Lectures on the I Ching

by Richard Wilhelm

Book, 1979

Description

Wilhelm frequently wrote and lectured on the Book of Changes, supplying guidelines to its ideas and ways of thinking. Collected here are four lectures he gave between 1926 and 1929. The lectures are significant not only for what they reveal about Chinese tradition and culture, but also for their reflections of the scholarly and cultural milieu prevalent in Germany during that time.Originally published in 1979.The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.… (more)

Library's review

Richard Wilhem's German translation of the I Ching, later translated into English by Cary Baynes (Princeton, Bolliingen Series XIX), is unquestionably the most widely used edition of this work. As the West's foremost translator of this difficult and elusive text, Wilhelm frequently wrote and

lectured on the Book of Changes, supplying guidelines to its ideas and ways of thinking. Collected here are four lectures he gave between 1926 and 1929. The lectures are significant not only for what they reveal about Chinese tradition and culture, but also for their reflections of the scholarly and cultural mileau prevalent in Germany during that time.

Wilhelm's interest in psychology, particularly Jungian psychology, enriched his appreciation of the I Ching as relevant to the lives of people in the contemporary world. He emphasized that the book's philosophy penetrates from the conscious life of the individual to the unconscious life of humankind's collective existence; that its concepts are neither fixed nor static, but dynamic and subject to change; and that the elements of chance holds an importent place in its perception of reality. It is his last point that prompted Jung to claim that the basic principle of the Book of Changes is what he termed 'synchronicity.'

As Irene Eber explains in her introduction, Wilhelm came to see the I Ching not as merely an ancient and venerable book but as a living tradition that was as important to the West as it was to China. While adressed to the philosophy of the Book of Changes, these essays provide the reader with a broad outline of Richard Wilhelm's own thinking about and understanding of this classic work.

Irene Eber is Senior Lecturer in Chinese History at the Institute of Asian and Aftrican Studies of The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Contents

Translator's preface
Introduction by Irene Eber
1 Opposition and fellowship
The circle of events
The eight basic trigrams of the Book of Changes
From opposition to fellowship
2 The spirit of art according to the Book of Changes
Song and image endowed with form
The spirit of music
The spirit of the art of living
3 Constancy in change
Patience
Shaping
Depersonalization
4 Death and renewal
I
II
Notes
Index

Show Less