Hoyt Tillman

Hunan University, Yuelu Academy, ZhuZhang Chair Visiting Professor

Arizona State University, School of International Letters and Cultures, Emeritus

Beijing University, Research Center for Ancient Chinese History, Adjunct

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Hoyt Cleveland Tillman earned a Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1976 in History & East Asian Languages and taught Chinese cultural history at Arizona State University from 1976 until he retired in 2019. In 2000, he was selected for the Humboldt-Forschungspreis (Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Senior Research Prize), after being nominated by the Institut für Ostasienkunde—Sinologie of the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, München (Munich), Germany. This was the first time this senior research prize was awarded in Sinology (Chinese Studies). Among his research affiliations in China are as a research affiliate at Peking (Beijing) University's Research Center for Ancient Chinese History (2004--) and Hunan University's Yuelu Academy (2019--). He has also been a guest professor at Beijing University 2003 and 2010, Renmin University of China (2011-2016), and elsewhere. His published books and articles center on the history of Confucianism and Chinese thinking, particularly from the early eleventh century through the fourteenth century. In contrast to traditional and most modern scholarship, he has uncovered greater diversity within Confucianism than others have realized. Others have tended to promote Zhu Xi (1130-1200) as the unique genius who revived Confucianism to the point that Zhu's version of the tradition and the classical Four Books became by 1241 the basis of education, the civil service examinations, and state orthodoxy until the early twentieth century. Tillman has shown how Zhu either borrowed key ideas from his friends or developed his ideas in competition with his rivals. Thus, studying his contemporaries is crucial to our understanding of his world of thought and how he increasingly narrowed the "Learning of the Way" Confucian "fellowship" into a school of thought committed to what he promoted as "pure Confucianism." For instance, Tillman's first book was the first to use an early thirteenth-century rare book with essays written by Chen Liang (1143-1194) that were omitted from all of the then extant editions. These essays not only documented Chen's evolution away from Zhu's more mainstream views, but also provided clear evidence that extant editions of Chen's writings had been "edited" to lessen his challenge to Zhu's positions on some issues. The incorporation of these essays from the rare book into new modern editions has enriched our understanding of Chen and the intellectual climate of the twelfth century. Tillman has also explored other issues, ranging from the relationship between culture and power in China's history, to the revival of Confucianism in China today.
Supervisors: Benjamin I. Schwartz and Ying-shih Yu
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Cultural Authority and Political Culture in China

Franz Steiner Verlag eBooks, Sep 11, 2012

This book combines two rather discrete studies. Christian Soffel's three chapters concern the Zho... more This book combines two rather discrete studies. Christian Soffel's three chapters concern the Zhongyong in the Song; Hoyt Tillman's three discuss the intellectual career of Hao Jing郝經 (1223-1275). Christian Soffel introduces some Song views of the authorship of the Zhongyong 中庸to makes the point that not all shared Zhu Xi's certainty about Zisi's authorship and implication that the work thus conveyed Confucius's ideas. Second, he takes up views of the concept of Daotong 道統in Southern Song. The two, the Zhongyong and Daotong, go together because Zhu Xi establishes the idea that there was a true transmission of the Way in the first lines of his preface to the Zhongyong. Depending on one's perspective, that preface is important because it is the most influential statement of Daotong as the name for the idea that there is one true line of Confucian thought or because it sets out the all-important Zhu Xi claim that human consciousness is fundamentally dualistic, drawing on bodily consciousness and an innate moral consciousness. I raise this because it gets at a methodological question for intellectual historians. The introduction states that "one goal of the present study is to understand the role of the Zhongyong during the Song dynasty…and then to use these results to gain additional perspective on the issue of cultural authority and the formation of "Confucian traditions" (p. 21). This more sociological way of looking at intellectual traditions is concerned with the dynamics of claiming authority. It reminds us that righteousness and wisdom alone do not guarantee that others will pay attention and asks that we look at how it came about that one person, Zhu Xi in this instance, was successful in establishing as leading figure in what once was a broader and more amorphous movement. This is an issue that has been of particular concern to Hoyt Tillman over the years in writing about what he has called the "Daoxue fellowship;" Soffel generally adopts that view. The other approach, most evident in Tu Weiming's Centrality and commonality : an essay on Chung-yung (Hawaii, 1976) focuses on the ideas in the text and interprets the text in the search of meaning. Zhu's famous preface is interesting because, on one hand, it constructs a Confucian tradition, an intellectual lineage, and makes a claim to exclusive authority and, on the other hand, makes the core Neo-Confucian claim that the mind, independently of culture and tradition, is endowed with the ability to access innate moral knowledge. Zhu's "Preface to the "Zhongyong jijie 中庸集解," translated here (p. 53) is all about lineage, but the

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