Pao Ching-yen

Pao Ching-yen (Chinese: 鮑敬言) (Pinyin: Bào Jìngyán) was a Chinese, Taoist, libertarian philosopher[1] who lived somewhere between the late 200's AD and before 400 AD.[2][3]

Bào Jìngyán
鮑敬言
NationalityChinese
CitizenshipJin Empire
OccupationPhilosopher
Known forTaoism, proto-anarchism
Notable work
Neither Lord Nor Subject
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A successor of Laozi and Zhuang Zhou in the politically and socially-oriented strain of libertarian Taoism, Pao Ching-yen was, according to Etienne Balazs, "China’s first political anarchist." He extended the arguments in the Zhuangzi to deeply critique State authority and power, writing that "the kings, the oppressors, exploiters of all kinds, are as guilty as the criminals who have emerged from the masses..."[4]

Bao Jingyan was the author of the treatise "Neither Lord Nor Subject", preserved in the Waipian (part of the Baopuzi) of the Taoist Ge Hong. The latter has indeed worked to refute Bao's essay. Bao was the first in China to place utopia in the field of politics. Influenced by Zhuangzi's thought, he opposed despotic absolutism.[3] Given the obscurity of Bao Jingyan's person, Jean Levi hypothesized that he could have been the pen name of Ge Hong, who would thus pass subversive theses without taking too many risks, or at the very least that Ge felt a certain sympathy towards these theses.[5]

References
  1. Needham 1956, p. 434.
  2. Graham 2005, p. 1.
  3. Balazs 1968, p. 123-127.
  4. Rapp 2012, p. 38.
  5. Levi 2004, p. 28-29.

Bibliography
  • Balazs, Étienne (1968). La Bureaucratie céleste: Recherches sur l'économie et la société de la Chine traditionnelle. Bibliothèque des sciences humaines (in French). Paris: Gallimard. OCLC 462847510..
  • Levi, Jean (2004). Éloge de l'anarchie par deux excentriques chinois (in French). Paris: Éditions de l'encyclopédie des nuisances. p. 92. ISBN 2-910386-23-6. Éloge.
  • Rapp, John A. (2012). Daoism and Anarchism: Critiques of State Autonomy in Ancient and Modern China. A&C Black. ISBN 1441132236..
  • Graham, Robert (2005). "1. Bao Jingyan: Neither Lord Nor Subject (300 CE)". Anarchism. A Documentary History of Libertarian Ideas. Volume One: From Anarchy to Anarchism (300CE to 1939). Montreal: Black Rose Books. ISBN 1-55164-250-6.; Hardcover ISBN 1-55164-251-4.
  • Needham, Joseph (3 January 1956). Science and Civilisation in China: Volume 2, History of Scientific Thought. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-05800-1.
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