Classical Chinese Philosophy

Philosophers of the classical Chinese metaphysical tradition and its continuers across East Asia, from the founding Daoist thinkers who described a formless Way underlying all things, through the Han dynasty naturalist critics of superstition, to the Song and Ming dynasty Neo-Confucian synthesis that reworked Confucian ethics into a full metaphysics of principle and material force. Also gathers Korean Confucian scholars who carried that Neo-Confucian synthesis into their own philosophical tradition, a Taiwanese philosopher working in the same comparative Chinese tradition, and modern historians of Chinese philosophy who continued to interpret and systematize it for a twentieth century audience. Spans roughly the sixth century BCE through the twentieth century.