Chunqiu,
books 13-15. |
|
6 Nov |
Unification I |
·
The First Emperor, chaps 5-8 (note order). |
|
|
Second
paper due 7 Nov @ 11.59 p.m. via email. |
|
|
9 Nov |
Unification II |
·
The First Emperor, chaps 1-4 (note
order). |
|
11 Nov |
Han cosmology |
·
Major & Cook, “The Western Han dynasty through
the reign of Emperor Wu,” 197-231. (Moodle) ·
DeBary, “The imperial
order and Han synthesis,” in Sources of Chinese tradition, 283-310. |
F.
Cosmos: And now to unify absolutely everything
|
13
Nov |
The Huainanzi 1: Original unity |
·
Major, Queen, Meyer
and Roth, The Huainanzi,
introduction and chap. 1 (book). |
|
|
||
|
16 Nov |
The Huainanzi 2: Duality |
·
Major, Queen, Meyer
and Roth, The Huainanzi,
chaps. 2 and 12 (book). |
|
18 Nov |
The Huainanzi 3: The further divisions |
·
Major, Queen, Meyer
and Roth, The Huainanzi,
chaps. 3 and 5 (book). |
|
20 Nov |
The Huainanzi 4: Earthly accord |
·
Major, Queen, Meyer
and Roth, The Huainanzi,
chaps. 4 and 11 (book). |
|
|
||
|
30 Nov |
The Huainanzi 5: Resonance |
·
Major, Queen, Meyer
and Roth, The Huainanzi,
chaps. 6 and 18 (book). |
|
2 Dec |
The Huainanzi 6: Self-cultivation |
·
Major, Queen, Meyer
and Roth, The Huainanzi,
chaps. 7 and 13 (book). |
|
4 Dec |
The Huainanzi 7: Continuing the sages |
·
Major, Queen, Meyer
and Roth, The Huainanzi,
chaps. 8 and 20 (book). |
|
|
||
|
7
Dec |
The Huainanzi 8: Ruling the empire |
·
Major, Queen, Meyer
and Roth, The Huainanzi,
chaps. 9 and 19 (book). |
|
Final paper due 11 December (11.59
p.m.) if you want comments. Otherwise it must be turned in by 5 p.m.,
15 December, and no work will be considered after that deadline. |
||
VI. Incompletes,
absences, accommodations, extensions – the draconian stuff
As the great early Chinese legalist Han Feizi
warned, indulgent parents have rowdy kids and overly lenient rulers have
inefficient subjects; by extension, a permissive teacher can’t maximize a
student’s learning potential. By laying down the law now, we’ll also never need
to raise it again in the future, and I can pretend to be a kindly Confucian
rather than a draconian legalist.
“An
Incomplete [IN] is permitted in a course where the level of work done up to the
point of the [IN] is passing, but not all the work of a course has been
completed by the time of grade submission, for reasons of health or extreme
emergency, and for no other reason,” according to the Reed College Faculty Code
(V A). “The decision whether or not to grant an IN in a course is within the
purview of the faculty for that course.”
Like many of my colleagues, I read this as restricting incompletes to
acute, extreme emergencies and health crises that have a clear beginning date
and a relatively short duration only, that are outside the control of the
student, and that interrupt the work of a student who was previously making
good progress in a course. Needless to say, we’ll be a bit more tolerant during the pandemic
pause, but incompletes still aren’t automatic and must be justified. Now more
than ever, we all need things we can depend on, and in teaching, we can benefit
by maintaining our expectations regarding the timeliness and quality of our
work. You must stay in communication with me if there’s a problem in
participation, papers or presentations.
Regular,
prepared, and disciplined conferencing is intrinsic to this course, and so at a
certain point when too many conferences have been missed – specifically nine which
translates into a “fail” for the course[4] –
it would logically be advisable to drop or withdraw and to try again another
semester.[5]
There’s no shame in that. Longer-term emergencies indeed happen, and you ought
to make use of Student Services when they do. In sum, I’ll help you out as much
as I can to get you across the finish line, but as noted, it’s the same finish
line for everyone and to be fair to your colleagues I need to have you there in
the race. To that end, I would ask that
you please email me whenever you are absent just to let me know you’re
okay. (More and more students seem to be doing this without prompting anyway,
perhaps because we’ve all become increasingly dependent upon virtual
connectivity.)
I’m happy
to give paper extensions for medical problems and emergencies, and you should
take advantage of the Health and Counseling Center in such circumstances. I’m well aware that, during the pandemic pause, we’ll need
to be more flexible, and as already noted, we can try to find accommodations to
make up for gaps that might occur. But out of fairness to everyone, “not doing
the work” can’t be one of those accommodations. Please note that here, too, the
honor principle provides a standard for expectations and behavior, meaning that
none of us (including myself) should resort to medical reasons when other
things are actually impeding our work. (Please just be
honest. It’s as simple as that.) In non-medical situations, late papers will
still be considered, but the lateness will be taken into
account and no comments given. Ken’s Subjectivity Curve: The later it
is, the more subjective Ken becomes. It's a gamble. I’m not a legalist like Han
Feizi, but even the Confucians resorted to hard law
when ritualized conduct and exemplary leadership failed.
Confucius meets Laozi
(Eastern Han stone relief, Shandong)
VII. The exploratory
Sometimes conferences sing. Yet just when I would like them
to sing glorious opera, they might merely hum a bit of country-western.
After my first year of teaching at Reed, I reflected upon my conference
performance and toyed with various ideas as to how to induce more of the
ecstatic arias and lively crescendos, and I came up with something I call an
"exploratory."
Simply put, an exploratory is a one-page, single-spaced piece
in which you highlight one thought-provoking issue that caught your attention
in the materials we are considering. This brief analysis must show thorough
reading and must show your own
thoughtful extension –
·
Your own informed, constructive criticism of the author
(and not just a bash-and-trash rant);
·
Your own developed, thoughtful
question (perhaps even inspired by readings from other classes) that raises
interesting issues when seen in the light of the author's text;
·
Your own application of theory and
method to the primary source;
·
Your own personal conjecture as to
how this data can be made useful; or (best of all)
·
Your own autonomous problem that you
devised using the same data under discussion.
I am not here looking for polished prose or copious (or any)
footnotes – save all that for our formal papers. (I do not return exploratories with comments unless a special request is
made.) Exploratories
are not full, open-heart surgeries performed on the text. Instead, exploratories tend to be somewhat informal but focused
probes on one particular aspect in which you yourself
can interact with the text and can enter into the conversation.
What is not an exploratory? It is not merely a
topic supported by evidence from the book, nor is it a descriptive piece on
someone else's ideas, nor is it a general book report in which you can wander
to and fro without direction. Bringing in outside
materials is allowed, but the exploratory is not a forum for ideas outside that
day's expressed focus. (Such pieces cannot be used in our conference
discussions.) Also, don’t give into the
temptation of just reading the first few pages of a text and then writing your
exploratory. (What would you conclude
if you received a lot of exploratories that all
coincidentally tackled an issue in the first five or six pages of the
reading?) It is instead a problematique, an issue with attitude.
The best
advice that I can give here is simply to encourage you to consider why I am requesting these exploratories from you: I want to see what ignites your
interest in the text so I can set the
conference agenda. That is why they are due the evening before a conference. Thus
late exploratories are of no use. (Being handed a
late exploratory is like being handed your salad after you've eaten dessert and
are already leaving the restaurant.) I
base roughly a third to half my conferences on exploratories,
and I will use them to draw you in, parry your perspective against that of
another, and build up the discussion based on your views. Exploratories
help me turn the conference to issues that directly interest you. They often
lead us off on important tangents, and they often return us to the core of the
problem under discussion. So if you are struggling
with finding "something to say," simply recall why I ask for these exploratories in the first place. Is there something in the
text you think worthy of conference time? Do you have an idea you want to take
this opportunity to explore? Here is your chance to draw our attention to it.
Your perspectives are important, and if you have them crystallized on paper in
advance, they will be easier to articulate in conference.
Since I
began using exploratories, most students have
responded very favorably. Students like the fact that it is a different form of
writing, a bit more informal and more frequent, somewhat akin to thinking
aloud. It forces one not just to read a text but to be looking for something in
that text, to engage that text actively. And it increases the likelihood that
everyone will leave the conference singing Puccini.
VIII. Pandemic? Don’t smash your gourd over it.
There’s Chinese proverb that simply reads: “The five-bushel gourd” 五石之瓠. Once upon a time, a man
planted a seed that produced the biggest gourd ever seen – the size of a
five-bushel basket – but because it was so big, he didn’t know what to do with the
useless thing. So he just broke it up. Afterward,
Zhuangzi tsk-tsked and chastised the man for his conventional ideas of
usefulness. After all, he could have carved a boat out of the gourd and
leisurely floated down the river in it on an autumnal afternoon. The moral is
to take advantage of what you’ve got, even if it looks like a disadvantage at
first.
So
I want to end on a positive note. Yes, it’s going to be an awkward year for you
and me. I’m dreading the online aspect of this course because it’s so foreign
to my world. (Fortunately, I have a stand-alone writing studio in my backyard
with an ethernet connection where I’ll be joining you.) I’m also told to expect
a lot more email from everyone – please be gentle if I don’t get back to you
within five minutes of your sending a question! – and I’m going to miss the
campus, the canyon and the company.
Yet one thing I’ve
learned in life – yep, here comes the sagely wisdom from someone about to
retire – is that you indeed play the hand you’re dealt, and if you play it
well, you might even create new opportunities among the myriad difficulties.
For example, I see myself making my recorded observations via Zoom as my
farewell to the field, solidifying my final thoughts about it, and you’re going
to help me solidify those final thoughts. I wouldn’t be doing that in a
non-pandemic Zoom-less year. So … what new opportunities can you take
away from the awkward year ahead? As you work through the difficulties, can you
creatively find your own plus among the minuses? Will you be leisurely floating
down the river on a beautiful autumnal afternoon?
Zhuangzi dreaming he’s
a butterfly, by Lu Zhi (c. 1550)