Preface to Volumes 85–86

Welcome to a double issue (volumes 85 and 86) of the Journal of Ming Studies. I hope that you and yours have managed to escape the clutches of COVID, and likely, like ourselves at Ming Studies, have begun to participate in in-person conferences while still finding the technology imposed on us (Zoom, Skype etc.) as quite fruitful in our continued scholarly endeavors. This volume contains three articles, an interview and our regular feature Ming News. Although not intended as thematic, this double issue brings together three papers on late imperial philosophy. Each paper brings with it an interest in the historical period of Ming philosophers, but also reaches across to a wider context of Chinese philosophy in general as well as interests in Western and contemporary thought. This volume indubitably grows out of the recent resurgence in late imperial Chinese philosophy, with one of the subjects, Li Zhi (李贄, Zhuowu卓吾, 1527– 1602), experiencing a love-fest ofWestern scholarship. A second philosopher, Wang Tingxiang (王廷相, 1474–1544) is the subject of the second paper, while the philosophical contentions over the Great Rites Controversy of the 1521–1527 at the start of the Jiajing reign (嘉靖, 1521–1566) make up the topic of the third paper. In each paper, though, we also see a stretching of the topic to get at what is both Ming and relevant today. Dr. Yiming Ha’s article “Public Discourse and Private Sentiment: Ritual Controversies, Ritual Authority, and Political Succession in Ming and Chosŏn” places in comparative framework two ritual crises, one in mid-Ming China, during the early years of the Jiajing reign and the other in Chosŏn, during the reign of King Injo (仁祖, 1623–1649). Dr. Ha discusses the comparative framework of the two debates – and though the Chosŏn was directly reliant on the Jiajing debate, it also witnessed a very different framing of the matter. Ritual authority was at the center of the conflict between the monarch and his opposition, the civil bureaucracy. In both cases, the ruler was able to rely on a contingent of the bureaucracy (both in and out of office) to support and indeed make his case. Dr. Kanghun Ahn’s article “Humanity may Triumph over Heaven: Wang Tingxiang’s Natural Philosophy in its Historical Context” posits a different context for its main question: Did Chinese philosophers understand climate as a larger question in their philosophical musings? His answer focuses to a great degree on what may be seen as unique work of Wang Tingxiang in grappling with natural phenomena. Dr. Ahn argues how Wang could be distinguished in his rejection of Ming Studies, 85–86, 1–3, May–October 2022