Early China/Ancient Greece

This pioneering book compares Chinese and Western thought to offer a bracing and unpredictable cross-cultural conversation. The work contributes to the emerging field of Sino-Hellenic studies, which links two great and influential cultures that, in fact, had virtually no contact during the ancient period. The patterns of thought and the cultural productions of early China and ancient Greece represent two significantly different responses to the myriad problems that human beings confront. Throughout this volume the comparisons between these cultures evince two critical ideas. First, that thinking is itself an inherently comparative activity. Through making comparisons, the familiar becomes strange, and the strange somewhat more familiar. Second, since we think through comparisons, we should think them all the way through. How valid and productive are the comparisons and contrasts made between particular works and different styles of thought that emerged from two different, although contemporaneous, cultural contexts?

At the University of Oregon, Steven Shankman is Distinguished Professor in the College of Arts and Sciences and Stephen W. Durrant is Professor of Chinese. They are coauthors of The Siren and the Sage: Knowledge and Wisdom in Ancient Greece and China. Shankman is also the author of In Search of the Classic and Durrant is also the author of The Cloudy Mirror: Tension and Conflict in the Writing of Sima Qian, published by SUNY Press.