Sima Tan

In this Chinese name, the family name is Sima.

Sima Tan
司馬談
Born	165 BCE Longmen, Han dynasty (now Hejin, Shanxi)
Died	110 BCE (aged 55) Luoyang, Han dynasty
Occupation(s)	Astrologist, astronomer, historian
Relatives	Sima Xi (father) Sima Qian (son)

Sima Tan (traditional Chinese: 司馬談; simplified Chinese: 司马谈; pinyin: Sīmǎ Tán; Wade–Giles: Ssu-ma T'an; c. 165–110 BCE) was a Chinese astrologist, astronomer, and historian during the Western Han dynasty. His work Records of the Grand Historian was completed by his son Sima Qian, who is considered the founder of Chinese historiography.

Education & career

Sima Tan studied astronomy with Tang Du, the I Ching under Yang He, and Daoism under Master Huang.

He was appointed to the office of Court Astronomer (Chinese: 太史令; pinyin: tài shǐ lìng) at age 25 in 140 BCE, a position which he held until his death. Although Sima Tan began writing the Records of the Grand Historian (Shiji), he died before it was finished; it was completed by his son, Sima Qian. The year of Sima Tan's death (110 BCE) was the year of the great imperial sacrifice fengshan (zh:封禅) by Emperor Han Wudi, for which the emperor appointed another person to the rank of fangshi, bypassing Sima, probably causing him much consternation.

Six schools

An essay by Sima Tan has survived within the Records of the Grand Historian. The essay is the last of the Shiji, called Yaozhi or Essential Points. It discusses the strengths and weakness of six kinds of governance.

• Confucianism (儒家 Rú jiā)
• Daoism (道家 Dào jiā)
• Legalism (法家 Fǎ jiā)
• Mohism (墨家 Mò jiā)
• School of Names (名家 Míng jiā)
• School of Naturalists (陰陽家/阴阳家 Yīnyáng jiā) (central figure Zou Yan)

Using the concept of 'Jia' or 'family', the essay invents the categories of Yin-Yang, Fajia, Mingjia and Daojia. Tan's descriptions of the Jia are all flawed, orbiting the 'empty' Daojia. Together with Mohism and Confucianism, he compares their purported strengths and weaknesses in promotion of what he dubs the Daojia, taking the essential points of the others.

Neither Tan nor Sima Qian name anyone under them. Imperial Archivists Liu Xiang (77–6BCE) and Liu Xin placed the figures, using them as categories in the imperial library a hundred years after Sima Qians death. Daojia comes to mean Daoism around the same time. They become categories of texts in the Book of Han. Fajia comes to mean something like Legalism, which contains Shang Yang and figures Sima Qian had described as Huang-Lao, as an early form of Daoism.

Although disconnected, as later used the Mingjia school of names would at least seem to represent an actual social category interacted with by the Mohists, earlier referred to by the Zhuangzi as debaters. Those later termed Daoists did not early know each other; the first part of the Zhuangzi doesn't demonstrate familiarity with the Laozi. All Han dynasty thought involves yin-yang thinking, even the military has it.

See also

• Daoism
• Sima Qian
• Shiji

References

• Creel, Herrlee Glessner (1970). What Is Taoism?: And Other Studies in Chinese Cultural History. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0-226-12047-8.
• Graham, A.C. (1989). The Disputers of the Tao. La Salle, IL: Open Court.
• Sima Qian (1993). Records of the Grand Historian of China – Qin Dynasty. The Research Centre for Translation. Translated by Watson, Burton (hbk ed.). Hong Kong, ZH; New York, NY: The Chinese University of Hong Kong; Columbia University Press. ISBN 0-231-08168-5. ISBN 0-231-08169-3 (pbk ed.)
• de Bary, W.T.; Bloom, I. (1999). Sources of Chinese Tradition. Vol. 1 (2nd ed.). New York, NY.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
• Smith, Kidder (2003). "Sima Tan and the Invention of Daoism, "Legalism," et cetera". The Journal of Asian Studies. 62 (1): 129–156. doi:10.2307/3096138. JSTOR 3096138.
• Goldin, Paul R. (2011). "Persistent Misconceptions about Chinese "Legalism"". Journal of Chinese Philosophy. 38 (1): 88–104.
• Jiang, Tao (2021). Origins of Moral-political Philosophy in Early China. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-760347-5.
• Fraser, Chris (2024). "School of Names". In Zalta, Edward N.; Nodelman, Uri (eds.). Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2024 ed.). Retrieved 31 July 2024.
• Hansen, Chad (2024). "Zhuangzi". In Zalta, Edward N.; Nodelman, Uri (eds.). Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy 3. Competing Interpretive Narratives (Summer 2024 ed.). Retrieved 19 February 2024.