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. In this essay within the larger work, Sima Tan describes six philosophical lineages or "schools" (家 jiā):

• 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)

Together with Mohism and Confucianism, Sima Tan compares their purported strengths and weaknesses in promotion of what he dubs the Daojia or Dao-school, which comes to mean Daoism a century after Sima Qian's death. Their descriptions of the schools are all flawed, orbiting the 'empty' dao-school. Despite a contrary statement by A.C. Graham, they do not 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. They become categories of texts in the Book of Han.

Using the concept of 'Jia' or 'family' in their Records of the Grand Historian, Sima Tan and Sima Qian invented the categories of Yin-Yang, Fajia, Mingjia and Daojia. 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. One reason those later termed Daoists didn't coin the term earlier would be because they didn't early know eachother. The first part of the Zhuangzi doesn't demonstrate familiarity with the Laozi. The writers of the Outer Zhuangzi established a connection between the Laozi text and the Zhuangzi text when they wrote conversations between Laozi and Confucius.

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.