De (Chinese: 德; pinyin: dé; Wade-Giles: te) is a key concept in Chinese philosophy, usually translated "inherent character; inner power; integrity" in Daoism, "moral character; virtue; morality" in Confucianism and other contexts, and "quality; virtue" (guna) or "merit; virtuous deeds" (punya) in Chinese Buddhism. It has been suggested that Pinyin_method be merged into this article or section. ... Wade-Giles, sometimes abbreviated Wade, is a Romanization (phonetic notation and transliteration) system for the Chinese language based on Mandarin. ... Yin Yang symbol and Ba gua paved in a clearing outside of Nanning City, Guangxi province, China. ... For other uses of the words tao and dao, see Dao (disambiguation). ... Confucian temple in Jiading district, Shanghai. ... The Sanskrit word guna(derived from Tamil word gunam which means character or nature) () has the basic meaning of string or a single thread or strand of a cord or twine. In more abstract uses, it may mean a subdivision, species, kind, and generally quality. // In Classical literature (e. ... In the Hindu theory of Karma, Punya is merit that accumulates as a result of good deeds, acts or thoughts and that carries over to later in life or to a persons next birth. ... This article explores how Buddhism, a Indian origin, has affected and been affected by Chinese culture, politics, literature and philosophy. ...

The word

De is usually written with the Chinese character 德 in both Traditional Chinese and Simplified Chinese, but it has logographic variants of 徳 and 悳 or 惪. 漢字 / 汉字 Chinese character in Hànzì, Kanji, Hanja, Hán Tá»±. Red in Simplified Chinese. ... Traditional Chinese characters are one of two standard character sets of printed contemporary Chinese written language. ... Simplified Chinese characters (Simplified Chinese: 简体字; Traditional Chinese: 簡體字; pinyin: jiǎntǐzì; also called 简化字/簡化字, jiǎnhuàzì) are one of two standard character sets of printed contemporary Chinese written language. ...

Most Chinese characters are composed of a radical, which provides semantic information, and a phonetic, which hints at pronunciation. The earliest written forms of de 惪/德 "power; virtue" are bronzeware script and seal script characters from the Zhou Dynasty (see external link below). The former primary character de 惪/悳 combines the "heart; mind" radical 心 and a zhi 直 "straight; upright; erect" phonetic. (Two millennia ago, the Old Chinese pronunciations of zhi and de were *drjək 直 and *tək 德, as reconstructed by Li Fanggui.) The latter amplified character de 德 adds the "step; walk; locomotion" radical 彳, which abbreviates the "go; walk; travel; conduct; behavior" radical 行 (originally picturing a crossroad). Han Dynasty scribes created the simpler variant de 徳, without the stroke above "heart". In Japanese, 徳 is classified as a jōyō kanji for common usage and 德 as a jinmeiyō kanji for writing proper names. The left part of mā, a Chinese character meaning mother, is a radical that means woman A radical (from Latin radix, meaning root) is a basic identifiable component of every Chinese character. ... In general, semantics (from the Greek semantikos, or significant meaning, derived from sema, sign) is the study of meaning, in some sense of that term. ... Phonetic (pho-NET-ic) is a nationwide voicemail-to-text messaging service available for most digital mobile phones in which a subscriber is provided a custom voice mailbox for the purpose of receiving all incoming voice messages as actual transcribed text for reading via short messaging (also known as SMS... Look up pronunciation in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Bronzeware script (金文 pinyin jin wen or 鐘鼎文 pinyin zhong1 ding3 wen2) is a family of scripts found on Chinese bronzes such as zhong (bells) and ding (tripods), since bronze artifacts with Chinese characters span many centuries and they have been found in many areas of China. ... 《尋隱者不遇》—賈島 松下問童子 言師採藥去 隻在此山中 雲深不知處 Seeking the Master but not Meeting by Jia Dao Beneath a pine I asked a little child. ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ... The Seal script characters for harvest (later year) and person. ... Li Fanggui (李方桂, pinyin: Lǐ Fāngguì; Wade-Giles: Li Fang-Kuei, Fang-Kuei Li) (1902-1987), Chinese American linguist. ... The Han Dynasty (Traditional Chinese: ; Simplified Chinese: ; Hanyu Pinyin: ; Wade-Giles: Han Chau; 206 BC–AD 220) followed the Qin Dynasty and preceded the Three Kingdoms in China. ... Japanese writing Kanji Kana Hiragana Katakana Hentaigana Manyōgana Uses Furigana Okurigana Rōmaji The jōyō kanji (常用漢字) are the 1,945 kanji issued by the Japanese Ministry of Education on October 10, 1981. ... Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name. ...

The linguist Peter A. Boodberg investigated the semantics and etymology of de 德, which he called "perhaps the most significant word, next to tao 道, in ancient Chinese macro- and microcosmology."

The standard translation for it is "virtue," both in the sense of inherent quality and in that of moral excellence, but with the validity of the traditional rendering somewhat shaken by Arthur Waley's insistence on interpreting it as "power." Indeed, it is believed by many scholars that the term originated in the mytho-magical period of Chinese speculation when tê was conceived as a kind of mana-like potency inherent in substances, things, and human beings, a potency which, on the one hand, made them true to their essence, and on the other, made possible their influencing of other entities. It appears often as if it had been imagined as a kind of electric charge permeating the thing in question, waxing or waning in accordance with some mysterious law, and capable of being transmitted, in the case of living beings, from one generation to another. Contrary-minded students of ancient Chinese philosophy dispute this interpretation as rather narrow and possibly anachronistic, and point to the fact that tê had early acquired, at least in Confucian literature, ethical connotations close to our "virtue," that is, as moral, and only rarely amoral or immoral, efficacy. They find, therefore, no quarrel with rendering tê, almost invariably, as "virtue." Philologists are, however, troubled by the absence in the Chinese term of any connotations reminiscent of the Latin etymon vir, such as manliness and virility. They remind us that tê is free from any contamination with sexual associations and differs in that from its great counterpart, tao, the Way, which, in one or two expressions, such as jên tao 人道, "the way of men and women," is suggestive of sexual activity. Other recommended translation, such as "energy" and essential quality," seem also inadequate from the etymological point of view. (1979:32)

Boodberg (1979:33-4) undertook a "graphophonetic analysis" of de. Based on the phonetic element zhi 直 "upright; erect" and the radical 行 suggesting movement, he translates de as English arrect "set upright; direct upward" (from Latin ad- "to") or insititious "ingrafted; inserted" potency (from Latin insitio "to implant; to graft"). Interpreting the 心 "heart; mind" to connote "innerness", he takes the prefix from Latin indoles "innate quality; natural disposition" to further neologize indarrect. Boodberg concludes that the noun de is best translated enrective in the passive sense of power, or arrective in the active sense of influencing others. He says the Chinese understood de as potent but not coercive, and as arrective rather than corrective. Since early texts describe de 德 as an acquired quality, he proposes it is a paronym of de 得 "to acquire; to obtain", which is a common definition of de "power; virtue". Lastly, he notes a possible etymology of "see straight; looking straight at things; intuition" becuase early zhi 直 graphs depicted a straight line over an 目 "eye" (horizontally written 罒 in 德). A paronym or paronyme is a word that is related to another word and derives from the same root; a cognate word. ...

Daoist usages

De (德) is famous as the second word in the title Dao De Jing. The Tao Te Ching (道德經, Pinyin: Dào Dé Jīng, thus sometimes rendered in recent works as Dao De Jing; archaic pre-Wade-Giles rendering: Tao Teh Ching; roughly translated as The Book of the Way and its Virtue (see dedicated chapter below on translating the...

Confucianist usages

Confucius gives this explanation of de in the Analects: "He who exercises government by means of his virtue may be compared to the north polar star, which keeps its place and all the stars turn towards it." (2/1, tr. James Legge)[1] Confucius (Chinese: , transliterated Kong Fuzi or Kung-fu-tzu, lit. ... Analects (論語 Pinyin: Lúnyǔ), or Analects of Confucius, written in twenty chapters, is thought to be a composition of the late Spring and Autumn Period. ... Ezra Pounds annotations on his copy of James Legges translation of the Book of Poetry (Shih Ching), in the Sacred Books of the East. ...

References

• Boodberg, Peter, "The Semasiology of Some Primary Confucian Concepts," Philosophy East and West 2 (1953): 317-32, reprinted in Alvin P. Cohen, ed. Selected Works of Peter A. Boodberg. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979, 26-40.

External links

• Seal and bronze scripts for 德, Richard Sears
• "Te, Power of the Tao", Part 1, Part 2, Yakrider

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