A01=Cynthia Joanne Brokaw
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Arthur Waley
Author_Cynthia Joanne Brokaw
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Buddhism
Bureaucrat
Calculation
Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=HPDF
Category=HPQ
Category=JB
Cheng-Zhu school
Classic of Filial Piety
Confucianism
Confucius
COP=United States
D. C. Lau
Delivery_Pre-order
Deng Yu
Doctrine of the Mean
Donglin Academy
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eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
Eunuch
Fazang
Filial piety
Generosity
Good and evil
Gu Yanwu
Guan Yu
Guanyin
Hanshan Deqing
Household
Huang Tingjian
Huang Zongxi
Huang-Lao
I Ching
Imperial examination
Joseph Needham
Language_English
Li Shi
Li Zicheng
Liu Zongzhou
Mandate of Heaven
Mencius
Middle Way
Moral example
Moral responsibility
Moral suasion
Morality
Neo-Confucianism
Opportunism
PA=Temporarily unavailable
Philip A. Kuhn
Prasenjit Duara
Price_€100 and above
PS=Active
Righteousness
Scholar-official
Shangdi
Shao Yong
Social status
softlaunch
Stipend
Supplication
Taoism
Tax
Usury
Wang Anshi
Wang Chong
Wang Mang
Wang Ming
Wang Yangming
Wealth
Xunzi (book)
Yan Yuan
Yi Yin
Youxia
Yu Ying-shih
Yuwen
Zhang Xuecheng
Zhen Dexiu
Zhou Dunyi
Zhu Xi
Zhuangzi (book)
Product details
- ISBN 9780691637181
- Weight: 595g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 19 Apr 2016
- Publisher: Princeton University Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
- Language: English
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The ledgers of merit and demerit were a type of morality book that achieved sudden and widespread popularity in China during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Consisting of lists of good and bad deeds, each assigned a certain number of merit or demerit points, the ledgers offered the hope of divine reward to users "good" enough to accumulate a substantial sum of merits. By examining the uses of the ledgers during the late Ming and early Qing periods, Cynthia Brokaw throws new light on the intellectual and social history of the late imperial era. The ledgers originally functioned as guides to salvation for twelfth-century Taoists and Buddhists, but Brokaw shows how the literati of turbulent sixteenth-century China began to use them as aids in the struggle for official status through civil service examinations. The author describes how the responses of some Confucian thinkers to the popularity of the ledgers not only refined the orthodox Neo-Confucian method of self-cultivation but also revealed the serious ambiguity of the classic Confucian understanding of the relationship between fate and human action.
Finally, she demonstrates that by the end of the seventeenth century the ledgers were used not so much to facilitate upward mobility as to promote social stability by prescribing standards that encouraged people to keep to their social places. Originally published in 1991. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
