TRUTHFUL IS MORAL: PRACTICING ETHICAL RESPONSIBILITY IN CHINESE HISTORIOGRAPHY.

In recent years, efforts have been made to reevaluate the tradition of Chinese historical thought and writing. This article seeks to further these efforts and offer a new understanding of the characteristics of historical writing in traditional China. It argues that, at the level of practice, tradit...

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Published in:History & Theory Vol. 63; no. 4; pp. 85 - 106
Main Author: Wang, Q. Edward
Format: Article
Published: Wiley-Blackwell Dec2024
Subjects:
Online Access:View this record in EBSCOhost
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      aug:
        au: Wang, Q. Edward
        affil: Rowan University
      su:
        Chinese historiography
        Confucius, 551 B.C.-479 B.C.
        Sima, Qian, ca. 145 B.C.-ca. 86 B.C.
        Ouyang Xiu, 1007-1072
        Sima Guang
        Zhu Xi, 1130-1200
        Philosophy of history
        Historians
      sug:
        subj:
          Chinese historiography
          Confucius, 551 B.C.-479 B.C.
          Sima, Qian, ca. 145 B.C.-ca. 86 B.C.
          Ouyang Xiu, 1007-1072
          Sima Guang
          Zhu Xi, 1130-1200
          Philosophy of history
          Historians
      keyword:
        Confucius
        morality and history
        Ouyang Xiu
        Sima Qian
        Zhu Xi
      ab: In recent years, efforts have been made to reevaluate the tradition of Chinese historical thought and writing. This article seeks to further these efforts and offer a new understanding of the characteristics of historical writing in traditional China. It argues that, at the level of practice, traditional Chinese historians, like their counterparts in the rest of the world, were deeply concerned with establishing and communicating facts in historical writing. Their separation of commentary and narrative in order to practice "straight writing" of the latter is a telling example, one that evolved into an enshrined tradition over the long span of imperial China. At the theoretical level, Chinese historians also consciously explored the ways in which truthfulness in history could be reconciled with the ethical responsibilities they perceived and sought to assume in and for their time. This quest did not stop at the level of "praise and blame" for past personalities and events. Rather, their practice amounted to an effort, epitomized by the historical practice of the Song period (960–1279), to search for the metaphysics of historical morality, or the immanent and overarching principles that guide human society.
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    language: English
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