Date of Award
1972
Degree Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Arts (MA)
Department
Religion
Supervisor
Jan Yun-hua
Language
English
Abstract
The introduction of this thesis gives the cultural background of the thousand-year old confrontation between a well sinicized India-born religion, Chinese Buddhism, and the
reviving Chinese orthodoxy of the Sung period, Neo-Confucianism. Early Neo-Confucianist philosophers, namely Ch'eng Hao, Ch'eng I and Chu Hsi, attacked Buddhism on four main groilllds: historical and textual formulations, cosmology, metaphysics, and ethics -- both social and personal. The point of the thesis is to give a critical account and a tentative appraisal of their criticism, by examining both their rejection and their assimilations of Buddhist views, and in so doing to propose an answer to why Neo-Confucianism finally succeeded in permanently defeating the still powerful Chinese Buddhism of the time.
Recommended Citation
Langlais, Jacques-M., "Early Neo-Confucian View of Chinese Buddhism" (1972). Open Access Dissertations and Theses. Paper 4423.
http://digitalcommons.mcmaster.ca/opendissertations/4423
McMaster University Library