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Discourses Weighed in the Balance, Volume 1
Discourses Weighed in the Balance (論衡)
Wang Chong's Lunheng is the most combative book of the Han: a lifelong sceptic takes on omens, ghosts, the deified sages, inflated histories and fashionable scholarship, testing every claim against evidence and common sense. This first volume gives chapters 1–42, on fate and encounters, nature and destiny, auspicious omens, exaggerations in the books and the claims of the diviners. This complete new English translation is published in two volumes; this is Volume 1 of 2, and the whole set is also available as a bundle. Each volume stands on its own, and the two together give all of Wang Chong's surviving chapters. Names are given in modern pinyin and key terms are rendered plainly rather than buried in jargon, so the arguments, stories and debates can be read straight through by anyone curious about Chinese thought.
