He Xiu (128-189) was one of the important Confucian figures in the Later Han Dynasty. He wrote a book, entitled Chunqiu Gongyang Jiegu (Gongyang's Commentary on the Spring and Autumn Annals) and, based on this book, had made important contribution to the tradition of Gongyang Studies. This thesis is a textual interpretation which attempts to expound the textual intention of He Xiu's book through the following chapters....[ Read more ]

He Xiu (128-189) was one of the important Confucian figures in the Later Han Dynasty. He wrote a book, entitled Chunqiu Gongyang Jiegu (Gongyang's Commentary on the Spring and Autumn Annals) and, based on this book, had made important contribution to the tradition of Gongyang Studies. This thesis is a textual interpretation which attempts to expound the textual intention of He Xiu's book through the following chapters.

In the first chapter, I will examine the concept of intention and its relation to text and meaning, especially to the concept of intentional meaning. In so doing, I intend to prove the falsity of the proposition that all texts have no intentional meaning, as claimed by some scholars in literary theory. To ascertain some kind of intentional meaning in a text is a precondition of this thesis to explore the textual intention of He Xiu's book. In the second chapter, the methods of finding textual meaning will be introduced with reference to Leo Strauss's (1899-1973) insightful ideas on how to interpret the classics in Greek tradition. Moreover, the methodology of this thesis will be explained in this chapter. In chapter three, in order to interpret the textual meaning of Chunqiu Gongyang Jiegu correctly, I attempt to study the different editions of the book so that its best edition can be identified for the purpose of this thesis. Lastly, in chapter four, based on the fundamental studies in the previous chapters of this thesis, I will explore the textual meaning of Chunqiu Gongyang Jiegu, namely the intention of He Xiu's book of annotation. It is found that what is embedded in He Xiu's annotation is an intention to refute Jia Kui's allegation against Gongyang Studies. In this regard, various analytic skills provided by Leo Strauss and his disciples will be used here for analyzing the textual intention of He Xiu's annotation. Besides, based on the intentional meaning in the text, I will elaborate some features of the thought of Chunqiu Gongyang Jiegu. Since this thesis is the first research to provide a detailed and in-depth exegesis for the book and to use a Western methodology to deal with it, I believe that this thesis can make an unprecedented contribution to the research field of Gongyang Studies, especially the thought of He Xiu.