Feigned Madness, Ambivalence, and Doubt in Early Confucianism

Abstract

Chapter 3 focuses on the “negative” account of madness found in numerous early texts, most clearly associated with Confucians, that takes madness as the result of character flaw. This chapter focuses on the concept of yangkuang (feigned madness) as a strategy for avoiding responsibility, as well as the idea of legitimate madness as caused by key failures in self-cultivation, particularly regulation of emotions.