New Book: Spaar, Immanuel. Ethical Living Through Conversation: Luo Rufang’s (1515–1588) Discourse Records (yulu)

Immanuel Spaar's monograph, based on a PhD dissertation completed between 2017 and 2024 under the supervision of Prof. Roland Altenburger, offers a discussion of the philosophical discoursing popularized by Wang Yangming and his followers. It introduces the philosopher and teacher Luo Rufang, who pursued Neo-Confucian philosophy as an ongoing conversation with followers and changing audiences. The first four chapters discuss the literary form of Luo Rufang’s textualized conversations, his discourse records (yulu), and show how lecturing unfolded after the late Wang Yangming’s efforts in consolidating a form of discussion and practice for moral cultivation (jianghui). In the next four chapters, select passages of Luo’s yulu that grew out of Luo’s lecturing practice convey the kind of ethical living embraced by Ming Neo-Confucians. The book ends with a chapter on editions of Luo’s discourses by later followers and a conclusion. The book is interesting for scholars of Ming intellectual history and philosophy, but also for those interested in more encompassing forms of education aimed at local audiences like government students and commoners, and for scholars testing assumptions about orality and written discourse.

The book is freely available via open acces.

Spaar, Immanuel. Ethical Living Through Conversation: Luo Rufang’s (1515–1588) Discourse Records (yulu). Würzburg: Würzburg University Press, 2025. https://doi.org/10.25972/WUP-978-3-95826-269-0

The monograph marks also the first entry in the new Würzburg Studies on Premodern China book series.