Concept

Shizi (book)

Overview

The Shizi is an eclectic Chinese classic written by Shi Jiao (尸佼; c. 390–330 BCE), and the earliest text from Chinese philosophical school of Zajia (雜家; "Syncretism"), which combined ideas from the Hundred Schools of Thought, including Confucianism, Daoism, Mohism, and Legalism. The Shizi text was written c. 330 BCE in twenty sections, and was well known from the Han dynasty (206 BCE – 220 CE) until the Song dynasty (960–1279) when all copies were lost.

Scholars during the Ming (1368–1644) and Qing (1644–1911) dynasties reconstructed the Shizi from quotations in numerous sources, yet only about 15 percent of the original text was recovered and now extant. Western sinology has largely ignored the Shizi and it was one of the last Chinese classics to be translated into English.

Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).

Possible passages

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But though the Tao as it comes from the mouth, seems insipid and has no flavour, though it seems not worth being looked at or listened to, the use of it is inexhaustible. 36. 1. When one is about to take an inspiration, he is sure to make a (previous) expiration; when he is going to weaken another, he will first strengthen him; when he is going to overthrow another, he will first have raised him up; when he is going…
Laozi, The Tao Teh King
States what Shizi is; the author is tied to Shizi in the knowledge graph.
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Then it is said that a people begins to philosophize, for this content has thought in common with Philosophy. At such a time we find deliverances about all the common events of Nature, as we also find intellectual maxims, moral sentences, general principles respecting morality, the will, duty, and the like, and those who expressed them have been called wise men or philosophers. Thus in the beginnings of Greek…
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Hegel's Lectures on the History of Philosophy
States what Shizi is.
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As is well known, it consists of a number of syllabic sounds which are pronounced singly or doubled in combination. One of the chief dialects has about four hundred of these sounds, and since the vocabulary of this dialect is estimated at somewhere about four thousand words it is evident that every sound has an average of ten different meanings—some fewer, but some all the more. For this reason there are a whole…
Sigmund Freud, Introductory lectures on psycho-analysis
Close in meaning to Shizi; the term itself is not named.
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Related ideas

Place in the tradition

Part of Hundred Schools of Thought.

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