Yielding History and Others: A Study of Taoist Thought in the Six Dynasties and Sui-Tang Dynasties: A Study of Taoist Thought in the Six Dynasties and Sui-Tang Dynasties

Author: Ge Zhaoguang
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2003-08-01
Features: Using the term "Submission" as the book title aims to position the historical narrator from the perspective of Taoism. It examines how a religion was forced to "adapt," "respond," and "enter" within the powerful mainstream discourse of ancient China. Intellectual history often focuses on the emergence of new knowledge, ideas, and beliefs, but rarely employs the "subtraction" method to discuss the gradual disappearance of knowledge, ideas, and beliefs, including those labeled as barbaric, backward, absurd, or licentious, which were gradually "marginalized" and "secretized." In fact, it is precisely in these processes of decline and disappearance that we can uncover the history obscured by the past, as well as how ancient China's secular imperial power and mainstream ideology, without conscious effort, could force other dissenting beliefs to "submit." It is this kind of "submission" in the history of religion that explains why, in Chinese history, there has never been a religious authority that directly opposed the secular state. Moreover, China's "omnipotent imperial authority," which united the symbolism of deities, the universe, ethical morality, political power, and military power, was even more formidable. In ancient China, imperial power monopolized all notions of legitimacy and rationality, forcing all religious beliefs that conformed to the mainstream to be labeled as "demonical," "licentious," or "disruptive," pushing them out of the upper echelons of elite thought and keeping them confined to the margins of secular, folk, and popular religious, cultural, and intellectual life—even in fiction—from ancient times to the present.