Thursday, September 11, 2008

Yang Xiong (author)

Yang Xiong was a Daoist, poet, and author from modern . His name written in Chinese is 揚雄, but it is frequently mistaken as 楊雄 in historical documents, for example the ''Sancai Tuhui''.

Yang is considered a materialist. He did not believe human nature was inherently good as Mencius had written, nor inherently bad as Xunzi had written, but came into existence as a mixture of both. His works include the divinatory ''Taixuan'' , the ''Fayan'' anthology, and the first dialect dictionary ''Fangyan''. He was a close associate of the official and philosopher Huan Tan , an Old Text realist who may have heavily influenced the works of Wang Chong .

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