Publisher's Synopsis
Based on the Legalist philosophy of power the Han dynasty accomplished its political and intellectual unification, forming the longest consummate academic ideological system in the world - Confucianism. During the Confucianist manipulation of the cultural material the sanctified historical texts became representations of power-lineage and philosophico-historiographical research of the stereotyped procedure. The book sets forth the composition, constitution and structure of the Han academic system through a hermeneutico-semiotic methodology. The tension between Confucian ethics and Han-Confucianist ideological morality is shown to entail a general model of the link of ethics and ideology in historical life. The Confucian thought and the Confucianist (ju) socio-cultural system is emphatically distinguished to reveal different cultural layers in Chinese historical society.
