Understanding Ancient Chinese Society

Approaches to Rén 人 and Mín 民

Bibliographic Data

ID3960911
AuthorsRobert H Gassmann (corresponding author)
Year2000
Volume120
Issue3
Pages348
Publication date2000-07-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of the American Oriental Society (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0003-0279 • E-ISSN: 2169-2289
PublisherJSTOR (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/606007
OpenAlexW90906544
LanguageEN
Citations received4

The study of ancient Chinese society is fraught with problems and issues and generally hampered by a lack of awareness that many basic terms are in fact still imperfectly understood. The meanings of key designations for social groups have therefore seldom been questioned, leaving them either in the state of naturally evident assumptions or of received knowledge hallowed by Chinese and sinological tradition. Although the importance of kinship and clan structures is generally stressed, scholars have not paid much attention to relating the textual evidence on social entities to the corresponding lexical material. This applies particularly to ren and min. Close reading of ancient texts not only reveals many interesting facts and information on the terms themselves, but also prompts us to reassess our understanding of key philosophical concepts in ancient Chinese thought

Archaeology · Art · ASCII · Character (mathematics) · China · Chinese characters · Chinese society · Clan · Epistemology · Key (lock) · Kinship · Linguistics · Literature · Reading (process) · Sociology · Anthropology · Chinese history and philosophy · Computer Science · History · Mathematics · Philosophy

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