The dysfunction of ritual in early Confucianism / Michael David Kaulana Ing.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Ing, Michael David Kaulana

Series:

Oxford ritual studies

Language:

Chinese

English

Multiple languages

Subjects (All):

Confucianism--Rituals.

Confucianism.

Physical Description:

285 pages ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

New York : Oxford University Press, [2012]

Language Note:

Includes passages in Chinese with English translations.

Summary:

In The Dysfunction of Ritual in Early Confucianism Michael Ing describes how early Confucians coped with situations where their rituals failed to achieve their intended aims. In contrast to most contemporary interpreters of Confucianism, Ing demonstrates that early Confucian texts can be read as arguments for ambiguity in ritual failure. If, as discussed in one text, Confucius builds a tomb for his parents unlike the tombs of antiquity, and rains fall causing the tomb to collapse, it is not immediately clear whether this failure was the result of random misfortune or the result of Confucius straying from the ritual script by building a tomb incongruent with those of antiquity.

The Liji (Record of Ritual)-one of the most significant, yet least studied, texts of Confucianism- poses many of these situations and suggests that the line between preventable and unpreventable failures of ritual is not always clear. Ritual performance, in this view, is a performance of risk. It entails rendering oneself vulnerable to the agency of others; and resigning oneself to the need to vary from the successful rituals of past, thereby moving into untested and uncertain territory. The Dysfunction of Ritual in Early Confucianism is the first monograph in English about the Liji (z text that purports to be the writings of Confucius's immediate disciples and was included in the earliest canon of Confucian texts called "The Five Classics"). The Dysfunction of Ritual in Early Confucianism challenges some common assumptions of contemporary interpreters of Confucian ethics, in particular the idea that a cultivated ritual agent is able to recognize which failures are within his sphere of control to prevent and thereby render his process of self-cultivation invulnerable to ritual failure. Book jacket.

Contents:

Ritual in the Liji

Typology of dysfunction

Coming to terms with dysfunction

Preventing

Inevitability of failure

Whose fault is failure? Ambiguity and impinging agencies

Ancients did not fix their graves

Productive anxieties and the awfulness of failed ritual

Concluding reflections: toward a tragic theory of ritual

On the textual composition of the Liji.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [261]-273) and index.

ISBN:

9780199924899

0199924899

9780199924912

0199924910

OCLC:

778635516

Publisher Number:

99950730020