Heaven, Earth, and Man in the Book of Changes - Softcover

Wilhelm, Hellmut

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0295956925 ISBN 13: 9780295956923

Publisher: University of Washington Press, 1979

Synopsis

The Book of Changes [I Ching or Chou I] was the first of the Five Confucian Classics and served as the wellspring of both Confucian and Taoist thought. Following in the tradition of his father, Richard Wilhelm, who made the best known and most respected translation of the I Ching, Hellmut Wilhelm came to be regarded as a preeminent authority on the Book of Changes. In these seven lectures, he carried forward his inquiry into its significance, both as a manual of divination and as a work of philosophy.

About this title

Review:

Hellmut Wilhelm, son of the great I Ching translator Richard, inherited a love and fascination for this Chinese text. In Heaven, Earth, and Man in the Book of Changes, Wilhelm the younger brings together seven lectures targeted to nonspecialist audiences. Each lecture centers on the I Ching, developing a theme, and then marching off into philosophy, poetry, and history. A particularly satisfying example is lecture five, "The Interaction of Heaven, Earth, and Man." In this piece, Wilhelm examines the work of an intellectual named Yang Hsiung, who in his early years was a poet but later abandoned poetry for philosophy. Yang's major work is an imitation of the I Ching, in which he uses graphs of four lines instead of six, each of which can be divided twice, for a total of 81 possible arrangements. The work is an expression of great humanism, which Wilhelm outlines in order to segue into the humanism of the I Ching. A rather demanding study of the I Ching, Heaven, Earth, and Man in the Book of Changes is rewarding for its forays into areas rarely traversed with such range and intellectual acumen. --Brian Bruya

About the Author:

Hellmut Wilhelm (1905-1990) was for many years professor of Chinese literature and history at the University of Washington.

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Washington Press
• Publication date: 1979
• ISBN 10: 0295956925
• ISBN 13: 9780295956923
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 248