Tang Dynasty Daoist Philosophy: Cheng Xuanying’s "Expository Commentary to the Daode jing" and philosophical discourse among the three teachings.

• Applicant: Dr. Friederike Assandri
• Subject Area: Asian Studies ; History of Philosophy
• Term: since 2020
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 431303814

The project will conduct a study of early Tang Daoist philosophy based on the "Expository Commentary to the Daode jing" 道德經義疏 by Cheng Xuanying 成玄英 (ca. 601/604- ca. 690). Cheng Xuanying was an ordained Daoist monk and one of the most eminent representatives of Daoist Twofold Mystery philosophy (chongxuan xue 重玄學). An outstanding systematic thinker, he was invited by the emperor to the capital Chang’an in 631. His "Expository Commentary to the Daode jing" can be counted among the fullest expressions of Tang Daoist philosophy. The "Expository Commentary to the Daode jing" can be seen as an important link between the Xuanxue philosophy of the 3rd and 4th centuries and the Neo-Confucian philosophy of the 10th-13th centuries. Furthermore it is of outstanding significance for our understanding of the integration of Buddhist thought into mainstream Chinese philosophy.The study will focus specifically on the contextualization of the Expository Commentary in intertextual relations with Daoist, Buddhist and Confucian commentarial literature written in Sui and early Tang dynasty Chang’an. The criteria for including texts in this study is thus not an assumed affiliation to a school of thought or a religion, but time and place of origin of the texts. The intertextual relations of the Expository Commentary with diverse contemporary commentary literature allow us to contextualize the Expository Commentary in philosophical discourses, in which representatives of all three teachings, Daoism, Buddhism, and Confucianism, participated. The study will be innovative in that it combines hermeneutic close reading strategies with full-text-searches in large text corpora. This approach allows to pay special attention to the synchronic interaction of the three teachings, in addition to the diachronic contextualization of a text in one system of thought (here Daoism). The project aims to present Daoist philosophy of the Tang, which so far has been neglected in presentations of the history of Chinese philosophy. At the same time it also will show the complex interactions and shared philosophical discourses of the three coexisting teachings. These are of great relevance for our understanding of the development of Chinese philosophy after the Tang in the context of the coexistence of the three teachings.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants