Yang Xiong and the Pleasures of Reading and Classical Learning in China

by Michael Nylan

Yang Xiong (53 BC-AD 18), the Han philosophical master remarks at one point in his Exemplary Figures, "Books are as sexy as women." Modern readers may frown at a comparison they regard as less than apt. Yang was supremely aware, however, of longstanding traditions, ascribed both to the sages and to the Classics, contrasting the unusual strength of the basic drives for food and sex with the general weakness of the acquired inclinations toward moral behavior. To say that "books are as sexy as women" was to make bold to add to those traditions, adopting the manner of a sage; also to elevate the value of certain texts, at least, to the level morality itself, insofar as they represented acquired tastes leading to the most desirable aspects of civilized life.

158 pages, Hardcover

Published June 30, 2011

About the author

Michael Nylan is a professor of history at the University of California, Berkeley. Her work includes The Art of War and China’s Early Empires with Michael Loewe, Yang Xiong and the Pleasures of Reading and Classical Learning in China, The Five “Confucian” Classics, Lives of Confucius with Thomas A. Wilson, and several essays on feminism and Confucianism.