On April 7, 2021, the International Center for the Study of Ancient Texts and Cultures (ICSAT)  held the second of our four 2021 Spring Lecture Series On Early Chinese Classics by overseas sinologists online: “The Shu Traditions and the Philosophical Arguments in Early China” led by Dr. Dirk Meyer from the University of Oxford. Dr. Meyer is the founding director of the Centre for Manuscripts and Text Cultures and an associate professor at the Queens’ College. The lecture series has attracted the attention and participants from scholars and students from famous universities across the world, including the Peking University, the Tsinghua University, the Renmin University of China, the University of Oxford, the Stanford University and the Cornell University, etc..

Based on the Shangshu and the ancient texts that quoted the Shangshu, Dr. Meyer proposes that in the Warring States, to support new arguments, philosophers used ancient materials, such as the Shangshu and the Yizhoushu, and even imitated the archaic language style, to strengthen the persuasion and show the authority of their new arguments. The practice actually developed into a “Shu genre”, and formed the “Shu tradition”. While discussing the formation of the genre and tradition of the Shu, Dr. Meyer reminds the audience of the following questions on the level of text production and text transmission: the differences and connections of the Shu tradition and the Shi tradition, the meaning production of pre-Qin philosophy, and the discourse community of the Warring States period. For now, we have finished 6 lectures, and through the discussion of several transmitted texts and excavated manuscripts, we are steadily approaching the textual system of Shu. Next, we will also look into the manuscript culture and philosophical discourse of the Warring States.

The next lecture will be held on 28 April, 19:00-21:00, BJT, and the final lecture will be held on 7 May, 18:00-20:00. We warmly welcome more participants to join our discussion.

Prof. Meyer' lectures are part of our Spring 2021 lecture series on the textual culture of early China.

To find out more about other lectures, please click here.

For questions, please write to: ruc_icsat@163.com