Moral Diaries flourished in the late Ming and Early Ch'ing period, and a considerable number of examples are readily available in collections of literati writings. The emergence of this genre has important implications for our understanding of the intellectual history of the period. First, Confucian scholars produced a plethora of moral diaries inspired by the example of Yuan Huang's "Ledgers of Merit and Demerit". Second, moral diaries from this period reflect deep feelings of moral guilt. Third, apart from their use in individual programs of moral self-transformation, moral diaries also had a didactic function: to teach students how to act ethically. Many other dimensions of moral diaries are also explored.
Besides, I depict the intellectual background lies behind the rise of this genre and to trace how it influenced the course of intellectual history during the early Ch'ing.
moral diary, Yen-Li School
Citations are generated automatically from bibliographic data as a convenience, and may not be complete or accurate.
