Ancient Chinese Philosophy

Use parallel passages and speaker context to interpret a selected Analects saying rather than treating it as an isolated maxim.

Differentiate major uses of ren 仁 in the Analects and defend a context-sensitive translation in a selected passage.

Explain how li 禮 transforms conduct and emotion in a selected Analects passage.

Analyze the relationship among filiality, family roles, and moral judgment in the Analects.

Distinguish the junzi 君子 from status-based nobility using textual evidence from the Analects.

Explain how learning, reflection, imitation, and correction interact in Confucian self-cultivation.

Evaluate the relationship between moral charisma, ritual, and coercion in the Analects’ model of government.

Write a concise commentary that resolves an interpretive ambiguity in a selected Analects passage.

Apply the Mohist “three standards” to evaluate a claim in a selected Mozi argument.

Reconstruct the Mozi’s argument for impartial concern, jian ai 兼愛, without assuming that it means equal emotional attachment.

Compare Mohist impartial concern with role-differentiated care in the Analects.

Evaluate how the Mohist doctrines of exalting the worthy, shangxian 尚賢, and conforming upward, shangtong 尚同, aim to produce political order.

Analyze the Mohist case against offensive warfare as an extension of ordinary moral judgment.

Explain how appeals to Heaven, spirits, and social consequences function in Mohist argumentation.

Evaluate whether two selected Mohist critiques of luxury—concerning frugality, funerals, or music—consistently apply the same consequential standard.

Interpret the relationship between dao 道 and de 德 in a selected Laozi chapter.

Analyze how a selected Laozi passage uses negation and paradox to challenge fixed conceptual distinctions.

Distinguish wuwei 無為 from literal inactivity using evidence from passages about action and government.

Explain how ziran 自然 and pu 樸 support the Laozi’s account of non-coercive order.

Trace the pattern of reversal in a selected Laozi argument about strength, weakness, gain, or loss.

Compare the Laozi’s political ideal with one Confucian or Mohist model using passage-level evidence.

Compare a received Laozi passage with a Guodian or Mawangdui parallel and assess the interpretive significance of a textual variant.

Write a close commentary on a Laozi chapter that integrates syntax, imagery, and philosophical argument.

Reconstruct the Mengzi’s argument that human nature is good from the “sprouts” of virtue.

Distinguish spontaneous moral feeling from completed virtue in the Mengzi’s model of cultivation.

Analyze the heart–mind, xin 心, as the site of moral judgment in a selected Mengzi passage.

Evaluate Mengzi’s use of an agricultural or physiological analogy to explain moral development.

Reconstruct the Mengzi–Gaozi disagreement over human nature and the source of righteousness.

Explain why the distinction between benefit, li 利, and righteousness, yi 義, matters to Mengzian political counsel.

Assess the relationship among humane government, material security, and popular legitimacy in the Mengzi.

Compare the Mengzi’s graded care with Mohist impartial concern using a clearly stated standard of comparison.

Distinguish claims that can safely be attributed to the Zhuangzi’s Inner Chapters from claims dependent on later strata.

Analyze how a selected Zhuangzi story destabilizes a speaker’s assumed perspective without collapsing into simple relativism.

Reconstruct one line of argument about language and disputation in the “Discussion on Making All Things Equal.”

Explain what a skill story such as Cook Ding suggests about knowledge, practice, and responsive action.

Differentiate “fasting the heart–mind” from ordinary concentration in its narrative context.

Interpret a selected passage about death or transformation without reducing it to a single doctrine.

Evaluate the Zhuangzi’s criticism of political service and deliberate moral reform.

Write a close commentary that explains how humor, dialogue, or narrative form performs a philosophical function in the Zhuangzi.

Distinguish names, objects, kinds, and standards in a selected passage from the Later Mohist Canons.

Reconstruct a compact inference from the Later Mohist Canons in premise-and-conclusion form.

Explain the philosophical force of Gongsun Long’s “white horse is not a horse” argument under more than one interpretation.

Analyze how a paradox attributed to Hui Shi exposes assumptions about space, time, identity, or difference.

Diagnose an equivocation or scope shift in a translated early Chinese argument by consulting key Classical Chinese terms.

Compare Mohist confidence in discriminating distinctions with Zhuangzian skepticism about fixed distinctions.

Write a concise commentary that reconstructs and evaluates a selected Later Mohist, Gongsun Long, or Hui Shi argument.

Reconstruct Xunzi’s argument that human nature is bad and distinguish nature, xing 性, from deliberate effort, wei 偽.

Compare Xunzi’s and Mengzi’s definitions of human nature before evaluating their disagreement.

Explain how ritual redirects desire and distributes goods in Xunzi’s account of social order.

Analyze the role of teachers, models, habituation, and accumulated practice in Xunzian self-cultivation.

Evaluate Xunzi’s naturalistic account of Heaven in relation to divination and human responsibility.

Explain how the “rectification of names” supports knowledge and government in Xunzi.

Assess Xunzi’s defense of music against the Mohist critique of elaborate cultural practices.

Apply Xunzi’s distinctions among nature, deliberate effort, ritual, and naming to diagnose a failure of order described in a selected passage.

Explain why “Legalism” is a later classificatory label rather than a unified self-declared school.

Analyze how Shang Yang’s system of public standards, rewards, and punishments aims to reshape conduct.

Evaluate Shang Yang’s argument that political institutions must change with historical conditions.

Explain Shen Buhai’s use of administrative technique, shu 術, and performance-and-title accountability, xingming 形名/刑名.

Analyze Shen Dao’s concept of positional power, shi 勢, independently of a ruler’s personal virtue.

Reconstruct how the Han Feizi combines law, administrative technique, and positional power.

Analyze how a selected Han Feizi persuasion narrative exposes the limits of virtue-based or impartialist counsel under autocratic power.

Compare the Han Feizi’s political adaptation of wuwei 無為 with the Laozi’s ideal of non-coercive rule.

Explain yin–yang and five-phase, wuxing 五行, correlations without treating them as static material substances.

Trace one correlative pattern across bodily, seasonal, ethical, and political domains in an early Chinese text.

Analyze the relationship among vital energy, qi 氣, heart–mind, and alignment in the Guanzi’s “Neiye.”

Compare the “Neiye” model of self-cultivation with one Confucian or Daoist model studied earlier.

Explain how the Lüshi Chunqiu selects and coordinates ideas associated with rival intellectual lineages.

Assess how a Huang-Lao text combines non-coercive rule with objective standards and administrative order.

Interpret a selected Mawangdui Huang-Lao passage using its political context and key Classical Chinese terms.

Evaluate the explanatory value and limits of “syncretism” as a description of late Warring States responses to political unification.

Assess how Qin unification and early Han political crises changed the institutional setting of philosophical activity.

Analyze how the Huainanzi integrates cosmology, self-cultivation, and rulership in a selected chapter.

Compare the Huainanzi’s use of wuwei with the Laozi’s use of the same term.

Reconstruct reasoning about resonance between Heaven and human government in a selected passage traditionally associated with Dong Zhongshu.

Explain how canon formation and state-sponsored learning changed the authority of texts associated with Confucius.

Evaluate the claim that the Han dynasty simply made “Confucianism” the state ideology.

Analyze how Sima Qian’s or his father’s classification of intellectual lineages shapes later histories of Chinese philosophy.

Use Wang Chong’s critique of one Han belief to distinguish evidential reasoning from correlative speculation.

Trace a change in the meaning or function of one key term across three pre-Qin texts using passage-level evidence.

Compare Confucian, Mohist, Daoist, and Legalist models of political order using a common analytical framework.

Compare Mengzian, Zhuangzian, and Xunzian accounts of cultivated agency without erasing differences in their vocabularies.

Evaluate how two early Chinese traditions draw the boundary between productive distinctions and distorting language.

Analyze how cosmological claims support an ethical or political conclusion in one Warring States and one Han text.

Assess how the Guodian Wuxing (“Five Conducts,” 五行) manuscript reshapes interpretation of a selected moral-cultivation concept in a received Confucian text.

Produce an annotated translation of a short Classical Chinese passage that explains consequential lexical and syntactic choices.

Construct and defend a concise comparative thesis about continuity and transformation from the pre-Qin period through the Han using primary-text evidence.