Talk:Xuanxue

Comment

Xuanxue is basically a Confucian school, taking the ideas of Laozi and Zhuangzi and incorporating them into a Confucian framework. Wang Bi still maintained that Confucius was the superior teacher! So I would not say it's a subset of Daoism at all.TheEvilPanda 17:30, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

Improving the content of this article

After reading Alan Chan’s article in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, it appears that this article could be improved.

Xuanxue is critical to the understanding of Daoist thought: the current article here notes the contribution of Wangbi and Guoxiang to a point, but does not bring into perspective how the two influenced the received texts and interpretation of the two core Daoist texts, the Laozi and Zhuangzi.

The also features the thoroughly discredit theory of “wonderism”, which at this point has no place in the scholarly understanding of the origins of Daoist thought. Alan Chan correctly omits any mention of Wonderism in his presentation of Xuanxue.

I am happy to draft a rewrite based more upon the current understanding of Xuanxue and its pivotal role on transforming daoist thought and its influence on Chan/Zen Buddhism.

Discussion? ShaziDaoren (talk) 11:00, 8 January 2019 (UTC)

The history of Xuanxue

This entry provides a basic and general background of Xuanxue 玄学. Xuanxue is a highly complicated and archaic ontological structure that was formed in Six Dynasties based on Daoist doctrines in pre-Qin period. The history of Xuanxue mentioned in this entry may be too simple to capture its development in Chinese history. According to Baidu encyclopedia, Xuanxue was firstly introduced by Wang Bi and He Yan from 240-249 in later Han dynasty, further developed by the group called Zhulin Xuanxue (竹林玄学), with members like Ruan Ji and Ji Kang, and other Xuanxue thinkers in Six Dynasties, and then assimilated and adapted by Zen and Buddhism in Sui and Tang dynasty. The writer may want to add more information on the development and influence of Xuanxuan in Chinese intellectual history. The writer may also want to compare the Xuanxue with other ideological systems in order to reveal the communications between Xuanxue and other important intellectual systems like Daoism, Confucianism and Buddhism. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Hkang01 (talk • contribs) 03:38, 18 April 2019 (UTC)

Suggestions

Wondering if the intro section can include the state of Xuanxue today—whether or not it still persists in some form. I think the Definition section is very helpful and well-done, though the descriptive words could potentially be slightly pared down as they could be distracting. For the ‘Misinterpretations of Xuanxue’ section I wonder if there is a specific critical text that could be alluded to rather than vaguely referring to ‘critics.’ Definitely a useful section to have though—I think the Chan text is really apt and points to the vague, elusive, indefinite nature of the Xuanxue school of thought.

Nicjguo (talk)

Organization and the misinterpretation section

Compared with other entries about similar matter, namely foreign terminologies, I find the organization of this entry a bit of problematic. Usually when introducing a foreign terminology--in fact almost any terminology--what goes first, is the definition. However, for this entry, the first section is "history". I think this is something that can and should be changed easily, to make the entry more straight forward to the readers. Also, in the initial paragraph, the Chinese characters of Xuanxue should also be introduced in parentheses. What would take more work to be done is providing a better narrative of the history of Xuanxue. Firstly,I believe what is currently in that section is not entirely about history, since some portion is used to introduce different strands of Xuanxue, which makes me feel like it would be better to have a separated section introducing the stands.Second, the history seems really short. The last line in that section talked about what happened in the fifth CE. It seems information about the development (or recession) of Xuanxue is lacking. I think it would be helpful to include information on how it is influenced by Confucianism (or the other way around), and what the introduction of Buddhism brought to its survive. At last, for the misinterpretation section, apart from what is "academically misinterpreted", I think it is equally, one may argue it is more, important to address how the term "Xuanxue" is totally misinterpreted by the folks as mysticism or folklore religion. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Tetsugakuboy (talk • contribs) 23:04, 26 April 2019 (UTC)

General Comments

Though this entry has provided a detailed definition as well as a general historical background of "xuanxue", as an entry which introduces a concept/a field of study, I think it is important to acknowledge the the very origin of the term — who invented the term "xuanxue" and what was the original context of this concept? In the section "Misinterpretations of Xuanxue", there may be some problems with the use of language in writing this section. It appears to me that the author of this entry is making his own arguments and interpretations. Clear references to existing scholar works, in terms of both misinterpretations and correct understanding of xuanxue, are definitely needed. Additionally, it may be also helpful to provide both original texts or concepts in Chinese and the English translations throughout the entry — I sometimes get confused about the terms and concepts used in the writing. SamuelJia97 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 02:41, 29 April 2019 (UTC)