Yielding History and Others: A Study of the Intellectual History of Taoism in the Six Dynasties and the Sui and 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 context of ancient China's dominant cultural discourse. Intellectual history often focuses on the emergence of new knowledge, ideas, and beliefs, rarely employing the "subtraction" approach to discuss the gradual disappearance of knowledge, thoughts, 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 could, without conscious effort, force other dissenting groups 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 "universal imperial authority," which embodied the symbolism of deities, the universe, ethical morality, political power, and military power, was also stronger. In ancient China, imperial power monopolized all forms of legitimacy and rationality, forcing all religious beliefs that aligned with the mainstream to be labeled as "demonical," "licentious," or "disruptive," pushing them out of the upper echelons of elite thought and leaving them confined to the margins of secular, folk, religious, cultural, and even fictional realms, from ancient times to the present.