Interpretations of Confucian Ritual (li) in Eleventh Century Discourse

• In Event: State Ritual and Political Culture in Imperial and Late Imperial China

Abstract

This paper deals with the applied hermeneutics of Confucian “ritology” (lixue) in middle Northern Song time (eleventh century) as an example of Chinese reflexivity on ritual. In contrast to dealing with classical material it therefore provides a “post-classical” perspective. The main question is how ritual itself was reflected, either in arguments in debates about concrete cases, or in more abstract philosophical thinking, and thus how Confucian Chinese in the eleventh century argued and reflected about “rituality” or the Chinese concept of “li”. The paper suggests from its Northern Song sources that we can identify two different modes of reflecting ritual, one more rigid and the other more flexible in attitude, which were still built upon the same canonical base. These different positions, more rigid or more flexible, might have developed due to personal character of the proponents, but at another level they served an important role in negotiating how ancient ritual could be performed under changed conditions.

Author

• Christian Meyer, University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Sinology