The pursuit of harmony has always been a great concern of Chinese thinkers. In this process, especially prior to the Ming dynasty, a significant “borrowing” of their basic philosophical elements and their mutually syncretic metamorphosis was a common practice among three religious communities, particularly disseminated during times of crisis. The work of Wang Yangming proved to be an epitome of this philosophical “collaboration”, capable of producing new synthetic teachings that directly or indirectly linked two or more polarized teachings. He succeeded in modifying the existing Buddhist idea of inherited Buddha Nature to be now understood as an innate insight, while also promoting the practice of meditation, as a clear example of Chan and Daoist influence. Wang Yangming is probably best known for his emphasis on the simultaneity of the two functions – knowledge and action, viewed as a reinterpretation of non-Confucian ideas in a new Neo-Confucian framework.

今日以焦竑為主題的研究成果，皆承認他在明代學術史上的身份有兩種定位：泰州王門傳人、考據學者。但在現有的學術史論述中，這兩重身份恰好是互相衝突的。因此對焦竑學術的描述，多認為他是「斷裂的」學術性格，或者是身處於「尊德性」轉向「道問學」的學術過渡人物。而本文則試圖扭轉此種認知，以焦竑所繼承的心學傳統為根柢，重新架構其學術中「尊德性」與「道問學」的學術邏輯。 本文共分六章，首章為緒論、第六章為結論。正文部份共分四章：第二章透過考據學源起的數種說法進行分析，探討現今學界對王學的既定印象。第三章以焦竑與考據學的關係為核心，說明他學術行為的內在邏輯。第四章則說明焦竑學術行為背後的理論依據。第五章則補充說明「知識」與「道德」在焦竑思想體系中的定位和意義。

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The art of reading and its application to knowledge acquisition and innovation by elites have been largely neglected by historians of print culture and reading in late imperial China (1368-1911). Unlike most studies, which are concerned more with the implied reader and individual reading experience, the present study assumes that the actual reader and the social, cultural and epistemic dimensions of reading practices are the central issues of a history of reading in China. That is, while the art of reading was internalized by the individual, his learning and application of it had social, cultural and epistemic features. At a time when secular reading practices in Renaissance England were informed by Erasmian principles, Ming literati, regardless of their different philosophical stances, were being trained in an art of reading proposed by Zhu Xi (1130-1200), whose Neo-Confucian philosophy had been esteemed as orthodox since the fourteenth century. Transformations and challenges in interpreting and applying his art did not hinder its general reception among elite readers. Its common employment determined the practitioner’s epistemic frame and manner of knowledge innovation. My dissertation consists of five chapters bracketed with an introduction and conclusion. Chapter One discusses Zhu’s theory of reading and the implied pattern of acquiring and innovating knowledge, based on a careful reading of his writings and conversations. Chapter Two describes the transmission of Zhu’s theory from the thirteenth to the seventeenth centuries. During its transmission, Zhu’s art was reedited, rephrased, and even readapted by both government agencies and individual authors with different intentions and agendas. Chapter Three focuses on the reception of Zhu’s theory of reading by 1500 and argues that the moral end of reading eventually triumphed over the intellectual one in early Ming Confucian philosophy. Chapter Four explores the affinity of Ming philosophers of mind with Zhu’s theory in their reading concepts and practices from 1500 to the mid-seventeenth century. Despite their attempts to separate themselves intellectually from the Song tradition, Ming philosophers of mind followed Zhu’s rules for reading in their intellectual practices. Chapter Five outlines the reading habits and knowledge landscape based on a statistical survey of extant Ming imprints. Despite some deviations, the Ming reading habits and knowledge framework largely accorded with Zhu’s theory and its Ming adaptations. The continuity of reading habits from Zhu’s time to the seventeenth century, I conclude, inspires us to rethink the Ming apostasy from the Song tradition. The particularity of scholarly knowledge acquisition and innovation in Ming-Qing China by the eighteenth century was not invented by Ming-Qing scholars but anticipated by Zhu through his theory of reading. With respect to late imperial China, the history of reading, together with the history of knowledge, is yet to be fruitfully explored. With this dissertation, I hope to be able to make a contribution to the understanding of the East Asian orthodox habit of reading as represented by Zhu’s admirers. By placing my investigation in the context of the history of knowledge, I also hope to contribute to the understanding of the relationship of reading to the way that knowledge evolved in traditional China. Intellectual historians tended to consider the Ming Confucian tradition as having broken off from the Cheng-Zhu tradition, but at least in reading habits and practices Ming elite readers perpetuated Zhu’s theory of reading and the knowledge framework it implied.

This research project investigates Confucian thinker Dai Zhen (1724-1777) and Jewish thinker Emmanuel Levinas’s (1906-1995) philosophical discourses on desire from a comparative perspective. First, I look at Dai Zhen and Levinas individually each in their own philosophical contexts, while framing my readings with parallel structure that pivots on a hermeneutic strategy to examine their ideas of desire within the larger prospect of the human relation with transcendence. Then, my inquiry leads to a critical analysis of several interesting issues yielded in my interpretive readings of the two thinkers as regards transcendence and immanence and the self-other relationship. Methodologically, my study combines careful textual analysis, philosophical reflection, and historical sensitivity. We might want to say that there is in fact no correlative of the Levinasian desire in Dai Zhen’s philosophy. Dai Zhen’s notion of desire perhaps comes closer to Levinas’s concept of need. However, the disparity of their conceptual formulations does not keep us from discerning their shared ethical concern for the other, the weak, marginalized, and underprivileged group of society, which provides me the very ground for a dialogical comparison between the two thinkers. Henceforth, my writing is hinged on a comprehension of their conception of desire as an articulation of human striving for what is lying beyond themselves, as a redefinition of the being or essence of humankind in relation to the transcendent which in both philosophers’ ethical thinking is translated into a sympathetic understanding of and care for the other, particularly the stranger, the widow, the orphan, the young, the weak and the like. Through the comparative study of the two thinkers’ ideas of desire, I want to argue that “desire,” which is most readily directed to human egoism and instinctive propensity in both Confucian and Western philosophical traditions, can be at once the very driving force to open us to the other beyond ourselves and an actual moral creativity to produce ethical being out of material existence.

This research project investigates Confucian thinker Dai Zhen (1724-1777) and Jewish thinker Emmanuel Levinas’s (1906-1995) philosophical discourses on desire from a comparative perspective. First, I look at Dai Zhen and Levinas individually each in their own philosophical contexts, while framing my readings with parallel structure that pivots on a hermeneutic strategy to examine their ideas of desire within the larger prospect of the human relation with transcendence. Then, my inquiry leads to a critical analysis of several interesting issues yielded in my interpretive readings of the two thinkers as regards transcendence and immanence and the self-other relationship. Methodologically, my study combines careful textual analysis, philosophical reflection, and historical sensitivity. We might want to say that there is in fact no correlative of the Levinasian desire in Dai Zhen’s philosophy. Dai Zhen’s notion of desire perhaps comes closer to Levinas’s concept of need. However, the disparity of their conceptual formulations does not keep us from discerning their shared ethical concern for the other, the weak, marginalized, and underprivileged group of society, which provides me the very ground for a dialogical comparison between the two thinkers. Henceforth, my writing is hinged on a comprehension of their conception of desire as an articulation of human striving for what is lying beyond themselves, as a redefinition of the being or essence of humankind in relation to the transcendent which in both philosophers’ ethical thinking is translated into a sympathetic understanding of and care for the other, particularly the stranger, the widow, the orphan, the young, the weak and the like. Through the comparative study of the two thinkers’ ideas of desire, I want to argue that “desire,” which is most readily directed to human egoism and instinctive propensity in both Confucian and Western philosophical traditions, can be at once the very driving force to open us to the other beyond ourselves and an actual moral creativity to produce ethical being out of material existence.

Cette thèse se propose d’étudier un ensemble de romans portant sur l’histoire dynastique,composés entre les années 1630 et les années 1730. Nous lisons ces œuvres à partir de la notion de monde impérial, en désignant par ce terme les représentations du réel où l’institution régnante sert de point de repère, aussi bien pour s’orienter dans l’espace et dans le temps, que pour expliquer les mouvements d’ordre et de désordre qui affectent l’ensemble des vies. L’objet central de cette étude est de saisir ce qui vacille et se transforme dans les manières d’ordonner des mondes impériaux au sein des romans composés durant cette période.Pour ce faire, nous nous proposons de relire ces œuvres à partir d’une série de ruptures qui travaillent les usages ou les conceptualisations de notions clés du discours néo-confucéen :les deux couples guo 國 et tianxia天下 (monde et dynastie), su 俗 et minjian 民間(vulgaire et populaire), et les trois notions de yanyi 演義 (développement du sens/ histoire exemplaire), zhi 知 (l’étape ultime du discernement) et gong 公(sens public). Une telle approche nous permet de mettre en évidence des liens qui restaient invisible dans le discours critique entre les romans sur l’histoire dynastique et un ensemble d’évolutions sociales et intellectuelles qui ont lieu entre les années 1630 et les années 1730, et qui touchent à des objets aussi divers que l’organisation spatiale et ethnique de l’empire, les formes d’activisme social, ou les termes dans lesquels sont pensés les discours moraux, et historiographiques.Corpus principal : Écrits oubliés des Sui (Suishi yiwen隨史遺文，préface 1633) ;Deuxième collection du Lac de l’ouest (Xihu erji 西湖二集, années 1640) ;Second bord de l’eau (Hou Shuihu zhuan後水滸傳，fin des Ming, début des Qing) ;Histoire exemplaire et vulgarisée du bûcheron (Qiaoshi tongsu yanyi樵史通俗演義, début desQing) ; Suite au bord de l’eau (Shuihu houzhuan水滸後傳，préface 1664) ; Histoire exemplaire des Sui et des Tang (Sui Tang yanyi隋唐演義, préface 1695) ;Histoire non-officielle des immortelles (Nüxian waishi女仙外史, préface 1711) ; Récit complet des Tang (Shuo Tang quanzhuan 說唐全傳, années 1730) / This dissertation deals with a set of novels about dynastic history written between the 1630sand the 1730s. My point of departure is the following : A) I study the way these novels structure representations of the imperial world – that is,representations of space, time, and social order that are organized in reference to the imperialinstitution.B) I reinsert these representations of the imperial world within contemporary ru (儒Neo-confucian) discourses. I do so by focusing on the way five notions or set of notions, thatare both central to ru discourses and to these novel are conceptualized and used : the twinnotions of guo (國 “imperial institution” / “country”) and tianxia (天下 “the world”) ; su (俗“vulgar”) and minjian (民間 “popular”); the notions of yanyi (演義 “development ofmeaning”, “exemplary narrative”); gong (公, “public”) ; and zhi (知 “moral recognition”). In doing so, this dissertation highlights a web of connections that were previouslyinvisible between novelistic representations of the imperial world and a set of evolutions withinthe ru world that are contemporary to the writing of these novels.Main primary sources : Forgotten Tales of the Sui (Suishi yiwen 隨史遺文，preface 1633) ; Second West Lake Collection (Xihu erji 西湖二集, ca1640) ; Second Water Margins (Hou shuihu zhuan後水滸傳 late Ming- early Qing ) ; Exemplary and Popularized History of the Woodcutter (Qiaoshi tongsu yanyi樵史通俗演義,early Qing) ; A sequel to the Water Margins, (Shuihu houzhuan水滸後傳，preface 1664) ; Exemplary History of the Sui and Tang ( Sui Tang yanyi 隋唐演義, preface 1695) ; Non-Official History of the Female Immortals (Nüxian waishi女仙外史, preface 1711) ; Complete History of the Tang (Shuo Tang quanzhuan說唐全傳, ca 1730)

This study deals with the trend of male bodybuilding in Korea and investigates the motivations and aesthetic ideals of Korean male bodybuilders. The author of the study uses the few hitherto academic research works on the subject and tries to give an overview of the history of Korean bodybuilding. Besides, the author has conducted a digital survey in order to collect answers from Korean male bodybuilders about their motivations, aesthetic ideals, etc. The aesthetic ideals of the bodybuilders are then compared to the male aesthetic ideals of modern Korean society and also discussed in relation to the somatic beliefs of NeoConfucianism. The findings are thereafter analyzed in context of two theses of the cultural consequences of globalization, namely homogenization and hybridization. The study concludes that Korean bodybuilders are more concerned with the arduous process of sculpting their physiques rather than the look of them themselves. Although the research material on Korean bodybuilding is scarce and the responses to the conducted survey are small in terms of both numbers and scale, it may be suggested that Korean bodybuilding appears to be an instance of the hybridization thesis. Lastly, the study emphasizes the need for more extensive research on the subject in question. / Denna studie behandlar ämnet koreansk bodybuilding för män och undersöker dels vad som motiverar koreanska kroppsbyggare att utöva sin sport, dels vad deras estetiska ideal är. Studiens författare använder sig av den begränsade befintliga forskningen inom ämnet och försöker även ge en överblick över koreansk bodybuildings historia. Författaren har dessutom utfört en digital undersökning för att samla in svar från koreanska kroppsbyggare om deras drivkrafter, estetiska ideal, etc. Dessa ideal jämförs sedan med det moderna koreanska samhällets motsvarigheter och diskuteras även utifrån de somatiska föreställningarna inom neokonfucianismen. Studiens forskningsresultat analyseras sedan utifrån två teorier om globaliseringens kulturella konsekvenser, närmare bestämt homogenisering respektive hybridisering. Trots det knappa forskningsmaterialet kring koreansk bodybuilding är studiens slutsats att koreanska kroppsbyggare är mer måna om den mödosamma processen i att bygga sina kroppar, snarare än hur dessa ser ut i sig själva. Studien suggererar också att koreansk bodybuilding verkar vara ett exempel på hybridiseringsteorin. Slutligen betonar studien behovet av mer utförlig forskning kring ämnet i fråga.