À vau-l'eau, à rebours ou l'ambivalence de la logiques triadique dans l'idéologie du Taipingjing

The affection of the Chinese for numerical categories has now become a cliché but the study of Chinese thought has mostly focused on binary (the Yin and Yang) and quinary (the Five agents) systems, while the notion of Trinity is generally considered to characterize the Western world. By way of contrast, the content of the Taiping jing, a source which reflects ideas deeply rooted in the worldview of Han times despite its problematic textual history, reveals a unique ideology based on a universal, triadic structure best exemplified by the omnipresent « Heaven-Earth-Man » pattern. But this ideology allows at the same time for two readings — a synthetic process of reversion to Unity in which Three/Man embodies the harmonious reuniting of the poles of binarity, in contradistinction to a ternary process of decline in which Three/Man perpetuates the drifting away from primordial perfection. A variable system of three correlated functions informs this cosmological ideology, which was to have a strong and lasting impact on subsequent Chinese thought.Espesset Grégoire. À vau-l'eau, à rebours ou l'ambivalence de la logiques triadique dans l'idéologie du Taipingjing. In: Cahiers d'Extrême-Asie, vol. 14, 2004. In Memoriam Isabelle Robinet (1932-2000). Pensée taoïste, Alchimie et cosmologie. pp. 61-94