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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 March 2015
1. Influential scholars include Pang Pu 
, Wei Qipeng , and Ikeda Tomohisa . For more recent works by these three scholars, see Pu, Pang, Zhubo Wuxing pian jiaozhu ji yanjiu (Taibei: Wanjuanlou), 2000Google Scholar; Wei Qipeng, jianbo Wuxing jianshi (Taibei: Wanjuanlou), 2000; and Tomohisa, Ikeda, “Kakuten Sobo chikukan ‘Gogyō’ yakuchū” and “Kakuten Sokan ‘Gogyō’ no kenkyū”, in Kakuten Sokan jukyō kenkyū , ed. Tomohisa, Ikeda (Tōkyō: Kyūko shoin, 2003), 183–230 & 451–80Google Scholar. For a Chinese translation of the latter article, see Guodian jian yu ruxueyanjiu , Zhongguo zhexue 21 (2000), 92–133Google Scholar, and for the translation by Wang Qifa of his book on the Mawangdui Wu xing manuscript, see Mawangdui Han mu boshu Wu xing yanjiu (Beijing: Xian-zhuang and Zhongguo shehui kexue, 2005)Google Scholar. Also important for the present study is the work of Yang Rubin , who studies the text extensively in his examination of Ruist conceptions of the body in his Rujia shentiguan (Taipei: Zhongyang yanjiuyuan Zhongguo wenzhe yanjiusuo, 1996)Google Scholar.
2. Riegel, Jeffrey, “Eros and Shijing Commentary,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 57.1 (1997), 143–77CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Csikszentmihalyi, Mark, “Fivefold Virtue: Reformulating Mencian Moral Psychology in Han Dynasty China,” Religion 28 (1998), 77–89Google Scholar; and Cook, Scott, “Consummate Artistry and Moral Virtuosity: the ‘Wu xing Essay and its Aesthetic Implications,” Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, and Reviews 22 (2000), 113-46Google Scholar. Most recently, Kenneth Holloway somehow “introduces” the text, claiming, with alarming incognizance, to make it “widely available to an English speaking audience for the first time;” see his “‘The Five Aspects of Conduct’ : Introduction and Translation,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, series 3, 15.2 (2005), 179-98CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
3. As evidence that statements attributed to Kongzi in the Lun yu were first part of a wide body of diverse sayings that would only retrospectively be linked with “the master,” Csikszentmihalyi cites unattributed versions of these statements found in Guodian “Yucong 3” and other texts (pp. 30–31). Attribution after the fact is certainly one explanation, but it is also possible that for the users of such texts the identification of these statements with Kongzi was so obvious that it went without saying.
4. See Xianqian, Wang (1842–1917), Xunzi jijie (1891), ed. Xiaohuan, Shen and Xingxian, Wang (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1988), 393-94Google Scholar (“Jie bi” ).
5. Precisely what aspects of this philosophical tradition remain coherent throughout, how much of that coherence can be traced back directly to either Kongzi himself or the teachings he transmitted, and how much of it was instead imposed through the reconstructions of later-day followers are all matters that remain open to debate. This vast subject of inquiry is obviously deserving of a much fuller treatment than we are able to give it here.
6. Csikszentmihalyi further suggests that the “Wu xing” as we have it may be an “expansion of an older text that simply treated the relationship between wisdom and sagacity,” accounting for two of the text's “major structural elements”: the “binary pairing” of “goodness” and “sagehood” and the “more complex distinctions between the four human virtues and the fifth perfect virtue of sagacity” (p. 65). The frequent pairing of zhi and sheng is indeed a puzzling aspect of the text, and Csikszentmihalyi's idea for an explanation of it is intriguing, although in the absence of additional evidence it must remain, as he admits, a matter for speculation.
7. The section numbering is based on Tomohisa, Ikeda “Kakuten Sobo chikukan ‘Gogyō’ yakuchū” , Kakuten Sokan no shisōshiteki kenkyū 1 (1999), 18–51Google Scholar. For a later version of this work, see n. 1.
8. The editors of Guodian Chu mu zhujian read qing , as do Pang Pu and Wei Qipeng; Ikeda sticks to jing See Guodian Chu mu zhujian , ed. bowuguan, Jingmen shi (Beijing: Wenwu, 1998), 149Google Scholar; Pang Pu, Zhubo Wuxing pian jiaozhu ji yanjiu, 34; Wei Qipeng, Jianbo Wuxing jianshi, 15; and Ikeda Tomohisa, “Kakuten Sobo chikukan ‘Gogyō’ yakuchū,” Kakuten sokan jukyō kenkyū, 141n5. The reading of qing as “effortlessness” stands partly on the strength of its appearance in the “Bu gou” chapter of the Xunzi: “Holding onto [sincerity] and [thus] attaining it, things will be effortless; effortless, he will carry it forth with singularity; if he carries it forth with singularity and does not abandon it, then he will cross over to assist [others]” , Wang Xianqian, Xunzi jijie, 48 (“Bu gou” ). For my own interpretation of this term, see Cook, “Consummate Artistry,” 122–23.
9. Xunzi jijie, 138 (“Ru xiao” ). Note that Qing-dynasty commentator Hao Yixing suspects the shai here is actually a graphic error for dun , “be devoted to.”
10. Csikszentmihalyi also suggests the “Wu xing”‘s emphasis on “self-cultivation as if ‘in solitude’” might have been another target for the Xunzi; if this is the case, one still needs to explain the presence of the notion of “attending to solitude” in the “Bu gou” chapter of that work.
11. Csikszentmihalyi does perhaps overreach somewhat when, after noting that “it is impossible to know if the term du means ‘in solitude’ or ‘unique’” in such texts as the Huainanzi (p. 175), he still claims that “they do establish that, at the very least, the vocabulary used first in the Wuxing was deployed in the Han Dynasty as part of a claim that the sage's sensory acuity was different in kind from that of ordinary people” (pp. 175–76). That the du of duwen or dujian might be closely connected to the shendu of the “Wu xing” and other Ru texts, and not function simply as the adverb “unique,” is a thought-provoking possibility and well worth consideration. Yet whether it is an established fact is another matter, especially since the former terms appear in a variety of such non-Ru texts as the Zhuangzi and the Guanzi.
12. Cook, “Consummate Artistry,” 127–29.
13. See Xun, Jiao (1703–1760), Mengzi zhengyi , ed. Wenzhuo, Shen (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1987), 672–75 (5B.1)Google Scholar.
14. Although Csikszentmihalyi does not accept ji da cheng as a musical term, he does similarly understand it (following Zhao Qi ) as “integrating the great achievements of past sages” (p. 182).
15. My interpretation partly follows that of Cheng Dachang ; see Jiao Xun, Mengzi zhengyi, 673. Note that Zhu Xi's earlier interpretation explains the phrase in terms of the supposed practice of commencing a musical performance with the sounding of a bronze bo bell and concluding it with the striking of a solitary chimestone.
16. Liu Xinfang was actually the first to suggest the interpretation of “resonance” in terms of sympathetic vibration, but for him such resonance is effected upon the sagacious ruler upon hearing the “bronze tones” of worthy men; see Xinfang, Liu, Jianbo Wu xing jiegu (Taibei: Yiwen, 2000)Google Scholar. Csikszentmihalyi, in effect, turns Liu's interpretation on its head, as describing instead the transformative effect of a ruler's virtue upon his subjects.
17. I should note that my use of brackets in my translation (around “instill” and “with”) seems to have led Csikszentmihalyi to misunderstand my reading of the phrase (Cook, “Consummate Artistry,” 128) as “not explicitly accounting] of the direct object zhi , translating the verb-object phrase zhen zhi as ‘resonance’” (p. 181n38). In fact, the zhi here is the “it” whose antecedent I take to be the “tone of bronze”; this the jade transitively “instills with resonance,” as if combining the different virtues of both instruments into one. This may be a less than ideal reading, but it does account for the zhi.
18. Csikszentmihalyi goes on to state that “The notion that tian sends down a transtemporal sage who is uniquely able to perceive and adapt the intentions of past sages would be a possible object of... criticism, and perhaps might have contributed to the antipathy of the Xunzi to the Wuxing and the Mengzi.” This explanation, however, does not take into account that the Xunzi espoused roughly the same historical view, that is, that “antiquity and today are of the same standard —although it may have differed from the other texts in its explanation of just how we are able to access the past.
19. Mengzi 6A.J, 6B.2, 2A.6; see Jiao Xun, Mengzi zhengyi, 763, 810, 235.
20. As for prior partial translations, in addition to the passages rendered in Rie- gel, “Eros and Shijing Commentary,” and Csikszentmihalyi, “Fivefold Virtue,” my “Consummate Artistry” contains more or less a full translation of the first ten sections; I have since completed a fully annotated translation, unavailable to Csikszentmihalyi at the time, of the entire text that will appear along with my translation of the rest of the Guodian corpus. Kenneth Holloway's ‘“The Five Aspects of Conduct”’ also contains a full translation, derived from his 2002 doctoral dissertation submitted to the University of Pennsylvania, albeit much more sparsely annotated.