Language, ontology, and political philosophy in China : Wang Bi's scholarly exploration of the dark (xuanxue) / Rudolf G. Wagner.

Includes bibliographical references (p. 243-254) and index.

Discerning the That-by-Which: The Language of the Laozi and the Lunyu -- A Plea for a History of Understanding -- The Consensus: The Ineffability of the Sage's Thinking -- The Radical Position -- Developing Reading Strategies -- The Discussion about Language and the Thinking of the Sage in Wei -- The Structural Contradiction of the Confucius Texts: Talking about That-Which-Is-Dark -- The Logical Deduction of the Unnameability of That-by-Which the Ten Thousand Kinds of Entities Are -- The Deduction of the Possibility of Limited but Sufficiently Grounded Propositions about That-by-Which the Ten Thousand Kinds of Entities Are -- Traces of the That-by-Which Found by the Confucius Texts within the Structures of Discernible Entities: Antinomy and Negation -- Grasping Aspects of the That-by-Which -- An Explanation of the Images [Xiang of the Zhouyi] -- Wang Bi's Ontology -- The Framework of Analysis -- Wang Bi's Inquiry into the That-by-Which -- Wang Bi's Approach -- The Binary Structural Organization of Entities -- The Order of the Ten Thousand Kinds of Entities -- The One and the Many -- The Dao -- The Dark -- Wang Bi's Political Philosophy -- The Actual and Perpetual Crisis of Human Society -- The Causes of the Crisis -- Operating the Return: The Sage -- Sagely Politics as Public Performance -- Wang Bi's Philosophy: An Ideology?