Search results
Wang Chong. Wang Chong (Chinese: 王充; pinyin: Wáng Chōng; Wade–Giles: Wang Ch'ung; 27 – c. 97 AD), [1] courtesy name Zhongren (仲任), was a Chinese astronomer, meteorologist, naturalist, philosopher, and writer active during the Eastern Han dynasty. He developed a rational, secular, naturalistic and mechanistic account of the world ...
Wang Chong was one of the most original and independent Chinese thinkers of the Han period (206 bce–220 ce). A rationalistic naturalist during an age of superstition, Wang dared attack the belief in omens and portents that had begun to creep into the Confucian doctrines.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Lun-Heng
- Legacy
- References
Wang Chong’s main work was the Lun-Heng (論衡) (first translated in 1911 as Balanced Enquiries, and since as Fair Discussions, or Critical Essays). Wang was a mechanist, denying that heaven has any purpose for man, whether benevolent or hostile. To say that heaven provides us with food and clothing, he declared, is to say that it acts as our farmer o...
After his death, Wang’s ideas became well known and had an influence on the resurgence of a new form of Daoism, sometimes called "neo-Daoism," which developed a more rational, naturalistic metaphysical account of the world, free from most of the mysticism and superstitionthat had infected Daoist thought for so long. In the twentieth century, his cr...
Conference on Seventeenth-Century Chinese Thought and William Theodore De Bary. 1975. The Unfolding of Neo-Confucianism. Studies in Oriental Culture, No. 10. New York: Columbia University Press. IS...De Bary, William Theodore, and Irene Bloom. 1979. Principle and Practicality: Essays in Neo-Confucianism and Practical Learning. Neo-Confucian studies. New York: Columbia University Press. ISBN 023...Vergilius Ture Anselm. 1950. A History of Philosophical Systems. New York: Philosophical Library.Wang Chong (Wang Ch’ung) (25—100 C.E.) Wang Chong (Wang Ch’ung) was an early Chinese philosopher who wrote during the Eastern Han dynasty. He is often interpreted as offering a materialist and skeptical philosophical system. Wang’s essays on physics, astronomy, ethics, methodology, and criticism are collected in the Lunheng (“Balanced ...
Sep 4, 2018 · The question confronts those who work in ancient Chinese thought—just how original or unique was Wang Chong, really? When Western thinkers first took notice of this interesting thinker, in the late nineteenth century with the revival of Chinese interest in his thought by critical Qing scholars, Wang was seen as an anomaly, a brilliant and completely unique representative of critical thought ...
- Alexus McLeod
- 2018
Sep 4, 2018 · The unrest Wang speaks of would have been connected to the turmoil during the end of the Western Han dynasty which aided in the transition of the Wang Mang interregnum (and explained some of Wang Mang’s reforms), and we might imagine that some of the animosity toward Wang Chong’s forebears was due to the unrest concerning land distribution and the shifting social place of minor landowners.
People also ask
Who was Wang Chong?
What do Western scholars know about Wang Chong?
Who was Wang & what did he do?
Are Wang Chong and Wang Mang related?
Is Wang Chong a critic?
How did Wang Chong learn?
Jan 15, 2012 · Wang Chong 王充 (27-97 CE), courtesy name Zhongren 仲任, was a philosopher of the early Later Han period 後漢 (25-220 CE). He hailed from Shangyu 上虞 (modern Shangyu, Zhejiang) and grew up in a poor family but had the opportunity to study in the National University (taixue 太學) in the capital. One of his teachers was the historian ...
