EASC Colloquium: Spontaneous Arising and an Ethics of Creative Change in the Early Daoist Text, Heng xian

The Indiana University East Asian Studies Center presents a talk by Professor Erica Brindley examining a newly excavated bamboo text called the Heng xian in terms of its views on creative change.

This talk will examine a relatively short, newly excavated bamboo text called the Heng xian in terms of its views on creative change. Erica Brindley will show that, rather than focus on wu-wei (effortless action) per se, the author presents an account of the creation of the entire cosmos, which lays the foundation for understanding the fundamental process of creativity intrinsic in the cosmos: that of “spontaneous arising (zi zuo 自作).” He then uses his cosmological account of spontaneous arising to serve as the basis for an ethics of creative change, applicable to the human world of politics and individual action, thought, naming, and belief. After outlining the meaning and importance of creative change in the early cosmos, Dr. Brindley will show how the author’s version of spontaneous arising serves as a positive formulation of wu-wei in the human world. And she will show how this particular, positive manner of articulating a Daoist ideal of action is philosophically subtle, insofar as it presupposes a certain ever-changing concept of the self in space and time.

Erica Brindley is Professor of Asian Studies and History and Director of Graduate Studies (Asian Studies) at The Pennsylvania State University. She is an intellectual and cultural historian of early China and the author of three monographs on ancient Chinese thought and intellectual history. She has written many articles on a wide variety of themes, including music, the self, identity and ethnicity, creativity, moral psychology, and cross-cultural interactions and impacts. She serves on the Board of Early China and is a member of the Editorial Collective for the journal, Verge.