Talk:Doctrine of the Mean

China High‑importance

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Philosophy: Ethics / Social and political / Eastern / Ancient High‑importance

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Untitled[edit]

I'm not sure the text I added here has no copyrigth issues. It taken from http://www.chinaknowledge.de/index.html [1] and on about page, I found those texts: We are not commercial, all our sites are free visible and copyable because you have the technical possibilities to do it. and We are content if you print our pages and load our pictures down (most of them are scanned from Chinese books who have no copyright). You can use them for your own studies and your own education as long as you do not have to pay for it... Please tell me if it's ok before I import more of this excellent website. gbog 18:11, 10 Jan 2004 (UTC)

IMO it's better to contact the webmaster of the site to get a recognization. After all the contributions to Chinese studies, IMO he would like to share the information and get to know the Wikipedia. 大将军, 都督中外诸军事 (talk) 08:23, 3 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Let's see, do we have any articles yet at Zhōngyōng, Zhong yong, Zhongyong? - 24 december 2005

A Muller essay to mull thru & iterate this article with![edit]

[2]

B9 hummingbird hovering^{(talk • contribs)} 06:46, 17 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Cleanup[edit]

I tried to tighten this article up somewhat since it provides a lot of redundant background information that can be references in other articles. Also, surprisingly, the article had no mention of the term in the Analects, so I added the origin of the term for clarification (quotation from the Analects as well), and broke the intro section into smaller, clearer sections for easier reading. Not sure if this is enough, but it's a start. Thanks! --Ph0kin (talk) 14:00, 14 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Needs a clear definition[edit]

This is my first time doing something like this, so I hope I don't commit any faux pas. I don't know enough about this term to add to the article, but I was reading the article to learn about the term, which brings me to my point.

This article seems to simply say "we don't know what this concept means, but here are a lot of undefined terms and some notes on the history of the text and its interpretation." Generally, I would think the introductory statements on a topic ought to point towards at least some kind of definition of the term, but this seems lacking here. Though the term quoted from the Doctrine of the Mean is "never expand[ed] on," is their a commonly accepted definition of the term and if so what is it? The "Alternate translations" and the "Interpretation" sections likewise simply list terms without an attempt to define them. The closest thing to a definition is in the "Interpretation" section where it says "the goal of the mean is to maintain balance and harmony from directing the mind to a state of constant equilibrium," and the idea of the mean as an "unswerving pivot," both of which are helpful. However, the first simply states what the mean's goal is not what its meaning is, and the later is a nice mental image, but is still not a definition. How these ideas directly relate to a definition of the term seems necessary.

How closely parallel is the Doctrine of the Mean to the philosophical concept of the Golden mean? Is the Doctrine of the Mean also a balance of extremes, or a balance between something else? Does it have solid ethical foundations, or is it a relative concept which can be used to justify the preference of a moment? Can these questions be answered or is it too vaguely understood to have a clear definition? If so, is this the consensus? If so, why has the term survived so long without any objective meaning?

Headgrinder (talk) 17:10, 7 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

In Chinese Society[edit]

This section has no citations. Additionally, the author referred to "Neo-Confucians," which existed in the Song and Ming dynasty, not recently. I'm pretty sure he meant to say New Confucians, which actually is a recent group. I took the liberty of fixing it. Lucanio (talk) 07:20, 16 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Gender[edit]

The article refers to he/she. Is that consistent with the teachings? Are men and women singled out?--Nowa (talk) 11:01, 23 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]