This sequence of four courses will propose a multi-disciplinary approach to the study of Chinese cultural history conceived of as a succession of modes of rationality (philosophical, bureaucratic, and economic). The focus will be on the moments of paradigm shift from one mode of rationality to another. For each of these moments, cultural facts and artifacts—thought, literature, ritual—will be examined in relationship to changing social, political, and economic systems.
Religious Transformation in Early China: the Period of Division
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Religious Transformation in Early China: the Period of Division
Instructor: Prof. John Lagerwey
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4.8
(37 reviews)
Intermediate level
Some related experience required
21 hours to complete
3 weeks at 7 hours a week
Flexible schedule
Learn at your own pace
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Assessments
39 assignments
Taught in English
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There are 7 modules in this course
This module presents the relationship between the elite attack on shamanism and their promotion of a cosmology that transformed medicine and laid the foundations for both self-cultivation and a bureaucratic empire.
What's included
5 videos3 readings5 assignments
This module introduces the three kinds of new religious community that appear from the second century on: those organized around transcendents, by the Heavenly Masters, and by the Buddhists.
What's included
8 videos8 assignments
This module explains how Buddhist and Daoist rituals revolutionized Chinese society and individuals. It reveals the importance of orality in Buddhism, written documents in Daoism.
What's included
8 videos8 assignments
This module explores how Buddhist and Daoist scriptures confirm the oral/aural bias of Buddhism, the written/visual bias of Daoism. We are going to learn the centrality of logic in Buddhism, of cosmology in Daoism.
What's included
6 videos2 readings6 assignments
This module indicates the attractiveness of key Buddhist scriptures and how Chinese poetry was transformed by Buddhism. It also shows how the “public sermons” of Buddhism contrasted with the “private records of the imagination” of Daoism.
What's included
4 videos4 assignments
This module is about how Daoist sacred geography is above all an exploration of the inner self and how mountains played a role both in imperial preference for Daoism and in the Buddhist “conquest” of China.
What's included
6 videos1 reading6 assignments
This module illustrates why popular religion continued to thrive in spite of elite attacks on it, and how Buddhism and Daoism dealt with widespread fear of the spirits of the dead.
What's included
2 videos2 assignments
Instructor
Instructor ratings
5.0 (10 ratings)Offered by
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