Self-Cultivation in Early China

An introduction to ancient Chinese ideas on how to live a good life.

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Self-Cultivation in Early China is an introduction to multiple aspects of the foundational practice of self-cultivation in early China (c.1000 to 100 BCE). Drawing on the Chinese classics and the dozens of scholars' texts (both received and excavated) that together form the basis of intellectual history for China and all of East Asia, the book's analysis relies on the topics and categories that were central to the thought of these authors, including such well-known thinkers as Confucius and Laozi. This book describes a salient point of view from which we may consider the broader landscape of Chinese intellectual history and presents an important paradigm of the scholarly Chinese worldview that is ideal for comparison with paradigms in other communities, ancient or modern, across the globe.