David Schaberg

Bio: David Schaberg is an academic researcher. The author has contributed to research in topics: Historiography. The author has an hindex of 2, co-authored 2 publications receiving 169 citations.

A Patterned past: Form and Thought in Early Chinese Historiography

Abstract: In this comprehensive study of the rhetoric, narrative patterns, and intellectual content of the Zuozhuan and Guoyu, David Schaberg reads these two collections of historical anecdotes as traces of a historiographical practice that flourished around the 4th century BCE among the followers of Confucius. He contends that the coherent view of early China found in these texts is an effect of their origins and the habits of reading they impose. Rather than being totally accurate accounts, they represent the efforts of a group of officials and ministers to argue for a moralising interpretation of the events of early Chinese history and for their own value as skilled interpreters of events and advisers to the rulers of the day.

A Patterned Past: Form and Thought in Early Chinese Historiography

Abstract: In this comprehensive study of the rhetoric, narrative patterns, and intellectual content of the Zuozhuan and Guoyu, David Schaberg reads these two collections of historical anecdotes as traces of a historiographical practice that flourished around the 4th century BCE among the followers of Confucius. He contends that the coherent view of early China found in these texts is an effect of their origins and the habits of reading they impose. Rather than being totally accurate accounts, they represent the efforts of a group of officials and ministers to argue for a moralising interpretation of the events of early Chinese history and for their own value as skilled interpreters of events and advisers to the rulers of the day.

Virtue Ethics and Consequentialism in Early Chinese Philosophy

Abstract: 1. Introduction 2. Kongzi and Ruism 3. Mozi and early Mohism 4. Mengzi 5. Pluralistic Ruism.

Astrology and Cosmology in Early China: Conforming Earth to Heaven

Abstract: Introduction Part I. Astronomy and Cosmology in the Time of Dragons: 1. Astronomy begins at Taosi 2. Watching for dragons Part II. Aligning with Heaven: 3. Looking to the supernal lord 4. Bringing heaven down to earth 5. Astral revelation and the origins of writing Part III. Planetary Omens and Cosmic Ideology: 6. The cosmo-political mandate 7. The rhetoric of the supernal 8. Cosmology and the calendar Part IV. Warring States and Han Astral Portentology: 9. Astral prognostication and the battle of Chengpu 10. A new astrological paradigm Part V. One with the Sky: 11. Cosmic capitals 12. Temporality and the fabric of space-time 13. The sky river and cosmography 14. Planetary portentology east and west Epilogue Appendix. Astrology for an empire: the 'treatise on the celestial offices' in The Grand Scribe's Records (c.100 BCE) Glossary Index.

Mirroring the Past: The Writing And Use of History in Imperial China

Abstract: China is known for its deep veneration of history. Far more than a record of the past, history to the Chinese is the magister vitae (teacher of life): the storehouse of moral lessons and bureaucratic precedents. "Mirroring the Past" presents a comprehensive history of traditional Chinese historiography from antiquity to the mid-qing period. Organized chronologically, the book traces the development of historical thinking and writing in Imperial China, beginning with the earliest forms of historical consciousness and ending with adumbrations of the fundamentally different views engendered by mid-nineteenth-century encounters with the West. The historiography of each era is explored on two levels: first, the gathering of material and the writing and production of narratives to describe past events; second, the thinking and reflecting on meanings and patterns of the past. Significantly, the book embeds within this chronological structure integrated views of Chinese historiography, bringing to light the purposive, didactic, and normative uses of the past. Examining both the worlds of official and unofficial historiography, the authors lay bare the ingenious ways in which Chinese scholars extracted truth from events and reveal how schemas and philosophies of history were constructed and espoused. They highlight the dynamic nature of Chinese historiography, revealing that historical works mapped the contours of Chinese civilization not for the sake of understanding history as disembodied and theoretical learning, but for the pragmatic purpose of guiding the world by mirroring the past in all its splendor and squalor.

Defamiliarizing the Foreigner: Sima Qian's Ethnography and Han-Xiongnu Marriage Diplomacy

Abstract: Tamara T. Chin examines how relations between China and the Xiongnu transformed the discourse of China’s imperial frontiers during the Han dynasty (206 b.c.e .–220 c.e .), and particularly how early Han dynasty political debates about the Han-Xiongnu “peace through kinship” ( heqin 和親) treaty shaped Sima Qian’s ethnography. She shows that Sima Qian, whose description of the Xiongnu introduced empirical ethnography into the Chinese tradition, represented the Xiongnu from multiple perspectives and drew attention to political bias in Han discussions of the Xiongnu. His portrait of “Han customs” provided a comparative ethnography of Han and Xiongnu kinship that exposed the tensions in early Han-dynasty disputes over the meaning of the metaphor of heqin kinship. Later historiography, though modeling itself on Sima Qian’s work, lacks both his unease about Han bias and his self-reflexivity in representing foreigners.

Ancient Greece and China Compared

Abstract: Ancient Greece and China Compared is a pioneering, methodologically sophisticated set of studies, bringing together scholars who all share the conviction that the sustained critical comparison and contrast between ancient societies can bring to light significant aspects of each that would be missed by focusing on just one of them. The topics tackled include key issues in philosophy and religion, in art and literature, in mathematics and the life sciences (including gender studies), in agriculture, city planning and institutions. The volume also analyses how to go about the task of comparing, including finding viable comparanda and avoiding the trap of interpreting one culture in terms appropriate only to another. The book is set to provide a model for future collaborative and interdisciplinary work exploring what is common between ancient civilisations, what is distinctive of particular ones, and what may help to account for the latter.