BASC70174 - The Huainanzi, or How to Rule the World by Not Even Trying

Course Description

Instructor: Stephen Walker.  The Huainanzi (2nd century BCE) is one of the most audacious products of the philosophical imagination. Notorious for its patron’s allegedly treasonous motives, this text is a comprehensive manual for ruling the world—based not on theological, legal, or moral ideas but on the conviction that such ideas always distort how power actually functions. The worldview of the Huainanzi grows practical affairs like branches out of a formless root: dao, or the spontaneous emergence of things. Social power lies not in making people do anything, not in getting one’s way with them, but in freeing them from interference and enabling them to flourish. The Huainanzi argues for the centrality of “acting by not acting” in every area of life, every expertise, and every art. Reading it together will not only steep us in this distinctively Daoist approach to practical questions, it will also grant us fascinating glimpses of early Chinese religious beliefs, scientific theories, political institutions, and literary genres. Course code: BASC70174 China Studies