The Great Commentary (Dazhuan 大傳) and Chinese natural cosmology

Abstract

As important as the Daoist and Confucian canons have been in the articulation of Chinese intellectual history and as much as they can be appealed as textual evidence for claims about early Chinese cosmology, perhaps no single text can compete with the Yijing 易經 or Book of Changes in terms of the sustained interest it has garnered from succeeding generations of China’s literati, and the influence it has had on Chinese self-understanding. The coordination of the rela- tionship between the changing world and the human experience is the main axis of the Yijing. The purpose of this text is fundamentally normative and prescriptive. It purports to address life’s most pressing question: What kind of participation in these natural processes can optimize the possibilities of a world in which natural and human events are two inseparable, mutually shaping aspects? Confucian morality itself is a cosmic phenomenon that emerges from the synergistic transactions that take place between the operations of nature and human effort.