Chinese History and Culture: Seventeenth Century Through Twentieth Century, Volume 2 9780231542005

Table of contents :
Contents
Author’s Preface
Editorial Note
List of Abbreviations
Chronology of Dynasties
1. Some Preliminary Observations on the Rise of Qing Confucian Intellectualism
2. Dai Zhen and the Zhu Xi Tradition
3. Dai Zhen’s Choice Between Philosophy and Philology
4. Zhang Xuecheng Versus Dai Zhen
5. Qing Confucianism
6. The Two Worlds of Honglou meng (Dream of the Red Chamber)
7. Sun Yat- sen’s Doctrine and Traditional Chinese Culture
8. The Radicalization of China in the Twentieth Century
9. Neither Renaissance nor Enlightenment
10. Modernization Versus Fetishism of Revolution in Twentieth- Century China
11. The Idea of Democracy and the Twilight of the Elite Culture in Modern China
12. China’s New Wave of Nationalism
13. Democracy, Human Rights, and Confucian Culture
14. Changing Conceptions of National History in Twentieth- Century China
15. Reflections on Chinese Historical Thinking
16. Modern Chronological Biography and the Conception of Historical Scholarship
17. The Study of Chinese History
18. Confucianism and China’s Encounter with the West in Historical Perspective
19. Clio’s New Cultural Turn and the Rediscovery of Tradition in Asia
Acknowledgments
Appendix
Index

Citation preview

Chinese History and Culture

volu m e 2

masters of chinese studies

Chinese History and Culture ❖

volu m e 2 s e v en t een t h cen t ury through t w en t i et h century

Ying-shih Yü With the editorial assistance of Josephine Chiu-Duke and Michael S. Duke

columbia university press new york

Columbia University Press wishes to express its appreciation for assistance given by the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange and Council for Cultural Affairs in the publication of this book. Columbia University Press Publishers Since 1893 New York

Chichester, West Sussex cup.columbia.edu

Copyright © 2016 Columbia University Press All rights reserved Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Yü, Ying-shih, author. Title: Chinese history and culture : seventeenth century through twentieth century / Ying-shih Yü ; with the editorial assistance of Josephine Chiu-Duke and Michael S. Duke. Description: New York : Columbia University Press, 2016. | Series: Masters of Chinese studies | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2015040772 (print) | LCCN 2015049874 (ebook) | ISBN 9780231178587 (vol. 1 : cloth : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780231542012 (electronic) | ISBN 9780231178600 (vol. 2 : cloth : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780231542005 (electronic : vol. 2) Subjects: LCSH: China—History. | China— Civilization. Classification: LCC DS736 .Y867 2016 (print) | LCC DS736 (ebook) | DDC 951— dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2015040772

Columbia University Press books are printed on permanent and durable acid-free paper. Printed in the United States of Amer ica c

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c ov er de sign: c h a ng ja e l ee

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Dedicated to Monica Shu-ping Chen Yü

c ont e nt s

Author’s Preface xi Editorial Note xiii List of Abbreviations xxiii Chronology of Dynasties xxv

1. Some Preliminary Observations on the Rise of Qing Confucian Intellectualism

1 2. Dai Zhen and the Zhu Xi Tradition

40 3. Dai Zhen’s Choice Between Philosophy and Philology

57 4. Zhang Xuecheng Versus Dai Zhen: A Study in Intellectual Challenge and Response in Eighteenth- Century China

85

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c on t e n t s

5. Qing Confucianism

113 6. The Two Worlds of Honglou meng (Dream of the Red Chamber)

134 7. Sun Yat-sen’s Doctrine and Traditional Chinese Culture

152 8. The Radicalization of China in the Twentieth Century

178 9. Neither Renaissance nor Enlightenment: A Historian’s Reflections on the May Fourth Movement

198 10. Modernization Versus Fetishism of Revolution in Twentieth- Century China

219 11. The Idea of Democracy and the Twilight of the Elite Culture in Modern China

234 12. China’s New Wave of Nationalism

252 13. Democracy, Human Rights, and Confucian Culture

260 14. Changing Conceptions of National History in Twentieth- Century China

275 15. Reflections on Chinese Historical Thinking

294 16. Modern Chronological Biography and the Conception of Historical Scholarship

317 17. The Study of Chinese History: Retrospect and Prospect

329

c ont ent s

18. Confucianism and China’s Encounter with the West in Historical Perspective

351 19. Clio’s New Cultural Turn and the Rediscovery of Tradition in Asia

368 Acknowledgments 385 Appendix: Address of Professor Yü Ying- shih on the Occasion of Receiving the John W. Kluge Prize at the Library of Congress and Acceptance Speech on the Occasion of Receiving the Tang Prize for Sinology 387 Index 393

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ollected in these two volumes are essays published during the past five decades, on various aspects of Chinese cultural and intellectual traditions and their modern transformations. Written on different occasions and in different times, they are scattered in a great variety of publications, some obscure and out of print. However, since all of them possess, to a greater or lesser degree, a unity of theme regarding the Chinese tradition in its historical changes, I consider it desirable to make them accessible to the general reading public by way of reprinting in a collected form. It is my extraordinary fortune that two of my highly esteemed colleagues, Professors Josephine Chiu-Duke and Michael S. Duke, agreed to serve as editors of my two volumes. They have edited each and every one of my essays with meticulous and diligent care, resulting in the elimination of a great deal of imperfections in the original versions. I am particularly grateful to both of them for providing, in the “Editorial Note,” a lucid account of my views discussed in these essays. It is also remarkable that instead of taking my views in the English essays as a self- contained category, they have made every effort to understand them in the context of my published oeuvre as a whole and specifically emphasized their interrelatedness to my Chinese writings. In this connection, a word may be said about my bilingual historical writings. Generally speaking, since the 1970s, it has been an established practice on my part to write book-length monographic studies in Chinese and present

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these findings in a more concise format in English as articles in journals, periodicals, or symposia. The difference is more than between a longer and a shorter version, however; it also has something to do with two different ways of historical representation. Full documentation is often emphasized in Chinese historical writings—traditional and modern—as a positive feature. As a result, direct quotation of original sources has been established as a common historical method. On the other hand, I deeply appreciate the Western style of argumentation in historical studies that, more often than not, refrains from extensive quotation of sources. Thus, in writing bilingually, I often secretly wished that my two versions might somehow strengthen and supplement, as well as complement, each other. I wish to take this opportunity to express my deep gratitude to Professor David Der-wei Wang for his kindness and, indeed, patience in including these two volumes of mine in a series of books he has specifically designed for Columbia University Press. I also wish to thank all of the various presses for generously granting their respective permissions to reprint my essays, Mr. Jeff S. Heller of Princeton’s East Asian Studies Department for conveying materials back and forth to the editors, and Ms. Su Hue Kim for her years of preparing my many drafts into typed form. I dedicate these two volumes to my wife, Monica Shu-ping Chen Yü, whose abiding love and support have sustained me throughout my career. Ying-shih Yü September 2, 2015

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rofessor Yü Ying-shih is a leading scholar in the field of Chinese studies. He was awarded the John W. Kluge Prize in 2006 for achievement in the Study of Humanity, and in September 2014, he also received the first Tang Prize international award in Sinology. As an eminent historian and a conscientious intellectual, Professor Yü has dedicated more than sixty years of his life to the study of Chinese history, thought, politics, and culture,1 crossing “many disciplines, time periods and issues, examining in a profound way major questions and deeper truths about human nature.”2 Through this comprehensive and integrative lifetime study, Professor Yü has published some thirty books, forty-one monographs, and more than five hundred articles and essays.3 At the same time, he has redefined the Chinese intellectual and cultural tradition, excavated the meaning of and instilled new life into that tradition, and, above all, has persistently put his intellectual convictions into practice without worrying about acting “against the current.” Such actions are evident in his scholarly articles analyzing, for example, the problematic nature of a “new wave of Chinese nationalism,” and of “the study of history” based on Chinese official orthodoxy of “the Marxist-Stalinist five-stage formulation.”4 They are also apparent in his “outspoken criticism” of the Chinese government’s suppression of the peaceful 1989 Tiananmen demonstration, his support for many scholars, young students, and liberal-minded intellectuals who left China after 1989, and his ongoing regular commentary on China’s social, intellectual, and political phenomena for Radio Free Asia.5

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Professor Yü exerted himself to complete a major revision of the article on Wang Yangming (1472–1529) in late 2014, but his health has prevented him from writing an introduction to these two volumes, and his deep modesty would also not permit us to use his address on receiving the Kluge Prize and his Tang Prize in Sinology acceptance speech as a comprehensive introduction. Thus, at the risk of not doing full justice to the breadth and depth of his creative contribution to the field of Chinese studies, we feel it necessary to offer a few initial observations on the primary concerns that have emerged in his research on China’s cultural and intellectual tradition, while also explaining the structure of this book of essays. Since Professor Yü left China in the beginning of 1950 and enrolled in the first class of the then newly established New Asia College in Hong Kong, two questions have always dominated his intellectual consciousness: As an ancient civilization, what was China’s essential value system that had sustained the life of its culture through ages of tumultuous political changes? Furthermore, would this system survive its modern revolutionary overhaul and find its way to secure itself as a culture that has historically displayed “a great deal of overlapping consensus in basic values” with the mainstream of Western culture?6 In a way, these two questions are tied to his overall concern about where China would go after the radical transformation of its 1949 revolution. The rich body of his decades of research that started during his college days in Hong Kong and continued throughout his academic life at the universities of Michigan, Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, and especially the work he carried out during the time after he retired from Princeton in 2001, reflects his examinations of and responses to these key questions. In the summer of 1971, when he revisited his alma mater and took his first trip to the major research institutes in Japan and Taipei, Professor Yü discovered that almost all of the China specialists there had never read his book or articles published in English. At the time, he began to think that if he wanted to play a role in bringing about meaningful communication between the Western and East Asian intellectual communities, he probably should try to make his research available in the Chinese-language world. Later, between 1973 and 1975, he took a leave from Harvard and returned to Hong Kong to serve as president of the New Asia College, and concurrently as the pro-vice- chancellor of the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Due to the demands of his daily work, Chinese became the most natural and reasonable medium for his writing. It was then that he decided he would resume writing large and detailed research articles and books in Chinese, and would present similar topics on a smaller scale and in a more concise format in English.7 As a result of that decision, his works in English constitute only a small part of his vast publication record, but the thirty-three scholarly articles collected in these two volumes nevertheless represent the essence of his fundamental concerns about and systematic interpretations of Chinese culture and history rang-

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ing over a time span of more than two thousand years. They demonstrate how his extraordinary knowledge about a wide variety of primary sources enabled him to investigate the crucial changes in Chinese cultural and intellectual traditions during the major transitions of China’s history. They also show how he has always explored and approached a series of questions and issues centering on his concerns from both diachronic and synchronic perspectives while never failing to compare impor tant aspects of Chinese culture with relevant historical phenomena in Western or other Asian cultures. More impor tant, they reveal the complex changes crisscrossing with the unbroken line of the foundational values that have connected China’s past and present, and probably its future as well. We should also note that several of Professor Yü’s Chinese books, especially his magnum opus on the historical world of Zhu Xi (1130–1200) 朱熹的歷史世界: 宋 代士大夫政治文化的研究 (Zhu Xi de lishi shijie: Songdai shidafu zhengzhi wenhua de yanjiu [The Historical World of Zhu Xi: A Study of the Political Culture of Song Intellectuals]) (Taipei: Yunchen, 2003; Beijing: Sanlian, 2011), and his most recent breakthrough study, 論天人之際: 中國古代思想起源試探 (Lun tianren zhiji: Zhongguo gudai sixiang qiyuan shi tan [Between Heaven and Man: An Exploration of the Origin of Ancient Chinese Thought]) (Taipei: Linking Publishing, 2014), have developed from some of the articles presented here.8 The earliest article in these two volumes was published in 1965 and the most recent one was completed near the end of 2014. For the present volumes, these articles are not arranged by their publication dates, but rather in chronological sequence by Chinese dynasties and with respect to their interconnected nature. In this manner, the central theme of continuity and transformation that links these articles together in relation to Professor Yü’s overall investigation and interpretation of Chinese civilization may unfold in accordance with its own inner logic. In his 2006 John W. Kluge Prize acceptance speech, Professor Yü asserts, “the Dao, or the Way, and history constitute the inside and outside of Chinese civilization.”9 Indeed, unraveling the unique dynamics between Chinese intellectuals’ discourse on the Dao 道 and their criticism of contemporary reality in different periods of time throughout China’s historical trajectory has always been ingrained in Professor Yü’s intellectual efforts. This endeavor is explicitly manifest in his earlier studies of the tension-fraught ruler-minister relationship embedded in Chinese political tradition. These studies had a strong, “wide and enduring” influence, and like many of his later works, have since become classic essays for students of Chinese history and culture in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and even in China after Mao.10 Professor Yü’s endeavor is equally discernible in his nonpareil study of the post-1949 inner landscape of the late historian Chen Yinque (1890–1969).11 Its impact has been and continues to be far-reaching. It caused quite a bit of consternation to the Chinese official academic leadership, and gave rise to an extensive trend of studying Chen Yinque’s works among different generations of Chinese scholars during the past three decades.12 Likewise, one can also detect Professor Yü’s efforts in the above-mentioned

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trailblazing masterpieces on Zhu Xi and Between Heaven and Man centering on the formation and development of China’s reflexive system of knowledge and thought on the Dao, or if one may, the transcendentally rooted set of moral principles for a symbolized ideal world order, throughout what Karl Jaspers called the “Axial Age.” We believe that the articles made available here on the intellectual and cultural changes from ancient times down to the late nineteenth century can help illustrate just exactly how and why the Dao, according to Professor Yü, became the defining characteristic of Chinese culture during the “Axial Age,” and how it was upheld by some of the finest Chinese intellectuals throughout traditional Chinese history as a critical standard in their striving for an ideal world order vis-à-vis their harsh political reality. These works should also serve to reveal just how the Dao was reformulated, expanded, defended, and preserved by these intellectuals generation after generation so that the lifeline of Chinese culture could continue on even though the individual political regimes perished in the flow of Chinese history. It is the Dao, then, as Professor Yü argues, that ultimately sustained these intellectuals to keep their faith in their cultural tradition and to take a stand during the dark moments of Chinese history. The noble efforts of these intellectuals undoubtedly command our respect, but on a closer reading of Professor Yü’s work, one may find that they actually impel us further to see how the Chinese intellectual striving for the realization of the Dao never actually secured an environment in which their struggles would no longer be vulnerable to the abuses of arbitrary power. Thus, one will also find that this tragic side of the Chinese intellectual tradition comprises another underlying theme that is embodied in Professor Yü’s articles and is even more prominent and prevalent in his comprehensive lifelong project on that tradition. In this light, one may be justified in viewing this portrayal of the parallel yet crisscrossing relations between these two themes not only as a major vehicle to illustrate the crucial continuity and changes that surfaced in China’s own tradition, but also as reflecting the critical tension between the daotong 道統, or the tradition of the Dao, and the zhengtong 政統, or the tradition of political power, throughout Chinese history. This tension is clearly notable in Professor Yü’s perceptive analysis of Wang Yangming’s “reorientation” and his Confucian efforts to enlighten the ordinary Chinese people, specifically including the traditionally denigrated merchant class, so that they could realize the Dao in their daily lives. Although this “reorientation” was an innovative reinterpretation and expansion of the Dao, the tragic side of the Confucian intellectual tradition remained unchanged. It is from that perspective, we believe, that Professor Yü has, since 1951, and distinctly since the 1989 Tiananmen demonstrations, persistently discussed why it is necessary for China to resume its nineteenth-century path toward the establishment of constitutional democracy so that the century-long intellectual struggle for a free, just, and civilized China will have a real chance to take root in Chinese soil. Discussion of these issues, with China’s tortuous path to modernity

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as a presupposed historical background, is one of the main focuses of the second volume. On one reading, these two volumes can be viewed as a complex tapestry into which all of the articles weave together the penetrative explorations and insights that shape Professor Yü’s portrait of China as a coherent whole. On the other hand, they can also be seen as two independent units, with one focusing on the continuities and ruptures in China’s traditional intellectual and cultural history, and one concentrating on the transformations of Chinese traditions in modern times. As Professor Yü’s articles illustrate, however, tradition always finds its way back into modernity in a dialectically entangled manner, whether in Chinese intellectuals’ narrative search to delineate China’s place in the modern world, or in their new conceptualization of how to write Chinese history. One perhaps may question how Han Chinese ideas of the afterlife and their food or elite seating orders, or even the fictional world of China’s greatest Qing dynasty novel, Honglou meng (Dream of the Red Chamber), are related to the central themes of Professor Yü’s two volumes. When one reads these articles, one is likely to marvel that China’s age- old practice of linking the seating order with a person’s seniority, or his or her social, political, and economic status, can, in fact, trace its roots at least to as early as the third century b.c.e., but it is even more pertinent to note that this seemingly innocuous cultural practice of seating orders actually played a decisive role in the subsequent development of Chinese imperial history in its initial stage. In short, a certain cultural custom may be just as impor tant as historical contingency in shaping the direction of one’s destiny, be it for an individual, or for an empire. At the same time, the way that Han Chinese transformed their indigenous culinary arts by creatively incorporating foreign foods and cooking methods into their own cuisine certainly demonstrates the adaptability, as well as the tenacity, of Chinese tradition. The enduring nature of Chinese tradition is also obvious in Professor Yü’s article on the afterlife. It shows that the Han Chinese perception of the worlds between the living and the dead were quite similar to the earlier Chinese conceptualization of the relationship between the transcendental or the ideal world symbolized by the Dao and the earthly reality in the sense that the two worlds were never perceived as two mutually exclusive realms, nor were they seen as two identical ones either. Furthermore, it also shows that the Han Chinese concepts of life and death were an “extension” of their integrative worldview of the human, Heaven, and Earth as comprising an inseparable unity that was sustained by the ever-so-close yet ever-so-distant Dao.13 The same thing can be said about the article on the Dream of the Red Chamber in volume 2. The difference is that Professor Yü’s discussion of the two interconnected worlds in this Qing novel, the ideal world and the world of reality, and the irreversible collapse of the ideal world did not evoke too much of a lament for this lost paradise. It did, however, lead us to place this article after the one that gives an intricate synopsis of Qing Confucianism as a whole. The

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collapse of a fictional world thus serves as a symbolic parallel to the fi nal disintegration of the traditional Chinese imperial order and foreshadows the coming “radicalization of China in the twentieth century.” All these articles were originally selected by Professor Yü and sent to Ms. Leslie Kriesel at Columbia University Press some years ago. They were intended for an impor tant project on distinguished scholars of Chinese studies organized by Professor David Der-wei Wang. Ms. Kriesel had them formatted as Word fi les, proofread them, and sent them to Professor Yü for review, but he was unable to attend to them due to his medical condition. In October 2014, when Professor Wang asked us whether we could help complete the editorial work, we had no doubt that this meaningful project should be completed. During the complicated process of reformatting, many passages and sections in the original articles, as well as all the Chinese characters, were lost. We have, where possible, retrieved the original English versions in books or from journals, located Chinese originals of essays translated into English and Chinese translations of English versions, restored the missing passages and sections, and changed all of the Wade- Giles romanizations of Chinese names and terms to contemporary Pinyin romanization.14 In the process, Chinese characters were reentered and additional Chinese characters were supplied for clarity in several essays. Meanwhile, English translations of most Chinese book titles mentioned in the text (but not in the endnotes) are also provided. At first mention in the main text, for example, we have Yijing 易經 (Classic of Changes), but only Yijing in the endnotes. Our other editorial tasks included standardizing the endnoting format, entering new notes for several published speeches that were not endnoted, adding notes to citations not referenced in some places, and shortening all notes by means of abbreviations of frequently cited titles. Names well known in the English-speaking world or used by Chinese scholars active in English are given in their familiar way, such as Chiang Kai-shek, Fung Yu-lan, Hu Shih, Lien-sheng Yang, Sun Yat-sen, and Ying-shih Yü. In Chinese references, however, such names are given as Feng Youlan, Hu Shi, Yang Liansheng, Yü Ying-shih, etc. As an example: Ying-shih Yü, Trade and Expansion in Han China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967), but Yü Ying-shih 余英時, Lishi yu sixiang 歷史與思想 (Taipei: Lianjing, 1976). With Professor Yü’s permission, we made a few minor changes in some of the Chinese-to-English translations and changed a small number of other wordings. Professor Yü’s two scholarly prize acceptance speeches mentioned above are in an appendix per his insistence, but we suggest that one read them as an introduction to his multifaceted and multilayered but integrated narrative world. In these speeches, one finds that while his narratives explore the unique characteristics of Chinese culture, they simultaneously illustrate how this uniqueness is

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inherently universal in its honoring of “common humanity and human dignity” as the core values of Chinese culture. To understand Professor Yü’s lifetime contribution to the Chinese intellectual and cultural tradition, one of course has to become familiar with his entire oeuvre, above all, his extensive publications in Chinese. However, editing these articles has made us increasingly aware of why and how Professor Yü has been “hailed as the greatest Chinese intellectual historian of his generation,” “a paradigm for [Chinese] humanism,” and “the epitome of a traditional Chinese shiintellectual”15 who never gives up his efforts to ameliorate social ills and improve public well-being, whether through words or actions. That various “Yü Ying-shih fan clubs” (Yü Ying-shih fensi tuan 余英時粉絲團) have emerged among the general reading public in the Chinese-language world no doubt provides further endorsement of the above tributes to him, and they may just further serve to indicate the unusual nature of both his work and his actions.16 These “fans” among the reading public most likely also hold what they learn from Professor Yü’s works to represent what the Chinese cultural and intellectual tradition genuinely stands for, and thus would likely agree that his contribution is not only significant for the field of Chinese studies but is also relevant to anyone who believes in the shared values of the best humane traditions, be they Chinese or Western, in today’s world community. In conclusion to this note, we would like to thank Professor David Der-wei Wang for arranging this editorial work. At Columbia University Press, we also thank Ms. Leslie Kriesel for all her preliminary work on these essays, editorial assistant Jonathan Fiedler, and the final copyeditors, Sue Sakai and John Donohue of Westchester Publishing Ser vices. Further thanks are due to Professor Chin-shing Huang, director of the Institute of History and Philology of the Academia Sinica in Taiwan, and his able assistant Ms. Yaling Lee for providing Professor Yü’s revised and expanded article on Wang Yangming. We also wish to express our gratitude to Dr. Jiu-jung Lo of the Institute of Modern History of the Academia Sinica and Ms. Liu Jing of the Asian Library at the University of British Columbia, who helped us locate information on old journal articles. Last, but most impor tant, we want to thank Professor Yü for trusting us with this worthy project and for assisting us throughout. Our deep gratitude goes equally to Mrs. Monica Yü, or Chen Shuping, for her encouragement and support. Without Professor Yü’s warm and kind understanding, which helped our work proceed smoothly, and his providing us with some hard-to-find documents, we could not possibly have brought this project to its completion within the intended time limit. It goes without saying that any errors that may have occurred in the process are ours alone. Josephine Chiu-Duke and Michael S. Duke

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notes 1.

On June 20, 2014, when the Tang Prize Award Committee announced that Professor Yü was the winner, their statement acknowledged Professor Yü’s work in these areas. See http://www.tang-prize.org/ENG/Publish.aspx?CNID = 300.

2.

These are the remarks Librarian of Congress Dr. James H. Billington made on Professor

3.

Part of Professor Yü’s bibliography can be found on the Academia Sinica website at

Yü’s research. See Library of Congress, http://www.loc.gov/today/pr/2006/06–214.html. http://www2.ihp.sinica.edu.tw/en/staff ProfilePrint.php?TM=3&M= 1&uid=84. For a more complete bibliography, see “Yü Ying-shih jiaoshou zhuzuo mulu” 余英時教授著作目録, compiled by Che Hsing-chien 車行健, in Wenhua yu lishi de zhuisuo: Yü Ying-shih jiaoshou bazhi shouqing lunwen ji 文化與歷史的追索: 余英時教授八秩壽慶論文集, ed. Hoyt Tillman (Taipei: Lianjing, 2009), 917–960. 4.

These articles are included in the second volume of this book.

5.

Dr. Billington’s remarks on awarding Professor Yü the Kluge Prize noted his support for China’s democracy movement. See Library of Congress, http://www.loc.gov/today /pr/2006/06 -214 .html. Professor Yü’s critical discussion of the 1989 suppression can be found in his Lishi renwu yu wenhua weiji 歷史人物與文化危機 (Taipei: Dongda tushu, 1997), esp. pp. 151–173. Professor Yu’s regular commentary is available at http://www.rfa .org/mandarin/.

6.

See “Address of Yü Ying-shih on the Occasion of Receiving the John W. Kluge Prize at the Library of Congress,” December 5, 2006, at http://www.loc.gov/today/pr/2006/06 -A07.html. For more details, see Chen Zhi 陳致, Wo zou guo de lu: Yü Ying- shih fangtan lu 我走過的路: 余英時訪談録 (Taipei: Lianjing, 2012), 3–15, esp. p. 11.

7.

See how Professor Yü recently discussed this decision in his “Lishi yu sixiang sanshiba nian” 《歷史與思想》三十八年, published by Pingguo ribao 蘋果日報 on April 27, 2014. See also http://hk.apple.nextmedia.com/supplement/apple/art/20140427/18701478.

8.

See the articles “Between the Heavenly and the Human” and “Morality and Knowledge

9.

“Address of Yü Ying-shih,” p. 2.

10.

These studies include “Fanzhi lun yu Zhongguo zhengzhi chuantong—lun Ru, Dao, Fa

in Zhu Xi’s Philosophical System” in volume 1.

sanjia zhengzhi sixiang de fenye yu huiliu” 反智論與中國政治傳統—論儒, 道, 法三家政 治思想的分野與匯流 and “ ‘Jun zun chen bei’ xia de junquan yu xiangquan—‘Fanzhi lun yu Zhongguo zhengzhi chuantong’ yulun” ‘君尊臣卑’ 下的君權與相權—‘反智論與中國 政治傳統’ 餘論. They are included in Yü Ying-shih, Lishi yu sixiang 歷史與思想 (Taipei: Lianjing, 1976), 1–75. For their influence, see his discussion of Lishi yu sixiang in “Lishi yu sixiang sanshiba nian.” See also how Chen Zhengguo 陳正國 and Lu Yang 陸揚 discuss the impact of Professor Yü’s work on his readers in Taiwan and China, respectively, in Chen’s “Taiwan shixue zhong de Yü Ying-shih shenying” 台灣史學中的余英時身影, Dangdai 當代, no. 232 (December 1, 2006): 34–51, esp. p. 39, and Lu’s article in the same issue of Dangdai, “Cong ta-nei dao tawai—Tan Yü Ying-shih xiansheng de renwenxue yanjiu yu Keluge jiang de yiyi” 從塔內到塔外—談余英時先生的人文學研究與克魯格獎的 意義, 52–59, esp. pp. 54–57.

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See Yü Ying-shih, Chen Yinke wannian shiwen shizheng 陳寅恪晚年詩文釋證 (Taipei: Shibao wenhua, 1984), the expanded edition published in 1986 by the same publisher, and the third expanded edition published in 2004 (Taipei: Dongda tushu). The second new edition was also published by Dongda tushu in 2011.

12.

The impact of Professor Yü’s study of Chen Yinque itself had a complex development. The consternation of the Chinese official academic leadership occurred twice and lasted quite a while each time. The fi rst refers to the reaction of the then official leadership to Professor Yü’s 1958 study of Chen Yinque’s work on Zaisheng yuan 再生緣, an eighteenth- century Tanci ballad (Tanci is a popu lar form of singing accompanied by instrumental music), and it involved the top security official Kang Sheng 康生 and scholars such as Guo Moruo 郭沫若, serving at the time as the head of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. The second refers to Chinese official responses to a series of Professor Yü’s articles discussing Chen Yinque’s inner landscape published in 1983 and 1984 (later reworked into his 1984 book on Chen). This time, Hu Qiaomu 胡喬木, the head of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences was involved. For this development, see Yü Ying-shih, “Chen Yinque yanjiu de fansi he zhanwang” 陳寅恪研究的反思和展望, in Chen Yinque yanjiu 陳寅恪研究, ed. Zhou Yan 周言 (Beijing: Jiuzhou chubanshe, 2013), 1–19, esp. pp. 4–6, 11–15; see also Zhang Qiuhui 張求會, “Xia Nai riji li de ‘Chen Yinque huati’ ” 《夏鼐日記》里的 “陳寅恪話題,” and Xu Qingquan 徐慶全, “Chen Yinque Lun Zaisheng yuan chuban fengbo” 陳寅恪《論再生緣》出版風波. Both articles are included in Zhou Yan’s book; see 48–61, esp. pp. 57–58, and 195–208, esp. pp. 205–207. These three articles and some other essays in Zhou Yan’s book, including Zhou Yan’s own editorial comments (4–5), all demonstrate the impact of Professor Yü’s works on the rise of this extensive trend.

13.

For further explanation of this view, see Yü Ying-shih, “Cong jiazhi xitong kan Zhongguo wenhua de xiandai yiyi” 從價值系統看中國文化的現代意義, in his Zhongguo sixiang chuantong de xiandai quanshi 中國思想傳統的現代詮釋 (Taipei: Lianjing, 1987), 46–48.

14.

Renwen yu lixing de Zhongguo 人文與理性的中國, by Yü Ying-shih, ed. and trans. (from English to Chinese) Cheng Nensheng 程嫩生, Luo Qun 羅群, and He Jun 何俊 (Taipei: Lianjing, 2008), was very useful for us in completing the endnotes in spite of the few errors and omissions it contained.

15.

The first citation is provided in Dr. Billington’s remarks on awarding Professor Yü the Kluge Prize in 2006 and also quoted by the Tang Prize Award Committee made in late June 2014. See http://www.tang-prize.org/ENG/Publish.aspx?CNID = 300. The second quote is from the title of a scholarly article by Li Xianyu李顯裕, “Renwen zhuyi de dianfan—Yü Ying-shih de xueshu jingshen chutan” 人文主義的典範— 余英時的 學術精神初探, Tongshi jiaoyu yu jingcha xueshu yantaohui lunwenji 通識教育與警察學 術研討會論文集 (2007): 131–137. See http://gec.cpu.edu.tw/ezfiles/91/1091/img/388/1967 41845 .pdf. The third citation is by the late Professor Anthony C. Yü (Yu Guofan 余國藩, 1938– 2015) in his “Yü Ying-shih jiaoshou de xueshu chengjiu yu shixue gongxian” 余英時教 授的學術成就與史學貢獻, Dangdai, no. 232 (2006): 29–33, esp. p. 33. It was also cited by one of the members of the Tang Prize Award Committee. See “Yü Ying-shih huo ban

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edi tor i al note ‘Tang jiang’ Hanxue jiang” 余英時獲頒 ‘唐獎’ 漢學獎, Radio Free Asia (Mandarin branch), June 20, 2014, http://www.rfa.org/mandarin/yataibaodao/gangtai/al- 06202014095122 .html. Hao Chang (Zhang Hao 張灝) made a similar comment describing Professor Yü as a “public intellectual” for the Hong Kong television documentary series on “Jiechu Huaren 傑出華人,” or “outstanding Chinese.” The program on Professor Yü was produced by the late Mr. Weng Zhiyu (1968–2015) 翁志羽 and aired on January 6, 2008. See http://app1 .rthk.org.hk/php/tvarchivecatalog/episode.php?progid= 554&tvcat =2.

16.

It is interest ing to note that fensi, the Chinese word for fan (supporter, admirer, etc.), is a kind of noodle made from meng bean flour. It sticks together in a ball (tuan) and is difficult to separate; thus, fensi tuan also symbolizes the solidarity of such fans. We have found from 16,800 to 85,200 results when we googled “Yü Ying-shih fensi tuan” in Chinese several times in July 2015.

ab b re v iat ions

AM BPZ CASS CBETA Chan, SB

CSJC CUHK DNP DWJ GXCK GXJB GXJBCS HHS HJAS HKU HS

Asia Major Baopuzi 抱朴子 Chinese Academy of Social Science 中國社會 科學院 Chinese Buddhist Electronic Text Association Wing-tsit Chan, A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963) Congshu jicheng 叢書集成 Chinese University of Hong Kong 香港中文大學 Dai Dongyuan xiansheng nianpu 戴東原先生 年譜 Dai Zhen wenji 戴震文集 Guoxue congkan 國學叢刊 Guoxue jiben congshu jianbian 國學基本叢書 簡編 Guoxue jiben congshu 國學基本叢書 Hou Hanshu 後漢書 Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies Hong Kong University 香港大學 Hanshu 漢書

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ab b r e vi ations

JAOS JAS JTS KG LHJJ LSCQ JS LSYJ MRXA MZS QHHW QSW QTW SBBY SBCK SBE SGZ Shangwu SJ SKQS SMZY SYXA TP TPJHJ WSTY WW WWCKZL WYWK XTS Zhonghua ZJS ZJSNXS ZLQS ZSCS ZYL ZYY ZYYY ZZ ZZTJ

Journal of the American Oriental Society Journal of Asian Studies Jiu Tangshu 舊唐書 Kao Gu 考古 Lunheng jijie 論衡集解 Lüshi chunqiu jishi 呂氏春秋集釋 Lishi yanjiu 歷史研究 Mingru xue- an 明儒學案 Mengzi ziyi shuzheng 孟子字義疏證 Quan Hou Han wen 全後漢文 Quan shanggu sandai Qin Han Sanguo Liuchao wen 全上古三代秦漢三國六朝文 Quan Tang wen 全唐文 Sibu beiyao 四部備要 Sibu congkan 四部叢刊 Max Müller, ed., The Sacred Books of the East (Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1879–1910) Sanguo zhi 三國志 Commercial Press Shiji 史記 Siku quanshu 四庫全書 Sanmin zhuyi 三民主義 Song-Yuan xue- an 宋元學案 T’oung P’ao Taipingjing hejiao 太平經合校 Wenshi tongyi 文史通義 Wenwu 文物 Wenwu cankao ziliao 文物參考資料 Wanyou wenku 萬有文庫 Xin Tangshu 新唐書 Zhonghua shuju 中華書局 Zhuangzi jishi 莊子集釋 Zhonguo jin sanbai nian xueshu shi 中國近三百 年學術史 Zongli quanshu (孫中山) 總理全書 Zhongshan congshu (孫) 中山叢書 Zhuzi yulei 朱子語類 Zhangshi yishu yipian 章氏遺書逸篇 Zhongyang yanjiuyuan lishi yuyan yanjiusuo jikan 中央研究院歷史語言研究所集刊 Zuozhuan 左傳 Zizhi tongjian 資治通鑑

c h ronolo gy of d y na st i e s

Xia Shang Zhou Western Eastern Spring and Autumn Period Warring States Period Qin Former (Western) Han Xin (Wang Mang) Later (Eastern) Han Three Kingdoms Wei Shu Wu Western Jin Sixteen Kingdoms North-South Dynasties Eastern Jin Northern (Tuoba) Wei Sui

2000?–1600? b.c.e. 1600?–1027? b.c.e. 1027?–256 b.c.e. 1027?–771 b.c.e. 771–256 b.c.e. 771–481 b.c.e. 481–221 b.c.e. 221–206 b.c.e. 202 b.c.e.–8 c.e. 9–23 c.e. 25–220 c.e. 220–280 220–265 221–263 222–280 265–316 301–439 317–589 317–420 386–535 581–618

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Tang Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms Song Northern Southern Mongol Yuan Ming Manchu Qing Republican Era

618–907 907–960 960–1127 960–1127 1127–1276 1271–1368 1368–1644 1636–1911 1911–present

Chinese History and Culture

volu m e 2

1. Some Preliminary Observations on the Rise of Qing Confucian Intellectualism

T

his is a thoroughly revised and much expanded version of a paper first drafted in 1971. Since it was originally intended to serve as an introduction to my book-length study, tentatively entitled The Rise of Confucian Intellectualism in the Qing, with it, I tried to cover rather than dig the ground. In rewriting this paper, I have still followed my original plan by avoiding, as much as possible, factual details. The central task I set for myself was to formulate certain conceptual schemes in light of which the internal development of Neo-Confucianism from the Song to the Qing may be looked at anew and, it is hoped, with fruitfulness. Some of the points of view suggested here have been more fully developed in several separate studies of mine that deal with various specific aspects of the intellectual history of this period. However, I now wish to present my preliminary observations on this vast and complicated subject with the hope that criticisms and comments from colleagues will help my whole projected study reach its final form sooner.

THE PROBLEM In the West, there has been a deep-rooted conflict between faith and reason. In the Christian tradition, the confl ict has centered more specifically around a faith versus learning controversy. The New Testament actually presents Jesus

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in two different images. On the one hand, Jesus sees learning as an obstacle to Christian piety. Later, this became the source of the stream of anti-intellectualism within the Church. On the other hand, Jesus also appears in the New Testament as a man of profound learning, that is, a scholar of the Scriptures, on the basis of which scholarship has been justified as a Christian calling by those who have sought to combine faith with reason.1 Generally speaking, however, until the so- called Revival of Learning in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, faith far outweighed reason on the Christian scale. In its extreme form, Christian antiintellectualism may be found in the well-known denunciation of classical pagan culture by Tertullian (ca. 190–240), who said: “What has Athens to do with Jerusalem, the Academy with the Church? We have no need for curiosity since the Evangel.”2 Historically, the conflict between faith and reason in medieval Christianity may be taken, to a large extent, to be a result of the struggle for domination between the Hebraic- Christian religious tradition on the one hand and the GrecoRoman classical culture on the other hand. Several centuries elapsed before the terrain between revealed truth and secular learning reached a state of compromise. In the persons of St. Jerome (347?–420) and St. Augustine (354–430), we first see the two prototypes of the Christian scholar: the former was a great scholar who was a Christian, whereas the latter was a great Christian who left an indelible mark on scholarship.3 Thus, the love of learning and the desire for God, to borrow the well-known title of Jean Leclerq’s monograph, became two basic elements in medieval monastic culture. How to reconcile these two apparently conflicting values therefore posed a perplexing dilemma for every monk. As Leclercq neatly puts it: And if there is a problem, it is because the difficulty takes the shape of a tension between two elements whose reconciliation is always precarious and between which an equilibrium must be constantly established. There is always the risk of weighting the balance too heavily on one side or the other. These two elements are the two constants of Western monastic culture: on the one hand, the study of letters, on the other, the exclusive search for God, the love of eternal life and the consequent detachment from all else, including the study of letters. . . . There is no ideal synthesis which can be expressed in a speculative formula, as there might be if the solution were of the intellectual order; the conflict can be transcended only by raising it to spiritual order.4 Does a similar problem exist in Chinese intellectual history? The answer is yes, but with impor tant qualifications. In contrast to the West, no such sharp opposition between faith and reason can be found in the Chinese case. As William de Bary has aptly remarked, “Confucian rationalism does not involve a conscious exaltation of reason as opposed to faith or intuitions (none of the early masters

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seems to have acknowledged such an explicit dichotomy).”5 Nevertheless, in early Confucianism, a central polarity can be discerned—the polarity between learning and speculative thinking.6 Confucius once discussed the relationship between xue 學 (learning) and si 思 (thinking) in the following way: “Learning without thought is labor lost; thought without learning is perilous.”7 Here learning and thinking are obviously taken as mutually complementary, neither functioning properly without the other. Sometimes, however, Confucius placed more emphasis on learning than on thinking: “I have been the whole day without eating, and the whole night without sleeping— occupied with thinking. It was of no use. The better plan is to learn.”8 These two statements taken together seem to mean that by learning Confucius meant to study in order to attain knowledge of things and by thinking he meant to speculate about things.9 Both learning and thinking involve the exercise of the mind, but the mind operates at two different levels. In learning, the mind operates at the concrete or factual level, and the result is knowledge of things as they are. In speculative thinking, the mind operates at the abstract or theoretical level, and theorizing enables one to grasp the significance of things. Learning and thinking are necessarily of two different orders because in Confucius’s scheme of things, the former must precede the latter. It is by no means an accident that in terms of priority, “extensive learning” (boxue 博學) is placed before “careful thinking” (shensi 慎思) in the “Zhongyong” (Doctrine of the Mean).10 Pure speculation is perilous because it lacks basis in factual knowledge in the first place. Nor would receptive learning always be fruitful, however. It is “labor lost” for the obvious reason that sheer erudition gets nowhere. There were times when Confucius talked as if he were among Isaiah Berlin’s hedgehogs, who “relate every thing to a single central vision, one system less or more coherent or articulate, in terms of which they understand, think and feel— a single, universal, organizing principle in terms of which alone all that they are and say has significance.”11 A conversation Confucius had with his disciple Zigong 子貢 (Duanmu Ci 端木賜) illustrates this point: “The Master said, ‘Ci, you think, I suppose, that I am one who learns many things and keeps them in memory?’ Zigong replied: ‘Yes,—but perhaps it is not so?’ ‘No’ was the answer; ‘I seek a unity all-pervading.’ ”12 Here the emphasis is shifted to thinking. For the “all-pervading unity” (yiguan 一貫) can result only from speculative thinking or theorizing. In still another context, the Master also defined the polarity in terms of bo 博 (erudition) and yue 約 (essentialism): “By extensively studying the literature and getting to its essence in the light of li 禮 (rites), one may thus likewise not err from what is right.”13 It is impor tant to note that the term “essentialism,” expressed this way in the context of li, carries heavy moral connotations. And Confucius’s “all-pervading unity” must also be understood in this moral light. It is not systematic thinking or theorizing in the ordinary sense. It is, in fact, moralizing. Thus, in the final

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analysis, the Confucian polarity proves to be knowledge versus morality. This should occasion no surprise because in the Confucian frame of reference, knowledge should always serve a higher moral purpose. From the point of view of intellectual history, this polarity produced a lasting influence on the shaping of the Confucian tradition. Insofar as Confucius stressed extensive learning or erudition, he created the image of a scholar, and insofar as he emphasized the “all-pervading unity” or “essentialism,” he created the image of a thinker or philosopher. After Confucius, although learning and thinking were generally taken as two inseparably complementary aspects of the Confucian teaching, the individual emphasis of each Confucian often varied. Thus, Mencius, who more closely fits the mold of a Confucian thinker, stressed “essentialism” (yue) rather than “erudition” (bo).14 On the other hand, Xunzi, being more a scholar, attached a greater importance to learning than to thinking.15 With the rise of Neo- Confucianism in the Song, the polarity became more clearly than ever before one between knowledge and morality. This polarization manifested itself in a variety of ways, old and new. Between the two major schools of Zhu Xi and Lu Xiangshan, it was seen as a controversy, respectively, over dao wenxue 道問學 (following the path of inquiry and study) and zun dexing 尊德性 (honoring the moral nature). Zhu Xi once confessed that he had overstressed the role of inquiry and study just as Lu perhaps had overstressed that of moral nature.16 Lu, on the other hand, persistently held his view that it is pointless to pursue inquiry and study without honoring the moral nature in the first place.17 Since the two key terms, zun dexing and dao wenxue, occupy a central place in Neo- Confucianism and since we discern in these two broad comprehensive concepts a polarization between “morality” and “knowledge,” a word of explanation is in order so that a nonspecialist Western reader may make a better sense out of such English expressions as “honoring the moral nature” and “following the path of inquiry and study.” In the Neo- Confucian context, zun dexing implies, above all, the awakening of moral faith through the understanding of our own nature, which partakes of the moral quality of Dao. As a result, we gain a kind of moral knowledge that more or less resembles the Christian “revealed truth.” Dao wenxue, on the other hand, deals with the whole territory of what we call objective knowledge, which ranges from knowledge of a Confucian classical text to that of a blade of grass. But the impor tant question here is how do zun dexing and dao wenxue stand in relation to each other? The answer differs sharply between an intellectualist such as Zhu Xi and an anti-intellectualist such as Lu Xiangshan. In a manner quite reminiscent of Thomas Aquinas, Zhu Xi thinks that he who knows anything knows something about Dao. According to this view, then, knowledge obtained through dao wenxue has a built-in moral quality, though the moral quality of such knowledge may vary greatly in degree from one case (say, knowledge of a Confucian classical text) to another (say, knowledge of a blade of grass). Moreover, total awakening of moral faith will arrive only at the end of a long

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painstaking process of “inquiry and study.” By contrast, Lu Xiangshan does not seem to have assigned any significant role to “inquiry and study” in man’s quest for Dao. The awakening of moral faith cannot be brought about by knowledge accumulated through dao wenxue, which is at best morally irrelevant. When the awakening takes place, it takes place as a “leap,” which is nonintellectual in character. To be fair to Lu Xiangshan, he does not repudiate “inquiry and study” altogether. Nevertheless, he does insist that only after having experienced the leap of moral faith can one then justifiably speak of “inquiry and study.” Without zun dexing, dao wenxue is like a ship without a rudder. Here Lu Xiangshan’s view is diametrically opposite to Zhu Xi’s conception that moral faith must build itself on a firm intellectual foundation. Polarization between morality and knowledge in Neo-Confucianism can be understood as having resulted mainly from the lasting conflict between these two opposing attitudes. Within the Cheng-Zhu school, the polarity of morality and knowledge also found an expression characteristically its own. It took the form of an active tension between moral cultivation and the extension of knowledge, as best expressed in the formula “moral cultivation requires seriousness and the pursuit of learning depends on the extension of knowledge.”18 This reminds us analogously of the tension between learning and piety in the Christian tradition. Even Zhu Xi’s own intellectual career also shows traces of a lifelong inner struggle with this polarity. His extensive discussions of various Confucian polarities— such as jujing 居敬 (exercising seriousness) and qiongli 窮理 (thorough study of principles), moral cultivation and extension of knowledge, knowledge and action, and the “all-pervading unity” and “extensive learning”— all bear importantly on the basic problem of how to establish a balance between the moral element and the intellectual element on the Confucian scale.19 Particularly noteworthy is his critical reexamination of the polarity between erudition and essentialism. His conclusion that essentialism must operate from the intellectual base of erudition leaves not even the slightest doubt as to where he placed his own emphasis.20 It may well be construed as a logical extension of his fundamental emphasis on inquiry and study. In Song Neo- Confucianism, not only was the primordial Confucian polarity between learning and thinking transformed into a dichotomy of knowledge and morality, but out of that polarity, a tension also gradually grew between what may be called, respectively, intellectualism and anti-intellectualism. The possible implications of these last two elusive terms in Chinese intellectual history are explored more fully in the appendix to this paper. Suffice it to say now, though, that there were two major types of Neo- Confucians: those whose minds were more “inquiry and study” orientated; those who tended to assign a greater role to knowledge in the Confucian scheme of things; and those whose minds were more “moral nature” orientated and who tended to take acquisition of knowledge, including even knowledge of the classics, to be the least essential part of Confucian teachings. For convenience, we will simply term the first type intellectualists

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and the second type anti-intellectualists. In this very loose sense, therefore, Zhu Xi belongs to the intellectualist type, whereas Lu Xiangshan belongs to the anti-intellectualist type. Corresponding to this general distinction between intellectualism and anti-intellectualism, there also arose a unique Neo- Confucian theory of knowledge, which distinguishes between what may be termed, again for convenience, intellectual knowledge and moral knowledge. This theory was first put forward by Zhang Zai 張載 (1020–1077),21 but later was more neatly formulated in the writings of Cheng Yi 程頤 (1033–1107). Cheng said: “The knowledge obtained through hearing and seeing is not the knowledge obtained through moral nature. When a thing (the body) comes into contact with things, the knowledge so obtained is not from within. This is what is meant by extensive learning and much ability today. The knowledge obtained from moral nature does not depend on seeing and hearing.”22 Clearly, then, according to this theory, moral knowledge (dexing zhi zhi 德性之知) differs categorically from all other knowledge, which comes from the senses’ contact with the external world (wenjian zhizhi 聞見之知 or “intellectual knowledge”). It deals exclusively with the inner world of man’s moral nature. This distinction between moral knowledge and intellectual knowledge also has its counterpart in Christianity. According to one view, the socalled truths propounded by faith form what is known as “religious” knowledge. And religious knowledge differs from other knowledge in that it deals with a “higher realm,” to which rational inquiry and its methods have no access at all.23 Just as Tertullian’s denunciation of classical pagan culture led to Christian antiintellectualism, the Neo- Confucian elevation of moral knowledge to a level beyond the reach of the senses also inevitably gave rise to anti-intellectualistic tendencies. From Zhang Zai to Wang Yangming 王陽明 (1472–1529), many individual Neo-Confucians repudiated, to a greater or lesser degree, intellectual knowledge on the ground that it can shed no light on our knowledge of the moral nature. The Cheng-Zhu school on the whole, for example, was, in the Song Period, more intellectualistic in its theoretical orientations. In early Ming times, however, even this school underwent a transformation in the anti-intellectualistic direction, resulting in a clear subordination of the intellectual element within the entire Cheng-Zhu system.24 Not until late Ming and early Qing did the pendulum slowly but steadily swing back to the other side. In terms of these trends, therefore, I suggest that Qing intellectual history may be more meaningfully viewed as a period that witnessed the rise of Confucian intellectualism.

THE HAN-SONG CONTROVERSY IN QING INTELLECTUAL HISTORY Reevaluation of Qing intellectual history in terms of Confucian intellectualism, however, must begin with a critical review of some of the dominant theses

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advanced by modern scholars to deal specifically with the nature of Qing learning and its significance in the Confucian tradition as a whole. In the mideighteenth century, a major controversy arose between proponents of the socalled Han Learning (Han xue 漢學) and adherents of Song Learning (Song xue 宋學), a controversy that, as will be shown below, characterized much of Chinese intellectual history until the end of the nineteenth century. To begin with, it may be noted that the term “Han Learning” is actually a name Qing scholars applied to their own philological approach to the study of the Confucian classics, an approach they believed was very much in the exegetical tradition of the Han times. It is also known by the name of kaozheng 考證 or kaoju 考據, meaning, literally, “evidential investigation.” On the other hand, “Song Learning” is a reference to the type of metaphysical speculations started by, though not confined to, Song Neo- Confucians. During the Qing Period, it was also called yili 義理, which may be rendered as “moral principles.” Hence, very imprecisely speaking, Han Learning (kaozheng) and Song Learning (yili) are the Chinese equivalents of the two respective Western terms “philology” and “philosophy.”25 This Han-Song controversy later became the conceptual starting point for various modern interpretations of Qing intellectual history. Thus, we fi nd in most, if not all, modern interpretations that Song Learning is generally identified with the entire Song-Ming philosophical tradition (or simply, as in current Western usage, Neo- Confucianism), whereas Han Learning is equated with Qing philology. Insofar as the relationship between Song-Ming NeoConfucianism and Qing learning is concerned, two basic classical views may be distinguished. The first view stresses discontinuity in intellectual history and therefore suggests that Qing learning was beginning when Neo- Confucianism was ending: Liang Qichao and Hu Shi are the chief proponents of this thesis. Liang implies this discontinuity when he says, “The point of departure of Qing learning was a violent reaction against the Neo- Confucianism of the Song and Ming.”26 Hu Shi is even more precise. In his view, the Neo- Confucian philosophical tradition, which had begun during the Northern Song, came to a sudden end with the Qing. With the beginning of the Qing dynasty, Chinese intellectual history entered into an entirely new age.27 The second view of the relationship between Song-Ming Neo- Confucianism and Qing learning stresses historical continuity rather than discontinuity; it sees the Neo- Confucian philosophical tradition being carried well into the Qing Period. Fung Yu-lan (Feng Youlan) and Ch’ien Mu (Qian Mu) may be taken as the two outstanding representatives of this second thesis. According to Fung, when the School of Han Learning in the Qing came to deal with philosophy, “the topics that were discussed . . . and the classical texts that were used remained the same as those of the Song and Ming Neo- Confucians. From this point of view, therefore, the Han Learning of the Qing was a continuation of Song and Ming Neo- Confucianism.”28 Qian Mu’s concern is much broader than philosophical discussion and textual analysis. He is ultimately concerned with

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Neo- Confucianism as a living intellectual as well as moral tradition. In this sense, he points out, Song Learning was highly active among the leading Ming loyalist-scholars in Qing times. Han Learning, both as a name and a reality, did not come into existence until the reign of Qianlong (1736–1796). And still during that time, in his estimation, many of the classical philologists were still profoundly steeped in the Neo- Confucian tradition. More often than not, he further argues, a scholar’s achievement in Han Learning was measurable in terms of his orientations in Song Learning.29 The two dominant theses of continuity or discontinuity, opposed to each other as they appear to be, nevertheless share a common ground. In the LiangHu thesis, Han Learning and Song Learning are treated as if they were diametrically antithetical to each other from the very beginning. To this obviously overdrawn distinction, the Fung- Qian thesis has served as an impor tant corrective. Even in the Fung- Qian thesis, however, there is no denying that Song Learning and Han Learning are, in their most mature forms, two entirely different types of intellectual discipline, each of which must be pursued according to its own rules. In terms familiar to the Qing scholars, Song Learning seeks to establish, chiefly through metaphysical speculations, Confucian “moral principles,” whereas Han Learning attempts as its central task to examine, critically and always on the basis of textual evidence, the very grounds of such “principles.” Therefore, in the last analysis, the real difference between the two schools of classical interpretation boils down to whether the Neo-Confucian philosophical tradition died a sudden and violent death in the early Qing or a slow and natu ral death in the middle Qing.30 From the point of view of intellectual history, the continuity thesis of Fung and Qian does seem more attractive and satisfying than the discontinuity thesis of Liang and Hu. It still leaves something to be desired, however. To register just one par ticular complaint, it does not address itself specifically enough to the question of the inner logic in the fundamental transformation from SongMing philosophy of Qing philology. Of this inner logic, more will be discussed below. For the moment, a word or two must be said about the Han-Song controversy itself. This controversy started with the claim of mid-Qing philologists that through their thorough textual investigations of the basic Confucian sources, they had brought to light for the first time since the Han dynasty the true meanings of the sages’ Dao. By contrast, as they asserted, Song Neo- Confucianism was based, more often than not, on incorrect readings of the Confucian texts, which, in turn, resulted from the Song thinkers’ inadequacy or even lack in philological training. In the eighteenth century, Hui Dong 惠棟 (1697–1758) and Dai Zhen 戴震 (1723–1777), the two great masters of philology, contributed, each in his own way, to this sharp distinction between Han Learning and Song Learning. Hui not only denounced Song Neo- Confucianism as no more than a mixture of Chan Buddhism and Daoism,31 he even accused Song Neo- Confucians of illit-

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eracy (Song Ru bu shizi 宋儒不識字).32 Dai’s position on this matter is nowhere more clearly shown than in the following statement: It has often been said that there is Han classical learning and there is Song classical learning; the former is philological in approach and the latter, philosophical. I am greatly puzzled by this statement. Alas, if the so-called philosophical ideas (of the sages) can be obtained by sheer speculation apart from the classics, then anyone is able to grasp them out of emptiness. If that is so, what do we need classical learning for? It is precisely because sheer speculation cannot lead one to the ancient sages’ philosophical ideas that one has to seek them from the ancient classics. Since messages contained in the surviving records have gradually fallen into oblivion due to the expanse of time between the past and the present, one therefore has to seek them through etymological studies (of the classics). Thus, only if etymology is clear, can the ancient classics be understood, and only if the classics are understood, can the sages’ philosophical ideas be grasped.33 By the time of the nineteenth century, the Han-Song controversy was greatly intensified as well as publicized with the publication of Jiang Fan 江藩 (1761–1831)’s Hanxue shicheng ji 漢學師承記 (Record of the transmission of the Masters of the School of Han Learning). Jiang, it may be noted, was a second-generation disciple of Hui Dong.34 Jiang’s glorification of Han Learning of Qing drew immediate critical reaction from Gong Zizhen 龔自珍 (1792–1841), who first read the work in manuscript form. In his letter to Jiang, written sometime in 1817, Gong listed altogether ten reasons to oppose application of the term “Han Learning” to the Qing case. In his opinion, “Classical Learning” ( jingxue 經學) would be a more appropriate appellation. He was particularly dissatisfied with the arbitrary distinction between “Song Learning” and “Han Learning.” As he saw it, neither did Han Confucians shun metaphysical speculation, nor were Song Neo- Confucians entirely ignorant of philological analysis of classical texts.35 Gong’s views proved to be widely shared by scholars of various intellectual persuasions in nineteenth-century China. The following three examples, selected on the basis of representativeness, should suffice to serve the purpose of illustration. Fang Dongshu 方東樹 (1772–1851) from Tongcheng 桐城 reacted most strongly and directly to Jiang’s book with his influential and controversial Hanxue shangdui 漢學商兌 (Critical evaluation of Han Learning), 1826. In this book Fang launched a systematic and all- out attack on the so- called Han Learning. He emphatically made the point that Song Neo- Confucians, especially Zhu Xi, were very much at home with philology.36 Chen Li 陳澧 (1810–1882), himself a classical philologist of great distinction, wrote the Hanru tongyi 漢儒通義 (Penetrating the meanings of the Han Confucians) to show that, contrary to the view held by fellow philologists of his day, Han Confucians were interested in

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philosophy no less than Song Neo- Confucians.37 Huang Yizhou 黃以周 (1828– 1899), the last giant of the Eastern Zhejiang school, also considered the socalled Han-Song distinction to be overdrawn. In his words: “ There are cases in which Zheng (Xuan)’s 鄭玄 philosophical remarks (on the classics) are better than Zhu Xi’s, and Zhu Xi’s philological explication of the text is superior to Zheng’s. To insist that we must follow the Han philologically and the Song philosophically, thus splitting (classical learning) into two separate parts, is but a parochial view of the conventionalistic type of Confucian.”38 Criticism of this kind immediately calls into question the nature of Song Learning as it has been traditionally defined. More impor tant, it also forces us to reopen the discussion of how Qing philology is related to Song-Ming Neo- Confucianism in general, and the Cheng-Zhu tradition (known also as Lixue 理學 “Rationalism”) in particular. Earlier we noted that both Hui Dong and Dai Zhen actually claimed not only that Qing philology was independent of Neo- Confucianism but also that it should replace the latter as the new Confucian orthodoxy. According to Zhang Xuecheng’s 章學誠 (1738–1801) firsthand account, it was precisely this philological claim to independence and orthodoxy that led followers of Dai Zhen, if not Dai himself, to believe that Dai’s Neo- Classicism had completely demolished Neo- Confucian Rationalism and that their master, Dai Zhen, would soon take the place of Zhu Xi in the Confucian pantheon.39 At this point, some intriguing questions arise. For example, is it true that apart from being a negative response, Qing philology owed nothing to SongMing Neo- Confucianism? Is it really the case that Qing philologists picked up the thread of Confucian classical learning where Han exegetes left it? If the distinction between Han Learning and Song Learning is ultimately reducible to the distinction between classical scholarship and metaphysical speculation, as most Qing controversialists seem to have agreed, is the Han-Song controversy somehow historically and structurally related to the various Confucian polarities, discussed previously, such as “learning” and “thinking,” “erudition” and “essentialism,” “following the path of inquiry and study” and “honoring the moral nature,” etc.? Needless to say, there are no ready-made answers to all these questions. Fortunately, some of Zhang Xuecheng’s writings provide us with interesting clues as to how such answers can be found. As an intellectual historian, he refused to accept at face value the then-fashionable distinction between Han Learning and Song Learning. He fully recognized the importance of philology to Confucian learning as a whole, but questioned the validity of the Qing philological claim beyond the methodological level.40 In two richly suggestive essays, “Zhu and Lu” (朱陸) and “Zhedong xueshu” 浙東學術 (The Zhedong intellectual tradition), he offered his own account of Neo- Confucian developments from Southern Song times to his own day. It is interesting to note that in Zhang’s account, the true intellectual heirs to Zhu Xi in the Qing are to be found in the line of classical philologists from Gu Yanwu 顧炎武 (1613–1682) to Dai Zhen,

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whereas the intellectual successors to Lu Xiangshan and Wang Yangming are to be found in the line of what he called Eastern Zhejiang historians from Huang Zongxi 黃宗羲 (1610–1695) to, presumably, Zhang himself. In these two essays as well as elsewhere, he further characterized the two separate intellectual traditions in the Qing mainly in terms of “erudition” versus “essentialism.” It is in this sense that he called, respectively, classical philologists “erudites” (boya 博雅) and Eastern Zhejiang scholars “specialists” (zhuanjia 專家), “specialization” in Zhang’s terminology being interchangeable with “essentialism.” Moreover, Zhang often used the term “essentialism” in an intellectual rather than a moral context. It no longer meant “moralizing” or “grasping what is morally essential” but came very close to what we would call “synthesizing” or “systematizing.” 41 Zhang’s redefinition of “essentialism” is highly indicative of the climate of opinion during his time. Intellectualization of key Confucian moral concepts must be regarded as a sign of the rise of Confucian intellectualism.42 To sum up, Zhang’s thesis throws an entirely different light on the HanSong controversy in Qing intellectual history. First, it treats the Han-Song distinction as more apparent than real. For if, as most late Qing controversialists suggested, Han Learning consists essentially of classical philology, then it cannot possibly be antithetical to Song Neo- Confucianism, and much less so to Zhu Xi’s tradition, which, with its built-in emphasis on inquiry and study, presupposes philology on the methodological level. Second, Zhang’s thesis stresses continuity between Song-Ming Neo- Confucianism and Qing learning from a point of view distinctly his own. Both Neo- Confucian schools of Zhu and Lu extended well into the Qing Period, but a metamorphosis transformed their extension: what had separated the two schools previously in the area of metaphysical speculations now continued to do so in the realm of classical and historical studies. Thus, we find that the previous division into two systems of thought has become a distinction between two approaches to empirical studies. There was not, therefore, as Fung Youlan defined it, a continuity limited to common philosophical topics and texts. Third, the central problem in Qing intellectual history arose not so much out of the distinction between Han Learning and Song Learning as it did from a renewed tension between “erudition” and “essentialism”— a tension, however, that had shifted from moral grounds to intellectual grounds. Par ticular attention must be called to the fact that Zhang placed Han Learning squarely in Zhu Xi’s tradition. This is tantamount to saying that Han Learning was more than mere philology (kaozheng). In fact, Zhang recognized in the Qing philological movement, from Gu Yanwu to Dai Zhen, a central philosophical point, which derived from Zhu Xi’s emphasis on inquiry and study as a starting point for the quest for the Confucian Dao. According to Zhang’s thesis, therefore, Han Learning can claim its immediacy to Dao only when it rises above philology. In the pages that immediately follow, I shall first try to clarify the term “Song Learning.” Only with this clarification can we expect to develop a more

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objective and balanced view of Neo- Confucianism. Then, on the basis of a redefinition of Song Learning, I shall propose a new scheme of periodization, according to which the development of Neo- Confucianism from the early Song to the mid- Qing times may be understood in terms of the inner logic of intellectual history. When we return to the Qing case at a later juncture, it is hoped that some of the profound implications of Zhang Xuecheng’s thesis will also become more readily appreciable.

TWO CONCEPTS OF SONG LEARNING Generally speaking, we can discern two different concepts of Song Learning in Chinese intellectual history. The first concept, defined in a narrow sense, identifies Song Learning with metaphysical speculation on the Confucian Dao. This concept was formally established in the Yuan Period when a new category of Daoxue 道學 was adopted in the Songshi (History of the Song Dynasty) to honor the thinkers of the Cheng-Zhu school.43 It was greatly strengthened in the Ming, during which time metaphysical speculation happened to be the dominant form of Confucianism. The Ming acceptance of this narrow interpretation of Song Learning is well illustrated by the fact that the “Daoxue Biographies” in the History of the Song were published as a separate book, for which Chen Xianzhang 陳獻章 (1428–1500) wrote an impor tant foreword (xu 序) in 1485.44 Furthermore, attention must also be called to the unique and unexcelled Ming contributions to Confucian speculative philosophy. In the estimate of Huang Zongxi: The literary and practical accomplishments of the Ming did not measure up to those of former dynasties. Yet in the “philosophy of Principle (Lixue 理學) it attained what other dynasties did not. In every thing Ming scholars made the finest of distinctions and classifications, as if they were sorting the hair of an ox or picking silk threads from a cocoon. They thereby discovered what other scholars had failed to discover.” 45 It was through this kind of metaphysically colored telescope of the Ming that the metaphysical importance of Song Learning was magnified out of proportion in the Qing. When Qing philologists talked about Song Learning unanalytically, they meant, almost without exception, Daoxue or Lixue.46 In modern times, this narrow concept of Song Learning still continues to enjoy great popularity. Metaphysical speculation is seen to be what is essentially new in the Song revival of Confucian learning.47 The concept has even penetrated into the Western intellectual world. The Western term, Neo- Confucianism, for example, is used mainly as an equivalent of Daoxue or Lixue in Chinese, although such an interpretation often presents difficulties.48

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Intellectual historians, however, have long been critical of this partial and restricted view of Song Learning. Huang Zongxi, for instance, found little sense in the creation of the new category “Daoxue” in the History of the Song. In his judgment, the traditional category Rulin 儒林 (Confucian Scholars) is quite adequate to take care of the so- called Daoxue philosophers such as Zhou Dunyi, the Cheng brothers, Zhang Zai, and Zhu Xi. The Daoxue category is particularly misleading because it tends to suggest that the transmission of the Confucian Dao is separable from that of the Confucian classics, the latter being the central concern of the traditional Rulin category.49 This leads to a second and broadly defined concept of Song Learning, which Huang developed in his unfinished Song-Yuan Xue- an 宋元學案 (Scholarly cases of Song and Yuan classical scholars).50 In Scholarly Cases of Song and Yuan Classical Scholars, Hu Yuan 胡瑗 (993– 1059), Sun Fu 孫復 (992–1057), Fan Zhongyan 范仲淹 (989–1052), and Ou-yang Xiu 歐陽修 (1007–1072) are treated, in that order, as the founders of Song Learning, none of whom, it may be noted, achieved any distinction in metaphysical speculation. In offering this new interpretation of the Confucian revival in the early Song, both Huang Zongxi’s and Quan Zuwang’s 全祖望 (1705–1755) historical judgments are well grounded. Methodologically, they distinguished the premetaphysical conception of Song Confucianism from the metaphysically colored view of the later periods. Thus, in each and every case of the above four Neo- Confucian scholars, the choice was made on the basis of a Song evaluation. As Quan Zuwang clearly explained in his “Introductory Remarks”:51 “Hu Yuan and Sun Fu were selected as the forerunners of Song Learning because they had been so recommended by both Cheng Yi and Zhu Xi. The placement of Fan Zhongyan next to Hu and Sun was originally also Zhu Xi’s idea. In the case of Ou-yang Xiu, he was included in spite of his aversion to metaphysical speculation.”52 On the authority of Yang Shi 楊時 (1053–1135), however, Quan Zuwang insisted that Ou-yang Xiu’s status as a Neo-Confucian scholar and thinker must be reestablished. He should be much more than merely a master of Song literature. In a sense, it may be contended that what Huang Zongxi and Quan Zuwang were attempting was actually a historical reconstruction of the self-image of Song Neo-Confucianism. In this regard, they must be considered highly successful, for, interestingly enough, their reconstruction of the early Song Neo-Confucian development is confirmed by the following observation of the Southern Song scholar Chen Fuliang 陳傅良 (1137–1203): With the rise of the Song, [the style of ] learning among scholars underwent no less than three changes. From the reign of jianlong 建隆 (960–962) to the reigns of tiansheng 天聖 (1023–1031) and mingdao 明道 (1032–1033), vulgar [intellectual] customs dating from the period of the Five Dynasties were wiped out. [Scholars] then had a clearer idea of the direction [in

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which learning] should be developed. However, some of the old and conventionalized practices were yet to be transformed. Then Fan Zhongyan and his followers came to the forefront, promoting moral integrity as a timely remedy. Prompted by a sense of shame, everybody in the Empire followed their lead. When Ou-yang Xiu appeared on the scene, he impressed the world with the purity and elegance of both his expressed ideas and his literary art, which far surpassed those of the Wei and Jin periods. Finally, after a while, Zhou Dunyi 周敦頤 (1027–1073) entered the field. He dropped all the nonessential embellishments and founded his learning primarily on the basis of the Six Classics.53 This account agrees even in detail with the Huang- Quan thesis presented in the Scholarly Cases of Song and Yuan Classical Scholars. Although the names of Hu Yuan and Sun Fu are not mentioned, Chen Fuliang must have had them in mind when he referred to the beginning of a new sense of direction in learning in the mingdao period, for it was precisely that period which marks the beginning of the lasting influence of Hu Yuan’s Neo- Confucian educational program, established first in Suzhou and finally in the Imperial Academy.54 Thus, in contrast to the narrowly defined view, a broad conception of early Song Neo- Confucianism eventually crystallized. Consciously distinguishing these two different concepts of Song Learning is essential to our understanding of the relationship between Han Learning and Song Learning. To say the least, unnecessary confusion of different levels of discussion in the Han-Song controversy can be avoided. With this clarification, it can be readily recognized that while Qing scholars such as Hui Dong and Dai Zhen attacked Song Learning in its narrow sense, others such as Gong Zizhen and Fang Dongshu defended it in its broad sense. Much of the entangled nature of the long-standing Han-Song Learning controversy therefore results from the fact that the controversialists are not always talking about the same Song Learning. A clear recognition of the fact that there have been two conceptual levels of Song Learning is equally impor tant for the interpretation of the nature of Qing intellectual history, especially in the way the Qing intellectual development stands in relation to the Song. It is one thing to contrast Qing philology with Song Neo- Confucianism in its narrow, metaphysical sense, but it is an entirely different matter to explain the rise of Qing philology against the background of the whole Neo- Confucian tradition conceived in broad terms. While the former approach suggests discontinuity, the latter implies continuity. As an intellectual historian, my emphasis will be placed on the latter approach, although I wish also to show specifically how NeoConfucian metaphysical speculation eventually gets itself helplessly involved in a philological argument.55 Although the meaning of the narrow concept of Song Learning has always been clear, Song Learning in its broad sense is not readily susceptible to a

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simple, neat definition. It hinges very much on how the Confucian Dao was conceived by the early Song Neo- Confucians. In this connection, a much quoted passage by Liu Yi 劉彛(1017–1086) may be cited to serve as a basis for our discussion. In 1069, Liu Yi, a leading disciple of Hu Yuan, explained the Confucian Dao to Emperor Shenzong in the following words: Your minister has heard that the Way (Dao) of the Sages has three aspects: substance (ti 體), function (yong 用) and literary expression (wen 文). The bond between prince and minister and between father and son, humanity, righteousness, rites and music—these are things which do not change through the ages; they are the substance of Dao. The Classic of Poetry and the Classic of History, the dynastic histories, the writings of the philosophers and the works of men of letters—these perpetuate the example down through the ages; they are the Dao’s literary expression. To activate this substance and put it into practice throughout the empire, enriching the life of the people and ordering all things to imperial perfection—this is its function.56 As de Bary observes, “In this threefold conception of the Dao, we have a concise statement of the aims of the Song school in their most general terms . . . suggesting broad lines along which it was to be developed by the manifold activities of Song scholars.”57 Liu’s threefold formulation of the Confucian Dao may be briefly explained as follows: Of the three aspects, the ti, or substance, is, of course, most fundamental to Neo- Confucianism. Since Liu was no metaphysician, he merely described it in plain language and presented it as no more than a set of Confucian ethical principles governing human relationships of various kinds. Like most Neo- Confucians of his day, however, he also firmly believed that the substance of Dao is not subject to change. It was precisely this belief that led other NeoConfucians with a metaphysical turn of mind to search intensively for the metaphysical foundations of the Confucian Dao. In its extreme form, as Dai Zhen later pointed out, the substance of Dao (or its equivalent Li “Principle”) was conceived as a completely self-sufficient metaphysical entity that, “being obtained from Heaven, becomes embodied in the mind.”58 Liu uses the term wen (literary expressions) in a very broad sense. It practically includes all the four major categories of books in traditional bibliographical classifications. It is not clear whether by the name zi 子, Liu meant writings of all philosophical schools or those of the Confucians only. Even if he intended the latter meaning, the whole range of “literary expressions” was already wide enough to engage the energy and time of scholars for generations. The problem of function (yong) of the Confucian Dao is immensely complicated and therefore requires further comment. To begin with, it must be emphasized that in the Neo- Confucian context, substance and function are but

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two sides of the same coin. Logically, the two imply each other. In this sense, then, the functional aspect of the Confucian Dao must be regarded as far more impor tant and real than its literary (including classical or, more appropriately, scriptural) traditions. The functions of Dao are multitudinous, however. Therefore, those mentioned in Liu’s statement can only be considered as a very incomplete list given by way of illustration. Upon closer scrutiny, one will find that Liu’s functions are essentially of the political and social kind. In the most general terms, the functions of the Confucian Dao may be classified into two major categories, which correspond, respectively, to what is commonly referred to as “sageliness within and kingliness without” (neisheng waiwang 內聖外王).59 To borrow a more clearly formulated expression from the seventeenth century writer Shao Tingcai 邵廷采 (1648–1711), the Dao functions “outwardly to put the world in order and inwardly to nourish man’s nature and feelings” (wai qi jingshi, nei yang xingqing 外期經世, 內養性情).60 In the history of Confucianism in general and of Neo- Confucianism in particular, the internal functioning of Dao was manifested mainly in the form of moral self- cultivation. Moral cultivation involved relatively fewer complications because at least in theory, attainment of “sageliness within” needed nothing from outside. On the other hand, however, the external functioning of Dao in terms of putting the world in order presented a perennially difficult problem to the Confucians. This aspect of the Dao transcended the realm of thought and depended for its final solution on external factors, which were, by definition, beyond the control of Confucian thinkers as individuals. As history has repeatedly shown, each time external conditions proved unfavorable for the realization of Confucian ideals, the Confucians withdrew to their own inner world of ideas with the expectation that after sufficient waiting, they could find a better opportunity to emerge. In this regard, the life of Confucius is highly symbolic of the fate of Confucianism in later Chinese history. According to tradition, Confucius turned to the world of classical scholarship only after he had accepted the fact that it was impossible for the Dao he promoted to prevail in the outside world. It may be suggested that the pattern of withdrawal and return, to borrow a favorite expression of Arnold J. Toynbee, is ever-recurrent and characterizes a large part of the long, frustrating historical experience of the Confucian Dao in its quest for political and social realization, from Confucius himself down to Gu Yanwu and Huang Zongxi.61

NEO-CONFUCIANISM: A NEW SCHEME O F P E R I O D I Z AT I O N With Song Neo- Confucianism so broadly defined, a new periodization of the whole Neo- Confucian intellectual development from the Song to the Qing may be attempted. Three different stages of the development can be clearly dis-

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cerned. The Song Period represents the beginning and first stage of NeoConfucianism when all the three aspects of the Tao— substance, function, and literary, including scriptural tradition— found their lively expressions. The middle and second stage began in late Southern Song and culminated in the Ming dynasty. In this stage, metaphysical speculations on the substance of Dao eventually gained ascendancy over the other two aspects in Neo- Confucianism. Thus, the functional aspect was largely confined to the realm of “sageliness within” or moral self- cultivation, and the study of the Confucian literary tradition on the whole ceased to make any significant progress. It was also during this period that the idea of Song Learning in its narrow sense gradually became crystallized. The final and third stage clearly started in the late Ming and early Qing times and came to full fruition in the eighteenth century. The central task Neo- Confucian scholars set for themselves during this third period was to restudy as well as to purify the Confucian literary tradition, especially the scriptural domain. The quest for the substance of Dao through moral self- cultivation was definitely out of fashion, as was the interest in the internal aspect of the function of Dao. It would be unjust, however, to say that Qing scholars were entirely unconcerned with the substance of Dao. In fact, they justified classical and historical studies as a Confucian calling on the ground that the quest for the true Confucian Dao must begin with intellectual clarification. Nor was the idea of function with respect to “kingliness without” completely dead during this whole period. On the contrary, the idea still showed great vitality throughout the third stage. For example, it pulsed vibrantly through the political criticisms of the Donglin 東林 movement of the late Ming Period, the expectations of Gu Yanwu and Huang Zongxi, the “pragmatism” of Yan Yuan 顏元 (1635–1704) and Li Gong 李塨 (1659–1733), the political and social philosophy of Dai Zhen, and Zhang Xuecheng’s theory of history being “practically ser viceable to society” ( jingshi 經世). The rise of the well-known Jingshi school in the nineteenth century, it may be noted, owed much to the intellectual inspirations of Zhang’s writings. Even with all these modifications, the final stage of the Neo- Confucian development is clearly marked by a much more genuine interest in the Confucian scriptural tradition (wen) than in either the substantial (ti) or functional (yong) aspect of Dao. We must now proceed to analyze the above three stages of development of Neo- Confucianism in terms of the inner logic of intellectual history. As Liu Yi’s statement indicates, early Song Neo- Confucians meant to develop the Confucian Dao along three broad lines through manifold activities, which, in fact, they did. It hardly needs to be said that the long and distinguished genealogy of Neo- Confucian philosophers, from Chou Dunyi, Zhang Zai, and the two Cheng brothers all the way to Zhu Xi and Lu Xiangshan, was primarily concerned with the quest for the substance of Dao. As regards wen (literary expressions), however, the Song accomplishments have long been underestimated. Recent studies have convincingly shown that in the fields of classical and

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historical studies, Song scholars distinguished themselves in at least two aspects: first, their critical investigations and reevaluations covered almost every single aspect of the ancient cultural heritage; second, even in terms of methodological innovations, they also anticipated much of what has been generally considered as unique contributions of Qing philologists.62 Confucian Dao in the Song, like Christian faith during the Reformation, “is a busy, active thing. It changes society and builds the Kingdom.”63 A major curriculum reform Hu Yuan introduced into the Imperial Academy in the third decade of the eleventh century, for example, placed emphatic stress on “management of practical affairs” (zhishi 治事) alongside classical studies (the so- called jingyi 經義) in Confucian higher education.64 Needless to say, classical scholarship dealt with the substance of Dao and “management of practical affairs” dealt with its function or application. This simultaneous concern with both substance and function is by no means unique with Hu Yuan. In fact, it is a spirit common to Northern Song Neo- Confucians. Sun Fu’s study of the Chunqiu 春秋 (Spring and Autumn Annals)65 and Li Gou’s 李覯 (1009–1059) study of the Zhouli 周禮 (Rites of Zhou),66 to give two additional examples, show an equally immediate functional sensitivity to the needs of the state and society during Song times. From the point of view of intellectual history, it was out of this Song zeitgeist,67 so to speak, that the reform movement from Fan Zhongyan to Wang Anshi arose, which was the culmination of the functioning of Dao in the realm of “kingliness without.” The failure of Wang Anshi’s reforms marks a turning point in the development of Neo- Confucianism. It put to an end the Neo- Confucian dream of experimenting with political and social reconstruction and therefore turned Neo- Confucianism inwardly toward the realm of “sageliness within.” In the twelfth century, Neo- Confucianism faced a difficult historical choice between political participation and intellectual withdrawal. Opinion was divided between what may be called the fundamentalist wing68 of Zhu Xi, Lü Zuqian 呂祖謙 (1137– 1181), and Zhang Shi 張栻 (1133–1180) on the one hand, and the utilitarian wing, including, among others, Chen Liang 陳亮 (1143–1194) and Ye Shi 葉適 (1150–1223) on the other. While the latter group continued to preach immediate political reformism, the former urged a retreat into the intellectual and moral world to tackle what they regarded as the more fundamental issues in Neo- Confucianism. As we all know, it was the fundamentalists that eventually triumphed over their utilitarian rivals. It should be added, however, that the fundamentalists’ retreat was originally conceived as a temporary strategic move, for Zhu Xi and his allies were all profoundly convinced that only when the fundamental issues were satisfactorily solved, could they then expect to return to deal effectively with the practical affairs of state and society.69 Hence, in terms of Liu Yi’s threefold formulation, it may be said that in Southern Song times, the Neo- Confucian emphasis shifted gradually to the

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substance (ti) of Dao, although the idea of function (yong) was still very much alive. In other words, Neo- Confucianism turned away from seeking immediate improvement of the external world and began a long metaphysical journey in search of the inner meanings of the substance of Dao. This shift, though not clearly perceptible in the beginning, is more or less reflected in the changing views of substance and function in Song Neo- Confucian philosophy. In the eleventh century, for instance, Cheng Yi took substance and function to be of the same origin (tiyong yiyuan 體用一源), which suggests that they are the two inseparable aspects of Dao.70 But Cheng Yi gave no clear indication as to which of the two aspects should be stressed. In the twelfth century, the idea of the inseparability of substance and function was still current. The emphasis, however, was placed more on substance than on function. On the positive side there was Zhu Xi’s view that “substance generates function,”71 which must be regarded as a significant departure from Cheng Yi’s view. On the negative side, there was Lü Zuqian’s warning against overstressing function. As Lü put it, function is always an essential part of the Confucian Dao, but we must not single it out as something of particular importance, for if we do, we would be inevitably led astray.72 Conceivably, Lü’s view was developed as a fundamentalist’s answer to the challenge of the utilitarian wing. It is difficult to say precisely when the second stage of Neo- Confucianism began. I have been very much tempted to take the Goose Lake Temple Debate between Zhu Xi and Lu Xiangshan in 1175 as the beginning. However, two reasons make me hesitate to do so. First, the debate was, in all likelihood, more impor tant to Neo- Confucians of later centuries than to those of the twelfth century. Zhu Xi, for instance, only referred to this event casually in some of his letters.73 At any rate, there is no evidence that the debate attracted much immediate attention from Zhu’s and Lu’s contemporaries. Second, in Zhu Xi’s time, a considerable degree of equilibrium was still maintained between the subjective quest of Dao through moral cultivation and the objective study of the Confucian scriptural tradition. Zhu Xi himself is a great classical scholar, even judging by the rigid standards of Qing philology. If we must choose a date for the beginning of the second stage, the thirteenth century is preferable to the twelfth. In the middle of the thirteenth century, a serious attempt was made by a certain Tang Zhong 湯中 to reconcile the differences between Zhu’s “following the path of inquiry and study” and Lu’s “honoring the moral nature.”74 This is the earliest of such reconciliations in NeoConfucian intellectual history, after the Goose Lake Debate. Unfortunately, we know very little about the details of Tang Zhong’s reconciliation. However, the very fact that Tang had found it necessary to make such an effort is sufficient indication that the Zhu-Lu controversy had by then already become one of the inner tensions in Neo- Confucianism. From the point of view of intellectual history, it is only logical that a few decades later, in early Yuan times, Wu Cheng

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吳澄 (1249–1333), the well-known and well-respected follower of Zhu Xi, also turned to stress the importance of “honoring the moral nature,” for which he was severely criticized by his contemporaries.75 In the second stage, while the functional aspect of Dao appears to have receded from the forefront of Confucian consciousness, the quest for the substance of Dao became inextricably involved with the whole Confucian scriptural tradition (wen). It was precisely because of this involvement that zun dexing and dao wenxue became the central tension in Neo- Confucianism. We have seen previously how this central tension implies a dichotomy between morality and knowledge in the Confucian context. Now we must examine briefly and in highly generalized terms how this tension can further be fitted into the analytical scheme provided by Liu Yi’s threefold formulation of Dao. On the basis of Liu Yi’s formulation, the major controversy in this middle stage of NeoConfucianism arose from the fact that there were two conflicting views on the role of that part of the Confucian scriptural tradition (wen) that dealt with metaphysical speculations on the substance (ti) of Dao. The substance of Dao, as Neo- Confucian philosophers of this second stage all agreed, is predominantly moral in nature. They also basically agreed that true knowledge of this substance can be obtained primarily through the inner light of man’s moral nature. Moral self- cultivation therefore becomes the first and central task for every Neo- Confucian. But what role would the Confucian literary tradition, especially the scriptural domain, play in this inner search for the substance of Dao? At this point, we find the Neo- Confucian house extremely divided. At one extreme, there is the view that since all the moral truths about the Dao had already been discovered by ancient sages and are contained in their writings, it is impor tant that we study these sources carefully to find out what the Dao really is. The primacy of moral cultivation is, of course, not questioned. However, the scriptural tradition is very much emphasized as a necessary intellectual prerequisite for the right kind of moral cultivation. At the other extreme, we find a view that stresses the transcendency of the moral substance of Dao. This view does not deny that moral truths had been previously discovered by the sages, but it tends to imply that man’s moral awakening, or recovery of his moral mind, consists, in each and every case, in an original creation and discovery all his own. In other words, no matter how many times the same truth had been discovered by sages before him, a man would still have to find it out all by himself and for himself. With this view, therefore, study of the Confucian literary (including scriptural) sources becomes at least peripheral, if not completely irrelevant, to the quest of the substance of Dao. Needless to say, the above presentation is necessarily oversimplified and overgeneralized. Moreover, between the two extremes, many intermediate views with varying degrees of inclination toward one side or the other can be discerned as well. On the whole, however, the conflict between the two fundamen-

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tally divergent attitudes figures centrally in the Neo- Confucian inner tension involving the relationship between “honoring the moral nature” and “following the path of inquiry and study,” or, as the Song distinction goes, between moral knowledge and intellectual knowledge. During the Ming Period, when the quest for moral knowledge reigned supreme, what Liu Yi referred to as the “literary expression” (wen) of the Confucian Dao received the least attention from Neo- Confucian philosophers. This situation is most characteristically illustrated by the fact that, historically, the lowest ebb of Confucian classical scholarship comes during the Ming. As Gu Yanwu neatly put it, “Since the adoption of the eight-legged style in the examination, ancient learning has been discarded; with the publication of the Sishu wujing daquan 四書五經大全 (Complete Collection of the Four Books and Five Classics), all the old exegeses have fallen into oblivion.”76 Although in actual practice Ming Neo- Confucianism ceased to contribute significantly to classical and historical studies, in theory, intellectual knowledge continued to be of central importance in philosophical discussions. The dominant Ming Neo-Confucian theory of knowledge, ranging from Chen Xianzhang to Wang Yangming, as it has been generally known, places moral knowledge in an absolute and completely self-sufficient realm to which intellectual knowledge is not accessible. When this theory is applied to the problem of the Confucian scriptural tradition, it leads inevitably to the radical conclusion that the Six Classics are but dregs of the sages.77 To Wang Yangming, it is even misleading to say that the Six Classics contain all the moral truths about the Dao. Such truths can exist only in our own moral mind, to which the Six Classics are no more than an index.78 Thus, a sharp contrast is powerfully drawn between moral truths as living truths and the language of the classics as dead language. Given this climate of opinion, textual investigation of the classics is bound to wither away. Wang Yangming’s central position in Ming Neo- Confucianism, as has been traditionally established, can hardly be questioned. And yet, he must not be taken as the sole representative of Ming intellectual history.79 No sooner had his theory of knowledge made its enormous impact than a strong philosophical reaction began. From the sixteenth century to the end of the dynasty, many new theories of knowledge were developed by Wang Yangming’s critics as well as revisionists, all emphasizing the importance of the intellectual element in Confucian learning in general and that of the scriptural tradition in par ticular. Even philology showed its rudimentary but clear beginnings. Ironically enough, to some degree, Wang Yangming got himself involved, perhaps without a conscious realization on his part, in what can only be described as, in a very broad sense, philological exercises. His restoration of the Daxue guben大學古本 (the so- called “old text of the Great Learning”) is a par ticular case in point. It served as the point of departure for several impor tant philological studies on the subject in the late Ming and early Qing, involving such impor tant names as Gao

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Panlong 高攀龍 (1562–1626), Liu Zongzhou 劉宗周 (1578–1645), Chen Que 陳 確 (1604–1677), and Mao Qiling 毛奇齡 (1623–1716). The fact is that in spite of Wang Yangming’s insistence on an intuitive understanding of the classics according to their spirit rather than letter, the Confucian letter nevertheless disturbed him deeply whenever it turned out that at certain vital points, his textual interpretation was at variance with that of an earlier Confucian master, especially Zhu Xi. In fact, it can be shown that the rise of Qing philology resulted, to a considerable extent, from metaphysical controversies during the late Ming. Elsewhere I have contended that the Confucian movement of “return to the sources,” which had begun in the sixteenth century and extended well into the Qing dynasty, resulted largely from the fact that metaphysical controversialists, being at their wit’s end, appealed to the supreme court of the earliest sages and grounded their arguments ultimately on the sacred texts of the classics.80 Once textual evidence was introduced into the metaphysical lawsuit, it was practically impossible not to call philology to the stand as an expert witness. Thus, philological explication of classical texts gradually replaced moral metaphysical speculation as the chief method for the attainment of Confucian truth (Dao). According to the generally accepted distinction in Qing intellectual history, the former is “solid scholarship” (shixue 實學) and the latter, “empty words” (kongyan 空言). In the last analysis, however, the intellectual transition from the Ming to the Qing is characterized mainly by a shift of emphasis in Neo- Confucianism from the moral element to the intellectual element. In the sixteenth century, due largely to Wang Yangming’s influence, many Neo- Confucians still held fast to the Song distinction between moral knowledge and intellectual knowledge, with the emphasis indubitably placed on the former. By the seventeenth century, however, leading Confucian scholars of varying philosophical persuasions began to take a new turn by assigning to intellectual knowledge a much more impor tant role in the quest for Dao. Liu Zongzhou, a critic and revisionist of the Wang Yangming school and mentor of Huang Zongxi, regarded the distinction between the two kinds of knowledge as false. Man’s moral consciousness not only is inseparable from his intellectual nature, but depends on the latter for operation.81 Liu’s view, it may be noted, won the enthusiastic applause of eighteenthcentury philologists.82 Gu Yanwu, quoting the Lunyu (Analects), says, “In your conduct let there be some things that you are ashamed to do; in your studies make use of the widest range of sources.”83 By separating morality and knowledge in such a neat way, he actually reduces the problem of Neo- Confucian pan-moralism to a matter strictly of personal ethics. Needless to say, it was his emphasis on erudition that received the closest attention of his latter- day followers.84 Wang Fuzhi 王夫之 (1619–1692), to cite one more example, in his commentary to Zhang Zai’s Zhengmeng 正蒙 (Correcting Youthful Ignorance) stresses that intellectual knowledge is a vital aid to our moral mind.85 He even reminds us of Immanuel Kant when he maintains that while knowledge begins

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with the senses, man nevertheless possesses a faculty of a priori knowledge (dexing ziyu xuewen 德性資於學問).86 Little wonder that a century later, Dai Zhen should insist that man’s moral nature feeds itself on scholarship and knowledge.87 Dai’s sage is not simply a man of moral perfection, for before the sage can bring himself to moral perfection, he must be a perfect scholar, a man of perfect wisdom.88 The growth of classical philology during the Qing can therefore, I believe, be better understood in this broad context of the rising importance of Confucian intellectualism. The growing importance of intellectual knowledge in Neo- Confucian thinking, the revival of philological interest among Confucian scholars, including metaphysicians, and the ever- deepening philological involvement of NeoConfucian philosophical discussions—these are all sure signs that at the turn of the seventeenth century, a fundamental intellectual transformation was taking place within Neo- Confucianism. It is this transformation that eventually takes Neo- Confucian development to its third and final stage during the Qing Period, when Confucian classical texts met the most systematic critical reexamination on a scale larger than during any period in Chinese history, including during the Han. Since the mid- eighteenth century, Qing classical scholarship has been persistently referred to as “philology” (kaoju or kaozheng). Yet the Qing classicists were not at all happy with this descriptive term, for it tended to suggest that the kind of textual studies they carried out so wholeheartedly had no direct bearing on the Confucian Dao. Jiao Xun 焦循 (1763–1820), for instance, strongly protested the term. Like Gong Zizhen, he preferred the much more elegant and dignified appellation “classical scholarship.” To call it “philology,” in his opinion, was to miss the point entirely that Qing classical studies sought ultimately to elicit the original meanings hidden beneath literal significance of the sages’ words.89 Such, therefore, was the Qing classicists’ self-image regarding the specific role they played in the history of Confucianism. Unfortunately, Jiao Xun’s protest seems to have never been seriously heeded. Modern interpretations of Qing intellectual history generally emphasize the philological distinctiveness of Qing classicism, whereas the professed dedication of the classicists to the Confucian Dao is often ignored as if it were mere cosmetics. As a result, the whole development of Qing classical and historical studies is seen, essentially, as a methodological movement whose intellectual ties with the Confucian tradition, if not severed, became too loose to be of much significance. I must admit that there is indeed much in the Qing philological development that lends support to such a view. As Benjamin I. Schwartz has aptly explained it: “Even if such pioneers as Hui Dong and Yen Ruoju continued to regard learning as a means to the achievement of ethical and political insights, their method led them elsewhere. It soon came to have a fascination all its own.”90 On the other hand, however, a purely philological interpretation of Qing Confucianism has two apparent faults. First, it obscures the Confucian philosophical

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background of Qing classical and historical scholarship, and consequently, overlooks the inner logic of the fundamental intellectual transformation of the seventeenth century. Second, while this interpretation is applicable to many individual cases in which the philologist was so absorbed in his textual problems that he forgot completely the original purpose of his intellectual undertaking, it nevertheless cannot give a satisfactory account of the very course of development that Qing philology took as a learned movement. In par ticular, this interpretation creates insurmountable difficulties in placing the two leading philosophical spokesmen of Qing classical and historical scholarship, Dai Zhen and Zhang Xuecheng, in their proper historical perspectives. In their insistence on a return to the original classical sources for purification of the Confucian tradition and in their philological crusade against empty metaphysical speculation, the Qing scholars resemble to an amazingly high degree the Christian humanists of the Renaissance and Reformation, especially Lorenzo Valla and Erasmus of Rotterdam. Indeed, the Qing scholars also shared many other basic assumptions with the humanists, including erudition as the sure basis for faith,91 the necessity of philological probing for bringing to light a text’s true meanings,92 and, above all, scholarship as (in the case of the Qing classicists) a Confucian calling. It is in such terms as these that I propose to redefine Qing philology as the last phase of Neo- Confucianism. In the attempt at a new periodization outlined above, I have set forth my own interpretation of the nature and development of Neo- Confucianism from the early Song to the Qing. This represents merely one intellectual historian’s point of view or emphasis. To conclude, I wish to make more explicit what this point of view or emphasis implies. My central concern is to explain Qing intellectual history against the philosophical background of Song-Ming Neo- Confucianism. In other words, I wish to examine to what extent and in precisely what terms the drastic shift from Ming metaphysical speculation to Qing philology can be understood as an internal intellectual development in the Neo- Confucian context. Therefore, my interpretation has necessarily been based on the inner logic of the development, to the total exclusion of external factors such as the political, social, and economic changes in seventeenth- century China, which figure prominently in many previous studies on the same subject written from points of view different from mine. This does not mean, however, that I subscribe to the obviously impossible view that ideas progress entirely according to their own logic and do not at all respond to outside stimulation. My isolation of purely intellectual developments from other realms of human activities is solely for the purpose of historical analysis. A strictly internal interpretation of intellectual history does not compete for its validity with any of the environmental interpretations, whether they be political, economic, or social. On the contrary, this par ticular interpretation supplements as well as complements all of them. This point has been amply borne out by Perry Miller’s excellent studies of the New England mind.93

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It may be contended that while environmental interpretations can contribute to our understanding of an intellectual movement, in most general terms, internal interpretations alone provide specific answers as to why that movement followed the par ticular course it actually did. For example, the theory of Manchu suppression may be accepted as a satisfactory explanation of early Qing scholars’ turning from history to classics. But specifically why a par ticular classical canon was chosen for philological investigation above all the others is a question to which the answer, more often than not, must come from intellectual history itself. From the point of view of this study, the whole Neo- Confucian development from the early Song to the Qing involves centrally the problem of knowledge. Neo- Confucianism started with a rigid distinction between moral knowledge and intellectual knowledge but ended with the latter’s supremacy accompanied by what may be called the intellectualization of moral reason. Though primarily a problem of knowledge in the special Confucian sense, this development does involve implications transcending Confucian confines, when conceived on a highly generalized and abstract level. Thus, I choose to see this development mainly in terms of the active tension between intellectualism and anti-intellectualism.

APPENDIX: INTELLECTUALISM AND ANTI-INTELLECTUALISM IN CHINESE INTELLECTUAL HISTORY I shall begin by explaining the two borrowed terms “intellectualism” and “antiintellectualism” as they are used in my study, and then proceed to sketch a variety of forms that both intellectualism and anti-intellectualism have assumed in Chinese intellectual history. By “intellectualism,” I do not mean any specific philosophical doctrine. The term is used generally to indicate a positive attitude toward intellectual knowledge and scholarly pursuits insofar as their bearings on the Confucian Dao are concerned. In par ticular, “intellectualism” places a marked emphasis on the importance of the textual basis for an understanding of the sages’ words. In its extreme form, such as in the case of some Qing philologists, it insists on a literal interpretation of a text to the extent of what may be called the fallacy of etymology, or, perhaps, as a Chan Buddhist would say, “experiencing death right below a character” (si zai zi xia 死在字下). On the other hand, the term “antiintellectualism” is even more elusive and ambiguous, as it has been used in current Western writings. As Richard Hofstadter, an authority on American anti-intellectualism, once remarked: “One reason anti-intellectualism has not even been clearly defi ned is that its very vagueness makes it more ser viceable in controversy as an epithet. But, in any case, it does not yield very readily to

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definition.”94 “Anti-intellectualism” in the context of the present study also refers to an attitude that tends to see Dao as lying in a higher realm than, and therefore beyond the reach of, intellectual knowledge. From this attitude, a different view of the Confucian scriptural tradition is derived. A Confucian subscribing to this view believes that he can meet the minds of the sages without necessarily going through the medium of the sages’ words. And when he finally gets around to the sages’ words— and this is often unavoidable as long as he professes to be a Confucian—he relies primarily on his own intuition and refuses to be bound by either the literal significance of a text or an earlier exegesis no matter how authoritative it may be, or both. Since, he would argue, words can never fully convey the inner meanings of messages from the sages, the Six Classics are but dregs or, at best, footnotes to our own mind. In Chinese intellectual history, both intellectualism and anti-intellectualism can be classified into various types according to different standards. There has been, for instance, a long tradition of what may be called a worldly or vulgar form of intellectualism, which is closely associated with the civil ser vice examination system of the state. The worldly intellectualism can be traced back as far as the Former Han Period, when it became proverbial that “to bequeath a chest full of solid gold to one’s son is not as good as to teach him a Confucian classic.”95 Toward the end of the Han, classicists went so far that they often devoted thousands of words to explaining one or two characters in a classical text, or they wrote a million-word commentary to one par ticular classic. As Ban Gu 班固 (32–92) rightly observed, it was worldly incentives such as office and emoluments that prompted Confucians to carry the worldly intellectualism to this extreme.96 Intellectualism continued to grow along this line in later periods. When a poem attributed to a Song emperor suggests that beauty, golden mansions, and emoluments are all hidden in books, it must have encouraged numerous people to turn to classical studies.97 Thus, the cult of book learning (dushu 讀書), which is central to Zhu Xi’s intellectualism, met its most vulgar twist in the hands of those intellectuals whose ultimate goal was worldly success rather than realization of Dao. It may be noted that Zhu Xi and his true Neo- Confucian followers always insisted that they be clearly distinguished from the worldly intellectualists. In reality, however, a clear- cut distinction between the two kinds of intellectualists was not always easy to maintain. Interaction was bound to happen and a shifting of standpoints occurred from time to time. After all, both types of intellectualists originally studied the same Confucian classics. This probably explains why the question of whether to take the examination or not always posed a difficult problem to Neo- Confucian masters, notably from the time of Zhu Xi to that of Wang Yangming. Now, turning to anti-intellectualism, the picture is even more complicated. Strong anti-intellectualistic tendencies were persistently present in both original philosophical Daoism and its reincarnation in Wei-Jin Neo-Daoism. When Laozi talked about “banishing wisdom and discarding knowledge,” he was an

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open and destructive anti-intellectualist.98 In the Zhuangzi alone, at least four types of anti-intellectualism can be distinguished. When Zhuangzi raises the question as to how can we ever be certain about knowing anything, he may be described as a skeptical anti-intellectualist;99 when he says, “There is a limit to our life, but to knowledge there is no limit. To pursue what is unlimited with what is limited is a perilous thing,”100 he sounds like a logical anti-intellectualist; when he suggests that the fish trap should be forgotten when fish are caught and words should be forgotten when ideas are apprehended,101 he may be called a linguistic anti-intellectualist; and finally, when he speaks of the wordlessness beyond the realm of words and the nonknowledge beyond the realm of knowledge, he becomes a transcendental anti-intellectualist.102 In Neo-Daoism, an impor tant battle between intellectualism and antiintellectualism was fought at the linguistic level. Living in the first quarter of the third century, Xun Can 荀粲 made the following famous remark about Confucian classics: “Zigong said that the Master’s discussion of human nature and Heavenly Way cannot be heard. Therefore, although the Six Classics have been preserved, they are no more than dregs of the Sage.”103 The analogy of the classics to dregs is, of course, traceable to earlier Daoist writings such as the Zhuangzi104 and the Huainanzi 淮南子,105 but in Xun Can’s formulation, we find the earliest clear expression of the idea that the classics are not necessarily the reservoir of Confucian truths—an idea that later influenced Neo- Confucian anti-intellectualists, notably Chen Xianzhang. The immediate implication of this idea, however, was rather limited to the Neo-Daoist philosophical discussion of the relations between “words” (yan 言) and “ideas” (yi 意). Neo-Daoist antiintellectualists generally believed that, on the authority of both the Zhuangzi and the “Xici” 繫辭 (Commentary on the Appended Phrases) in the Yijing 易經 (Classic of Changes),106 “words do not completely express the ideas of the Sage.” On the other hand, Neo-Daoist intellectualists, also on the basis of the “Commentary on the Appended Phrases,” argued that words are entirely adequate in expressing ideas.107 In the end, however, it was the anti-intellectualistic view that dominated the Neo-Daoist intellectual world. It was also this view that later became amalgamated with the Mahâyâna concept of upāya (“expediency,” for which the Chinese term is fangbian 方便) and therefore facilitated the development of Buddhist anti-intellectualism.108 Buddhism presents another difficulty in our discussion of intellectualism and anti-intellectualism. In theory, Buddhism, by its reliance on the dialectic as opposed to ordinary logic and by its insistence that the Truth or the Real is knowable only by intuition or transcendental wisdom (prajñā) as opposed to reason, rejects outright intellectual knowledge and therefore is by definition an anti-intellectualistic system from our point of view.109 The problem is not that simple, however, for when this intuitive philosophy developed into an elaborate and subtle scholasticism, it too turned itself into a kind of intellectualism, although it is intellectualism of a higher, or perhaps we may say, the highest,

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level. In Tang China, the Consciousness Only (Vijñaptimātra) school, with its subtle analysis of the eight consciousnesses and fine distinctions of the mind, became precisely such an intellectualism.110 Needless to say, it is a kind of philosophy that could have interested only the learned. On the other hand, the Tang dynasty also witnessed the rise of the most radical form of Buddhist anti-intellectualism— Chan or Zen Buddhism. Dr. Hu Shi is certainly justified in calling the Chan movement a “reformation or revolution in Buddhism.”111 At least, in the Chan Buddhist emphasis on “pointing directly to the human mind” and “seeing one’s nature and becoming Buddha,” we are reminded of Martin Luther’s salvation by faith alone. A Chan Buddhist may be considered even more radical than Luther, however, on the ground that he rejects not only the church but also the scriptures, whereas, according to Luther, revelation was inseparable from the actual text of Holy Writ so that one was granted God’s grace only after study.112 The general features of Chan Buddhist anti-intellectualism are too well known to require further comment. However, two specific points of historical interest may not be entirely out of place here. First, Chan anti-intellectualism can be better understood against the social background of many of its masters. Beginning with Huineng 惠能 (or 慧能 638–713), a large number of Chan Buddhists came from the lower social strata and therefore were nonintellectuals, if not illiterates. It was only natural that they should de-emphasize the intellectual element in Buddhism. This aspect of Chan anti-intellectualism later strengthened the Confucian idea that all men are potential sages, although in the beginning, as shown in the case of Zhu Daosheng 竺道生 (ca. 360–434), the philosophical precursor of Chan Buddhism, the influence may have worked the other way around. A touch of Chan can be detected in the ways in which both Lu Xiangshan and Wang Yangming saw a sagely virtue in the illiterate. Second, the Chan Buddhist theory of transmission of mind without the use of written texts implies the inexpressibility of the First Principle or Truth. While the idea undoubtedly has its independent Buddhist origin, it also strongly suggests a Neo-Daoist influence. As we have just seen, the Neo-Daoist philosophical dispute focused centrally on the problem of the inadequacy of language as a medium of ideas. As early as the fourth century, the philosophic Buddhist monk Zhi Dun 支遁 (314–366) had already introduced this Neo-Daoist thesis into Buddhism. In his Daxiao pin duibi yaochao xu 大小品對比要鈔序 (Preface to a Selection of Comparative Excerpts from [the Prajñpârmitâ in] the Greater and Smaller [Number of] Chapters), he says: “One must clearly see that-bywhich (the Saint) expresses (the Truth in words); one must understand that-bywhich he speaks. For when the principles are obliterated (in mystic comprehension) then all words are discarded, and when the (idea) of Enlightenment has been forgotten, then Wisdom is complete.”113Here it may be noted that although Zhi Dun’s emphasis is clearly on principles and meanings, his view of the func-

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tion of language is not totally negative. However, the thesis later took a further anti-intellectualistic turn in the hands of Zhu Daosheng, who says: “Ever since the transmission of the scriptures eastward (to China), their translators have encountered repeated obstacles, and many have been blocked by holding (too narrowly) to the text, with the result that few have been able to see the complete meaning. Let them forget the fish-trap and catch the fish. Then one may begin to talk with them about the Way (Dao).”114 Zhu Daosheng’s linguistic antiintellectualism, coupled with his theory of sudden enlightenment, must have contributed ideologically to the rise of Chan Buddhism in the Tang.115 Within Confucianism, anti-intellectualism was also built on several different bases. In addition to metaphysical anti-intellectualism, two other types of great political and social significance may be briefly indicated. The first type arises out of the distinction between cai 才 (talent) and de 德 (virtue) or cai and xing 性 (nature), as in the Wei and Jin Period.116 The distinction itself is at least as old as Confucius, but acquired its practical importance in imperial China. It is particularly relevant to the problem of official recruitment. Its earliest institutionalized expression may be found in the two major categories under which the Han government selected people to fill offices—xiaolian 孝廉 (filial piety and moral integrity) and xiucai 秀才 (fine talent). The general tendency in Chinese history, however, seems to have been a gradual shift of emphasis from “virtue” to “talent” due, to a great extent, to an ever-increasing demand for objectivization of criteria. On the other hand, one of the justifications for the aristocratic claim to office in medieval China (roughly from the third century to the ninth) was “virtue.” The medieval nobility believed that the kind of virtues needed for administration could be cultivated only in good families. Even down to Ming- Qing times, family background was still more or less stressed, as can be seen from the fact that no one would be admitted to the civil ser vice examination until he could show a clear and clean family record. The distinction received further emphasis in Neo- Confucianism. Sima Guang 司馬光 (1019–1086) reopened the discussion of the old problem by restating the Confucian principle, with renewed enthusiasm and vigor, that virtue must be placed before talent as a social and political value.117 The term “talent” of course has a much broader meaning than knowledge or scholarship. Nevertheless, knowledge tends to stand at the center of what constitutes “talent.” This is especially the case when the distinction was applied to the education of women. The proverb widely current in Ming and Qing China, “a woman without talent is a woman with virtue,” actually defines “talent” in terms of literacy.118 The second type of anti-intellectualism stems from the emphasis on practicality and utility. The best Confucian representative of this type in our period is Yan Yuan, who was probably the most thorough and radical anti-intellectualist in the entire history of Confucianism. In modern times, he has been sometimes referred to as a “pragmatist” in Chinese intellectual history. The analogy

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seems to be somewhat forced and therefore questionable. Nevertheless, in his crusade against intellectualism, and in the fact that he maintained that ideas must be subservient to the successful carry ing out of actual affairs, he is certainly comparable to William James, for both men are philosophers of practicality.119 Moreover, Yan Yuan fought intellectualism on two fronts at the same time. Armed with the Confucian idea of yong (“function,” “use,” or “utility”), he launched fierce attacks on both metaphysical speculation on the ti (substance) of Dao and bookish knowledge of wen (literature). However, the fate of his “pragmatic” philosophy was doomed as long as he was unable to break through the prescribed limits of Confucianism, for methodologically, he could neither distinguish himself clearly from the kind of moral cultivation that had been practiced by Song-Ming Neo- Confucians, nor keep himself completely uninvolved with the Confucian scriptural tradition, which was being subjected to rigorous philological examination under the rising Confucian intellectualism of the day. To follow the useful distinction suggested by Morton White, we actually see in Yan Yuan an anti-intellectualist and an anti-intellectual combined in the sense that he not only repudiated knowledge acquired through book learning but also considered scholars or intellectuals (dushuren 讀書人) to be completely useless members of society. In this sense, then, his anti-intellectualism transcended the realm of pure thought and can be more fruitfully investigated in close association with an examination of the sociopolitical attitudes toward knowledge and the intellectual in seventeenth- century China. From the above review, brief as it is, at least two obvious points come to mind. First, intellectualism and anti-intellectualism in Chinese history can be studied from a number of angles, ranging from the intellectual and religious to the political and social. Each study should by no means be confined to the kind of distinction I have chosen to maintain in this study. Second, all these types of intellectualism and anti-intellectualism, though distinguishable in conception, are not always separable in historical reality. Interaction between them is but a matter of course. Various kinds of anti-intellectualism often reinforced each other, as did intellectualism of different origins, for although in my study I tend to see the conflict between intellectualism and anti-intellectualism mainly as an internal development of Neo- Confucian thought, this does not mean that the development can be understood in complete isolation from other nonConfucian or even nonintellectual forces. It must be further noted that both intellectualism and anti-intellectualism as two contrasting attitudes may be more meaningfully understood in relative rather than absolute terms. As a matter of fact, we rarely find them in pure forms, and in many of the border cases, it is even difficult to draw a strict line. Moreover, in applying the distinction to individual thinkers, it is particularly important that we be very clear about the levels at which or realms in which we classify a person as an intellectualist or anti-intellectualist, for the same person could be both at different levels or in different realms. Although Zhu Xi is undoubt-

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edly a Confucian intellectualist at the level of “following the path of inquiry and study,” at the higher level of “honoring the moral nature,” he also shows antiintellectualistic tendencies. Wang Yangming probably would have had a much stronger case had he argued for Zhu Xi’s “Dinglun” 定論 (Final Conclusions) in terms of levels of thought rather than stages of life. Tertullian’s Christian antiintellectualism also makes better sense in the realm of philosophy than in that of theology, for the reason he derides is that of the philosophers, whereas in defending faith and understanding Scripture, he still resorts to reason.120 The various modifications made above, I hope, will suffice to indicate the immense complexities that are necessarily involved in any attempt at making a meaningful distinction between intellectualism and anti-intellectualism in Chinese intellectual history. In this connection, I could not agree more with Isaiah Berlin’s remarks about the famous distinction he makes between the hedgehog and the fox. Of course, like all overly simple classifications of this type, the dichotomy becomes, if pressed, artificial, and ultimately, absurd. However, if it is not an aid to serious criticism, neither should it be rejected as being merely superficial or frivolous; like all distinctions that embody any degree of truth, it offers a point of view from which to look and compare, a starting point for genuine investigation.121

notes My sincere thanks go to Professors L. S. Yang and John K. Fairbank, who kindly read the first draft of this essay and offered valuable suggestions for improvement. I also wish to thank the East Asian Research Center, Harvard University, for a grant in the spring term, 1971, which allowed me to carry out research and writing by releasing me from teaching responsibilities. 1.

E. Harris Harbison, The Christian Scholar in the Age of the Reformation (New York: Charles Scribner’s, 1956), 2–3.

2.

De praescriptione haereticorum, 7, and Apologeticus, 46, quoted and discussed in Charles Norris Cochrane, Christianity and Classical Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, [1944] 1957), 222–223. See also Henry O. Taylor, The Emergence of Christian Culture in the West (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1956), 108–123; Étienne Gilson, Reason and Revelation in the Middle Ages (New York: Random House, 1938), 8–10, and History of Christian Philosophy in the Middle Ages (New York: Random House, 1955), 44–45.

3.

Harbison, The Christian Scholar, 6–7, 19.

4.

Jean Leclercq, O.S.B., The Love of Learning and the Desire for God, trans. Catherine Misrahi (New York: Fordham University Press, 1961), 29–30.

5.

William Theodore de Bary, “Some Common Tendencies in Neo- Confucianism,” in Confucianism in Action, ed. David S. Nivison and Arthur F. Wright (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1959), 39.

6.

For the concept “polarity,” see Benjamin  I. Schwartz, “Some Polarities in Confucian Thought,” in Nivison and Wright, Confucianism in Action, 51–52.

32 7.

t he r is e of qing c onf uc ia n int e l lec t ual ism James Legge, trans., Confucian Analects, 2.15, vol. 1 in The Chinese Classics (Hong Kong: HKU Press, 1960), 150.

8.

Ibid., 15.30, 302–303.

9.

According to Confucius, of the four classes of men in relation to knowledge, the second class includes “those who learn, and so, readily, get possession of knowledge” (xue er zhi zhi zhe 學而知之者). Confucian Analects, 14.9, 313.

10.

James Legge, trans., The Doctrine of the Mean, in vol. 1 of The Chinese Classics, 413. In his discussion of theorizing, Gilbert Ryle says, “Columbus could not have given his account of the west side of the Atlantic without voyaging thither, nor could Kepler have given his account of the solar system unless he and Tycho Brahe had spent weary hours visually studying the heavens.” The Concept of Mind (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1970 [reprint]), 288. These two examples are very helpful to our understanding of the relation between Confucius’s “learning” and “thinking.”

11.

Isaiah Berlin, The Hedgehog and the Fox (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1966), 1.

12.

Confucian Analects, 15.2, 295.

13.

Ibid., 6.25, 193.The translation is modified according to Mao Qiling 毛奇齡’s interpretation in Lunyu jiqiu pian 論語稽求篇, juan 3: 10a– b, as well as in Xihe heji 西河合集, dated between 1720 and 1795, vol. 38.

14.

For instance, Mencius says, “In learning extensively and discussing minutely what is learned, the object (of the superior man) is that he may be able to go back and set forth in brief what is essential.” James Legge, trans., The Works of Mencius, 4B.15, vol. 2 in The Chinese Classics, 323.

15.

It is significant that in the opening chapter of the Xunzi, entitled “Quanxue” 勸學 (Exhortation to Learning), Xunxi specifically quoted Confucius’s remark that “a whole day’s thinking is not as good as a moment’s learning.” See H. H. Dubs, The Works of Hsün-tzu (London: Arthur Probsthain, 1928), 32.

16.

Zhu Xi 朱熹, “Da Xiang Pingfu” 答項平父, in Zhu Wengong wenji 朱文公文集, SBCK suoben, juan 54, 5:962.

17.

Xiangshan xiansheng quanji 象山先生全集, SBCK suoben, juan 34, 2:261.

18.

Henan Chengshi yishu 河南程氏遺書, GXJBCS, juan 18: 209.

19.

Zhuzi yulei 朱子語類 (Taipei: Zhengzhong, 1962 [reprint]), juan 9, vol. 1, esp. pp. 295–300; juan 27, vol. 2, esp. pp. 1148–1157.

20. Ibid., juan 33, vol. 3, esp. pp. 1396–1401. 21.

Zhengmeng 正蒙, in Zhangzi quanshu 張子全書, GXJBCS, 45.

22. Henan Chengshi yishu, juan 25: 348; English translation in Chan, SB, 570. 23. John Herman Randall Jr., The Role of Knowledge in Western Religion (Boston: Beacon, 1958), 8. 24. See Wing-tsit Chan, “The Cheng- Chu School of Early Ming,” in Self and Society in Ming Thought, ed. Wm. Theodore de Bary (New York: Columbia University Press, 1970), 29–51. 25. These two Western terms, “philology” and “philosophy,” must also be understood in a very broad sense. Here I follow the example of David S. Nivison’s The Life and Thought of Chang Hsüeh- ch’eng 1738–1801 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1966).

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26. Liang Ch’i- ch’iao (Qichao), Intellectual Trends in the Ch’ing Period, trans. Immanuel C. Y. Hsü (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1959), 27. See also Liang Qichao 梁啟超, Zhonguo jin sanbai nian xueshu shi 中國近三百年學術史 (Taipei: Zhonghua, 1962 [reprint]), 1–40. 27. Hu Shi 胡適, Dai Dongyuan de zhexue 戴東原的哲學 (Shanghai: Shangwu, 1927), 1. See also his “Jige fan lixue de sixiang jia” 幾個反理學的思想家, in Hu Shi wencun 胡適文存, 3rd series (Taipei: Yuandong, 1953 [reprint]), 53–107. 28. Fung Yu-lan, A History of Chinese Philosophy, trans. Derk Bodde (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1953), 2:630–631. 29. See Qian Mu 錢穆, Zhongguo jin sanbainian xueshushi 中國近三百年學術史 (Shanghai: Shangwu, 1937), 1:1. 30. The Marxist historian Hou Wailu 候外廬, though criticizing the above two schools harshly at various points, also accepts the same assumption that the so- called Han Learning was an antithesis of Song speculations. See his Zhongguo sixiang tongshi 中國思想通史 (Beijing: Renmin, 1963), vol. 5, esp. p. 415. 31.

Hui Dong, Jiuyaozhai biji 九曜齋筆記, juan 2: 192, Zazhu miji congkan 雜著秘笈叢刊 edition (Taipei: Xuesheng Shuju, 1971).

32. Hui Dong, Songyai biji 松崖筆記, juan 1: 37, Zazhu miji congkan (Taipei: Xuesheng Shuju, 1971). 33.

Dai Zhen, “Yu Shih Zhongming lun xueshu” 與是仲明論學書, in Dai Dongyuan ji 戴東 原集, SBCK suoben, juan 11: 115.

34. On the Hanxue shicheng ji and its author, Jiang Fan, see Zhou Yutong’s 周予同 introduction in his annotated edition of Hanxue shicheng ji (Hong Kong: Shangwu, 1964 [reprint]), esp. pp. 30–54. 35.

Gong Zizhen, “Yu Jiang Ziping jian” 與江子屏牋, in Gong Zizhen quanji 龔自珍全集, collated by Wang Peizhang 王佩璋 (Shanghai: Zhonghua, 1961), 2:346–347. For the date of Gong’s letter, see Wu Changshou 吳昌綬, Ding-an xiansheng nianpu 定盫先生年譜, included in Gong Zizhen quanji, 2:600.

36. Fang Dongshu, Hanxue shangdui, WYWK, esp. pp. 154–155. Fang was probably also influenced by Yao Nai 姚鼐 (1732–1815, a foremost leader of the Tongcheng 桐城 Literary School). See Yao’s letter to Jiang Songru 蔣松如 in Xibaoxuan quanji 惜抱軒全集, SBBY, Wenji 文集, juan 6: 9b–11a. 37.

Chen Li, Hanru tongyi, Dongshu congshu 東塾叢書, preface, 1a– b. See also Arthur W. Hummel, Eminent Chinese of the Ch’ing Period (Washington,  D.C.:  U.S. Government Printing Office, 1943), 1:91–92, and Shimizu Nobuyoshi 清水信良, Kinsei Chūgoku shisō shi 近世中國思想史 (Tokyo: Meiji Tosho Shuppan, 1950), 415–419.

38. Huang Yizhou, Jingji zazhu 儆季雜著, Nanjing shuyuan 南菁書院 edition, 1894, “wenchao” 文鈔, 6:33a. On Huang’s place in the Eastern Zhejiang school of the Qing Period, see Chen Xunci 陳訓慈, “Qingdai Zhedong zhi shixue” 清代浙東之史學, in Shixue zazhi 史學雜誌 2, no. 6 (April 1931), esp. pp. 29–30. 39. See Zhang Xuecheng, Wenshi tongyi 文史通義 (Beijing: Guji chubanshe, 1956), 58–59 and 368–370.

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40. See Zhang’s letter to Wu Xushi 吳胥石 in Wenshi tongyi, 286. Cf. also Nivison, The Life and Thought of Chang Hsüeh- ch’eng, 157n. 41.

See “Yu Lin xiucai” 與林秀才, in Wenshi tongyi, 324, and “Shao yutong bie zhuan” 邵與 桐別傳, in Zhangshi yishu 章氏遺書 (Wuxing: Liu Shi Jiayetang 劉氏嘉業堂 edition, 1922), 18:9a.

42. Detailed analy sis of this intellectualization has been made in my paper “Zhang Xuecheng Versus Dai Zhen: A Study in Intellectual Challenge and Response in Eighteenth- Century China,” originally published in Philip J. Ivanhoe, ed., Chinese Language, Thought and Culture: Nivison and His Critics (Chicago and La Salle: Open Court, 1996), 121–154. 43. According to Professor Lien-sheng Yang, this new category may have been already created for the Song National History in the last part of the Southern Song Period. See “The Organ ization of Chinese Official Historiography,” in Excursions in Sinology (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1969), 109. 44. See Baishazi quanji 白沙子全集, Biyulou 碧玉樓 edition (1771), 1:17b–18b. 45. MRXA, WYWK, vol. 1, “fan-li” 凡例, 1, translated by Wm. Theodore de Bary in Self and Society in Ming Thought (New York: Columbia University Press, 1970), 4 (with minor alterations). 46. Lixue, as it is used by Huang Zongxi, includes also the so- called Xinxue 心學 (School of Mind). 47. For a very recent example, see Mou Zongsan 牟宗三, Xinti yu xingti 心體與性體 (Taipei: Zhengzhong shuju, 1968), 1:11–19. 48. For Western usage of the term “Neo- Confucian” and its difficulties, see Wm. Theodore de Bary, “A Reappraisal of Neo- Confucianism,” in Studies in Chinese Thought, ed. Arthur Wright (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953), 88 and 108n17. 49. See Huang’s letter to the Commission of Ming History Project concerning the Lixue Biographies in Huang Lizhou wenji 黃梨洲文集, ed. Chen Naiqian 陳乃乾 (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1959), 449–452. 50. This monumental work was largely completed by Quan Zuwang. Quan, however, seems to have closely followed the original design laid down by Huang Zongxi. 51.

See “Xulu” 序錄, in SYXA, 1:1–2.

52. Ou-yang Xiu’s lack of interest in such basic philosophical problems as man’s nature is discussed in James T. C. Liu, Ou-yang Hsiu: An Eleventh- Century Neo- Confucian (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1967), 96–97. 53.

“Wenzhou yanbu xuetian ji” 溫州淹補學田記, in Zhizhai xiansheng wenji 止齋先生文集, SBCK, 39:9b.

54. See Chen Fuliang’s “Tanzhou chongxiu Yuelu shuyuan ji” 潭州重修嶽麓書院記, in ibid., 39:6b–8a, where both Hu Yuan’s and Sun Fu’s names are given in connection with the renewal of Confucianism during the mingdao period. See also SYXA, 1:26; de Bary, “A Reappraisal of Neo- Confucianism,” 89–90. 55.

I must clarify from the outset that by differentiating between the two concepts of Song Neo- Confucianism and placing my emphasis on the broad one, I am merely insisting on a necessary historical distinction, not taking a par tic u lar philosophical position. The

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distinction in no way involves a value judgment as to which one is “better.” I am inclined to think, however, that the narrow concept can claim a greater validity in the study of the history of philosophy, whereas the broad concept suits the intellectual history approach much better. In fact, the broad concept has been adopted by several intellectual historians in modern times. See Qian Mu, ZJSNXS, 1:3–4; Takeuchi Yoshio 武內義雄, “Sōgaku no Yurai oyobi Sono Tokushusei” 宋學之由來及び其特殊性, in Tōyō Shichō 東洋思潮, Iwanami Kōza 岩波講座 (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1934), and Shina Shisōshi 支那思想史 (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1936), 248–252; de Bary, “A Reappraisal of Neo- Confucianism,” 81–111, and “Some Common Tendencies in Neo- Confucianism,” 25–49. 56. SYXA, juan 1, 1:26; English translation by Wm. Theodore de Bary, with minor alterations, in Sources of Chinese Tradition (New York: Columbia University Press, 1950), 439. 57.

De Bary, “A Reappraisal of Neo- Confucianism,” 90. This threefold formulation is Liu Yi’s own, not Hu Yuan’s, as Professor de Bary seems to assume. It is a view that Hu Yuan would have undoubtedly endorsed, however, had he known it.

58. Dai Zhen, MZS, ed. He Wenguang 何文光 (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1961), esp. pp. 13–15. 59. Although this expression first appeared in the “Tianxia” 天下 chapter of the Zhuangzi (James Legge, trans., The Texts of Taoism [New York: Dover, 1962], part 2, p. 217), it was taken over by the Neo- Confucians from the Northern Song on. 60. Shao Tingcai 邵廷采, “Da Lixian Li Shugu” 答蠡縣李恕谷書, in Sifu Tang ji 思復堂集, 7:10b, Shaoxing xianzheng yishu edition 紹興先正遺書本 (Tainan: Zhuangyan wenhua, 1997). 61.

It must be noted that here I am only talking about the Confucian idealistic tradition in terms of the basic political, social, and economic ideals that leading Confucian thinkers through the ages not only cherished but sought, though apparently to no avail, to put into practice in the Chinese state and society. (Many of these Confucian ideals may be conveniently found in Zhongguo datong sixiang ziliao 中國大同思想資料 [Beijing: Zhonghua, 1959].) At the same time, however, I am keenly aware of the dominant modern view since the May Fourth Movement, which, in a variety of ways, stresses the central point that Confucianism (including Neo- Confucianism) since the Han dynasty was established as the ideological orthodoxy in China and functioned as an official tool of the government. That this view is built on the basis of a hard historical fact can hardly be denied, but I wish to contend that the continuity of a Confucian idealistic tradition in premodern China is an equally hard historical fact, to which due recognition must also be given. On this point, see the illuminating discussion of Wm. Theodore de Bary in “Some Common Tendencies in Neo- Confucianism.” Huang Tsung-hsi’s Mingyi daifang lu 明夷待訪錄 (A plan for the prince), for instance, is clearly a signal of withdrawal before return. The title literally suggests something like “a memorandum written during darkness before dawn with the expectation of a call from a prince.” The term Mingyi is originally the name of a hexagram in the Yijing. In his preface, Huang Zongxi uses the expression Ming er wei Rong 明而未融 (“Brightness not fully developed”), which is a reference, not to the Yijing directly, but to the Zuozhuan 左傳. According to an entry in the fifth year of Duke Zhao 昭公 (536

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t he r is e of qing c onf uc ia n int e l lec t ual ism b.c.e.), someone consulted the Yijing and got the hexagram Mingyi, which then became Qian 謙 (also a hexagram). It was explained that “Mingyi becoming Qian represents brightness, but that which is not fully developed— corresponding, we may presume, to the early dawn” 明夷之謙, 明而未融, 其當旦乎 (translation by James Legge, The Ch’un Ts’ew, with the Tso Chuen, Chinese Classics, 5:604). It is interest ing to fi nd that Gu Yanwu also uses the same historical allusion in a poem written for a Ming loyalist friend, in which he says Mingyi yu weirong 明夷猶未融 (“Mingyi is not yet fully developed”). Gu Tinglin shiwen ji 顧亭林詩文集 (Shanghai: Zhonghua, 1959), 304. Moreover, in another poem (“Chunyu,” 春雨), Gu has the line Qiong jing dai houwang 窮經待後王, meaning, “Study the Classics exhaustively with the expectation that a later prince may fi nd it useful” (ibid., 415). A similar idea may also be found in his letter to Yang Yu 楊瑀 (Yingshih Yü, “Zhang Xuechen Versus Dai Zhen” 雪臣, 146). Thus, we can see that both scholars shared exactly the same Confucian feeling of “withdrawal and return” in a historical situation in which external conditions rendered it impossible to make their classical and historical knowledge practically ser viceable to society.

62. See Zhang Shunhui 張舜徽, Zhongguoshi lunwen ji 中國史論文集 (Wuhan: Hubei Renmin chubanshe, 1956), 78–130; Qian Mu, Zhuzi xin xue- an 朱子新學案 (Taipei: Sanmin shuju, 1971), 1:10–15. Vols. 4 and  5 of Qian’s study deal specifically with Zhu Xi as a scholar in various fields of Confucian learning. 63. Harbison, The Christian Scholar, 163. 64. See Wang Jianqiu 王建秋, Songdai Taixue yu Taixue sheng 宋代太學與太學生 (Taipei: Zhongguo xueshu zhuzuo jiangzhu weiyuanhui, 1965), 169–175. 65. See Mou Runsun 牟潤孫, “Liang Song Chunqiu xue zhi zhuliu” 兩宋春秋學之主流, in Zhushi Zhai congkao 注史齋叢稿 (Hong Kong: Xinya yanjiusuo, 1959), 141–161. 66. Hu Shi 胡適, “Ji Li Gou de xueshuo” 記李覯的學說, in Hu Shi wencun, 2:28–47. See also Étienne Balazs, Chinese Civilization and Bureaucracy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1964), 277–289. 67. On the problem of the so- called “spirit of the times” in intellectual history, see Franklin L. Baumer, “Intellectual History and Its Problems,” The Journal of Modern History 21, no. 3 (September 1949), esp. pp. 192–194; John C. Greene, “Objectives and Methods in Intellectual History,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review 44 (June 1957), esp. pp. 59–64; and H. Stuart Hughes, Consciousness and Society: The Reorientations of European Social Thought, 1890–1930 (New York: Knopf, 1958), 8–9. 68. For the term “fundamentalism,” see de Bary, “Some Common Tendencies in NeoConfucianism,” 34. 69. See Qian Mu, ZJSNXS, 1:5–6; de Bary, “A Reappraisal of Neo- Confucianism,” 105–106. 70. Cheng Yi 程頤, Yi Cheng zhuan 易程傳, CSJC, preface, 2. On the usage of the terms ti (substance) and yong (function) in Song Neo- Confucianism and their possible Buddhist origins, see Li Yong’s 李顒 exchange of views with Gu Yanwu, Erqu ji 二曲集 (Beijing: Tianhuaguan daiyin, 1930), 16:7a–9b. For a detailed discussion on Zhu Xi’s theory of substance and function, see Qian Mu, Zhuzi xin xue- an, 1:429–440. 71.

ZYL, 1:580. Zhu Xi’s view of substance and function was further developed by Wang Yang-ming. See Wang Wencheng gong quanshu 王文成公全書, SBCK, juan 1: 81; Wing-tsit

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Chan, trans., Instructions for Practical Living and Other Neo- Confucian Writings by Wang Yang-ming (New York: Columbia University Press, 1963), 71. 72. SYXA, juan 51, 13:60. 73. See Mou Zongsan, Xinti yu xingti, 3:253–254. 74. Yuan Jue 袁桷, Qing Rong jushi ji 清容居士集, SBBY, 21:4b. See also Quan Zuwang 全祖望, Jieqiting ji 鮚埼亭集, WYWK, juan 34, 4:430–431. 75. Yu Ji 虞集, Daoyuan xuegu lu 道園學古錄, SBBY, 44:5b; SYXA, juan 92, 23:5–6. 76. Rizhi lu jishi 日知錄集釋, WYWK, 6:105. On the decline of classical studies in the Ming, see Pi Xirui 皮錫瑞, Jingxue lishi 經學歷史, annotated by Zhou Yutong 周予同 (Shanghai: Shangwu, 1934), 292–299. 77. See Chen Jian’s 陳建 criticism of Chen Xiancheng in Xuebu congbian 學蔀通辨, CSJC, 62–63. For a recent discussion of Chen’s break with the intellectual approach of the Zhu Xi school, see Jen Yu-wen, “Ch’en Hsien- chang’s Philosophy of the Natu ral,” in Self and Society in Ming Thought, esp. pp. 61–62, and the same author’s book in Chinese, Baishazi yanjiu 白沙子研究 (Hong Kong: Jianshi mengjin shuwu, 1970), esp. pp. 180–184. 78. Wang Yangming, “Jishan shuyuan zunjingge ji” 稽山書院尊經閣記, in Wang Wencheng Gong quanshu, juan 7: 250–251. 79. See the recent interest ing discussion by de Bary in Self and Society in Ming Thought, 1–26. 80. See my “Cong Song-Ming Ruxue de fazhan lun Qingdai sixiangshi” 從宋明儒學的發展 論清代思想史, Zhongguo xueren 中國學人 2 (September 1970): 19–41. 81.

Liu Zongzhou, Lunyu xue- an 論語學案, in Liuzi quanshu 劉子全書 (1824 edition), 29:31a.

82. See SKQS zongmu tiyao 總目提要, WYWK, juan 36, 8:11–12. 83. See Arthur Hummel, ed., Eminent Chinese of the Ch’ing Period (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1943), 1:423. 84. Qian Mu, ZJSNXS, 1:130–131. 85. Wang Fuzhi, Zhangzi Zhengmeng zhu 張子正蒙注 (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1956), 106. A similar view was expressed by Fang Xuejian 方學漸 (1540–1615) as early as 1611. (See Dongyou ji 東遊記, Tongcheng Fangshi qidai yishu 桐城方氏七代遺書 edition [1888], 1:4b.) Since Wang was a close friend of Fang Yizhi 方以智 (1611–1671, grandson of Fang Xuejian), it is very likely that Wang may have been influenced by Fang Xuejian through his philosophical discussions with Fang Yizhi. (See my Fang Yizhi wanjie kao 方以智晚 節考 [Hong Kong: Xinya yanjiusuo, Longmen shudian, 1972], 65–66, 87–88.) 86. Wang Fuzhi, Siwen lu 思問錄, “neipian” 內篇 (Taipei: Guangwen, 1970), 24–25. For a recent discussion, see Xiao Jiefu 肖箑父, “Wang Fuzhi zhexue sixiang chufan,” 王夫之 哲學思想初探, in Wang Chuanshan xueshu taolun ji 王船山學術討論集 (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1965), vol. 1, esp. pp. 39–49. 87. MZS, 15. 88. Ibid., 55. 89. See Jiao’s letter to Liu Taigong 劉台拱 (1751–1805) in Diaogu ji 雕菰集, GXJBCS, 2:212–214. 90. Foreword to Liang Ch’i- ch’iao, Intellectual Trends in the Qing Period, xix.

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91. See Myron P. Gilmore, “Fides et Eruditio: Erasmus and the Study of History,” in Humanists and Jurists (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1963), 87–114. 92. For Erasmus, see John Huizinga, Erasmus and the Age of Reformation (New York: Harper, 1957), 111; for Valla, see Donald Kelley, Foundations of Modern Historical Scholarship (New York: Columbia University Press, 1970), 28–33. 93. See especially Miller’s Orthodoxy in Massachusetts, 1630–1650 (Boston: Beacon, 1959), and The New England Mind: The Seventeenth Century (Boston: Beacon, 1961). For a discussion of Miller’s nonenvironmental approach to intellectual history, see Robert Allen Skotheim, American Intellectual Histories and Historians (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970), esp. pp. 186–197. 94. Richard Hofstadter, Anti-intellectualism in American Life (New York: Vintage, 1962), 6–7. 95. HS (Shanghai: Shangwu, 1927), 73:2b. 96. Ibid., 88:12a. 97. Cf. Ping-ti Ho, The Ladder of Success in Imperial China (New York: Columbia University Press, 1963), 86–87. 98. This and many other similar expressions are quoted and discussed in Fung Yu-lan, A History of Chinese Philosophy, 1:187–189. 99. Legge, The Texts of Taoism, part 1, pp. 190–192. 100. Ibid., part 1, 198. [We have reversed the order of the second sentence.—Eds.] 101. Ibid., part 2, 141. 102. See Fung Yu-lan’s analysis, A History of Chinese Philosophy, 201 and 242n. 103. Xun Can’s biography quoted in Shishuo xinyu zhu 世說新語注 (Hong Kong: Taiping, 1966), 47. 104. Legge, The Texts of Taoism, part 1, pp. 343–344. 105. Huainanzi, Zhejiang shuju edition (Hangzhou, 1876), 12:9b–10a. 106. See James Legge, trans., The Yi King, SBE (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1882), 16:376. 107. See Ou-yang Jian’s 歐陽建 “Yan jin yi lun” 言盡意論, in Quan Jinwen 全晉文 (in Yan Kejun 嚴可均), QSW (Zhonghua shuju edition, 1965), 109:1a– b. 108. See Tang Yongtong 湯用彤, “Yan yi zhi bian” 言意之辨, in Wei-Jin xuanxue lungao 魏晉 玄學論稿 (Beijing: Renmin, 1957), 26–47. Cf. also Erik Zürcher, The Buddhist Conquest of China (Leiden: Brill, 1959), 1:89–90. 109. On the dialectic and intuition in Buddhist philosophy, see T. R. V. Murti, The Central Philosophy of Buddhism (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1955), chaps.  5 and  8. Cf. also Daisetz T. Suzuki, The Essentials of Zen Buddhism (New York: Dutton, 1962), 25. 110. For general discussions of this topic, see Fung Yu-lan, A History of Chinese Philosophy, 2:299–338, and Ren Jiyu 任繼愈, Han-Tang Fojiao sixiang lunji 漢唐佛教思想論集, rev. ed. (Beijing: Renmin, 1973), 195–240. 111. See Hu Shih, “Ch’an (Zen) Buddhism in China: Its History and Method,” Philosophy East and West 3 (1953): 12. See also his posthumously published Zhongguo zhonggu sixiang xiaoshi 中國中古思想小史 (Taipei: Hu Shi ji-nian guan, 1969), 109–111. 112. See W. Schwarz, Principles and Problems of Biblical Translation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1955), 193.

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113. Quan Jin wen, 157:6a– b. Translated in Zürcher, The Buddhist Conquest of China, 1:125. 114. Huijiao 慧皎, Gaosengzhuan 高僧傳, Chuji 初集 (Taipei: Taiwan yinjingchu 台灣印經處 edition, 1958), 1:171. Translated by Derk Bodde, in Fung Yu-lan, A History of Chinese Philosophy, 2:270. 115. Cf. Fung Yu-lan, A History of Chinese Philosophy, 2:388–390. 116. On the problem of cai versus xing in the Wei-Jin Period, see Tang Changru 唐長孺, “Wei-Jin caixing lun de zhengzhi yiyi” 魏晉才性論的政治意義, in Wei-Jin Nanbeichao shi luncong 魏晉南北朝史論叢 (Beijing: Shenghuo, dushu, xinzhi sanlian shudian, Xinhua shudian faxing, 1955), 298–310. 117. See his ZZTJ, Zhonghua, 1:14–15, and also his essay “Caide lun” 才德論, in Wenguo Wenzheng Sima Gong ji 溫國文正司馬公集, SBCK chubian, suoben, juan 70: 511–512. 118. See Chen Dongyuan 陳東原, Zhongguo funü shenghuo shi 中國婦女生活史 (Shanghai: Shangwu, 1928), 189–202. 119. On William James as an anti-intellectualist, see Morton White, “Reflections on Antiintellectualism,” Daedalus 91, no. 3 (Summer 1962): 466–467. 120. Gilson, History of Christian Philosophy in the Middle Ages, 575. 121. Berlin, The Hedgehog and the Fox, 2.

2. Dai Zhen and the Zhu Xi Tradition

I

n his essay “Zhu and Lu” and its “Postscript,” Zhang Xuecheng 章學誠 (1738–1801) made a highly illuminating and original criticism of Dai Zhen 戴震 (1724–1777) with regard to the latter’s intellectual relationship with Zhu Xi 朱熹 (1130–1200). Zhang began by pointing out that in terms of intellectual ancestry, Dai was very much in the Zhu Xi tradition, which had all along stressed classical scholarship as a Confucian calling. Since Dai had the advantage of living and working in the heyday of Qing philology, however, it was natural that, technically, he surpassed Zhu Xi in textual studies. Nevertheless, unaware of his own intellectual origins, said Zhang, Dai was not only contemptuous of Zhu Xi philologically, but also declared Zhu Xi to be philosophically out of date.1 Zhang’s criticism reveals a profound sense of historical continuity on his part. It clearly suggests that Qing philology may be more reasonably interpreted as an internal development of than a sharp break from the Song-Ming NeoConfucian tradition.2 In this study, however, my investigation will be focused primarily on Dai Zhen’s intellectual relationships with the Zhu Xi tradition. I shall address two specific questions: First, to what extent is Zhang justified in taking Dai to be a true heir of Zhu Xi in the context of mid- Qing intellectual history? Second, in terms of the inner logic of the development of Neo- Confucianism, how are we to account for Dai’s criticism of Zhu Xi’s philosophical system?

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With regard to the first question, there are indeed several grounds on which Zhang’s point may be established. To begin with, attention may be called to Dai’s geographical background. Dai came from Huizhou, southern Anhui, which also happened to be Zhu Xi’s native prefecture. This was a region where the Zhu Xi tradition had never completely ceased to exist. Especially in the early seventeenth century, owing to the influence of the Donglin Academy, there was a renewed local interest in Zhu Xi. Generally speaking, Zhu Xi studies in this region developed along two lines: On the one hand, Zhu Xi’s thought was carefully reexamined on the basis of his commentaries on the Four Books and the Neo- Confucian handbook entitled Jinsi lu 近思錄 (Reflections on things at hand), which he compiled jointly with Lü Zuqian 呂祖謙 (1137–1181); on the other hand, in the realm of classical scholarship, Zhu Xi’s unfinished work on the three Confucian classics of rites (the Yili [Book of Etiquette and Ceremonial], the Liji [Classic of Rites], and the Zhouli [Rites of Zhou]) was continued with the help of the newly sharpened weapon of Qing philology.3 As we all know, throughout his intellectual career, Dai basically followed these two lines. There can be no doubt that Dai’s lifetime struggle with Zhu Xi’s thought and scholarship must have been shaped by his early exposure to this local tradition. As a matter of fact, we can find many examples in the Qing Period that exhibit the shaping influences of local intellectual traditions on individual scholars. Li Fu’s 李紱 (1673–1750) defense of Lu Xiangshan 陸象山 (1139–1191) was, to a large extent, related to his geographical origin in Linchuan, Jiangxi, and Zhang Xuecheng’s self-identification with the Wang Yangming 王陽明 (1472–1528) school was, by his own admission, established on account of his Eastern Zhejiang background. In the second place, Dai’s mentor Jiang Yong 江永 (1681–1762), also from the Huizhou area, was a lifetime devotee of Zhu Xi’s teachings. In 1742, Jiang completed his definitive annotated edition of the Reflections on Things at Hand, which has remained to this day authoritative.4 From 1750 to 1754, Dai studied classical philology and mathematics under Jiang in the local Zhu Xi Academy (Ziyang Shuyuan 紫陽書院). Dai’s experience at the academy had a profound influence on his general intellectual outlook. He was convinced by the example of his mentor that in the study of the Confucian classics one must, on the one hand, follow the Han exegetes philologically but, on the other, follow the Song masters, especially Zhu Xi, philosophically.5 In the third place, the Qing philological movement with its emphasis on “evidential investigation” (kaozheng 考證) was very much in that part of the Zhu Xi tradition that stressed “following the path of inquiry and study” (dao wenxue 道問學). While more will be said about this point later, it suffices to note here that classical philology is implied in Zhu Xi’s theory of “investigation of things” (gewu 格物) and “extension of knowledge” (zhizhi 致知). As a matter of fact, Zhu Xi himself was also a great master in the field of textual and philological studies,

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and in many ways anticipated the Qing philologists.6 He once confided in a friend that he was rather fond of the time-consuming “evidential investigations.”7 We may say that philological improvement or revision in Confucian classical scholarship is a built-in feature in his intellectualistic system. Viewed in this way, it is therefore perfectly legitimate for a philosophical follower of Zhu Xi to be at the same time philologically critical of him. During the early Qing, for instance, Yan Ruoju 閻若璩 (1636–1704) openly declared his intention to support Song philosophy with Han philology.8 Dai also made a similar point in his account of the Zhu Xi tradition in Fujian.9 In fact, Yan’s geographical and institutional studies of the Four Books—Sishu shidi 四書釋地 (Four Books in four installments)—which corrected many of Zhu Xi’s errors, were taken as a subtle defense of the Master in the philological form.10 Hence, both Jiang Yong’s and Dai’s efforts to bring Zhu Xi philologically up to date must be regarded as very true to the spirit of the Zhu Xi tradition. Last but not least, contrary to Zhang Xuecheng’s assertion, Dai was very much aware of his intellectual indebtedness to Zhu Xi. In a letter to Shi Jing 是鏡 (courtesy name, Zhongming 仲明, 1693–1769) written around 1750, Dai vigorously defended Zhu Xi’s tradition of “inquiry and study” as opposed to the anti-intellectualism of the Lu-Wang school. It reads as follows: As I know, the study of classics involves three major difficulties: it is difficult to attain erudition; it is difficult to have insightfulness; and it is difficult to cultivate sophisticated refinement. I certainly do not have them. However, these are the general qualities I set as criteria for scholarly writing. Some of our forebears such as Zheng Yuzhong (i.e., Zheng Qiao 鄭樵, 1104–1162) and Yang Yongxiu (i.e., Yang Shen 楊慎, 1488–1559), with their extensive knowledge and good memories, had written housefuls of books. Although they are worthy of the name of erudition, they nevertheless can have no claims to sophisticated refinement. There were others who bypassed all these difficulties and claimed that the great Dao can be reached through a shortcut. For example, Lu Xiangshan of Song and Chen Xianzhang 陳獻章 (1428–1500) and Wang Yangming of Ming discarded altogether scholarly discussions and decorated themselves with the good name of “honoring the moral nature” (zun dexing 尊德性). But how can anyone apply the name “honoring the moral nature” to one’s theory when it is divorced from “following the path of inquiry and study” (dao wenxue)?11 Obviously, here Dai is taking Zhu Xi’s side in the well-known controversy over the problem of zun dexing and dao wenxue between Zhu and Lu. As we know, Zhu Xi once admitted to a friend that, in contrast to Lu Xiangshan’s emphasis

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on “moral nature,” his own teaching was indeed more orientated toward “inquiry and study.” He said: Generally speaking, since the time of Zisi 子思 (492–431 b.c.e.), “honoring the moral nature” (zun dexing) and “following the path of inquiry and study” (dao wenxue) have been the two basic ways in which people are taught to exert themselves. Now, what Zijing (i.e., Lu Xiangshan’s courtesy name) talks about are matters pertaining exclusively to “honoring the moral nature,” whereas in my teaching, I have placed a greater emphasis on “inquiry and study.”12 However, when Lu learned about Zhu’s remark, he simply retorted by saying, “Since he does not know anything about honoring the moral nature, how can there be inquiry and study in the fi rst place?”13 There can be no doubt that in writing this letter, Dai must have had these exchanges between Zhu and Lu in mind, and his last sentence in the above- quoted passage is clearly a rejoinder to Lu on Zhu’s behalf. Moreover, in his early writings Dai not only regarded the Cheng-Zhu school as “philosophically clear and profound”14 but also defended it on philological grounds. For example, he followed closely the text of the Daxue 大學 (Great Learning) as emended by Cheng Yi 程頤 (1033–1107) and Zhu Xi;15 he also made serious efforts to save Zhu Xi from his many difficulties in the study of the Yijing 易經 (Classic of Changes).16 Now, I must proceed to the second question, which is far more complicated than the first one. As I have shown elsewhere, there was a profound psychological aspect to Dai’s criticism of Zhu Xi.17 Here, however, I shall examine the question solely from the point of view of intellectual history. Following some interesting leads in the writings of Zhang Xuecheng, I have proposed to view the Ming- Qing intellectual transition in terms of a shift of emphasis in NeoConfucianism from the moral element (zun dexing) to the intellectual element (dao wenxue), a transition that eventually led to the rise of Confucian intellectualism in the eighteenth century.18 Dai Zhen’s changing attitudes toward the Zhu Xi tradition, I believe, serve particularly well as an illustration of this transition. Professor Qian Mu 錢穆 (1895–1990) convincingly demonstrated that Dai did not turn into a philosophical critic of the Zhu Xi tradition until he came under the influence of Hui Dong 惠棟 (1697–1758), whom he first met in Yangzhou 揚州 in 1757.19 It is generally agreed that Dai’s reinterpretation of the key Confucian concept li 理 in the Mengzi ziyi shuzheng 孟子字義疏證 (Commentary on the meaning of terms in Mencius) was profoundly inspired by Hui Dong’s Yi weiyan 易微言 (Sublime words of the Classic of Changes).20 However, a perusal of Sublime Words of the Classic of Changes reveals that it also contains other embryonic ideas of an intellectualist kind that were to be more fully developed in Dai’s philosophical writings.

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Hui’s intellectualism is nowhere more clearly revealed than in his emphasis on the idea of “accumulation” ( ji 積), which is derived from Xunzi 荀子 (310?– 230? b.c.e.), the first Confucian intellectualist. In the entry “Shengxue shang ji” 聖學尚積 (The sagely learning stresses accumulation), Hui quoted from many Confucian texts, including the Xunzi, to show that Confucian learning can be acquired only through gradual accumulation of knowledge.21 By implication, this would mean a rejection of all forms of subitism in learning by way of moral intuition including the moderate version of Zhu Xi’s as presented in his emendation of the Great Learning.22 In the same manner, Hui set out to offer his new interpretation of the impor tant term yi guan 一貫 (one thread through). Etymologically, he demonstrates that guan always means “accumulation.” The Dao therefore accumulates bit by bit.23 He further pointed out that the so- called one is, for Confucius, only the beginning, but for Zhuangzi 莊子 (365–290? b.c.e.), it is the end. According to Hui, in their reinterpretation of the word “one,” the Song Neo- Confucians actually followed the Daoists not Confucius.24 This point, it may be noted, was to receive an emphatic elaboration in Dai.25 Probably influenced by Hui Dong’s approach, Dai also emphasized the idea of “accumulation” by quoting extensively from the Xunzi. He endorsed without reservation Xunzi’s thesis that “sagehood is obtainable through accumulation.”26 By “accumulation,” of course, Dai meant “accumulation of learning.” A corollary of this is Dai’s theory that moral perfection can be achieved by man only through a gradual development (kuochong 擴充) of his intellect (zhi 智), by which he is essentially distinguished from animals.27 Unlike Hui Dong, however, whose criticism of Song Neo- Confucianism is purely destructive in nature, Dai showed an intrinsic interest in saving Zhu Xi’s intellectualistic system through repair and reformulation. In spite of his very sharp differences with Zhu Xi on some of the concrete philosophical issues such as the bifurcation of li 理 (principle) and yu 欲 (desire), it seems that his break from his intellectual ties with the Cheng-Zhu tradition was never complete. There are sufficient indications that he continued to struggle with several basic assumptions in the Zhu Xi system. As shown above, he had been on Zhu’s side concerning the importance of the intellectual element— dao wenxue—to Confucian learning. In this regard, his position remained unchanged after the break. It is true that in his Xuyan 緒言 (Preface), he condemned both the Cheng-Zhu and Lu-Wang traditions, but a closer scrutiny of this text shows that he did not condemn the two schools indiscriminately. In his judgment, the two Chengs and Zhu Xi were only guilty of conceptual borrowing from Buddhism, whereas Lu and Wang committed a major crime in bringing Buddhist substance into Confucian thinking. Moreover, when Wang Yangming discussed learning in terms of the substance of liangzhi 良知 (innate moral knowledge), he actually followed Daoist-Buddhist anti-intellectualism by discarding learning altogether.28 Even in the famous letter to Peng Shaosheng 彭紹升 (courtesy name, Yunchu 允初, 1740–1796), which he wrote only about a month before

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his death, he still repeated the very same statement.29 There can be no doubt that as far as the intellectual basis of Confucian learning was concerned, he differed from the Cheng-Zhu school only in degree, but from the Lu-Wang in kind. In a highly sensitive and strategically vital area of Neo- Confucian philosophy, it may even be shown that Dai was a true disciple of Zhu Xi until death. As we know, a cornerstone of Zhu Xi’s intellectualistic system is the thesis that knowledge must precede action or practice, though the two always depend on each other for mutual reinforcement.30 Later, Wang Yangming had painfully struggled with this thesis in its vulgarized Ming form before he was able to counter it with his own famous formulation, “unity of knowledge and action” (zhixing heyi 知行合一), in 1509.31 Dai’s view on this vital question emphatically and persistently follows Zhu Xi. According to him, all heterodox theories share two basic characteristic features: fi rst, they all advocate being without desire (wuyu 無欲) instead of seeking to prevent our mind from being beclouded (bi 蔽);32 second, they all emphasize action or practice without fi rst stressing the importance of knowledge.33 On the other hand, knowledge always takes precedence over action in Confucian learning. As Dai says: “All the words of the sages are but to urge people to seek the most appropriate [principles] so that they may be put into practice. To seek the most appropriate [principles] means that knowledge comes first. In no way does sagely learning ever consist in eliminating selfishness without also seeking to remove beclouding or stressing action without first stressing knowledge.”34 It may be noted that Dai took the term “beclouding” (bi) from Xunzi, and following Xunzi’s reasoning to its logical conclusion, he also insisted that there is no other way to clean one’s beclouded intellect than to pursue learning.35 As a Confucian philosopher, Dai cannot avoid discussing the problem of moral nature. And when he comes to grips with it, his emphasis is always placed on the intellectual foundation of morality. For Dai, the possibility is ruled out that there is a kind of innate moral knowledge independent of intellectual knowledge. As one acquires knowledge from constant inquiry and study, he believes, one’s moral nature will be substantiated day by day. This point is further elaborated as follows: Let us make an analogy between man’s physical body and his moral nature. The physical body begins with infancy, and ends up with adulthood. Hence, in the same manner, moral nature begins with unenlightened ignorance and ends up with sagely intelligence. The physical body grows only because it feeds on nutrition from drinking and eating. It increases daily and does not return to its original substance. For the same reason, moral nature also feeds itself on learning and inquiry in order to develop into sagely intelligence. Obviously, it does not return to its original substance, either.36

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In this way, Dai actually pushed the intellectual element in Neo- Confucianism far beyond its prescribed limits. Peng Shaosheng certainly grasped a most essential point in Dai’s Commentary on the Meaning of Terms in Mencius when he specifically pointed out: “What you are saying amounts to asserting that the moral nature is not sufficient to guide us to the Dao, for [moral nature itself] must depend on study and inquiry in order to grow. If so, then moral nature would not be worth honoring anymore.”37 Although Zhu Xi said, as quoted earlier, that he had paid more attention to “inquiry and study” in his teaching, this statement must not be taken to mean that he placed knowledge above morality. It was a shared assumption of all Neo- Confucians, irrespective of sectarian differences, that zun dexing was of primary importance and dao wenxue, secondary. Hence, when asked, Zhu Xi would say that “honoring the moral nature” is the ultimate goal toward which all efforts in the realm of “inquiry and study” must be directed.38 Now, while Dai Zhen did not openly repudiate the Neo- Confucian teaching of “honoring the moral nature,” in redefining the relationship between zun dexing and dao wenxue, he nevertheless intellectualized moral nature to such a point that it was conceived as an epiphenomenon of study and inquiry. In other words, he transformed the moral-intellectual dualism in the Cheng-Zhu tradition into an intellectual monism. In light of this transformation, we can also better understand his fundamental dissatisfaction with both Cheng Yi’s and Zhu Xi’s overwhelming emphasis on “seriousness” ( jing 敬) at the expense of “learning” (xue 學).39 As we know, this dichotomy is a reference to the best-known Cheng-Zhu formula, “Self- cultivation requires seriousness; the pursuit of learning depends on the extension of knowledge.”40 “Seriousness” lies exclusively in the moral realm, whereas “learning” constitutes its intellectual foundation. Roughly speaking, they may be analogously compared to piety and learning in the Christian tradition. Dai’s criticism therefore clearly indicates that he was interested in the extension of knowledge to the degree of almost ignoring cultivation of the moral nature. As Hu Shi 胡適 (1891–1962) rightly points out, this criticism could only be made during the middle Qing, when scholarship came to full fruition.41 Dai’s discussions of the Confucian polarities between “erudition” (bo 博) and “essentialism” (yue 約) also shed a good deal of light on his intellectualization of the Cheng-Zhu tradition. Taking issue with Zhu Xi over the interpretation of yiguan (one thread through) in the Lunyu (Analects),42 he says: In the search for the Dao, there is a difference between learning from below and reaching [the Dao] above. In the pursuit of learning, there is a distinction between knowing the vestiges and grasping the essence of the Dao. The expression “There is one single thread binding my way (Dao) together” 吾道一以貫之 (Analects, 4.15) means that the Dao to be reached above is also the Dao to be learned below.

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We have the expression “I have a single thread binding it all together” 予一以貫之 instead of “my learning [has a single thread binding it all together]” 予學 (一以貫之) because the earlier appearing [character xue 學] is omitted here. This expression therefore means that if one grasps the essence of the Dao, then one’s mind becomes so penetrating that it is no longer necessary to go through all the trouble to know its (i.e., the Dao’s) vestiges. . . . The Analects says: “Use your ears widely but leave out what is doubtful; repeat the rest with caution. . . . Use your eyes widely and leave out what is hazardous; put the rest into practice with caution” (2.18). Again, “I use my ears widely and follow what is good in what I have heard; I use my eyes widely and retain what I have seen in my mind. This constitutes a lower level of knowledge” (7.28). And again, “I was not born with knowledge, but, being fond of antiquity, I am quick to seek it” (7.20). These statements indicate that [Confucius] did not discard extensive learning. Although the range of knowledge must be wide, the most impor tant thing is to be able to enlighten the mind. When one comes to investigate a thing, one must do it so thoroughly that there is nothing left in it to be understood. Then one moves on to the next thing and does exactly the same. After a long time, one’s knowing mind becomes so enlightened that it develops into sagely intelligence. [Having reached this point] even things one has not learned can no longer possibly exhaust one’s intelligent mind.43 There are several impor tant points to be noted in this passage. First, Dai refused to accept the Song conception of the Dao or li as a metaphysical entity, which stood in a different order from learning. To him, the Dao and learning are different in degree but not in kind. To say that “the Dao to be reached above is also the Dao to be learned below” suggests strongly that inquiry and study form the only sure basis of the Confucian Dao. This is remarkably consistent with his intellectual monism discussed above. Second, it is interesting that in order to force such a conclusion, he did not even hesitate to violate a basic rule in philology by resorting to a textually unfounded emendation: his suggested reading for “I have a single thread binding it all together” as “My learning [has a single thread binding it all together]” is a philosophical point, but philologically, it is very unconvincing.44 Third, in his statement “although the range of knowledge must be wide, the most impor tant thing is to be able to enlighten the mind,” we find a new definition of the relationship between “erudition” and “essentialism” that is uniquely his own. It can be readily seen that “essentialism” (yue) with Dai, like with Zhang Xuecheng, is intellectualized.45 However, unlike Zhang’s “systematization” or “theorization,” Dai defi ned yue in terms of the knowing mind. Being a classical philologist, Dai of course was also aware of the fact that yue in early Confucian texts had a dominant moral character,

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meaning “to grasp what is morally essential.” To solve this difficulty, he made an ingenious distinction between two kinds of “essentialism”: what is essential with respect to acting (xing 行) is cultivation of the person (xiushen 修身) and what is essential with respect to knowing (zhi 知) is to enlighten the mind. In neither case, he concluded, is there a single abstract metaphysical entity to be grasped or known.46 Understood in this light, the term xiushen (cultivation of the person), as he came to use it, must not be confused with what Cheng Yi and Zhu Xi called “self- cultivation depends on seriousness,” for Dai’s whole intellectual system admits of no innate moral principle, which Song-Ming Neo- Confucians believed to be not only identifiable with man’s nature or mind but, more important, attainable only through intense spiritual cultivation. Xiushen in the context of Dai’s thought therefore concerns Confucian morality only to the extent that morality is understood as no more than personal ethics. Here Dai’s distinction between two kinds of “essentialism” reminds us very much of Gu Yanwu 顧炎武 (1613–1682)’s separation of knowledge and morality.47 Finally, we must relate Dai’s intellectualism to his redefinition of the key Neo- Confucian concept of li, or “principle,” in terms of the “internal texture of things” (tiaoli 條理), a redefinition firmly established on the philological basis, and, as is generally known, central to his philosophical system. Applied to the realm of human affairs, li is therefore no longer antithetical to “desires” (yu 欲) or “feelings” (qing 情) as had been traditionally held, but the legitimate satisfaction of “desires” or proper channelization of “feelings.”48 Modern scholars are certainly justified in stressing the importance of the profound political and social implications of Dai’s theory of li. From the point of view of this study, however, I would like to contend that the originality of Dai’s reinterpretation consists essentially in his intellectualization of the concept of li in the ChengZhu tradition in a way that is remarkably similar to Zhang Xuecheng’s intellectualization of Wang Yangming’s liang-zhi. Throughout his Commentary on the Meaning of Terms in Mencius, he emphatically rejected the orthodox NeoConfucian view that took li to be a completely self-sufficient metaphysical entity. Specifically, he took issue with Zhu Xi’s definition of li “as if it were a thing, which being obtained from Heaven, becomes embodied in the mind.” According to his analysis, subscription to Zhu’s view would logically commit us to antiintellectualistic conclusions, for if li is a completely self-sufficient entity, then it does not need anything from learning. This is precisely why learning, he argues, can find no place in Buddhism and Daoism. Lu Xiangshan and Wang Yangming were also consistent when they talked about the recovery of man’s original moral mind, or liangzhi, to almost the total exclusion of intellectual knowledge. What seems to have bothered Dai most profoundly is Zhu Xi’s bifurcation between li and qi 氣 as well as between “seriousness” ( jing) and “learning” (xue). To Dai, the Cheng-Zhu tradition on the whole followed the main stream of Confucian intellectualism. However, the

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presupposition of li as a completely self-sufficient entity had forced both Cheng Yi and Zhu Xi, especially the latter, to separate li categorically from qi, and consequently, place li in a realm beyond the reach of ordinary learning. Thus, in their search for this metaphysical entity (the so- called benti 本體, or “original substance”), which Dai took to be nonexistent, they eventually had to resort to the a priori introspective method known as exercising “seriousness.” This led to the upset of the original equilibrium between the moral and the intellectual elements of the Cheng-Zhu system as implied in the formulation “Self-cultivation requires seriousness; the pursuit of learning depends on the extension of knowledge.” To quote Dai himself, “there has been too much discussion on seriousness and too little on learning” in the Cheng-Zhu tradition. In short, Dai saw the concept of a self-sufficient li as an incongruous foreign body in Confucian intellectualism.49 To remove this inner inconsistency from the Cheng-Zhu system, Dai therefore proposed to redefine li as the “internal texture of things.” According to his final and definitive view, “seriousness” is entirely irrelevant to the quest for li. To be “serious” does not in any way help one to discover li.50 Taking a radically intellectualistic position as Dai did, this conclusion is perhaps inevitable, for since li is no longer taken as a self-sufficient metaphysical entity that “man acquires from Heaven and holds in mind,” it then follows that li cannot be grasped through an inner vision of a moral kind resulting from exercising “seriousness.” On the positive side, Dai’s li is fundamentally intellectual in nature and as such is discoverable only by way of “learning.” By clinging to his philological definition of li as the “internal texture of things,” Dai wittingly transformed this key NeoConfucian idea from a priori moral principles that transcend, and yet also give shape and meaning to things, to immutable laws or patterns that are inherent in things. Little wonder, then, that Dai emphatically stated, “With regard to the li of things, they can be found only after things are analyzed with utmost minuteness.”51 Such a transformation strengthened Confucian intellectualism in at least two essential ways. First, it restored knowledge to its rightful central importance in Confucian learning, for the discovery of the “internal texture of things” must of necessity presuppose the possession of an objective knowledge of things with utmost minuteness. Second, it reestablished gradualism as a guiding methodological principle in Confucian learning because if li, or principles, do not reside in the mind but exist objectively in each and every thing in the external world, it then follows that the search for a knowledge of them can only be an accumulative enterprise. Dai’s intellectualization of li may further be seen in an impor tant distinction he made between what is natural (ziran 自然) and what is necessary (biran 必然). In his Yuanshan 原善 (Inquiry Into Goodness), written in 1766, he said: “The desires of nature are the signs of the natural. The virtue of nature is conducive to the attainment of necessity. What is conducive to the attainment of

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necessity conforms to and perfects what is natural of Heaven and Earth. This is called the utmost attainment of the natural.”52 Some eleven years later (1777), he maintained the same distinction in his Commentary on the Meaning of Terms in Mencius, as follows: “Goodness (shan 善) is what is necessary, whereas nature (xing) is what is natural. What is natural will be fully completed only when it is developed into what is necessary. This is what is known as developing the natural to its utmost.”53 There is no doubt that what Dai calls biran is actually a reference to li, or principles, with emphasis on their moral character. However, at this juncture several interesting questions arise: For example, why did Dai deliberately choose to replace li (moral principles) with biran (moral necessity)? Why must he relate moral necessity to the natural (ziran) and regard the former as “the utmost attainment” of the latter? How will it be possible for the natural to be developed into what is morally necessary? The answer to the first question is not far to seek. In his view, the term li as used by Song Neo- Confucian philosophers, including Zhu Xi, suggests that it is an actual entity (shiti 實體) that “being obtained from Heaven becomes embodied in the mind,” whereas, in fact, it is only an empty name with no independent existence of its own.54 By replacing li with biran, Dai obviously hoped to avoid this kind of misunderstanding. In this sense, he may indeed be called a Confucian nominalist. This leads naturally to the second question. Unlike moral necessity, the natural (ziran) is defined by Dai as “actual entities” which include what he calls “the daily activities in human relations” (renlun riyong 人倫日用), that is, the actualities of life. But the actualities of life are what man shares in common with other animals. Man is distinguished from animals by the fact that he alone can discern in the natural what is morally necessary and direct the former to the latter. Since, however, the necessary is the “internal texture” of the natural, the establishment of moral norms for the purpose of guiding “the daily activities in human relations” must therefore be viewed as the completion of the natural, not its destruction. The impor tant point here is rather that moral necessity must be firmly grounded in what is natural. It is in the very nature of man to live in full accord with moral necessity. As a matter of fact, according to Dai, man will lose his naturalness when he follows what is natural in the same way as animals do.55 Here we find Dai’s view fundamentally different from those of the Song Neo- Confucian masters, including Zhu Xi, with regard to the relationship between moral order and natu ral order. For the latter, the entire natural order is governed by li or moral principles, whereas for the former, only the human part of the natural order is moral. Moreover, in Dai’s case, the moral order is perceived to be ultimately patterned after the natural order, not the other way around, as with Song Neo- Confucians. As to the question of how it is possible for the necessary to be developed out of the natural, Dai’s answer is rather simple and straightforward: it depends entirely on the incessant pursuit of knowledge on the part of man. Through inquiry and study, man gradually discovers what is necessary in what is natural and

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thus establishes moral principles on the basis of this knowledge. It was the sages, however, who possessed a perfect knowledge of what was morally necessary, and it was through the Six Classics that this knowledge has been transmitted from generation to generation.56 The study of the classics is thus fully justified as a Confucian calling. Dai’s position as a Confucian intellectualist is perhaps nowhere more clearly revealed than in this area of his thought.57 By way of conclusion, I would like to turn to Zhu Xi’s classical formulation of the investigation of things (gewu) and the extension of knowledge (zhizhi) for comparison and contrast. Only through such comparison and contrast, I believe, can we expect to grasp the real significance of Dai’s intellectualization of the Zhu Xi tradition. In a famous “Supplement” to a supposedly missing passage in the Great Learning, Zhu Xi said: If we wish to extend our knowledge to the utmost, we must investigate the principles (li) of all things we come into contact with, for the intelligent mind of man is certainly formed to know, and there is not a single thing in which its principles do not inhere. It is only because all principles are not investigated that man’s knowledge is incomplete. For this reason, the first step in the education of the adult is to instruct the learner, in regard to all things in the world, to proceed from what knowledge he has of their principles, and investigate further until he reaches the limit. After exerting himself in this way for a long time, he will one day achieve a wide and far-reaching penetration. Then the qualities of all things, whether internal or external, the refi ned or the coarse, will all be apprehended, and the mind, in its total substance and great functioning, will be perfectly intelligent.58 It can be safely assumed that Dai must have had this “Supplement” in mind in par ticular when he wrote, as quoted previously: Although the range of knowledge must be wide, the most impor tant thing is to be able to enlighten the mind. [When one comes to investigate] a thing, one must do it so thoroughly that there is nothing left in it to be understood. Then one moves on to the next thing and does exactly the same. After a long time, one’s knowing mind become so enlightened that it develops into sagely intelligence. [Having reached this point], even things one has not learned can no longer possibly exhaust one’s intelligent mind. (See note 43.) Insofar as Dai advocated that one must investigate things exhaustively one after another, he was closely following the teaching of Zhu Xi, but insofar as he refrained from talking about the experience of a “sudden enlightenment” in which “the mind becomes perfectly intelligent in its total substance and great

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functioning,” he was consciously pushing his methodological gradualism to its logical conclusion. From his intellectualistic point of view, it is inconceivable that in learning one can ever reach a point at which one’s knowledge of all the multitude of things, external or internal, refined or coarse, becomes complete. Here Dai’s break with Zhu Xi may be explained on several grounds. In the first place, Dai did not believe, as Zhu Xi apparently did, that there is a single unitary Principle (li) that lies scattered through all things. On the contrary, li, for him, is essentially an analytical concept. He insisted, on etymological grounds, that li must be understood in terms of fen 分, or “distinctions,” which, needless to say, is very much in keeping with his definition of li as the “internal texture of things.”59 To understand li therefore means to make distinctions “among things.”60 Moreover, “since each individual thing has its li, then li must of necessity vary from one thing to another.”61 Such being the case, our quest for li can only be a gradual cognitive process and the moment of sudden enlightenment as described by Zhu Xi would never arrive. In the second place, according to Dai’s analysis, Zhu Xi’s system also presupposes that “the mind contains all the li with which it responds to all things.” Since things in the external world are of an infinite number, however, it therefore follows that the individual mind must contain an equally infinite number of li in order to respond to things. But the difficulty is: Can we imagine that these many separate li coexist in an individual mind? To solve this difficulty, it is further suggested that all the li in the mind are not really separate, but are differentiations from a single unitary li (liyi fenshu 理一分殊, or “principle is one but its manifestations are many”).62 From this theory, then, the view can be derived that continuing acquisition of knowledge of li will at some point lead to a sudden enlightenment in which the li of all things in the external world become visible to us within our own nature or mind.63 Yet this is precisely the theory Dai rejected because it takes “li as if it were a thing which, being obtained from Heaven, becomes embodied in the mind.” For Dai, man’s mind possesses no such all- embracing unitary li at all. What distinguishes man from animals is none other than a knowing faculty— a faculty that grows from a dull beginning to full maturity as it gradually feeds itself on knowledge of things in the external world. Therefore, although Dai used a language very similar to Zhu Xi’s in describing the mind going through a long period of “investigation of things,” the kind of mind he hoped to develop is fundamentally a well- cultivated knowing mind, with which things yet to be investigated can be dealt with most effectively; it differs decidedly from the kind of mind as conceived by Zhu Xi, which is marked by a complete possession of all the a priori principles of things. Finally, in the third place, with all the emphasis Zhu Xi placed on the extension of knowledge, he is, in contrast to Dai, no more than a halfway intellectualist. To him, the pursuit of learning is meaningful only if it is carried out under the frame of reference of “honoring the moral nature.” Therefore, what he speaks

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of as “the perfectly intelligent mind in its total substance and great functioning” 64 must be understood essentially in terms of man’s search for the knowledge of his inner moral nature. By no means can his “investigation of things” and “extension of knowledge” be construed as directed primarily toward the objective knowledge of the external world. The case with Dai Zhen is somewhat different, however. I would certainly hesitate to join Liang Qichao 梁啟超 (1873–1929) in suggesting that Dai pursued knowledge for the sake of knowledge.65 Nevertheless, as keenly observed by Gong Zizhen 龔自珍 (1792–1841), the Qing period was an age in which Confucian intellectualism (dao wenxue) reigned supreme.66 With the rise and development of the mid- Qing philological movement of which Dai was the foremost philosophical spokesman par excellence, the Neo- Confucian idea of “honoring the moral nature” was gradually relegated to the background. As a result, Dai’s view of the relationship between morality and knowledge differed markedly from that of Zhu Xi. In Dai’s philosophical system, man’s knowledge of the principles (li) of things, including moral principles, never ceases to grow as it continually feeds itself on inquiry and study. The traditional distinction between intellectual knowledge and moral knowledge, or between “learning” and “seriousness,” was no longer meaningful to Dai, who saw morality to be none other than a product of knowledge.67

notes 1.

See Zhang Xuecheng, Wenshi tongyi 文史通義 (Beijing: Guji, 1956), 53–59.

2.

I have developed this thesis in two articles in my Lishi yu sixiang 歷史與思想 (Taipei: Lianjing, 1976; 12th printing, 1987), 87–156, and in a monographic study entitled Lun Dai Zhen yu Zhang Xuecheng 論戴震與章學誠 (Hong Kong: Longmen, 1976). It is significant to note that toward the end of his life, the late Mr. Gu Jiegang 顧頡剛 (1893– 1980), a great intellectual heir of the Qing tradition of “evidential investigation,” also came to recognize the historical continuity between Song learning and Qing philology. He specifically called our attention to Zhang’s essay “Zhu and Lu” as a document illustrative of this continuity. See his article “Chedi pipan ‘Bang shixue,’ nuli zuochu xin gongxian” 徹底批判 幫史學, 努力作出新貢獻, in Zhonghua wenshi luncong 中華文史論叢 7 (July 1978): 50–51.

3.

See Qian Mu 錢穆, Zhongguo jin sanbai nian xueshu shi 中國近三百年學術史 (hereafter JSNXS) (Shanghai: Shangwu, 1937), 1:307–312; Jiang Fan 江藩, Hanxue shicheng 漢學師 承記, WYWK (Shanghai: Shangwu, 1931 [1937]), 2:1–4 (on Jiang Yong 江永); Jiang Fan, Songxue yuanyuan ji 宋學淵源記, WYWK, 19 (“Biography of Wu Shen” 吳慎 and “Biography of Shi Huang” [Shi Huang 施璜]).

4.

See Wing-tsit Chan’s note on Jiang’s commentaries in Zhu Xi and Lü Zuqian, Refl ections on Things at Hand: The Neo- Confucian Anthology, trans. Wing-tsit Chan (New York: Columbia University Press, 1967), 343–344, and Liang Qichao 梁啟超, “Dai Dongyuan

54

dai z he n a nd th e zh u x i tr adition zhexue” 戴東原哲學, in Jindai Zhongguo xueshu luncong 近代中國學術論叢 (Hong Kong: Chongwen, 1973), 187.

5.

Dai Zhen, “Yu Fang Xiyuan shu,” 與方希原書, in DWJ, punctuated and collated by Zhao Yuxin 趙玉新 (Hong Kong: Zhonghua, 1974), 143–144.

6.

Zhang Shunhui 張舜徽, Zhongguo shi lunwen ji 中國史論文集 (Wuhan: Hubei renmin, 1956), esp. pp. 82–91; Qian Mu, Zhuzi xin xue- an 朱子新學案 (Taipei: Sanmin, 1971), 5:191–341.

7.

Zhu Xi, “Da Sun Jihe (Yingshi)” 答孫季和 (應時), no. 2, in Zhu Wengong wenji 朱文公文集, SBCK chubian suoben, 54:960.

8.

Qian Mu, JSNXS, 1:232.

9.

Dai Zhen, “Minzhong shiyou yuanyuan kaoxu” 閩中師友淵源考序, in DWJ, 158.

10.

Jiang Fan, Hanxue shicheng ji, 2:58.

11.

Dai Zhen, “Yu Shi Zhongming lun xueshu” 與是仲明論學書, in DWJ, 141.

12.

Zhu Xi, “Da Xiang Pingfu” 答項平父, in Zhu Wengong wenji, 54:962.

13.

See “Yulu” shang 語錄上, in Xiangshan xiansheng quanji 象山先生全集, SBCK chubian

14.

See Dai Zhen, Jingkao 經考, 6th ser. (Shanghai: Anhui congshu 安徽叢書, 1936), 5:7a–8a.

15.

Dai Zhen, Jingkao fulu 經考附錄, 4:21a, 22b–23a.

16.

See Jingkao, juan 1: 3a and 19b; Jingkao fulu, juan 1: 22a. For more details, see my Dai Zhen

suoben, 34:261.

yu Zhang Xuecheng, 154–164, and Yang Xianggui 楊向奎, Zhongguo gudai shehui yu gudai sixiang yanjiu 中國古代社會與古代思想研究 (Shanghai: Renmin, 1964), 2:920–922. 17.

Yü Ying-shih, Dai Zhen yu Zhang Xuecheng, 83–132.

18.

See my “Some Preliminary Observations on the Rise of Qing Confucian Intellectualism,” Tsing Hua Journal of Chinese Studies 清華學報, n.s. 11, nos. 1 and 2 (December 1975): 105–146, and “Toward an Interpretation of the Intellectual Transition in SeventeenthCentury China,” JAOS 100, no. 2 (1980): 115–125.

19.

Qian Mu, JSNXS, 2:322–324. The meeting is impor tant enough to be recorded not only in Duan Yucai’s 段玉裁 Dai Dongyuan xiansheng nianpu 戴東原先生年譜 (included in DWJ, 223) but also in Li Dou 李斗, Yangzhou huafang lu 揚州畫舫錄 (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1960), 10.230.

20. Hu Shi, Dai Dongyuan de zhexue 戴東原的哲學 (Shanghai: Shangwu, 1927), 51–53; Yang Xianggui, Zhongguo gudai shehui yu gudai sixiang yanjiu (1964), 2:918. According to Qian Mu, JSNXS, 2:324–327, Hui Dong’s Yi weiyan had a considerable methodological influence on the final revision of Dai’s Yuanshan 原善 (1766). The Yi weiyan is included in Hui’s Zhouyi shu 周易述 (Taipei: Zhonghua, 1965). 21.

See Hui, Zhouyi shu, in Huishi Yixue 惠氏易學 (Taipei: Guangwen, 1970 [1981]), 1:773–775.

22. See James Legge, trans., “The Great Learning,” in The Chinese Classics (Hong Kong: HKU Press, 1960), 1:365–366. 23. Hui, Zhouyi shu, 697. 24. Ibid., 703. 25. For instance, see Dai Zhen, MZS (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1961), 52–59. 26. Ibid., 31–32.

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27. Ibid., 28–30. 28. See Xuyan hsia 緒言下, included in ibid., 121. 29. See “Da Peng jinshi Yunchu shu” 答彭進士允初書, in ibid., 161–170. For the dating of this letter, see Duan Yucai, Dai Dongyuan xiansheng nianpu, 240. 30. The whole question of “knowledge” and “action” or “practice” in Zhu Xi’s thought is too complicated to be adequately dealt with here. Briefly, his view may be found in his “Da Wu Huishu” 答吳晦叔 where he says: “When we discuss the principle of knowledge and action in a general way, and examine it in every individual case, then there can be no doubt that knowledge must come first and action later,” in Zhu Wengong wenji, 42:710. See also ZYL (Taipei: Zhengzhong, 1973), 1:235–236. For a balanced treatment of this question, see Qian Mu, Zhuzi xin xue- an 朱子新學案, 2:379–405. 31.

See Qian Dehong 錢德洪, “Yangming xiansheng nianpu” 陽明先生年譜, in Wang Wencheng Gong quanshu 王文成公全書, SBCK chubian suoben, 32:910–911. See also Chuanxi lu 傳習錄, in ibid., 1:58, and Wing-tsit Chan, trans., Instructions for Practical Living and Other Neo- Confucian Writings by Wang Yang-ming (New York: Columbia University Press, 1963), 11–12. The literature on this subject is too vast to be cited. For recent discussions on zhixing heyi in English, see Julia Ching, To Acquire Wisdom: The Way of Wang Yang-ming (New York: Columbia University Press, 1976), 66–69, and Tu Wei-ming, Neo- Confucian Thought in Action: Wang Yang-ming’s Youth (1472–1509) (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976), chap. 4.

32. MZS, 54. For Dai’s discussion of bi (beclouding), see Yuanshan, in MZS, 72; Chungying Cheng, trans., Dai Zhen’s Inquiry Into Goodness (hereafter Goodness) (Honolulu: East-West Center Press, 1971), 99. 33.

MZS, 57.

34. Yuanshan, 72; Goodness, 100. For Dai’s intellectual indebtedness to Xunzi, see Qian Mu, JSNXS, 2:357–358. 35.

Yuanshan, 74; Goodness, 107.

36. MZS, 15. 37.

Peng Shaosheng, “Yu Dai Dongyuan shu” 與戴東原書, in Erlin Ju ji 二林居集 (Nanchang, 1881 edition), 3:18a.

38. As a matter of fact, this was the very criterion according to which Wang Yangming selected the writings from Zhu Xi to form a text called Zhuzi wannian dinglun 朱子晚年 定論. See Wang Wencheng Gong quanshu, 3:160–169. 39. See MZS, 15. 40. See Er- Cheng yishu 二程遺書, 18:5b, in Er- Cheng quanshu 二程全書, translated in Chan, SB, 562; see 523n21 for complete bibliographical information. 41.

Hu Shi, Dai Dongyuan de zhexue, 81–82.

42. The locus classicus is in Lunyu (Analects), 15.3. It reads as follows: The Master said, “Ssu, do you think that I am the kind of man who learns widely and retains what he has learned in mind?” “Yes, I do. Is it not so?” “No. I have a single thread binding it all together.”

56

dai z h e n a nd th e zh u x i tr adition All Analects quotations are from  D.  C. Lau, Confucius: The Analects (Harmondsworth and New York: Penguin, 1979).

43. MZS, 55. See also Hui Dong’s discussions of the term yiguan in Yi weiyan (Zhouyi shu, 697–705). 44. This is precisely what is known in Chinese philology as “interpreting a classical text through interpolation” (zengzi jiejing 增字解經). Dr. Hu Shi also pointed out in a marginal note in the Yuanshan that Dai gave his own philosophically meaningful definition of the term gewu 格物 (investigation of things) without any philological support. See Dai Dongyuan de zhexue, appendix, 28. 45. For Zhang Xuecheng’s interpretation of the term yue (essentialism), see my Dai Zhen yu Zhang Xuecheng, 64–65. 46. MZS, 56. 47. See my “Some Preliminary Observations,” 126. 48. MZS, 1–3, 8–10. 49. Ibid., 13–20. 50. See Dai’s letter to Duan Yucai dated First Moon, 14th day, 1777, photo-lithographically reproduced in Dai Dongyuan, Dai Zigao shoucha zhenji 戴子高手札真蹟 (Taipei: Zhonghua congshu weiyuanhui, 1956), unpaginated. 51.

MZS, 54.

52. Yuanshan, 64; Goodness, 77. 53.

MZS, 44.

54. See Xuyan, shang, in MZS, 97–98. 55.

Ibid., 96.

56. MZS, 82, 147; “Ti Hui Dingyu xiansheng shoujing tu” 題惠定宇先生授經圖, in DWJ, 168. 57.

See Zhou Fucheng 周輔成, “Dai Zhen de zhexue” 戴震的哲學, in Zhonguo jin sanbai nian xueshu sixiang lunji 中國近三百年學術思想論集 (Hong Kong: Chongwen, 1973), 4:92–94. Cf. also Fung Yu-lan, A History of Chinese Philosophy, trans. Derk Bodde (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1953), 2:661–663.

58. Chan, SB, 89; James Legge, The Chinese Classics, 1:365–366. 59. See MZS, 1. See also Zhou Fucheng’s analysis, “Dai Zhen de zhexue,” 88–89. 60. See MZS, 3. 61.

Ibid., 54 (“shi bi youli, sui shi butong” 事必有理, 隨事不同).

62. Ibid., 54. 63. Fung Yu-lan, History of Chinese Philosophy, 562. 64. These ideas are in Zhu Xi’s comments on the Daxue. See Chan, SB, 88–89. 65. Liang Ch’i- ch’ao, Intellectual Trends in the Ch’ing Period, trans. Immanuel  C.  Y. Hsü (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1959), 68. 66. Gong Zizhen quanji 龔自珍全集, collated by Wang Peizheng 王佩諍 (Beijing: Shanghai, 1959), 1:193. 67. Fung Yu-lan, History of Chinese Philosophy, 662.

3. Dai Zhen’s Choice Between Philosophy and Philology

D

ai Zhen 戴震 (1724–1777) presents two entirely different images in the intellectual history of the mid- Qing Period: that of a classical philologist and that of a Confucian philosopher. During his own time, it was Dai the philologist who received universal recognition in the scholarly world. On the other hand, Dai the philosopher was largely ignored or even denounced by his contemporaries. Zhang Xuecheng’s 章學誠 (1738–1801) great appreciation of Dai’s philosophical writings was not shared at all by such common friends as Zhu Yun 朱筠 (1729–1781) and Shao Jinhan 邵晉涵 (1743–1796). In modern times, it is largely owing to the efforts of such scholars as Zhang Binglin 章炳麟 (1869–1935), Wang Guowei 王國維 (1877–1927), Liu Shipei 劉師培 (1884–1919), Liang Qichao 梁啟超 (1873–1929), and Hu Shi 胡適 (1891–1962) that Dai the philosopher has become the focus of intellectual attention. By contrast, Dai’s philological accomplishments are more often praised than seriously studied, with the notable exception of his collated text of the Shuijing zhu 水經注 (Commentary to the Classic of Waterways).1 In the present study, I propose to examine philosophy and philology as the two basic constituent elements in Dai’s system of Confucian learning. By “philosophy” and “philology,” I refer to what Qing scholars called, respectively, “moral principles” (yili 義理) and “evidential investigation” (kaozheng 考證 or kaoju 考據).

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This study’s emphasis is placed on the development of Dai’s thought during the last two decades of his life when he was, by general suffrage of the scholarly world, the foremost leader of the philological movement. Dai’s involvement in this learned movement is an event of singular importance not only in his own intellectual life, but in the development of the movement as well. While the movement provided Dai with a solid philological foundation on which his philosophical edifice was eventually built, in turn he also helped shape the character of the movement in its mature stage by supplying it with a much-needed philosophical justification. Dai first came to Beijing in 1754. He had no sooner made his initial contact with academic circles in the capital than he was hailed as the archphilologist of the day. A firsthand account of Dai’s sudden rise to fame is given in Qian Daxin (1728–1804)’s Zhuting jushi ziding nianpu 錢大昕 (Chronological autobiography) as follows: Nineteenth year (jiaxu, 1754) of Qianlong, aged twenty-seven sui. His Excellency Qin Huitian 秦惠田 (canonized as Wengong 文恭) of Wuxi invited me to participate in his Wuli tongkao 五禮通考 [Comprehensive study of the Five Rites] project. Dai Dongyuan 戴東原 of Xiuning 休寧 came to the capital for the first time. He visited me at my residence and we talked all day. I was greatly impressed by the depth and breadth of his learning. The following day, I recommended him to His Excellency, who cordially agreed to take a ride with me to pay Dai a personal visit. His Excellency then praised him on all occasions. Henceforth, Dai’s name was known throughout China.2 Needless to say, what made both Qian Daxin and Qin Huitian so excited about their discovery of Dai was not the latter’s sophistication in Confucian thinking, but his many-sided accomplishments in the broad field of Qing philology or evidential research, including mathematics, astronomy, historical geography, etymology, and phonology. Hence, when Dai finally accepted Qin Huitian’s invitation to work on the Comprehensive Study of the Five Rites project, he was put in charge of the section on “astronomical calculations.”3 Dai’s early public image as an archphilologist remained unchanged until the end of his life; it only continued to grow as his influence in the scholarly world increased with time. In 1773, he was appointed a compiler of the Siku quanshu 四庫全書 (Complete Library of the Four Branches [SKQS]) project without a jinshi 進士 degree, a fact that fully testifies to his stature as a leading classical philologist. During the period 1773–1777, when he was working on this project, according to Duan Yucai 段玉裁, works assigned to him for editing fell mainly into the following categories: astronomy, mathematics, historical geography, etymology, and linguistics.4 In 1755, Dai wrote to a friend that the Dao of the sage is to be found in the texts of the Six Classics, which must be subjected to

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both philosophical and philological analyses. The Han Confucianists were philologically correct but philosophically unsound, whereas the Song Confucianists were philosophically sound but philologically incorrect.5 The implication is, of course, that it is ideal to be in possession of the virtues of both and the vices of neither. It is clear, however, that in 1777, as in 1754, Dai was respected in academic circles in Beijing only as a classical philologist. Much to his dismay, Dai was never taken seriously by his colleagues as a Confucian philosopher.6 Yet during the same period that Dai was philologically active and productive, he was also philosophically creative. He first drafted Yuanshan 原善 (Inquiry Into Goodness) sometime before 1763 and then expanded and revised it in 1766; he wrote Xuyan 緒言 (Preface) in 1769 when he was working on a local history project in Shansi; and he completed Mengzi ziyi shuzheng 孟子字義疏證 (Commentary on the meaning of terms in Mencius), his crowning achievement in Confucian philosophy, only a few months before his death. Moreover, it has recently come to light that sometime between 1769 and 1777, he also revised the Preface text and changed its title to Mengzi sishu lu 孟子私淑錄 (A Record of Personal Comments on Mencius), which was later incorporated into the final version of Commentary on the Meaning of Terms in Mencius.7 Although Dai was working simultaneously in the fields of philology and philosophy, his philological studies were always enthusiastically received, whereas his philosophical adventures failed to evoke a positive response from his fellow scholars. Zhang Xuecheng gives a vivid description of the situation in 1766 when he was staying with Zhu Yun in Beijing. In “Da Peng Shaosheng shu” (A Letter in Reply to Shao Eryun 邵二雲; Jinhan 晉涵),” he recalls: At that time, it may be remembered, both Mr. Zhu [Yun] of Ta-hsing 大興 and Mr.  Qian [Daxin] of Jiading 嘉定 were the two towering figures of highest academic reputation among scholar- officials in the capital. They both admired Dai, but only to the extent of Dai’s penetrating and refined studies in textual criticism, philology, etymology, and mathematics. When it came to Dai’s [philosophical] treatises, such as Yuanshan [Inquiry Into Goodness], they regretted to see [Dai] applying his good self to a field of futility. I argued forcefully in front of Master Zhu, contending that [Dai’s philosophical] theories were indeed the most rewarding part of his textual investigations. Unfortunately, my position was humble and my words carried little weight. None of the esteemed scholars was listening to me.8 We have reason to believe that after this initial setback, Dai kept his philosophical writings to himself and rarely, if ever, permitted them to be circulated among his unsympathetic colleagues. This is clearly shown in his preface to the final version of Inquiry Into Goodness, in which he says that he will hide the

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manuscript in his family library in the hope that someday an able person will come along to appreciate and promote the truth contained therein. Duan Yucai, Dai’s leading disciple, who had copied the first draft of Inquiry Into Goodness in 1763, does not seem to have known about Dai’s other two major philosophical works—Preface and Commentary on the Meaning of Terms in Mencius— during his master’s lifetime.9 In a letter to Wang Niansun 王念孫 (1744–1832), Duan confessed that he did not study the Commentary on the Meaning of Terms in Mencius and grasp its central significance until as late as 1810.10 The obscurity of Dai as philosopher in the late eighteenth century can further be seen from the fact that Zhang Xuecheng, who was a great admirer of Dai’s philosophy, never had access to Dai’s later philosophical writings. Indeed, as late as 1790, when Zhang wrote his postscript to the essay “Zhu and Lu,” he still took Inquiry Into Goodness (most likely the first draft) and two other short pieces on the concept of “nature” to be representative of Dai’s thought.11 We have evidence that Dai only showed Preface to his old schoolmate Cheng Yaotian 程瑤田 (1725–1814) in 1776 and Commentary on the Meaning of Terms in Mencius to the Buddhist philosopher Peng Shaosheng 彭紹升 (1740–1796) in 1777, at their request.12 Both Cheng and Peng, it may be noted, were genuinely interested in Neo-Confucian philosophy, although they differed from Dai, each in his own way, in philosophical outlook. At this point, let us pause for a moment and consider two intriguing questions: First, was Dai’s philology related to his philosophy, and, if so, how were they related to each other? Second, were philology and philosophy of equal importance to Dai, or, in terms of Dai’s own ultimate concern, was one of them more fundamental than the other? The answer to our first question is quite clear. On many occasions, Dai Zhen explicitly stated that his philology and his philosophy were inseparable. In his letter to Duan Yucai, dated February 21, 1777, Dai wrote: Since I was seventeen years old, I have set the quest of Dao as my life goal. I was convinced that Dao can be found only in the Six Classics and the works of Confucius and Mencius. But unless we study the meanings of the words, institutions, and terminologies [in these classical texts] we will not be able to understand the language of the texts.13 Earlier in 1765, he also said: Alas, if the so- called philosophical ideas [of the sages] can be obtained by sheer speculation apart from the classics, then anyone would be able to grasp them out of emptiness. If that is the case, what do we need classical learning for? It is precisely because sheer speculation cannot lead one to the philosophical ideas of the sages of antiquity that one has to seek them from the ancient classics. Since messages contained in the surviving

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records have gradually fallen into oblivion due to the expanse of time between the past and the present, one therefore has to seek them through philological studies [of the classics]. Thus, only if philology is clear, can the ancient classics be understood, and only if the classics are understood, can the sages’ philosophical ideas then be grasped.14 Hence, for Dai, philology was the foundation and philosophy the superstructure. However, Dai’s conception of philology was different from that of his contemporaries. While most mid-Qing scholars were doing philology on a piecemeal basis, Dai Was promoting what must be called a systematic philology. As early as 1749, Dai wrote: [It is necessary that we] bring the Erya Dictionary to bear on the interpretation of [such classical texts as] the Shijing [Classic of Poetry] and the Shujing [Classic of History] and, conversely, also use the Poetry and the History to authenticate the Erya Dictionary. We should then apply [the philological methods of explication] to all the extant ancient texts of preQin times. Only by systematization through synthesis and analysis, always on the basis of the Six Graphic Principles,15 and phonetics, can we then hope to establish philology on solid ground.16 Also around this time, in his much- quoted “Yu Shi Zhongming lunxue shu” (Letter to Shi Zhongming), he further defi ned his systematic philology: “The meaning of a single character [in a classical text] can be considered as conclusively established only when it is uniformly applicable to all the classics and firmly based on the Six Graphical Principles.”17 It is true that already in the seventeenth century, Wan Sida 萬斯大 (1633–1683) had expressed the view that Confucian classical scholarship is of such a unified nature that no single text can be fully understood in isolation from the rest. The entire corpus of Confucian classics must therefore be treated as a closely interrelated system.18 But, obviously, here Wan is only advocating a systematic study of the classics. Qing philology did not come to full maturity until the middle of the eighteenth century. In Wan’s time, the kind of systematic philology Dai Zhen was to promote a century later could hardly have been conceived. Central to Dai’s conceptions of systematic philology is the basic assumption that the language in which the sages’ philosophical ideas are expressed is uniform throughout the pre- Qin texts. To what extent this assumption can be regarded as valid is a question that does not concern us here. The point I wish to stress is that it is precisely this assumption that gives an inner unity to philosophy and philology in Dai’s scheme of things. Like Isaiah Berlin’s hedgehog, Dai also related “every thing to a single central vision, one system less or more coherent or articulate,” although in his par ticular case, the “central vision” or the “one system” involved him in two different types of intellectual work—philology

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and philosophy. True to his hedgehog nature, however, Dai sought not only to make philosophy and philology systematic within their respective domains, but also to relate these two branches of Confucian learning systematically to the “central vision” of the Confucian Dao. This leads directly to our second question, namely, which of the two fields, philosophy or philology, was more fundamental to his central intellectual concern. I wish to begin by saying that in spite of his public image as an archphilologist, deep in his heart, Dai Zhen always aspired to become a Confucian philosopher. The best evidence for this is to be found in the profound gratifi cation he expressed each time he was engaged in a major philosophical work. He once told Duan Yucai, “When I completed chapter 1 of Inquiry Into Goodness, my pleasure was beyond description. I even found food particularly delicious.”19 It is understandable why he was so excited about Inquiry Into Goodness, his first systematic treatment of a philosophical topic. From his early years to the very end of his life, Dai devoted himself to the study of philology and yet, at the same time, he made every effort to go beyond philology to reach a genuine philosophical understanding of the Confucian Way. Time and time again, he stressed the point that philology was not an end in itself but a means to “hearing the Dao” (wen dao 聞道).20 It is probably in the writing of Inquiry Into Goodness that he experienced for the first time the supreme delight of being philosophically enlightened via philology. There is also an extremely revealing piece of information concerning Dai’s state of mind when he was working on Preface, his second major philosophical treatise. In 1772, he reminisced with Cheng Yaotian about when he started writing it in Shanxi in 1769: “When I was staying with Governor [Zhu Gui 朱珪] in his official residence, for some ten odd days I pretended to be sick. Afterward, I came out and confessed to the Governor that I was not really sick. I was only in a frenzy while trying to smash the Supreme Ultimate Chart of the Song Confucianists.”21 A word of explanation is in order. The last phrase, “smash the Supreme Ultimate Chart of the Song Confucianists,” is a reference to his composition Preface. Although his Inquiry Into Goodness marks a significant departure from the philosophical position of orthodox Song Confucianism, Dai did not push his differences with Song Confucianists to a breaking point in that work.22 As Qian Mu rightly points out, it was in the Preface that he began to attack his Song predecessors openly.23 However, what particularly interests us here is his frenzied state of mind while writing the Preface. This seems to be a clear indication that he was totally immersed in thought during the period of “some ten odd days” of his pretended illness. The actual writing of Preface may have taken much longer, for evidence shows that three years later, in 1772, Dai was still revising this work.24 Nevertheless, we can safely assume that it was during these “ten odd days” in 1769 that his central ideas for it crystallized— ideas that would eventually take form in Commentary on the Meaning of Terms in Mencius. Hence, as far as the development of Dai’s philosophical thought

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is concerned, the importance of this brief period in 1769 can hardly be exaggerated. Moreover, Dai’s reminiscence also suggests something psychologically significant. The “pretended illness,” the “frenzy,” and the attempt to “smash the Supreme Ultimate Chart” all point to a powerful psychological experience. When Dai said that he “smashed the Supreme Ultimate Chart,” he was actually saying that he had finally declared war on Song Confucianism. In fact, Dai’s change into a critic of the Cheng-Zhu tradition is traceable to his first meeting with Hui Dong 惠棟 in Yangzhou back in 1757, but his first piece critical of Song Confucianism was not written until 1765. Even then, his criticism was still mild, indirect, and implicit.25 It took him another four years to declare war openly. In view of his early intellectual background, especially his spiritual adherence to the Cheng-Zhu tradition through the influence of Jiang Yong, Dai’s decision to “smash the Supreme Ultimate Chart” at long last must have been an event of the first magnitude in his life.26 Dai’s last, philosophical work— Commentary on the Meaning of Terms in Mencius—was completed sometime early in 1777, and, unfortunately, he did not live long enough to leave us a similar statement that would reveal his innermost feelings about this masterpiece. Nevertheless, from his letters to friends we know that he was prouder of it than of any of his other writings. In a letter to Duan Yucai dated May 30, 1777, he spoke of this work thus: “Of all the works I have written, I must take Commentary on the Meaning of Terms in Mencius to be my magnum opus. It contains essentials for rectifying the minds of the people. Nowadays everybody, righteous or wicked, mistakenly takes his personal opinion to be what is called li 理 (principle, or reason) and has thus brought calamity to the populace. I therefore felt compelled to write my Shuzheng.”27 As we know, Dai’s latest discovery in his Commentary on the Meaning of Terms in Mencius was a redefinition of li in terms of both qing 情 (feelings) and yu 欲 (desires); this was diametrically opposed to the Cheng-Zhu dichotomy between li on the one hand and qing and yu on the other. He was so excited about his new formulation that during the four months prior to his death on July 1, 1777, he wrote no fewer than five letters to his friends explaining the central significance of his major breakthrough in Confucian philosophy.28 There can be no doubt that the completion of his magnum opus gave him an intellectual satisfaction of the highest degree. The above analysis shows clearly that philosophy not only occupied Dai’s mind consistently but also engaged his heart. By contrast, philology does not seem to have ever gratified his ego with comparable intensity.29 This is not to say, of course, that philology was not impor tant to him. I have already pointed out that philology was the very foundation on which his philosophical structure was built. I must also add that Dai was a professional philologist in the sense that most of the time he made his livelihood from philological work. However, the fact remains that throughout the last two decades of his life, he never

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allowed his professional interest in philology to distract him from his central philosophical vision, the Confucian Dao. In an earlier letter to Duan Yucai dated February 21, 1777, he talked about his future plans: It seems that I shall be able to finish my part of the editing work [in the Siku quanshu project] in the coming summer. I have decided to take a leave and return to the south in the seventh or eighth moon so that I may obtain the care of a physician. I wish to find a teaching position in an academy to support myself and will not come out again. I shall devote several years of my life to writing a book elucidating the Dao of Confucius and Mencius. If I still have some energy left, I will then edit my previous studies in etymology and the classics.30 Obviously, had Dai lived a few years longer, he would have done something more ambitious in the realm of philosophy than the Commentary on the Meaning of Terms in Mencius, covering not only Mencius but Confucius as well. Philology on the other hand, as the last sentence unmistakably indicates, became only peripheral to his intellectual concern. Here Dai made his final choice between philosophy and philology.31 We have seen that Dai’s public image as an archphilologist was directly contradicted by his self-identity as a Confucian philosopher. It was a contradiction between his inner world and an intellectual environment that not only surrounded him, but of which he was also a part. The importance of this contradiction in Dai’s life cannot be overstressed. As is shown below, the pressures of this intellectual environment of the mid- eighteenth century had generated in Dai a tension of such an enduring nature that he struggled to accommodate it until his death. It seems to me that much of his intellectual development after his arrival in Beijing in 1754, especially the ways in which his philosophic ideas were expressed, needs to be reinterpreted in the light of this tension. For two centuries, this dark corner in Dai’s inner consciousness has remained obscured from the view of those who studied him. No one has ever suspected that during his lifetime the most profound psychological pressures to which Dai the archphilologist was being subjected came from none other than the group of philologists with which he was most intimately associated. Let us begin by examining the nature of these pressures. In his “Shu Zhu Lu pian hou” (Postscript to Zhu and Lu), Zhang Xuecheng wrote: Mr. Dai’s scholarship was profound in etymology and excelled in technical terms and institutions [in the classical texts]. Moreover, he also grasped the very significance of these matters and, on the basis of his scholarship, he was to expound the Dao. But contemporary scholars only valued erudition and philology. Since they saw that Dai’s philological achievement fitted in

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well with the current fad, they therefore considered this to be Dai’s greatest strength. When Dai wrote his essays “Human Nature” and “Goodness,” in which he truly displayed great originality in the treatment of such philosophical topics as Heaven and Man, li (principle, or reason) and qi (vital force, or matter), these same contemporary scholars then turned to accuse him of talking emptily about philosophy. In their opinion, he could well have saved the trouble of writing such essays. They certainly show no understanding of Dai’s scholarship at all.32 From Zhang’s “Letter in Reply to Shao Eryun,” quoted earlier, we know that “contemporary scholars” is a reference to Zhu Yun and Qian Daxin. Elsewhere, Zhang specifically singled out Zhu Yun as a hostile critic of Dai’s adventures in philosophical ideas.33 Since both Zhu and Qian were among the most influential leaders in the learned movement of philologism of the day, and since they made this attack emphatically as well as repeatedly, it is inconceivable that Dai could have been insensitive to their criticism, much less ignorant of it. In fact, Dai was not only sensitive, he also responded to it actively. However, his response was conveyed in such a subtle and quiet way that it has eluded detection. In what immediately follows, I aim to prove my point through a discussion of his Inquiry Into Goodness and Commentary on the Meaning of Terms in Mencius. In his preface to the revised and expanded version of Inquiry Into Goodness, Dai wrote: Originally, I wrote my treatise Yuanshan in three sections (zhang 章). Being afraid that scholars might be biased by a point of view wholly different from mine, I therefore quoted from the Confucian classics to explain and support my argument. In the volume to follow, I place my original three sections, respectively, at the beginning of each of the three chapters ( juan 卷) into which this volume is divided; these are followed by my quotations from, and comments on, the classics. Since I have compared and combined the meanings of terms in the classics, it should be very clear where the beginning and the end of my reasoning and my purpose lie: an examination of the Way of Heaven and the Way of Man; they present the most fundamental teachings of the classics. Now that we are separated from the ancient sages by such a long period of time, it is no surprise that students of the classics in our time cannot maintain a systematic view of the teachings or the insights of the ancient sages and that they accept what they usually hear and learn about without discriminating the true from the false. Fearing that my words are not strong enough to retrieve the teachings of the classics from decline, I therefore hide my treatise in my family library in the hope that some able person will discover it and that he will someday promote the truth contained therein.34

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The preface contains several impor tant messages that reveal the delicately strained relations between Dai and other leading philologists. First, it tells the reader what motivated its author to revise and enlarge his original version of Inquiry Into Goodness: he did so in response to scholars “biased by a point of view wholly different” from his. Who were the “scholars” that Dai is talking about in this context? In view of the fact that between 1763 and 1766, the original manuscript of Inquiry Into Goodness circulated only in an extremely limited circle of Dai’s scholarly friends,35 and that the earliest known criticism of the work came from none other than Zhu Yun and Qian Daxin, we can safely assume that Dai’s “scholars” were, in all probability, not very different from what Zhang Xuecheng referred to in the “Postscript to Zhu and Lu” as “contemporary scholars.” In other words, Dai must also have had both Zhu Yun and Qian Daxin in mind when he wrote the preface. Second, the manner in which he revised and expanded his early draft of Inquiry Into Goodness further shows that the rewriting was prompted by Zhu Yun’s and Qian Daxin’s criticizing it as “empty talk on philosophy” (kongshuo yili 空說義理), for the rewriting, as Dai himself pointed out, consisted mainly of quoting extensively from the classics to support his original argument. Liang Qichao, who carefully compared the two versions, fully confirmed this point.36 Thus, we see that Dai’s revision of Inquiry Into Goodness was not necessitated by philosophical reasons. He did it with the express purpose of establishing his philosophical argument on a firm textual basis. In a quiet but persistent manner, he refuted the philologists’ charge that his philosophical treatise was merely “empty talk.” Third, in the latter part of the preface, Dai turned from the defensive to the offensive by pointing out the philologists’ inability to maintain a systematic view of the teachings of the sages. This is a typical hedgehog’s denunciation of the fox’s habit of mind. The term “students of the classics” in the preface leaves little doubt that, here, Dai was speaking of the philologists. Later, in 1769, he made the same point in a positive way by exhorting the philologists to rise above philology in their classical studies to learn the Confucian Dao.37 If Dai’s rewriting of Inquiry Into Goodness was done under the pressures of philologism, the same pressures can also be shown to have been at work in his writing of Commentary on the Meaning of Terms in Mencius. It is all the more revealing that once again Zhu Yun was directly involved. The following story was told by the intellectual historian Jiang Fan 江藩 (1761–1831), one of Zhu Yun’s disciples: Hong Bang 洪榜 (1745–1779) . . . throughout his life admired Dai’s scholarship. At the time when Dai’s Commentary on the Meaning of Terms in Mencius was produced, readers could not comprehend its meaning, and only Bang considered its contribution as great as Yu’s (founder of the Xia dynasty) achievement [in regulating the waterways]. He wrote a xingzhuang

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行狀 (career biography) of Dai that included [Dai’s] letter to Peng Chimu 彭尺木.38 When my teacher Sihe 笥河 (Zhu Yun) saw this, he said, “This [item] need not be included. This is not the kind of work by Dai that is worthy to be handed down.” Bang then wrote [Chu] a letter of protest. The fact that now this letter is not found in the xingzhuang is because Dai’s son, Zhongli, finally excluded it. It was not [Bang’s] decision.39 To get to the heart of the matter, it is necessary to take a close look at Hong’s letter to Zhu, which reads, in part: In our last conversation, you instructed me, “[Dai’s] reply to Peng Chimu in the xingzhuang need not be included. [Philosophical topics such as] Human Nature and the Way of Heaven cannot be heard [from Confucius].40 Why should there be further discussions in addition to those of the Cheng brothers and Zhu Xi? This is not the kind of work by Dai that is worthy to be handed down.” During the conversation, I only listened to your instruction. Out of respect, I didn’t dare to say a word. Now as I look back, since you are a well-respected leader of the scholarly world, you wouldn’t possibly say anything without good reasons. I can think of three possible reasons for your objection [to the inclusion of Dai’s letter]. First, the Cheng brothers and Zhu Xi are all eminent worthies with moral perfection. It is therefore undesirable to contradict their established doctrines. . . . Second, it is impor tant for a student of the classics to follow the methodology of his own field. Han Learning has its own methodology, and so does Song Learning. Now since Dai specialized in textual technicalities and excelled in etymology, it would be better for him to stay away from [philosophical discussions of] the meanings of [Human] Nature, and the [Heavenly] Decree (ming 命) so that his weakness may not be exposed and his strength obscured. Third, it may be argued that one can only exert oneself to become a Confucian scholar, but one cannot attain sagehood through learning. One can hardly avoid exaggeration when one tries to characterize an antiquarian scholar in terms of the moral qualities of a sage. As far as I can see, your objection probably arises from these three contradictions. 41 It must be pointed out that when Zhu Yun raised his objection to Hong Bang, he did not give any specific reasons. The above three reasons, therefore, were all conjectures on the part of Hong. In my judgment, the most likely explanation is that Zhu’s objection was based on something very close to the second reason listed in Hong’s letter, namely, a Han Learning philologist should never meddle with philosophical speculation typical of Song Learning. Dai’s letter to Peng Shaosheng, written in 1777, is actually a summary of his major philosophical arguments in both Inquiry Into Goodness and Commentary

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on the Meaning of Terms in Mencius. Thanks to Zhang Xuecheng, we already know that from the very beginning, Zhu had disapproved of Dai’s adventures in philosophy and had contemptuously called Dai’s Inquiry Into Goodness and his other philosophical pieces “empty talk.” Obviously, Zhu didn’t change his view after Dai’s death and he honestly believed that by asking Hong Bang to exclude the letter from the xingzhuang he was rendering his beloved friend a last important ser vice. From his strictly philological point of view, he just couldn’t bear to see the image of Dai as a great classical scholar marred by a proclivity for philosophical nonsense. To allow Dai’s “empty talks on philosophy” to be handed down to posterity was only to subject him to ridicule in history, for his admiration for Dai’s classical scholarship had reached such an emotional height that he seized every opportunity to quarrel heatedly with Qian Zai 錢載 (1708– 1793) when the latter denounced Dai’s philology.42 There can be no doubt that Hong Bang was fully aware of Zhu’s radical philologism. Hence, toward the end of his letter, he defended Dai’s Commentary on the Meaning of Terms in Mencius in the following way: “Among Dai’s writings on Human Nature and the Heavenly Decree, none is more comprehensive than his study of the Book of Mencius. Nevertheless, he titled this study Commentary on the Meaning of Terms in Mencius [Mengzi ziyi shuzheng]. Hence, it is not a work talking about Human Nature and the Heavenly Decree. It is rather a work dealing exclusively with etymology and textual technicalities.” 43 By arguing that the title of the Commentary on the Meaning of Terms in Mencius suggests philology rather than philosophy, Hong unwittingly revealed, at the same time, an impor tant psychological secret of Dai’s—an inner tension created by psychological pressures of philologism. Actually, Dai’s final adoption of a philological title as well as philological form of presentation for his major philosophical work makes sense only when it is understood as an indirect reply to the philologists’ charge that in doing philosophy he was engaged in “empty talk.”44 He was merely trying to say that his philosophy was an inevitable outgrowth of his philology. This is typical of Dai’s response to the challenge of the philologists, which we have already observed in his revisions of Inquiry Into Goodness. Unfortunately, however, Hong’s letter has given rise to a serious modern misunderstanding of the destiny of Dai’s philosophy vis-à-vis the intellectual climate of mid- Qing China. Commenting on Dai’s adoption of a philological title, Hu Shi indicated that Dai did this because he had to yield to the authority of the Cheng-Zhu school. “It turned out, however,” Hu deplored, “that in the end, the opposition of the followers of the Cheng-Zhu school just proved to be unavoidable.”45 Here, Hu misread the situation completely. As has been shown above, if Dai ever yielded to an authority, it could only have been the authority of Han Learning. Furthermore, speaking of the opposition of the Cheng-Zhu school in this context, Hu has practically identified Zhu Yun as a Cheng-Zhu follower, which is an impossible thing to do.

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Zhu Yun, a leader of the philological movement, contributed greatly to the rise of the so- called Han Learning in eighteenth- century China.46 According to Sun Xingyan 孫星衍 (1753–1818), he was extremely critical of classical studies since the Southern Song, when, in his opinion, they were marked by emptiness and Buddhist influence. To him, true classical scholarship could only be founded on sound philology.47 Zhang Xuecheng, a disciple of Zhu, characterized his mentor as a scholar who followed strictly the interpretations of Han exegetes in every thing from etymology, mathematics, and textual technicalities to the meanings of the classics.48 The imperial Siku quanshu compilation project was initiated in 1773 largely on his suggestion.49 It is true that, unlike Ji Yun 紀昀 (1724–1805), he did not attack the Cheng-Zhu school openly. Nevertheless, it seems too far-fetched to suggest that a scholar with his kind of philological orientation would have been opposed to Dai’s philosophy in defense of the ChengZhu school. Hu Shi was apparently misled by Chu’s remark, “Why should there be further discussions in addition to those of the Cheng brothers and Zhu Xi?” By this remark, as far as I can judge, Chu meant to say that even ChengZhu philosophy was “empty talk.” Why should Dai want to add still more? As a radical philologist, Chu was equally contemptuous of Dai and the Cheng-Zhu school on this score. In a word, he was, like many other leading philologists of the day, an antiphilosopher. In this connection, we must also say something about the Cheng-Zhu school as it was during the lifetime of Dai Zhen. The Cheng-Zhu teachings, of course, remained orthodox in the sense that they continued to be tested in examinations, but we obviously cannot identify everybody who studied the Cheng-Zhu texts for examination purposes as a follower of the Cheng-Zhu school. There must also have been many moralists who still lived, thought, and talked quite comfortably within the confi nes of the Cheng-Zhu weltanschauung, but these people were no more Cheng-Zhu Confucians than all churchgoers are Christians. What was conspicuously lacking in the Cheng-Zhu school during the reign of Qianlong (1736–1795) was, therefore, an intellectual spokesman who could defend the Cheng-Zhu philosophical position ably and intelligently.50 Both Zhu Zeyun 朱澤澐 (1666–1732) and Wang Maohong 王懋竑 (1668–1741), the two fine Zhu Xi scholars of the Qing Period, were long dead when Dai began to write philosophically in the early 1760s. Even if we take the Cheng-Zhu school as state ideology, the Qianlong Period did not produce a political spokesman comparable to Lu Longqi 陸隴其 (1630–1693), Xiong Cilü 熊賜履 (1635–1709), Li Guangdi 李光地 (1642–1718), or Zhang Boxing 張伯行 (1652–1725). Hence, by Dai’s time, the Cheng-Zhu school had become philosophically impoverished.51 On the other hand, the tide of Han Learning, in which Dai participated, was very much on the rise. According to the contemporary account of Yuan Mei 袁枚 (1716–1797), scholars of the day all competed with each other in promoting Han Learning and attacking Song Learning. This intellectual fashion almost

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carried the whole empire, the south as well as the north.52 Hu Qian 胡虔 ( juren 1796), a friend of Zhang Xuecheng, also made a similar observation. In praising Xu Shen 許慎, the Han lexicographer, and denouncing Zhu Xi, Hu wrote that “ten thousand mouths almost speak with one voice.”53 With the so- called Song Learning weakened beyond repair, it could not possibly have threatened Dai Zhen so much as to require him to present his philosophical ideas under the veil of philology. Moreover, as we have seen, Dai’s criticism of Song Learning, from Inquiry Into Goodness to Preface, and finally in Commentary on the Meaning of Terms in Mencius, clearly reveals a process of escalation that defies all disguises, no matter how clever and skillful. In fact, it is doubtful that he ever had any intention of concealing his philosophical differences with Song Confucianists. In his “Da Peng Shaosheng shu” (Reply to Peng Shaosheng), he said: The central ideas in my Inquiry Into Goodness, together with the various arguments set forth in my Commentary on the Meaning of Terms in Mencius, are all sharply dissimilar from the Dao you espouse. It was in deference to your wishes that I showed them to you. Now in your letter, you say that we have differences as well as similarities. On my part, however, I think we are totally different and there is not even the slightest similarity between us.54 This is a perfect example showing that Dai had no scruples about driving his philosophical differences with the so- called School of Song Learning beyond the breaking point. Dai’s debate with Peng Shaosheng took place in 1777, only a month before his death. According to the evidence, Peng was the only scholar who had the privilege of reading the Commentary on the Meaning of Terms in Mencius while Dai was still alive. If it is at all justifiable to say that during Dai’s lifetime his philosophy had been seriously challenged by the Cheng-Zhu school, then this probably was it, although Peng’s credentials for membership in that school are not entirely unproblematic.55 Other contemporary scholars who had criticized Dai’s philosophical ideas from the Cheng-Zhu point of view included Yao Nai 姚鼐 (1732–1815), Weng Fanggang 翁方綱 (1733–1818), and Cheng Jinfang 程晉芳 (1718–1784). But a close scrutiny reveals that all their serious critical pieces were written only after Dai’s death, largely because neither Commentary on the Meaning of Terms in Mencius nor Inquiry Into Goodness was published until 1777–1779.56 Of the three, probably only Yao had actually exchanged views with Dai on problems concerning Song philosophy when both were in Beijing.57 However, since Yao had been a great admirer of Dai and even asked to become his disciple in 1755, it is rather unlikely that their philosophical discussions could have been very heated.58 In the above, I have briefly reviewed the general state of affairs in which the adherents of Song Learning found themselves in the second half of the eigh-

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teenth century. The aggregate evidence shows rather conclusively that this school, in sharp contrast to that of Han Learning, lacked not only leadership but also vitality. It was in no position to put up any effective or organized resistance to the dynamic intellectualism of Dai Zhen. The revitalization of ChengZhu orthodoxy and its counterattack against Han Learning in general and Dai Zhen in particular did not take place until about half a century after Dai’s death. Under the influence of Yao Nai, Fang Dongshu 方東樹 (1772–1851) wrote a powerful systematic critique of Han Learning, the Hanxue shangdui 漢學商兌 (Evaluation of Han Learning), in 1824—a year that may be taken as the beginning of the decline of Qing philologism. Writing on January 25, 1861, Li Ciming, with the exaggeration and sentimentality typical of a Chinese diarist, held Yao Nai responsible for having transformed China, within a short span of less than forty years, from a world of profound learning to one of complete illiteracy.59 Hence, if the Cheng-Zhu school as a formidable philosophical enemy of Dai Zhen during the latter’s lifetime was imaginary, existing only in the mind of modern historians, it was, nevertheless, a real one in the middle of the nineteenth century. With the development of his philosophical ideas, Dai’s attitude toward ChengZhu orthodoxy grew increasingly antagonistic and uncompromising. His relationship with philology was an entirely different story, however. Throughout his life, but especially in his later years, he displayed a deep-rooted ambivalence toward philology. On the one hand, his faith in the fruitfulness of various new methods and techniques as they were firmly developed in the broad realm of classical philology was almost unlimited. He believed, with other leading scholars of the day, that philology was the only key to open the arsenal of classical texts in which the sages’ Dao was hidden. Yet on the other hand, he refused to stress the importance of philology beyond its methodological significance. In his view, there was a natural connection leading classical philology to Confucian philosophy. To rest content with philological probing itself was to mistake the means as the end. Interestingly enough, we find him, at times when he was not fully on guard, even speaking in contempt of philology. To penetrate the depth of his ambivalence toward philology, it is necessary to examine some of his oral remarks, which, in my judgment, are psychologically much more revealing than his formal writings. Dai once told Duan Yucai: Matters pertaining to such fields as etymology and mathematics may be compared to sedan- chair bearers, whose function is to carry the sedanchair rider. To identify me as a person good only at such matters as etymology and mathematics is to mistake a sedan- chair rider for a sedanchair bearer.60 A slightly different version of this remark is also given by Zhang Xuecheng as follows:

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I take etymology, phonetics, astronomy, and geography to be my four sedan- chair bearers; the Dao I am trying to make clear is the mandarin who rides in the sedan- chair. What a pity the so- called outstanding scholars of our time are qualified only to communicate with my sedan- chair bearers.61 The analogy in both versions is the same, but the emphasis is somewhat different. In Duan’s version, Dai was mainly concerned with his own intellectual identity; he did not want to be taken as a philologist, even an archphilologist. In Zhang’s version, he used the same sedan- chair analogy to achieve a different purpose, namely, to express his disdain for those philologists who, because of inability or lack of interest, or both, refused “to rise from the grasp of the minute and disconnected to the grasp of the whole.”62 The difference between these two versions is no cause for suspicion. The sedan- chair analogy was probably a favorite of Dai’s, which he must have used on many occasions. In both cases, however, it is unmistakable that the common theme was to disparage philology and promote philosophy. Psychologically, there is still something deeper than just that. I strongly suspect that by making remarks like these he was consciously responding to the challenge of both Zhu Yun and Qian Daxin. The reference to “the so- called outstanding scholars of our time” in Zhang’s version makes this identification almost inevitable. Conceivably, Dai may have been greatly annoyed by the repeated criticism of these two esteemed friends that he simply wasted time in “applying his good self to a field of futility,” that is, to “empty talk on philosophy.” The philologists of the day just could not bring themselves to recognize, as he did, the existence of a natural connection between classical philology and Confucian philosophy. In frustration and anger, he therefore issued his stinging retort that they were qualified only to make friends with his sedan-chair bearers. That Dai’s above remarks were aimed at philologists such as Zhu Yun and Qian Daxin can be confirmed by another oral remark of his preserved in Jiang Fan’s Guochao Hanxue shicheng ji (Record of the transmission of the masters of the school of Han learning). Chiang related, “Dai Zhen once told people, ‘Among contemporary scholars, I consider Qian Daxin to be number two.’ For Dai implied that he himself was by far the number- one scholar.”63 Here, we must pause and ask, Precisely on what ground could Dai claim his superiority over Qian in learning? Needless to say, the claim could not possibly have been made on the ground of erudition, which was, by and large, a commonly accepted standard among Qing philologists. As Paul Demiéville has rightly pointed out, “As far as erudition goes, Qian Daxin seems to have been the greatest scholar of his time, greater than both Zhang Xuecheng and Dai Zhen.” 64 We must, therefore, look elsewhere for a sensible answer. Fortunately, a valuable clue to the problem is furnished by the following autobiographical statement Dai once made to Duan Yucai: “Learning consists primarily in mastery of

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essence ( jing 精), not pursuit of erudition. In my own case, I have never pursued erudition (bo 博).”65 What Dai called “mastery of essence” ( jing) is very close in meaning to what Zhang Xuecheng called “essentialism” (yue 約) or “specialization” (zhuanjia 專家), which, in the context of their discussions, must be understood as characteristic more of philosophy than of philology. I believe it was by resorting to a criterion more philosophical than philological that Dai, in this mid- Qing context of Confucian learning, pronounced Qian Daxin to be the first runner-up, and reserved the number- one place for himself. Revealingly enough, it was also on the very same ground that Zhang Xuecheng, quite independently of Dai, came to the conclusion that Dai “was actually the number- one scholar of the Qianlong Period.”66 Even a late Qing critic of Han Learning such as Zhu Yixin 朱一新 (1846–1894) said, when making a comparison between Dai and Qian: “Among the scholars of the Qianlong and Jiaqing periods, [Dai] Dongyuan and [Qian] Zhuding 竹汀 were two giants, one excelling in the classics (Dai) and the other in history (Qian). Zhuding surpassed Dongyuan in terms of erudition, but was inferior to the latter in profundity.”67 It is interesting that in his first judgment, Zhu followed precisely Qian’s own criterion of erudition, which, as we have seen above, is also the one adopted by Demiéville.68 In the second judgment, however, Zhu apparently shifted to Dai’s emphasis on “mastery of essence,” which he characterized as “profundity.” Dai’s message contained in this remark, therefore, can be fully understood only in the light of his sedan- chair analogy. In Dai’s eyes, since Qian, with all his erudition, never rose “from the grasp of the minute and disconnected to the grasp of the whole,” he was a sedan- chair bearer. On the other hand, Dai did not hesitate to assign to himself the number- one place in the scholarly world of the day because, in his selfdefinition, he was always a Confucian philosopher, riding comfortably in the sedan- chair. In a still deeper sense, however, this remark of his may not have been intended simply as a personal criticism of Qian Daxin. What he really meant to say was that philology can never claim to be Confucian learning of the highest order. By virtue of its being immediate to Dao, only philosophy can make such a claim in Dai’s scheme of things. Once again, Dai responded to the challenge of the philologists in his typically subtle and indirect way. There is another aspect of Dai’s oral remarks that illustrates his strained relationship with the philologists. By this I refer particularly to his open attacks on the Cheng-Zhu school. Let me fi rst quote a systematic classification of Dai’s oral remarks by Zhang Xuecheng: Generally speaking, Dai’s oral remarks may be classified into three types. Speaking to prominent court officials of high scholastic standing, he tended to be more or less agreeable. Only occasionally did he express his own ideas, but only to the extent to which he considered that such ideas were acceptable to them. He never wanted to elaborate on his ideas. In

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conversations with his disciples, however, he was truly helpful by always giving them enlightening instructions. Talking with his admirers who  were not learned enough to follow his teachings, his style was extremely elusive. He was often enigmatically abstruse and therefore beyond grasp.69 All three categories of people can be identified. The “prominent court officials of high scholastic standing” referred to, among others, Zhu Yun, Qian Daxin, Lu Wenchao 盧文弨 (1717–1796), Qin Huitian, and Wang Mingsheng 王鳴盛 (1722–1798). The “disciples” were Duan Yucai and Wang Niansun. Dai’s “admirers” were numerous, but here Zhang must have had Feng Tingcheng 馮廷丞 and Wu Yingfang 吳穎芳 specifically in mind.70 People in the first category were all leading philologists of the day, whose support and sympathy could mean a great deal to the cause of the reconstruction of Confucian philosophy that Dai was championing. I strongly suspect that some of Dai’s anti– Cheng-Zhu remarks were intended to arouse feelings of comradeship among his fellow philologists. Take the following two remarks, recorded by Zhang Xuecheng, for example: Now, with my appearance on the scene, the time probably has arrived for Zhu Xi to run out of luck. Anyway, he has been fortunate enough to dominate the intellectual world for over five hundred years.71 and I have written my Inquiry Into Goodness in the hope that I shall eventually find my niche in the Confucian temple.72 It is quite understandable that Zhang found such remarks repugnant. But the question is, what sort of psychological force had driven him to say things like this? To say that Dai had a “devious” or “impure” mind (xinshu weichun 心術未醇 or xinshu buzheng 心術不正), as Zhang persistently did, is probably right, but does not explain much.73 It only gives us a different question: Why did Dai happen to have a “devious” or “impure” mind? I suggest that in making such remarks, Dai was also responding to the psychological pressures of philologists, but from a different direction. If, by way of his sedan- chair analogy, he was to show the nonfinality of philology in Confucian learning, his avowed candidacy for a place in the Confucian pantheon occupied by Zhu Xi was to tie his new philosophy to the philological movement. He was trying to make his fellow philologists see that his dedication to philosophical work, on the solid foundation of Qing philology, was by no means an expression of personal idiosyncrasy. On the contrary, he would like to think that in doing philosophy, he was serving

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the common cause of the Qing philological movement. After all, his philosophy was the synthesis of Qing philological findings, and, moreover, the school of Han Learning could not expect to prevail over that of Song Learning in its bid for Confucian orthodoxy without a final, decisive victory on the philosophical battleground. Dai’s remarks, as quoted above, seem to suggest that his aspiration to replace Zhu Xi in the Confucian temple, if it ever came true, would symbolize the establishment of a new Confucian orthodoxy rather than just a personal triumph for Dai. His special reference to his Inquiry Into Goodness is also significant. Isn’t it clear that he was taking this opportunity to answer the charge of Chu Yun and Qian Daxin that Inquiry Into Goodness “was empty talk on philosophy and should not have been written”? It is obvious that these oral remarks by Dai appealed to emotion rather than to reason. Yet this is probably precisely why Zhang Xuecheng had found Dai agreeable to leading scholars of the day. It may be noted that the mid- Qing philological movement was from the beginning a highly emotionally charged one, with several of its leaders harboring, to varying degrees, strong anti-Song (or, more precisely, anti- Cheng-Zhu) feelings. Before Dai came into contact with this movement in 1754, he had no quarrel with Song Confucianism. On the contrary, under the influence of Jiang Yong, he sometimes even defended the Cheng-Zhu philosophical tradition.74 However, his attitude toward Song Confucianism took a drastic iconoclastic change after his meeting with Hui Dong in Yangzhou in 1757. More than anybody else, Hui was responsible for giving the Qing philological movement the name of Han Learning. From a strictly philological point of view, he accused Song Confucianists of philological illiteracy.75 His iconoclasm reached its emotional peak when he said, “Song Confucianism was even more disastrous than the burning of books by the Qin.”76 Ji Yun, a chief editor of the Complete Library of the Four Branches, was another scholar who apparently pushed Dai deeper into the anti-Song campaign. Ji’s tactics against the Cheng-Zhu school were unique in that he launched, simultaneously, a frontal attack and a flanking attack. As a chief editor of Complete Library of the Four Branches, he made biting criticisms of Song Confucianism in a systematic and organized way throughout the massive Siku quanshu zongmu tiyao 四庫全書總目提要 (Cata logue of the Complete Library of the Four Branches).77 As a popular writer, he composed numerous fables and anecdotes to expose the hy pocrisy of Cheng-Zhu moralists.78 He was indeed the only scholar in traditional China who ever attempted to undermine the influence of Song Confucianism not only in high culture but in popular culture as well. It is conceivable that some of Dai’s anti– Cheng-Zhu remarks may have been but echoes of Ji’s utterances. I must hasten to add, however, that I am not suggesting that Dai’s philosophical writings are all products of a deliberate need to satisfy the anti-Song

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feelings of his fellow philologists.79 His philosophical differences with Zhu Xi are genuine differences, which even the critical Zhang Xuecheng found little room to doubt. What disturbed Zhang was rather the inconsistency between the pen and the tongue. Chang was particularly worried about the disintegrating influence of Dai’s oral remarks, for not long after Dai’s death, he already heard many prominent scholars saying, “When the day comes that Dai’s learning reigns supreme, it will be as easy to demolish Zhu Xi as to break down a decayed stump.”80 This last quote is extremely revealing. It tells us that Dai’s strategy of appealing to the philologists’ longing for Confucian orthodoxy was, after all, not without effect. Zhang Xuecheng was very observant in detecting the inconsistencies between Dai as a writer and Dai as a conversationalist. With all his profundity in psychological observation, however, he failed to fathom the depth of Dai’s inner tension arising from the latter’s self-identity as a Confucian philosopher vis-à-vis the antiphilosophical temper inherent in Qing philologism. It is in terms of this inner tension that Dai’s inconsistencies must be understood. Finally, I conclude this study with a brief review of Dai’s intellectual development, focusing on his changing views of Confucian learning. Heretofore, historians have generally discerned in Dai’s life two stages of development, with his visit to Yangzhou in 1757 as the dividing line.81 In what follows, however, I try to establish that Dai’s thought underwent altogether three stages of development, reaching full maturity only in the last decade of his life. This development is nowhere more clearly shown than in his discussions of the structure of Confucian learning, to which I now turn. In a letter to Fang Ju 方矩 dated 1755, Dai wrote: “From antiquity to the present, there have been altogether three different approaches to learning: some take the philosophical approach, others take the philological approach, and still others take the literary approach. Of the three, however, the literary approach must be regarded as the last in importance.” 82 As far as I know, this is the earliest clear formulation of the well-known triptych of Confucian learning— philosophy, philology, and literary art— although scholars had long pursued the three types of intellectual activity before Dai Zhen. What is particularly noteworthy in this statement is the fact that Dai did not treat the three branches of Confucian learning as of equal value. This point becomes more readily recognizable when we turn to his letter to Zheng Yongmu 鄭用牧, probably written in 1750, in which he further stated, “Today there are many learned men who excel in literary art and philology, but none of them seems interested in seeking to know the Dao.”83 Here his partiality for philosophy is too obvious to be ignored. Taking these two letters together, it is clear that during this early stage, philosophy was placed far above philology and literary art in his intellectual system. Philology fared better than literary art, but paled noticeably beside philosophy. This explains why, in the same letter to Fang Chu, he did not hesitate to praise Song Confucianists as philosophically sound in spite of all their philological imperfections.

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His second stage, in which philology figured centrally in his conceptions of learning, lasted roughly from 1757 to 1766. It was during this period that he told Duan Yucai: “Philosophy, philology, and literary art each has its own fountainhead. I should like to think that I have found all three fountainheads.”84 Two points may be observed in this connection. First, to say that philosophy, philology, and literary art come from separate “fountainheads” implies, logically, that they are not interrelated. This is decidedly different from his earlier view, as his letter to Fang Ju makes clear: literary art was first linked to what he called “root,” which is largely identifiable with philosophy, and then eventually to the “ultimate root,” which was none other than Dao itself. Second, his whole conception of Confucian learning took on a fundamental structural change. The earlier hierarchical structure was replaced by a more or less egalitarian one, in which philosophy could no longer claim its priority over either philology or literary art. But Dai’s egalitarianism is much more apparent than real. In fact, through this structured readjustment, he elevated philology to a place that was almost immediate to the Dao. Thus, we find him saying, in 1765, that “only if philology is clear, can the ancient classics be understood; and only if the classics are understood, can the sages’ philosophical ideas then be grasped.” Between philology and “the sages’ philosophical ideas” (Dao), there is little room left for philosophy as a legitimate branch of inquiry in Confucian learning. Dai’s radical philological point of view in the second stage should probably occasion little surprise, since it was during this period that the impact of the philological movement on him was the strongest. In fact, the view to which he subscribed was widely shared by many other philologists of the time. Zhang Xuecheng has told us: The so- called learning as conceived by scholars of our time consists only of [studies of] terminology in the classical dictionary Erya and etymology [based on] the liushu, or Six Graphic Principles, which are, in their opinion, all that matters to our world. As for the philosophical works of Zhou [Dunyi] and the Chengs (Cheng Hao and Cheng Yi), or the literary writings of Han [Yu] and Ouyang [Xiu], they simply cast them aside with a sniff. Even the open-minded ones among them do no more than divide learning into three branches of philosophy, philology, and literary art, and take each on its own merit.85 In this passage, it may be noted, Zhang presented two current views of Confucian learning. The fi rst view was apparently too narrow to be embraced by Dai, but the second one was almost surely Dai’s. It not only fi t well with Dai’s “fountainhead” theory just quoted, but also echoes Zhang’s formulation as given in his letter to Zhang Runan 章汝楠 right after his first encounter with Dai in 1766.86 It may be recalled that although Dai’s philosophical career was well under way toward the end of this stage, his declaration of philosophical

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independence from the Cheng-Zhu school was not officially proclaimed until he “smashed the Supreme Ultimate Chart of the Song Confucianists” in his traumatic experience of 1769. Hence, throughout this stage, his criticism of Song Confucianism was mainly confined to the realm of classical philology. In this stage— unlike the fi rst one—he could no longer accept Cheng-Zhu philosophy as basically sound, but— unlike the fi nal stage— his own systematic philosophy was not yet fully established. It was probably because of this interregnum that philosophy became temporarily out of focus in his view of Confucian learning. In the last decade of his life, Dai concluded his long intellectual development with a fi nal, defi nitive view of Confucian learning. According to Duan Yucai, Dai had retracted the “fountainhead” theory and had told Duan, “Philosophy is the fountainhead of philology and literary art. How could there be a fountainhead of philosophy? What I said before is an overstatement.”87 In another context, Duan further quoted his master’s words as follows: “Only after one becomes thoroughly familiar with philosophy can he then engage in philology and literary art.”88 This last statement explains what Dai meant by “philosophy is the fountainhead of philology and literary art.” Clearly, he now returned to his early position by stressing the immediacy of philosophy to the Confucian Dao. He seems to say that to engage in philology and literary art without the “central vision” provided by philosophy can lead only to blindness. At any rate, he appears to have fully regained his confidence in philosophy. But why should he now deny philosophy its “fountainhead”? Duan Yucai explained that this is because the first “philosophy” as preserved in the Six Classics is the creation of the sages, and is itself the “fountainhead” of our political, social, and moral order.89 This explanation is in basic agreement with Dai’s own theory of ziran 自然 (natural) and biran 必然 (necessary), according to which sagehood consists primarily in creatively transforming the natural to the necessary, which is synonymous with li, or “principle.”90 It was, in the final analysis, Dai’s emphasis on the creativity of the human mind that eventually led to his realization of the absurdity of speaking of “fountainhead” in the case of philosophy. Dai’s final view of Confucian learning is further expressed in his “Yu mou shu” (Letter to Someone) written in 1777, which reads, in part: In the study of the classics, elucidation of the meaning of words comes first. The next step is to understand the grammar of the text. However, if one’s final goal is to search for the Confucian Dao, then he must purge himself completely of all his dependence. Although the etymology of the Han scholars was based on an orthodox line of transmission, at times it suffered from forced interpretations. The Jin exegetes had even more farfetched interpretations and groundless speculations. Those of the Song judged by introspection; thus, they often accepted many errors, renounc-

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ing precisely what was not wrong. . . . Scholars since the Song have wrenched their own ideas into identity with what the ancient sages and wise men intended to say, without really understanding their spoken and written language.91 Basically, the structure of Dai’s final view bears a remarkable resemblance to that of his early one. Nevertheless, it also shows marks of his struggles with both Song philosophy and Qing philology during the middle stage. The structure is again hierarchical, with philosophy as the lord and philology and literary art, in that order, as maids. But no longer would he be so compromising as to maintain that Han Confucianists were philologically correct but philosophically unsound, while Song Confucianists were just the opposite. On the contrary, he was now as much critical of the Han philologically as he was of the Song philosophically. Freedom from all dependence in the search for truth was thus both the starting point and the terminal point of Dai’s intellectual life. Quite symbolically, his was a life that began with a minor philological question at the age of ten,92 but that ended with a major philosophical answer five years past the age at which Confucius knew the Decree of Heaven.93

notes 1.

This modern interest in Dai’s collated text of the Shuijing zhu has been sustained by the famous controversy concerning whether or not Dai’s work was purloined from Zhao Yiching’s 趙一清 (1711–1764) Shuijing zhu shi 水經注釋 prior to its publication. Starting in 1943, Hu Shi spent almost two decades in a special investigation of this cause célèbre. He brought to light numerous pieces of evidence that convincingly demonstrate that all the major discoveries about this text had already been made by Dai before he could have had access to Zhao’s manuscripts. Moreover, contrary to the charge that Dai made false references to the Yongluo dadian 永樂大典 text to cover up his plagiarism, Hu Shi was able to show that on a number of occasions, Dai followed the Yongluo text even to a fault. Although the whole matter is too complicated to be dealt with adequately here, it is nevertheless clear that the case usually lined up against Dai is based only on some misinterpreted circumstantial evidence. It is also interest ing to note that modern scholars such as Meng Sen 孟森 and Wang Guowei 王國維, who charged Dai with plagiarism, were invariably unsympathetic toward Dai’s anti–Neo- Confucian philosophical point of view. It is only fair that any responsible scholar who still wishes to press the same charge against Dai must of necessity take full account of Hu Shih’s findings. See Hu Shih, “A Note on Ch’üan Tsu-wang, Chao I- ch’ing and Tai Chen: A Study of Independent Convergence in Research as Illustrated in Their Works on the Shui- ching chu,” in Eminent Chinese of the Ch’ing Period, ed. Arthur  W. Hummel (Washington,  D.C.: Library of Congress U.S. Govt. Printing Office, 1944), 2:970–982, and Hu Shi shougao 胡適手稿, series 1–6 (Taipei: Hu Shi jinian guan, 1966–1969).

80 2.

dai z he n’ s c hoice b e tw e e n ph ilosoph y and ph ilolo g y Qian Daxin, Zhuting jushi ziding nianpu 竹汀居士自訂年譜 (Hong Kong: Zhongwen, 1974 [reprint]), 12. Deceived in old age by his memory, Duan Yucai wrongly assigned Dai’s first visit to Beijing to 1755 in DNP, included in DWJ (Hong Kong: Zhonghua, 1974), 220. For details, see Yü Ying-shih, Lun Dai Zhen yu Zhang Xuecheng 論戴震與章學誠 (Hong Kong: Longmen, 1976), 152–153.

3.

DNP, 221.

4.

Ibid., 236–238.

5.

DWJ, 144.

6.

Qian Mu 錢穆, ZJSNXS (Shanghai: Shangwu, 1937), 1:332.

7.

See Qian Mu, “Ji chaoben Dai Dongyuan Mengzi sishu lu” 記鈔本戴東原孟子私淑錄, included in Yü, Dai yu Zhang, 283–289. For a different view of the textual evolution of Dai’s philosophical writings, see Yamanoi Yū 山井湧, Min Shin shisōshi no kenkyû 明清 思想史の研究 (Tokyo: Tokyo Daigaku, 1980), 412–431.

8.

From Zhang Xuecheng, ZYY; letter included in Yü, Dai yu Zhang, 309.

9.

Qian Mu, ZJSNXS, 1:324–328.

10.

Liu Pansui 劉盼遂, ed., Jingyun Lou wenji bubian 經韻樓文集補編 (Beijing: Laixun Ge,

11.

Zhang Xuecheng, WSTY (Beijing: Guji, 1956), 57.

12.

According to DNP, 223, Cheng Yaotian copied the Xuyan in 1776, and according to Peng

1936), hsia, 20a.

Shaosheng’s letter to Dai Zhen, in Erlin ju ji 二林居集 (Taipei: Shimen, [1881] 1976), chap. 3: 16b, Dai showed both the Yuanshan and Mengzi ziyi shuzheng (MZS) (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1961) to Peng in 1777. (See also DNP, 240.) From Dai’s reply, we know that Peng at first only asked to see Dai’s Yuanshan, probably without any knowledge of the MZS. Dai, however, sent him both manuscripts. See Dai’s letter to Peng included in MZS, 161. 13.

This letter is included in Yü, Dai yu Zhang, 291–293.

14.

DWJ, 168.

15.

I have followed James J. Y. Liu in rendering the liushu as “Six Graphic Principles.” See Liu’s The Art of Chinese Poetry (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962), 4.

16.

DWJ, 44.

17.

Ibid., 140.

18.

This is according to Huang Zongxi’s 黃宗羲 summary of Wan’s views. See Huang Lizhou wenji 黃黎洲文集 (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1959), 199.

19.

DNP, 226.

20. For example, see DWJ, 146; “Yu mou shu” 與某書, in MZS, 173. 21.

Duan Yucai, Jingyun Lou wenji 經韻樓文集, Jingyun Lou edition (Taipei: Dahua, 1977 [reprint]), 7:54a– b.

22. In Dai Zhongli’s 戴中立 (son of Dai Zhen) letter to Duan Yucai dated 1778, he remarked under the title Yuanshan, “a refutation of Song Confucianists” (in Dai Dongyuan shouzha zhenji 戴東原手札真蹟 [hereafter, Zhenji] [Taipei: Zhonghua, 1956; unpaginated edition]). I suspect that this remark indicates Dai Zhen’s self- evaluation of his Yuanshan. Zhongli probably only recorded what he heard from his father during the latter’s lifetime. 23. Qian, ZJSNXS, 1:339.

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24. Ibid., 1:328–329. 25. See Dai’s colophon “Ti Hui Dingyou xiansheng shoujing tu” 題惠定宇先生授經圖, in DWJ, 167–168. In this short piece of 1765, Dai said: “It has often been said that there is Han Confucian classical learning and there is Song Confucian classical learning; the former is philological in approach, the latter philosophical. I am greatly puzzled by this statement. Alas, if the so- called philosophical ideas [of the sages] can be obtained by sheer speculation apart from the classics, then anyone would be able to grasp them out of emptiness. If that is the case, what do we need classical learning for?” Clearly, this is a subtle way of saying that Song Confucianism is sheer speculation without textual basis in the classics. This passage contrasts sharply with the text of his 1755 letter to Fang Ju 方矩, in which he wrote: “The Dao of the sages is contained in the Six Classics. [In understanding the classics,] the Han Confucianists are philologically correct but philosophically unsound, whereas the Song Confucianists are philosophically sound but philologically incorrect” (DWJ, 144). 26. It may be pointed out that Dai’s attitude toward Jiang Yong 江永 also changed significantly around the time he decided to “smash the Supreme Ultimate Chart.” Although it is not clear whether he was a registered student of Jiang, Dai did treat Jiang as a “teacher” in his early years. During the last decade of his life, however, Dai respected Jiang only as an ordinary senior scholar. This psychological change on the part of Dai may be explained by the fact that he no longer shared Jiang’s faith in Cheng-Zhu Confucianism. For details, see Yü, Dai yu Zhang, 164–178. 27. In Dai, Zhenji. Also quoted in DNP, 241. 28. Qian, ZJSNXS, 1:330–331. 29. Yang Xianggui 楊向奎, Zhongguo gudai shehui yu gudai sixiang yanjiu 中國古代社會與古 代思想研究 (Shanghai: Renmin, 1964), 2:929. It must be pointed out that occasionally Dai also derived some delight from his philological discoveries, but not nearly as overwhelmingly as from his philosophical accomplishments. See, for instance, his letter to Lu Wenchao 盧文弨 in DWJ, 61, and DNP, 226. 30. In Yü, Dai yu Zhang, 292. 31.

On this point, see Jiao Xun’s 焦循 discussion in “Shen Dai” 申戴, Diaogu ji 雕菰集, GXJBCS, 1:95.

32. WSTY, 57. 33.

Zhang, Zhangshi yishu buyi 章氏遺書補遺, Liu shi Jiayetang 劉氏嘉業堂 edition, 1922, 29a.

34. See Tai Chen’s Inquiry Into Goodness: A Translation of the Yuanshan with an Introductory Essay, trans. Zhongying Cheng (Honolulu: East-West Center Press, 1971), 65; quoted with minor alterations. 35.

For instance, when Duan Yucai asked to see his Yuanshan in 1766, Dai wrote him saying that it was borrowed by a friend named Wang Ming 王明. (See Dai’s letter to Duan, dated 1766, in Dai, Zhenji.) This letter shows that the Yuanshan manuscript existed only in a single original copy.

36. Liang Qichao, “Dai Dongyuan zhushu zuanjiao shumu kao” 戴東原著述纂校書目考, in his Jindai Zhongguo xueshu luncong 近代中國學術論叢 (Hong Kong: Chongwen, 1973), 234.

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37.

See the last sentence of his “Gu jingjie gouchen xu” 古經解鈎沉序, in DWJ, 146.

38. This is Peng Shaosheng’s hao, or courtesy name. For this letter, see MZS, 161–170. 39. Jiang Fan 江藩, Hanxue shicheng ji 漢學師承記, in WYWK, 2:24. Citing this instance from memory, Liang Qichao mistook Zhu Gui 朱珪 for his brother Zhu Yun in Qingdai xueshu gailun 清代學術概論 (Taiwan: Zhonghua, 1970), 31. This error is also carried over in Emmanuel  C.  Y. Hsü’s translation, Liang Ch’i- ch’ao: Intellectual Trends in the Ch’ing Period (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1959), 62. 40. This is a reference to a passage in the Analects (5.12). The implication is that Confucius never engaged in “empty talk.” 41.

Hong Bang, “Shang Sihe Zhu Xiansheng shu” 上笥河朱先生書, Dai Zhen quanshu 戴震 全書 (Hebei: Huangshan shushe, 1994), 141.

42. See Li Ciming 李慈銘, Yueman Tang rizhi bu 越縵堂日記補 (Taipei: Wenhai, 1963), vol. 13, ren chi 壬集, 59a. For more details, see Weng Fanggang 翁方綱, Fuchu Zhai wenji 復 初齋文集 (Taipei: Wenhai, 1966), 1:323–324. 43. Hong Bang, “Shang Sihe Zhu Xiansheng shu,” 141. 44. There is a brief discussion of why Dai changed the title of his philosophical work from Xuyan to MZS in Hu Shi’s Dai Dongyuan de zhexue 戴東原的哲學 (Shanghai: Shangwu, 1927), 86–87. As is shown below, Hu Shi’s interpretation is based on a serious misunderstanding of Hong Bang’s letter. (See Yü, Dai yu Zhang, 100–102.) The Japanese scholar Aoki Kaizō 青木晦藏 suspected that Dai’s philological title may have been inspired by Itō Jinsai’s 伊藤仁齋 (1627–1705) Yu Meng ziyi 語孟字義 (Tôkyô: Iwanami Shoten, 1971). See Aoki Kaizō, “Itō Jinsai to Dai Tōgen” 伊藤仁齋と戴東原, Shibun 斯文 8, no. 1 (1926): 27–28. Thus far, however, there has been no evidence that Dai ever had access to Itô’s works. 45. Hu Shi, Dai Dongyuan, 86. 46. Yao Mingda 姚名達, Zhu Yun nianpu 朱筠年譜 (Shanghai: Shangwu, 1932), preface, 2–4. 47. Sun Xingyan, “Sihe xiansheng xingzhuang” 笥河先生行狀, Sihe wenji 笥河文集, Jifu congshu (Taipei: Yiwen, 1966 [reprint]), juanshou 卷首, 21b–22a. 48. Zhang Xuecheng, “Zhu xiansheng muzhiming” 朱先生墓誌銘, in Zhangshi yishu 章氏 遺書 (Shanghai: Shang-wu, 1936), 3:29. 49. Guo Bogong 郭伯恭, Siku quanshu zuanxiu kao 四庫全書纂修考 (Shanghai: Shangwu, 1937), 7–13. For an excellent account of Zhu Yun’s role in the Siku project, see R. Kent Guy, The Emperor’s Four Treasuries: Scholars and the State in the Late Ch’ien- lung Era (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University, Council on East Asian Studies, 1987), chap. 3. 50. On this point, consult Zhang Binglin 章炳麟, Jian lun 檢論, Zhangshi congshu (Taipei: Shijie shuju, 1982), 4:24b–25a. 51.

One only needs to read Jiang Fan’s Guochao Songxue yuanyuan ji 國朝宋學淵源記, Yueya Tang congshu (Taipei: Yiwen, 1965 [reprint]), to confirm this observation.

52. See Yuan Mei 袁枚, Suiyuan 隨園詩話 (Beijing: Renmin wenxue, 1960), 1:49. 53.

Hu Qian, “Guang xue pian” 廣學篇, quoted in Qian, ZJSNXS, 2:517.

54. MZS, 161. 55.

DNP, 240. It must be pointed out, however, that at the time Peng was debating with Dai, instead of taking the Buddhist point of view, he was defending the philosophical

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position of the orthodox Cheng-Zhu school. See Peng’s letter in his collected writings, Erlin ju ji, 3:16b–19a. 56. Yü, Dai yu Zhang, 109–110, and 130n70. 57.

See Yao Nai, “A Letter in Reply to Jiang Songru” 復蔣松如書, in Xibao xuan chuanji 惜抱 軒全集, SBBY, wenji 6: 101.

58. See Dai’s letter to Yao in DWJ, 142. 59. Li, Yueman Tang, vol. 10, geng ji mo 庚集末, 53a. 60. See Duan Yucai’s preface to Dai Dongyuan ji 戴東原集, SBCK, 1. 61. WSTY, 57. Since this sedan- chair analogy is confi rmed by Duan Yucai, we can be sure that Dai’s oral remarks preserved in Zhang Xuecheng’s writings are generally reliable. 62. As E. Harris Harbison speaks of John Colet, in The Christian Scholar in the Age of the Reformation (New York: Charles Scribner’s, 1956), 60: “The hardest effort in all scholarship is to rise from the grasp of the minute and disconnected to the grasp of the whole.” 63. Jiang, Hanxue shicheng ji, 1:49. 64. Paul Demiéville, “Chang Hsüeh- ch’eng and His Historiography,” in Historians of China and Japan, ed. W. G. Beasley and E. G. Pulleyblank (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1961), 170. 65. DNP, 248. Dai often expressed the view that the most difficult things to acquire in learning are erudition, insight, and precision. (See DWJ, 141, and his Jingkao 經考, Anhui congshu, n.d., 3:21a.) Obviously, he took erudition to be the least difficult to acquire of the three. 66. ZYY, cited in Yü, Dai yu Zhang, 309. 67. Chu Yixin, Wuxie Tang dawen 無邪堂答問, Guangya (Taipei: Shijie, 1963 [reprint]), 1:3b. 68. For Qian Daxin’s view of erudition as the most impor tant thing in learning, see his “Baojing Lou ji” 抱經樓記, in Qian yan T’ang wenji 潛研堂文集, SPTK, 21, 195–196. See also Qian Mu, “Qian Zhuting xueshu” 錢竹汀學述, Gugong wenxian jikan 故宮文獻季刊 2, no. 2 (March 1971): 1–11. 69. WSTY, 59. 70. See Wu Xiaolin 吳孝琳, Zhang Shizhai nianpu bucheng 章實齋年譜補正, in Zhang Shizhai xiansheng nianpu huibian 章實齋先生年譜彙編 (Hong Kong: Zhongwen, 1975), 263–264, and Yü, Dai yu Zhang, 105. 71.

WSTY, 57.

72. ZYY, cited in Yü, Dai yu Zhang, 309. 73. WSTY, 57; ZYY, cited in Yü, Dai yu Zhang, 307. 74. Yü, Dai yu Zhang, 155–157. 75. Hui Dong, Songyai biji 松崖筆記 (Taipei: Xuesheng, 1971), 37. 76. Li Ji 李集, Hezheng lu 鶴徵錄, Yangjia Laowu 漾葭老屋 edition, 1872, 3:12b. 77. Yu Jiaxi 余嘉錫, Siku tiyao bianzheng 四庫提要辨證 (Hong Kong: Zhonghua, 1974), vol. 1, xulu 序録, 54. 78. Arthur  W. Hummel, ed., Eminent Chinese of the Ch’ing Period (1644–1912) (Taipei: Chengwen, 1967 [reprint]), 1:123.

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79. Qian Mu, however, is inclined to think that Dai’s anti– Cheng-Zhu works, especially MZS, were intended to please Ji Yun; see Qian, ZJSNXS, 1:322. This seems too harsh a judgment of Dai. 80. ZYY in Yü, Dai yu Zhang, 310. 81.

Hu Shi, Dai Dongyuan, 24–26; Qian, ZJSNXS, 1:316–324; and Yang, Gudai Shehui yu sixiang, 2:923.

82. DWJ, 143. 83. DWJ, 143. 84. DNP, 246. 85. WSTY, 311. 86. See Zhangshi yishu, 3:314. 87. DNP, 246. 88. Duan Yucai’s preface to Dai Dongyuan ji, 1. For further discussions of this statement, see Yü, Dai yu Zhang, 114–117. 89. Duan, “Preface,” 1. 90. See MZS, 12–13 and  64. For English translations, see Wing-tsit Chan, SB, 716–717; Cheng, translation, Inquiry Into Goodness, 77. For further clarifications, see Ying-shih Yü, “Dai Zhen and the Zhu Xi Tradition,” in Essays in Commemoration of the Golden Jubilee of the Fung Ping Shan Library (1923–1982), ed. Chan Ping-leung, Lai Shu-tim, Yeung Kwok-hung, Wong Tak-wai, Lee Ngok, and Chiu Ling-yeung (Hong Kong: HKU Press, 1982), 377–392. 91. MZS, 173; English translation adapted from Hsü, Intellectual Trends, 56. 92. When Dai was studying the Daxue with a teacher at the age of ten, he asked the question, “How do we know that this is what Confucius said, as transmitted by Zengzi, and how do we know that the commentary represents the views of Zengzi as recorded by his disciples?” See DNP, 216; Liang, Hsü trans, Intellectual Trends, 55. 93. According Jiao Xun, shortly before his death, Dai was concerned only with his philosophy, not his philology. See Jiao’s Diaogu ji, 1:95. For a detailed analysis of this complicated problem, see Yü, Dai yu Zhang, 118–123.

4. Zhang Xuecheng Versus Dai Zhen

A Study in Intellectual Challenge and Response in Eighteenth- Century China

I

n the learned judgment of modern intellectual historians, Dai Zhen 戴震 (1724–1777) and Zhang Xuecheng 章學誠 (1738–1801) are the two towering scholars in eighteenth- century China.1 Perhaps nothing would strike the contemporaries of Dai and Zhang, including their common friends, such as Zhu Yun 朱筠 (1729–1781) and Shao Jinhan 邵晉涵 (1743–1796), as more absurd than this modern judgment. In their own times, Dai was widely acknowledged as the foremost leader of the new philological movement in Confucian classical studies, whereas Zhang, though well respected as a serious theorist of history and literature in a small coterie of learned friends, was practically unknown to the general intellectual world. With kaozheng 考證 (“philology,” or evidential research) firmly established as the sole criterion of Confucian scholarship in the eighteenth century, the academic standing of Zhang was nowhere near that of Dai. Even as late as the last decade of the nineteenth century when Zhang’s work was gradually gaining recognition, he was still rated far below Dai as a scholar. For example, the young Zhejiang scholar Sun Baoxuan 孫寶瑄 (1874– 1924), in his diary of 1894, expressed only a limited appreciation of Zhang’s original ideas and criticized his magnum opus Wenshi tongyi 文史通義 (General principles of literature and history) as a whole as narrow in conception and interpretation. By contrast, he showed unbounded admiration for Dai when he devoted a whole week in 1898 to a close reading of Dai’s collected essays.2

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With the turn of the century, however, a new criterion of scholarly excellence gradually emerged. It was the scholar’s ability to rise above philology to search for the hidden meanings in a classical text that was prized above all other qualities. Here we detect a subtle shift in emphasis in late Qing intellectual history from kaozheng to yili 義理 or, in David S. Nivison’s neat translation, from “philology” to “philosophy.” As a result, since the beginning of the twentieth century, Dai’s philosophy has become the focus of intellectual attention while his philology has been praised rather than studied.3 It is also the rise of this modern criterion that has elevated Zhang to the niche in the mid- Qing world of Confucian learning that he truly deserves. In this study, I propose to examine the intellectual relationship between Dai and Zhang that, hopefully, may also throw some light on the inner complexities as well as tensions in the academic community of eighteenth- century China. It has been well established since Hu Shi 胡適 (1891–1962) that Dai exerted a considerable influence on Zhang’s early view of Confucian scholarship. It is also common knowledge now, as Nivison has rightly pointed out, that “Zhang both admired and denounced Dai.”4 As a matter of fact, Zhang referred to Dai explicitly as well as implicitly in many dozens of his essays and letters, the last one being the essay “Zhedong xueshu” 浙東學術 (Intellectual tradition of Eastern Zhejiang) written in 1800. Moreover, he not only denounced Dai vehemently but also defended him with equal intensity and vigor. Such strong feelings on Zhang’s part suggest that Dai’s influence on him must have been much more profound and enduring than has been heretofore recognized by scholars. This underrecognition has arisen, however, not so much from misreading and misunderstanding on the part of his modern interpreters as from the fact that some of Zhang’s writings, discovered relatively late in the 1940s and 1950s, have not been sufficiently studied. It is these new materials, now conveniently collected together in the 1985 Beijing, Wenwu edition of the Zhang Xuecheng yishu 章學 誠遺書 (Remaining writings of Zhang Xuecheng) that compel us to reexamine Zhang’s intellectual development in the light of his lifetime struggles with Dai’s philology as well as philosophy.

THE FIRST ENCOUNTER To begin with, we must first clarify the obscurities around Zhang’s first meeting with Dai. Nivison tells the story as follows: “One older scholar to whom Zhu [Yun] may have introduced his pupil (i.e., Zhang) was Dai Zhen, a leading philologist and a man who, unlike most advocates of ‘solid learning,’ was seriously interested in philosophy. It is likely that Zhang first met Dai Zhen in 1766 when Dai was in the capital to lecture and to attempt the jinshi 進士 examination.”5 This is a close and learned guess summing up all the modern findings on the event of singular importance in Zhang’s intellectual life. Fortunately,

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among the above-mentioned new materials, we find a letter in which Zhang gives his own account of his first meeting with Dai. In “A Letter in Reply to Shao Jinhan” (Da Shao Eryun shu), he recalled: Sometime between spring and summer of 1766, at the suggestion of Zheng Chengzhai 鄭誠齋 (i.e., Zheng Huwen 虎文, 1714–1784), the Hanlin Compiler, I went to see Mr. Dai at the hostelry of Xiuning 休寧. I asked him about his learning and Dai outlined it for me in a general way. A suspicion was immediately aroused in my mind that what Compiler Zheng had told me about Dai might be an understatement. I was then staying with our teacher Zhu [Yun] and had the good fortune of making acquaintances with all the accomplished scholars of the time, which, needless to say, had greatly widened my intellectual horizon. However, it was only in Mr. Dai that I found someone who could almost be said to have grasped the essentials of ancient sages and penetrated far into the realm of universal truth. At that time, it may be remembered, both Mr.  Zhu [Yun] of Daxing and Mr. Qian [Daxin] 錢大昕 of Jiading were the two towering figures of highest academic reputation among scholar- officials in the capital. They both admired Dai but only to the extent of Dai’s penetrating and refined studies in textual criticism, philology, etymology, and mathematics. When it came to Dai’s [philosophical] treatises, such as Yuanshan 原善 [Inquiry Into Goodness], they regretted to see [Dai] applying his good self to a field of futility. At that time, I argued forcefully in front of Master Zhu, contending that [Dai’s philosophical] theories were indeed the most rewarding part of his textual investigations. Unfortunately, my position was humble and my words carried little weight. None of the esteemed scholars was listening to me. During that period, you yourself were also in the company of Jiading 嘉定 (Qian) and Daxing 大興 (Zhu). But I didn’t hear you take my side by saying a word to convince both [Qian and Zhu] that [Dai] was actually the number one scholar of the Qianlong Period.6 This letter reveals a number of impor tant facts about the first encounter. First, it confirms not only the modern conjecture about the year of the meeting as 1766 but also gives the more precise time as between spring and summer. Second, contrary to the earlier speculation, it was Zheng Huwen, not Zhu Yun, who introduced Zhang to Dai. Zheng had known Dai at a much earlier date when he was the director of Ziyang 紫陽 Academy in Xin-an 新安, Dai’s native city.7 Third, modern scholars are in general agreement that in the first encounter, Zhang was utterly shattered by the powerful logic of Dai’s philological point of view. Now, in light of this letter, we know that Zhang was also deeply impressed by Dai’s philosophical project. This is a very impor tant point to which I shall return later. Fourth, in his “Postscript to Zhu 朱 and Lu 陸” (Shu Zhu Lu

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pian hou), Zhang deplored that while scholars of the day admired Dai’s philological accomplishments, they nevertheless failed to grasp the central significance of Dai’s contribution to Confucian philosophy. However, he stopped short of identifying these “scholars of the day.” From this letter it is clear that when he made this statement, he had specifically in mind his teacher Zhu Yun and the eminent scholar Qian Daxin, both of whom he highly respected. Thus, the letter provides us with a most impor tant clue to Dai’s inner tension arising from his choice between philosophy and philology.8 Shortly after his first meeting with Dai in 1766, Zhang reported part of their conversation to Zhang Runan 章汝楠 as follows: Formerly in reading books I set out to get the general meaning, and being young and enthusiastic, I applied myself merely to wide reading in all branches of literature, without having any end in view. I was fond of advancing theories that were lofty rather than acute, and attacked textual scholarship, soaring about in emptiness. I was always pleasantly satisfied, supposing that I understood things. But I was astonished when I heard Dai Dongyuan 戴東原 of Xiuning shake his fist and shout, “Present- day scholars, no matter what they deal with, are primarily guilty of never having learned to read correctly!” Startled, I asked him what he meant; he said, “If I were unable to comprehend the ideas of ‘before heaven’ and ‘after heaven’ or the subtle wealth of meaning in the books from the He and the Luo, I would not pretend to have read the Classic of Changes; if I were unable to understand the courses of the stars, the variations in the heavens from year to year, the constellations, and the patterns of earth, I would not pretend to have read the astronomy sections of the History.” . . . We were indeed perfect examples of what he was saying, for we actually never opened a volume of a single Classic of the Four Books. How shameful! How shameful!9 Based on this letter alone, it is only natural to assume, as scholars actually did in the past, that the conversation between Zhang and Dai in their first meeting was confined to philology. However, the above-quoted letter to Shao Jinhan shows beyond doubt that their conversation must have also turned to Confucian philosophy. I can give two reasons to support this point: First, in preparing Zhang for the first meeting, Zheng Huwen must have, like everybody else, praised Dai’s philology in the highest possible terms. Then why did Zhang fi nd Zheng’s description an “understatement”? This can only mean that during the conversation Zhang discovered, much to his surprise and delight, that Dai was not only a classical philologist but also a Confucian philosopher. Second, after the meeting, Zhang began to defend Dai’s philosophical work, especially Inquiry Into Goodness, against the attacks of Zhu Yun and Qian Daxin. This strongly suggests that Inquiry Into Goodness must have been mentioned and perhaps

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even discussed in their conversation. It happened that in early 1766, Dai had just completed the revised and expanded version of his Inquiry Into Goodness. He was so excited about this new accomplishment in Confucian philosophy that it was the first thing he told his disciple Duan Yucai 段玉裁 (1735–1815) when the latter arrived in Beijing.10 It seems almost certain that when Dai outlined his own scholarly work to Zhang, he would have mentioned Inquiry Into Goodness. At this juncture, a further question must be asked, namely, why did Zhang go to the trouble of honoring Dai with a formal visit. Given our knowledge of Zhang’s introverted personality, sometimes even bordering on eccentricity, it was indeed a matter of unusual seriousness for him to initiate such a well-prepared visit to a perfect stranger. It is unlikely that he was primarily motivated by simple curiosity, let alone vanity, to meet and interview a famous scholar. I am inclined to think that at this point, Zhang was experiencing some kind of selfdoubt with regard to his pursuit of learning. Nivison has neatly summarized a general distinction Zhang made between two types of scholars as follows: “Intellectual tempers differ. There are, in the broadest terms, those who tend to grasp intuitively the significance of things, to see things in large wholes, and there are others who are naturally interested in detailed matters of fact.”11 This is almost exactly a Chinese version of Isaiah Berlin’s distinction between the hedgehog and the fox.12 According to his self-analysis, Zhang was a person of the first type or, in Berlin’s term, a hedgehog. From childhood, he had developed a keen interest in grasping the general significance of things, as well as a distaste for textual details. Reminiscing with his sons in 1791, he stated: When I studied the writers of old, I had more insight than patience. Therefore, I often neglected minute philological and textual matters. However, my intuitive understanding guided me at times to see things often overlooked by previous scholars.13 But this hedgehog’s point of view was seriously challenged when he came to seek instruction from Zhu Yun in Beijing in 1765. As he reported in his 1766 letter to Zhang Runan: Recently, I have come to study under Mr. Zhu. He also says that he disapproves very much of those shallow but bright young scholars who, lacking sufficient knowledge, like to indulge in empty talk of philosophy. Therefore, when he gives instruction to his students, he wants them to begin with investigating hard facts, only after which are they allowed to develop general views of their own.14 Beijing in the mid- eighteenth century was the center of what may be called the movement of philologism, and philologists were, by definition, foxes due to

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either intellectual temper or pressures generated by the movement. By “philologism,” I refer to a widely held belief among radical advocates of philology in Zhang’s time that a philological approach alone can lead to the discovery of the Dao long buried in the pre- Confucian as well as Confucian texts. After Zhang joined the academic circle of Zhu Yun in 1765, he was directly exposed to the dominant influence of philologism. Surrounded by philological foxes, he was probably somewhat less sure than before about going his own way as a hedgehog. I would venture to suggest that it was most likely this self- doubt that prompted him to pay Dai a formal visit. Having thus reconstructed the states of mind of both Dai and Zhang on the eve of their first meeting, it should occasion no surprise if the range of their conversation included both philology and philosophy. There remains, though, one more question about their first meeting: what did the meeting mean to Zhang? I am inclined to believe that it had a double meaning for Zhang in a critical moment in his intellectual life. It gave him a challenge as well as a reassurance. The challenge, as has been well established, was a philological one, whereas the reassurance was philosophical in nature. The two are interconnected, however. It probably did not take long for Zhang to discover that Dai never meant to pursue philology for its own sake. On the contrary, Dai had been all along typical of a hedgehog, seeking to “know one big thing”—the Confucian Dao— and placed philology squarely in the ser vice of philosophy. To put it in a different way, Dai, like Zhang, was a person who also sought to grasp the significance of things and, above all, relate every thing to a single central vision. To Zhang, who was now in his late twenties but still in quest of intellectual self-definition, this discovery must have been a great revelation. Dai alone was able to make him see the inner connectedness between philology and philosophy. In the age of Confucian intellectualism, a true philosophical vision worthy of pursuit could only be built on solid philological grounds. Perhaps this explains why Zhang was, at least for a while, thoroughly convinced of the importance of philology. But he was also reassured by the encouraging example of Dai that he had been steering his course of study in the right direction after all. His immediate task, however, was how to meet the philological challenge to which we now turn.

THE SEARCH FOR AN INTELLECTUAL BASE To understand the nature of the “philological challenge” Zhang Xuecheng faced, we need to know something about the general intellectual mode of the Qing Period as distinguished from the preceding age. As keenly observed by the Confucian thinker Gong Zizhen 龔自珍 (1792–1841): The Confucian Dao 道 consists of two main strands, namely, “honoring the moral nature” (zun dexing 尊德性) and “following the path of inquiry

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and study” (dao wenxue 道問學). In the beginning, these two strands do not contradict but lend support to each other; they are expected to end in unity. In the past, however, only a few in a generation or even one in several generations may be regarded as having successfully combined the two strands in such a way. The majority merely followed whichever trend happened to dominate their own times. Since the beginning of our dynasty, the scope of Confucian studies has been greatly broadened. Nevertheless, ours is an age dominated by dao wenxue.15 For want of a better English term, I choose to call dao wenxue “Confucian intellectualism.” I have interpreted Chinese intellectual history during the MingQing transition in terms of the rise of Confucian intellectualism primarily because, as Gong Zizhen and other Qing scholars clearly recognized, the transition was from zun dexing to dao wenxue.16 Under the dominant mode of “honoring the moral nature” (zun dexing), Confucians of both the Cheng-Zhu 程朱 and the Lu-Wang 陸王 schools tried to enunciate the moral principles of the ancient sages mainly through metaphysical speculation. Philological explication of classic texts was considered at best peripheral and at worst obstructive to the pursuit of the Dao. However, metaphysical disputes between the ChengZhu and Lu-Wang schools eventually led both sides to textual studies in the sixteenth century. Wang Yangming 王陽明 (1472–1529)’s effort to restore the socalled “old text of the Daxue [Great Learning]” initiated a series of philological exercises on this classical text in the seventeenth century. On the Cheng-Zhu side, Luo Qinshun 羅欽順 (1465–1547) also advocated a “return to the sources” as the way to settle philosophical disputes. Defending the Cheng-Zhu theory of “the nature is principle” against Lu Xiangshan’s 陸象山 “the mind is principle,” for example, Luo quoted several passages from the Yijing (Classic of Changes) and the Mencius to make his point. He concluded his argument by saying: “Thus if one carries on his studies without seeking evidence in the classics and is utterly arbitrary and opinionated, it is inevitable that he will be misled.”17 It was this deeply felt need on the part of some late Ming Confucians to “seek evidence in the classics” in support of their philosophical views that step by step pushed Confucianism from within to a new direction. In the middle of the seventeenth century, it resulted in a fundamental shift in the frame of mind from “honoring the moral nature” (zun dexing) to “following the path of inquiry and study” (dao wenxue). Gu Yanwu 顧炎武 (1613–1682), as has been generally held since the eighteenth century, was more responsible than anyone else for the establishment of this new paradigm in Confucian classical learning. His best-known statement, “the proper study of principles is the study of the classics” ( jingxue ji lixue 經學即理學), was one of the fundamental assumptions of Confucianism throughout the entire Qing Period. Once the focus shifted to classical texts, philology, including especially etymology, phonology, paleography, and textual criticism, began to assume a role of central importance in

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Confucian learning. Almost without exception, Qing classicists believed that philology alone could provide us with the key to the world of ideas and institutions supposedly created by the ancient sages. As Dai Zhen forcefully argued: It is precisely because free speculation cannot lead one to the philosophical ideas of the sages of antiquity that one has to seek them from the ancient classics. Since messages contained in the surviving records have gradually fallen into oblivion due to the expanse of time between the past and the present, one therefore has to seek them through philological studies [of the classics]. Thus, only if philology is clear can the ancient classics be understood, and only if the classics are understood, can the philosophical ideas of the sages then be grasped.18 Since Zhang Xuecheng also shared the intellectualistic assumptions of Qing Confucianism, his initial response to Dai’s philological challenge was not rejection but shock and shame, as clearly shown in his 1766 letter to Zhang Runan quoted above. However, seven years later, in 1773, when Zhang met Dai again, he not only appeared to be completely recovered from his initial shock but also, as Nivison rightly observes, began to “crystallize his own distinctive point of view toward history and letters.”19 In that year, the two scholars ran into each other twice, first in Ningbo and then in Hangzhou. A brief review of the two encounters will throw considerable light on the extent to which Zhang had reached his self- definition in Confucian learning with regained confidence since he first met Dai in 1766. According to Zhang, he had a heated debate with Dai in Ningbo 寧波 on the subject of local historiography. As Dai saw it, the main concern of local history was to give a detailed, accurate account of the geographical, especially territorial, changes of the locality as an administrative unit (i.e., county, prefecture, or province). His emphasis on historical geography led him to such an extreme view that in two of his recently completed local histories, he denied biographical status to Buddhist monks and instead treated them as mere appendages to monasteries or temples. On his own part, however, Zhang took it to be the true function of local history to preserve what he called “the unpublished documents and the memories of the living elders” (wenxian 文獻) of a locality that are of contemporary relevance and practical usefulness. Citing Sima Qian’s Shiji 史記 (Records of the Grand Historian) as authority, he argued that it is in the nature of history to give greater attention to the recent than to the remote past. Historical geography, in Zhang’s view, is impor tant only for the study of the antiquity of a locality. It was on these grounds that Zhang came to the conclusion that Dai, with all his erudition and profundity in classical learning, did not understand history at all.20 Thus, the dispute on local history reveals unmistakably the differences between Dai as a philologically oriented classicist and Zhang as a present-minded

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historian. In the case of Dai, it can be readily seen that he was applying the same kind of philological techniques in his study of the classic of historical geography— the Shuijing zhu 水經注 (Commentary on the Classic of Waterways)—to the compilations of local histories.21 It is also impor tant to note that by saying that Dai, a great classicist, did not understand history, Zhang was not only advocating the autonomy of history but also elevating history to a status comparable to that of classical scholarship. I shall return to this point later. In Hangzhou, Zhang overheard Dai’s severe criticism of Zheng Qiao 鄭樵 (1104–1160)’s Tongzhi 通志 (General History). From a strictly philological point of view, Dai found General History full of errors, especially in the section on astronomy. Zhang disagreed profoundly, but he kept silent at the time. Later he wrote a series of essays in defense of Zheng Qiao. In his view, General History as a historical synthesis is a truly outstanding work in terms of its “broad conception” (honggang 弘綱) as well as its grasp of the “meanings” (yi 義) of the history of Chinese learning. To denounce this monumental work philologically was wholly to miss its main purpose.22 Here we encounter the problem of what is known in the West as the hermeneutic circle. As methodological individualists, Dai and other Qing philologists seem to have held that, in the process of understanding and interpretation, one must understand the parts before one can begin to grasp the whole. On the other hand, as a methodological holist, Zhang tended to place his emphasis on comprehension of the whole as a precondition for understanding the parts. This turned out to be one of Zhang’s fundamental disagreements with Dai, which he developed further in later writings.23 Thus, the two meetings in 1773 show unmistakably that Zhang’s intellectual struggle with Dai’s radical philology finally came to fruition. Unlike during the first conversation, Zhang was no longer a passive listener. On the contrary, he was able to refute Dai’s views point by point from his own intellectual base—history. Let us turn to see how he established and developed this intellectual base of his own. Zhang was a holistically oriented theorist in the age of Confucian intellectualism. Like classicists of the day, he was equally committed to the intellectualist ideal of scholarship as a Confucian calling. However, he was, by intellectual temper, disposed to history rather than classics. By his own admission, he showed a natural aptitude for history since childhood, but had little talent for classical philology.24 His first long discussion with Dai in 1766 helped shape his academic career in two impor tant ways. First, he became keenly aware that one could not possibly make one’s mark in whatever specialization in Confucian learning without first meeting the basic intellectualist requirement of grounding it in empirical, especially textual, scholarship. In Zhang’s case, needless to say, it was historical scholarship. Second, greatly encouraged by Dai’s example of making philology subservient to philosophy, he began to develop his theories of history and literature by working extensively in a great variety of texts. The results were the two projected books, Wenshi tongyi (General principles of literature

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and history) and Jiaochou tongyi 校讎通義 (General meaning of bibliography), whose origins can both be traced to 1772.25 Here a word about the relationship between these two works is in order. As Nivison rightly points out, the term wenshi has both a literal meaning (literary art and historical writing) as well as a specific meaning (literary and historical criticism) as traditionally used by bibliographers. On the other hand, for Zhang, jiaochou “was a free-ranging historical study of books and traditions of writing and learning to which they belong, a study that was to be somehow at the same time both explanatory and critical.”26 Moreover, Nivison also describes the General Meaning of Bibliography as follows: It is a theoretical work, ostensibly on the uncompromising subject of bibliography; in other words, it is a book about books—how to analyze and catalog them, after comparing texts to determine questions of authenticity, authorship, and completeness. Certainly it is this, but it is also in tight and systematic form a presentation of Zhang’s most fundamental theses on the philosophy of history and the criticism of literature and scholarship. It is a basic statement of his philosophical position as far as it had developed at this time.27 This is certainly an accurate description of the book. Here, however, an interesting puzzle emerges: thus described, where are we to draw the line between Zhang’s jiaochou and wenshi? In the process of considering this puzzle, I have stumbled on a startling discovery. Since the whole matter is too complicated to be adequately treated here, I can only give a brief report of my findings. It has been a generally accepted view that Zhang began writing his General Principles of Literature and History in 1772. As this view is firmly established from Zhang’s letters to friends written in 1772 and 1773, there seems no reason to question it. Let me begin by citing some of these letters. He first mentioned General Principles of Lit erature and History in his 1772 letter to Zhu Fenyuan 朱棻元 (1727–1782) in which he reported: Since leaving the capital (i.e., in 1771), I have busied myself much with writing: I have worked over the entire field of letters and have written a Wenshi tongyi; and although the work is not complete, I have shown the general drift in three essays from the first part (i.e., neipian 內篇) of it, which I copied into a letter to Qian Daxin.28 Then in his 1773 letter to Yan Dongyou 嚴冬友, he said: I thought I would cull out the essence of my reflections and make up a study of bibliography ( jiaochou); so I studied the writings of Ban Gu 班固, Liu Xiang 劉向, and Liu Xin 劉歆 reasoning back from them to Zhou 周

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institutions, and I examined the Wenxin diaolong 文心雕龍 and the Shi tong 史通; I have analyzed and distinguished between assertions and facts, and have classified and evaluated divergent traditions, and have written a Wenshi tongyi.29 Obviously, these two letters talk about the same thing, only with more details in the second one. If we trust his own words, then what he referred to as the Wenshi tongyi at this early date bears little resemblance to what we now have under the same title. Rather, it fits perfectly the description of the General Meaning of Bibliography, or, as Nivison says, “it is a book about books.” Hence, a reasonable explanation would be that what Zhang had written up to this time under the title of General Principles of Literature and History was later to become part of his General Meaning of Bibliography, a title that he did not actually have until, perhaps, 1779. This observation is further confirmed in his preface to Hezhou zhi yu 和州志隅 (A synopsis of the history of Hezhou), written in 1774, in which he said: “I have shown my [Wenshi] Tongyi to others, and they still have hesitated to read it with confidence, presumably thinking it is mere theory (kongyan 空言, “empty words”) without any demonstration in reality. My Synopsis in twenty sections will have a hint as to how it may be applied, and by inference, one may see that the Wenshi tongyi is not vague and impractical theory.”30 In this par ticular case, it is quite obvious that his reference to General Principles of Literature and History would not make sense at all if it were to be identified with the work of the same title as it exists today. What theories or principles can we possibly find in the present General Principles of Literature and History that may be “applied” to the bibliographical section in the History of Hezhou? Clearly, Zhang’s statement makes sense only if we substitute the General Meaning of Bibliography for the General Principles of Literature and History. As a matter of fact, the General Meaning of Bibliography, in structure as well as in substance, resembles the bibliographical treatise (“Yiwen zhi” 藝文志) of the Hezhou zhi so much that Nivison even suggests that it was a development of the latter.31 As far as I can judge, what really happened may be surmised to have been as follows. In 1772, he had already developed some central ideas about what he called wenshi jiaochou in a number of essays. These essays, as the above- quoted letter of 1773 to Yan Dongyu clearly indicates, turned out to be about the theory of bibliography ( jiaochou) rather than that of literary and historical writing (wenshi). In other words, they were the first drafts of essays that later went to form the first part (neipian) of the General Meaning of Bibliography. However, since at this time the title of the General Meaning of Bibliography was nonexistent, he therefore referred to “the three essays” he had shown friends (including Qian Daxin) as “from the first part of the General Principles of Literature and History.” This confusion has been further aggravated by the fact that both the General Principles of Literature and History and the General Meaning of Bibliography are divided into “first part” (neipian, “Inner Chapters”) and “second part”

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(waipian 外篇, “Outer Chapters”), which makes the detection doubly difficult. For decades, scholars have tried to identify the “three essays” in the present General Principles of Literature and History without getting anywhere. Now at least we are more or less sure that they must be among the eighteen essays in the first part of the General Meaning of Bibliography, especially those in chapter 1 dealing with general principles. Nivison makes a sensitive comment on this problem. He says: In these letters Zhang mentions for the first time the name of the volume of essays which is now his best-known piece of writing. But we can only guess what this early Wenshi tongyi must have been. Most of the work now in existence was written later. Moreover, there is an indication that Zhang at one time intended to use this title as a collective title for all his writings, or at least for all that he proposed to save.32 Two points in this comment particularly deserve attention. First, it has been well established that practically all the impor tant theoretical essays in the present General Principles of Literature and History were written much later, between 1783 and 1792.33 So the early General Principles of Literature and History is more likely to have been the predecessor of the present General Meaning of Bibliography. Second, it is also well grounded to say that Zhang had originally intended to use General Principles of Literature and History “as a collective title for all his writings.” As Nivison further explains, “Zhang may, however, have modified this intention after changing the title of his Jiaochou lüe 校讎略 to Jiaochou tongyi (which could not very logically be included in another tongyi).”34 This certainly makes sense, but there is also another possibility. By the time he wrote the General Meaning of Bibliography in 1779, new ideas may well have grown in his mind to the extent that he decided to reserve the General Principles of Literature and History as the title for a more ambitious project. Moreover, we can easily see the vast differences between the early General Principles of Literature and History and the later one from his entirely different attitudes toward them. From 1772 to 1774, he was very anxious to show his essays of the early General Principles of Literature and History to his friends in hopes of being appreciated. However, in the case of the later one, he made a special point to keep his most original ideas concealed from the reading public during his lifetime. As his letter to Wang Huizu 汪輝祖 of 1796 makes abundantly clear, he was afraid that these ideas “might startle the world, horrify common folks, and be severely criticized by people.”35 It seems safe to conclude that the essays for the General Principles of Literature and History he referred to between 1772 and 1774 were the fi rst drafts of what became the General Meaning of Bibliography. The discovery of the simple fact that the early General Principles of Literature and History was in reality the first version of the General Meaning of Bibliography throws a good deal of new light on the development of Zhang’s thought in response to Dai’s philological challenge. In the fi rst place, contrary to the previ-

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ous speculation, in the early 1770s, Zhang did not write on topics of a highly philosophical nature like those in the present General Principles of Literature and History. His essays during this period were largely distillations of bibliographical studies ( jiaochou), close to the textual base he had specifically chosen to develop. This shows that he had indeed taken Dai’s words of 1766 to heart— one must not theorize without the support of some work of substance. In the second place, in his letter to Qian Daxin, originally written in 1772 but probably revised in 1798,36 Zhang described what he was doing as wenshi jiaochou 文史校讎. What did he refer to by this term? Now we know that in 1772 he could not have possibly referred to the two famous books later published under the names of jiaochou and wenshi, respectively. At this juncture, we must return to the question raised earlier: Where to draw the line between the wenshi and the jiaochou? His grouping of the two parts together indicates that he had conceived of the two parts as inseparable from each other. As his work progressed, however, he gradually came to the realization that there were problems unique to the methodology of jiaochou that needed to be treated separately—hence, the Jiaochou tongyi of 1779. From beginning to end, Zhang promoted jiaochou as a legitimate field of study in Confucian learning, the function of which was not indiscriminate collection and cataloging of texts but clarification of the different traditions of thought and scholarship through systematic classification of texts.37 Impor tant as it was, Zhang nevertheless did not regard jiaochou as an end in itself. Rather, it was to serve the higher purpose of his literary and historical studies (wenshi) that reveal the truth about Dao. Thus, it may not be too far-fetched to suggest that his deliberate choice of the expression wenshi jiaochou was intended to challenge the hegemony of Dai’s classical scholarship built on philology ( jingxue xungu 經學訓詁). However, from 1772 to 1783, he devoted himself wholly to building his own intellectual base through studies in historical bibliography ( jiaochou). A newly discovered manuscript confirms my observation here. In a letter to Qian Dian 錢坫 (courtesy name Xianzhi 獻之, 1744– 1806), a relative of Qian Daxin, dated 1778, Zhang began by praising Qian’s profound knowledge of classical philology (xungu wenzi 訓詁文字). Then he went on to reflect on his own work as a contrast: As for myself, I can only understand the general meanings [of the classics] but I am unable to engage in philological studies. Following my own inclination, I would much prefer to discuss the historical work of Ban [Gu], Liu [Xiang] and Liu [Xin]. I set for myself the central task of delineating the origins as well as the traditions of all the writings. However, I am not sure if I have really grasped the ideas of the ancients.38 This new evidence helps establish two impor tant facts about his early thinking. First, as late as 1778 he still characterized himself primarily as a historical bibliographer. There is no hint whatsoever of his discovery of the philosophical ideas concerning history and literary writing that are found in the present

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General Principles of Literature and History. Second, the contrast between Qian’s “philology” and his own “bibliography” reveals that he was consciously developing his intellectual base in jiaochou as a counterchallenge to xungu of the classicists of his day, including, especially, Dai Zhen. As a matter of fact, later in this letter, he specifically mentioned Dai’s excellence in “philology” (xungu) while at the same time criticizing his excessive competitiveness to the extent of “pretending to know what he did not really understand.”39 In making this criticism, he must have had in mind his remark of 1773 that “Dai the classicist did not understand history.” There can be little doubt that the methodological tool of Zhang’s bibliographic studies was as central to his critical understanding of literature and history as Dai’s tool of philological researches was to his interpretations of the Confucian classics. In the third place, we can now distinguish two stages in Zhang’s intellectual development since his first meeting with Dai in 1766. The first stage stretched approximately from 1771, when he began writing a projected book, to 1783, when he produced his first essays of what became the General Principles of Literature and History. During this period, he was more emphatically concerned with establishing and solidifying his intellectual base by way of jiaochou than developing his philosophical views on history and writing. His General Meaning of Bibliography of 1779 may be taken as the representative product of this stage. The second stage covered the period from 1783 to his death in 1801. During these two decades, his main effort was to work out in a systematic fashion the central ideas of his General Principles of Literature and History, which, unfortunately, remained more or less incomplete. The most productive years in this stage turned out to be 1788 to 1790, when a breakthrough took place in his theoretical thinking. Previously, due to the confusion arising out of the title of General Principles of Literature and History, we generally assumed that he had been working on wenshi and jiaochou simultaneously since 1771. Now, with this confusion removed, we can discern more clearly than ever before a sensible pattern in his intellectual growth from the textual base to the theoretical superstructure. Here Dai’s influence is unmistakable. As Zhang emphatically pointed out, Dai’s lifetime work in philology (xungu) was but a preparation for the reconstruction of Confucian philosophy.40 Needless to say, the two stages of Zhang’s intellectual development must be understood in relative terms. His emphasis in the first stage was placed on jiaochou and in the second stage on wenshi, but in neither case was it a matter of total exclusion of the other. However, true to the intellectualist spirit of his age, in both stages he demonstrated a remarkable consistency in testing the validity of his ideas by applying them to empirical research projects. It often resulted in a symbiotic growth of theory and practice in Zhang’s work. We have already seen how closely his General Meaning of Bibliography and Hezhou zhi were related to each other. Now let us briefly examine how his other major project, the Shiji kao 史籍考 (Critique of historical writings), helped the writing of his Gen-

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eral Principles of Literature and History. He first proposed this ambitious project to Bi Yuan 畢沅 (1730–1793), governor of Henan, in 1787, and then from 1788 on, he worked on it, with interruptions, until the end of his life.41 As Nivison rightly observes, “The enormous labor required by such a work was not expended for nothing, for it must have been a major stimulus to Zhang’s thinking during the years when he was writing the most interesting of those essays expressing his historiographical theories.” 42 I wish to cite Zhang himself to substantiate this observation. In 1788, he wrote two letters to Sun Xingyan 孫星衍 (1753–1818) that bear importantly on our discussion here. The first letter, written in midspring, says: Recently, I have been working on the Critique of Historical Writings project together with Hong [Liangji 洪亮吉, 1746–1809] and Ling [Tingkan 凌 廷堪, 1747–1809] on behalf of His Excellency [Bi Yuan]. Having read a great variety of books, I have made some progress [in my own learning]. Probably I would be able also to take this opportunity to complete the writing of my General Principles of Literature and History.43 The second letter, written a few months later, further states: After I complete this project for His Excellency [Bi Yuan], I would like to use all the findings made in the course of it to establish my own theories. However, I would do this only for my own enjoyment. I would not dare to publish them at the moment. But nor would I dare to conceal them from a few friends who really understand me.44 The letters speak for themselves. However, it must be noted that it was in the second letter that Zhang first articulated what proved to be the most celebrated of his theories, “the Six Classics are all history.” His attempt at a new classification of historiographical bibliography led to the discovery of this idea that, in turn, also served as a guiding principle in his compilation of the Critique of Historical Writings.45 Not coincidentally, early in 1789, after having worked on the project slightly over a year, he was able to produce no fewer than twenty-three core essays of the General Principles of Literature and History within a period of two months. Such a sudden enlightenment even surprised Zhang himself, who later said, “In my whole life, I have never produced things at a speed as fast as this.”46

“THE SIX CLASSICS ARE ALL HISTORY” Zhang’s central thesis in the General Principles of Literature and History, “the Six Classics are all history,” is one of the most thoroughly discussed topics in

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modern historical scholarship of China.47 In this study, no attempt will be made at a comprehensive review of this thesis and its full implications in Qing intellectual history. Rather, it will be examined strictly from the point of view of intellectual challenge and response between Zhang and Dai. The late Professor Qian Mu 錢穆 (1895–1990) was the first among modern scholars to suggest that Zhang’s thesis was intended to challenge the dominant paradigm of classical philologism of his day by questioning its fundamental assumptions.48 Let us take this paradigm as our point of departure. By the second half of the eighteenth century, Gu Yanwu’s apt catchphrase, jingxue ji lixue (“the proper study of principles is the study of the classics”), quoted earlier, had become something of a self-evident truth. It was such a widespread notion that Zhang also copied the phrase into one of his notebooks.49 As the leading philosophical spokesman of Qing classical philologism, Dai Zhen elaborated on the implications of that notion in many of his letters and occasional writings. The following succinct statement in Dai’s letter to his leading disciple, Duan Yucai, written a few months before his death, may be taken as an example: Since I was seventeen years old, I have set the quest for Dao as my life goal. I was convinced that Dao can be found only in the Six Classics and the works of Confucius and Mencius. But unless we study the meanings of the words, institutions, and terminologies [in the classical texts] we will not be able to understand the language of the texts. Song Confucians ridiculed philology and ignored language. Thus, they may well be compared to people who wish to cross rivers without boats or climb high without ladders.50 This statement may very well be understood as a commentarial unpacking of Gu Yanwu’s original idea. It makes clear not only Gu’s deep distrust of metaphysical speculation but also his advocacy of the philological approach to the classics as the only way to repossess the Dao. Implicit in this statement are three impor tant assumptions: first, the Dao had already been discovered by the sages in classical antiquity, especially Confucius and Mencius; second, this Dao is recorded in the texts of the Six Classics; third, only philology can explicate the original meanings of these ancient texts. It was specifically against similar arguments by Dai Zhen, as we shall see, that Zhang developed his thesis “the Six Classics are all history.” As noted earlier, 1789 was the most fruitful year of Zhang’s intellectual life as far as the writing of his General Principles of Literature and History was concerned. In that year, he wrote a preface to a group of theoretical essays that reveals unmistakably that the crystallization of his central vision of Confucian learning resulted as much from a genuine lifetime quest of the Dao as from a decade-long inner struggle with Dai’s challenge. As late as 1789, twelve years after Dai’s death, the specter of his greatest intellectual rival continued to haunt him. Thus, he wrote:

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I am only qualified to discuss literature and history (wenshi), and cannot claim that I know the Dao. However, if I exclude literature and history from the Dao in my discussion, then literature and history would not be worthy of their names. I therefore examined the origin of Dao and wrote these thirteen essays. I wish to show how literature and history actually began, as well as how Confucian learning eventually evolved into literature and history. Those Confucian scholars are mistaken when they say that the Dao resides in a realm outside literature and history.51 In writing the last sentence of the above quote, Zhang particularly had Dai in  mind. This point is fully borne out by his “Discussing Writing Again with Zhang Zhengfu 章正甫 ” (You yu Zhengfu lun wen) written in 1789 or 1790, where he said: The historical writings of Sima [Qian 司馬遷, c. 145–85 b.c.] and Ban [Gu, c. 32–92] and the literary works of Han [Yu 韓愈, 768–824] and Liu [Zongyuan 柳宗元, 773–819] are related to Dao much in the same way as are the philological studies of Ma [Rong 馬融, 76–166] and Zheng [Xuan 鄭玄, 127–200] and the classical commentaries of Jia [Kui 賈逵, 30–101] and Kong [Yingda 孔穎達, 574–648]. But Dai [Zhen] says that these [historical and literary writings] are only “art” (yi 藝), not Dao. This is quite comparable to a person who happens to come to the capital by boat denying that there is also a land route to Beijing.52 In light of this letter, it is clear that Zhang’s preface of 1789 was but a subtle criticism of Dai without mentioning his name. He meant that his wenshi (literature and history) was no less immediate to Dao than Dai’s jingxue (classical scholarship). Here we must also point out that Zhang’s criticism was directed specifically against Dai’s “Letter to Fang Xiyuan 方希原 [Ju 矩]” (Yu Fang Xiyuan shu), dated 1755. It was in this letter that Dai explicitly stated, on the one hand, that the writings of Sima Qian, Ban Gu, Han Yu, and Liu Zongyuan could only be regarded as “art” (yi) rather than Dao and, on the other hand, that “the Dao of the Sages is all contained in the Six Classics.”53 Zhang rejected all three assumptions of Qing philologism as repeatedly elaborated by Dai. To begin with, he did not share Dai’s unlimited faith in philology. He showed considerable respect for the technically sophisticated philology of Dai and other contemporary classicists. However, technical competence in philology was far from being decisive in the interpretation of the meanings of a classical text. “In the past several thousand years,” he said, “Confucian scholars have failed to reach agreements” on such technical matters as the Six Graphic Principles (liu shu 六書) or the ancient system of phonetics. As a methodological holist, he believed that it was possible to grasp the general meanings of classical texts without the technical assistance of philology.54

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Zhang also seriously questioned the validity of the other two assumptions of Qing philologism, namely, all impor tant truths about Dao had already been discovered by ancient sages and they are all preserved in the Six Classics (an assumption that, it may be noted, had been generally accepted in the Confucian tradition since the Han dynasty). He was able to challenge such a long-established tradition because he had developed a wholly new conception of Dao. As modern students of Zhang generally agree, Zhang’s Dao is thoroughly historicized.55 As lucidly summarized by Nivison: “Indeed, the Classics by themselves, Zhang thinks, are not sufficient to reveal the Dao fully. For what they do reveal, they reveal by showing what has been and what has happened in the past. Ultimately it is history itself, the course of events, that reveals the Dao, and obviously the Classics cover only a part of this.”56 What concerns us here, however, is not Zhang’s now well-publicized view of Dao as such but how he used it to formulate his central thesis, “the Six Classics are all history,” as a response to Dai’s radical philology. We have seen that in his preface of 1789, he argued vigorously that his wenshi has as legitimate a claim to manifesting the Dao as Dai’s jingxue. This is a view that he held to the end of his life. In 1796, he wrote to Zhu Gui 朱珪 (1731–1807) and presented him a copy of the first printed edition of the General Principles of Literature and History. In this letter, he returned to his favorite theme, but this time speaking exclusively of classics and history: In antiquity, people never drew a distinction between classics and history, or took either one as more impor tant than the other. In my unconventional view, without a clear understanding of history, even great masters of the Confucian classics, like Fu Sheng 伏勝 [third and second centuries b.c.] and Kong Anguo 孔安國 [c. 156–74 b.c.], Jia Kui and Zheng Xuan, could at most attain half of the Dao. What I try to present in my [Wenshi] Tongyi is an attempt at a holistic grasp of the essentials of the ancients.57 What is particularly revealing about this statement is that it was again a criticism of Dai Zhen. A few lines back, he practically repeated his view about Dai in their 1773 debate on local history that with all his profundity in philology, Dai nevertheless did not know anything about history. Against this background, we are almost certain that the following passage from part 3 of his essay “On the Dao” (Yuan Dao), is a contrast between Dai and himself: For that part of the Dao which is complete in the Six Classics and of which the meanings and implications are hidden in the past, it is sufficient for textual and philological studies to bring it to light. However, as to events and changes that occurred in later times, the Six Classics cannot possibly say anything about them. It is therefore impor tant [for people in later times] to produce writings from time to time according to principles abstracted from the Six Classics in order to illustrate the Dao.58

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According to this view, Dai, like the great Confucian masters of the Han dynasty, grasped no more than half of the Dao. At this juncture, we must pause and ask a further question. Would Zhang admit that since he did not study the classics by way of philology, his understanding of the Dao was therefore also partial? The answer must be a resounding no. As the last sentence of his letter to Zhu Gui, quoted above, indicates, he was confident that he had arrived at a holistic understanding of the Dao in its essentials, though not the details. As a holistically oriented historian, he discovered a truth of singular importance: “the Six Classics are all history.” But the reverse is not true; historical writings must not be taken as classics. As a matter of fact, he considered the term “classic” ( jing) to be a misnomer or a historical error. In his essay (“Jingjie” 經解 (An explanation of [the term] classic), he tried to show that etymologically, jing meant no more than outlines. It was commonly used in Mohist and Legalist rather than Confucian texts. Only long after Confucius’s death was the term jing sacralized and applied to texts of the Confucian school. “In the beginning,” he emphatically pointed out, “the Six Classics were not necessarily venerable titles.”59 The classics are sacred not because they are classics, but because they are originally historical in nature. As he expressed it unequivocally elsewhere, “Men of later ages venerated the classics because they are the history of the Three Dynasties (i.e., Xia 夏, Shang 商, and Zhou 周).”60 With the thesis “the Six Classics are all history,” Zhang not only demolished Dai’s monopolistic claim to the Dao but also sacralized history at the expense of classical scholarship of his day. Like all students of Zhang, I fully recognize the profundity and richness of this thesis in its philosophical as well as historical implications. It is far from my intention to simplify it by way of psychological reduction. Under no circumstances can intellectual history be reduced to personal psychology. All I am suggesting here is that had it not been for Dai’s challenge, it is almost certain that Zhang would not have formulated and argued his thesis in the way he actually does in the General Principles of Literature and History.

ZHU XI AND LU XIANGSHAN: TWO INTELLECTUAL GENEALOGIES Finally, Zhang’s lifelong intellectual tension with Dai Zhen culminated in his historical reconstruction of the two rival Neo- Confucian genealogies of Zhu Xi 朱熹 (1130–1200) and Lu Xiangshan (1139–1192). Dai’s death in 1777 provided Zhang with an opportunity to reflect on the strengths as well the weaknesses of his rival’s scholarship. This he did in an essay entitled “Zhu and Lu.”61 Then, in 1800, a year before his own death, he wrote another essay under the title “Zhedong xueshu” (The intellectual tradition of Eastern Zhejiang), in which he

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traced his own intellectual ancestry all the way back to Lu Xiangshan. Though a quarter century apart, the two essays nevertheless complement each other in meaning and therefore constitute a single unit. What is left unsaid in the earlier essay (“Zhu and Lu”) is said in the later one (“The Intellectual Tradition of Eastern Zhejiang”), at least by implication if not by design.62 In these two pieces of writing, he reconstructed two intellectual genealogies beginning with Zhu Xi and Lu Xiangshan, respectively. Before we comment on their substance, let us first look at the two genealogies. In “Zhu and Lu,” the Zhu genealogy runs as follows: First generation: Huang Gan 黃榦 (1152–1221) and Cai Chen 蔡沈 (1167– 1230); second generation: Zhen Dexiu 真德秀 (1178–1235), Wei Liaoweng 魏了翁 (1178–1237), Huang Zhen 黃震 (1213–1280), and Wang Yinglin 王應麟 (1223–1296); third generation: Jin Lüxiang 金履祥 (1232–1303) and Xu Qian 許謙 (1270–1337); fourth generation: Song Lian 宋濂 (1310–1381) and Wang Wei 王褘 (1323–1374); fifth generation: Gu Yanwu 顧炎武 and Yan Ruoju 閻若璩 (1636–1704). It must be pointed out that the idea of “generation” in this essay is used very loosely, but it does not affect our discussion here. Then, in “The Intellectual Tradition of Eastern Zhejiang,” the following lineage from Lu Xiangshan is established: Yuan Xie 袁燮 (1144–1224), Yuan Su 袁肅 ( jinshi, 1199) and Yuan Fu 袁甫 ( jinshi, 1214); Wang Yangming (1472–1529), Liu Zongzhou 劉宗周 (1578– 1645), Huang Zongxi 黃宗羲 (1610–1695), Mao Qiling 毛奇齡 (1623–1716), Wan Sida 萬斯大 (1633–1683) and Wan Sitong 萬斯同 (1638–1702); Quan Zuwang 全祖望 (1705–1755). With regard to the two genealogies themselves, I wish to make the following observations: First, they are lists of “Confucian scholars” rather than “NeoConfucian philosophers.” In both essays, Zhang explicitly stated that his criteria of selection were “mastery of the classics and respect for tradition” (tongjing fugu 通經服古) as well as avoidance of “empty talk on moral nature” (kongyan dexing 空言德性). Nowhere is his Confucian intellectualism more clearly revealed than in these two genealogies. Second, according to his “Postscript to Zhu and Lu,”63 he wrote the earlier essay as a criticism of Dai Zhen. He traced Dai’s intellectual lineage from Gu Yanwu all the way back to Zhu Xi to show that Dai, in attacking Zhu Xi, “failed to understand his own historical position.”64 Third, in the essay “Zhu and Lu” of 1777, what is conspicuously missing is the genealogy of the Lu school. It is in the “The Intellectual Tradition of Eastern Zhejiang” (1800) that this missing genealogy is provided. However, a closer scrutiny reveals that this genealogy does not cover the Lu school as a whole but is re-

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stricted to Lu’s followers in Eastern Zhejiang. There can be no question that Zhang’s genealogical reconstruction in 1800 was intended primarily to place himself in the Lu tradition vis-à-vis Dai in the Zhu tradition. This point is fully borne out by the fact that Yang Jian 楊簡 (1140–1226), the leading disciple of Lu Xiangshan, and Qian Dehong 錢德洪 (1497–1574) and Wang Ji 王畿 (1498–1583), the two most outstanding philosophical heirs of Wang Yangming, are omitted from Zhang’s genealogy even though all were natives of Eastern Zhejiang. In other words, this genealogy was tailored to the precise specifications of his own intellectual identity. Zhang’s reconstruction of the two Neo-Confucian genealogies throws a new light not only on his intellectual relationship with Dai but also his own stature as a philosophical spokesman of Qing Confucian intellectualism. Due to space limitations, however, only a brief account of these two related aspects can be given below.65 According to Nivison, Zhang discovered Huang Zongxi rather late, probably as late as 1795, after his own work had been basically accomplished. Only then did he begin to fully realize the importance of Eastern Zhejiang historical scholarship. On this basis, therefore, Nivison dismisses the notion that Zhang was a “member” of the “Eastern Zhejiang School”: “To talk of an ‘Eastern Zhejiang School’ as including Zhang Xuecheng is to fall into Zhang’s own historicalessentialist manner of speaking. Influence there may be, but Zhang’s selfidentification with a special Zhejiang tradition was a lifetime’s afterthought.”66 To call Zhang’s self-identification with the “Eastern Zhejiang Intellectual Tradition” “a lifetime’s afterthought” is a true insight. But this insight needs to be developed so that the very nature of Zhang’s “afterthought” may be brought to light. To begin with, we must first ask the question why in his “Zhu and Lu” of 1777 is only the intellectual genealogy of Zhu Xi given, but not that of Lu Xiangshan? Was this due to the fact, as Nivison has shown, that Zhang was unfamiliar with Huang Zongxi’s work until as late as 1795? This is certainly an important part of the answer, but not the whole story. The other part, I would suggest, lies in the fact that Zhang was yet to reach the full maturity of his thought and scholarship. Now we know that in 1777 Zhang’s work was largely concentrated on his bibliographical and methodological ( jiaochou) studies. His theoretical breakthroughs, such as “the Six Classics are all history,” were still a decade away, and the General Principles of Literature and History did not really exist except as a title. He could not justifiably conceive the intellectual rivalry between Dai and himself in terms of Zhu Xi versus Lu Xiangshan in the Southern Song or Gu Yanwu versus Huang Zongxi in the early Qing, as he actually did in “The Intellectual Tradition of Eastern Zhejiang.” Our next question, then, is when did he identify himself with the Qing tradition of historical scholarship in Eastern Zhejiang beginning with Huang Zongxi? It is true that the death of his friend Shao Jinhan in 1796 provided him with the occasion to review this tradition. He particularly praised Huang

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Zongxi, Shao Tingcai 邵廷采 (1648–1711), and Quan Zuwang for their contributions to the study of history,67 but it is not clear whether he also considered himself a latter- day heir to this tradition. Moreover, there is evidence to the contrary. In 1797, he wrote a letter to Zhu Xigeng 朱錫庚 in which he summed up his characterization of Dai in “Zhu and Lu” with basically the same genealogy. However, the Qing part of the genealogy reads as follows: Down to the beginning of our dynasty, Gu Yanwu, Huang Zongxi, and Yan Ruoju all followed this [Zhu] tradition even more closely than in the genealogy of Confucian classicists of the Han dynasty. Dai’s classical scholarship actually took the works of these scholars as its point of departure. And yet he was harshly critical of the learning of Zhu Xi. This is indeed like a person who drinks the water but forgets its origins.68 It is most surprising that even as late as 1797, Zhang not only placed Huang Zongxi in the Zhu Xi tradition but also regarded him as one of Dai’s intellectual ancestors. Even if we consider this to have been a mere “slip” on Zhang’s part, the very “slip” itself is not without some deep psychological significance. At least it reveals that at this time, his self-identification with the East Zhejiang tradition of historical scholarship was not yet final. This simple fact also explains why he was unable to establish a genealogy for the Lu school in his 1777 essay on “Zhu and Lu.” In this sense, then, his “The Intellectual Tradition of Eastern Zhejiang” of 1800 was indeed “a lifetime’s afterthought.” In 1800, his eyes were failing and his health in general deteriorated rapidly. He was no longer able to write without assistance. Already he knew that his days were numbered. Nevertheless he found it necessary to give a finishing touch to his magnum opus. “The Intellectual Tradition of Eastern Zhejiang” was the last theoretical essay to go into the core chapters of the General Principles of Literature and History. There cannot be the slightest doubt that it must have meant a great deal to him. What, then, were some of the compelling reasons that prompted Zhang to write this last essay? We can only make a few guesses. First, as he was about to turn over the drafts of his General Principles of Literature and History to a friend for final editing, he must have discovered that the 1777 essay on “Zhu and Lu” was grossly unbalanced in content. It traced Dai Zhen’s intellectual genealogy all the way back to Zhu Xi but said nothing about how his own work could be linked to the tradition of Lu Xiangshan. This is exactly the gap that the essay “The Intellectual Tradition of Eastern Zhejiang” was intended to close.69 Second, with his own system of Confucian learning basically completed, he now probably felt justified to take Dai and himself as each representing a main line of approach to the Dao in the Confucian tradition, namely, Dai’s classical studies as opposed to his historical ones. To find a definite place for himself in the history of Confucian learning, he also needed an intellectual genealogy of his own, and nothing could serve this purpose better than the Eastern Zhejiang tradition of historical scholarship. It was obviously

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for this reason that he had to assign the pivotal role in this tradition to none other than Huang Zongxi, whom, it may be recalled, he had generously offered to Zhu Xi’s school three years earlier. As he said in “The Intellectual Tradition of Eastern Zhejiang”: It is generally acknowledged today that Gu Yanwu was the founder of Confucian learning of our dynasty. Gu, however, actually belonged to the intellectual tradition of Western Zhejiang. It is less well known that there was also a contemporary scholar, Huang Zongxi, from Eastern Zhejiang who stood shoulder to shoulder with Gu as the two towering figures. Intellectually, he not only followed in the wake of Wang Yangming and Liu Zongzhou but also broke new ground for Wan Sida and Wan Sitong. Thus, compared to Gu, we must say that his intellectual lineage was much longer. Gu was a follower of Zhu Xi and Huang of Lu Xiangshan . . . but they respected each other and never exchanged derogatory remarks. . . . Therefore, the Eastern Zhejiang and the Western Zhejiang have been two parallel rather than conflicting traditions. The emphasis of the Eastern Zhejiang tradition is placed on zhuanjia 專家 (specialization), whereas that of the Western Zhejiang tradition is on boya 博雅 (erudition), each following its own established practice.70 Here, Zhang exaggerated the historical importance of Huang Zongxi to the point of contradicting his own account of Gu Yanwu as given in the long genealogy of the Zhu school in the essay “Zhu and Lu.” He presented Gu Yanwu as an isolated scholar by confining him geographically to the Western Zhejiang (Zhexi 浙西) region even though he knew very well that Gu’s influence had been nationwide all along.71 This exaggeration is perfectly understandable, however, once we realize that he was in fact indirectly comparing himself to Dai Zhen. Last but not least, Zhang’s last essay must be understood in light of his central idea in the General Principles of Literature and History, “The Six Classics are all history.” An impor tant passage of “The Intellectual Tradition of Eastern Zhejiang” reads, in part, as follows: Learning in the period of the Three Dynasties (i.e., Xia, Shang, and Zhou) consisted only of history, not classics. . . . Men of later ages venerated the classics because they are the history of the Three Dynasties. . . . In the Eastern Zhejiang intellectual tradition, scholars interested in philosophical topics such as “nature” and “destiny” have invariably turned to study history. This is precisely why it is so excellent.72 Modern interpreters generally believe that by this statement Zhang referred only to the Eastern Zhejiang tradition during the Qing Period, because it is obviously untenable if extended earlier than the seventeenth century.73 This turns out not to be the case, however. In his “Biography of Shao Jinhan” (Shao Yutong

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Biezhuan), also written in 1800, he said explicitly: “Since the Southern Song, Confucian philosophers in Eastern Zhejiang by and large devoted themselves to historical scholarship as a way to study such topics as ‘nature’ and ‘destiny.’ This tradition passed from generation to generation.”74 It is beside the point to say that Zhang exaggerated his case incredibly, which he indeed did. The real question is why he did it. As far as I can discern, he was probably suggesting two points. First, since according to the theory of “the Six Classics are all history,” the Dao is fully revealed only in history, the long tradition from which he comes has been on the right track all along. Eastern Zhejiang philosophers never engaged in “empty talk”; they did philosophy by way of history. Second, the dominant paradigm in Confucian learning from Gu Yanwu to Dai Zhen must now be radically modified. Instead of “the proper study of principles is the study of classics” ( jingxue ji lixue), he would propose to say “the proper study of principles is the study of history” (shixue ji lixue 史學即理學). This seems implicit in his exaggerated statement about the Eastern Zhejiang tradition since the Southern Song. Thus, the two justly famous theses in his General Principles of Lit erature and History turn out to reinforce each other and jointly form a power ful argument against Dai’s classical philologism. With this last essay, Zhang concluded his long intellectual struggle with Dai at the very end of his life. The significance of Zhang’s two Neo- Confucian genealogies, however, far transcends the personal dimension of his intellectual development. With all their imperfections, the two genealogies nevertheless reveal Zhang’s profundity and incisiveness as an intellectual historian who alone among his contemporaries penetrated beneath the surface of textual studies to discover the deeper meanings of the apparently thoughtless activities of mid- Qing philologists. This is not to suggest, of course, that he made this discovery wholly unaided. As shown above, his final views on both Neo- Confucian traditions in the Qing Period evolved over decades as his response to the challenge of Dai’s classical philologism gradually deepened. As he followed Dai’s work closely, at some point it must have dawned on him that behind much of Dai’s anti–Zhu Xi talk on philological grounds, there was a hidden philosophical project that was nevertheless continuous from Zhu Xi. Philologists in eighteenth- century China including Dai, almost without exception, counterposed their own philologically orientated Han Learning to the metaphysical speculation of Song Learning. This Han-Song opposition implies that a complete rupture occurred between Song-Ming Neo- Confucianism and Qing classical scholarship in the mid-seventeenth century. Zhang, as far as I am aware, never took part in this type of discourse; we have yet to discover in his writings that he took the Han Learning–Song Learning distinction as meaningful. From his point of view, both Neo- Confucian traditions continued well into the Qing Period. What did change was the frame of mind, with “honoring the moral nature” (zun dexing) giving way to “following the path of inquiry and

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study” (dao wenxue). He was aware, perhaps more fully than most contemporary scholars, that his was an age of dao wenxue and, what is more, he accepted it wholeheartedly. In this sense, he not only shared Dai’s intellectualist outlook but also, like Dai, assumed the responsibility as a philosophical spokesman for Qing Confucian intellectualism. There is a difference, however, in that while Dai may be construed as a spokesman from the Zhu Xi tradition,75 Zhang’s apologia for Confucian intellectualism was clearly made from the Lu-Wang position. It was relatively easy and straightforward for Zhang to demonstrate that Dai was, in fact, a latter- day heir to Zhu Xi. After all, dao wenxue has been traditionally accepted as a built-in feature of the Zhu Xi tradition. On the other hand, his effort to bring the Lu-Wang tradition into accord with Qing intellectualism was a heroic one. His arguments are complex, circuitous, and, at times, even tortuous. One or two examples may be given here. He often emphasized that in learning, one must first see the “large whole” (dati 大體) rather than getting lost in details. This is, needless to say, a reference to the Mencian idea of “establishing the nobler part of one’s nature” as particularly emphasized by Lu Xiangshan. In Mencius and Lu Xiangshan, this “large whole” could only mean a person’s “moral nature.” But for Zhang, it turned out to be an intellectual ability to grasp holistically the central significance of things. Sometimes he also referred to this as zhuanjia, which literally means “specialist” or “specialization.” We must not confuse it with the term “specialist” in the modern sense, however. What his zhuanjia “specializes” in is none other than the hedgehog’s “one big thing.” Let us take another example. In some of his essays, he made references to Wang Yangming’s zhi liangzhi 致良知 (extending good-knowing), which again is moral in nature. In Zhang’s hands, however, liangzhi 良知 also took an intellectualistic turn. What he meant by that term is but a scholar’s intuitive inclination toward a par ticular type of intellectual work.76 In this way, he intellectualized the Lu-Wang tradition to suit the needs of his Eastern Zhejiang historical scholarship. With the Dao historicized on the one hand and the Lu-Wang tradition intellectualized on the other, he succeeded in raising Confucian intellectualism to a new height in eighteenth- century China.

notes The author thanks Frederick W. Mote and Willard J. Peterson for reading the first draft of this essay and making suggestions for improvement. 1.

Zhang Binglin 章炳麟 (1869–1935), Liang Qichao 梁啟超 (1873–1929), Hu Shi 胡適 (1891–1962), and Qian Mu 錢穆 (1895–1990) have been mainly responsible for promoting, each in his own way, this modern view. In Japan, a similar evaluation may be found in Shimada Kenji 島田虔次, “Shô Gakusei no ichi” 章學誠の位置, Tôhô Gakuho 東方 學報 (March 1970): 519–530.

110 2.

z ha ng xue c h e ng v er sus dai z h e n Sun Baoxuan 孫寶瑄, Wangshan Lu riji 忘山廬日記 (Shanghai: Shanghai Guji, 1983), Year 24: 207–210.

3.

The only notable exception is Dai’s collated text of the Shuijing zhu 水經注. See Hu Shi, Hu Shi shougao 胡適手稿, series 1–6 (Taipei: Hu Shi jinian guan, 1966–1969).

4.

David  S. Nivison, The Life and Thought of Chang Hsüeh- ch’eng (1738–1801) (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1966), 142. [Romanization changed to Pinyin in quotes from Nivison’s book.—Eds.]

5.

Ibid., 32–33.

6.

Zhang Xuecheng Yishu 章學誠遺書 (hereafter Yishu) (Beijing: Wenwu, 1985), 645.

7.

See Qingshi liezhuan 清史列傳, punctuated by Wang Zhonghan 王鍾翰 (Beijing: Zhong-

8.

See Ying-shih Yü, “Tai Chen’s Choice Between Philosophy and Philology,” AM, 3rd

hua, 1987), 8:5888–5889. series, 2, part 1 (1989): 79–108. 9. 10.

Yishu, 224; English translation in Nivison, Chang Hsüeh- ch’eng, 33. Duan Yucai, Dai Dongyuan xiansheng nianpu 戴東原先生年譜, in DWJ, punctuated by Zhao Yuxin (Hong Kong: Zhonghua, 1974), 228; Qian Mu, ZJSNXS (Shanghai: Shangwu, 1937), 1:326–327.

11.

Nivison, Chang Hsüeh- ch’eng, 156.

12.

See Isaiah Berlin, The Hedgehog and the Fox (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1966).

13.

Yishu, 92 (“Family Letter, no. 3”).

14.

Yishu, 224.

15.

Gong Zizhen quanji 龔自珍全集, collated by Wang Peizheng 王佩諍 (Shanghai: Zhonghua, 1961), 1:193.

16. Ying-shih Yü, “Some Preliminary Observations on the Rise of Ch’ing Confucian Intellectualism,” Tsing Hua Journal of Chinese Studies, n.s., 11, nos. 1–2 (December 1975): 105–144. 17.

Luo Qinshun, Kunzhi ji 困知記, CSJC, 13. English translation by Irene Bloom, Knowledge Painfully Acquired (New York: Columbia University Press, 1987), 144–145. However, I have changed Bloom’s “without reference to the classics” to “without seeking evidence in the classics” because it is closer to the literal meaning of qucheng yu jingshu 取證於經書. Italics are also mine.

18.

DWJ, 168.

19.

Nivison, Chang Hsüeh- ch’eng, 47.

20. Yishu, 128. 21.

See Dai’s “Rules of Compilation” for the Fenzhou fu zhi 汾州府志, now included in Dai Zhen quanji 戴震全集 (Beijing: Qing Hua University Press, 1991), 1:489.

22. Yishu, 37. 23. Yishu, 337–338; Nivison, Chang Hsüeh- ch’eng, 188. 24. Yishu, 93 (“Family Letter, No. 6”). 25. Nivison, Chang Hsüeh- ch’eng, 41. 26. Ibid., 41–43. 27. Ibid., 56. 28. Yishu, 225; English translation in Nivison, Chang Hsüeh- ch’eng, 41.

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29. Yishu, 333; English translation in Nivison, Chang Hsüeh- ch’eng, 42. 30. Yishu, 552; English translation in Nivison, Chang Hsüeh- ch’eng, 46. 31.

Nivison, Chang Hsüeh- ch’eng, 57–60.

32. Ibid., 41. 33.

Qian Mu, ZJSNXS, 420–424.

34. Nivison, Chang Hsüeh- ch’eng, 174. 35.

Yishu, 82; Nivison, Chang Hsüeh- ch’eng, 253.

36. I believe the original letter to Qian Daxin was probably written in 1772 because part of its content agrees with his letter to Zhu Fenyuan, cited above. However, the letter as it now stands may have been expanded and revised as late as 1798 in order to be included in his collected work. This was a common practice among Chinese writers in the past. See Qian Mu, ZJSNXS, 418; Paul Demiéville, “Chang Hsüeh- ch’eng and His Historiography,” in Historians of China and Japan, ed. W. G. Beasley and E. G. Pulleyblank (London: Oxford University Press, 1961), 172n; Nivison, Chang Hsüeh- ch’eng, 183n. 37.

Nivison, Chang Hsüeh- ch’eng, 196.

38. Yishu, 694. 39. Ibid., 696. 40. Ibid., 16. 41.

Luo Bingmian 羅炳綿, Qingdai xueshu lunji 清代學術論集 (Taipei: Shihuo, 1978), 1–115.

42. Nivison, Chang Hsüeh- ch’eng, 205–206. 43. Yishu, 335. 44. Ibid., 86. 45. See “Shikao shi li” 史考釋例, in Yishu, 615–618, and “Shikao zhelu” 史考摘錄, in Yishu, 648–656. 46. Yishu, 325. 47. For some of the impor tant modern discussions on this thesis, see works cited in Yü Ying-shih 余英時, Lun Dai Zhen yu Zhang Xuecheng 論戴震與章學誠 (Hong Kong: Longmen, 1976), 76n. 48. Qian Mu, ZJSNXS, 380–386. 49. Yishu, 381. 50. Dai Zhen quanji, 1:213. Similar but more detailed arguments may be found in DWJ, 44, 140, 145–146, 164–165, 168. 51.

Yishu, 325.

52. Ibid., 338. 53.

DWJ, 143–144.

54. Yishu, 73–74. 55.

Qian Mu, ZJSNXS, 382–384; Demiéville, “Chang Hsüeh- ch’eng and His Historiography,” 178–180; Nivison, Chang Hsüeh- ch’eng, 140–162.

56. Nivison, Chang Hsüeh- ch’eng, 151. 57.

Yishu, 315. See also “Notes of 1795,” in Yishu, 387–388.

58. Yishu, 12. 59. Ibid., 8–9. 60. Ibid., 15.

112 61.

z h a ng xue c h e ng v er sus dai zh e n In my opinion, Zhang most likely wrote “Zhu and Lu” in 1777 when he heard about Dai’s death. For different views, however, see Hu Shi, Zhang Shizhai xiansheng nianpu 章實齋先生年譜, revised by Yao Mingda 姚名達 (Taipei: Yuanliu, 1986), 73–77; Qian Mu, ZJSNXS, 419; and Nivison, Chang Hsüeh- ch’eng, 105.

62. Yishu, 14–16. 63. Ibid., 16–17. 64. Nivison, Chang Hsüeh- ch’eng, 162. 65. For a fuller documentation and analysis, see Yü Ying-shih, Dai yu Zhang, 53–75. 66. Nivison, Chang Hsüeh- ch’eng, 279. See also 249–250. 67. Yishu, 117–118. On this Eastern Zhejiang tradition of historical scholarship, see Lynn Struve, “The Early Ch’ing Legacy of Huang Tsung-hsi: A Reexamination,” AM, 3rd series, 1, part 1 (1988): 83–122. 68. Yishu, 611. 69. In 1801, Wang Zongyan 王宗炎 (1755–1826), to whom Zhang entrusted his Wenshi tongyi for editing, suggested some editorial changes for the first paragraph of the last essay. See Yishu, appendix, 624. 70. Yishu, 15. 71.

Demiéville considered it a mistake on Zhang’s part to identify Gu Yanwu geographically with Zhexi (“West of the Zhe River”); see “Chang Hsüeh- ch’eng and His Historiography,” 171n. However, Zhang’s identification was based on the new study of Quan Zuwang 全祖望. See Jieqi Tingji 鲒埼亭集, SBCK suoben 縮本 edition, waibian 外編, juan 49: 1057–1058.

72. Yishu, 15. 73. Jin Yufu 金毓黻, Zhongguo shixue shi 中國史學史 (Shanghai: Shangwu, 1957), 252. 74. Yishu, 177. 75. See Ying-shih Yü, “Tai Chen and the Chu Hsi Tradition,” in Essays in Commemoration of the Golden Jubilee of the Fung Ping Shan Library, ed. Chan Ping-leung (Hong Kong: HKU Press, 1982), 376–392. 76. Yü Ying-shih, Dai yu Zhang, 63–65, 73–75.

5. Qing Confucianism

1

T

he best way to characterize Confucianism in the Qing dynasty (hereafter Qing Confucianism) is to contrast it with what is called Song-Ming NeoConfucianism. Song-Ming Neo- Confucians were primarily moral philosophers debating among themselves endlessly on metaphysical questions such as whether “moral principles” (li 理) are inherent in “human nature” (xing 性) or in “human mind” (xin 心). By contrast, Qing Confucians were, first and foremost, scholars devoting themselves painstakingly to philological explication of classical and historical texts. As a result, the Song-Ming Period witnessed the emergence and development of the rivalry between two major philosophical systems represented, respectively, by the Cheng-Zhu and the Lu-Wang schools, whereas the Qing Period took great pride in having reestablished the Confucian canon on the foundations of critical scholarship aided by the newly sharpened tools of philology. This is precisely why “classical scholarship” ( jingxue 經學) has been generally identified by modern intellectual historians as the quintessence of Qing Confucianism as opposed to metaphysical speculation in Song-Ming Neo- Confucianism. As the above contrast clearly indicates, while both Song-Ming Neo-Confucians and Qing Confucians studied the same body of sacred texts, they were nevertheless guided by two entirely different paradigms. Such being the case, it can

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be safely assumed that a radical paradigm shift must have taken place during the Ming- Qing intellectual transition. An inquiry into the question of why and how this epoch-making shift occurred in the first place will therefore provide us with a convenient point to retrace Qing Confucianism to its origins. To begin with, it may be straightforwardly stated that the whole process of intellectual change that eventually led to the establishment of textual scholarship as the central task of Confucianism in the Qing Period had been initially triggered and propelled by forces generated from within the Neo- Confucian philosophical development of the sixteenth century. To illustrate this point, two striking examples may be cited from the two opposing sides of NeoConfucianism. In 1518, Wang Yangming 王陽明 (1472–1529) made a great effort to restore what he called “the Old Text of the Great Learning” (Daxue guben 大學 古本) with the explicit purpose of challenging the textual authority established by Zhu Xi in the twelfth century. The latter, as we all know, made some subtle rearrangement and emendation of the Great Learning to support his philosophical position, which has since been accepted as the standard text. Now, Wang Yangming needed the same text to ground his philosophical views, which are the opposite of Zhu Xi’s. It was this need that pushed him into the domain of textual research. This is clearly shown in his most impor tant philosophical synopsis, entitled “Inquiry on the ‘Great Learning’ ” (Daxue zhangju), which is based wholly on his 1518 text. Our second example is Luo Qinshun 羅欽順 (1465–1547), a leading philosopher of the Cheng-Zhu school and revered critic of Wang Yangming. His sustained philosophical debate with Wang over the years also contributed much to the rise of textual scholarship. In 1515, Wang made a selection of passages from several dozens of Zhu Xi’s letters and published them three years later under the title Zhuzi wannian dinglun 朱子晚年 定論 (Zhu Xi’s final conclusions arrived at late in life).1 The purpose of this whole exercise, according to his preface, was to show that in his later years, Zhu Xi had abandoned his earlier mistaken views and arrived at conclusions similar to those now held by Wang. This work, however, drew harsh criticism from Luo, who pointed out, rightly, that many of the passages are from letters that can be easily dated to the early life of Zhu Xi. In his reply, Wang conceded that he did, indeed, fail to pay sufficient attention to the problem of dating. This exchange between Luo and Wang further testifies to the ever-growing importance of textual criticism in late Ming Neo- Confucian controversies. What is even more significant is Luo’s novel methodological suggestion regarding how the endless metaphysical dispute in Neo- Confucianism can be ultimately settled. Defending Zhu Xi’s theory of “the nature is principle (xing ji li 性即理)” against Wang’s “the mind is principle (xin ji li 心即理),” he quoted extensively from a variety of classical texts in support of his case. In concluding, he argued: “If one carries on his studies without seeking evidence in the classics and is utterly arbitrary and opinionated it is inevitable that he will be misled. It is wrong to allow oneself to be misled, worse yet to mislead others.”2 Here the

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very notion of “seeking evidence in the classics” turned out to be quite prophetic about where Confucianism was to be heading, for “evidential investigation” (kaozheng 考證) constituted the central methodological principle of Qing classical scholarship. To be sure, neither Wang nor Luo can be called a textual scholar. By getting themselves involved in textual entanglements even to such a limited degree, both philosophers nevertheless set examples, rather unwittingly, for others to follow. As a result, the two rival Neo- Confucian schools, Cheng-Zhu versus Lu-Wang, were moving their battlefield from philosophy to philology in an everincreasingly fast pace. By general consensus, Gu Yanwu 顧炎武 (1613–1682) was the founding father of Qing classical scholarship; the new paradigm of research he established practically dominated the world of learning throughout the Qing Period. As also commonly held, he was more responsible than anyone else for turning Confucian scholars away from metaphysical speculation, and at the same time, opening up the field of classical study based on textual evidence. However, his break with Neo- Confucianism was by no means complete. Contrary to the longestablished view since Liang Qichao 梁啟超 (1873–1929), Gu did not dismiss or attack Song-Ming Neo- Confucianism summarily and indiscriminately. Of the two major Neo- Confucian schools, he was clearly partial to the Zhu Xi tradition and all of his sharp criticisms were directed against Wang Yangming and his followers. This is especially shown in his enthusiastic endorsement of Luo Qinshun in the latter’s debate with Wang Yangming on the question of Zhu Xi’s Final Conclusions mentioned above. Moreover, Gu’s famous and influential statement that “the proper study of moral principles consists primarily in the study of the classics” can also be read as his answering to Luo’s clarion call “to seek evidence in the classics.” It is true that Gu departed from the Ming Neo-Confucian tradition by shunning metaphysics altogether. However, insofar as Gu also emphasized that the ultimate purpose of his advocacy of textual research on the classics was to bring the Confucian Way to light (mingdao 明道), he was still carry ing on the same sacred mission as did his Neo- Confucian predecessors, but taking an entirely different path.3 The above account suggests two closely related points of considerable historical importance with regard to the transition from Ming Neo- Confucianism to Qing Confucianism. First, it was the inner logic of the Neo- Confucian development as exemplified, especially, in its endless metaphysical controversies that pushed itself to a point at which reexamination of the original texts became absolutely necessary. This is the case because Neo- Confucian thinkers of all persuasions had to validate their claims to knowledge of the Confucian Way by citing the authority of these texts. Thus, they initiated a movement that may be most appropriately described as “return to the sources”— a movement that took more than a century for Qing Confucian scholars to bring to completion. Second, at the methodological level, the Ming- Qing intellectual transition can

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indeed be defined in terms of a shift from the philosophical to the philological approach. In this sense, the transition may be viewed as more characteristically discontinuous than continuous. The discontinuity involved here is also a matter of degree, however, for the philological turn had already begun with some of the philosophical followers of Wang Yangming in the late Ming, notably Jiao Hong 焦竑 (1540–1620), who, quite remarkably, opened up several areas of textual research only to be fully developed by early Qing scholars. In view of these two closely related points, it would make little sense to take the beginning of Qing Confucianism to be a sudden and negative reaction to Ming NeoConfucianism, as suggested by the received wisdom. Instead, it was not only largely continuous with but also necessitated by the internal development of Ming Neo- Confucianism. This continuity is nowhere more clearly shown than in the textual criticism developed in early Qing. Two outstanding examples may be given to substantiate this observation. First, in 1654, Chen Que 陳確 (1604–1677) wrote a famous essay on the text of the Great Learning that immediately created a stir in the academic community. Through textual analysis and terminological comparisons with other ancient sources, he came to the conclusion that the Great Learning is a document of much later date and therefore must be rejected as a sacred text directly linked to the teaching of Confucius. In his view, Wang Yangming could have well saved the trouble to restore the “ancient text” had he only known that the very authenticity of the Great Learning as a Confucian text is in serious question. As a follower of Wang Yangming, however, he openly admitted that the main point he was making in this textual study was a philosophical one, namely, to demolish the textual basis of Zhu Xi’s theory about the relationship between “knowing” and “acting.”4 Second, from the 1670s on, Yan Ruoju 閻若璩 (1636–1704) began to engage himself in a long-term research project on the sixteen chapters in the “ancient script” Guwen Shangshu 古文尚書 (Classic of History), whose authenticity had long been suspect since Zhu Xi. In the end, Yan was able to prove once and for all that they were indeed forgeries of the fourth century c.e. It is significant to note, however, that in this study of a purely philological nature, Yan made every effort to place himself squarely in the Zhu Xi tradition of Neo- Confucianism. He not only specifically acknowledged his indebtedness to Zhu Xi for having initiated him into this project but also, more impor tant, professed to cling to the latter’s general intellectual position that Confucian moral principles must be grounded in a deep understanding of classical texts. It is also strikingly odd that in this book, Yan interspersed his textual analysis with harsh attacks on Lu Xiangshan 陸象山 (1139–1192) and Wang Yangming. When Mao Qiling 毛奇齡 (1623–1716) read an early draft of Yan’s study, he was so furious that he immediately set out to write a refutation of it also on evidential grounds. As a follower of Wang Yangming, he was keenly aware of the negative philosophical implications of Yan’s work for the Lu-Wang school as a whole, for one of the forged chapters contains a passage about “the

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mind of man versus the mind of Dao,” which he took to be a textual basis more crucial to the School of Mind (xinxue 心學) of his own day. From his letters to Yan, it is clear that his defense of the chapters of the History in ancient script was actually a defense of his own philosophical position.

2 With the full flowering of classical studies in the second half of the eighteenth century, Qing Confucianism reached its peak. By this time, the philological tools of various kinds including, especially, etymology, phonology, paleography, and collation had been developed to near technical perfection. By applying these new techniques to the study of classical and historical texts in a systematic and sustained manner, mainstream Confucians in the mid- Qing Period radically changed our understanding of the Confucian canon. As a matter of fact, midQing Confucians were not only very much excited about this unique contribution of theirs to the Confucian tradition but also took great pride in it. Justified or not, they consistently believed that it is philology, not metaphysical speculation, that can unlock the door to the classical world of ancient sages. This general sense of excitement and pride is best expressed in the following powerful statement made by Dai Zhen 戴震 (1724–1777) in 1765: Alas, if the so- called moral principles of the sages can be obtained by sheer speculation apart from the classics, then anyone is able to grasp them out of emptiness. If that is the case, what do we need classical scholarship for? It is precisely because free speculation cannot lead one to a proper understanding of the moral principles of the ancient sages that one has to seek it from the ancient classics. Since messages contained in the surviving records have gradually fallen into oblivion due to the expanse of time between the past and the present, one therefore has to seek them through philological studies of the classical texts. Thus, only if philology is clear can the ancient classics be understood, and only if the classics are understood, can the sages’ moral principles then be grasped.5 This statement is clearly a further elaboration of Gu Yanwu’s original proposal that “the proper study of moral principles consists primarily in the study of the classics.” It not only makes more explicit Gu’s deep distrust of metaphysical speculation but also argues more cogently for the central importance of philology in classical scholarship. It may be noted, however, that when Gu first introduced the paradigm change a century earlier, he merely indicated in general terms that “the right way of reading the classics must begin with a thorough investigation of the language in which they are expressed” but did not go much further.6 This difference between Gu and Dai testifies to the enormous growth of classical

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scholarship during the century that separated the two Confucian scholars. It was on the foundation of this accumulative scholarship that Dai was able to give philological methodology a most precise and clear formulation. Qing Confucianism assumed its most distinctive shape during the Qianlong reign (1736–1795), as the learned world in Qing China entered its most creative period. We must now try to describe that distinctive shape in its own terms with a view to determining more precisely the nature and place of Qing Confucianism in the history of Chinese thought. To begin with, it is impor tant to know how Qing Confucianism was perceived by its own advocates. In this connection, a keen observation made by Gong Zizhen 龔自珍 (1792–1841) serves our purpose admirably well. Gong was personally trained in all kinds of classical philology by his maternal grandfather, Duan Yucai 段玉裁 (1735–1815), the leading disciple of Dai Zhen, and later became a founder of the New Text school. With these credentials, what he had to say about Qing Confucianism certainly deserves our serious attention. In 1817, he reflected on the state of Confucian learning in his day as follows: The Confucian Way consists of two main strands, namely, “honoring the moral nature” (zun dexing 尊德性) and “following the path of inquiry and study” (dao wenxue 道問學). In its original conception, these two strands are supposed not to contradict but rather lend support to each other. However, in actual practice, it turns out that each of the two approaches to the Way tends to dominate the learned world in a given period. The expected harmonious unity between the two has never been realized. As a result, the majority of Confucian scholars merely follow whichever approach happens to be dominant in their own times. With the founding of our dynasty, the scope of Confucian studies has been enormously broadened. However, ours is an age dominated by the mode of intellectual inquiry. Thus, since the beginning of the Qianlong era (1736–1795), “inquiry and study” has been established as the standard requirement which a Confucian must meet by definition.7 Before we can explore the full implications of this impor tant statement, however, a word of clarification is in order. The two key terms, zun dexing and dao wenxue, are taken from the “Zhongyong” (Doctrine of the Mean), referring, respectively, to moral cultivation and intellectual inquiry. Generally speaking, in the Neo- Confucian context, both approaches are conceived to be relevant to man’s quest for Dao. The moral approach consists primarily in the awakening of moral faith by way of meditation and metaphysical speculation. By contrast, the intellectual approach implies that every advance in our knowledge of the world brings us a step closer to the total understanding of Dao, and only by “inquiry and study” can knowledge be acquired, whether it concerns knowledge of a classical text or that of “a blade of grass.” It was precisely the differ-

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ence in emphasis of these two approaches that philosophically divided the Cheng-Zhu school and the Lu-Wang school. By and large, the former took both as equally impor tant for the attainment of Dao, whereas the latter not only entrusted the central role to the moral approach but also assigned intellectual inquiry to a place of insignificance. When Gong used these two terms, he generally followed this Neo- Confucian distinction between the moral approach and the intellectual approach. However, in suggesting that Qing Confucianism was dominated by “intellectual inquiry,” he had specifically in mind the prevailing mode of classical scholarship of his own time. By the mid-eighteenth century at the latest, there was a general consensus among mainstream Confucian scholars that the original philosophical messages of ancient sages had been grossly misinterpreted by Song-Ming Neo- Confucian thinkers who, under the influence of Buddhism, relied too heavily on metaphysical speculation. The only reliable method to recapture the original meanings of ancient Confucianism, they insisted, was to subject every classical text to a most rigorous and critical examination based on the newly developed philology. What Gong meant by “intellectual inquiry” (dao wenxue) in the above-quoted statement must be understood in this light. We are now in a position to evaluate in more general terms the unique contribution of Qing Confucianism in the history of Chinese thought. In sharp contrast to the Neo- Confucian metaphysical speculation on “moral nature” from Song to Ming, Confucianism in the Qing Period took a decidedly intellectualistic turn. As a result, the study of the classics was fully justified as a Confucian calling. It has been widely held, however, that since Qing Confucianism was concerned wholly with textual scholarship, it involved little or no philosophical thinking on the part of its practitioners. While this view may well have been applicable to many individual cases of mid- Qing classicists who carried on normal research within the philological paradigm, it nevertheless fails to make sense of Confucian intellectualism as a sustained learned movement throughout the Qing Period, which, viewed holistically, does reveal a central philosophical vision radically different from Song-Ming Neo- Confucianism. This new vision is nowhere more clearly shown than in some of the ways in which the Confucian tradition was redefined by Dai Zhen and Zhang Xuecheng 章學誠 (1739–1801), the two leading philosophical spokesmen of the learned world in eighteenth- century China. In his early years, Dai was a close philosophical follower of Zhu Xi. As clearly shown in his 1750 essay on the question of moral cultivation versus intellectual inquiry, he defended Zhu Xi’s pedagogical emphasis on the latter on the one hand and criticized the exclusive attention of the Lu-Wang school to the former on the other. With regard to the relative importance between “principle” (li) and “mind” (xin) in Confucian philosophy, he also honored the former with a more basic status. With the intellectual component in the Cheng-Zhu tradition as his starting point, he later developed a philosophy uniquely characteristic of his

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own age in which Confucian intellectualism reigned supreme. Here, one or two examples will suffice for the purpose of illustration. First, his final, definitive view about how moral nature stands in relation to intellectual inquiry and study particularly merits attention. In his later philosophical writings, he clearly moved beyond the moral-intellectual duality in the Cheng-Zhu tradition and came to a position that may be described as intellectual monism. Consequently, he seriously questioned the distinction between moral knowledge and intellectual knowledge, a distinction central to all Neo- Confucianists irrespective of sectarian differences. In this regard, his analogy between man’s physical body and his moral nature is highly illuminating. As he argues, “[The] physical body begins with infancy and ends up with adulthood. So in the same manner, man’s moral nature begins with unenlightened ignorance and ends up with sagely intelligence. [The] physical body grows only because it feeds on nutrition from drinking and eating. Similarly, moral nature also feeds itself on learning and inquiry in order to develop into sagely intelligence.”8 In this formulation, moral nature is practically redefined as if it were epiphenomenal to intellectual inquiry. Second, Dai also took over the key concept of li (“principles”) from Zhu Xi and again intellectualized it to serve his own philosophical purposes. He rejected the orthodox Neo- Confucian conception of li as a completely selfsufficient metaphysical entity that “man acquires from Heaven and holds in mind.” Instead, based on etymological evidence, he redefined li in terms of “internal texture of things.” It therefore follows that the only way to discover such “principles” is through intellectual inquiry. In his own words, “With regard to principles of things, they can be established only after things in question are analytically studied with utmost thoroughness.”9 Thus, he transformed li from a Neo- Confucian idea of a priori moral principles, which transcend and yet give shape and meaning to things, to something like “laws” or “patterns,” which are inherent in things and thereby constitute the very object of knowledge on the part of man. It may be further noted, however, what Dai did to the concept of li, mutalis mutandis, applies to the idea of Dao as well. He also refused to see Dao as a metaphysical entity. Instead, he took Dao to be the way or ways in which the world, including the natural and the human, ceaselessly evolves. The way one seeks to understand Dao, according to him, is also the way one obtains knowledge about li, or “principles,” of things. Hence, his famous remark “The Dao to be reached above is the Dao to be learned below,” which clearly implies that Dao can be known only by going through the normal intellectual process even though a higher level of synthesis and abstraction is involved.10 There can be little doubt that the philosophical system Dai eventually completed toward the end of his life is a radically intellectualistic one. To the extent that it identifies “intellect” as the most distinguishing characteristic of human nature and elevates “knowledge” to a pivotal position in Confucian learning, his philosophy marks the beginning of a new phase in the history of Confu-

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cianism. For the fi rst time, the centuries- old absolute presupposition that man’s innate moral sense is the foundation of all intellectual creativities was seriously questioned. It is true that Dai still subscribed to the Mencian view about the moral seed in every human heart. Nevertheless, he argued forcefully that the moral seed will not grow to fruition unless and until planted on fertile intellectual soil. It is indeed no exaggeration to say that he regarded morality as a product of knowledge. As shown above, Dai Zhen began his intellectualism from within the ChengZhu tradition but in the end, he went far beyond the prescribed limits of that tradition. By contrast, Zhang Xuecheng came from the Lu-Wang background and made every effort to intellectualize its moralistic system. Highly sensitive to the rapidly changing climate of opinion of the eighteenth century, he practically embraced most of the intellectualistic assumptions of contemporary Confucian classicists. Like the majority of Qing Confucians, he believed that only original scholarship, not speculation, can lead to a true understanding of the Confucian Dao. His version of intellectualism is nowhere more characteristically revealed than in his repeated attempts at a reconstruction of the two major Neo- Confucian genealogies: the Cheng-Zhu versus the Lu-Wang. Toward the end of his life, he drew up altogether two lists of names representing the lines of transmission of the two contending schools. Several observations may be made with regard to these two reconstructed genealogies. To begin with, his explicitly stated criteria of selection are illuminating. According to him, an intellectual heir to either Zhu Xi or Lu Xiangshan must meet two basic requirements: positively, he must be comprehensively knowledgeable about the classics and respectful of tradition; negatively, he must not engage in “empty talk on moral nature.” As a result, those included in his lists are mostly “scholars” rather than “philosophers.” Second, he no longer took the difference between Zhu and Lu as intellectual inquiry versus moral cultivation. Instead, he saw it as the inevitable expressions of two opposing tendencies in man’s intellectual nature. Those who tend to grasp intuitively the significance of things and see things in large wholes would become followers of the Lu-Wang school, whereas those who tend to pursue knowledge of a vast number of subjects as well as at various levels would become followers of the Cheng-Zhu school. What is referred to above as “intuitive grasp of the significance of things” is actually Zhang’s redefinition of the term zun dexing (honoring moral nature). It is indeed remarkable that he was able to turn such a central Confucian notion about moral nature into something purely intellectual without apparently showing traces of deep psychological tension. In the very same manner, he also intellectualized Wang Yangming’s idea of liangzhi 良知 (innate knowledge of good) by reinterpreting it as a scholar’s intuitive inclination toward a par ticular type of intellectual work, be it classics, history, or poetry. Last but not least, his justly famous thesis, “The Six Classics are all history,” was also part and parcel of the rising Confucian intellectualism.11 According to

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his reconstructed genealogies, Qing classical scholars from Gu Yanwu to Dai Zhen were the true heirs of the Cheng-Zhu school, whereas Eastern Zhejiang historians from Huang Zongxi 黃宗羲 (1610–1695) and Quan Zuwang 全祖望 (1705–1755) to Zhang himself developed the Lu-Wang tradition in a new direction. Instead of engaging in “empty talk” on such general principles as “human nature” and “destiny,” Eastern Zhejiang historians have always, said Zhang, devoted themselves to historical scholarship to show how these principles actually operated in concrete human situations. In this connection, it is impor tant to point out that Zhang’s famous thesis was formulated with the specific purpose of challenging the classicists’ monopolistic claim to the Confucian Dao. As shown earlier, a generally accepted assumption among Qing scholars under the new paradigm was that the Dao discovered by sages of antiquity is all recorded in the classical texts and that the newly refi ned philological tools are capable of explicating the original meanings of these texts. Zhang considered this conception of Dao fundamentally mistaken. To him, Dao was but the quintessence of the civilized way of life and as such, it constantly evolved in history. Ancient sages did not create the Dao; they only discerned it in the everyday social activity of men and women. In his view, therefore, the Six Classics as historical texts of ancient sages could only reveal the Dao as it had evolved up to the end of classical antiquity. They could not possibly say anything about the Dao as it continued to manifest itself in the course of events and changes in later times. The real message behind Zhang’s thesis is thus unmistakable: the classicist, insofar as his specialization is confined to the texts of the Six Classics, is by defi nition incapable of seeing the Dao fully. On the other hand, it is the historian with a comprehensive understanding of the historical process from the past to the present who is eminently qualified to grasp the Dao in its essentials. In this way, he pushed intellectualism beyond the limit of the dominant paradigm of the classicists from Gu Yanwu to Dai Zhen. Critical inquiry and study as a methodological principle, he insisted, must extend to texts of all varieties, not merely the Six Classics, because historical and literary scholarship has a claim to the Dao no less legitimate than classical scholarship. Thus, we see that he greatly broadened the intellectual base of Confucianism. The extent to which Zhang intellectualized the Lu-Wang tradition may be most clearly shown by a brief contrast with its Song-Ming Neo- Confucian version. For Lu Xiangshan and Wang Yangming, Dao or li (principles) and the mind (xin) are really indistinguishable whether the concept of mind is understood in its cosmic or individual sense. They generally assumed that Dao and the mind share the same spiritual substances of which the moral order as we find it in the cosmos or in the human world is constituted. This is precisely why Neo- Confucians of the Lu-Wang persuasion always emphasized that in our quest for Dao, the moral approach must take precedence over the intellectual approach. By moral approach, it is meant that the “original mind” (Lu) or “innate knowledge” (Wang) be followed at all times as our infallible guide. The

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intellectual approach, on the other hand, is at best peripheral and at worst misleading because Dao, being internal to the mind, cannot be studied from without as if it were an ordinary object of knowledge. In Zhang’s intellectualized system, by contrast, “history” takes the place of “mind” and, consequently, Dao and history are viewed as the inside and the outside of each other. Dao in itself is indeed “above form” and therefore inaccessible to direct observation. However, we can instead grasp in understanding the invisible Dao by tracing its historical process of objectification. Thus, to know Dao is to know history. As a historian, he apparently did not believe that there was an a priori shortcut to knowledge of the past. Finally, Zhang’s self- definition as a follower of the Lu-Wang tradition also made it necessary for him to assign the concept of mind (xin) a proper place in his system of thought. However, when he came to grips with this problem, it turned out that he was once more well served by his most favorite strategy, namely, intellectualization. The pivotal function of the mind is emphatically stressed in his discussions about how to reconstruct the past. As a genealogist of philosophical schools and historian of ideas, he often spoke in such a way as if the final goal of explicating a text was to transcend language in order to get at the thoughts of its author. His direct borrowing of the Chan Buddhist expression “transmission from mind to mind without a written text” ( fawai chuanxin 法外傳心) further testifies, in par ticular, to the influence of Lu Xiangshan, who advocated more enthusiastically than any other Neo- Confucian thinker that moral ideas of ancient sages be directly grasped through a transhistorical meeting of minds.12 However, it can be easily demonstrated that the “mind” Zhang speaks of throughout his writings is a pure knowing mind without the built-in moral substance of what Lu called the “original mind.” In keeping with Zhang’s redefinition of the rivalry between the two major Neo- Confucian schools in terms of the opposing tendencies in man’s intellectual temper, he made another strategic move by developing a methodology uniquely suited to the type of scholarship he was then advocating in order to counterbalance the radical philology so exceedingly glorified by his contemporary classicists. At first he also shared the classicist’s enthusiasm about philology as a sharp tool capable of bringing to light messages of the sages hidden in classical texts. However, as his own distinct point of view about the Confucian tradition was being gradually crystallized, in time he grew increasingly critical of the philological approach as practiced in his day. His main complaint about philology was that it was effective only in getting to know the details through textual exegesis but quite inadequate to the task of grasping the large whole. This is the case because, in his eyes, the philologist fails, more often than not, to rise above the language of the text and penetrate into the thought of the author. To avoid getting lost in details in the search for Dao, he therefore proposed to establish a new methodology with “grasp of the large whole” and “leap into the minds of the ancients” as two basic principles. As we know, these two principles

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were originally formulated by Lu Xiangshan to serve the purpose of moral cultivation. The two key terms “large whole” (dati 大體) and “mind” (xin) are taken from Mencius, referring to man’s moral nature and moral mind, respectively. Zhang retained the old terms but transferred them from the moral to the intellectual domain. He had to make this subtle but profound change because he was faced with a question wholly different from that of his predecessors. For Lu-Wang Neo- Confucians, the primary question was “How to become a sage?” For Qing Confucian scholars, however, the very first question they must seek to answer was rather “How can we be sure that we understand the ideas of ancient sages correctly?” It was his dissatisfaction with the classicist’s answer to this question that prompted him to offer his own methodological principles with a distinctive Lu-Wang undertone. In this par ticular area, his intellectualization of the Lu-Wang tradition consists of two interrelated moves. First, the original moral approach with its special emphasis on the transhistorical meeting of minds was transformed into methods of interpretation and understanding allowing the possibility of getting hold of the authorial intent of a given text through as well as beyond its language. Second, the notion that the search for Dao must begin with a firm grasp of the “large whole” (dati) also provided a model for his methodological formulation. To the radical philological point of view that mastery of every technical detail is prerequisite to the understanding of a given text as a whole he opposed the principle that grasp of the whole alone can give meaning to scholarly research and determine the relevance of technical details to a chosen subject matter. Put in more general terms, he may well be characterized as a methodological holist particularly concerned with the relation of parts to the whole in interpretation. With the formulation of methodological holism, his intellectualization of the Lu-Wang tradition became complete. Dai Zhen and Zhang Xuecheng were the two most philosophically minded scholars who happened to live in the era when Confucian intellectualism reached its pinnacle. The former was a philologically oriented classicist coming from the Cheng-Zhu background, while the latter was an intellectual historian identifying himself as a custodian of the Lu-Wang tradition. Together, their new and divergent conceptions about the Confucian tradition sum up exceedingly well the multifarious developments of mainstream Confucianism to the end of the eighteenth century. In this sense, Dai and Zhang are expressing not only their own views but also those of their predecessors, including Gu Yanwu, Huang Zongxi, Chen Que, Wang Fuzhi 王夫之 (1619–1693), and Yan Yuan 顏元 (1635–1704).

3 While the main emphasis and contribution of mid- Qing Confucianism lay primarily in the domain of classical and historical scholarship, new developments

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in political and social thought also took place in early and late Qing. A brief account of them is now in order. To begin with, the Confucian idea of jingshi 經世 (ordering the world) requires a word of clarification. Broadly speaking, the Confucian Dao is always expected to function in two major categories that correspond, respectively, to the classical expression of “sageliness within and kingliness without” (neisheng waiwang 內聖外王). In the Song-Ming Neo- Confucian context, the former refers to the cultivation of moral nature and the latter to “putting the world in order,” that is, jingshi. Being this-worldly in nature, the Confucian Dao is ultimately to seek full realization in the human world, not merely contented with salvation of the individual by way of moral cultivation. This is precisely why Zhu Xi’s Four Books is headed by the Great Learning, for as a general outline of the whole Confucian project, this par ticular text states in no uncertain terms that the process of Dao’s realization begins with moral cultivation of the self but ends with “order of the state” and “peace of the world,” which are what jingshi is all about. Such being the case, it is little wonder that the notion of jingshi was deeply rooted in the consciousness of many a devout Confucian whose irresistible impulse to put the world in order often broke out in times of extreme adversity and chaos. Under such circumstances, almost as a rule, many Confucians would throw themselves into political and social action by either promoting reform or voicing protest, or both. Having thus clarified the role of jingshi in the Confucian scheme of things, let us proceed to review the functional dimension of the Confucian Dao during the Qing Period. The jingshi anxiety seized Confucian consciousness twice during the Qing, first in the seventeenth century and later in the nineteenth, both responding to a sustained political and social crisis. The first jingshi movement actually started during the late Ming but continued into the early Qing. The Manchu conquest in 1644, needless to say, shocked all the Confucians beyond measure and thereby further deepened their consciousness of the political and social crisis. Take the first generation of Qing Confucians as an example: divergent as their intellectual orientations were, Gu Yanwu, Huang Zongxi, and Wang Fuzhi all emphasized that the ultimate importance of Dao lies in its wondrous function to set things right when the human world goes terribly wrong. As a matter of fact, it was this Confucian impulse toward “reordering the world” that initially prompted them to restudy the Six Classics with the avowed purpose of clarifying the true nature of Dao. As Gu Yanwu clearly stated, “I decided not to do any writing unless it had a relation to the actual affairs of the contemporary world as indicated in the Six Classics.”13 It was his firm belief that only a thoroughgoing study of the classics can bring Dao to light, which in turn will save the world from all of its current troubles. Huang Zongxi went a step further. He proposed to enlarge the core of Confucian learning by combining the study of classics with that of history, especially history of the most recent past, for whether the Confucian Dao can

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function to improve the world hinges, according to him, entirely on whether its practitioners can make creative use of historical experience to solve contemporary problems. Here we see how he started an intellectual tradition in Eastern Zhejiang that culminated in the work of Zhang Xuecheng. A similar view was also independently developed by Wang Fuzhi, who anticipated Zhang’s definition of the aim of historical studies in terms of “setting the world in order” ( jingshi) by a full century. The pervasive jingshi trend continued well into the second generation, of which Li Yong 李顒 (1627–1705) and Yan Yuan may be taken as the two most outstanding representatives. Li was a Neo- Confucian philosopher from Shaanxi who largely followed the teaching of Wang Yangming but also gave due recognition to the contributions of the Cheng-Zhu school. Throughout his life, however, he never strayed from his Confucian idealism centering around the notion of jingshi. Among his early works, several bear the titles of jingshi and “current affairs.” In reply to a disciple in 1656, he made the categorical statement that “the central purpose of Confucian learning consists wholly in setting the world in order” as opposed to the Daoist “nonaction” and the Buddhist “nirvana.”14 Yan Yuan agreed to this view when he learned of it in 1692. With his overwhelming emphasis on the importance of political and social practice, he transformed late Ming Neo- Confucian quietism into a most radical form of activism. His sages were no longer “sitting” sages but men of action, and his Dao was neither a metaphysical entity nor a linguistic construct but a driving force of the human world constantly in motion. Indeed, of all early Qing thinkers, he alone may be said to have formulated a most powerful philosophy with the Confucian notion of jingshi at its very center. This long-lasting commitment to the ideal of “setting the world in order” during the Ming- Qing transition contributed, to a considerable extent, to a reorientation in Confucian political and social thinking. As a result, a number of noticeable new attitudes and ideas emerged. Due to space, however, only a few may be briefly indicated here. First of all, Huang Zongxi’s famous treatise, Mingyi daifang lu 明夷待訪錄 (Waiting for dawn: A plan for the prince), written in 1662, deserves special mention.15 In this little classic, he not only made a most penetrating and devastating criticism of Chinese despotism, especially its Ming version, and all the institutional malfunctions associated with it, but also offered a comprehensive blueprint for restoring the Confucian world to order. On the one hand, the treatise crystallized his lifetime reflections on the deep-rooted troubles that eventually brought about the fall of Ming and the Manchu conquest; on the other hand, it also consolidated his views about the functional dimension of Dao developed through a penetrating study of Confucian political principles in the classics vis-à-vis a close reading of dynastic histories beginning with the founding of the first unified empire. This work was enthusiastically received by its earliest readers, who generally hailed it as a set of

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reform proposals, which, if duly implemented, would “set the world right” ( jingshi). One of Huang’s arguments against imperial autocracy is particularly indicative of where Confucian political and social thought was heading. It runs roughly as follows: Sovereigns in postclassical times such as the First Emperor of Qin and the founding emperor of Han violated the terms of ser vice originally expected of a universal king. Instead of advancing the interests of the people, they abused the enormous power vested in them by identifying their supreme private interests with the common good of the empire. They looked upon the empire as if it were their private property and, as a result, the people did not even dare to think of their own interests. This argument may well be regarded as the sharpest expression of a general sense shared by many a Confucian in the seventeenth century. Gu Yanwu also offered his view as follows: it is in human nature that everyone should care for his own family and cherish his own children. Even if the Son of Heaven loves the people, he still cannot possibly do better than what they can do for themselves. Therefore, the only way for the common good to prevail in the world is for the Son of Heaven to see to it that all people can pursue their legitimate self-interests, each in his individual way. In Gu’s own words, “with all the individual self-interest (si 私) in the world combined, the common good (gong 公) is formed.”16 Obviously, both Huang and Gu revealed a keen sense of distrust as far as the imperial power was concerned. It appears that they finally came to the realization that the centuries- old Neo- Confucian project known as “Bringing Dao to the world with the blessing of the sovereign” (dejun xingdao 得君行道) was but an illusion. Consequently, in their efforts to establish a better social and ethical order, often at the local level, through a variety of educational, cultural, and philanthropic activities, they tended to seek support not so much from the state as from the local elite and the wealthy. It is particularly significant that the focus of Confucian economic thinking was steadily shifting to the question of how to protect the wealthy from the state. Huang Zongxi, Gu Yanwu, Wang Fuzhi, and Tang Zhen 唐甄 (1630–1704), to give only a few notable examples, all insisted that wealth must be kept in local communities in the care of those who created it so that in times of extreme adversity, such as famine, the poor may be provided with immediate assistance or relief. On the other hand, they also emphatically pointed out that if wealth is wholly concentrated in the imperial treasury, then the people will forever be deprived of access to it. Out of this deep skepticism about the function of the state grew a general notion that the operation of public enterprises ought to be entrusted to private entrepreneurs rather than state bureaucrats. As time went on, this notion became increasingly popu lar among Confucians and eventually was embodied in the system of “official supervision and merchant operation” at the end of the nineteenth century. In this regard, it may be noted, the interpenetration

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between the emerging business culture and Confucianism since early Qing is unmistakable. In the realm of social, economic, and ethical thought, Qing Confucianism generally exhibited a tendency toward relaxation of moral absolutism. Above, we have seen how Gu Yanwu and Huang Zongxi took “common good” and “self-interest” as mutually complementary. In fact, this new reading is equally applicable to many other Confucian polarities, notably “righteousness versus profitableness,” “frugality versus luxury,” and, above all, “heavenly principle versus human desire.” All these polarities, which had been previously understood as mutually exclusive opposites, were now redefined in relative terms. Of early Qing Confucians, Chen Que did more than anyone else to accord “human desire” a legitimate place in the Confucian scheme of things. His statement that “heavenly principle consists in the proper fulfi llment of human desires” anticipated Dai Zhen’s ethical theory by exactly a full century.17 This impor tant revision, in par ticular, shows how Confucianism reoriented itself toward the changing social and economic realities in the seventeenth century. Needless to say, it was also closely linked to the Confucians’ commitment to the ideal of the amelioration of human affairs ( jingshi). As Dai Zhen repeatedly assured his readers, his redefinition of “principles versus desire” was prompted by the simple fact that more often than not, those in power condemn the basic needs of the common people as “human desires” and summarily reject their demands for fulfillment in the name of “heavenly principles.”18

4 Our account of Qing Confucianism would not be complete without a brief note on the nineteenth century. By the 1820s at the latest, the peak of mainstream Confucianism focused on classical and historical scholarship was over, even though the research tradition continued well into the twentieth century. The nineteenth century witnessed two major departures from mainstream Confucianism. The first was a pervasive revival of the jingshi consciousness, as clearly marked by the publication in 1827 of an enormous collection of Qing writings on practical matters relating to state and society under the title Huangchao jingshi wenbian 皇朝經世文編 (Illustrious Qing dynasty documents on statecraft), edited by He Changling 賀長齡 (1785–1848) and Wei Yuan 魏源 (1794–1856). It was a revival because the title unmistakably suggests a direct borrowing of Chen Zilong’s 陳子龍 Huang Ming jingshi wenbian 皇明經世文編 (Illustrious Ming dynasty documents on statecraft) compiled in 1638. Like the rise of the jingshi movement in the seventeenth century, the revival was also a response to the deepening political, social, and economic crisis since the beginning of the Jiaqing reign (1796–1820). However, unlike its predecessor two centuries earlier, the revived jingshi movement grew rapidly in influence with time, espe-

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cially after the Opium War of 1839–1842. From Zeng Guofan 曾國藩 (1811–1872) to Kang Youwei 康有為 (1858–1927), jingshi was gradually being established as one of the four major fields of Confucian studies, along with moral philosophy (yili 義理), philology (kaozheng), and literary art (cizhang 詞章). Insofar as history figured centrally in jingshi studies, the revival was very much continuous with the original movement. But it is also impor tant to note that by the end of the nineteenth century, the jingshi category was already expanded to encompass Western learning, including contemporary political history, institutions, commerce, science, military tactics, and even Christianity. Thus, it was the idea of jingshi that provided late Qing Confucians with the much-needed justification to seek knowledge of practical relevance to China from the West. Hence, the famous formula, “Chinese learning for the fundamentals and Western learning for practical use.” It was rather natural for Western learning, especially science and technology, to be thus accommodated in Confucianism, for the Confucian idea of jingshi, being particularly attentive to all kinds of practical problems, always emphasized the importance of technical expertise and its innovation. Another new departure of Confucianism was the rise of the so- called New Text school, which began quietly with Zhuang Cunyu 莊存與 (1719–1788), an obscure scholar in the heyday of mainstream classical scholarship. Mid- Qing classicists often referred to their philological approach to classical texts as Han learning on the assumption that they generally followed the model of textual exegesis of the Han dynasty. However, in the course of his research, Zhuang discovered that there was an early Han exegetical tradition that had been completely ignored by classical philologists of his day. This was the Gongyang school (later known as the New Text school), with Dong Zhongshu 董仲舒 (ca. 179–ca. 104 b.c.e.) as its most outstanding representative. According to this tradition, Confucius was a prophet who wrote the Chunqiu (Spring and Autumn Annals) to convey his ideas about how a future king of a unified China should establish his institutions. But these ideas were not explic itly expressed in writing. Instead, they were transmitted orally from generation to generation by the followers of the prophet. According to this view, therefore, the Spring and Autumn Annals is not a simple historical text to be read literally. On the contrary, it is a repository of the prophet’s “esoteric words and great principles” whose meanings can only be grasped by way of interpretation beyond the literal sense of the text. Such being the case, the New Text tradition had remained virtually untouched by mainstream Confucians until Zhuang Cunyu appeared on the scene, for the simple reason that philology was wholly inadequate to the task. Viewed in this way, Zhuang’s excursion in New Text studies may well be understood as an isolated anomaly in the practice of the so- called Han Learning. As Ruan Yuan 阮元 (1764–1849), the nineteenth- century patron saint of Han Learning, rightly observed, Zhuang’s work remained obscure during his lifetime because his

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approach was completely out of step with mainstream classical scholarship. Thus, it would take about half a century for the significance of his studies on the Gongyang tradition to be generally recognized due, first, to the efforts of Liu Fenglu 劉逢祿 (1776–1829), his grandson, and Song Xiangfeng 宋翔風 (1776– 1860), his grandnephew, and then through the influential writings of Gong Zizhen and Wei Yuan. In more general terms, it may be suggested that nineteenth- century Confucianism took two turns, a practical turn in the revival of the jingshi impulse and an interpretive turn in the rediscovery of the Gongyang tradition. We have seen that the former was a direct response to the ever- deepening political and social crisis. Was it also the case that Zhuang Cunyu’s turn to the New Text school of Dong Zhongshu was, as his biographer Gong Zizhen said, motivated by his “secret desire to improve the world”? Not exactly. Evidence rather suggests that it began, first and foremost, as an internal revolt against mainstream classical scholarship. By the middle of the eighteenth century, the majority of philologically trained classicists tended to be obsessed with technical details in their normal research. More often than not they failed to rise from the grasp of the minute and disconnected from the grasp of the whole. But his shreds-andpatches approach could not possibly meet the spiritual needs of those Confucians who were primarily interested in discovering broad visions in classical and historical texts. As a result, a subtle methodological shift occurred: interpretation began to be emphasized as equally impor tant as, if not more important than, philological explication. In his search for the “great principles” in the Spring and Autumn Annals, Zhuang Cunyu was undoubtedly one of the earliest harbingers who set the interpretive turn in motion. From a purely methodological point of view, he may well be classed with Zhang Xuecheng and Dai Zhen, even though their pursuits in scholarship were worlds apart from one another. Interpretation was not only central to Zhang’s quest for meanings in history; Dai was also more interpretive than philological in his attempt to reconstruct a new Confucian philosophy, for which he was severely criticized by many fellow philologists. In spite of their separate origins, the two new developments of Confucianism eventually converged in the middle of the nineteenth century to form the powerful movement of reformism. On the one hand, New Text Confucians such as Gong Zizhen and Wei Yuan pushed for practical changes by expanding the notion of jingshi beyond its traditional limits. On the other hand, jingshi scholars unconnected to the Gongyang tradition such as Bao Shichen 包世臣 (1775–1855) also advocated fundamental institutional reforms. However, it was Kang Youwei who most successfully combined both trends, the interpretive and the practical, into one well-integrated academy in Canton. At the same time, he began to develop his most radical interpretation of the New Text Confucianism. Thus, in a study of the so- called forged classics, Xinxue weijing kao 新學偽經考 (A study of the “New Text” forgeries [Guangzhou: 1891]), he made a

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heroic attempt to prove that many of the Confucian texts philologically explicated by mainstream Qing classicists were actually forged by what he called the Old Text school under the leadership of Liu Xin 劉歆 (d. 22 c.e.) for the support of the New Dynasty of Wang Mang 王莽 (9–23 c.e.). He claimed that the true Confucian teachings can only be found in the sage’s own writings, principally the Spring and Autumn Annals, for even the Lunyu (Analects) suffered falsifications in the hands of Liu Xin and his colleagues. In another major work, Kongzi gaizhi kao 孔子改制考 (A study of Confucius as a reformer [Shanghai: Shanghai shudian, 1992: (1896)]), he further presented Confucius as a prophet-reformer who laid down plans for institutional reforms not only for his own age but for future generations as well. Following the Gongyang interpretation, he believed that Confucius’s Spring and Autumn Annals contains a theory of three-stage progress in human history, namely, Disorder, Relative Peace, and Universal Peace. In his view, therefore, the primary and real duty of every Confucian must by definition consist in carry ing out reforms and initiating changes necessary for his own time as originally envisioned by Confucius. Thus, the convergence of the practical turn and the interpretive turn finally culminated in Kang’s version of Confucian reformism. However, as Kang had incorporated too many Western ideas and values into his political philosophy, he also brought Qing Confucianism to an end.

notes 1.

For this text, see Wang Wencheng Gong quanshu 王文成公全書, SBCK, 3.160–169.

2.

Luo Qinshun 羅欽順, Kunzhi ji 困知記, CSJC, 13. English translation by Irene Bloom, Knowledge Painfully Acquired: “K’un- chih chi” by Lo Ch’in- shun (New York: Columbia University Press, 1987), 144–145. However, I have changed Bloom’s “without reference to the classics” to “without seeking evidence in the classics” because it is closer to the literal meaning of quzheng yu jingshu 取證於經書. Italics are also mine.

3.

See Gu Yanwu, “Yu ren shu ershiwu” 與人書二十五, in Tinglin wenji 亭林文集, juan 4, in

4.

See Chen Que, “Daxue bian” 大學辨, in “Bieji” 別集 of the Chen Que ji 陳確集, juan 14

Gu Tinglin shiwenji 顧亭林詩文集 (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1959). and 15 (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1979). 5.

Dai Zhen 戴震, DWJ, punctuated and collated by Zhao Yuxin 趙玉新 (Hong Kong:

6.

See Gu, “Da Li Zide shu” 答李子德書, in Tinglin wenji, juan 4.

7.

See Gong Zizhen, “Jiang Ziping suo zhu shu xu” 江子屏所著書序, in Gong Zizhen quanji

Zhonghua, 1974), 168.

龔自珍全集 (Shanghai: Renmin, 1979). See also Ying-shih Yü, “Zhang Xuecheng Versus Dai Zhen: A Study in Intellectual Challenge and Response in Eighteenth- Century China,” in Chinese Language, Thought, and Culture: Nivison and His Critics, ed. Philip J. Ivanhoe (Chicago and La Salle: Open Court, 1996), 128. 8.

Dai Zhen, MZS, ed. He Wenguang 何文光 (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1961), 15.

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9.

MZS, 55.

10.

Ibid.

11.

This is the central thesis of Zhang Xuecheng, Wenshi tongyi 文史通義 (Beijing: Guji, 1956).

12.

For Zhang’s phrase, see his “Shizhu” 史注, in Wenshi tongyi, juan 3, “Neipian” 內篇, 3.

13.

Gu Yanwu, Gu Tinglin shiwen ji 顧亭林詩文集 (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1959), 95.

14.

See Ying-shih Yü, “Toward an Interpretation of the Intellectual Transition in SeventeenthCentury China,” JAOS 100, no. 2 (1980), note 18 on Li Yong’s Erqu ji 二曲集.

15.

See Wm. Theodore de Bary, Waiting for the Dawn: A Plan for the Prince: Huang Tsung-hsi’s “Ming-i-tai-fang lu” (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993).

16.

Gu Yanwu, Yuan chaoben Rizhi lu 原抄本日知錄, punctuated by Xu Wenshan 徐文珊

17.

See Chen Que ji 陳確集 (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1979), 157.

18.

See MZS, 1–3, 8–10, and 96.

(Taipei: Minglun, 1970), 68.

bibliogr aphy Professor Yu’s 1982 article on Dai Zhen and Zhu Xi as well as his 1987 article on Qing dynasty xueshu sixiang have been added to the following original bibliography.—Eds. Bloom, Irene. Knowledge Painfully Acquired: The “K’un- chih chi” by Lo Ch’in- shun. New York: Columbia University Press, 1987. Chin, Ann-ping, and Mansfield Freeman. Tai Chen on Mencius: Explorations in Words and Meanings. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1990. de Bary, William Theodore, ed. The Unfolding of Neo- Confucianism. New York and London: Columbia University Press, 1975. ——. Waiting for the Dawn: A Plan for the Prince: Huang Tsung- hsi’s “Ming-i- tai-fang lu.” New York: Columbia University Press, 1993. Elman, Benjamin  A. Classicism, Politics, and Kinship: The Ch’ang- chou School of New Text Confucianism in Late Imperial China. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1990. ——. From Philology to Philosophy: Intellectual and Social Aspects of Changes in Late Imperial China. Cambridge, Mass.: Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University, 1984. Huang, Chin-shing. Philosophy, Philology, and Politics in Eighteenth- Century China: Li Fu and the Lu-Wang School Under the Ch’ing. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Levenson, Joseph R. Confucian China and Its Modern Fate: The Problem of Intellectual Continuity. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1958. Liang, Ch’i- chao. Intellectual Trends in the Ch’ing Period. Trans. Immanuel C. Y. Hsu. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1959. Nivison, David S. The Life and Thought of Chang Hsüeh- ch’eng (1738–1801). Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1966.

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Peterson, Willard. Bitter Gourd: Fang I- chih and the Impetus for Intellectual Change. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979. Qian, Mu 錢穆. Zhonguo jin sanbainian xueshu shi 中國三百年學術史 (Chinese intellectual history of the last three hundred years). Shanghai: Shangwu (Commercial Press), 1937. Yü, Ying-shih. “Dai Zhen and the Zhu Xi Tradition.” In Essays in Commemoration of the Golden Jubilee of the Fung Ping Shan Library, Studies in Chinese Librarianship, Literature, Language, History and Arts, ed. Chan Ping-leung, 376–392. Hong Kong: HKU Press, 1982. ——. Lun Dai Zhen yu Zhang Xuecheng 論戴震與章學誠 (On Dai Zhen and Zhang Xuecheng). Beijing: Sanlian, 2000. ——. “Qingdai xueshu sixiangshi zhongyao guannian tongshi” 清代學術思想史重要觀念 通釋. In Zhongguo sixiang chuantong de xiandai quanshi 中國思想傳統的現代詮釋, 405–486. Taipei: Lianjing, 1987. ——. “Some Preliminary Observations on the Rise of Ch’ing Confucian Intellectualism.” Tsing Hua Journal of Chinese Studies, n.s., 11, nos. 1 and 2 (December 1975). ——. “Tai Chen’s Choice Between Philosophy and Philology.” AM, third series, 2, part  1 (1989). ——. “Zhang Xuecheng Versus Dai Zhen: A Study in Intellectual Challenge and Response in Eighteenth- Century China.” In Chinese Language, Thought, and Culture: Nivison and His Critics, ed. Philip J. Ivanhoe, 121–153. Chicago and La Salle: Open Court, 1996.

6. The Two Worlds of Honglou meng (Dream of the Red Chamber)

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wo worlds in sharp contrast to each other are created by Cao Xueqin 曹雪芹 (1716?–1763) in his novel Honglou meng 紅樓夢 (Dream of the Red Chamber), two worlds which, for the sake for distinction, I shall call the “Utopian world” and the “world of reality.” These two worlds, as embodied in the novel, are the world of Daguanyuan 大觀園1 and the world that existed outside it. The difference between these two worlds is indicated by a variety of opposing symbols, such as “purity” and “impurity,” “love” and “lust,” “falsity” and “truth,” and the two sides of the Precious Mirror of Romance. Throughout the book, mention of these two worlds constitutes a most impor tant clue which, if grasped intelligently, will enable us to understand the significance that lies behind the author’s creative intentions. These two worlds are so vividly portrayed and so sharply contrasted that all readers of the novel must, in one way or another, to a greater or lesser degree, be sensitive to their existence. In the past, however, for a long time the nature of “Redology” (hongxue 紅學)2 was such that its chief efforts were devoted to research on the historical aspect of the novel. Our “Redologists,” being mostly historians or adherents to the historical method, had naturally focused their attention on the world of reality that the novel described, so much so that the other world in the novel—the ideal world, the castle in the air that the author had “labored ten years to create”—was utterly neglected. In fact, these scholars’ chief concern had been to demolish this castle in the air and restore it to the

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bricks and stones that belonged to the world of reality. Under the influence of the “autobiographical approach,” restoration efforts went even further, with a shifting of emphasis from the world of reality in the novel to the world of reality in which the author once lived. In fact, what has been called for half a century Redology, or Honglou meng scholarship, was none other than Cao Xueqin scholarship, or the study of the man Cao Xueqin and his family history. This substitution of Cao Xueqin scholarship for Honglou meng scholarship necessarily involved certain sacrifices, one of the greatest of which, as I see it, is the obscuring of the line of division between the two worlds of the novel. The climax of historical research came during the years 1961 to 1963 when scholars in mainland China conducted an enthusiastic search for the “whereabouts of Daguanyuan inside the capital.” By this, people are given the distinct impression that Cao Xueqin’s garden exists in the world of reality and is part of it. The ideal world in the book is blanked out and, if one may borrow the words of the author, “It is a world wiped clean; only a sheet of white remains!” Still, it would be unfair to say that during the past few decades no par ticular notice has been paid to the portraiture of the ideal world in the novel. As early as 1953 or 1954, Yu Pingbo had emphasized the idealistic element of Daguanyuan and observed that, judging from the level of vision on which it was imagined, the garden could well be a creation out of nowhere. He quoted Jia Yuanchun’s words from chapter 18, “Now all beautiful features of Heaven and Earth are assembled,” to illustrate that Daguanyuan was nothing but a paradisiacal mirage conjured up by the author’s pen. In the history of Redology, the point that he made had the significance of what Thomas S. Kuhn called a “paradigm,”3 and it is certainly lamentable that circumstances had forbidden him to give full assertion to this revolutionary viewpoint. In 1972, the first piece of writing appeared devoting a full discussion to the ideal world in the novel, a paper entitled “On Daguanyuan,” written by Stephen C. Soong. It argued that the garden definitely did not exist in the real world, that it was in truth an unreal creation born of the author’s imagination to suit his creative intentions. Soong even went as far as to say: Daguanyuan is a garden that isolates the girls from the outside world, whereby it is hoped that the girls would lead carefree and leisurely lives and avoid being polluted by the filthy influences of the other sex. It would be best if the girls could preserve their youth forever, and not marry away. In this sense, Daguanyuan can be said to be a protective fortress for the girls which exists only in the ideal realm but has no foundation in reality.4 This statement, with its unpretentious and apt observation, will be the starting point of my discussion on the two worlds of The Dream of the Red Chamber. To say that Daguanyuan was an ideal world created out of Cao Xueqin’s imagination automatically brings up an impor tant question: If Daguanyuan

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was a “fairyland” where “no mortal is allowed to tread,” then what would be the position of the “Land of Illusion” (taixu huanjing 太虛幻境) mentioned in chapter 5 in relation to the whole book? Certainly we can call this Land of Illusion a dream within a dream and an illusion among illusions, but having established this, will we not be obliged to follow up by saying that in the novel there are three worlds altogether? On this point, the commentator Zhiyan Zhai 脂硯齋5 (Rouge Ink stone) made the following observation: “Daguanyuan is the Land of Illusion for Baoyu and the twelve golden maidens—how can this fact be treated casually?”6 As Zhiyan Zhai saw it, Daguanyuan was the shadow of the Land of Illusion projected onto the world of man, and originally, these two worlds were one and the same and their images fitted each other exactly. There being no doubt that Zhiyan Zhai, incognito though he (or she) is, was intimately acquainted with the author and his creative intentions, we should feel safe to count his commentaries as the strongest side evidence if, at the same time, sufficient internal evidence is found in the novel itself. On this point, the novel does supply the following direct evidence: In chapter 5, Baoyu follows Qin Keqing “to a place where vermilion railings and white stones, green trees and clear streams came into sight, unvisited by man and unpolluted by dust. In his dream, Baoyu was enraptured and thought, ‘This place is really interesting. I am willing to spend the rest of my life here, even if I have to forsake my family for it.’ ” The place described here was in fact the Daguanyuan that appeared later on in the novel, for in chapter 17, the same line, “vermilion railings and white stones, green trees and clear streams” was magnified into a description of the landscape near Xinfang Yuan 沁芳園 before which Jia Zheng and Baoyu passed on their tour of the garden. Also, in chapter 33, the novel tells us that “having moved into the garden, Baoyu felt completely satisfied, and could find nothing more to be unhappy about.” A close comparison between the passages that come before and after these lines will enable us to see the kind of relationship that existed between the Land of Illusion and Daguanyuan. If this piece of evidence seems a little oblique, a more straightforward and explicit one can be quoted from chapter 17, which tells us how, departing from Hengwu Yuan 蘅蕪苑, Jia Zheng, Baoyu, and others came before a jade-stone plaque. Here Jia Zheng raised the question, “What words should we inscribe here?” The crowd said, “Only Penglai, Land of Fairies, seems fitting,” but Jia Zheng shook his head and said nothing. At the sight of this place, Baoyu was suddenly reminded of something, and searching his memory, it seemed to him that he had seen this place somewhere before, and yet he could not remember on what day or month or year. Jia Zheng then told Baoyu to suggest a title, but Baoyu, with his heart set on recapturing that fleeting scene, could not gather his thoughts to perform this assignment.

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Then Jia Zheng specially added the remark: “This place is strategic, so you had better come up with a good one.” Now where actually had Baoyu seen this jade-stone plaque before? Maybe he could not recall it himself, but readers will remember that in chapter 5, while touring the Land of Illusion, Baoyu had “followed the fairy maiden to a place where they saw a stone plaque, placed sideways, on which were written the words ‘Land of Illusion.’ ” Was not this the very place Baoyu was trying to dig up in his memory? As Jia Zheng had emphatically said, “This place is strategic.” It certainly is, for what place in the novel can be more impor tant than the Land of Illusion? The same jade-stone plaque was later named “Precious Mirror of the Heavenly Fairies” by Baoyu, and Liu Laolao, mistaking the name for “Precious Temple of the Jade Emperor,” kowtowed enthusiastically to it. Thus, by alternately using the names “Penglai, Land of Fairies,” “Precious Mirror of the Heavenly Fairies,” and “Precious Temple of the Jade Emperor,” the author was reminding us time and again that Daguanyuan does not exist on earth, but is in heaven, and that it is not an aspect of reality, but an aspect of the ideal. To put it more precisely, Daguanyuan and the Land of Illusion are indeed one and the same. Now that we see that Daguanyuan was actually no less than the Land of Illusion for Baoyu and his female companions, it becomes understandable why the plan for building it must have a pretext as weighty as the home-visit of Yuanchun, the Royal Concubine. One comment in chapter 16 of the Zhiyan Zhai edition says: “Daguanyuan was built to fit the occasion of the home-visit—this key factor reveals the purpose of the author’s grand design.” In addition to this significant design, an interesting piece of narrative in the opening pages of chapter 17 tells us that after the garden was completed, Jia Zhen offered to lead Jia Zheng on a tour of it to see whether changes should be made anywhere, adding that Jia She had already made his tour—which seemed to imply that Jia She was the first man to have gone into the garden. This was purposely misleading, however, for later on it was said, “Because Qin Zhong occupied Baoyu’s thoughts, causing him unending grief, Grandma Jia gave orders for Baoyu to be taken into the garden so that he could amuse himself there.” Right after this, we are told that Baoyu stumbled upon Jia Zheng unawares and was ordered to follow him back into the garden to write inscriptions for the tablets. The latter part of this narrative implies at least two things: first, that Baoyu was the very first person to enter Daguanyuan to admire the scenery—he had been there more than once before Jia Zheng, Jia She, and others went in to examine the completed works; and second, since Daguanyuan had the significance of a Utopia or a Pure Land for Baoyu and the girls, it is imperative that they themselves, rather than anyone else, should perform the task of naming the various pieces of architecture there. The fairyland where “no mortal is allowed to tread” would

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not permit of pollution by outsiders. Thus, Zhiyan Zhai in his summing-up comment for chapter 17 said: “Baoyu is the beauty of all beauties, and for this reason, he must take up the task of inscribing the tablets in Daguanyuan.” And another comment of his also said: “The accidental nature of the encounter is precisely what intrigues us. If Baoyu was specially summoned to inscribe the tablets, the passage would lose all the literary merits that it now has.” At such points, these commentaries help us penetrate the author’s intentions, thus allowing us to understand the full meaning of many of his statements. And there is seldom an idle word in the Red Chamber narrative. We all know that Baoyu did not compose inscriptions for all the tablets in Daguanyuan that day. As a matter of fact, there were so many pieces of architecture in Daguanyuan that Baoyu could not possibly have coined names for them all. Who else had contributed to this task? The answer came in chapter  76, when Daiyu and Shi Xiangyun were spending the Mid-Autumn Festival evening together, admiring the moon and writing poetry. Shi Xiangyun started praising the names “Tubitang” 凸碧堂 (Convex Blue Hall) and “Aojingguan” 凹晶館 (Concave Crystal House) as being fresh and unconventional, whereupon Daiyu said: To tell you the truth, these names were coined by me. You remember that year when Baoyu was put to the test—he thought up names for several places, some were used, some were changed, but there were places he didn’t cover. Afterwards all of us worked together and fi xed up names for those places that still didn’t have any. We noted the source of those names as well as the location of each place, and handed them in together for Elder Sister to see; then she brought the list out for Uncle to have a look. To our surprise, Uncle liked our suggestions, and even said, “If I only knew, I would have asked the girls to do it together that day. It would have been such fun.” So, every one of the names suggested by me was adopted, without so much as changing one single character. So finally, in this passage, we are given to know whatever was left unsaid previously about that day’s inscription of tablets in Daguanyuan. The truth comes out that, apart from Baoyu, it was the girls, especially Daiyu, who performed the task of naming the various spots in the garden. Once again we are impressed by the author’s grand design, for there is a span of sixty chapters between the previous mention of the episode in chapter 17 and this passage from chapter 76, which for the author meant nearly the end of his portion of the novel. Yet despite this long interval, he was able to link the beginning and end of the narrative together meaningfully. Daguanyuan, being the embodiment of the ideal world, was an unreal world that the author had lavished great imagination to create. To Baoyu, the protagonist of the book, it was the only world that had any significance. Baoyu and the girls around him practically treated the world outside Daguanyuan as nonexis-

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tent, or, if they took note of it at all, saw in it only negative meaning, for this outside world stands for squalor and degradation. Most readers are also inclined to neglect this outside world of reality and instead fi x their gaze on the attractions of the Utopian garden. But Cao Xueqin himself was not guilty of this negligence, for he had attached equal importance and devoted an equal amount of care to the portrayal of the unclean and degraded world of reality. It becomes obvious, therefore, that a difference in viewpoint separates the author, the protagonist, and the reader. It is the inability to settle this impor tant question of viewpoint that impedes the establishment of the “autobiographical approach,” which wishfully lumps Baoyu and the author together as one person. Successful as he was in creating a Pure Land that existed in the realm of the ideal, Cao Xueqin was deeply aware of the impossibility of disconnecting this Pure Land from the filthy world of reality. Not only is such disconnection impossible, but actually, the two worlds are forever closely integrated, and any attempt to view them as separate entities and to interpret each of them in isolation must result in failure to grasp the novel’s internal coherence. To understand this, it is necessary for us to examine the realistic foundations of Daguanyuan. The construction of Daguanyuan is clearly related in chapter 16. The site begins on the east side, rising from the garden of the East Mansion, and extends to the north, covering a distance that, if exactly measured, amounts to three and a half li. This is followed by a more detailed account: Orders were first given to the workmen to pull down the walls and buildings in the Ning Mansion’s Huifang Yuan 會芳園 so that it can open straight into the east court of the Rong Mansion. . . . As there is already running water coming into Huifang Yuan from under the north corner of the wall, there is no need to look elsewhere for water. Not enough rocks and plants can be taken from the spot for the present purpose, but bamboos, trees, rocks, pavilions, and even railings can be borrowed from the old garden of the Rong Mansion, where Jia She lived. It is a pity that so far, scholars influenced by the “autobiographical approach” have not probed further into these lines, which are pregnant with meaning.7 We have already seen that, as the author and critics have repeatedly pointed out, the birth of Daguanyuan was an event of first importance in the novel. Judging from this, the author’s detailed account of the realistic origin of the garden cannot be without motivation. Of course, all our doubts would be cleared if the adherents of the autobiographical approach could establish that Daguanyuan was erected from the old residence of the Cao family, but, this being impossible, we have to look for explanations elsewhere.

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According to the above- quoted passage, the site of Daguanyuan was a combination of the sites of two older gardens—the Ning Mansion’s Huifang Yuan and the old garden of the Rong Mansion, where Jia She lived. In chapter 17, with reference to the text, “On it mosses grew in patches, and creepers peeped out from the shadows,” Zhiyan Zhai made the following comment: “(Daguanyuan) being reconstructed from the two older gardens, it is essential to describe it in such a way—this description reveals an extremely fine perception.” From this we can see that both author and critic, explicitly or implicitly, took pains to remind the reader that impor tant information was concealed in these two older gardens. But what exactly was concealed? An answer to this must begin with an examination of the character Jia She, who was one of the dirtiest people in the novel. Jia She’s character was not presented with the restraint that the author usually observed when exposing the sins of the older generation, a restraint we can perhaps best understand by remembering the saying, “One should cover up for one’s seniors.” Conversely, the ugly deeds given full treatment in the book are largely attributed to the likes of Jia Zhen, Jia Lian, and Xue Pan, who belonged to the same generation as Baoyu—a point that certainly carried “autobiographical” significance.8 Nevertheless, the usual restraint on the part of the author did not spare Jia She his lashings. The entirety of chapter 46 was devoted to an account, plus condemnation, of his outrageous efforts to make the maid Yuanyang his concubine. The author opined through the mouth of Xiren: “Really— we shouldn’t be saying this—but this Elder Master is a real sex maniac. He just wouldn’t keep his hands off anyone with a halfway decent face.” We suspect, too, that the abundant descriptions of adulterous conduct on the part of Jia Lian were meant to reflect the old proverb “Like father, like son.” What this adds up to is that the garden Jia She once inhabited, and the bamboo, trees, rocks and stones, as well as the pavilions, groves, and railings that had been associated with his presence, must likewise be contaminated. An examination of the garden of the East Mansion reveals even more sordid secrets. As Liu Xianglian’s famous remark goes, “Apart from these two stone lions, I’m afraid nothing in your East Mansion is clean—nothing, not even your cats and dogs.” Still, this is a general statement and the true character of this place called Huifang Yuan requires further analysis. In the chapters preceding chapter  16, before Daguanyuan came into being, Huifang Yuan was, in fact, the stage on which many of the novel’s impor tant episodes had been enacted. Parts of this garden still identifiable today include Tianxiang Lou 天香樓, Ningxi Xuan 凝曦軒, Dengxian Ge 登仙閣, etc. Of these, Tianxiang Lou was, of course, well known for being a den of iniquity, for chapter 13 was originally entitled, “The Adulterous Qin Keqing Met Her Death in Tianxiang Lou” (Qin Keqing sifeng Longjinwei, Wang Xifeng xieli Ningguofu). Nor did the other two places carry cleaner reputations; Ningxi Xuan was the place where the gentlemen, young and old, gathered for drinking and merrymaking, a place where they went “to do Heaven-knows-what,” in Fengjie’s words. What they did

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we can easily imagine if we look up chapter 75,9 where it tells us that what kept Jia Zhen and others at Tianxiang Lou were the gambling, the dirty talk, and the young boys who were there to satisfy the men’s lustful pleasures. As for Dengxian Ge, it was the place where Qin Keqing’s and the maid Ruizhu’s coffins were temporarily placed after the two had killed themselves, the one by hanging and the other by striking her head against a pillar. And chapter 11 gives us one more scandal about Huifang Yuan—“On seeing Fengjie, Jia Rui lusted after her.” It was, in fact, in that garden that the two had first encountered each other. We can now draw the conclusion that the old garden where Jia She had lived and Huifang Yuan of the East Mansion were in reality two of the dirtiest places in the world, and yet they formed the site and foundation on which Daguanyuan was erected—that ideal world and cleanest of all human abodes. Can such an arrangement be accidental? Even the cleanest element in Daguanyuan—the water—had to be obtained from the aqueducts of Huifang Yuan. On this point, Zhiyan Zhai made the following comment: “Water is the feature that matters most in the garden; hence, it must be given explicit treatment in the writing.” Thus, we become aware of the author’s desire to inform us at all times that the ideal world in the novel was actually erected on the foundation of a real world that harbored the greatest vice. He wanted us to bear in mind that in fact the greatest purity was born of the greatest impurity. If the novel were completed by Cao Xueqin, or if a complete version were handed down to us intact, we would certainly be told that the ultimate fate of that great purity is to return to impurity. “She wanted to be clean, but clean she never was; she said her life was a Void, but was it really so?” These two lines from the prophetic chapter 5 embody not only Miaoyu’s fate, but also the fate of all of Daguanyuan, for among the inhabitants of Daguanyuan, was not Miaoyu the one who was most addicted to cleanliness? On the one hand, Cao Xueqin had devoted wholehearted efforts to the creation of an ideal world— a world he wished could last forever in the realm of man. On the other hand, his pen had mercilessly carved out a world of reality, the exact foil to that ideal world. All the forces of this world of reality will continuously batter at the ideal world until the latter is completely destroyed. The two worlds of The Dream of the Red Chamber are interwoven in an inseparable relationship. Moreover, the inner dynamics of this relationship push the novel toward a definite direction. It is when this dynamic relationship develops to its utmost that the tragic consciousness of the novel will rise to its greatest height. The next part of this essay goes a step further to substantiate our two-world theory with an examination of how the people of Daguanyuan themselves looked upon the contrast between squalor and cleanliness. Especially important here are Daiyu’s thoughts as revealed in the famous flower-burial episode, a deeply significant scene that occurs in chapter 23, when Baoyu and his female companions were just starting their ideal life in Daguanyuan. The story tells us:

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It was in the middle of the Third Month. That day, after the morning meal, Baoyu took his copy of the Huizhen ji 會真記 to the bridge at Xinfang Gate 沁芳閘 and sat down on a stone under the peach blossoms. He opened his book and read it carefully from the beginning. As he came to a place where it told of “fallen blossoms forming a pattern,” a wind swept past, and tore down more than half of the flowers from the peach tree, covering his book as well as the ground with petals. He wanted to shake them off, but fearing they might be trampled upon, he held the petals and went to the edge of the pond, and shook them into the water; the petals, floating on the surface, drifted away out of Xinfang Gate. Going back to the original spot, he saw that there were still a lot of peach blossoms scattered on the ground. Just when he was hesitating, he heard somebody speak behind him, “What are you doing here?” Turning around, he saw it was Lin Daiyu, carry ing a flower-hoe on her shoulder, from which was suspended a chiffon sack, and holding a flower-broom in her hand. Baoyu laughed and said: “Good, good, come and sweep up these flowers and dump them on the water, will you? I’ve just dumped quite a few over there.” Lin Daiyu answered: “It isn’t good to leave them on the water. Look, the water here is clean, but once it flows out, it gets mixed up with the dirty and stinking water that people pour from their homes, and the flowers would still be spoilt. In that corner, I have a tomb for flowers. Let’s sweep these up and put them in this silk bag, and cover it up with soil. As the days pass, they will simply dissolve in the soil. Isn’t that much cleaner?” Way back in the last years of the Qing dynasty, Peking opera had dramatized this well-known scene, and the famous actors, Mei Lanfang and Ouyang Youqian, had made it popular with their adaptations in the early years of the Republic. Because public interest had converged on Baoyu and Daiyu’s romance, especially the sentimentalism of “Over the flower tomb, Daiyu shed tears for the fallen petals” in chapter 27, while Redologists too often concentrated on the source of the term “flower burial,”10 no one has yet given serious thought to the implications behind Daiyu’s act of burying flowers. Let me state here that Daiyu’s flower-burial episode is the author’s first explicit indication of the difference that lies between the two worlds in the novel. I say first because the episode is the first incident that occurred after Baoyu and his companions had moved into Daguanyuan. Daiyu’s thoughts were obvious enough— every thing in Daguanyuan was clean while every thing outside was dirty and smelt of decay, so that burying the fallen blossoms inside the garden and letting them dissolve in the soil would enable them to remain clean forever. Here, of course, the flowers symbolize the female inhabitants of the garden. Daiyu’s flower-burying poem manifests this by saying:

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Better sweet remains in silken purse be saved And cupp’d in a mound of earth so pure. That which arrived clean, clean it must go, Lest in muddy waters it be soiled.

A par ticular flower was claimed by each young lady during the Feast of the Flowers described in chapter 63, and Fengjie exclaimed in chapter 42, “Isn’t that the Flower Fairy in the garden!” Likewise, the chapter 78 story of Jingwen’s transformation into a flower fairy after she died must be interpreted in the same light. Following this flower symbolism, the only way for the inhabitants of Daguanyuan to preserve their cleanliness and chastity would be to anchor themselves permanently in the ideal realm and not venture beyond it. I have said previously that Baoyu and the girls practically viewed the outside world as nonexistent, but this is only to point out how ardently these people wished that their ideal world could last forever and how they longed for cleanliness of the soul; it does not imply that they were entirely ignorant of realities outside the garden. As the author said, the girls in Daguanyuan were “innocent and naive,” but not childish or stupid. On the one hand, they distinguished sharply between the two different worlds, and on the other, they were well aware of the great harm the world of reality could wreak on the ideal world. These two levels of significance are ingeniously conveyed to us through the use of concrete imagery in the flower-burial episode. The novel sometimes also depicts the hostility of the outside world in explicit and penetrating language. In chapter 49, when the wonderful life in Daguanyuan was just beginning to unfold with the arrival of such important persons as Xue Baochai, Xing Xiuyan, Li Wen, Li Qi, etc., Shi Xiangyun gave Baochai this frank warning: “You can play and laugh and eat as much as you want to in front of Grandmother or when you’re in the garden. When you’re in Auntie’s chamber, and Auntie happens to be in, you can chat with her and stay a while. But when Auntie is not there, don’t you go in. All of those people in that house are bad—they want to harm us.” On hearing this, Baochai laughed and said, “Talk of you being naive—well, you’re not entirely naive; but though you’re not naive, your mouth is far too honest.” Here, Shi Xiangyun was being quite outspoken, and even betrayed a mistrust for Madam Wang. It seemed that when the residents of Daguanyuan ventured outside their Utopia, the only spot they could tread safely was in the presence of Grandma Jia, while everyone else set out to harm them. Grandma Jia was accepted as a kindred spirit chiefly because of her former status as one of the twelve maidens of Zhenxia Ge 枕霞閣 and thus, in the eyes of the Daguanyuan crowd, could be accepted as “one of us.” This strong in-group feeling—“Us” versus “Them”—that bound the inhabitants of Daguanyuan so closely together must have risen from their awareness of the vast differences between the two worlds.

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However, in the in-group society of Daguanyuan, not everyone was equal, for the ideal world operates according to a distinct order of its own. Wang Anshi had observed that in the Peach Blossom Spring, the fi rst Utopia ever created in Chinese literature, “there were neither king nor subject, only fathers and sons,” meaning that in the Peach Blossom Spring, though no political order existed, an ethical order did prevail. In Daguanyuan, order was established chiefly on the principle of “love,” and quite logically, the novel concludes with The Celestial Roster of Lovers. However, with this Roster now inaccessible to us, we have no means of finding out exactly what kind of order the author had in mind to establish in his ideal world; all we can say is that apart from “love,” other factors also affect the ranking on the Roster. We should therefore not forget to take into account such attributes as beauty, talent, behav ior, and even status. Here I shall only mention one vital clue that scholars have more or less neglected—the question of Baoyu’s relationship with the girls. On this point, the 1760 version of the novel gives an impor tant comment by Zhiyan Zhai in chapter 46: “All girls that appear in this Record of Love must register with Brother Stone (Baoyu) first.” The term “love” here is the same as that in the Roster of Love. Judging from this, it seems certain that each character’s position on the Celestial Roster must be greatly affected by the degree of intimacy she shared with Baoyu, and a study of how each person registered with Brother Stone becomes essential to our understanding of Daguanyuan’s inner structure. This brings us to the question of architectural design in the garden, which I think is highly relevant to the novel’s internal structure and which Stephen C. Soong has, quite correctly, from the point of view of literary criticism, associated with the author’s method of characterization. True to the statement “A man’s house is an extension of himself,”11 the hero’s character is often revealed by the way his house is arranged. In his design of Daguanyuan’s setting, Cao Xueqin went even further than this, for he made use of the variations in size and fineness, as well as the distances between the buildings in the garden, to describe the order that prevailed in the ideal world. Some examples illustrating this can be quoted from chapter 17, which tells of how Baoyu made his rounds to inscribe the tablets for the various buildings in the garden. In this chapter, the narrative dwells emphatically on four places—Xiaoxiang Guan 瀟湘館, Daoxang Cun 稻香村, Hengwu Yuan 蘅蕪苑, and Yihong Yuan 怡紅院, in each case letting the reader in on certain symbolically significant information. As everyone who saw it had enthusiastically exclaimed, Xiaoxiang Guan was a “marvellous place,” and Baoyu gave it the title “Phoenix’s Abode,” signifying its importance as the first stop on the tour of the Imperial Concubine. In the words of Zhiyan Zhai, this “marvellous place” was “the only fitting residence for Daiyu.” Chapter 23 also reported Daiyu as saying to Baoyu, “As for myself, I prefer Xiaoxiang Guan,” at which Baoyu clapped his hands and said, laughing, “You feel exactly as I do, for I was about to ask you to pick this place, too. I’ll live in Yihong Yuan. We two will be close together, quiet and undisturbed.” This is a fine ex-

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ample of how distance and setting are utilized to reflect the special relationship that existed between Baoyu and Daiyu. When Jia Zheng asked Baoyu how he liked Daoxiang Cun, Baoyu immediately replied that it was “far inferior to the ‘Phoenix’s Abode,’ ” and then criticized it for its artificiality and lack of natural flavor, much to Jia Zheng’s displeasure. Later, Baoyu failed to produce a poem using Daoxiang Cun as subject matter, a task that Daiyu completed for him. All this shows that Li Wan, who was the occupant of Daoxiang Cun, stood quite low in Baoyu’s opinion, she being the only woman in Daguanyuan who had had a husband and he was, as we all know, one who held definite views toward married women. But it is fitting that Baoyu’s critical attitude should be limited to this oblique way of expression, for after all, Li Wan was his sister-in-law and had an excellent character. The point that is particularly interest ing here is the distinction between “artificiality” and “naturalness.” It is indeed not without reason that Li Wan is placed next to last, just above Qin Keqing, in the “Main Register of the Twelve Golden Maidens of Jinling.” Jia Zheng’s remark on Hengwu Yuan was “What a boring place!”— again betraying the author’s deprecation, but delivered from the mouth of the father so that Baoyu’s opinion could be reserved. In this way, the author ingeniously avoided the problem, pointed out by Yu Pingbo, of having to state explicitly which girl—Daiyu or Baochai—was considered superior. Here Zhiyan Zhai gave a comment that is quite perceptive of the author’s intention: “This treatment makes the later story all the more colorful—before getting any praise, Hengwu Yuan is criticized first. Other wise, the balance of power between Baochai and Daiyu is a really difficult subject to treat.” And, later in chapter 56, a remark from Tanchun—“What a pity that two big establishments like Hengwu Yuan and Yihong Yuan should produce nothing profitable!”—reveals almost casually that the two were rivals in size among the residences in Daguanyuan. Thus, we see clearly the “balance of power” between Baochai and Daiyu—for although Daiyu and Baoyu lived in close proximity, Baochai’s and Baoyu’s residences were equals in size. Where architectural design was concerned, the significance of Yihong Yuan can be seen from three features: first, the fact that Baoyu wanted to give the place the name “Red Fragrance and Green Jade” for its double implication— a thought that was echoed later when he composed poetry on the order of Yuanchun; second, the fact that Yihong Yuan was the only house in Daguanyuan furnished with a full-size mirror— symbol of the Precious Mirror of Romance; and third, the fact that all the water in Daguanyuan “collects at this place and then flows out from under that wall.” Zhiyan Zhai was indeed right in saying, “Yihong Yuan was the confluence of all Daguanyuan—this represents a major theme of the book.” This is because the author is using the garden’s architectural design to show how Baoyu related with each of the girls, and through this, to offer an explanation for the inner structure of the ideal world. It is in this light that we

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should comprehend Zhiyan Zhai’s statement that everyone who appeared in the Record of Love must register with “Brother Stone” first. What is more, the fact that all the water, after collecting at Yihong Yuan, flowed outside from under the wall, exactly echoes what Daiyu said when she was burying the flowers— “The water here is clean, but once it flows out, it becomes dirty and stinks.” So far, this essay has emphasized the concept that the two worlds in The Dream of the Red Chamber were a direct contrast between cleanliness and uncleanliness, and numerous examples have been quoted to support that argument. However, there is one concrete and empirical question that we still have to face—whether, after all, life in Daguanyuan was all that clean. It is imperative that we answer this question, for if the truth came out that Daguanyuan was actually just as dirty as the world of reality outside, then the point that we are forcing— that the two worlds are exact foils to each other—will fall short of solid proof. To test this vital point in our argument, we can no longer adopt our hitherto method of proof by example, because there cannot be any evidence of what is nonexistent in Daguanyuan—namely, smut. What we can say is that, in principle, within the realm of Daguanyuan, Cao Xueqin wrote only about love and not lust. Rather, he had given the most vivid descriptions of the lasciviousness of the outside world so that it could serve as a sharp contrast to the life of rarefied emotions that was led by those who dwelt in the garden. As every reader knows, Daguanyuan was basically a girls’ world, a world in which no male had ever lived, except Baoyu. Once we made sure that Baoyu led a clean life there, the chasteness of this ideal world would be initially guaranteed. In chapter 31, the author gave us an impor tant clue to this question by telling us that when Baoyu asked Qingwen to bathe with him, Qingwen had laughed and said, “That time Bihen sent you off to your bath, you took fully two or three hours. Not knowing what you were up to, we didn’t dare go in. After you finished, I went in to take a look, and there were puddles of water around the legs of the bed, and even the mattress was dripping wet. Heaven knows how you washed yourself.” A lot seems to be implied in these words, for Qingwen was the maid who shared Baoyu’s room and looked after him at night, after Xiren had found favor with Madam Wang and, in order to appear proper, stayed aloof from him. If Baoyu did anything amiss, Qingwen would be the one most likely to blame, and she was finally banished for this reason. But in fact we know that nothing improper had ever occurred between Baoyu and Qingwen, and that was why, on her deathbed, Qingwen said she had “borne that (ill) name in vain.” To prove that the relationship between the two was a clean one, the author dragged in Deng Guniang, the most notorious whore in the book, to bear witness, and these were her words: “I’ve been in here for a while and listened carefully outside the window. There were only the two of you in the house. If there were anything fishy between you, surely you would have brought it up. Who would have guessed that you two had actually left each other alone? Well, this is not the

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first time in this world that people have been wrongly accused!” As a matter of fact, Deng Guniang’s testimony not only acquits Baoyu and Qingwen of the charges against them, but also brings out the truth about life in the garden. Even when Baoyu was left alone with Qingwen, his closest maid and the one most open to suspicion, the two had “left each other alone.” It is not hard to deduce from this the truth about every thing else in the garden.12 Finally, a thorny point that needs straightening out is the story, told in chapter 73, of how the maid nicknamed Sha Dajie (Sister Simpleton) by mistake picked up a purse on which an obscene picture was embroidered, something that appeared to be a downright contradiction of what we called the pure Utopian nature of Daguanyuan. Yet an analysis of this episode will show that it precisely confirms our theory of the novel’s two-world structure. This obscene purse must have been dropped by the maid Siqi and her younger cousin Pan You-an while they were philandering in the garden back in chapter 71. However, the narrative at the beginning of chapter 72 tells us that their lovemaking was interrupted by Yuanyang’s intrusion, which means that the pure world of Daguanyuan was on the verge of falling apart but had not yet entered the stage of complete collapse. Chapter 74 tells us that after Siqi had been pinned down as the suspect in adultery, she only bowed her head in silence but did not show any sign of fear or shame. This attitude can only be explained in terms of our analysis of “love” and “lust” (see note 11). Siqi must be deeply in love with her younger cousin. What the world looked upon as unforgivable “adultery” may not be a sin to the author, for he was known to have said, “Those who know love must lust all the more” and “When two people meet in love, they must end in lust.” Indeed, compared with what the outside world knew as “dirty Tang and stinking Han,” this kind of adultery was really nothing at all. If we change our angle and think of the author as having intentionally presented this case as a scandalous affair, then we must acknowledge that this internal occurrence was an inevitable development in the course of the novel’s unfolding tragedy. We have already pointed out that in the end, the ideal world must be destroyed under the constant attacks launched by the forces of the world of reality. The appearance of the obscene purse in Daguanyuan was precisely the result of this invasion from without. But obviously one internal factor had permitted the invasion—the factor of “love” in the ideal world. “Love” in the ideal world was certainly pure and chaste, but, like the water in Daguanyuan, it was not static, and must eventually flow away into the outside world. In this sense, the tragic character of the novel was determined from the start. As we have maintained, a dynamic relationship existed between the two worlds of the author’s creation; we can now add to the statement and say that this dynamic relationship was rooted in the concept “when two people meet in love, they must end in lust.” A number of signs indicate that from chapter 71 to chapter 80, Cao Xueqin was already actively planning the fi nal annihilation of the ideal world of

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Daguanyuan. The most noticeable of these signs is found in chapter 76, when Daiyu and Shi Xiangyun amused themselves with poetry writing on the night of the Mid-Autumn Festival. It turns out that the last line completed by Daiyu was “And the cold moon buries the souls of the flowers.” They were interrupted by Miaoyu, who came forward and said, “You had a good line in the one I just heard, only it sounded much too ominous. It may have something to do with one’s destiny, so I tell you: don’t go on.” As we know, flowers and plants are symbols for the female denizens of the garden, so if the “souls of the flowers were buried,” as Daiyu sang in her dirge, it must mean that Daguanyuan’s destiny was about to end. We see, therefore, that it was no coincidence that the obscene purse should make its appearance in the pure world at such a time. In fact, C. T. Hsia has compared the appearance of this purse to the appearance of the Serpent in the Garden of Eden that made Adam and Eve fall from Paradise into the world of Man, a comparison cited by Stephen Soong as having hit the nail right on the head.13 It is generally accepted that the present 120-chapter novel came from the hands of more than one person. We have no way of knowing how Cao Xueqin, who had written the first eighty chapters, wanted to depict the fall of Daguanyuan, as the garden was superficially still enjoying “splendid prosperity” at the end of those eighty chapters. As far as we can guess, the author might make use of strong contrasts to emphasize a sad ending. Thus, while commenting on chapter 42, Zhiyan Zhai revealed, “Portions after [the eightieth chapter] are so disturbing that one finds it unbearable to finish reading them.” In the judgment of Zhou Ruchang, “In the second half of the novel, the original statuses and positions of all characters are to undergo a ‘complete reversal,’ ”14 a remark to which every scholar who studies the novel will assent. Perhaps the reversal would not be limited to the characters alone; following them, the ideal world of Daguanyuan, clean and unmolested though it was, could not but undergo a reversal, too— perhaps in the nature of a fall from prosperity to ruin. As for the people in the novel, reversal would not stop at the level of status and position— our two-world theory suggests that it must, to a certain extent, involve as well a reversal of cleanliness and uncleanliness. All the residents of Daguanyuan had a love for cleanliness, but it seems that those with the cleanest habits always attracted the most dirt, a fact best seen in chapters 40 and 41. These two chapters described how Grandma Jia led a group that included Liu Laolao to look at Tanchun’s house. The old lady was reported as saying laughingly: “Don’t let’s stay here. The girls don’t like people to come in to sit, they fear it might dirty the house.” After Tanchun, all smiles, pressed them to stay, the old lady laughed and added: “This third lassie of mine— she’s good, but the two jades (Baoyu and Daiyu) are nasty. In a while, when we’ve gotten drunk, we’ll pick on their places to make a row.” These lines paved the way for the next chapter entitled “Liu Laolao Lies Drunken in Yihong Yuan” (Jia Baoyu pincha Longcui An, Liu Laolao zuiwo Yihong Yuan), in which Baoyu,

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who hated most the fi lthiness of old married women, suffered Liu Laolao’s having taken the liberty of lying flat on his bed in Yihong Yuan and making the whole room stink with “her drunken smells.” Obviously, the author had done it on purpose—he had stained the ideal world’s beauty and cleanliness with ugliness and squalor from the world of reality. In the same chapter, Liu Laolao also had tea in Longcui An 櫳翠庵— again highlighting the contrast to Miaoyu’s making a fetish out of being clean. This is why after chapter 80, the worst of fates befell Miaoyu. The Album of the Twelve Golden Maidens said of her: She wanted to be clean, but clean she never was; She said her life was a Void, but was it really so? Alas, that this quality of gold and jade Should end up mired in mud!

The song that Baoyu heard in his dream in chapter 5 also said, “She ended up dirt-laden and filthy, much against her own wishes, like a piece of white jade mired in the mud; no use for princes and knights to sigh for lack of chance to approach her”— concrete proof that after chapter  80, Miaoyu had completely fallen down in the world and met with a fate worse than death. She was the cleanest person in the ideal world of the novel, and yet, after that ideal world had broken up, she had dribbled into the dirtiest corner in the world of reality. This one example is enough to show how violent the contrast between the two worlds was as the author depicted them. As cleanliness originally came from squalor, so in the end to squalor, it must ineluctably return. I feel this is the central significance of the tragedy of The Dream of the Red Chamber, and to Cao Xueqin, it must have been the greatest tragedy known to man. This essay is translated from a lecture delivered by Dr. Yü as one of a series of lectures celebrating the tenth anniversary of the Chinese University of Hong Kong. In a related study, “Jindai hongxue de fazhan yu hongxue geming” 近代 紅學的發展與紅學革命 (The Development of Redology in Recent Times and the Redology Revolution), published in the Journal of the Chinese University of Hong Kong 2 (1974), Dr. Yü has analyzed the “inner logic” of the past fifty years of “Redology” and possible new avenues for future scholarship in this classic novel by Cao Xueqin (1716?–1763).—Diana Yu. [The maps of Daguanyuan and the Jia family tree have been omitted.—Eds.]

notes 1.

Variously rendered Broad Vista Garden (H. Bencraft Joly), Daguanyuan (Chi- Chen [Jizhen] Wang), Garden of Spectacular Sights (George Kao), Park of Delightful Vision

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t h e t wo wor l d s of ho ng lou m e ng (Kuhn/McHugh), Grand View Garden (Wu Shichang), Magnarama Garden (Lin Yutang), and Prospect Garden (David Hawkes). The most readable, complete, and readily accessible translation of this 120- chapter novel is the five-volume work by David Hawkes and, for the last volume, John Minford. The title is The Story of the Stone: A Chinese Novel in Five Volumes, trans. David Hawkes and John Minford, (London and New York: Penguin, 1973–1986). All volumes are published separately in the Penguin Classics series with the volume titles: 1. The Golden Days; 2. The Crab-Flower Club; 3. The Warning Voice; 4. The Debt of Tears; and 5. The Dreamer Wakes. [All unattributed translations in this chapter are by Dianna Yu of Renditions Magazine—Eds.]

2.

Cf. Lin Yutang, My Country and My People (London:  W. Heinemann, 1935 [1939; reprinted, 1956]): “the Chinese, men and women, have most of them read the novel seven or eight times, over, and a science has developed which is called ‘redology’ (hongxue, from Red Chamber Dream), comparable in dignity and volume to the Shakespeare or Goethe commentaries.” Liu Wu- chi, in the foreword to The Dream of the Red Chamber: A Critical Study, by Jeanne Knoerle, S.P. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press for the International Affairs Center, 1972), states: “The study of The Dream of the Red Chamber (Honglou meng), which continues to attract critical attention today in China and abroad, has acquired a designation of its own: Hongxue, or ‘Red- ology.’ ” [The term is said to have been coined around 1875.—Eds.]

3.

Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientifi c Revolutions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970), passim.

4.

Stephen  C. Soong 宋淇, “On Daguanyuan,” Ming Pao Monthly 明報月刊 (September 1972): 4.

5.

Zhiyan Zhai is the pseudonym of an early and prolific commentator on the novel who was obviously a contemporary of Cao Xueqin and who knew Cao and his family very well. There are many complicated theories about his or her identity.—Eds.

6.

Yu Pingbo 俞平伯, ed., Zhiyan Zhai Honglou meng jiping 脂硯齋紅樓夢輯評 (Shanghai:

7.

Zhou Ruchang 周汝昌, in his Honglou meng xinzheng 紅樓夢新證 (Hong Kong: Beidou

Gudian wenxue chubanshe, 1957 [1954, 1961]). shuwu, 1964), 156, cited the passage about dismantling the structures in Huifang Yuan, but his purpose was to press the search in Beijing for the original site of Daguanyuan. In his Du Honglou meng suibi 讀紅樓夢隨筆, Yu Pingbo, discussing “the question of Daguanyuan’s locality,” also referred to the old Ning Mansion garden being merged into Daguanyuan. Yu was mainly concerned with the impossibility of verifying its true locale, conceding it as another instance of the author’s “nonsensical talk.” Unfortunately, he failed to probe further into why the author had invented this “nonsensical talk.” 8.

I do not completely reject the “autobiographical approach”; I am only opposed to substituting “autobiography” for the novel. See my essay, “Jindai hongxue de fazhan yu hongxue geming” 近代紅學的發展與紅學革命, Xianggang Zhongwen Daxue xuebao 香港中 文大學學報 2, no. 1 (June 1974).

9.

The reappearance of Tianxiang Lou is admittedly an unexplained inconsistency in popu lar editions of the novel. However, the recent discovery of a Qianlong hand- copied

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edition known as the Jingben 靖本 has revealed to us that Tianxiang Lou was originally named “Xi Fan Lou” 西帆樓, and was only later changed to Tianxiang Lou by the author at the suggestion of a commentator. My guess is that the slipup occurred when the author forgot to make the necessary emendation in chapter  75. See Zhou Ruchang, “Honglou meng ji Cao Xueqin youguan wenwu yishu” 紅樓夢及曹雪芹有關文物一束, WW 2 (1973): 23. 10.

For instance, Wang Guowei 王國維, in his “Honglong meng pinglun” 紅樓夢評論 (included in Wang Guantang Xiansheng quanji 王觀堂先生全集 [Taipei: Wenhua, 1968], 5:1628–1671), pointed out (p. 1665) that the term “flower burial” was first used in Nalan Xingde 納蘭性德 (1655–1685)’s Ci 詞 poetry in the Yinshui ji 飲水集.

11.

René Wellek and Austin Warren, Theory of Literature (New York: Harcourt, Brace Har-

12.

Here we must take a look at Cao Xueqin’s concept of “love” versus “lust.” As we have

vest Book, 1956), 210. repeatedly pointed out, the two are at once sharply differentiated and mutually related in the two worlds of the Honglou meng. Not being an ascetic, Cao never regarded lust as an unqualified sin. Nor did he follow some kind of dualism and treat love and lust as distinctly separate entities. In chapter 5 of the novel, he early proclaimed the doctrine that “to be attracted by feminine beauty is itself lust; even more so, to experience the feelings of love is to lust” and took his stand against the kind of hypocritical talk which held that “attraction for beauty” and “feelings of love” can exist independently of lust. In general, he believed that love can, and indeed must, embrace lust. When love leads to lust, then lust is essentially love, which is why love is also called “lust of the mind.” Lust, on the other hand, does not have the element of love in its makeup, and he castigated this “lust,” in the narrow sense of the word, as “skin- deep and promiscuous.” Again, Cao Xueqin’s concept of qing 情 is not to be equated with the Platonic love of the West. Witness the phrase, “ Those who know love must lust all the more,” as inscribed in the Register for Qin Keqing. To recognize this is to understand why the Fairy Disenchantment should instruct Baoyu secretly in the art of love and why, subsequently, Baoyu should want to reenact it with his maid Xiren. This is what the author meant to tell us: that Baoyu was a man fully capable of love and lust, but that what distinguished him was that in his case, lust was ever at the ser vice of love. From this point of view, we need not insist that Baoyu was entirely innocent of carnal knowledge with the other maids in his apartment. In sum, Cao Xueqin created in Baoyu a character in whom love and lust, purity and pollution, are equally represented. This is a character to mirror and bridge over the two worlds of his creation. The significance of the author’s including in chapter 6 the incident of Baoyu’s sexual experiment with Xiren lies, to my way of thinking, in his desire to show that Baoyu’s leaving those pure maidens in Daguanyuan alone from then on was due to an unwillingness rather than an incapability. Were it not for this one explicit incident in chapter 6, there is no telling where the reader’s speculation on this score might lead him to! 13.

Soong, “On Daguanyuan,” Ming Pao Monthly (September 1972): 9.

14.

Zhou Ruchang, “Honglou meng ji Cao Xueqin youguan wenwu yishu,” WW 2 (1973): 25.

7. Sun Yat-sen’s Doctrine and Traditional Chinese Culture

THE ORIGINS OF SUN’S THOUGHT

I

n an autobiographical sketch written in 1923, Sun Yat-sen 孫逸仙 said about his own thought: “Among the various revolutionary ideas I hold, some are adapted from traditional Chinese thought, others are appropriated from theories and practices developed in Europe, and still others are original insights grown out of my own critical reflections.”1 On the whole, I believe, this self-analysis can be easily borne out by a thorough investigation of his writings. That would lie beyond the scope of this study, however. The aim of the present chapter is rather a modest one. I shall confi ne my analysis to the first of the three component parts of Sun’s system of thought, namely, ideas adapted from the Chinese intellectual tradition. In the past few decades, various attempts have been made to identify the Confucian, Mohist, Daoist, and Legalist elements in Sun’s doctrine of the sanmin zhuyi 三民主義 (Three Principles of the People).2 However, my approach will be different. Instead of tracing individual ideas in Sun’s ideology of revolution to their original Chinese sources, I shall discuss his thought in relation to Chinese tradition holistically as well as in the context of Chinese intellectual history during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. As Martin Wilbur observed, “Sun’s reformist prescriptions seem at all states of their development to reflect the ideas currently fashionable among the then-

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radical Chinese intellectuals; in short, he absorbed and popu lar ized more than innovated.”3 Like most educated Chinese youth of his day, Sun was exposed to Confucian classics early in life. By the age of twelve, he had studied the Four Books and the Five Classics, and at twenty, after eight years of English education in Hawaii and Hong Kong, he resumed studies of Chinese classics and history.4 His resumption of classical and historical studies was an event of great importance in his spiritual and intellectual growth. In 1886, when he was a student at the Canton Hospital Medical School, he is reported to have read Confucian classics and dynastic histories assiduously in his spare time. A complete set of the dynastic histories was found in his dormitory room. At first his schoolmates believed that he had purchased the set for decoration; to their surprise, they soon discovered that he was familiar with the contents of many of the histories. Only then did they begin to realize that his ambition went far beyond the pursuit of a successful medical career.5 There can be little doubt that Sun’s early interest in Chinese classics and history was a genuine one because it remained with him until the end of his life. For example, in July 1924, only a few months before his death, he donated a set of the twenty-four histories and a set of the Sibu beiyao (Essential works of the four categories) to the library of the Whampoa Military Academy.6 Obviously, he believed that a basic knowledge of Chinese classics and history was necessary for the training of revolutionaries. This enduring interest in the Chinese tradition played an impor tant part in the shaping of his vision of the future of China. It was probably this traditional strain in his thought that prevented him from falling into the trap of radical iconoclasm that characterized many Chinese revolutionary intellectuals, especially the generation that succeeded him. However, Sun’s interest in learning, whether Chinese or Western, was never purely academic. Rather it was, from the very beginning, deeply rooted in his central concern for changing China. Sun said in a short autobiography in Chinese that he wrote in 1896 at the request of the leading British sinologist H. A. Giles: Since my early years, I had lofty ambitions, and by nature, I longed for the new and the strange. Therefore, most of what I studied was a broad, if impure, mixture of things. In Chinese studies, I loved only the literature of the Three Ages of Antiquity [i.e., Xia 夏, Shang 商, and Zhou 周] and the two Han dynasties. In Western studies, I was most fascinated by the Way of Darwin. But I also read from time to time works on science and political affairs. As for religion, I worshiped Jesus, and as for men, I admire King Tang 湯 and King Wu 武, and America’s George Washington.7 A close analysis of this passage reveals that Sun’s pursuit of learning was oriented toward change or revolution. First, the fact that of all the sages and worthies in

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Chinese history he chose to admire only King Tang of Shang and King Wu of Zhou is an unmistakable indication that by 1897, he had already set revolution as his central task. These two sage-kings were heroes to him because both were described traditionally as “revolutionary” leaders (Tang Wu geming 湯武革命), comparable, in his mind at the time, to George Washington in U.S. history. Second, his fascination with the “Way of Darwin” was also significant; it indicated his enthusiasm for change or evolution. Although he had direct access to Darwin’s original works, his interest in Darwinism primarily as a theory of social evolution may have been influenced, directly or indirectly, by Yan Fu’s 嚴復 translation of T. H. Huxley’s Evolution and Ethics (1894),8 as well as by the Confucian idea of historical “progress” as expounded by the Modern Text ( jinwen 今文) school in the late nineteenth century. Third, his statement about “the literature of the Three Ages of Antiquity and the two Han dynasties” was borrowed from Han Yu’s 韓愈 (768–824) “Fu Li Ao shu” 復李翱書 (Letter in reply to Li Ao). By “literature,” Han Yu here referred not to poetry or prose but to the Confucian classics and histories. Thus, with Han Yu’s words in mind, Sun’s intention was in all likelihood to seek a general understanding of China’s cultural heritage to renovate China. Clearly, as a man of action, Sun never had as his primary goal to pursue classical and historical scholarship for its own sake. In this connection, it is perhaps relevant to mention Sun’s view about the “succession of the Way” (daotong 道統) as formulated by Han Yu. In his famous essay “Yuandao” 原道 (On the True Way), Han Yu wrote: “What Way is this? It is what I call the Way, and not what the Daoists and Buddhists call the Way. Yao 堯 taught it to Shun 舜, Shun to Yu 禹, Yu to Tang 湯, and Tang to kings Wen 文 and Wu 武 and the Duke of Zhou 周公. These men taught it to Confucius and Confucius to Mencius, but when Mencius died, it was no longer handed down.”9 It is very interesting that when the Comintern emissary J. F. M. Sneevliet (“Maring”) visited Sun in Guilin, Guangxi, in December 1921 and asked him what was his “ground for revolution,” the latter gave him the following answer: “China has a daotong which had been transmitted without interruption from Yao, Shun, Yu, Tang, Wen, Wu, and Duke of Zhou to Confucius. My own thought, on the one hand, has been built on the basis of this daotong and, on the other hand, it is also an expansion and development of the daotong.”10 This is a very puzzling statement whose exact meaning is not easy to determine. Some Guomindang writers such as Dai Jitao have concluded from this that Sun ought to be viewed as a true modern heir to the Confucian orthodoxy.11 Liberal critics of the Guomindang such as Hu Shi, however, have tended to question the authenticity of the statement.12 Whether Sun actually used the term daotong or not in his conversation is now impossible to know. Authentic or not, it is unmistakable that the statement followed Han Yu’s formulation rather closely. In view of his earlier borrowing from Han Yu, as quoted above, we can safely assume that Sun was, as all educated Chinese of his day, quite familiar

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with Han Yu’s writings. It would not be surprising if Sun indeed had said something to that effect to Sneevliet in 1921. But it would be an exaggeration to suggest that Sun truly considered himself a modern successor of the Confucian tradition transmitted through the ages by the sages. It seems to me that a more reasonable interpretation would be that Sun probably made the above remark to Sneevliet as a subtle, polite rejection of Marxism. All he was saying was that as China had a distinct and long-lasting cultural tradition of its own, revolutionary principles derived from Marxism were not applicable to the Chinese case. I believe that this is the ideological ground on which he rejected the idea of an alliance with Soviet Russia at that time.13 It has been suggested that because Sun “was trained in Western medicine and only semi-trained in the Chinese classics, he never became an insider among the upper- class literati.” Because of this background, “Sun and the Kuomintang [Guomindang 國民黨] had their origins on the cultural frontier between China and the West,” and “Sun’s thinking was not formed in the Confucian mold nor, in fact, in any par ticular mold.”14 Although there is indeed a grain of truth in this observation, it is nevertheless an oversimplified view that fails to take full account of the complex and subtle influences the Chinese tradition has exerted on the molding of Sun’s revolutionary ideology. There can be no question that on the surface, his ideology was largely a mixture, or, better, a synthesis of Western ideas. If we examine more closely the deep structure of his thought, however, we would find that there were, layer after layer, component parts of the Chinese tradition. What was unique about the “Chinese tradition” in his thought is rather that it consisted of elements of two different origins: those he appropriated from Chinese elite culture as a result of his study of the Chinese classics and histories and those he absorbed from Chinese popular culture as a result of his early association with overseas Chinese communities and secret societies. There is clear evidence that Sun was torn between the two cultures, especially during the period when his Tong Meng Hui 同盟會 was founded. He was faced with the difficult choice of which culture—the secret societies or the literati—was to play the leading role in his revolutionary organization.15 The origin of Sun’s thought, therefore, did not simply grow “on the frontier between China and the West.” It also originated at the intersection of elite culture and popular culture within the Chinese tradition. However, because a full-scale investigation of Sun’s ideology lies beyond the scope of the present study, in what follows, I shall confi ne my discussion to the possible bearing of some of the elite elements in the Chinese tradition on the formation of Sun’s revolutionary vision. As I pointed out earlier, I take Sun’s understanding of the Chinese tradition to be more a reflection, to borrow Wilbur, of “the ideas currently fashionable among the then-radical Chinese intellectuals” than an interpretation all his own. To determine the central ideas about the Chinese tradition that had gained currency in Sun’s time, it is necessary to

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briefly review the intellectual history of China in the second half of the nineteenth century.

C H I N A’ S I N T E L L E C T U A L D E V E L O P M E N T IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY By the early decades of the nineteenth century, the School of Classical Evidentialism (Kaozheng 考證) had already passed its peak. Political, social, and economic crises of the time further intensified the intellectuals’ dissatisfaction with the kind of textual study that had become increasingly irrelevant to the actualities of life. As a result, two closely related intellectual developments gradually emerged within the tradition of Confucian learning. The first development was the promotion of practical studies for the purpose of “setting the world in order” ( jingshi 經世). The second was the rise of the so- called Modern Text school ( jinwen) in classical learning. As we shall see later, both developments originated in a reorientation of Confucian thought toward reform and change. If we follow the ti-yong 體用 (substance-function) distinction in NeoConfucianism since the Song Period, we may say that the jinwen school sought to reinterpret the “substance” (ti) of the Confucian Way (Dao), whereas the jingshi movement was concerned with the “functional” (yong) aspects of the Way in the sense that Confucian learning is not “empty talk” but “practically ser viceable to society.” Now let us say something about each of the two developments and then link both to Confucian reformism in the late nineteenth century, which, in turn, provided Sun Yat-sen’s revolutionary ideas a base in the Chinese tradition. The central text of the Modern Text school is the Chunqiu Gongyang zhuan 春秋公羊傳 (Gongyang Commentary to the Spring and Autumn Annals). According to the Modern Text school, the authorship of the Annals was attributable to Confucius himself. Moreover, of the three commentaries (the other two being the Zuo 左 and Guliang 穀梁 Commentaries, i.e., Zuozhuan and Guliangzhuan) datable to pre-Han times, the Gongyang text alone has preserved the “original messages of the Sage” because it is believed to have been transmitted orally, from Confucius through an unbroken line of Confucian teachers. Early in Han times, scholars of the Gongyang tradition, such as Dong Zhongshu 董仲舒 (ca. 179–ca. 104 b.c.e.), already interpreted the Annals as a text in which Confucius conveyed his ideas as to how a new dynasty should establish its new institutions. Dong Zhongshu also pointed out that Confucius actually divided the 242 years of history covered by the Annals into three stages (or “Three epochs”; sanshi 三世). Later, the idea of sanshi was further developed by the Gongyang school as representing the Epoch of Disorder, the Epoch of Approaching Peace, and the Epoch of Universal Peace. Thus, a Confucian theory of historical evolution was established.16

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In the eighteenth century, as all Confucian texts were being subjected to rigorous philological examination under the influence of the School of Classical Evidentialism, the Gongyang Commentary also caught the attention of scholars. For example, Kong Guangsen 孔廣森 (1752–1786), who was a student of Dai Zhen 戴震 (1724–1777), the great classicist of this school, was the first to write a book on the text entitled Gongyang tongyi 公羊通義 (A general interpretation of the Gongyang Commentary [Guangzhou, 1860]). However, because this work did not follow the Gongyang tradition closely, it was not accepted by the Modern Text school in late Qing as a valid interpretation. Liang Qichao 梁啟超 (1873– 1929), a latter- day follower of the school, traced the beginning of the Qing Modern Text school to Zhuang Cunyu 莊存與 (1719–1788) and Liu Fenglu 劉逢祿 (1776–1829). As a great pioneer of the Modern Text school, Liang told us, Zhuang “omitted trivial philological points and the nomenclature of artifacts, concentrating only on [elucidating] the so- called ‘great principles hidden in esoteric language.’ ”17 However, it was Liu Fenglu who, following the footsteps of Zhuang, rediscovered the meanings of ideas in the Gongyang tradition of the Han dynasty such as “unfolding the Three Epochs,” “going through the Three Periods of Unity,” and “receiving the mandate to reform institutions.”18 In other words, the Modern Text school was trying to redefine the Confucian Way in terms of political and social institutions as opposed to the Neo- Confucian definition in terms of immutable metaphysical principles. According to the new conception of this school, the “substance of the Way” (Daoti 道體) was embodied in institutions that must of necessity change with history as it moves from one “epoch” to another. It was no longer conceived as a metaphysical entity existing in a transcendent realm. The flourishing of the Modern Text school owed a great deal to the efforts of two nineteenth- century scholars, Gong Zizhen 龔自珍 (1792–1841) and Wei Yuan 魏源 (1794–1857). Liang Qichao also had the following succinct account of the two men: The strong advocates of the Modern Text School were perforce Gong and Wei, during whose lives the Qing government was already becoming weak and decadent. The whole nation was drugged by the enjoyment of peace at that time, but these men, as if they alone sensed national dangers and grievances, often came together to discuss grandiose plans for their country. . . . Therefore, it was their legacy that prompted later Modern Text scholars to discuss politics in classical terms.19 By “later Modern Text scholars” Liang referred, particularly, to his mentor Kang Youwei 康有為 (1858–1927) and himself. The type of practical studies developed under the general term jingshi also began about the same time. Moreover, jingshi studies were often promoted by

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the same scholars who led the Modern Text Movement. The idea of jingshi has been an integral part of Neo- Confucianism since Song times because jingshi was predicated on the assumption that the “substance” of the Way must of necessity have its “function” to change the world for better. As an early Song Confucian scholar explained: “To activate this substance [of Dao] and put it into practice throughout the empire, enriching the life of the people and ordering all things to imperial perfection—this is its function.”20 As I have pointed out elsewhere, the idea of jingshi zhiyong 經世致用 (practical use of the Confucian principles in reordering the society) formed a strong undercurrent and pulsed vibrantly in the Neo- Confucian tradition. The NeoConfucian attempt “to activate the substance of Dao and put it into practice” was ever-present down through the centuries and showed its vitality particularly in times of deepened political and social crises such as in the early seventeenth and the late nineteenth centuries.21 This was clearly shown in the case of the two large collections of essays and proposals concerning practical problems of the Ming and Qing societies, which appeared in 1638 and 1827, respectively. It is no accident that the two works shared the same title, Jingshi wenbian 經世文編 (Documents on statecraft), for the title of the latter, Huangchao jingshi wenbian 皇朝經世文編 (Illustrious Qing dynasty documents on statecraft), compiled by He Changling 賀長齡 (1785–1848), was actually suggested by the former, Huangming jingshi wenbian 皇明經世文編 (Illustrious Ming dynasty documents on statecraft), a work completed under the general editorship of Chen Zilong 陳子龍 (1680–1747).22 However, the idea of jingshi itself was not a simple borrowing from an earlier period. In fact, it had been very much alive throughout the intellectual history of the entire Qing Period. Even at the height of the School of Classical Evidentialism in the eighteenth century, scholars as different as Dai Zhen, Qian Daxin 錢大昕 (1728–1804), and Zhang Xuecheng 章學誠 (1738–1801) all agreed that the ultimate test of Confucian principles lay in whether they could be fruitfully applied to the solution of practical problems. Some of Zhang Xuecheng’s ideas were especially influential in the nineteenth century. The rise of the jingshi school owed much to the inspirations of Zhang’s writings. It was partly due to his influence that a shift of emphasis from classical philology to historical scholarship occurred in the early decades of the nineteenth century. Thus, many jingshi scholars turned their attention to more recent history with a view to calling their contemporaries’ attention to the urgency of basic institutional and economic reforms in China. Among them was the above-mentioned Wei Yuan, a powerful advocate of the Modern Text school. If we want to date precisely the beginning of the jingshi movement in the late Qing, 1827, the publication year of Illustrious Qing Dynasty Documents on Statecraft, is probably as good as any. It is impor tant to note that Wei Yuan was not only the chief assistant to He Changling in the compilation of the Illustrious Qing Dynasty Documents on Statecraft but also the driving force behind the whole

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project. Following Zhang Xuecheng’s suggestion that historical studies could serve to bring new changes to society ( jingshi), He opened up the field of history of the reigning dynasty with special emphasis on its practical relevance to contemporary problems. Salt administration, water conservancy, and grain tribute, which figured centrally in the jingshi scholarship of the nineteenth century, were the subjects to which he made many notable contributions. It was characteristic of jingshi scholarship to study practical matters of immediate relevance to contemporary society. As a result, its content often changed with time. Because Wei Yuan witnessed the Opium War, his jingshi writings after 1842 very much reflected the new practical concerns of postwar China. In his impor tant work on the geography of the “maritime countries”— Haiguo tuzhi 海國圖志 (Treatise on the maritime countries; compiled in 1842, published in 1844, and expanded in 1847 and 1852), he emphatically pointed out the urgent need for China “to learn the superior skills of the barbarians in order to control them.” By “superior skills of the barbarians” he referred, of course, to the advanced military technology of the West, including, specifically, warships and firearms. This famous statement, it should be noted, was soon to become the slogan of many Chinese reformers.23 Thus, Wei Yuan expanded jingshi scholarship beyond its traditional limit to include so- called Western learning, which was to occupy an increasingly central place in Chinese intellectual history over the next several decades. This brief sketch shows clearly that since the early nineteenth century, the jinwen school and the jingshi movement developed in a symbiotic relationship. In the person of Wei Yuan, the two trends actually converged to form a common stream of thought. Wei Yuan’s initial efforts to absorb Western learning into the Chinese jingshi was particularly significant. In so doing, he actually paved the way for the development of the idea of “Chinese learning for substance and Western learning for practical application”—the guiding spirit in the first phase of China’s search for modernization. Later, when Kang Youwei arrived on the scene, we find both the Modern Text and the jingshi developments well integrated in his intellectual life also. As early as 1891 when Kang wrote his Changxing xueji 長興學記 (Record of the Changxing Academy) as a teaching guide, he introduced into the curriculum a new category called “jingshi learning.” As he further defined it in a note: “Jingshi learning consists of what is practically applicable to China today. It must accommodate changes as well as suit the needs of the people.”24 In his Chronological Autobiography (Zibian nianpu), written in 1895, he gave a brief account of his teaching at the Changxing Academy as follows: “In my daily lectures to students I spoke of the principle of achieving benevolence, of the background of current events in China and abroad, and of the ways for saving China.”25 Clearly, “the principle of achieving benevolence” was the Chinese substance (ti) of his learning, which, needless to say, was none other than the Confucian tradition as reinterpreted by the Modern Text school of the nineteenth century. Nevertheless, history (“background

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of current events”) and reform plans (“ways for saving China”) made up the main content of his jingshi learning, which was intended for “practical application” (yong). As I shall try to show in the following section, the traditional elements in Sun Yat-sen’s thought can be better understood in the context of  these two interlocking intellectual developments in nineteenth- century China.

THE INFLUENCE OF THE JINGSHI SCHOOL ON SUN’S THOUGHT Sun was not a specialist in Chinese classics or history and during the formative period of his intellectual life, he lived in a cultural world lying on the periphery of the Chinese elite tradition, but he nevertheless followed with close attention and keen interest the new developments in the mainstream of Chinese thought. There is some evidence that around 1893 when both Sun and Kang Youwei lived in Canton, Sun was quite receptive to Kang’s reformist ideas. According to an unofficial account, in 1893 Sun expressed a desire to meet Kang through a friend. However, because Kang insisted that he would receive Sun only if Sun were to come as a student, the meeting never took place.26 This story itself may well be a fabrication, but there can be little doubt that Sun must have heard about Kang’s teachings through their mutual acquaintances. Between 1893 and 1896, there were contacts between Kang and his students on the one hand and Sun and his followers on the other. The possibility of cooperation between the two groups was discussed, though nothing came out of it.27 It should be noted that before 1893, Kang had completed his major Modern Text studies with reformist themes such as Xinxue weijing kao 新學偽經考 (A study of the forged classics of the Xin period; 1891) and Kongzi gaizhi kao 孔子 改制考 (A study of Confucius as a reformer; 1897). Moreover, as early as 1890, when Chen Qianqiu 陳千秋 and Liang Qichao came to study with him, Kang already told them about his new ideas concerning Confucian political philosophy, including the theory of the “three stages of evolution to reach the world of Universal Peace” (taiping 太平).28 Later, his study of the “Liyun” 禮運 (Evolution of Rites) chapter in the Liji (Classic of Rites) led to the rediscovery of the idea of Datong 大同 (Great Unity or Universal Commonwealth) and an early version of the Datong shu 大同書 (Book of Great Unity) was drafted as a result. Both Chen Qianqiu and Liang Qichao were greatly excited by this utopian work. Many years later, Liang Qichao recalled that among his students, only Chen Qianqiu and Liang Qichao were permitted to read this book at first. They enjoyed reading it tremendously and were bent on making parts of it public. Kang did not encourage this, but he could not prevent them from doing so either, and from that time forth, students at the Wanmu Caotang 萬木草堂 all talked about the universal commonwealth.29

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Moreover, Chen Qianqiu, who was a political activist, was reportedly among Kang’s students who had several meetings with Sun Yat-sen.30 Even if we dismiss the report about Chen Qianqiu’s connection with Sun as unreliable, it is nevertheless quite safe to assume that Sun must have become familiar with some of Kang’s ideas derived from the Modern Text tradition, among which was the idea of Datong in the “Liyun” text. As a matter of fact, this par ticular text had made so profound an impression on Sun’s mind that later in his life, he often chose it for calligraphic exercises. Apart from his inscription of his favorite phrase “the nation is for all” (tianxia weigong 天下為公), he also made a full inscription of the Datong passage in the “Liyun” text that has become the most famous specimen of his calligraphy.31 Whatever intellectual debt Kang Youwei may have owed to other Modern Text scholars, he alone must be credited with the rediscovery and reinterpretation of the “Liyun” text, with a reformist emphasis on the ideas of Datong and “evolution.”32 It is difficult to determine exactly when and how Sun Yat-sen first became fascinated with ideas of the “Liyun” text. Judging by the circumstances, however, it may not be too far-fetched to suggest that Kang’s ingenious use of its ideas to ground his reformist ideology that had greatly excited his disciples may also have sharpened Sun’s awareness of the text’s revolutionary significance during the short period (1893–1896) when initial contacts were being made between the two groups. As we have seen, Chen Qianqiu and Liang Qichao did try to publicize Kang’s utopian ideas such as Datong and sanshi around this time. At any rate, with the publication of Kang’s A Study of Confucius as a Reformer in 1897, these ideas were soon to become household words in China. Given Sun’s acuity, it would be inconceivable for him to have remained totally unaffected by Kang’s views about the Chinese cultural tradition. As we shall see later, Sun’s understanding of other aspects of early Chinese culture also showed traces of Kang’s interpretations. However, to speak of Kang’s influence in this area is by no means to suggest that Sun had been at any time totally captivated by Kang’s thought. Sun could not be a slavish follower of any par tic u lar school of thought, Chinese or Western. This was true with respect not only to his absorption of Western theories but also to his pursuit of Chinese learning. My point is that because Kang Youwei was the dominant figure in the Chinese intellectual world during the last decade of the nineteenth century—which happened to coincide with the period in which Sun’s thought grew into full maturity—it was only natural that the latter appropriated some of the former’s new interpretations of the Confucian classics for his own purposes. Nor was Kang the only influence through which Sun sought to understand his own cultural tradition vis-à-vis modernization. As his own revolutionary vision was gradually being crystallized, he was also modifying his views of the Chinese tradition in a variety of ways. In the course of his intellectual development, as will become clear below, he also learned from other scholars about Chinese culture and history, and eventually outgrew the initial influence of Kang’s Modern Text frame of reference.

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Next, we must briefly consider Sun Yat-sen’s intellectual relation with jingshi learning, the other major scholarly movement in the late Qing Period. As mentioned earlier, as early as the time of Wei Yuan, jingshi studies had already been expanded beyond the traditional limit to include so- called Western learning. As time went on, Western learning was acquiring an ever-growing importance in the Chinese intellectual world. When Zhang Zhidong coined the famous maxim “Chinese learning as substance, Western learning for practical application” in 1898, Western learning had almost become an independent field of study. Historically, however, the development of Western learning in nineteenth-century China from Wei Yuan to Zhang Zhidong must be viewed as an offshoot of the jingshi movement. In his essay “Xixue” 西學 (Western learning), dated 1892, Zheng Guanying also offered the formulation “Chinese learning as root [ben 本] and Western learning as branch [mo 末].”33 Both Zhang Zhidong’s and Zheng Guanying’s formulations, it may be noted, were originally adapted from the traditional idea that in Confucian learning, the study of Dao constitutes its “substance” (ti) while the “ordering of the world” ( jingshi) constitutes its “practical application” (yong).34 Viewing Western learning as an extension of jingshi learning, we can immediately see that Sun was very much at the center of the jingshi movement as it evolved in the last decade of the nineteenth century. Sun’s intellectual tie with late Qing jingshi learning may best be illustrated by his famous “Letter to Li Hongzhang” (Shang Li Hongzhang shu) of 1894. His letter said: After deep reflection, I realize that the roots of wealth and power in Europe do not lie entirely in solid ships, efficient guns, strong forts, and crack troops, but also in that a man can use his talents to the utmost, a piece of land can produce to the utmost, natural resources can be exploited to the utmost, and commercial goods can be circulated almost without restriction. A few paragraphs later, he further elaborated his points in the following words: When a man can use his ability to the utmost, all enterprises will be undertaken; when the land can yield to the utmost, people will have enough to eat; when natural resources can be exploited to the utmost, the national economic strength will be great; when commodities can be circulated without restriction, financial resources will be abundant. Thus these four elements are the principal sources of wealth and power, and provide the solid foundations of a nation.35 First, let me point out that the central idea of the letter reflected faithfully the general mood of thinking of jingshi scholars around this time. In redefining the concept of Western learning, for example, Zhang Zhidong distinguished be-

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tween what he called “Western technology,” including “solid ships” and “efficient guns,” on the one hand, and what he called “Western institutions,” including the school system, financial organization, and promotion of commerce and industry, on the other. He considered Western institutions to be far more important than Western technology.36 Clearly, this is also the message of Sun’s letter. The main thrust of the letter was a call for the full development of China’s human and natural resources through better education, improvement of agriculture, industrialization, and encouragement of commerce. These ideas were also largely in agreement with the views of his reform- oriented contemporaries such as Zheng Guanying 鄭觀應, Ma Jianzhong 馬建中, Zhang Jian 張謇, Yan Fu, and Kang Youwei.37 Interestingly, it has been noted that Sun’s letter bore a remarkable resemblance to the preface of Zheng Guanying’s Shengshi weiyan 盛世危言 (Warnings to a prosperous age; 1892) not only in ideas but in language as well. Zheng, like Sun, argued that the “source of foreign wealth and power do not altogether lie in solid ships and effective guns.” He also listed three of Sun’s four elements as matters of utmost urgency for China: “Let human talents be fully used; let the land be fully used; and allow for the free flow of materials.”38 But this striking similarity should occasion no surprise, for, according to one account, Sun had actually consulted Zheng in the writing of this letter.39 Moreover, Sun’s letter was first published in October 1894 in the Wanguo gongbao 萬國公報, a Shanghai-based journal sponsored by foreign missionaries and of which Zheng was a patron.40 It is quite possible that Zheng may have helped in its publication. What is particularly significant about Sun’s letter from the point of view of intellectual history, however, is that it can be traced to a jingshi origin. As early as the 1860s, Feng Guifen 馮桂芬 (1809–1874) wrote in his Jiaobinlu kangyi 校邠廬抗議 (Straightforward words from the lodge of Early Zhou studies): Regarding the present situation there are several major points: in making use of the ability of manpower, with no one neglected, we are inferior to the barbarians; in securing the benefit of the soil, with nothing wasted, we are inferior to the barbarian; in maintaining a close relationship between the ruler and the people, with no barrier between them, we are inferior to the barbarians; and in the necessary accord of word with deed, we are inferior to the barbarians.41 Obviously, the first two points in this passage agreed exactly with their counterparts in both Zheng’s preface and Sun’s letter quoted above. It is therefore only natural that scholars tend to interpret the three documents in terms of a genealogy of ideas.42 We do not know for sure whether Sun got his ideas directly from Feng’s work or indirectly through Zheng Guanying. However, it must be pointed out emphatically that Feng’s Straightforward Words from the Lodge of Early Zhou Studies was very influential in the reform-minded elite circles. It

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went through many editions after 1861, and in 1892, it was simultaneously republished in Suzhou and Wuchang (Hubei), a fact testifying fully to its importance as well as its popularity. Therefore, in 1894, when Sun wrote his letter to Li Hongzhang, Sun must have been familiar, one way or another, with many of Feng’s views, which were, so to speak, very much in the air. As for Zheng Guanying, it is almost a certainty that he had direct access to the book.43 The establishment of Sun’s intellectual relationship with Feng Guifen is of considerable importance to our understanding of Sun’s overall attitude toward the Chinese cultural tradition. Feng Guifen was the foremost leader of the jingshi school during the Tongzhi Restoration (1862–1874). The simple fact that along with keeping abreast of Kang Youwei’s reformist interpretation of the Confucian classics, Sun also followed closely every new development in the jingshi movement indicates that he was, after all, not so much outside the mainstream of Chinese thought in the late nineteenth century as people have generally assumed. It is one thing to say that he was not readily accepted by the Chinese elite circles in the early stage of his revolutionary life, but it is an entirely different matter to suggest that because he was not a trained classicist or historian, he was largely unaware of what was going on in the Chinese intellectual world. In fact, the contrary is true. We have reason to believe that the jingshi school exerted a lasting influence on his thought with regard to the role he assigned to China’s cultural heritage in the historical process of its modernization. Feng Guifen wrote in his essay “On the Adoption of Western Knowledge” (Cai Xixue yi; 1861): “If we let Chinese ethics and moral teachings serve as an original foundation, and let them be supplemented by the methods used by the various nations for attainment of prosperity and strength, would it not be the best of all procedures?”44 With this par ticular passage in mind, Mary C. Wright offered the following perceptive analysis of Feng’s vision as a whole: Feng Guifen anticipated by a generation Zhang Zhidong’s famous maxim, “Chinese learning as the basis, Western learning for practical use.” Feng did not take the naïve view that China could meet the Western challenge simply by borrowing technology. Rather, having grasped technology’s contribution to the internal strength of Western society in the nineteenth century, he urged a re- examination of China’s own civilization and a creation from Chinese materials of a strong modern China. This was certainly learning from the West, but it was not imitations of the West except in limited technical fields.45 I believe this characterization may very well apply, mutatis mutandis, also to Sun Yat-sen. Needless to say, with his profound knowledge of the West, Sun could not possibly subscribe to Zhang Zhidong’s 張之洞 simplistic formulation. It is nevertheless an undeniable fact that in the course of the long evolution of his revolutionary vision, he never for a moment toyed with the idea that moderniza-

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tion could be accomplished only at the cost of tradition. On the contrary, he painfully struggled to reconcile modernization with what he perceived to be the essence of Chinese culture. It was probably for this reason that he even equated “revolution” with “restoration” when he delivered a speech at the welcome meeting organized by the Chinese students in Tokyo on February 23, 1913. “The present revolution in China,” he said, “is actually a restoration of the culture that had been historically achieved several thousand years ago.”46 Here Sun’s words remind us of Feng Guifen, who also spoke of China’s “self-strengthening” in terms of “restoration” of the best of ancient institutions to their original vigor.47

T H E T R A D I T I O N A L H E R I TA G E O F T H E T H R E E PRINCIPLES OF THE PEOPLE This final section will be devoted to a discussion of Sun Yat-sen’s views of the Chinese traditions as expressed, mainly, in his lecture on the three Principles of the People. As Xiao Gongquan rightly observed, Sun’s political philosophy was a creative synthesis of traditional Chinese theories and modern Western sources.48 In what follows, I propose to examine this “Chinese base” in the Three Principles of the People, according to their original order.

Na t iona l ism In an article entitled “A History of the Chinese Revolution” (Zhongguo geming shi), dated January 29, 1923, Sun wrote: “Nationalist thought is a heritage bequeathed to us by our ancestors that need not be imported from outside. The nationalism I hold is nothing but an elaborated version of what I have inherited from the past.”49 A deeper analysis shows that the origins of the par ticular kind of nationalism he espoused can be traced back to the anti-Manchuism of early Qing thinkers, especially Wang Fuzhi 王夫之 (1619–1692). In Lecture 1 of “The Principle of Nationalism” (Minzu zhuyi), Sun defined “race in terms of such factors as blood kinship, common language, common livelihood, common religion and common habits. For simplicity we may divide these factors into two basic categories: blood kinship, or ‘consanguinity,’ constitutes a category by itself while the rest may all be grouped together under the category of ‘culture.’ ” Sun said: Considering the law of survival of ancient and modern races, if we want to save China and to preserve the Chinese race, we must certainly preserve Nationalism. To make this principle luminous for China’s salvation we must first understand it clearly. The Chinese race totals four hundred

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million people; of mingled races there are only a few million Mongolians, a million or so Manchus, a few million Tibetans, and over a million Mohammedan Turks. These alien races do not number altogether more than ten million, so that for the most part, the Chinese people are of the Han or Chinese race with common blood, common language, common religion, and common customs— a single, pure race.50 Thus, his position may be described as Han- centric culturalism based on the idea of consanguinity. I consider this to be a residual product of his early antiManchu revolutionary experience. Before 1911, many revolutionary intellectuals in Tokyo, such as Chen Tianhua 陳天華 (1875–1905) and Zhang Binglin 章炳麟 (1868–1936), not only subscribed to this Han- centric culturalism but even developed it to its extreme. Zhang Binglin, for example, contended on the authority of Wang Fuzhi that “cultural identity rises from consanguinity.” According to this view, because the Manchus were only a minority in China, they must, like other minorities, accept the majority rule of the Han race and become fully “assimilated” by the Han culture.51 The idea of “assimilation” remained important to Sun’s brand of nationalism even after the revolution. In a popular lecture on the Three Principles of the People delivered in June 1921, he repeatedly struck the note that “the Manchus, the Mongolians, the Mohammedan Turks, and the Tibetans must all be assimilated by our Han Chinese so that we can become a great nation.”52 In this par ticular case, we can see clearly that Sun’s Han-centric culturalism must have been strengthened, if not inspired, by his intellectual interactions with other revolutionary scholars, especially Zhang Binglin. Once again, Sun’s view reflected what was “currently fashionable among the thenradical Chinese intellectuals.” However, viewed as a whole in historical perspective, the cultural dimension of Sun’s nationalism is far more significant than its Han- centric element. It is in its cultural dimension that we find his nationalism transcending the narrow political limit of the concept. His love of China included its culture and history; he did not see his native land merely as a political community. In other words, his idea of nationalism was closer to that of Johann Gottfried von Herder and the Romanticists, which emphasized cultural criteria such as mother tongue, ancient folk tradition, common descent, or the “national spirit” rather than political identity.53 Like the Romanticists, Sun sometimes also tended to glorify China’s remote past. In Lecture 6 of “The Principle of Nationalism,” he paid the highest tribute to the spiritual achievements of ancient Chinese. Confucian moral ideals, political philosophy, and method of personal cultivation were, in his view, all superior to their Western counter parts. Labeling these as “old learning” and “old morality,” he went on to stress: “We must revive not only our old morality but also our old learning. . . . If we want to regain our national spirit, we must reawaken the learning as well as the moral ideals that we once

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possessed.”54 Here, whereas his talk of “national spirit” reminds us of Herder and the Romanticists, his talk of “reviving old morality and old learning” betrays the lingering influence of the jingshi scholars of the previous century, such as Feng Guifen and Zhang Zhidong. There cannot be the slightest doubt about Sun’s profound commitment to the core values in the Chinese cultural tradition. In 1918, on the eve of the May Fourth Movement, when he was composing his famous treatise on “Knowledge is difficult, action is easy,” he calmly discussed the controversy of “spiritual culture” versus “material culture,” then very much in vogue. Although freely admitting that the two “cultures” were indeed closely interrelated, he nevertheless insisted that in some areas of spiritual culture, China was either equal or even superior to the West. China’s inferiority vis-à-vis the West lay entirely in the domain of material culture. In this case, he was responding to the New Culture Movement (including the baihua 白話, or vernacular literature) launched by the editors and contributors of Xin Qingnian 新青年 (New Youth) such as Chen Duxiu 陳獨秀 (1899–1939), Qian Xuantong 錢玄同 (1887–1939), and Hu Shi (1891–1962). Sun stated without any hesitation: “Among today’s scholars of the New Learning, there are people who are advocating abolition of the Chinese script. But in my opinion, the Chinese script must not be abolished.”55 Clearly, this is a rebuttal to Qian Xuantong, who considered the ideographic script an obstacle to modernization and suggested its replacement by romanization. In the same treatise, we also find Sun praising Zhou civilization in the highest possible terms: “Chinese civilization had reached a high point by the Western Zhou Period. At that time, political institutions, morality, literature, learning, and technology had all developed to a level almost comparable to those in modern Europe and America.”56 Historians will no doubt be quick to point out that he had accepted uncritically the idealized picture of the Zhou dynasty as described in inauthentic texts. However, this is beside the point; he not only honestly believed but also took tremendous pride in the Chinese “national spirit” inherent in humanistic, moral culture that had flourished in classical antiquity. One may even be tempted to suggest that his profound faith in Chinese culture was one of the spiritual forces that supported him through all of his frustrating revolutionary experiences. It is indeed true that he welcomed the May Fourth Movement with genuine enthusiasm and openly acknowledged that his own revolution “must depend on a change of thought in China.”57 Yet there is no evidence that the radical antitraditionalism of the movement had changed his longheld view about Chinese cultural tradition in a fundamental way. On March 2, 1924, he spoke as follows: But even if we succeed in reviving our ancient morality, learning, and powers, we will still not be able, in this modern world, to advance China to a first place among the nations. If we can reproduce the best of our

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national heritage just as it was in the time of our forefathers when China dominated the world, we will still need to learn the strong points of Europe and America before we can progress at an equal rate with them.58 Here, we do detect a subtle shift in emphasis from “reviving” China’s past to “learning” from the West. His faith in cultural nationalism remained, nevertheless, as unshaken as ever.

Demo cr ac y Of his minquan zhuyi 民權主義, or Principle of Democracy, Sun said: In ancient China, there were abdications of Yao and Shun as well as the changes of the Mandate of Heaven (geming, “revolution”) of King Tang and King Wu. As for theories, there were statements like “Heaven sees with the eyes of its people. Heaven hears with the ears of its people,” “The people are of supreme importance; the sovereign comes last,” “I have indeed heard of the punishment of the outcast Zhou, but have not heard of any regicide,” “the people are of supreme importance; the sovereign comes last.” So we cannot say that democratic ideas have been lacking in China. However, what we have are ideas but not institutions.59 In his Lecture 1 of “The Principle of Democracy,” he repeated the same idea with the same quotes from Mencius except adding the “Liyun” slogan, “when the great Dao prevails, the nation is for all.” As the “Liyun” text has been traditionally attributed to Confucius—and Kang Youwei had made quite a point of that in his various writings before the reform of 1898—Sun therefore could say with justification that “Confucius and Mencius spoke two thousand years ago for people’s rights.”60 One can see that there was a gradual emergence and formation of a common discourse from the time of Kang Youwei and that it cut across the political or doxographical lines such as between the Revolutionaries and Reformists or between the New Text school and the Old Text school. One interesting feature of this discussion is that the change- oriented Chinese intellectuals all tended to reinterpret certain key Chinese classical and historical texts in light of the Western values they hoped to introduce to China. The idea of minquan or minzhu is a case in point. Kang Youwei, as has been well known, stretched his text to identify the Age of Universal Peace with minzhu 民主 (people’s rule, or democracy). Thus, he also came to the conclusion that Yao and Shun stood for “Universal Peace under the people’s rule.” 61 On the revolutionary side, interestingly enough, we find that scholars of the famous guocui 國粹 (national essence) school were engaged in exactly the same kind of textual interpretation in the

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first decade of the present century. Some cited the Chinese counterpart of Vox populi vox Dei, the “Liyun” slogan quoted earlier, to “prove” that minquan (democracy) as a theory had appeared in Chinese history much earlier than in the West. Others echoed Kang Youwei in his claim that in classical antiquity, the Chinese system of government was indeed based on the principle “the nation is for all.” 62 Even such marginal intellectuals as He Qi 何啟 (He Gai) and Hu Liyuan 胡禮垣, with whom Sun had been closely associated in his early years, participated in this discourse. Like Kang Youwei, they also interpreted the age of Yao and Shun as the “age of democracy” (minzhu). The idea of minquan (people’s power, or people’s rights), according to them, had been most clearly articulated in ancient China, especially by Mencius. Moreover, they also directly responded to and reflected on Kang Youwei’s theory about “the nation is for all” (tianxia weigong).63 In view of these facts, I am very much inclined to think that Sun Yat-sen’s definitive views of the Chinese cultural tradition as a whole had been formed gradually over the decades as he followed closely the development of this discussion. His use of the term guocui (national essence, or national characteristics), originally a borrowing from the Japanese kokusui, also revealed his intellectual tie to the guocui school and its influential journal, Guocui xuebao 國粹學報.64 His theory of the five-power government deserves some attention, too. Why did he insist on a five-power system instead of the three-power division as generally practiced in the West? His own justification ran as follows: What is the source of the two new features in our quintuple-power constitution? They come from old China. China long ago had the independent systems of civil ser vice examination and censorship and they were very effective. . . . The power of censorship includes the power to impeach, which other governments have but which is placed in the legislative body and is not a separate governmental power. The selection of real talent and ability through examinations has been characteristic of China for thousands of years. . . . If we now want to combine the best from China and the best from other countries and guard against all kinds of abuse in the future, we must take the three Western governmental powers—the executive, legislative, and judicial— and add to them the old Chinese powers of examination and censorship, and bring the system to perfection, a quintuple-power government.65 Obviously, the revision resulted largely from his own study and understanding of the Chinese political tradition. But he probably had also interacted with other scholars on this subject. Zhang Binglin, for instance, also independently proposed, in 1908, a four-power governmental system with education as the fourth branch.66 It is characteristic of Sun that he did not want to do away with the

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Chinese tradition completely, nor was he willing to copy any Western model without due modifications.

The P r inc i pl e of L i v el iho od In his lectures on the Three Principles of the People, Sun Yat-sen referred to his minsheng zhuyi 民生主義, the Principle of the People’s Livelihood, as something comparable to socialism or even communism. This reference could be misleading, and indeed it has given rise to a great deal of ideological controversy since his death. As I have argued elsewhere, he made this par ticular reference in 1924 primarily as an expedient, strategic move to accommodate the Chinese Communists during the Nationalist- Communist coalition period.67 No doubt, he was extremely familiar with various socialist ideas then current in the West. On the whole, however, his Principle of the People’s Livelihood was conceived from the beginning in traditional Chinese terms in spite of the fact that he formulated it in a thoroughly modern way by taking into full consideration recent experiences of Western capitalist societies. The simple fact that he deliberately chose the Chinese term minsheng for his principle is sufficient proof of its Chinese base. The term, as he explained very clearly, derived from the phrase guoji minsheng (finance of the state and the people’s livelihood).68 Guoji and minsheng 國計民生 originated as two separate terms traceable to preQin texts; their combination into one phrase was relatively late in origin. It remains to be discovered precisely when the phrase first occurred. However, it is noteworthy that the idea of guoji minsheng had been given a new emphasis during the Tongzhi Restoration.69 From that time on, the idea was very much in the consciousness of Chinese intellectuals, especially those who were concerned with practical statecraft along jingshi lines. Sun’s terminological choice more or less reflected the jingshi legacy he had inherited in his early intellectual life. In formulating the Principle of People’s Livelihood, Sun seems to have had the Confucian idea of equalization ( jun 均) very much in the back of his mind. Speaking of the minsheng principle in 1919, he specifically quoted the famous saying of Confucius that a state ought to “worry not about poverty but about unequal distribution.”70 It was mainly out of this concern with equalization that he praised the well-field ( jingtian 井田) system as the best land system in ancient China. According to the well-field system, farmland was divided into grids containing nine squares, three by three. The outer squares were distributed to eight families, and these families cultivated the central section collectively for the government. He went so far as to suggest that the well-field system agreed essentially with his idea about “equalization of landed power” (pingjun diquan 平均地權), one of the two major components of his Principle of the People’s Livelihood, the other one being the “regulation of capital.”71

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In this connection, the influence of his conversations with intellectuals must be noted. According to a contemporary’s account, during the 1898 to 1899 period, Sun often discussed land systems in Chinese history with Chinese intellectuals in Tokyo, including Liang Qichao and Zhang Binglin. Their topics ranged from the well-field system, the equal field ( juntian 均田) system (by which land was divided equally among farm families), to the idea of “public granary” in the Taiping ideology.72 They seem to have been in basic agreement about the socialist nature of the well-field or equal field system. The identification of the well-field system with socialism was probably also inspired by Kang Youwei, who believed the jingtian system to be a device of Confucius. As Kang’s leading disciple, Liang Qichao, wrote in 1899, “China’s ancient jingtian system stands on the same plane as modern socialism.”73 In 1906, Zhang Binglin said the same thing about the juntian system: “One especially excellent thing that absolutely cannot be matched by the West is the juntian system, which corresponds to socialism.”74 In the same year, Hu Hanmin 胡漢民 (1879–1936) also expressed the view with Sun’s approval that the well-field system was a socialist model in ancient China.75 The idea of equalization ( jun) was also central to the other component of Sun’s minsheng principle, “regulation of capital.” In this area, Sun’s proposal amounted to what is generally known as “state capitalism,” with all the major industries and public utilities and transportation placed under the direct control and management of the state. It seems to have been his firm belief that this was the only way to guarantee distributive justice in economic life. His strong advocacy of “state capitalism” was apparently prompted by the unequal distribution of wealth he witnessed in Western capitalistic societies in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.76 However, I suspect that in this area his economic thinking may also have been influenced by the Chinese tradition. Given his broad knowledge of Chinese institutional history, he must have been familiar with the practice of state monopolies of salt and iron since the Han dynasty. It was therefore only natural that he was well disposed to favor state capitalism. Moreover, in the thought of the time, it was almost an unquestioned assumption that industry and commerce must be run by the state to prevent the growth of gross inequality in the allocation and distribution of wealth. Kang Youwei, for example, also considered public ownership and management of all industrial and commercial firms (gonggong 公共 and gongshang 工商) an essential feature of his utopian Universal Commonwealth (Datong).77 It is commonly known that the public (gong 公) has always been emphasized in the Chinese tradition as a positive social value compared to selfishness (si 私). After all, the meaning of Sun’s Principle of the People’s Livelihood cannot be fully grasped without a deeper understanding of his commitment to traditional Chinese values. I would like to end this section with a note on Sun Yat-sen’s famous thesis, “Knowledge is difficult and action is easy” (zhi nan xing yi 知難行易). In 1918,

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after having been repeatedly frustrated by the fact that even his own followers had lost faith in his revolutionary cause, he wrote a treatise entitled “Sun Wen xueshuo” (The Doctrine of Sun Wen). He apparently believed that true faith could be established only on the foundation of true knowledge. His followers failed to act according to his principles because they never really understood them. In the preface to this treatise, he traced the source of the trouble to the dictum in the Confucian Shangshu (Classic of History), “To know is not difficult, but to act is.” It was this single habit of thinking in Chinese tradition, he said, that stood very much in the way of his revolution. He was, therefore, determined to destroy this erroneous notion.78 In the treatise, he also attacked Wang Yangming’s theory of “the unity of knowledge and action” because it implicitly took the Classic of History dictum as its very assumption. His own thesis, “Knowledge is difficult and action is easy,” was thus intended as a contradiction of the traditional view. He was gratified that his thesis was positively confirmed by John Dewey when the latter visited him in Shanghai. Knowing these things, can we then conclude that Sun had, in 1918, rebelled against Chinese tradition? The answer must be negative, for he soon made it clear that in formulating his thesis or, rather, antithesis, he was actually following the correct view of Confucius and Mencius.79 As a matter of fact, had he known better, he could well have cited Zhu Xi 朱熹 (1130–1200) and, more recently, Dai Zhen in his support, for his view is surely much closer to the Cheng-Zhu Neo- Confucian tradition, with its emphasis on knowledge as a prerequisite for action.80 Sun most certainly did not intend to break with tradition when he joined this time-honored knowledgeversus-action debate. It hardly needs mentioning that knowledge-versus-action as a philosophical category has been a marked characteristic of Chinese thought for well over two millennia. To think in this very category at all, I may add, is to take tradition seriously, not to dismiss it. In 1913, Sun Yat-sen made the following remark in a speech: “The recent Chinese revolution is actually a restoration of the civilization that has existed in our history for several thousand years.” To equate “revolution” with “restoration” does sound odd— a contradiction in terms. But his audience applauded loudly.81 It is truly remarkable that Sun as a revolutionary leader lived a life of constant tension between revolution and restoration, innovation and tradition, as well as continuity and rupture, and yet showed little sign of a failure of nerve. This phenomenon seems to speak as much for Sun Yat-sen as for his culture. His admiration for Western civilization and his love of his own cultural tradition were both authentic. By founding the republic, he may be truly said to have given China a rebirth. The republic was undoubtedly a synthesis of Chinese tradition and Western modernity created out of tension at all levels. At the personal level, however, the role Sun assumed was clearly decisive. For he alone was able to transform his personal tension into a source of creativity and did every thing he could, under the circumstances, to “combine the best from China and the best from other countries,” as he said.

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Unfortunately, Sun died with his revolution unfinished. His vision of a new China still remains to be fully realized. We know quite well what his vision is like in political, economic, and social terms. But how are we to translate his vision into cultural terms, particularly with respect to Chinese tradition? It is, of course, anybody’s guess. To conclude, however, let me borrow as a tentative answer Hu Shih’s (Hu Shi) view of Chinese tradition, which he reached toward the end of his life: “The product of this rebirth looks suspiciously occidental. But scratch its surface and you will find that the stuff of which it is made is essentially the Chinese bedrock which much weathering and corrosion only made stand out more clearly—the humanistic and rationalistic China resurrected by the touch of the scientific and democratic civilization of the new world.”82

notes 1.

ZLQS (Taipei: Zhongyang wenwu gongyingshe, 1956), 5:453.

2.

The literature is rather vast. The following selected titles may serve to indicate the general approaches: Lu Zhiping 呂治平, Guofu yu Rujia sixiang zhi bijiao yanjiu 國父與儒家 思想之比較研究 (Taipei: Zhongyang wenwu gongyingshe, 1958; Taipei, n.p., 1967); Li Yubin 李玉彬, XianQin Rujia sixiang 先秦儒家思想 (Taipei: Shangwu yinshuguan, 1978); Liang Hancao 梁寒操, Kong-Meng xueshuo yu Sanmin zhuyi 孔孟學說與三民主義 (Taipei: Zhongyang wenwu, 1980); Hu Mian 胡勉, Rujia sixiang yu Sanmin zhuyi 儒家思 想與三民主義 (Taipei: Liming wenhua shiye gongsi, 1980); Zhang Zhihao 張志豪, XianQin Mojia sixiang yu Sanmin zhuyi 先秦墨家思想與三民主義 (Taipei: Zhengzhong shuju, 1979); Xiao Tianshi 蕭天石, Sanmin zhuyi yu Lao-Zhuang bianzhen sixiang 三民 主義與老莊辯證思想 (Taipei: Sanmin zhuyi yanjiusuo, 1967). For a recent review, see Qiu Hongda, “Yi Zhongguo wenhua chuantong xilun sanmin zhuyi,” 丘宏達, 依中國文 化傳統析論三民主義、共產主義與中國現代化, 黃花崗雜誌 11, no. 4 (2004), http://www .huanghuagang.org/hhgMagazine/issue11/big5/11 .htm.

3.

C. Martin Wilbur, Sun Yat-sen, Frustrated Patriot (New York: Columbia University Press, 1976), 7.

4.

ZLQS, 5:88–89.

5.

See Guofu nianpu 國父年譜 (Taipei: Zhonghua Minguo gejie jinian Guofu bainian danchen choubei weiyuanhui, 1965), 1:37.

6.

Mao Sicheng, comp. 毛思誠編, Minguo shiwunian yiqian zhi Jiang Jieshi xiansheng 民國 十五年前之蔣介石先生 (n.p., 1936 [also Hong Kong: Longmen, 1965]), 7:26.

7.

ZLQS, 5:90.

8.

See James Reeve Pusey, China and Charles Darwin (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Asia Center, 1983), 317–318; Benjamin Schwartz, In Search of Wealth and Power: Yan Fu and the West (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1964), 98–112.

9.

“On the True Way,” translated in Wm. Theodore de Bary, Wing-tsit Chan, and Burton Watson, eds., Sources of Chinese Tradition (New York: Columbia University Press, 1960), 434.

174 10.

sun yat - s e n’ s d o c t r ine a nd tr aditional c h inese c ul t ure See Guofu nianpu, 2:800–801; Harold Z. Schiff rin, Sun Yat- sen, Reluctant Revolutionary (Boston: Little, Brown, 1980), 224–225.

11.

Dai Jitao 戴季陶, Sun Wen zhuyi zhi zhexue di jichu 孫文主義之哲學的基礎 (Taipei:

12.

See Hu Songping 胡頌平, Hu Shizhi xiansheng nianpu changbian chugao 胡適之先生年

Pamier shudian, 1952 [reprint]), 21. 譜長編初稿 (Taipei: Lianjing, 1984), 10:3754–3756. 13.

On the practical side of Sun’s rejection of an alliance with Soviet Russia around this time, see Wilbur, Sun Yat- sen, 120.

14.

Ssu-yü Teng and John  K. Fairbank, China’s Response to the West (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1954), 223–224.

15.

Harold  Z. Schiff rin, Sun Yat- sen and the Origins of the Chinese Revolution (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968), 347–354.

16.

See Fung Yu-lan, A History of Chinese Philosophy, trans. Derek Bodde (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1953), 2:71–87.

17.

See Emmanuel C. Y. Hsü, trans., Liang Ch’i- ch’ao: Intellectual Trends in the Ch’ing Period (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1959).

18.

Ibid., 88. Cf. also Sun Haipo 孫海波, “Zhuang Fanggeng xuezhi” 莊方耕學業志, in Zhonguo jin sanbai nian xueshu sixiang lunji 中國近三百年學術思想論集 (Hong Kong: Chongwen shudian, 1971), 125–136.

19.

Hsü, Liang Ch’i- ch’ao, 91.

20. Translated in de Bary, Chan, and Watson, Sources of Chinese Tradition, 439. The original Chinese passage may be found in Wuchao mingchen yanxing lu 五朝名臣言行録, SBCK, juan 10, 198. 21.

Yü Ying-shih 余英時, “Qingdai xueshu sixiangshi zhongyao guannian tongshi” 清代學 術思想史重要觀念通釋, Shixue pinglun 史學評論 5 (January 1983): 32–45; now also in Yü Ying-shih, Zhongguo sixiang chuantong de xiandai quanshi 中國思想傳統的現代詮釋 (Taipei: Lianjing, 1987), 418–431.

22. Library of Congress, Orientalia Division, Eminent Chinese of the Ch’ing Period, ed. Arthur W. Hummel (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1943), 1:282. 23. Qi Sihe 齊思和, “Wei Yuan yu wanQing xuefeng” 魏源與晚清學風, Yanjing xuebao 燕京 學報 39 (December 1950): 177–226. Cf. also Teng and Fairbank, China’s Response, 29–35. 24. Discussed in Qian Mu, ZJSNXS (Shanghai: Shangwu, 1937), 2:637. 25. Lo Rongbang, ed., Kang Youwei: A Biography and a Symposium (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1967), 53. 26. Feng Ziyou 馮自由, Geming yishi 革命逸史 (Shanghai: Shangwu, 1945 [reprint]), 1:47. 27. Lo Rongbang, Kang Youwei, 57 and 148–149; Yen-p’ing Hao, “The Abortive Cooperation Between Reformers and Revolutionaries,” Harvard University, East Asian Research Center, Papers on China, No. 15 (1961), 93. 28. Lo Rongbang, Kang Youwei, 52. 29. See Hsü, trans., Liang Ch’i- ch’ao: Intellectual Trends, 98. 30. Feng Ziyou, Zhonghua minguo kaiguo qian geming shi 中華民國開國前革命史 (Chongqing: Zhongguo wenhua fuwushe, 1944), 1: 35 and 38. 31.

Pusey, China and Charles Darwin, 32–33.

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32. Tang Zhijun 湯志鈞, Kang Youwei yu “Wuxu” bianfa 康有為與戊戌變法 (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1984), 153–171. See also a discussion of the utopian ideas including Datong in late Qing in Hsiao Kung- chüan, A Modern China and a New World (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1975), 499–501. Hsiao pointed out that the Datong passage had already been used by the Taiping rebels. However, the Taiping document Hsiao mentioned could not have been accessible either to Kang Youwei or to Sun Yat-sen. 33.

Yü Ying-shih 余英時, Zhongguo jindai sixiangshi shang de Hu Shi 中國近代思想史上的 胡適 (Taipei: Lianjing, 1984), 11–12.

34. For the ti-yong dichotomy, see William Ayers, Chang Chih- tung and Educational Reform in China (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1971), 150–152, 159–160. Also see Li Yong’s 李顒 words quoted in Yü Ying-shih, “Qingdai xueshu sixiangshi zhongyao guannian tongshi,” 37. 35.

Translated in Teng and Fairbank, China’s Response, 224–225.

36. Xiao Gongquan 蕭公權, Zhongguo zhengzhi sixiangshi 中國政治思想史 (Taipei: Huagang chuban youxiangongsi, 1964), 2:845. 37.

Zhao Fengtian 趙豐田, WanQing wushi nian jingji sixiangshi 晚清五十年經濟思想史 (Beijing: Dongfang shuju, 1939), 88–147, 301–305.

38. Schiff rin, Sun Yat-Sen and the Origins, 36. 39. Chen Zhixian 陳志先, Guofu de xuesheng shidai 國父的學生時代 (Taipei: Taiwan shengli shifan xueyuan guofu yijiao yanjiuhui, 1955), 33 40. See Guofu nianpu, 1:59. 41.

The English title is translated by Kwang- ching Liu. See Teng and Fairbank, China’s Response, 53.

42. Zhou Hongran 周弘然, “Guofu ‘Shang Li Hongzhang shu’ zhi shidai beijing” 國父 “上 李鴻章書” 之時代背景, in Geming zhi changdao yu fazhan 革命之倡導與發展 (Taipei: Zhongyang wenwu, 1963), 9:270–280. See also Schiff rin, Sun Yat- sen and the Origins, 36, and Michael Gasster, Chinese Intellectuals and the Revolution of 1911: The Birth of Modern Chinese Radicalism (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1969), 10. 43. A detailed factual account of Feng Guifen and his writings may be found in Momose Hiromu 百瀨弘, “Feng Guifen ji qi zhushu” 馮桂芬及其著述, in Zhonguo jin sanbai nian xueshu sixiang lunji, 397–410. This is a Chinese translation of a Japanese article originally published in Toa ronzo 東亞論叢 2 (January 1940). See Frank A. Lojewski, “Reform Within Tradition: Feng Kuei-fen’s Proposals for Local Administration,” Tsing Hua Journal of Chinese Studies, n.s., 11, nos. 1 and 2 (December 1975): 148 and 157n6. 44. Translated in Teng and Fairbank, China’s Response, 52. However, the term mingjiao is wrongly rendered as “famous [Confucian] teachings.” Actually, the character ming 名 here refers to “names,” as in “the rectification of names.” I have therefore modified it accordingly. 45. Mary Clabaugh Wright, The Last Stand of Chinese Conservatism: The T’ung- chih Restoration, 1862–1874 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1957), 65. 46. Sun Zhongshan 孫中山 [Sun Yat-sen], ZSCS (Shanghai: Xinmin shuju, 1928), vol. 3, “Lectures,” 37. 47. Wright, The Last Stand, 65–66.

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48. Xiao Gongquan, “Zhongguo zhengzhi sixiangshi cankao ziliao xulun” 中國政治思想史 参考資料緒論, appended to his Zhongguo zhengzhi sixiangshi, 2:996–998. 49. ZLQS, 5:453. 50. Sun Yat-sen, “The Three Principles of the People,” in SMZY, trans. Frank  W. Price (Shanghai: China Committee, Institute of Pacific Relations, 1929), 11–12. 51.

See Xiao Gongquan, Zhongguo zhengzhi sixiangshi, 2:902–910; Gasster, Chinese Intellectuals, 77, 203, 204; Pusey, China and Charles Darwin, 330–334.

52. ZSCS, vol. 3, “Lectures,” 72–75. 53.

See Hans Kohn, “Nationalism,” in Dictionary of the History of Ideas, ed. Philip Wiener (New York: Scribner, 1973), vol. 3, especially p. 327a.

54. SMZY, 133–134. 55.

ZSCS, vol. 3, “Sun Wen xueshuo,” 30.

56. Ibid., 53–54. 57.

See Chow Tse-tsung, The May Fourth Movement: Intellectual Revolution in Modern China (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1960), 194–195.

58. SMZY, 142. 59. ZLQS, 5:454. 60. SMZY, 169. Sun also made the same point in a brief statement about the Three Principles of the People in 1919. See “Sanmin zhuyi,” in ZLQS, 5:393–394. According to a study by Tang Zhijun, Kang’s commentary on the “Liyun text” was probably written sometime between 1896 and 1898. See his Wuxu bianfa shi luncong 戊戌變法史論叢 (Hong Kong: Shangwu, 1973 [reprint]), 147. 61.

Hsiao, A Modern China and a New World, 99. This is identical to Sun’s view. See SMZY, 169.

62. See Hu Fengxiang 胡逢祥, “Lun Xinhai geming shiqi di guocui zhuyi shixue” 論辛亥革 命時期的國粹主義史學, LSYJ 5 (1985): 142–160. 63. Xiao Gongquan, Zhongguo zhengzhi sixiangshi, 2:854–855. 64. For his use of the term guocui, see the Chinese text of SMZY in ZSCS, 1:90. 65. SMZY, 356–358. I have modified the English translation to correct a mistake. 66. Xiao Gongquan, Zhongguo zhengzhi sixiangshi, 2:913, and Gasster, Chinese Intellectuals, 217. 67. See my essay “Zhongguo Guomindang yu sixiang xiandaihua” 中國國民黨與思想現代化, in Zhongguo Guomindang yu Zhongguo xiandaihua 中國國民黨與中國現代化, ed. Zhongyang yuekan she 中央月刊社編 (Taipei: Zhongyang yuekan she, 1982), 20. This essay is now in Yü Ying-shih 余英時, Wenhua pinglun yu Zhongguo qinghuai 文化評論與中國 情懷 (Taipei: Yunchen, 1988), 203–215. 68. SMZY, 364. 69. Wright, The Last Stand, 153–143. 70. ZLQS, 5:389. 71.

See Chen Zhengmo 陳正謨, “Pingjun diquan yu Zhongguo lidai tudi wenti” 平均地權 與中國歷代土地問題, Zhongshan wenhua jiaoyu guan jikan 中山文化教育館季刊 9, no. 3 (Autumn 1937): 889–890; Xiao Zheng 蕭錚, “Pingjun diquan zhenchuan” 平均地權 真詮, Dizheng yuekan 地政月刊 1, no. 1 (January 1933): 10.

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72. Feng Ziyou, Geming yishi (1953), 2:144. 73. Quoted in Joseph R. Levenson, Confucian China and Its Modern Fate (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1965), 3:26. 74. Quoted in Gasster, Chinese Intellectuals, 200. 75. Robert  A. Scalapino and Harold Schiff rin, “Early Socialist Currents in the Chinese Revolutionary Movement: Sun Yat-sen Versus Liang Ch’i- ch’ao,” JAS 18, no. 3 (May 1959): 326. Cited also in Levenson, Confucian China, 134n36. 76. For Sun’s view of “state capitalism,” see “Zhongguo Guomindang dangzhang cao-an” 中國國民黨黨章草案, in ZSCS, 2:2–4; “Shiye jihua” 實業計劃, ibid., 176–177; “Sanmin zhuyi,” Lecture 1, “Minsheng Zhuyi,” ibid., 1:243–245. 77. See Kang Youwei, Datong shu (Beijing: Guji, 1956), 246–251. 78. “Sun Wen xueshuo” 孫文學說, in ZSCS, 3:2. 79. Ibid., 505. 80. See my “Morality and Knowledge in Chu Hsi’s Philosophical System,” in Chu Hsi and Neo- Confucianism, ed. Wing-tsit Chan (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1986), 228–254, and “Tai Chen and the Chu Hsi Tradition,” in Essays in Commemoration of the Golden Jubilee of the Fung Ping Shan Library, ed. Chan Ping-leung, Lai Shu-tim, Yeung Kwok-hung, Wong Tak-wai, Lee Ngok, and Chiu Ling-yeong (Hong Kong: HKU Press, 1982), 376–392. 81.

ZSCS, vol. 3, “Lectures,” 37.

82. Hu Shih, “The Chinese Tradition and the Future,” in Sino-American Conference on Intellectual Cooperation: Reports and Proceedings, University of Washington, Department of Far Eastern and Slavic Languages and Literature (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1960), 21–22. See full text at https://archive.org/details/ERIC _ ED010453.

8. The Radicalization of China in the Twentieth Century

S

ince the turn of the century, a radical mode of thinking has dominated the Chinese mind. The history of Chinese thought in the twentieth century may be interpreted as a process of rapid radicalization. As a matter of fact, never in its long intellectual tradition of over 2.5 millennia had China been as thoroughly radicalized as in modern times. Radicalism in the Chinese intellectual tradition, however, has its limits. The critique developed within the tradition is essentially an internal one. Traditional critics in general and Confucians in particular have tended to take the Way (Dao) to be immanent in the world of everyday life. This is expressed in the opening statement of the Confucian classic, “Zhongyong” (The Doctrine of the Mean): “The Way cannot be separated from us for a moment. What can be separated is not the Way.” This would suggest that we have always lived in the Way. Yet on the other hand, the Way as transcendence must also be distinguished from the world of everyday life. Indeed, it would not be conceivable that the Way could have generated critical principles as it actually did without this transcendent dimension. However, it is an undeniably unique feature of the Way, not in the discovery or invention of an alternative Way. In his Interpretation and Social Criticism, Michael Walzer, of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, argues that since the moral world has long been in existence, neither discovery nor invention is necessary. It is rather in interpretation where the real possibility of social criticism lies. Moral principles and values are always unclear and

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uncertain in meaning; they require constant interpretation and reinterpretation on our part, particularly in times of crisis.1 Walzer’s emphasis on the importance of interpretation as a critical method fits in remarkably well with the Chinese critical tradition. But we must hasten to add that the very idea that an alternative Way can be discovered or invented to take the place of the one already in existence does not seem to have ever occurred to traditional Chinese critics. Even popular radicalism in the Chinese tradition rarely, if ever, questioned the ultimate legitimacy of the Way. For example, the Scripture of Great Peace (Taipingjing 太平經), a Daoist religious text datable to the second century, has been identified by many modern scholars as one of the earliest works containing “rebel ideologies.”2 The text advocates radical reforms and attacks social and economic inequalities of its time. The critical method adopted in the text is clearly interpretation, however. By reinterpreting the Way in terms of Great Peace (or Great Equality), the author(s) of the text did not mean to demolish the Confucian order established since the beginning of the Han dynasty. On the contrary, there is every indication that the authors intended to cleanse the Way of its impurities. Little wonder that historians today, Marxist and non-Marxist alike, are often puzzled by the “Confucian model” they detect in the social structure represented in this text.3 Rebel ideologies of later ages, though sometimes inspired by religious ideas of non- Chinese origins, do not suggest an alternative social order substantially different from the traditional egalitarian model. In this respect, Chinese popular radicalism is probably not very dissimilar to its English counterpart as exemplified in London during the Restoration. There reformers “did not agitate merely to tear things down, but to restore to the community a customary order that the authorities themselves had allowed to come undone.”4

R E I N T E R P R E TAT I O N A N D D I S C O V E R Y With this traditional picture as a contrast, allow me to now move on to the modern era. Radicalization of the Chinese mind at the turn of the century began with a strategic move from “interpretation” to “discovery” on the part of the Chinese intellectual elite. At the end of the nineteenth century, Chinese critics discovered that there was a new and better Way in the West that could displace and replace the old Way, not unlike Plato’s philosopher who, having seen the sunlight, returned to the cave to tell his former fellow-prisoners what he discovered about truth. Antonio Gramsci, a leading Socialist theoretician, discussing the Russian Bolsheviks and their revolution, wrote: An elite consisting of some of the most active, energetic, enterprising and disciplined members of the society emigrates abroad and assimilates the culture and historical experiences of the most advanced countries of the

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West, without however losing the most essential characteristics of its own nationality, that is to say without breaking its sentimental and historical links with its own people. Having thus performed its intellectual apprenticeship it returns to its own country and compels the people to an enforced awakening, skipping historical stages in the process.5 This could be an equally accurate description of the Chinese intellectual elite in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, except that we must also include Japan among “the most advanced countries.” Yan Fu 嚴復 (1854–1921) was among the earliest “returned students” who, through his interpretive translation of Thomas H. Huxley’s Evolution and Ethics and Herbert Spencer’s A Study of Sociology, galvanized a whole generation of Chinese intellectuals into a fury of reform-related activity. It must be emphatically noted that when he was working on the translation of Evolution and Ethics from 1895 to 1896, Yan Fu was the foremost radical thinker in China. Indeed, “Respect the people and rebel against the ruler; respect the present and rebel against antiquity” was the gospel he preached to everybody. Moreover, in a well-known essay, “Pi Han” (In Refutation of Han Yu, 1895), he dismissed as historically false the account of the origins of human culture given in Han Yu’s 韓愈 “Yuandao” 原道 (On the True Way). Throughout the essay, Yan Fu not only explicitly questioned the legitimacy of the Confucian political order but also implied that the democratic system practiced in the modern West is much closer to the true Way as envisioned by ancient Chinese sages. Thus, Yan Fu began the process of radicalization, marked by the transition from interpretation to discovery as a critical method. However, the transition was not easy. Generally speaking, from the 1890s to the Revolution of 1911, Chinese radicalism still took the form of interpretation, but it was, in fact, thinly disguised discovery. We can see clearly in the case of Yan Fu the earliest application of the method of discovery disguised as interpretation. He discovered in the West a much better alternative to the Confucian political order; he also discovered, much to his liking, social Darwinism and the ethic implicit in it. It is interest ing to note that in his translator’s commentaries on Thomas H. Huxley, John Stuart Mill, and Montesquieu, he often made laudatory references to the classical Daoist texts, Laozi and Zhuangzi. In his commentaries on Laozi and Zhuangzi, he pointed out that Western ideas such as freedom, democracy, science, and evolution could be found in these two texts in their embryonic forms. Thus, following the Chinese commentarial tradition, Yan Fu appears to be merely reinterpreting the Chinese Way through a subtle shift in emphasis from Confucianism to Daoism. Nevertheless, as his “In Refutation of Han Yu” makes clear, he was actually advocating a radical change in China from an authoritarian political system to a democratic one.6 If Yan Fu tempered his early radicalism with evolutionary gradualism, Kang Youwei 康有為 (1858–1927) and Tan Sitong 譚嗣同 (1864–1898) boldly developed full-blown radicalism in modern China for the first time. Unlike Yan Fu,

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both Kang and Tan as political reformers pushed for not only “wholesale change” but “immediate change” as well. Of the two, Tan must be judged as the more radical because he was ready to break away from the Chinese tradition. There can be no doubt that both had been exposed to Western learning available in China before their reform program took its final shape. Current research shows that Kang Youwei’s theory of the three-stage social evolution, supposedly derived from his study of the Gongyang zhuan 公羊傳 (Gongyang Commentary) on the Chunqiu (Spring and Autumn Annals) of Confucius, was in part owed to Yan Fu’s social Darwinism.7 At any rate, it is now common knowledge that their reform program was formulated with a Western model in the background. However, both still found it necessary to disguise discovery as interpretation. In the case of Kang, the disguise was more deceptive because his reinterpretation of Confucius as a reformer was inextricably entangled in a great variety of classical texts. By contrast, Tan did not pretend to build his radical vision on any par tic u lar classical text. Yet to the extent that he called his philosophical treatise Renxue 仁學 (A study of humanity, 1896–1897), he was certainly making no claim to discovery. On the contrary, it suggests that he was merely trying to reinterpret the Confucian ideal of ren, even though his reinterpretation involved the idea of “ether” in nineteenth- century science. As the modern Chinese intellectual historian Chang Hao (Zhang Hao 張灝) says, “the impact of Tan’s discovery of the West was beyond gaining scientific knowledge.” 8 It is significant to note that the emphasis in A Study of Humanity is placed not on the discovery of the West but on the interpretation of the Confucian vision of humanity. The last phase of discovery disguised as interpretation was well represented by the Guocui (National Essence) Movement organized around the journal Guocui xuebao 國粹學報 (Journal of National Essence) (1905–1911). Major contributors to the journal included Zhang Binglin 章炳麟 (1869–1935), Liu Shipei 劉師培 (1884–1919), Huang Jie 黃節 (1874–1935), Deng Shi 鄧實, (1877–1941), Chen Qubing 陳去病 (1874–1933), and Ma Xulun 馬敘倫 (1884–1970). It is rather ironic that since the May Fourth Period, the entire guocui group has been generally identified as cultural conservatives. In their own days, they were bona fide radical scholars. In their attitude toward the Confucian tradition, all were revolutionaries as opposed to the constitutionalists led by Kang Youwei or Tan Sitong. It was due to their efforts that an iconoclastic undercurrent in the history of Chinese thought was rediscovered. Anarchists of the Wei-Jin Period (220–419) such as Bao Jinyan and left-wingers of the Wang Yangming school like Li Zhi 李贄 (1527–1602), for example, were restored to grace for the fi rst time. In addition, several of the guocui scholars, notably Zhang Binglin and Liu Shipei, sojourned in Tokyo during the first decade of the twentieth century and, as a result, were exposed to a variety of Western ideas and theories through Japanese translation. They not only went much further to discover the West but also were often intensely excited about their new discoveries.

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If Yan Fu introduced Western ideas and theories to the Chinese reading public, guocui scholars set for themselves the central task of applying some of these ideas and theories to the study of the Chinese cultural heritage. As one of the editorial rules of the Guocui xuebao makes abundantly clear, “With regard to Western learning, we shall also elucidate all those new theories and special insights that prove to be capable of illuminating Chinese learning.”9 It is undoubtedly true that the avowed purpose of the guocui movement was a quest for cultural identity in the face of the ever-growing Western influence. However, a general investigation of the writings of some of the leading guocui scholars will show, rather paradoxically, that what they identified as China’s “national essence” turned out to be, more often than not, basic cultural values of the West such as democracy, equality, liberty, and human rights. This identification was justified on either of the following grounds: First, as Huang Jie, an editor of the Guocui xuebao and a well-known classicist, put it, “guocui consists not only in what is indigenous and still suitable but also in what is borrowed but capable of being adapted to the needs of our nation.” Second, they took these Western values as universal and insisted on their genesis in an early China completely independent of the West. A large part of the guocui historiography deals with these themes.10 The theory of social evolution of the Spencerian variety together with its historical laws was now applied to interpret almost every aspect of Chinese history.

RADICALISM Finally, during the May Fourth era beginning with the literary revolution in 1917, a paradigmatic change took place in the development of radicalism in modern China. From this time on, whether in criticizing the tradition or advocating changes, Chinese intellectuals would almost invariably invoke some Western ideas, values, or institutions as ultimate grounds for justification. It was now neither necessary nor possible to disguise discovery as interpretation. The May Fourth Movement has been referred to by several other names, such as the “New Culture Movement,” the “Renaissance,” and the “Enlightenment.” Each name implies a par tic u lar historical interpretation regarding the nature and significance of the movement. The two Western terms, “Renaissance” and “Enlightenment,” require some observations. The application of these two Western historical terms to the May Fourth Movement is predicated on the assumption that the Chinese past can be reconstructed according to the historical model of the West. This assumption did not begin with the May Fourth era but is traceable to Guocui historiography as well as to Liang Qichao’s advocacy of New History. In the two essays on this topic, written in 1901 and 1902, Liang not only adopted the European scheme of periodization (ancient, medieval, and modern) as the model of universal validity but also accepted the Spencerian theory of social evolution as a self-evident truth.11

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In recent years, however, it seems quite popular, in China as well as in the West, to interpret the May Fourth Movement as the Chinese Enlightenment.12 I accept the term “enlightenment,” but only in a symbolic sense, not as a historical analogy. As mentioned earlier, the discovery of the West by modern Chinese critics reminds us of Plato’s philosopher who returns to his cave after having discovered the sunlight in the outside world. This Platonic symbolism is particularly appropriate for the “returned” Chinese intellectuals of the May Fourth generation. So, too, is Gramsci’s characterization of the Russian elite, as well as the following case about Hu Shi 胡適, a famous intellectual in the May Fourth Movement. In 1916, Hu Shi wrote a self- congratulatory poem in classical style on his birthday. In it, he said that he dreamed that he made a trip to Heaven as an “immortal” where he discovered a few “magical drugs” unknown to other “immortals.” He intended to return to the human world and use them to cure diseases. Obviously, his “Heaven” is Amer ica and his “human world” is China.13 On March 8, 1917, just months away from his journey home, Hu Shi read a book about the Oxford Movement and was deeply touched by a John Henry Newman quotation, supposedly from the Iliad: “You shall know the difference now that we are back again.” At the end of the entry in his diary, he remarked: “This sets the precedent for us returned-students.”14 Like the Russian elite in Gramsci’s description, Hu Shi did not break his “sentimental and historical links with his own people.” He returned to China and compelled the people to an “enforced awakening.” For good or for bad, he did make a difference. When Hu Shi arrived in Shanghai in July 1917, he found to his dismay that his motherland was almost exactly the same as he had left it in 1910. However, China had not come to a standstill during his absence. He had left an imperial China and had returned to a republican one. A new storm of radicalization was gathering. His explosive article on literary revolution, with a follow-up one by chief editor Chen Duxiu 陳獨秀 (1879–1942), had appeared in the New Youth magazine early in the year. Yet it would be unfair to blame this new wave of radicalism, especially in its total rejection of tradition, on a few May Fourth leaders, including Hu Shi and Chen Duxiu. Contempt for tradition, a built-in feature of radicalism, had well begun with some of the guocui scholars. It continued to grow after the Revolution of 1911, as R. F. Johnston, the British teacher of the last emperor of China, observed: “It is a bewildering phenomenon . . . that just when we Eu ropeans were realizing with amazement the high value of China’s social and political philosophy, her ethics, her art and literature, the Chinese themselves were learning to treat these great products of her own civilization with impatient contempt.”15 We can ignore the European part of Johnston’s statement, but the Chinese part must be accepted as an eyewitness account of the Chinese mentality that made the May Fourth Movement possible. Since the end of the nineteenth century, radicalization of the Chinese mind proceeded at an astonishingly accelerated speed. When Hu Shi returned to

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China in 1917, most of the major radical thinkers of the earlier generations were still alive, and some were still politically and intellectually active. These included Yan Fu, Kang Youwei, Liang Qichao, Zhang Binglin, and Liu Shipei, but in the eyes of Hu Shi and Chen Duxiu, not to mention the younger generation, they were already men of the past. All were conservatives; some were even reactionaries. How could this possibly be the case? It becomes ever more puzzling if we consider the fact that by Hu Shi’s own admission, China did not make much progress between 1910 and 1917. Ordinarily when we judge someone as either ahead of or behind his time, our frame of reference is the status quo, or what the German sociologist Karl Mannheim calls “the existing framework of life.” With reference to the status quo in China on the eve of the May Fourth Movement, none of the above thinkers can be summarily dismissed as intellectually out- of- date. However, this puzzle disappears once we realize that while intellectuals of the May Fourth generation regarded these early radical leaders as outdated, their frame of reference was not the status quo in China but some new truths they had recently discovered in the outside world, especially in the West. In this way, radical ideas in China rose and fell in quick succession according, by and large, to the inner logic of the world of thought and were virtually unrelated to the realities of society.16 In The Conservative Mind from Burke to Eliot, the American critic Russell Kirk points out that since 1790 at least five major schools of radical thought have emerged. They are the rationalism of the philosophes, the romantic emancipation of Rousseau and his allies, the utilitarianism of the Benthamites, the positivism of Comte’s school, and the collectivistic materialism of Marx and other socialists. In addition, Kirk also mentions Darwinism as a force that has done much to undermine the first principles of a conservative order.17 It is extraordinary that practically all these major schools of radical thought, as well as others, which have taken the West almost two centuries to absorb and digest, arrived in China within a short span of three or four decades. From hindsight, twentieth-century China has been so inundated with radicalisms from the West that thorough and rapid radicalization was hardly avoidable. Mao Zedong 毛澤東 (1893–1976) once characterized the intellectual climate of modern China as a “search for truth from the West.” There has been more or less a consensus among historians that a profound sense of the crisis of national survival on the part of Chinese intellectuals was initially responsible for setting in motion this “search.” It is neither possible nor necessary here to examine every imported idea that helped to radicalize the Chinese mentality. For illustration, let us take only one or two examples. The idea of total demolition of tradition as a precondition for the building of a new society was wholly inconceivable to the traditional Chinese imagination, but it was one of the absolute presuppositions of the May Fourth iconoclastic antitraditionalism.18 Many radical ideas undoubtedly helped, but perhaps none more effectively than the Enlightenment notion of rationality and

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modernity, as Stephen Toulmin, a philosopher at Northwestern University, explains: “The belief that any new construction is truly rational only if it demolishes all that was there before and starts from scratch, has played a par ticular part in the intellectual and political history of France . . . but no one who enters the spirit of Modernity whole-heartedly can be immune to its influence. The most spectacular illustration of this is the French Revolution.”19 May Fourth intellectuals’ early conversion to Marxism was certainly made much easier by their deep faith in “science” in its extreme positivistic sense. The very term “scientific socialism” carried with it a weight of authority that must have crushed many resisting wills. In this connection, mention may also be made of the enormous and long- enduring influence of social Darwinism.20 This paved the way for the May Fourth intellectuals to wholeheartedly accept the Marxist iron law of social evolution as self- evident truth. However, not all the May Fourth intellectual leaders were radicals. Hu Shi, for example, must be recognized as a moderate liberal even though he did have his radical moments. Since radicalization sped up immeasurably after the May Fourth Movement of 1919, Hu Shi was soon to be dismissed as a conservative or, worse still, as a “counterrevolutionary” by radical Marxists and other revolutionaries. It is amazing that only one year after the May Fourth incident, Chen Duxiu was already converted to Marxism. Hu Shi’s debate with the other May Fourth leader, Li Dazhao 李大釗 (1888–1927), over “Problems Versus Isms” (whether piecemeal solutions to concrete problems or holistic ideological choices ought to be the central concerns of the intellectuals) broke out as early as July or August 1919.21 It was the first ideological confrontation between liberalism and Marxism, and it signaled the beginning of the final, highest stage of radicalization in twentieth- century China. There can be no doubt that May Fourth Marxist radicals were always inclined to transform China totally by recourse to what Karl Mannheim calls a “systematic possibility,” meaning that to deal with a single undesirable social fact, the whole system of society in which such a fact is possible ought to be transformed.22 However, as their pursuit of the possible was always made in the abstract as opposed to the concrete, the possibility became forever out of reach. Scientific socialism turned out to be more utopian than utopian socialism. Moreover, from the very beginning, Chinese Marxism was cast in the negative mold of May Fourth iconoclastic antitraditionalism. Thus, it generated a radicalism of a highly destructive nature. I would like to suggest that Mao Zedong may well be interpreted as Chinese Marxist radicalism incarnate. He was a genius in destruction but wholly incapable of constructive work. Throughout his life he was in constant pursuit of an abstract possibility and unable to settle with anything concrete. In the 1940s, he designed a new democracy apparently in concrete terms, but never intended to put it into practice. He was the founding father of the People’s Republic of China, yet his dissatisfaction with it was so deep that he never ceased to attack it by launching one campaign

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after another until his death. His destructive work culminated in the Cultural Revolution. It seems as if he deliberately worked against the actualization of the very possibility he himself had always pursued.

SOCIOLOGY OF KNOWLEDGE It is sometimes said that ideas have lives of their own, but this is no more than a metaphor. In reality, it is the holders of ideas, especially the intellectuals, who give them lives. In order to understand why China since the turn of the century has been radicalized, I must now move from phenomenology of mind to sociology of knowledge. Radicalization of the Chinese mind is an immensely complex topic deserving of a much fuller treatment. I would venture to suggest, however, that it grew fi rst and foremost out of two interrelated historical developments that may be called, respectively, the marginalization of China in the world and the marginalization of intellectuals in Chinese society. I shall try to explain how this double marginalization helped to trigger the long process of radicalization in modern China. By marginalization of China in the world I refer not to the historical reality itself, but the perception of it on the part of Chinese intellectuals. In reality, the replacement of the tributary system by the treaty system in the 1840s already marked the beginning of the end of the traditional Sinocentric world order. Their immediate response to the humiliating treaty of Nanjing of 1842 was rather a traditional one. Limited by experiences of barbarian invasions in the past, they interpreted China’s defeat mainly in terms of the technological superiority of the West. It did not occur to them that the Chinese political and social order as a whole was no longer adequate to cope with a barbarian threat of an altogether different nature. Discussing China’s foreign policy toward the West in 1842, the reform-minded scholar Wei Yuan 魏源 (1794–1856) came to the conclusion that the only way for China to control the barbarians would be to resolve to learn their superior techniques: warships, firearms, and methods of training soldiers.23 On the other hand, his reformism was still very much in the Confucian jingshi tradition, showing not even the slightest trace of any Western influence. Two decades later, the prophetic reformer Feng Guifen was among the earliest Chinese intellectuals to recognize the importance of Western learning to China’s survival in the modern world. In his influential essay, “On the Adoption of Western Learning” (Cai Xixue yi, written in 1862), he advanced beyond Wei Yuan by pointing out that to learn the superior techniques of the barbarians, China must first grasp the fundamentals of Western learning, including mathematics, mechanics, optics, light, chemistry, and other branches of the natural sciences. His faith in the traditional political and social order, however, remained unshaken; Chinese ethics and Confucian teachings, he in-

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sisted, must continue to serve as the original foundation.24 The prominent scholar-official Zhang Zhidong’s famous saying, “Chinese learning for fundamental principles, Western learning for practical application” (1898), was clearly a crystallization of the ideas originally developed in Feng Guifen’s writings.25 In 1894–1895, Chinese intellectuals discovered for the first time the shocking truth about China being marginalized. Culturally, Japan had been borrowing from China since the Tang dynasty (618–907), if not earlier. In the eyes of many nineteenth- century Chinese intellectuals, Japan was one of China’s cultural satellites in the East Asian world. When a Chinese scholar was told in the early 1870s that Japan had recently turned away from Chinese civilization and had begun to transform itself on the Western model, ranging from legal institutions to social customs, he became so upset as to compare the Meiji Emperor to the First Emperor of Qin who “committed books to flames and swept away all the Confucians.”26 Needless to say, no one in China could have possibly foreseen that precisely because of its success in Westernization, Japan was able to defeat China decisively in the war of 1894–1895. Criticizing the anachronism of the Sinocentric self-conception of the Chinese (tianxia, meaning “all under Heaven”), the eminent translator of Chinese classics, James Legge, made the following remarks in 1872: During the past forty years her (i.e., China’s) position with regard to the more advanced nations of the world has entirely changed. She has entered into treaties with them upon equal terms; but I do not think her ministers and people have yet looked the truth fairly in the face, so as to realize the fact that China is only one of many independent nations in the world, and that the “beneath the sky,” over which her emperor has ruled, is not all beneath the sky, but only a certain portion of it which is defi ned on the earth’s surface and can be pointed out upon the map. But if they will not admit this, and strictly keep good faith according to the treaties which they have accepted, the result will be for them calamities greater than any that have yet befallen the empire.27 Legge’s observation was not only accurate but startlingly prophetic. China’s first war with Japan was a calamity. Even though by the 1890s, Chinese ministers and the general populace no longer considered China as “all beneath the sky” vis-à-vis the West, they nevertheless continued to regard Japan with traditional arrogance. This is evident in the views expressed by advocates of war in the court as well as among the intellectuals during the period from 1894 to 1895. China may well have become only one of many nations in the world, but its central position in East Asia was not open to challenge, especially from one of its cultural satellites. It is not without symbolic meaning that the war was fought, at least ostensibly, on account of China’s claim of suzerainty over Korea, a claim that Japan refused to recognize.

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From the above discussion, it seems safe to say that as far as its perception was concerned, the marginalization of China did not fully manifest itself until the end of the first Sino-Japanese war. It was a catastrophe of this magnitude that finally awakened Chinese intellectuals to the painful truth that China had been marginalized not only in the world but in East Asia as well. As the Rutgers historian Michael Gasster pointed out in his study of the origins of modern Chinese radicalism, “After 1894–1895, the even more astonishing humiliation dealt to China by her hitherto lightly regarded neighbor, Japan, had almost immediate consequences in domestic politics and the intellectual world, as evidenced by the activities and ideas of Kang Youwei, Yan Fu, and Sun Yat-sen.”28 The discovery of the marginalization of China led immediately to the radicalization of the Chinese mind. Within two weeks of the conclusion of the Treaty of Shimonoseki (April 17, 1895), ending the war, Kang Youwei was joined by more than 1,200 examination candidates in Peking to present the famous “Ten Thousand Word Memorial” to the throne advocating comprehensive institutional reforms. Yan Fu’s translation of Evolution and Ethics and Tan Sitong’s A Study of Humanity were both a psychological aftermath of the war. Psychologically speaking, Liang Qichao was not exaggerating when he said that the war of 1894–1895 “awakened China from a slumber of four thousand years.”29 Never before had the Chinese intellectual world been radicalized on such an enormous scale and within such a short time. From an exclusively political point of view, the post-1895 radicalization resulted directly from the intellectuals’ sudden awareness of the crisis of national survival. There can be no question that the immediate goal of both Kang Youwei’s reform movement and Sun Yat-sen’s more radical program of revolution was to “Save China” ( jiuguo 救國) from being conquered by imperialist powers. In culture, as in politics, the Middle Kingdom complex has been constantly at work since the end of the nineteenth century.30 When Chinese intellectuals discovered the unpleasant truth about China being marginalized politically as well as culturally, they immediately confronted the difficult task of how to open China to Western influence without at the same time relinquishing its millennia- old status as a center of culture. The history of this bizarre intellectual enterprise can be divided into two distinct periods, corresponding exactly to “discovery disguised as interpretation” and “discovery undisguised.” During the period of discovery disguised as interpretation, the general strategy adopted by Chinese intellectuals was to interpret those Western ideas, values, and institutions particularly suited to the needs of China’s modernization as long as they were discovered by ancient Chinese sages independently of the West. We can easily see where the ingenuity of this strategy lies: to the extent that it advocated changes to the Western model, its main thrust was clearly radical, not conservative; however, to the extent that it disguised “discovery” as “interpretation,” the purpose of retaining China’s status as a center of culture was also well served. For example, the theory of Chinese origins of Western

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learning meant that Western sciences, technologies, music, the parliamentary system, economies, religion (Christianity), and law all had originated in classical China and somehow found their way to Europe. In this case, two points particularly deserve attention. First, although this theory had its early sporadic beginnings in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, it gained sudden but wide popularity from 1895 to 1900. Second, during these few years, the theory was elaborately developed by scholars who were eagerly receptive rather than resistant to Western learning.31 As a cultural phenomenon, this lends considerable support to our observation that since the end of the Sino-Japanese war, the change-oriented mentality of Chinese intellectuals has been shaped, at the psychological level, by their discovery of the truth about China being marginalized to the periphery of human culture. The theory of “Chinese origins of Western learning” came into vogue at the beginning stage of radicalization perhaps because it functioned as a safe conduit to Chinese intellectuals, assuring them, as it were, that to learn from the West was also the way to bring China back to the center. My second example is the theory of the Western origin of the Chinese race proposed by the French scholar Terrien de LaCouperie (1844–1894) in the late 1880s. Based on a highly dubious interpretation of Chinese etymology, he suggested that the Yellow Emperor (Huangdi 黃帝), supposedly the father of the Chinese race, was actually the generic title of the kings of Susiana (Nakhunti). According to this theory, the Yellow Emperor led a group of Chaldeans known as “Baks” from Mesopotamia to Central Asia and finally reached China in the third millennium b.c.e. Under the leadership of the Yellow Emperor (Huangdi or Nakhunti), the Baks eventually defeated the natives and conquered China. The Baks, whom LaCouperie identified as the ruling aristocracy known as Baixing 百姓 (Hundred Surnames) in early Confucian texts, created the earliest civilization in China.32 This theory is pure fantasy, unworthy of even refutation. What is amazing about it, however, is the fact that in the first decade of the twentieth century, practically all Chinese historians of the Guocui school, including Huang Jie, Zhang Binglin, and Liu Shipei accepted this theory without showing a slightest sense of embarrassment. In his foreword to the inaugural issue of the Guocui xuebao, Huang Jie repeatedly referred to the Han Chinese as “we, the race of the Baks.”33 Zhang Binglin asserted not only that the Chinese race came from Chaldea but that China in high antiquity also shared many cultural traits with the Greeks, Romans, Saxons, Franks, and Slavs.34 Liu Shipei was even more explicit. He speculated that the Han Chinese and the Caucasians were originally of the same race but later migrated to China and Europe, respectively, as a result of a population explosion.35 One cannot help wonder how such critical and learned scholars could possibly be so credulous and absurd. What mattered here was not historical scholarship but cultural psychology. Like the theory of the Chinese origin of Western learning, it happened to meet the deep psychological needs of Chinese revolutionary intellectuals at this par ticular juncture in history. On the one hand, as anti-Manchu

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revolutionaries, they wanted to distance themselves from the ruling ethnic group (Manchus) as far as possible, historically as well as culturally. On the other hand, as cultural radicals, they took Western values as universal values and insisted on their genesis in early historic China. By invoking the theory of the Western origin of the Chinese race, they could thus conveniently kill two birds with one stone. Moreover, as historians, they wanted Chinese history to retain its central place in world history, as in the past. If the Chinese race were of Western origin, then China would still be seen as being at the very center of the West- dominated modern world, not on the periphery. With the paradigmatic shift from interpretation to discovery, radicalization began to take a wholly new shape and relate to China’s marginalization in a very different way. By the 1910s, as Chinese intellectuals had been increasingly gaining direct access to the West, the old strategy to defend the centrality of Chinese culture vis-à-vis the Western hegemony totally collapsed. Neither the theory of Chinese origins of Western learning nor the identification of values and ideas dominant in the modern West as China’s national essence was acceptable to a new generation of intellectuals who came of age in the early years of the Republic. As Hu Shi wrote in the introduction of his doctoral dissertation in 1917: How can we Chinese feel at ease in this new world which at first sight appears to be so much at variance with what we have long regarded as our own civilization? For it is perfectly natural and justifiable that a nation with a glorious past and a distinctive civilization of its own making should never feel quite at home in a new civilization, if that new civilization is looked upon as part and parcel imported from alien lands and forced upon it by external necessities of natural existence. And it would surely be a great loss to mankind at large if the acceptance of this new civilization should take the form of abrupt displacement instead of organic assimilation, thereby causing the disappearance of the old civilization. The real problem, therefore, may be restated thus: How can we best assimilate modern civilization in such a manner as to make it congenial and congruous and continuous with the civilization of our own making?36 Hu Shi’s theory sheds new light on the radicalization and marginalization of China. It is then its oldness, not Chineseness, that must be held accountable for the marginalization of Chinese culture to the periphery in the modern world. The real trouble with China was that due to her long isolation from the outside world, she had lagged behind the West in social evolution. Since Hu Shi regarded the universal and modern aspects of what he calls the “new civilization” of primary importance and its Westernness as secondary, he could, therefore, advocate China’s “complete acceptance of the civilization of the new world” without being troubled by the inferiority complex that had haunted Chinese intel-

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lectuals of earlier generations. This also explains why he later preferred “modernization” or “cosmopolitanization” to “Westernization” as descriptive terms for China’s cultural borrowings from the West. In 1917, Hu Shi heralded a new approach to cope with China’s marginalization, and along with it, a new way to radicalize. From 1917 onward, efforts to repossess the center of culture for China on the part of Chinese intellectuals generally take the form of incessantly seeking to import the latest products in the cultural market from the West. As a result, a new frame of mind has been formed among the Chinese intellectual elite that may be called the neoterist mentality, a mentality obsessed with change, with what is new. This mentality is best described in the vivid words of the British political philosopher Michael Oakeshott: “We are willing to try anything once, regardless of the consequences. One activity vies with another in being ‘up-todate’: discarded motor- cars and television sets have their counter parts in discarded moral and religious beliefs: the eye is never on the new model.”37 Since the radical would be nothing if not also a neoterist, China’s marginalization and radicalization have thus grown, reinforcing each other at every turn. The tremendous overflow of radical ideas from the West and their rise and fall in quick succession in post-May Fourth China must be understood in this light. As radicalization eventually led China to totalitarianism in 1949, the flow of ideas from the West came to an abrupt stop. However, China’s drive toward the center of the world, recently intensified by revolutionary violence, continued to run its course. This is demonstrated in the so- called Great Leap Forward Movement of 1958–1960 launched personally by Mao. On the one hand, with iron and steel production, he announced that China would catch up with Britain in fifteen years and, on the other hand, with the “people’s commune,” he was very proud of the fact that China had actually beat the Soviet Union by entering into the Communist stage first.38 Since he believed that spiritual regeneration must take precedence over economic development, he sensed no contradiction at all to say that a country still fifteen years behind Britain in production had already won the political contest against the Soviet Union. To a considerable extent, it was also the same belief in the unfathomable power of the human spirit and will, especially his own, that drove him to the peak of a lifelong radicalism—the so-called Cultural Revolution.

FROM THE CENTER TO THE PERIPHERY Radicalization can be examined from a sociological point of view by linking it to the fact that the Chinese intelligentsia has been ever-increasingly marginalized from the center to the periphery in society since the end of the nineteenth century. This does not suggest, however, that the social marginalization of the Chinese intellectual began with the arrival of Western imperialism. As a matter

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of fact, historically, the decline of the social position of the shi 士 (scholar) vis-àvis the merchant had been going on slowly but steadily since the sixteenth century, if not earlier. As noted by the early nineteenth-century scholar Shen Yao 沈垚 (1798–1840), “While in the old days, sons of scholars forever remained as scholars, in later times, only sons of merchants could become scholars. . . . China’s center of gravity has tilted toward commerce, and consequently, heroes and men of intelligence mostly belong to the merchant class.”39 However, this process of social change suddenly accelerated toward the end of the century as the total collapse of the imperial system was drawing near. As a result, “China’s center of gravity” moved further away from the shi, who, according to the old Chinese system of social stratification, headed the list of the simin 四民 (four major functional orders), the other three being nong 農 (farmers), jiang 匠, (artisans and craftsmen), and shang 商 (merchants and tradesmen). As far as its bearing on radicalization was concerned, the social marginalization of the Chinese intellectual also reached a turning point in the early years of the twentieth century when the traditional shi was being rapidly transformed into what we now call zhishi fenzi 知識份子 (intellectual). This transformation, ironically, went hand in hand with the educational reform that had been carried out with ever-increasing speed after the first Sino-Japanese war. From 1895 to the end of the Qing dynasty in 1911, new schools of various levels based on Western and Japanese models grew all over China. In the meantime, it also suddenly became fashionable for students to go abroad for education, especially to Japan. The net result of these developments was the replacement of the state examination system by a modern school system. When the examination system was finally abolished in 1905, a long Chinese tradition in education and learning that had produced the shi since 622 without interruption was brought to an end. Therefore, symbolically, the year 1905 serves well as a dividing line between the traditional “scholar” and the modern “intellectual.” There are, however, as many continuities as discontinuities between the traditional shi and the modern zhishi fenzi. In one area of vital importance, however, the modern “intellectual” must be clearly distinguished from the traditional “scholar.” The former is no longer directly linked to state power as the latter certainly was. Around the time of the abolition of the examination system, according to a rough official estimate, China had tens of thousands of juren 舉人, the intermediate degree, and several hundreds of thousands of shengyuan 生員, the lowest degree holders, who were eager to improve their social status by earning the prestigious juren and jinshi 進士 degrees.40 To these numbers, we must also add millions of degree aspirants who, having toiled for years in preparation, were ready to climb the ladder of success. Now, all of a sudden the ladder was pulled away and they were thus deprived of the traditional status as shi that had made them an integral part of the ruling apparatus in late imperial China. This may well have been one of the unintended consequences of the educational reform of the Qing court.

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As the traditional shi turned into the modern zhishi fenzi, Chinese intellectuals also became politically marginalized in the sense that they now stood on the periphery of state power. Unlike jinshi or juren degrees, diplomas from new schools, or even higher degrees from foreign colleges and universities, did not automatically entitle their holders to state employments. As a result, modern intellectuals have been more readily susceptible to radicalization than the traditional shi. Captain James  H. Reeves, the United States military attaché in Peking, made the following observation in 1912: The revolution has been largely effected through the work of Chinese who have gone to school in Japan during the last ten to fifteen years. . . . During the past few years, the remark has been heard on all sides that the returned Japanese students [i.e., those Chinese who had returned from Japan] were revolutionary in spirit. . . . [They] returned to China republicans rather than monarchical reformers.41 At the same time, attention must also be called to the fact that in the imperial past, some shi turned into rebels only when they had repeatedly failed in examinations. (Hong Xiuchuan, the leader of the Taiping Rebellion, is one example.) Discussing the interests of Asian intellectuals, Max Weber once characterized the Chinese shi (whom he called “the Confucians”) as “aesthetically cultivated literati and polished salon conversationalists rather than politicians.”42 Generally speaking, this is true, but we must hasten to add that the shi could also be highly politicized and radicalized in times of sustained national crisis, as amply illustrated by the student movements under the Han and Song dynasties, the political protest of the Donglin scholars in the late Ming dynasty, and the joint petition for reform by Kang Youwei and 1,200 examination candidates in 1895. However, political radicalization of the shi had its prescribed limits. It was often expressed by way of internal criticism aimed primarily at restoration or modification of the imperial order; it did not question the legitimacy of the order itself. It invariably took the form of remonstrance or petition to the throne as if in the spirit of loyal opposition. With the advent of the modern zhishi fenzi, the situation has been fundamentally altered. Marginalized to the periphery, they generally refuse to identify themselves with the political establishment against which they protest. Comparing Kang Youwei’s petition to the emperor in 1895 to the student movement of May Fourth will make this point clear. It may be argued that Kang’s movement is midway between tradition and modernity. The May Fourth Movement is a decidedly modern political action appealing to the patriotic feelings of the masses rather than petitioning to the government. To a considerable degree, this radical mode of Chinese intellectuals can also be understood in terms of marginalization. Under a government dominated by warlords, intellectuals had no legitimate ways of seeking public office except, perhaps, through personal ties.

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As in the case of China’s marginalization, we can also conveniently divide the marginalization of intellectuals in Chinese society into two distinct periods with the abolition of the examination in 1905 as a symbolic though imprecise milepost. In the decade of 1895–1905, the last generation of shi still stood inside the power structure of the imperial state, even though they were considerably marginalized to the periphery. Nevertheless, the shi in the last years of imperial China continued to recognize, though not entirely without reluctance, the legitimacy of the Confucian order. They disguised discovery as interpretation and advocated changes within the limit of monarchical reform. By contrast, modern intellectuals, especially since 1905, stood outside the center of the imperial power. Armed with ideas imported from the West, they openly questioned the raison d’être of the imperial system.43 As much as I would like to distinguish the shi from the zhishi fenzi, I must point out that spiritually, the latter has continued much of what had been cultivated by the former. For example, the idea that the intellectual must always be identified with public-mindedness is not a cultural borrowing from the modern West, but from Confucian heritage traceable ultimately to the sage himself. At any rate, the two most famous mottoes of the Confucian scholar and statesman, Fan Zhongyan 范仲淹 (989–1052), are still very much alive in the mind of practically every educated person in China, even to this day: “The shi must take the whole world as his own responsibility”; “The shi is one who ought to be the first to worry about the troubles of the world but last to enjoy its pleasures.” It was with this spirit that numerous modern intellectuals had plunged themselves into revolution after revolution until, more often than not, they were totally consumed by its flame. The real tragedy in the history of Chinese revolutions is that it was always the radicalized Chinese intellectuals who imported and sowed the seeds of revolution while the harvest was, without exception, reaped by those anti-intellectual elements who knew best how to manipulate the revolution to seize its power. For the intellectuals, the seeds of revolution turned out to be seeds of their own destruction.

CONCLUSION This essay attempts to do two things. First, it aims to delineate the Chinese mind in the twentieth century primarily in terms of a process of radicalization. Attention is particularly drawn to the distinctive shape this radicalization takes, and the unique way in which it takes form. This is still very much an ongoing process in China today; a review of the past may therefore throw some light on the present. Second, radicalization is linked directly to the marginalization of China in the modern world and the marginalization of intellectuals in Chinese society. While some may link the first marginalization with the Middle Kingdom complex or simply nationalism, I consider “Middle Kingdom” too political and

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“nationalism” too general to serve my purposes. For Chinese intellectuals, the overriding concern has been to keep China from losing its status as a center of culture. Needless to say, this double marginalization does not wholly explain radicalization in twentieth-century China. It has been singled out because it seems to hold a key for unlocking one of the doors of the twentieth-century Chinese mind. Radicalization is only one among the many faces of modern China. The term must not be taken to suggest that Chinese intellectuals at all levels have been radicalized since the turn of the century or the rise of the May Fourth Movement. In conclusion, if I may be permitted to indulge in a personal note, I also come from Anhui, the native province of both Chen Duxiu and Hu Shi, and during the second Sino-Japanese war, I lived in a small village about sixty to seventy miles away from Chen’s birthplace (Huaining) for eight years (1937– 1945). I heard of Chen’s name only once when he was accused, falsely, as I later learned, of having changed the old Confucian dictum into “filial piety is the fi rst of all evils and adultery the fi rst of all virtues.” I also spent a year (1945– 1946) in the neighboring county, Tongcheng, whose literary school had been singled out for abuse by the May Fourth leaders of new literature, especially Qian Xuantong 錢玄同 (1887–1939). But there I was still encouraged to write poetry in the classical style. It was only after I returned to the big cities such as Nanking, Shanghai, Beijing, and Shenyang in 1946 that I began to be exposed to the influence of radical ideas of Western origin. In those postwar years (1946–1949), as far as I can recall, neither Marxism nor iconoclastic antitraditionalism dominated the daily life of ordinary urban intellectuals. Consequently, I have often been puzzled by the question as to how widespread and penetrating the May Fourth Movement or Marxism really was prior to 1949 in China as a whole. If, however, we look at the campuses of major universities in post–May Fourth China, we see an entirely new face. The inevitable conclusion is that although radicalization may have been confined only to scattered centers in a vast China, it did occur where it mattered most, both intellectually and politically.

notes 1.

Michael Walzer, Interpretation and Social Criticism (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univer-

2.

For a brief reference to this, see John K. Fairbank, Edwin O. Reischauer, and Albert M.

sity Press, 1985). Craig, East Asia: Tradition and Transformation (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1989), 79. 3.

On the Scripture of the Great Peace, see Max Kaltenmark, “The Ideology of the T’ai-p’ing ching,” in Facets of Taoism, ed. Holmes Welch and Anna Seidel (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979), 19–52.

4.

Margaret C. Jacob and James R. Jacob, eds., The Origins of Anglo-American Radicalism (Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press International, 1991), 5.

196 5.

t h e r adic a l iz at ion of c h ina in t h e t went iet h cent ury Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notes of Antonio Gramsci, ed. and trans. Quintin Hoare and Geoff rey Nowell Smith (New York: International Publishers, 1971), 19–20. Also quoted and discussed in Walzer, Interpretation and Social Criticism, 62–63.

6.

Benjamin I. Schwartz, In Search of Wealth and Power: Yen Fu and the West (Cambridge,

7.

Tang Zhijun 湯志鈞, Kang Youwei yu “Wuxu” bianfa 康有為與戊戌變法 (Beijing: Zhong-

Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1964). hua, 1984), and James Reeve Pusey, China and Charles Darwin (Cambridge, Mass.: Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University, 1983), 89–91. 8.

Hao Chang, Chinese Intellectuals in Crisis: Search for Order and Meaning, 1890–1911 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), 72.

9.

Guocui xuebao 1 (1905): 2.

10.

Hu Fengxiang 胡逢祥, “Lun Xinhai geming shiqi de guocui zhuyi shixue” 論辛亥革命

11.

Liang Qichao 梁啟超, Yinbingshi wenji 飲冰室文集 (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1989), 6:11–12;

12.

Vera Schwarcz, The Chinese Enlightenment: Intellectuals and the Legacy of the May Fourth

時期的國粹主義史學, LSYJ 5 (1985): 142–160, 151–152. 9:3–4. Movement (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986); Li Zehou, Zhongguo xiandai sixiangshi lun (Beijing: Donfang, 1987), 7–49. 13.

Hu Shi 胡適, Hu Shi liuxue riji 胡適留學日記 (Taipei: Yuanliu, 1988), 4:162–163.

14.

Ibid., 194–195.

15.

Quoted in Xiao Gongquan 蕭公權, Wenxue jianwang lu 問學諫往録 (Taipei: Zhuanji wenxue, 1972), 39. Johnston wrote this in 1913.

16.

Arif Dirlik, Revolution and History: The Origins of Marxist Historiography in China, 1919–1927 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978).

17.

Russell Kirk, The Conservative Mind from Burke to Eliot, 7th rev. ed. (Chicago and Washington, D.C.: Regnery Books, 1986), 9.

18.

Yü-sheng Lin, The Crisis of Chinese Consciousness: Radical Antitraditionalism in the May

19.

Stephen Toulmin, Cosmopolis: The Hidden Agenda of Modernity (New York: Free Press,

Fourth Era (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1979). 1990), 175. 20. Pusey, China and Charles Darwin, 57, 260–273. 21.

Jerome  B. Grieder, Hu Shih and the Chinese Renaissance: Liberalism and the Chinese Revolution, 1917–1937 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1970), 181–183.

22. Karl Mannheim, Conservatism: A Contribution to the Sociology of Knowledge, ed. and trans. David Kettler, Volker Meja, and Nico Stehr (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1986), 88. 23. Ssu-yü Teng and John K. Fairbank, China’s Response to the West: A Documentary Survey, 1839–1923 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1954), 34. 24. Ibid., 51–52. 25. Ying-shih Yü, “Sun Yat-sen’s Doctrine and Traditional Chinese Culture,” in Sun Yat-sen’s Doctrine in the Modern World, ed. Chu-yuan Cheng (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1989), 90–91. 26. Chen Qiyuan 陳其元, Yongxian zhai biji 庸閑齋筆記 (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1989), 110.

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27. James Legge, The Chinese Classics (Hong Kong: HKU Press, 1960), 5:52. 28. Michael Gasster, Chinese Intellectuals and the Revolution of 1911: The Birth of Chinese Radicalism (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1969), 6. 29. Ding Wenjiang 丁文江, Liang Rengong xiansheng nianpu changbian chugao 梁任公先生年 譜長編初稿 (Taipei: Shijie shuju, 1958), 24. 30. The “Middle Kingdom” complex is a reference to China’s sense of superiority as the center of the world. See Wei-ming Tu, “Cultural China: The Periphery as the Center,” Daedalus 120, no. 2 (Spring 1991): 4. 31.

Quan Hansheng 全漢昇, “Qingmo de xixue yuan zi Zhongguo shuo” 清末的西學源自中 國說, collected in Zhongguo jindaishi luncong 中國近代史論叢 (Taipei: Zhengzhong, 1956), first series, 5:216–258.

32. Martin Bernal, “Liu Shih-p’ei and National Essence,” in The Limits of Change: Essays on Conservative Alternatives in Republican China, ed. Charlotte Furth (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1976), 96–98. 33.

Huang Jie 黃節, “Guocui xuebao xu” 國粹學報序, Guocui xuebao 1 (1905): 1–4.

34. Zhang Binglin 章炳麟, Qiushu 訄書 (Shanghai: Gudian wenxue, 1958), 44–45. 35.

Liu Shipei 劉師培, Liu Shenshu xiansheng yishu 劉申叔先生遺書 (Taipei: Huashi, 1975), 721–722.

36. Quoted in Grieder, Hu Shih and the Chinese Renaissance, 160. 37.

Michael Oakeshott, Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays (Indianapolis: Liberty Press, 1991), 414.

38. Feng Youlan 馮友蘭, Sansong Tang zixu 三松堂自序 (Beijing: Sanlian, 1984), 166–169. 39. Quoted in Yü Ying-shih 余英時, Zhongguo jinshi zongjiao lunli yu shangren jingshen 中國 近世宗教倫理與商人精神 (Taipei: Lianjing, 1987), 97. 40. Wang Dezhao 王德昭, Qingdai keju zhidu yanjiu 清代科舉制度研究 (Hong Kong: CUHK Press, 1982), 246. 41.

Quoted in Gasster, Chinese Intellectuals and the Revolution of 1911, 61.

42. W.  G. Runciman, ed., Max Weber: Selections in Translation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), 200. 43. It is impor tant to note that the Chinese students in Japan kept themselves away from Sun Yat-sen and his revolution as late as 1903, but in 1905, Sun found himself enthusiastically welcomed by hundreds of them. In the meantime, back in China, revolution also gained new momentum among radical intellectuals, such as in Shanghai and Chekiang (Zhejiang). See Gasster, Chinese Intellectuals and the Revolution of 1911, 50–51, and Mary Backus Rankin, Early Chinese Revolutionaries: Radical Intellectuals in Shanghai and Chekiang, 1902–1911 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1971), 112, 146.

9. Neither Renaissance nor Enlightenment

A Historian’s Reflections on the May Fourth Movement

I

n recent years, the May Fourth Movement has generally been identified as the Chinese Enlightenment. When Chinese authors first gave the movement this new identity in the late 1930s and early 1940s, it was clearly intended as a tribute of the highest possible order by way of analogy. Now that the twentieth century is over, however, the honor originally implied in that identity is fast becoming a dubious one. Indeed, now the dark side of the Enlightenment project centering on the idea of rationality is often perceived as a “failure,” or even worse, as a form of “domination.” It is therefore only natural that the postmodern rage against Enlightenment rationality is also beginning to cast a shadow on the May Fourth project. I shall return to the question of the Enlightenment below. Right now I consider it impor tant to call attention to the fact that before the identity of the Enlightenment was established, the May Fourth Movement had been more widely known in the West as the “Chinese Renaissance.”1 To begin with, I propose to explore the historical implications of each of these analogical concepts as well as explain why eventually, “Renaissance” gave way to “Enlightenment.” More than anyone else, Hu Shi 胡適 (1891–1962) was responsible for propagating the idea of the “Chinese Renaissance” in the West. While on a lecture tour in Great Britain in November 1926, he lectured on the “Chinese Renaissance” repeatedly in academic institutions such as the Royal Institute of International Affairs, Trinity College (Dublin), Oxford University, the University of

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Liverpool, and Woodbrooke Settlement.2 One of the lecture posters even introduced him as “The Father of the Chinese Renaissance.”3 When he arrived in New York in January 1927, the New York-based magazine The Nation reported: “Hu Shih has returned to the United States. . . . Boldly advocating the use of a despised vernacular tongue, he did for Chinese what Dante and Petrarch had done for Italians: he opened the doors of literacy to millions who could never have mastered the intricacies of the involved classic tongue.”4 This is simply another way of identifying him as the “Father of the Chinese Renaissance.” In one of his Haskell Lectures at the University of Chicago in 1933, Hu Shi explained in no uncertain terms what he meant by the notion of “Chinese Renaissance”: The Renaissance was the name given by a group of Peking University students to a new monthly magazine which they published in 1918. They were mature students well trained in the old cultural tradition of the country, and they readily recognized in the new movement then led by some of their professors a striking similarity to the Renaissance in Europe. These prominent features in the movement reminded them of the European Renaissance. First, it was a conscious movement to promote a new literature in the living language of the people to take the place of the classical literature of old. Second, it was a movement of conscious protest against many of the ideas and institutions in the traditional culture, and of conscious emancipation of the individual man and woman from the bondage of forces of tradition. It was a movement of reason versus tradition, freedom versus authority, and glorification of life and human values versus their suppression. And lastly, strange enough, this new movement was led by men who knew their culture heritage and tried to study it with the new methodology of modern historical criticism and research. In that sense it was a humanist movement.5 A few observations may be made with respect to this account of the origin of the idea of “Chinese Renaissance.” First, it is indeed true that the English subtitle of the student magazine Xinchao 新潮 (New Tide) of Beijing University was suggested by a founding member of the New Tide Society in 1918. However, Hu’s self- effacing modesty prevented him from revealing the impor tant fact that he himself had been the patron saint of this influential publication from its conception.6 Second, it was Hu Shi who in 1917 drew the analogy between the literary revolution he was then advocating and the Eu ropean Renaissance. During his return to China in June 1917, he read Edith Sichel’s The Renaissance (1915) as his train rolled across the Canadian Rockies toward Vancouver.7 Much to his gratification, he found his advocacy of vernacular as opposed to classical language as the medium of Chinese literature historically justified by the rise of vernacular literature in Renaissance Europe. Dante and Petrarch,

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Hu Shi noted, began to use vernacular language in their writings. His attention was particularly drawn to the fact that although Leon Battista Alberti openly declared Latin “a dead language,” Cardinal Pietro Bembo eventually settled the question by coming down on the side of the vernacular in his Prose della volgar lingua (Discussions of the vernacular language; 1525).8 There can be no question that the adoption of the “The Renaissance” as the English subtitle of the student magazine was due to Hu Shi’s inspiration. Third, of the three prominent features listed in the passage quoted above, the second one, defined in terms of “reason versus tradition,” “freedom versus authority,” is clearly more characteristic of the Enlightenment than the Renaissance. This, however, should occasion no surprise. With all his talk of Renaissance, Hu Shi after all was more directly an intellectual heir of the French Enlightenment than of Italian humanism. In more ways than one, he reminded his Western contemporaries of Voltaire.9 Moreover, from many of his public lectures on cultural trends in the modern world, we get an unmistakable impression that Hu Shi took the Renaissance as the true beginning of modernity in the West and viewed all subsequent developments, such as the Reformation, the scientific revolution, the Enlightenment, industrialization, the democratic revolutions, and even the socialist movements as if they were elements in a linear progression of modernity following the Renaissance. It was probably because of his emphasis on the continuity of the Enlightenment with the Renaissance that he sometimes failed to draw a line between the two, as shown in the characterization quoted above.10 At this juncture, we need to examine a little more closely the notion of Enlightenment as applied to the May Fourth Movement. As far as I know, it was the Marxists who first interpreted the May Fourth Movement in Enlightenment terms. In 1936, several underground Communists launched a “New Enlightenment” Movement in Beijing and Shanghai. In the Zhexue da cidian 哲學大詞典 (Great dictionary of philosophy), published in 1985, this movement is defined as follows: The New Enlightenment Movement is also known as the “New Rationalist” Movement. It was an intellectual and cultural movement that unfolded in response to the national struggle against Japan during the 1930s. It was also the continuation and development of the May Fourth Enlightenment Movement. In September and October of 1936, it was fi rst suggested in two articles—“The Mobilization of Philosophy for National Defense” and “The New Culture Movement in Present-Day China”—by members of the Chinese Communist Party. They proposed that a joint effort be made to promote the spirit of the May Fourth revolutionary tradition; they made a clarion call to the patriots to start . . . a large-scale new enlightenment movement in order to awaken the masses to the need for a war of resistance and democracy. . . . The New Enlightenment Move-

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ment lasted for a year until the complete breakout of the war of resistance against Japan and the formation of the anti-Japanese united front for national salvation at the end of 1937. It played a positive role in clearing ignorance as well as disseminating anti-Japanese propaganda.11 From this account it is clear that the Communists reinterpreted May Fourth as “Enlightenment” because they needed a “New Enlightenment” Movement to carry out the party line of a new “united front.” It is impor tant to know that the authors of the two articles referred to above are none other than Chen Boda 陳伯達 (1904–1989) and Ai Siqi 艾思奇 (1910–1966), two leading party ideologues active in Beijing and Shanghai educational and cultural circles under disguises. I must also emphatically point out that of the two, Chen was a more senior and far more impor tant member of the Communist Party. It was Chen who initiated the New Enlightenment Movement. At first it may seem very puzzling that a man practically unknown in the Chinese intellectual world could launch a movement single-handedly that was immediately and enthusiastically received by many leftist magazines in Beijing and Shanghai. However, once we know who Chen Boda really was, the puzzle disappears. In early 1936, when Liu Shaoqi 劉少奇 (1898–1969) arrived in Tianjin to head the underground North China Bureau of the Communist Party, Chen was appointed chief of its Department of Propaganda. It was in this new official capacity that Chen utilized the May Fourth legacy in the name of “Enlightenment” to fulfill the task recently assigned by the party. In his own words, “We want to form the broadest possible united front with all individuals loyal to the fatherland, all patriots, all liberals, all democrats, all rationalists, all natural scientists.”12 Here, it must be noted, the word “we” is not an editorial usage, but a coded reference to the party. Needless to say, all the initial positive responses from leftist journalism were orchestrated by the party through its underground network. Moreover, the New Enlightenment Movement was closely related to the famous December Ninth Movement of 1935. The latter has been viewed by some of its participants as “a direct outgrowth and fulfillment of the aspirations of the original student movement of 1919.”13 In a crucial aspect, however, December Ninth of 1935 is different from May Fourth of 1919. As Fu Sinian 傅斯年 (1896– 1950) recalled in 1946: “Many people said that during the May Fourth Movement of 1919, we students were manipulated by certain politicians in the North. This was definitely nonsense. I was involved centrally in that movement. I know for a fact that nobody manipulated me, nobody asked me to rise against the unpatriotic government that was about to sign the Treaty of Versailles.”14 In the case of the December Ninth student demonstration of 1935, however, we now know that it, like the New Enlightenment Movement, was carefully planned and implemented by the underground cells of the Communist Party. According to the firsthand account of Gao Wenhua 高文華 (fl. 1930s), party secretary of the North China Bureau:

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Students unrest culminated in the December Ninth Movement. We in the North China Bureau supported and led this patriotic movement. Within the party, leadership was assumed by Comrades Zhao Shengyang 趙升陽, Ke Qingshi 柯慶施, Chen Boda, and others. Those who directly led it in the open included Comrades Li Chang 李昌, Jiang Nanxiang 蔣南翔 (party secretary of the Qinghua University branch), Lin Feng 林楓, Yao Yilin 姚翼林, Xu Bing 徐冰, Xu Deheng 許德珩, and others.15 Moreover, Lu Cui 陸璀 (fl. 1930s), a student leader of the December Ninth demonstration described by Edgar Snow in 1935 as “China’s Joan of Arc,” now openly admits, in a collection of her propaganda writings published in commemoration of the sixtieth anniversary of this historic event, that she was then working under the direct guidance of the party’s underground organization.16 Obviously, the two movements—December Ninth and the New Enlightenment—were ingeniously masterminded to support each other in a way very much reminiscent of the relationship between May Fourth in its narrow sense (the student demonstration of 1919) and May Fourth in its broad sense (what Hu Shi and the New Tide Society called the “Renaissance”). Now, with its origins in the North China Bureau, it does not seem to make much sense to say that the former was “a direct outgrowth and fulfillment of the aspirations of the original student movement of 1919” and that the latter was “the continuation and development of the May Fourth Enlightenment Movement.” Since the New Enlightenment Movement was conceived from the beginning to serve the needs of a hidden political agenda,17 its proponents did not even bother to justify why, on intellectual grounds, “Enlightenment” was a better appellation for May Fourth than “Renaissance.” From the political point of view, they linked both May Fourth and New Enlightenment to patriotism. Chinese Enlightenment, old and new, according to Ai Siqi, must take patriotism as its main task.18 But anyone familiar with European Enlightenment knows how absurd it is to relate patriotism to Enlightenment. With the possible exception of Rousseau, the philosophes were all cosmopolitans who took as their calling, not to exalt the interest of country, but to cultivate, enlighten, and ennoble mankind.19 It is interesting to note that Chinese Marxists as a rule preferred Enlightenment to Renaissance. Whenever a period of Chinese history was compared to the Renaissance by earlier authors, they would change the analogy to Enlightenment. There is another example in addition to the May Fourth case. Liang Qichao 梁啟超 (1873–1929), early and late in his career, insisted on characterizing the intellectual history of the Qing Period as China’s “age of Renaissance.”20 The Marxist historian Hou Wailu 候外廬 (1906–1988) rejected Liang’s analogy, however, and instead made a sustained and systematic effort to reinterpret the same period as “early Enlightenment.”21 Now, we must ask: Why were the Chinese Marxists so obsessed with the idea of Enlightenment? I would like

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to hazard a few suggestions. First, according to the Marxist theory of history, as China entered the historical stage of capitalism, it had to experience a largescale social expression of bourgeois consciousness similar to the French Enlightenment. May Fourth as an intellectual movement fits nicely into this scheme. Second, Diderot once wrote to Voltaire praising him for exciting “in our hearts an intense hatred of lying, ignorance, hypocrisy, superstition, tyranny.”22 Much of iconoclastic and anti- Confucian writings by May Fourth intellectuals can be similarly characterized.23 It was this destructive side of May Fourth that particularly appealed to Chinese Marxists. Third, Chinese Marxists were advocates of revolution. Since, as they noted, the Enlightenment Movement often preceded political revolution in European countries, they needed an Enlightenment to justify their advocacy of revolution in China.24 In light of the above analysis, I am inclined to think the Chinese Marxists’ persistence in redefining May Fourth in terms of Enlightenment did not arise out of a whimsical reading of history. On the contrary, they probably made a deliberate and calculated choice based on the sentiment that their political radicalism would be much better served by Enlightenment than by Renaissance, which was, in any case, too remote as well as too mild to be of immediate, practical relevance. By the same token, we must also take Hu Shi and other liberals’ espousal of Renaissance very seriously. From 1917 on, Hu Shi always insisted that May Fourth as an intellectual or cultural movement must be understood as the Chinese Renaissance. This is not only because of his advocacy of vernacular language as the modern literary medium, but more impor tant, also because of his profound sense of historical continuity. To him, “Renaissance” suggests renovation rather than destruction of the Chinese tradition.25 In spite of his often severe criticisms, Hu Shi’s rejection of the Chinese tradition, including Confucianism, was far from total. Central to the notion of Renaissance was his belief in the possibility of breathing new life into the old civilization of China. As early as 1917, he clearly stated the problem as follows: “How can we best assimilate modern civilization in such a manner as to make it congenial and congruous and continuous with the civilization of our own making?” The solution he then offered was that it “will depend solely on the foresight and the sense of historical continuity of the intellectual leaders of New China, and on the tact and skill with which they can successfully connect the best in modern civilization with the best in our own civilization.”26 This sounds a far cry from a total break with the Chinese past. Later, in 1933, he stated in concrete terms what was “best” in each civilization and how the two could be skillfully “connected”: Slowly, quietly, but unmistakably, the Chinese Renaissance is becoming a reality. The product of this rebirth looks suspiciously occidental. But, scratch its surface and you will find that the stuff of which it is made is essentially Chinese bedrock, which much weathering and corrosion have only made stand out more clearly—the humanistic and rationalistic

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China resurrected by the touch of the scientific and democratic civilization of the new world.27 In hindsight, we cannot help but laugh at the premature optimism of this “incurable optimist,” as Hu Shi was known to his friends. However, he remained undaunted even at the very end of his life. In “The Chinese Tradition and the Future,” his speech to open the Sino-American Conference on Intellectual Cooperation held at the University of Washington in July 1960, he made his fi nal attempt at a systematic application of the Renaissance concept to Chinese history. He distinguished altogether three Renaissances in Chinese history before the May Fourth one. The fi rst was the Renaissance in Chinese literature in the eighth and ninth centuries when vernacular language began to appear in poetry and recorded conversations of Chan monks. The second Renaissance occurred in philosophy. By this, he referred primarily to the rise of Neo-Confucianism in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. The third Renaissance was the “Revival of Learning” in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, when humanist scholars began to use “scientific methods” to study classical and historical texts on a large scale. Here, obviously, he was following Liang Qichao’s interpretation of Qing intellectual history, as mentioned above.28 It is beside the point whether we can accept his grand narrative of Chinese history woven around the central thread of “Renaissance.” The impor tant point is that, contrary to his popular image as a radical antitraditionalist, Hu Shi, early and late in his career, always needed some parts of the Chinese tradition to justify the Chinese Renaissance of which he was a leading participant. Thus, at the end of his speech, he emphatically concluded, “In short, I believe the tradition of ‘the humanistic and rationalist China’ has not been destroyed and in all probability cannot be destroyed.”29 It was indeed an expression of his personal faith, not an established historical fact, to make this claim in 1960 for the Chinese tradition he particularly cherished. However, he had no choice but to keep that faith alive, for if that par ticular tradition were destroyed, so would be the Chinese Renaissance of the May Fourth era, which was nothing if not the alpha and omega of his own identity. To conclude this part of my discussion, allow me to begin by suggesting that Renaissance and Enlightenment must not be taken lightly as two different analogical concepts randomly borrowed to characterize the May Fourth Movement. Instead, they must be taken seriously as representing two incompatible projects, each leading to a course of action on its own. Simply put, Renaissance was originally conceived as a cultural and intellectual project, whereas Enlightenment was essentially a political project in disguise. Central to the Renaissance project was the notion of intellectual autonomy. Knowledge and art must be pursued primarily as ends in themselves, not to serve some other higher purposes, whether they be political, economic, religious, or moral. It was precisely for this reason that Hu Shi often regretted that the student movement of

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May Fourth, 1919, though laudable for its patriotism, was nevertheless an unwelcome interruption as far as the Chinese Renaissance was concerned, for it marked the beginning of the politicization of Chinese academia, thereby undermining intellectual autonomy before it could be securely established in modern China.30 In contrast, the Enlightenment project designed by Chinese Marxists was ultimately revolution oriented. With the emphasis placed squarely on patriotism and national salvation, Marxist advocates of the New Enlightenment only recognized in culture and thought an ideological function in the ser vice of revolution. The idea of intellectual autonomy was by and large alien to them. No wonder Mao Zedong 毛澤東 (1893–1976)’s view of May Fourth was diametrically opposed to Hu Shi’s. His highest praise was reserved for the student movement of May Fourth, 1919, which, in his view, led to the revolution of 1925–1927.31 Ironically, even the New Enlightenment itself turned out to be no more than “false consciousness.” No sooner had it served the purpose of the formation of a united front than it fell into oblivion. The idea of Enlightenment did not resurface until the end of the 1970s, when the Communist Party needed a “reliberation of thought” to turn itself around under completely new circumstances. Renaissance preceded Enlightenment by two decades but gave way to the latter eventually. This was perhaps due less to the intrinsic merit of Enlightenment as a descriptive term for the May Fourth Movement than to the radicalization of the Chinese mentality. The Renaissance project was deeply rooted in Anglo-American liberalism, which found China less than habitable as the national crisis continued to deepen in the 1930s. Wedded to nationalism on the one hand and veiled behind Enlightenment on the other, Marxist radicalism became extremely attractive to student activists all over China. Renaissance could no longer find as many sympathetic ears in the new generation of university students as it had in 1918. Above, I have delineated two contrasting projects in the May Fourth Movement represented by Renaissance and Enlightenment. Although the term “Enlightenment” was not applied to May Fourth until 1936, the Marxist project itself was already set in motion in 1920 at the latest, when Chen Duxiu 陳獨秀 (1879–1942) moved the powerful magazine Xin Qingnian 新青年 (New Youth; also known as La Jeunesse) from Beijing to Shanghai and transformed the magazine into “a Chinese version of Soviet Russia,” the New York Communist weekly pictorial.32 This resulted in the split in the New Youth Society between the left wing under Chen’s leadership and the liberal wing in Beijing headed by Hu Shi. From this time on, the left wing began to direct May Fourth toward political revolution by actively engaging in ever-broadening mass organization and mobilization, whereas the liberal wing continued to expand the original Renaissance project in the cultural and intellectual realm. A further clarification with regard to the Enlightenment project is in order. The substitution of Enlightenment for Renaissance as a description of May

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Fourth in recent years is primarily due, as shown earlier, to the efforts of Chinese Marxists traceable to the 1930s. It is for this reason that I fi nd it useful to draw a sharp contrast between the Marxist interpretation of May Fourth as Enlightenment, on the one hand, and the liberal interpretation of it as Renaissance, on the other. What I refer to as the “Enlightenment project” is therefore, in truth, the Marxist project. However, I am not suggesting even in the slightest that anyone who understands May Fourth in terms of Enlightenment must subscribe to the Marxist point of view. As I have already indicated above, there are indeed many valid reasons to argue for the analogy between May Fourth and the Enlightenment, if an analogical approach is to be followed in historical research, which, of course, is highly problematical. It is interesting to note that Luo Jialun 羅家倫 (1896–1969), Hu Shi’s leading disciple and founder of New Tide (Renaissance), also compared May Fourth to the Enlightenment many years later. He said: May Fourth, first and foremost, represents the awakening of a new culture consciousness . . . and is very similar to the eighteenth-century European Enlightenment. . . . Enlightenment figures such as Rousseau and Diderot used fierce criticism to break through the confines of old thought. Moreover, they used a scientific attitude and the spirit of freedom not only to reconsider prevailing literary tendencies . . . but also to undertake a thorough inquiry into the political and social system as well.33 Luo’s use of Enlightenment instead of Renaissance as analogy was in all probability influenced by Li Changzhi 李長之 (1910–1978), who was on the faculty of the Central University in the early 1940s when Luo served as its president. Equally at home with the literary and philosophical traditions of China and Europe, Li Changzhi developed penetrating observations of May Fourth as a cultural movement. He weighed carefully and on intellectual grounds the pros and cons of the two analogies as applied to May Fourth and came to the conclusion that May Fourth bore a family resemblance not to the Renaissance but to the Enlightenment. He arrived at this conclusion independently of the Marxist New Enlightenment Movement and for completely different reasons. He meant to exalt Renaissance and downgrade Enlightenment. According to him, to the extent that the May Fourth mentality was rational, critical, skeptical, iconoclastic, practical, scientific, and antimetaphysical, it is justifiable to identify May Fourth with Enlightenment. However, the main trouble with this Enlightenment mentality is its shallowness; it cannot appreciate anything intellectually profound. As a result, in philosophy, Dewey, Huxley, Darwin, and Marx became fashionable, while Plato, Kant, and Hegel were little discussed. He further pointed out that the May Fourth spirit is antithetical to the Renaissance, which by definition implies both a return to and a revival of the classical tradition. May Fourth intellectuals showed neither an appreciation for their own early tradition

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nor an understanding of the classical culture of the West. Confucius was ferociously attacked as an apologist of the “feudal order,” whereas Plato was dismissed as a mere “metaphysician.” It was a classic case of a misnomer when Western scholars labeled Hu Shi the “Father of the Chinese Renaissance.” Despite his scathing criticism, I must hasten to add that Li was not wholly negative about May Fourth as a cultural movement. May Fourth cleared the old cultural ground through its destructive work and thereby opened up China for the real possibility of cultural reconstruction, but the impor tant thing was, he concluded, to start a true Chinese Renaissance by going beyond the Enlightenment.34 His revised version of a “Renaissance project” does not seem to have evoked much enthusiastic response in the Chinese intellectual world during the war-ridden and politically polarized 1940s, but it has begun to strike a sympathetic chord among a new generation of Chinese intellectuals who are moving away from the positivistic mode of thinking of the Marxist variety toward an “interpretive turn” in the human sciences.35 What I find particularly interesting in Li Changzhi’s reevaluation of May Fourth is his open acknowledgment that May Fourth as a cultural movement must be clearly recognized, first of all, as a movement of cultural borrowing, or, as he puts it, the transplantation of Western culture to China without ever taking roots in its soil.36 In a sense, this is an obvious fact. Why should I fi nd such a truism interesting? It deserves attention, I believe, for several reasons. First, as far as I know, no one has stated this plain truth so empathetically and with such a degree of seriousness. Second, this statement, though basically true, is nevertheless somewhat misleading if understood in the sense that those Western ideas and theories that had stirred up so many Chinese intellectuals of the May Fourth generation were completely without basis in the cultural reality in which they found themselves. Elsewhere I have tried to show that during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Chinese intellectuals, generally speaking, responded with genuine enthusiasm only to those Western values and ideas that struck chords in their own traditions.37 Finally, the plain fact undermines the very foundation on which the analogy between May Fourth on the one hand and Renaissance or Enlightenment on the other is built. The reason is not far to seek: in their own historical context, neither the Renaissance nor the Enlightenment was a result of cultural borrowing; each was the flowering of internal development and growth over many centuries of European culture. It is on this last point that I wish to comment further to clarify the nature of May Fourth as a cultural movement. To begin with, I propose to altogether discard analogy in the study of Chinese history. If we can neither recognize general laws in history nor take the unique pattern of European historical experiences as the universal model for all non-Western societies, why must we bother even to raise the question whether there was a Renaissance or an Enlightenment in Chinese history in the first place? We would do well to see the May Fourth Movement as it really

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was. It was, as Li Changzhi rightly observed, first and foremost a cultural movement in response to the stimulus of Western ideas. May Fourth intellectuals did consciously borrow ideas from the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. That is precisely why one can interpret May Fourth in terms of either with some justification. But May Fourth was neither the Chinese Renaissance nor the Chinese Enlightenment for the simple reason that a great variety of Western ideas and values other than Renaissance and Enlightenment were also introduced into China during the same period. If we carry analogical thinking to its extreme, then we would have to crowd many centuries of European history into the brief space of one or two decades of twentieth-century China which, needless to say, amounts to a monstrous absurdity. Once we are free of the obsession with rigid analogy, we can begin to understand May Fourth in its own terms. In my earlier study of the radicalization of China in the twentieth century, I pointed out that “during the May Fourth era beginning with the literary revolution of 1917, a paradigmatic change took place in the development of radicalism in modern China. From this time on, whether in criticizing the tradition or advocating changes, Chinese intellectuals would almost invariably invoke some Western ideas, values or institutions as ultimate grounds for justification.”38 Now, in the context of the present discussion, I would add that the same principles also held true for Chinese conservatives during the May Fourth Period. More often than not, they, too, appealed to Western authors in defending the Chinese tradition. Li Changzhi’s definition of May Fourth in terms of the transplantation of Western culture to China must also be understood in this light. If we take the notion of “enlightenment” as a metaphor rather than an analogy, we may say that May Fourth is different from the European Enlightenment in a very fundamental way. When the Enlightenment philosophes attacked Christianity, scholasticism, and the “Dark” Middle Ages, they were armed with the classics of Greek and Roman antiquity. In other words, they were guided by an inner light. By contrast, May Fourth intellectuals had to go out of their darkened cave— China—to see the light of day; they were guided by a light from outside—the West. Or, to borrow Mao Zedong’s famous saying, China has been “seeking truth from the West since the end of the nineteenth century.” In its early days, May Fourth was also popularly known in China by the names “New Culture” or “New Thought,” which seem to be more descriptive and less misleading than either “Renaissance” or “Enlightenment.” As a matter of fact, the identity of May Fourth with the term “New Culture” has been more firmly established than with any other term, at least in Chinese writing. In this connection, I propose to use Hu Shi’s definition as the point of departure to reexamine the idea of New Culture and its place in the intellectual history of twentieth- century China. His 1919 article “Xin sichao de yiyi” 新思潮的意義 (The meaning of new thought) begins by pointing out that “the fundamental significance of the new thought lies simply in a new attitude,” which may be

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called the “critical attitude.” It then goes on to list three specific tasks to be carried out under the guidance of this critical spirit: the first is to “study problems.” There are many concrete problems in China— social, political, religious, literary—that require our immediate attention. They must be critically studied so that solutions may be found. The second is to support new ideas, new learning, new literature, and new faith from the West. They not only meet the spiritual needs of Chinese intellectuals but can also provide them with theoretical guidance in their search for solutions to China’s concrete problems. The third is to apply the critical spirit to the study of the Chinese intellectual tradition under the catchphrase “systematic reorganization of the national heritage” (zhengli guogu 整理國故). In the interest of self-understanding, China’s old tradition must be critically and systematically reexamined. Only then can we develop an objective understanding of the various parts of our own intellectual heritage in historical perspective and determine their respective values. Finally, it concludes by suggesting that the ultimate goal of the new cultural movement is the reconstruction of Chinese civilization.39 Here Hu Shi presented a New Culture project formulated in its broadest possible terms and at a higher level. Defined in this way, the New Culture is not just about advocacy of Western values and ideas such as democracy, science, autonomy of the individual, emancipation of women, and the like. Nor is its central significance limited to the denunciation of the Chinese tradition, including, especially, the theory and practice of Confucianism. From his point of view, all the above matters of a practical nature—the list is endless— can likely be included in the category of “study problems.” However, in promoting simultaneously the importation of Western thought and scholarship on the one hand and the “systematic reorganization of national heritage” on the other, he seems to have returned to the theme he had set forth in 1917, namely, how to “connect the best in modern civilization with the best in our own civilization.” It is not my purpose here to offer a detailed commentary on Hu Shi’s essay. Instead, I merely wish to use it as a starting point to suggest a new way of looking at the intellectual history of the May Fourth era. If the New Thought or New Culture is definable in terms of a critical spirit under the guidance of which both Western and Chinese learning are to be pursued with the purpose, explicit or implicit, of illuminating each other in order to achieve, ultimately, a creative syntheses, then the very concept would have to be stretched to the extent of including every active member of the May Fourth intellectual world as a participant of the New Culture Movement, for the simple truth is that those who are often labeled as “conservative” critics of the May Fourth Movement turned out to be no less critical and no less Westernized than their “progressive” rivals. To illustrate my point, let me give one or two examples. By general consensus, Liang Shuming 梁漱溟 (1893–1988) was a cultural “conservative” par excellence. However, is his justly famous Dongxi wenhua ji qi zhexue 東西文化及其哲學40 (Eastern and Western cultures and their

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philosophies) of 1920 part of the New Culture or not? Surprisingly, the following is what Hu Shi had to say about it in his 1926 lecture on “The Renaissance in China”: For the first time in history we begin to recognize a new attitude, a desire to understand the basic meaning of modern civilization, to understand the philosophy behind the civilization of the West. As the best example of this new consciousness I may cite the work of a Chinese scholar, Liang Shu-ming. . . . He is voicing the yearning of a new age. His book was widely read and much has been written since on the same subject. . . . May I suggest that in these discussions we find a completely new attitude, an attitude on the one hand of frank admission of our own weaknesses, all the weak points in Oriental civilization; and on the other hand, the attitude of a frank, genuine understanding of the spirit, not only the material prosperity, but also the spiritual possibilities of the Western civilization.41 I have quoted Hu Shi at some length because his words bear importantly and directly on my point. The “new attitude” he recognized in Liang’s work is exactly what he had described as “the fundamental significance of the new thought” in 1919. Thus, by Hu Shi’s own admission, Liang’s study of Eastern and Western cultures and philosophies is very much a constituent part of the so- called Chinese Renaissance. Next, I would also like to cite the example of Mei Guangdi 梅光迪 (1890–1945) in support of my contention. Mei, as is generally known, was one of Hu Shi’s most intimate friends in their younger days, but in 1917, they became bitter intellectual rivals as a result of Mei’s violent opposition to the literary revolution. In 1922, Mei with Wu Mi 吳宓 (1894–1978), both leading Chinese disciples of Irving Babbitt, founded Xueheng 學衡 (Critical review; 1922–1933), which, as a Chinese writer vividly described it in 1934, stood “for every thing that Dr. Hu Shih [was] against. The avowed aim of the Critical Review  . . . was to fight the baihua 白話 movement, and to strive to maintain the old ways of writing. It was a losing battle, but the effort was heroic.”42 Hence, Mei and the Critical Review were contemptuously dismissed as conservative nonsense by May Fourth leaders, including Hu Shi and Lu Xun 魯迅 (1881–1936).43 It would seem unquestionable that Mei not only placed himself outside the New Culture of the May Fourth era but was also its most relentless enemy. Forty-five of Mei’s letters to Hu Shi have now been published, however, and they throw a completely different light on his relationship to the rise of the New Culture as later promoted by Hu Shi. Without going into details, allow me to report a few of what I consider to be significant findings. First, from October 1911 on, Mei wrote Hu Shi several long letters discussing the problem of Confucianism in modern China. At this time, probably due to the lingering influence of his father, Hu was still very much a believer in

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Cheng-Zhu 程朱 Neo- Confucianism. Mei severely attacked the Cheng-Zhu orthodoxy and urged Hu Shi to move on to the learning of Yan Yuan 顏元 (1635– 1704) and Li Gong 李塨 (1659–1733), which emphasized the central importance of social and political practice in the original teaching of Confucius and Mencius as opposed to the idle speculation of Cheng-Zhu Neo- Confucian philosophy.44 At fi rst, Hu resisted the suggestion; however, it sowed the seed of his ardent advocacy of the Yan-Li school a decade later.45 Second, Mei was not only equally dissatisfied with Han and Song Confucianism but also highly critical of the National Essence (Guocui 國粹) school then very much in vogue in China, which, he thought, still uncritically followed traditional commentaries on the Confucian classics.46 He was aiming at a higher synthesis of the Confucian tradition and Western culture. This could be accomplished only in two stages: a thorough purification of the Confucian tradition of the past two thousand years and a firm grasp of European learning with special emphasis on its classical beginning. Old Chinese texts, said he, must now be studied in light of the Western system of organizing human knowledge such as literature, philosophy, law, and the like.47 Third, in his letter dated March 19, 1916, Mei wrote: In the future, if I could introduce Western literary knowledge to China and provide a new point of view for the study of our traditional literature, and thereby set some examples for younger scholars to follow, I would feel my wish more than fulfilled . . . I am much enlightened by your discussions of Song and Yuan literature in your letter. It goes without saying that the [present] literary revolution ought to begin with “people’s literature” (such as folklore, popular poetry, spoken language, etc.). However, it must go through a great war, for the sudden talk of vernacular literature will inevitably be ridiculed and attacked by conservative men of letters. But on our part, we rather welcome their ridicule and attacks.48 In view of this letter, Mei was actually an enthusiastic participant of Hu’s literary revolution in its early days, even though he disagreed strongly with Hu’s literary taste. Moreover, I have also carefully checked Mei’s letters as quoted by Hu Shi against the original. There can be little doubt that Mei has been made a villain of the literary revolution by being quoted out of context. In these letters, Mei repeatedly tried to make his position clear to Hu Shi: that he was sympathetic to the literary revolution but could not go with him so far as to glorify the spoken language (baihua) beyond its limit. He told Hu in no uncertain terms that he was not necessarily less iconoclastic than Hu; he refused to embrace the “new currents” in literature and art, not because he was “conservative” but because he was “too skeptical, too independent.”49 In light of this new evidence, we can say almost with certainty that it was Hu Shi’s ever-growing radicalism in the subsequent debates that eventually pushed Mei to extreme conservatism.

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However, had Mei lived until 1952, he would have felt fully vindicated when Hu Shi, in his turn, became thoroughly disgusted with the “new poetry” and “new literature” in American colleges.50 Finally, in political and social views, Mei was always a moderate liberal, just as Hu was. He was, from the beginning, on the side of the republican revolution and, later, when Yuan Shikai 袁世凱 (1859–1916) betrayed the republic, his sympathy was wholly with the Nationalist Party. His deep differences with Hu Shi in literature and philosophy did not prevent him from expressing his admiration for Hu’s published statement against Yuan in American magazines. He even volunteered to write the revolutionary leader Huang Xing 黃興 (1874–1916) to recommend that Hu be appointed the spokesman for the republican cause. In his own words, “Hu Shi, being equally fluent in Chinese and English, is the only person among Chinese students in America who can use his pen to turn around the public opinion of this country.”51 In a letter dated December  28, 1916, in which he continued his debate with Hu Shi on the literary revolution, he nevertheless tried, in a rather reconciliatory tone, to seek a basic agreement with Hu on general “views of life.” He suggested to Hu in earnest that his Babbittian humanism and Hu’s Deweyan experimentalism shared more in common than they differed from each other. Both were in favor of reform, with only one major difference: Babbitt held that it should begin with the individual and then gradually spread to the whole society, whereas Dewey seemed to take an opposite view with regard to the process of reform.52 Moreover, although deeply committed to the moral faith of Confucius and Mencius, Mei’s repudiation of imperial Confucianism as a political ideology was complete. He condemned both Han and Song Confucians for distorting Confucian teachings in the ser vice of autocracy and social inequality, and repeatedly denounced the theory of “three bonds” (san gang 三綱).53 Antitraditionalist outbursts such as these could have appeared in the pages on the New Youth without their author ever being suspected of being a founding member of the Critical Review. This explains why he did not hesitate to praise Hu Shi for his liberal political views as late as 1922.54 The case of Mei Guangdi and his Critical Review raises a serious question about the true identity of the New Culture of the May Fourth era. If the New Culture consisted, first and foremost, of the importation of Western ideas to China, as Hu Shi’s definition suggests, then Babbittian humanism was clearly just as “new” as Deweyan experimentalism to the intellectual world of May Fourth China. In a sense, the conflict between Hu Shi and his followers on the one hand and Mei Guangdi and the Critical Review on the other may well be viewed as the rivalry between Deweyan experimentalism and Babbittian humanism transferred from America to China.55 This is only natural because in cultural borrowing, it is hardly possible to pick up a foreign idea without at the same time also calling someone else’s attention to its opposite. Can we then consider Babbittian humanism part and parcel of the New Culture of the May

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Fourth era? At least this question was answered in the affirmative by both Liang Shiqiu 梁實秋 (1901–1987) and Lin Yutang 林語堂 (1895–1976), whose credentials as members of the May Fourth Movement are impeccable. Having studied under Babbitt in 1924–1925, Liang returned to China convinced of his classical humanism. In the late 1920s, he edited a collection of Chinese articles on Babbitt, mostly from the pages of the Critical Review, and published it under the title Baibide yu renwen zhuyi 白璧德與人文主義 (Babbitt and humanism). The publisher, it may be noted, was none other than the Crescent Moon Society in Shanghai, a stronghold of the New Culture, with Hu Shi as its patron saint.56 Lin Yutang, who studied with Babbitt at Harvard from 1919 to 1920, also wrote to Hu Shi that during his conversation with Babbitt, he sensed some misapprehension on the part of the latter regarding Hu’s points of view. However, he added that Babbitt, though against every thing modern, was nevertheless right in his criticism of the neoteric mentality, which takes what is the newest to be the best. To Lin, it was the good fortune of the Chinese literary revolution to find a conscious and reflective opposition in people such as Babbitt and Mei Guangdi.57 Clearly, both Liang and Lin did not, to say the least, share the partisan spirit of Hu Shi and Lu Xun in dismissing Mei Guangdi and the Critical Review as completely external to the New Culture. It is interesting to note that just as there has been some renewed interest in Babbitt in the United States since the 1980s, Mei Guangdi and the Critical Review have also been rediscovered by Chinese intellectuals since the 1970s.58 There seems to be a growing trend toward placing the cultural conservatism of Mei Guangdi and Wu Mi, along with the radicalism of Chen Duxiu and Lu Xun and the liberalism of Hu Shi, in the same discursive structure of May Fourth New Culture.59 Before bringing my reflections to a close, I wish to say a few words about the other part of Hu Shi’s New Culture project—“the systematic reorganization of the national heritage.” In this vast field of, essentially, historical studies of the Chinese tradition in all its aspects, there is an even greater need to enlarge the concept of New Culture to accommodate some of the leading “national heritage” (guogu 國故) scholars. A few examples will suffice for the purpose of illustration. Wang Guowei 王國維 (1877–1927), universally acknowledged as one of the most “scientifically minded” and original historians of ancient China, was politically a Qing loyalist and culturally conservative. Chen Yinke 陳寅恪 (1890–1969), the leading medievalist, was both politically and culturally conservative, and never wrote a single sentence in the vernacular. And yet he freely admitted that China has been inferior to the West since classical antiquity not only in science but in philosophy and art as well.60 Tang Yongtong 湯用彤 (1893–1964), a great authority on the history of Chinese Buddhism and philosophy, was a contributor to the Critical Review, and like Chen Yinke, always used classical language in his writings. All three, needless to say, were unsympathetic to the May Fourth Movement in both its narrow and its broad senses. In the guogu field, however, Hu Shi admired them all and found them to be

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kindred spirits. The compliment was sometimes reciprocated, though not always. If we measure guogu scholars by such narrowly and rigidly defined May Fourth standards as vernacular language, positivist mentality, antitraditionalism, political radicalism or liberalism, ethical relativism, social egalitarianism, individualism, and the like, then a great majority, and easily the best of them, would have to be excluded from the New Culture of this era. As a result, what is left of the New Culture would be a linguistic world of conflicting ideological parodies but intellectually very much impoverished. Daniel Bell once described himself as “a socialist in economics, a liberal in politics, and a conservative in culture.”61 I believe many Chinese intellectuals of the May Fourth Period can be characterized in a similar way with, of course, a great variety of possible combinations. May Fourth has always been and still is many different things to different people. To me, it is primarily an age of cultural contradictions, and contradiction is, by definition, multidimensional as well as multidirectional. I can never bring myself to see it as a single coherent movement leading to a predetermined destination as if governed by an iron law of history. Each May Fourth intellectual not only seems unique, but many of them changed their minds quickly and sometimes drastically. Like the Russian intellectual before the Revolution who “could be a Westernizer in the morning, a Slavophil in the afternoon, and criticize after dinner,”62 the May Fourth intellectual was also capable of shifting his position constantly within a period of months, if not days and weeks. Surely, some larger intellectual types and certain patterns of ideas may be vaguely discerned in the May Fourth Movement in its broad sense. On the whole, however, it is extremely hazardous to generalize about these types and patterns. The Enlightenment republic of letters was described by Samuel Johnson as demonstrating “community of mind” because there was some kind of common core in that republic.63 Therefore, it may be permissible to speak of “the Enlightenment project.”64 By contrast, the May Fourth intellectual world consisted of many communities of changing minds. Consequently, not only were there several May Fourth projects constantly undergoing changes and often conflicting with one another but each project also had different versions. Perhaps the safest generalization one can make about May Fourth is that it must always be understood in terms of its multidimensionality and multidirectionality.

notes 1.

Chow Tse-tsung, The May Fourth Movement (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1960), 338–342, discusses briefly the concepts of “Renaissance” and “Enlightenment” and their applicability to the May Fourth Movement. He takes both as representative of “the liberals’ views.” However, Vera Schwarcz, in The Chinese Enlightenment: Intellectuals and the Legacy of the May Fourth Movement of 1919 (Berkeley: University of

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California Press, 1968), identifies May Fourth with the “Enlightenment” without mentioning the “Renaissance,” as does Li Zehou 李澤厚 in a well-known essay on the May Fourth Movement, “Jiuwang yu qimeng de shuangchong bianzou” 救亡與啟蒙的雙重 變奏, originally published in 1986. See Zhongguo xiandai sixiangshi lun 中國現代思想 史論 (Beijing: Dongfang, 1987), 7–49. 2.

Hu Shih, “The Renaissance in China,” Journal of the Royal Institute of International

3.

See vol. 5, November 9, 18, 23, 28, 1926, of Hu Shi de riji 胡適的日記, 18 vols., unpagi-

4.

Ibid., vol. 6, January 20, 1927.

Aff airs 5 (November 1926): 266–283. nated photographic reproduction of original manuscript (Taipei: Yuanliu, 1990). 5.

Hu Shih, The Chinese Renaissance (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1934), 44.

6.

Fu Sinian 傅斯年, “Xin chao zhi huigu yu qianzhan” 新潮之回顧與前瞻, in Fu Mengzhen xiansheng ji 傅孟真先生集 (shangbian, jia) (Taipei: Taiwan Daxue 1952), 1:210–211.

7.

Hu Shi, Hu Shi liuxue riji 胡適留學日記, 4 vols. (Taipei: Yuanliu, [1939] 1986), 4:240–247.

8.

Subsequent research on Renaissance vernacular literature has greatly softened this strict dichotomy between vernacular and Latin literatures. In the late fi fteenth and the early sixteenth centuries, the relationship between the vernacular and neo-Latin was one of coexistence and cross-fertilization. Had Hu Shi followed Renaissance scholarship after 1917, he would have abandoned his Renaissance analogy on these grounds. For a detailed discussion, see Yü Ying-shih 余英時, “Wenyi fuxing yu renwen sichao” 文藝復興與人文思潮, in Lishi yu sixiang 歷史與思想 (Taipei: Lianjing, 1976), 305–337, 305–308.

9.

John K. Fairbank, Chinabound: A Fifty-Year Memoir (New York: Harper & Row 1982), 45–46; Yü Ying-shih, Zhongguo jindai sixiangshi shang de Hu Shi 中國近代思想史上的胡適 (Taipei: Lianjing, 1984), 62–63.

10.

According to Peter Gay, however, although the affinity between the Renaissance and the Enlightenment is fundamental, the difference is also undeniable. As Gay says, “Like the Enlightenment, the Renaissance turned to the distant past to conquer the recent past, but unlike it, the Renaissance founded its radicalism in despair. Indeed, one cannot read Erasmus or Machiavelli without feeling that it also ended in despair: neither of them shows much confidence in the eventual victory of reason and humanity.” Peter Gay, The Enlightenment: An Interpretation; The Rise of Modern Paganism (New York: Knopf, 1966), 269.

11. 12.

Zhexue da cidian (Shanghai: Cishu, 1985), 676–677. Quoted in He Ganzhi 何幹之, Zhongguo qimeng yundong shi 中國啓蒙運動史 (Shanghai: Shenghuo 1947), 207.

13.

Schwarcz, Chinese Enlightenment, 218.

14.

Fu Lecheng 傅樂成, Fu Mengzhen xiansheng nianpu 傅孟真先生年譜 (Taipei: Zhuanji

15.

Gao Wenhua 高文華, “1935 nian qianhou Beifangju de qingkuang” 1935 念前後北方局

wenxue, 1969), 62–63. 情況, in Zhonggong dangxiao ziliao 中共中央黨校資料 (Beijing: Zhonggong zhongyang dangxiao ziliao, 1982), 184–188, and Ye Yonglie 葉永烈, Chen Boda 陳伯達 (Hong Kong: Wenhua jiaoyu, 1990), 102.

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16.

Lu Cui 陸璀, Chenxing ji 晨星集 (Beijing: Renmin ribao, 1995), 7, 19.

17.

According to a confidential document of the Communist Party datable to late 1936, the Communist Party changed its line in September 1936 in two impor tant ways. First, instead of proletarian revolution, it now adopted a moderate strategy to push for a “Democratic Republic” in China. Second, tactically, it made an appeal for an end to the civil war and to establish a “united front” in the broadest possible way with all parties and groups in China. This document came into Hu Shi’s possession in 1940, when he was ambassador to the United States (see “Zhonggong de celüe luxian” 中國的策略路線, in vol. 6 of Hu Shi de riji). This document is authenticated by Mao Zedong’s report of May 1937  in Mao Zedong xuanji 毛澤東選集, 4 vols. (Beijing: Renmin, 1969), 1:233, 246– 247n6. It cannot be a mere coincidence that Chen Boda and Ai Siqi launched the New Enlightenment in September 1936, at exactly the same time that the new party began. Moreover, it is also extremely revealing that according to Wang Yuanhua 王元化, who was then working for the party as a young writer, around 1938 the party suddenly decided to ban the term “Enlightenment” and thus brought the New Enlightenment Movement to an abrupt end. See Lin Yusheng 林毓生, Wusi: duoyuan de fansi 五四多元的反思 (Hong Kong: Sanlian, 1989), 3.

18.

He Ganzhi, Zhongguo qimeng yundong shi, 209.

19.

Gay, The Enlightenment, 13–14.

20. Liang Ch’i- ch’ao, Intellectual Trends in the Ch’ing Period, trans. Immanuel  C.  Y. Hsü (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1959), 14. 21.

Hou Wailu 侯外廬, Zhongguo zaoqi qimeng sixiangshi 中國早期啟蒙思想史 (Beijing: Renmin, 1956).

22. Quoted in Carl L. Becker, The Heavenly City of the Eighteenth- Century Philosophers (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1932), 92. 23. He Ganzhi, Zhongguo qimeng yundong shi, 122–133. 24. Ibid., 97. 25. Hu Shi, “Zhongguo wenyi fuxing yundong” 中國文藝復興運動 (1970), in Hu Shi yanjiang ji 胡適演講集 (Taipei: Yuanliu, 1986 [reprint]), 1:178. 26. Jerome B. Grieder, Hu Shih and the Chinese Renaissance (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1970), 160–161. 27. Hu Shih, The Chinese Renaissance (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1934), ix–x. 28. Hu Shi first developed the theory of three Renaissances in premodern Chinese history in 1923, but his periodization with regard to the fi rst two changed considerably over the next decades; see the entry for April 3, 1923 in Hu Shi de riji (1990). See also Hu Shih, “The Chinese Tradition and the Future,” in Sino-American Conference on Intellectual Cooperation: Report and Proceedings (Seattle: University of Washington, Department of Publications and Printing, 1960), 13–22, 17–18. 29. Hu Shih, “The Chinese Tradition,” 22. 30. Hu Shi, “Wusi yundong shi qingnian aiguo de yundong” 五四運動是青年愛國的運動 (1970), in Hu Shi yanjiang ji, 2:133–134. 31.

See Mao Zedong xuanji 毛澤東選集, 2:659–660, and Li Changzhi 李長之, Ying Zhongguo de wenyi fuxing 迎中國的文藝復興 (Shanghai: Shangwu, 1946), 38–39.

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32. Chow, The May Fourth Movement, 250. 33.

Quoted in Schwarcz, Chinese Enlightenment, 265.

34. Li Changzhi, Ying Zhongguo de wenyi fuxing, 14–22. 35.

See Li Zhensheng 李振聲, “Jing wei lishi, zunzhong lishi” 敬畏歷史, 尊重歷史, Dushu 讀書 (July 1995): 2, and David R. Hiley, James F. Bohman, and Richard Schusterman, eds., The Interpretive Turn: Philosophy, Science, Culture (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991).

36. Li Changzhi, Ying Zhongguo de wenyi fuxing, 12–13, 19–20. 37.

Ying-shih Yü, “Confucianism in the Modern World: A Retrospective and Perspective Study” (in Japanese), Chûgoku: shakai to bunka 中國社會と文化 10 (June 1995): 135–179.

38. Ying-shih Yü, “The Radicalization of China,” Daedalus 122, no. 2 (Spring 1993): 125–150, 130. 39. Hu Shi, Hu Shi wenxuan 胡適文選, (Taipei: Yuanli, [1930] 1986), 41–50. 40. Liang Shuming 梁漱溟, Dongxi wenhua ji qi zhexue 東西文化及其哲學 (Taipei: Li ren, 1983). 41.

Hu Shih, “The Renaissance in China,” Journal of the Royal Institute of International Affairs 5 (November 1926): 266–283, 273–274; see also Feng Youlan (Fung Yu-lan) 馮友蘭, Sansong Tang zixu 三松堂自序 (Beijing: Sanlian, 1984), 201.

42. Wen Yuanning 溫源寧, “Mr. Wu Mi: A Scholar and a Gentleman” (in English, 1934), in Huiyi Wu Mi xiansheng 回憶吳宓先生, ed. Huang Shitan 黃士坦 (Xi- an: Shaanxi renmin, 1990), 24–28. 43. Chow, May Fourth Movement, 282; see Lu Xun 魯迅, Lu Xun quanji 魯迅全集, 20 vols. (Beijing: Renmin wenxue, 1973), 2:98–101, 114–116. 44. Geng Yunzhi 耿雲志, comp., Hu Shi yigao ji micang shuxin 胡適遺稿及秘藏書信 (hereafter, Hu Shi yigao), 42 vols. (Hefei: Huangshan, 1994), 33:313–322, 327–333, 398–399. 45. Hu Shi, Dai Dongyuan de zhexue 戴東原的哲學 (Taipei: Yuanliu, [1927] 1986), 3–8, 73, 75. 46. Geng Yunzhi, Hu Shi yigao, 33:387–389. 47. Ibid., 33:334–336. 48. Ibid., 436–437. 49. Ibid., 450, 443. 50. Hu Shi de riji, vol. 17, February 25, 1952. 51.

Geng Yunzhi, Hu Shi yigao, 33:437–438.

52. Ibid., 464–466. 53.

Ibid., 374–375, 384–387.

54. Hu Shi, Women de zhengzhi zhuzhang 我們的政治主張 (Taipei: Yuanliu, [1924] 1986), 61. 55.

Thomas  R. Nevin contrasts Babbitt with Dewey as follows: “His stress upon will, attended by its helpmate the rational intellect, might have given him a basis for rapport with dominant philosophical trends of his time, notably those influenced by Dewey. But Babbitt’s focus was defiantly internal and individual. He scorned the problem-solving techniques of the sciences while he dreaded their inroads into humane values. He regarded the optimism of a generation of ‘instrumentalists’ and engineers as ill-founded and misguided, because no society, however adroitly planned or subjected to experiment, would never escape the human frailties documented in the works of Sophocles, Dante, and Goethe, and revealed to the wisdom of the humanely balanced individual.” Thomas R.

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ne i t her r e nais sa nce nor e nl igh t e n ment Nevin, Irving Babbitt: An Intellectual Study (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1984), 147. This passage applies perfectly to the intellectual tension between Mei Guangdi and Hu Shi, including the former’s attempt to reconcile his Babbittian humanism to Hu Shi’s Deweyan experimentalism.

56. Liang Shiqiu, Wenxue yinyuan (Hong Kong: Wenyi shuwu, [1963] 1969), 57–64. 57.

Geng Yunzhi, Hu Shi yigao, 29:314–315.

58. Thomas R. Nevin, Irving Babbitt; Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., “Democracy and Leadership,” in The Cycles of American History (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1986), 419–436; Hou Jian 侯健, Cong wenxue geming dao geming wenxue 從文學革命到革命文學 (Taipei: Zhongwai wenxue, 1974); Li Funing 李賦寧, Sun Tianyi 孫天義, and Cai Heng 蔡恆, eds., Diyi jie Wu Mi xueshu taolunhui lunwen xuanji 第一屆吳宓學術討論會論文選集 (Xi-an: Shaanxi renmin jiaoyu, 1990). 59. Lin Liyue 林麗月, “Mei Guangdi yu xin wenhua yundong” 梅光迪與新文化運動, in Wusi yanjiu lunwen ji 五四研究論文集, ed. Wang Rongzu 汪榮祖 (Taipei: Lianjing, 1979), 383– 402; Yue Daiyun 樂黛雲, “Shijie wenhua duihua zhong de Zhongguo xiandai baoshou zhuyi” 世界文化對話中的中國現代保守主義, in Li Funing, Sun Tianyi, and Cai Heng, Diyi jie Wu Mi xueshu taolunhui lunwen xuanji, 253–275, 255, 264–266. 60. Wu Xuezhao 吳學昭, Wu Mi yu Chen Yinke 吳宓與陳寅恪 (Beijing: Qinghua, 1992), 9–13. 61.

Daniel Bell, The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism (New York: Basic Books, 1978), xi.

62. Liah Greenfeld, Nationalism: Five Roads to Modernity (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1992), 270. 63. Quoted in Gay, The Enlightenment, 39. 64. Alasdair C. MacIntyre, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory, 2nd ed. (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984), 117–118, and, Richard J. Bernstein, The New Constellation: The Ethical-Political Horizons of Modernity/Postmodernity (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1992), 202–208.

10. Modernization Versus Fetishism of Revolution in Twentieth-Century China

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owadays the term “modernization” has lost much of the popularity it once enjoyed during the 1950s in the heyday of American modernization theory. In recent academic discourse, the place of “modernization” has been taken over by a number of “posts” beginning with “postmodern.” It is significant to note, however, that as early as the 1970s, some of the leading modernization theorists already found it necessary to reformulate the original thesis by way of clarification or modification. As a response to a widespread dissatisfaction with many of the assumptions of initial modernization studies, Daedalus devoted a whole special issue in 1973 to examining the topic of “Post-Traditional Societies.” According to S. N. Eisenstadt’s introductory essay, the term “post-traditional” was coined to “facilitate new ways of looking at certain central problems of modernization and development.”1 In the wake of the Vietnam War, modernization theory declined markedly in influence. Among other things, it was accused of being ethnocentric in the sense that it used the historical experience of Western Europe and the United States as a standard for judging non-Western societies and cultures.2 With the rise of conflict theory in the late 1960s, the idea of “modernization” was considerably eclipsed, though not wholly replaced, by that of “revolution.”3 Some harsh critics even rushed to sound the death knell for modernization theory. As vividly caricatured by Marion J. Levy Jr. in 1986, both politically and academically, it has been popular in recent years to declare that the whole field of modernization

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studies can easily be seen through by a child, that it constitutes no more than a set of rationalizations, that its generalizations are nowhere tenable or seldom so, and that the subject is at best a passé assemblage of vulgar imperialist prejudices. A sociologist has, in effect, buried the subject, albeit in a shallow grave.4 However, ironically, as a result of the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, it is theories of revolution that have been generally discredited. By contrast, as Francis Fukuyama rightly observes, “modernization theory looks much more persuasive in 1990 than it did fifteen or twenty years earlier when it came under heavy attack in academic circles.”5 As a historian, I wish to deal historically with this theme of the predicament of modernization in East Asia. First, I shall examine the idea of modernization as a historical phenomenon. Then I shall discuss the predicament of China’s modernization by relating it specifically to the changing conceptions of revolution. The following preliminary observations are offered in the hope that they may throw some new light on the uniqueness of the Chinese experience in this regard as a whole. Historically speaking, modernization occurred only once and in the West. This is what we usually refer to as the rise and development of “modern Western civilization,” which, if viewed broadly, is marked by a number of milestones such as the Renaissance, the Reformation, the Scientific Revolution, the Glorious Revolution, the Enlightenment, the French Revolution, the American Revolution, the Industrial Revolution, etc. With these developments, Western civilization transformed itself, step by step, into the modern age— hence, the notion of “modernization.” The end product of the modernization of the West, as we all know, was the formation of capitalist society dominated by the bourgeois or middle class. Viewed in this way, modernization of the West can best be understood as an indigenous and spontaneous historical process over a period of five centuries. Modernization theory, however, is a different matter. To begin with, as Habermas rightly observes, it disassociates Weber’s concept of “modernity” from its modern European origins and styles it into a spatial-temporally neutral model for processes of social development in general.6 Furthermore, it is undeniable that this theory is predicated on the assumption that there are certain historical laws that govern the evolution of all societies, Western and non-Western alike. Thus, according to the modernization paradigm, societies in the world today can be conveniently classified into three major categories: the “developed,” the “developing,” and the “underdeveloped.” It is not my intention here to question the validity of modernization theory. What I am trying to suggest is that the concept of modernization in its original Western meaning must not be confused with its derivative meaning as applied to non-Western societies. In the latter case, the so- called modernizing process did not arise out of the necessity of the historical turning point at which these societies found themselves. Instead, it was a process set in motion by the

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unique aggressiveness inherent in Western modernity. As Marx pointed out in 1858, “The specific task of bourgeois society is the establishment of a world market, at least in outline, and of production based upon this world market. As the world is round, this seems to have been completed by the colonization of California and Australia and the opening up of China and Japan.”7 It is interesting to note that we have generally dated the beginning of the Modern Age of China and Japan from the time when Marx was writing this letter. As his wording unmistakably shows, however, Marx saw “the opening up of China and Japan” as part of the concluding chapter of the history of Western modernity. As far as I am aware, there is absolutely no evidence that around the middle of the nineteenth century an “East Asian modernity” was already in the offing independently of the West. The conclusion is therefore inevitable that both China and Japan, and for that matter, all other non-Western societies, have been pushed into their “Modern Age” by the West. Such being the case, to speak of “modernization” with regard to non-Western societies makes sense only if one views the matter from the standpoint of the West. As for these societies themselves, the real problem was not, at least in the beginning, a matter of modernization that was wholly alien to their frames of mind. Rather, it was a matter of how to understand, respond to, and cope with the unprecedented crisis created by the highly disruptive forces of the invading West. However, it did not take nonWestern peoples long to discover that for survival and self-affirmation, the only way to “out-Herod Herod” was to imitate the West. As the cases of late nineteenth- century China and Japan have amply shown, not only were science and technology borrowed from the West but Western institutions and customs also served as models for emulation. It is only natural that in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, these early attempts at modern transformations were generally referred to by Chinese and Japanese intellectuals as “Westernization.” Fukuzawa Yukichi 福澤諭吉 (1835–1901), the foremost Japanese Westernizer of his time, expressed this spirit best when he said, “The final purpose of all my work was to create in Japan a civilized nation, as well equipped in both the arts of war and peace as those of the Western world.”8 I am fully aware that “modernization” cannot be simply equated with “Westernization.” Historically, however, “Westernization” is a more accurate term than “modernization,” for intellectuals in China and Japan did understand the modernizing process of their countries mainly, if not wholly, in terms of “Westernization.” As modernization theory has grown more sophisticated since the late 1960s, a major revision has taken place regarding the relationship between modernization and tradition. The early view took tradition to be a hindrance to modern progress; overcoming tradition was therefore seen as a precondition for modernization. However, accumulation of case studies of the so- called developing countries such as India, Thailand, Turkey, etc., began to shed new light on the role of tradition in the process of modernization. A study of the political development in modern India has led Lloyd and Suzanne Rudolph to recognize that

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complex interrelationship of tradition and modernity. As they powerfully expressed, “The assumption that modernity and tradition are radically contradictory rests on a misdiagnosis of tradition as it is found in traditional societies, a misunderstanding of modernity as it is found in modern societies, and a misapprehension of the relationship between them.”9 This insightful observation has been further confirmed by many later studies of other aspects of India.10 With this new understanding of the relationship between modernization and tradition, we now turn to the “predicament of modernization” in China. China’s failure and Japan’s success in modernization have long puzzled scholars. Since the 1930s, if not earlier, various interesting theories have been formulated to explain the vast differences in the modernizing processes of the two East Asian countries. Then, in the 1960s and  1970s, Taiwan and Hong Kong emerged, along with South Korea and Singapore, as East Asia’s “four little dragons.” Taiwan’s success in economic development not only facilitated the growth of a pluralistic society but, more significantly, also led to political liberalization in the 1980s, thereby providing modernization theory with a rare but remarkable example. Since both Taiwan and Hong Kong have also grown out of the bedrock of Chinese civilization, their success with modernization further complicates the case regarding China’s transition from tradition to modernity as a whole. Needless to say, this is no place to review in a comprehensive manner the problem of China’s modernization. Instead, the present essay proposes to single out for scrutiny one par tic u lar strand from the web of ideology in twentieth- century China. By this, I refer to what may be called the “fetishism of revolution.” What follows is primarily a study in the history of ideas—not ideas pure and simple in their autonomous realm but ideas with grave social and political consequences. A change- oriented mentality has dominated China since the turn of the century. As a result, the Chinese political mentality in the twentieth century may be characterized as a process of radicalization at ever-accelerating speed.11 By its own internal logic, radicalization must lead to the advocacy of “revolution,” the most radical of all radical ideas. Let us begin with the concept of “revolution” in modern Chinese political discourse. The Chinese term geming 革命 (kakumei in Japanese) in classical texts means literally “Change of the Mandate of Heaven,” referring to the “dynastic overthrow.” As Liang Qichao pointed out in his 1902 essay on revolution, it was Japanese scholars who first used the Chinese classical geming (kakumei) to translate the English word “revolution.” Though a professed reformist himself, Liang nevertheless clearly recognized that what China then needed was a thoroughgoing and full-scale “revolution” in the sense of “fundamental transformation.” Neither “dynastic overthrow” of the traditional type nor piecemeal changes would be of much help. To translate “revolution” as geming or kakumei was therefore a serious misinterpretation. Of all the “dynastic overthrows” in Europe, why should historians only single out

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the English Revolution of 1688 and the French Revolution of 1789 as worthy of the name? Liang said this was because in both cases, England and France had been fundamentally transformed as a result. Thus, in Liang’s 1902 essay, perhaps the very first one ever written on the subject by a Chinese author, revolution was already recognized as a value central to modernity. Revolution, in his own words, is “an honorific name standing for civilization, nobility and loftiness.”12 On the side of the revolutionaries, we may take Zou Rong 鄒容 (1885–1905)’s powerful propagandistic pamphlet, Geming jun 革命軍 (The Revolutionary Army; 1903), as a typical example. In this pamphlet, the word “revolution” was used in two different senses, one narrow and one broad. In the narrow sense, it was to be understood as the overthrow of the Manchu dynasty, and in the broad sense, as the founding of a new republic on the American and French models. This double meaning of revolution— actually the two sides of the same coin— was shared by practically all the revolutionaries of the time. In contrast to Liang Qichao’s rather detached praise of “revolution,” the revolutionaries’ enthusiasm for “revolution” was unbounded. To quote the words of Zou Rong: Sweep away thousands of years of despotism, cast off thousands of years of slavishness, exterminate the five million bestial Manchus, wash away the humiliation of 260 years of oppression and sorrows, cruelty and tyranny, turn the Chinese soil into a clean land and all the sons and grandsons of the Yellow Emperor into George Washingtons. Then we may rise from death and return to life, retrieve our souls; come out of the eighteenth layer of hell and ascend to the thirty-third layer of heaven . . . and reach the highest honor of having one single great incomparable aim called revolution. Oh, how exalted is revolution! Oh, how supreme is revolution!13 In this passage, we can detect not only a call for violence but also an implicit rejection of tradition, both of which were to become increasingly entangled with the idea of revolution in later generations. It is true that in the remainder of the pamphlet, Zou Rong did emphasize that the aim of the revolution was to build an independent, free, and democratic China comparable to America and France. To that extent, he was indeed concerned with what we now call modernization or, more precisely, Westernization. However, what he could not have possibly foreseen was that given the dead weight of China’s long tradition, the revolution was to remain unfinished for a whole century. Moreover, the destructive violence of revolution once set in motion was to consume the energy of the Chinese people one way or another to such a degree that the constructive work of modernization would have to be postponed indefinitely. Thus, from the very beginning, there were already clear indications that the tension between revolution and modernization in China was such that it was almost destined, as it were, to result in a radical disjunction.14 As well observed by a historian of the Revolution of 1911, “What the radicals of the day did was to introduce the

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whole idea of revolution and set the general style of left-wing student politics for the next forty years. Their combination of nationalistic, visionary dreams, institutional inexperience, and impatient radicalism was repeated in successive appeal up to the time of the Communist victory.”15 Now, let us move to the next impor tant revolutionary stage, the May Fourth Movement of 1919. During the May Fourth Period, roughly from 1917 to 1923, the idea of revolution underwent two interrelated developments. First, unlike early revolutionaries, May Fourth intellectuals were more concerned with the realm of ideas and values than that of politics and institutions, at least in the initial stage of the movement. As a result, the notion of revolution ramified in all directions. As a matter of fact, the May Fourth Movement not only began in 1917 with a “literary revolution” but has also been generally characterized as an “intellectual revolution.” During this period, the term “revolution” was indiscriminately applied to a great variety of subjects such as “social revolution,” “moral revolution,” “family revolution,” “marriage revolution,” “revolution in ethics,” etc. Second, as every aspect of the Chinese tradition was called into question by the critical spirit of the May Fourth Movement, a mentality in iconoclastic antitraditionalism was being gradually formed. As Chen Duxiu 陳獨秀 (1879–1942) wrote in 1919 on behalf of the famous magazine, New Youth: “Our magazine has been accused of committing these crimes: destroying Confucianism, destroying moral norms, destroying national essence, destroying woman’s chastity, destroying old ethics, destroying old arts, destroying old religions, destroying old literature, destroying old politics, etc. To these charges, we, as members of the magazine, must plead guilty.” He further explained that New Youth had no alternative but to commit these “crimes” to pave the way for the advent of Mr. Democracy and Mr. Science, who “can cure the dark maladies in Chinese politics, morality, learning, and thought.”16 True to the spirit of the Enlightenment, which had exerted a shaping influence on his mind, Chen called for the systematic eradication of idols: “All false and irrational beliefs in our tradition— religious, political, ethical, et cetera— are ‘idols’ and must be destroyed. Otherwise, universal truth can never be deeply implanted in our minds.”17 To be fair to Chen Duxiu, he was not really so negative about the Chinese tradition as these iconoclastic writings seem to indicate. However, in 1919, he was already sufficiently radicalized to seek a sharp break with China’s past. Thus, he and other May Fourth leaders, notably Lu Xun 魯迅 (1881–1936) and, to a lesser degree, Hu Shi 胡適 (1891–1962), must be held responsible for importing to China the idea that demolition of tradition is the precondition for modernization. I used the word “importing” advisedly, for it turns out to be none other than the Enlightenment notion of rationality and modernity as embodied in the French Revolution. Recently, a philosopher of science aptly called it “the myth of the clean slate” in the sense that “Any new construction is truly rational only if it demolishes all that was there before and starts from scratch.”18 It was this myth, I would argue, that transformed the idea of revolution in twentiethcentury China in a fundamental way.

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Finally, the impact of the Russian Revolution on the Chinese intelligentsia cannot be overestimated. It was the theory and practice of Marxism-Leninism that contributed more than anything else to the growth of what I call the “fetishism of revolution” in China. Needless to say, I owe the term “fetishism” to Marx. When he tried to explain the mysterious character of commodity as a value in itself, Marx found it necessary to turn to “the mist- enveloped regions of the religious world” for an analogy. “In that world,” Marx said, in Das Kapital, volume 1, “the productions of the human brain appear as independent beings endowed with life, and entering into relation both with one another and the human race.”19 “Fetishism” to Marx was one of such mental productions. Without denying the obvious fact that every actual revolution in the modern age had its material component, I wish to emphasize that revolution as an idea is first and foremost the creation of the mind traceable to the Enlightenment and the French Revolution.20 Having traced the concept of revolution in the history of Western political thought, Steven B. Smith identified Emmanuel Kant as the fi rst modern philosophical spokesman of revolution. As he pointed out, “From Kant onward the concept of revolution acquired an almost transcendental significance that later thinkers would transmute into an idea of historical inevitability. Starting with Kant but proceeding in an unbroken line from Hegel to Marx, from Lenin and Trotsky to Mao Zedong, revolution became a kind of sacred duty undertaken by selfless men acting to fulfill the conditions of reason and freedom.”21 Now let me briefly explain some of the ways in which the Russian Revolution helped Chinese revolutionaries to grasp “the transcendental significance” and the “sacredness” of revolution, thereby contributing to the rise of the fetishism of revolution. To begin with, according to Marxism-Leninism, the socialist revolution was indeed a “historical inevitability” based on the idea of “iron laws” that govern social change. The very notion of “scientific laws” as implied in what Engels called “scientific socialism” proved to be particularly attractive to radical intellectuals of the May Fourth generation, who generally fell under the spell of scientism.22 Moreover, politically, with the end of the monarchy, the traditional idea of the Mandate of Heaven could no longer function as a base of legitimation. It was therefore quite natural for “historical inevitability” or “scientific laws of social change” to fill the empty space recently vacated by the Mandate of Heaven. Next, to carry out the socialist revolution was a “sacred duty” because, according to Marxism, it fought for the greatest and most just cause in the entire history of mankind, namely, the liberation of the most miserably exploited and oppressed proletariat class. The moral claim also suited the spiritual needs of May Fourth radicals admirably well through a few theoretical twists. First, although the number of Chinese industrial workers was extremely small during the May Fourth Period,23 the Chinese “proletariat” could nevertheless count on hundreds of millions of peasants as its faithful allies as they undoubtedly constituted the miserably exploited and oppressed class in China. Second, in light

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of Lenin’s theory of imperialism, the entire Chinese “people” could well be perceived as being recklessly exploited and oppressed by Western powers. Third, on the side of revolutionary practice, mention must also be made of the moral passions that sustained the Chinese search for the ideal of revolution. During the May Fourth Period, there was a great explosion of moral passions in China. First, May Fourth intellectuals had been brought up under Confucian education, which, among other things, also taught that it was the primary duty of the elite to be always concerned with the well-being of the common people. There can be no doubt that the sufferings endured by the Chinese since the turn of the century touched their hearts very deeply. Second, moral passion was also generated by the rising tide of Chinese nationalism at this time. We must not forget that the demonstration in Beijing on May 4, 1919, was directly triggered by the strong patriotic feelings of the students. In terms of origins, these moral passions had nothing to do with socialist revolution as an international movement. However, later they were all skillfully manipulated by Chinese Marxists to advance their own cause. I am inclined to think that the combined forces generated by both the “scientific” laws of history and the moral passions helped greatly to sacralize the idea of revolution in China. It is true that to justify revolution on scientific and moral grounds at the same time seems to involve a self- contradiction. However, the contradiction turned out to be also the very strength of Marxism. As keenly observed by Michael Polanyi: Alleged scientific assertions, which are accepted as such because they satisfy moral passions, will excite these passions further, and thus lend increased convincing power to scientific affirmations in questions— and so on, indefinitely. Moreover, such a dynamo- objective coupling is also potent in its own defense. Any criticism of its scientific part is rebutted by the moral passions behind it, while any moral objections to it are coldly brushed aside by invoking the inexorable verdict of its scientific findings. Each of the two components, the dynamic and objective, takes it in turn to draw attention away from the other when it is under attack.24 Thus, from the mid-1920s on, “revolution” became the supreme god in China and criticism would be viewed as blasphemy by not only party revolutionaries but radical intellectuals as well. In post-1949 China, “counterrevolutionary crimes” became the worst of all crimes, for which, following the Soviet example during the Red Terror, penalties would be set according to “revolutionary conscience.”25 The sudden switch from the French Revolution model to the Russian Revolution model was quite characteristic of the May Fourth mentality, with its penchant for “up-to- date” ideas, values, or institutions in the West. Chen Duxiu, still a great Francophile and advocate of democracy of the Anglo-American type as late as 1919, not only was converted to Marxism but also showed more enthu-

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siasm than anybody else in organizing a Communist Party in China in 1920. Then, with his eyes turning to the latest Western model of political system, Lenin’s “proletarian dictatorship,” he showed no hesitation to dispose of democracy as if it were but a used car.26 This switch of models, it may be emphatically noted, marked the beginning of a basic paradigmatic change in the Chinese conception of revolution. In Marxist-Leninist terminology, it has often been referred to as a shift from the “bourgeois revolution” to the “proletarian revolution.” With the collapse of the Communist regimes in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, however, such a distinction no longer makes much sense today. In view of recent discussions of modern revolution from a global perspective, it seems that one way to understand the switch of models from the French Revolution to the Russian Revolution may be that the repeated frustrations with China’s search for modernity by slavishly imitating the West finally pushed many intellectuals such as Chen Duxiu to the opposite side, namely, that of antiWesternism. As succinctly stated by Robert N. Bellah: The rapid social change brought on by Western incursions have had traumatic consequences for almost all the societies on the receiving end. They have come to desire many features of Western society at the same time that they deeply resent the disruption they have experienced and the sense of futility with respect to many of their efforts to catch up with the West. Often they have engaged in “anti-Western Westernization,” carry ing out drastic social change under the aegis of an avowedly anti-Western ideology. Communism is only the most vivid example of this trend.27 Intellectuals such as Chen Duxiu and Li Dazhao 李大釗 (1888–1927) turned antiWestern because they now identified the West with imperialism, which, they believed, was ultimately responsible for China’s poverty and misery. However, the final goal of the new revolution they were advocating was not really different from that of the old. It remained to be catching up to the Western mode. (“Overtaking England and Catching Up with America” was still Mao’s favorite slogan in the 1950s.) The only difference is that their imitation of the West was often hidden behind the linguistic veil of a furious anti-Westernism. Now returning to the central theme of this essay, I wish to point out that this redefining of revolution on the Russian model is significant in two impor tant ways: First, linking the revolution in China to the Marxist-Leninist idea of World Revolution gave Chinese revolutionaries a sense of a “sacred” mission heretofore unknown to them. Speaking of the nationalist revolution he was espousing in 1924, Dr. Sun Yat-sen remarked that it was the “great responsibility” placed upon us Chinese by Heaven.28 Obviously, Sun’s revolutionary passion must have been aroused by his reading of a famous passage in the Mencius (6B.15). Now, with a Leninist twist, the new generation of revolutionaries could easily appropriate this Mencian moral passion for its own use. Indeed, a revolutionary

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would feel it morally very edifying to be assured that he was fighting for the liberation of the oppressed classes of not only his own country but the entire world. World Revolution was thus perceived as the “great responsibility” placed upon him by history. Second, with the task of revolution expanded to overthrowing not only the Chinese past (the so-called feudalism) but also the Western present (“capitalism-imperialism”), revolution was no longer something that could be finished in a short period of time as previously understood. Thus, in 1927 at the latest, the Marxist idea of “permanent revolution” was already formally adopted by the Chinese Communist Party under the leadership of Qu Qiubai 瞿秋白 (1899–1835).29 Absolutely sacralized on the one hand and almost immortalized on the other, the idea of revolution was bound to develop a very uneasy relationship with the idea of modernization, to which we now turn. According to modernization theory, modernization is continuous with revolution in non-Western societies: the former begins when the latter ends. As David Kopf points out, “non-Western modernization has been dominated from the 1960’s by present-minded social scientists who tend to date the Herculean transformation of mobility and mobilization from year one of post-independence.”30 This perhaps resulted from the fact that earlier studies of modernization were limited to societies in Asia and Africa that had newly attained political independence from colonial rule. In reality, however, the relationship of modernization to revolution is too complex to lend itself to facile generalizations. Even in postcolonial new states, this relationship also varied from case to case. It is often difficult, if not impossible, to draw a clear- cut line temporally separating revolution from modernization. This is vividly shown in the slogan current in Indonesia during the 1960s: “The Revolution Is Unfinished!”31 A Chinese reader will be quick to point out that it was none other than Sun Yat-sen who first coined this famous slogan. Here lies the very root of the predicament of China’s modernization. As long as revolution was perceived as “unfinished,” no serious and systematic work in modernization could get started in China. The reason is not far to seek. For one thing, revolution is, by definition, destructive in nature, whereas modernization is, in essence, constructive, involving central state and society building; destroying and constructing cannot be carried out at the same time. In the long run, however, the fetishism of revolution proved to be a far more formidable enemy of modernization than revolution itself. Fetish-worshipers of revolution are people who are so completely attached to the idea of revolution that they cannot find any other meaning or purpose in life than the very thought that they are undertaking the sacred duty of revolution, real or imaginary. Some signs of uneasiness between the fetishism of revolution and modernization already began to show themselves in the late 1920s when the Nationalist revolution succeeded and the Nationalist Government was set up in Nanjing. Fetishworshipers of revolution displayed a profound hostility toward the program of political modernization— constitutional democracy—vigorously advocated by

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liberal critics of the Nationalist “party- dictatorship.”32 This was the beginning of the alienation of the intellectuals from the Nationalist regime, which was only to be further accentuated by the indoctrination policy known as Danghua Jiaoyu (黨化教育, Party-ized Education).33 However, since there was a considerable number of modernizers within the Nationalist Party, the Nanjing government did achieve a degree of state building. Moreover, the dissipation of revolutionary spirit in the Nationalist Party after 1928, though generally considered a weakness, also turned out to be virtue in hindsight, because it prevented the Nanjing Government from engaging in the unending violence of revolution to destroy the original social organization. As a result, there was a limited space for the traditional society to gradually transform itself into what may be called “civil society.” As John K. Fairbank wrote in his last book: “Without the devastating Japanese invasion, the Nanjing government might gradually have led the way in China’s modernization. As it turned out, however, resisting Japan gave Mao and the Chinese Communist Party their chance to establish a new autocratic power in the countryside, excluding the elements of a nascent urban civil society that were still developing under the Nationalists.”34 The truth is that the fetishism of revolution under the Nationalists, though clearly visible, was neither pervasive enough nor powerful enough to stop modernization completely. The fetishism of revolution was in full swing in China between 1949 and 1976 under the personal guidance of Mao Zedong (1893–1976), who was nothing if not the Chinese revolution incarnate. He was a genius in destruction and, once in power, immediately began to demolish the Chinese tradition from the ground up in the name of revolution. As well summed up by Ambrose King: The Chinese Communist party had struggled to effect a revolutionary change in the 1950s and 1960s by using “organization” to destroy and replace the institutional structure of the Chinese traditional social system. The party-state structured the society into an all-inclusive, functional collectivity called danwei 單位. In mainland China, almost every working adult belongs to a danwei which provides its members with extensive goods and ser vices. The relation between the individual and danwei is near total and the high degree of individual dependency on the danwei has created a “culture of organized dependency,” as [Andrew G.] Walder demonstrated. The danwei refers to the “work-unit” with which an individual is totally identified. A person without a danwei is a person without identity altogether. But, it must be emphatically noted, this is only the beginning not the end of the Maoist revolution. 35 In a recent book on Mao’s early and late life by Li Rui 李銳 (1917–), who served as Mao’s secretary during the 1950s, there is a great deal of revealing evidence about his frantic fetishism for revolution.36 In the first place, he believed that the world, both human and natural, is always fi lled with contradictions and

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oppositions, with new ones constantly replacing old ones. Therefore struggle (i.e., revolution) must never come to an end. In the second place, the revolution he was fighting for was not confined to China but must extend to the whole world. It was to be measured not in years or decades, but centuries. In the third place, by revolution, he meant creating chaos by violence. In the fourth place, he made no distinction between economic construction and violent revolution. This was the fundamental assumption of his Great Leap Forward of 1958. This point is also fully borne out by his published works. For instance, he said in January 1958, “In making revolution one must strike while the iron is hot— one revolution must follow another, the revolution must be continually advanced.”37 It is extremely revealing that here he is actually talking about the Great Leap Forward, not revolution. But who could possibly tell the difference if these words were taken out of their original context? In the fifth place, he was thoroughly negative about the Chinese tradition and considered his destructive work far from being completed. In 1959, he repeatedly expressed his determination to abolish the last of the Chinese institutions—the family. This horrified most of his comrades who were present, particularly Marshall Zhu De 朱德 (1886–1976). Finally, he believed that by relying on iron will and revolutionary means, he could translate any utopia, Chinese or foreign, ancient or modern, into a reality in China. Here he pushed “the myth of the clean slate” to its illogical end. Hegel has the following interesting description of what he calls “negative will” or “negative freedom”: This [negative freedom] is the freedom of the void which rises to a passion and takes shape in the world; while still remaining theoretical, it takes shape in religion as the Hindu fanaticism of pure contemplation, but when it turns to actual practice, it takes shape in religion and politics alike as the fanaticism of destruction—the destruction of the whole subsisting social order—as the elimination of individuals who are objects of suspicion to and social order, and the annihilation of any organization which tries to rise anew from the ruins. Only in destroying something does this negative will possess the feeling of itself as existent. Of course it imagines that it is willing some positive state of affairs, such as universal equality or universal religious life, but in fact it does not will that this shall be positively actualized, and for this reason: such actuality leads at once to some sort of order, to a particularization of organizations and individuals alike; while it is precisely out of the annihilation of particularity and objective characterization that the self-consciousness of this negative freedom proceeds. Consequently, what negative freedom intends to will can never be anything in itself but an abstract idea, and giving effect to the idea can only be the fury of destruction.38 Mao answers to this description perfectly. The “abstract idea” that his negative will willed, I submit, was none other than the fetishism of revolution. No won-

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der the Four Modernizations could not really get started until after Mao’s departure from the world. But what is truly terrifying is that Mao was not alone in this fetish-worship of revolution. According to Li Rui, he was surrounded by many apparently “true believers,” including as distinguished a scientist as Qian Xuesen 錢學森 (1911– 2009). In launching the Great Leap Forward, Mao told Li, he was chiefly influenced by Qian, who assured him that solar energy is unlimited and, if well utilized, it will be entirely possible to grow “ten thousand catties of grain or more per mou (Chinese acre).”39 In China, it may be further pointed out, fetishism of revolution was wedded to scientism. To conclude, I must honestly admit, I cannot pretend to know why Taiwan and Hong Kong have both succeeded in modernization. I merely wish to point out one irrefutable fact, namely, for reasons too obvious to be stated, both societies have the good fortune of remaining untouched by the violence of revolution. Modernization cannot even begin if there is nothing to be modernized. In this sense, modernization and tradition must of necessity imply each other. Sixty years ago, a distinguished British scholar had this advice for China: Much talk of the Westernization of China is remote from reality. [T]hough a nation may borrow its tools from abroad, for the energy to handle them it must look within. . . . It is in herself alone, in her own historical culture, rediscovered and reinterpreted in light of her modern requirement, that China will find the dynamic which she needs. The most fundamental achievements of her revolution are still to come. The problem is to translate political rejuvenation in practical terms of social institutions, and to build with a modern technique, but on Chinese foundations.40 It may still be worthwhile to take heed of this unusually wise counsel.

notes 1.

S. N. Eisenstadt, “Post-Traditional Societies,” Daedalus 102, no. 1 (Winter 1973).

2.

Joyce Appleby, Lynn Hunt, and Margaret Jacob, Telling the Truth About History (New York:

3.

Gilbert Rozman, “Theories of Modernization and Theories of Revolution: China and

Norton, 1994), 87–88. Russia” (paper presented at the International Conference on Modernization in China, 1860–1949, Taipei, Taiwan, August 16–18, 1990). 4.

Marion J. Levy Jr., “Modernization Exhumed,” Journal of Developing Societies 2 (1986): 1.

5.

Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (New York: Free Press, 1992), 133.

6.

Jurgen Habermas, The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity: Twelve Lectures (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1987), 2.

7.

Robert C. Tucker, ed., Marx-Engels Reader, 2nd ed. (New York: Norton, 1978), 676.

232 8.

m oder n i zat ion v er sus fe t is h is m of revolu t ion Ryusaku Tsunoda, William T. de Bary, and Donald Keene, eds., Sources of Japanese Tradition (New York: Columbia University Press, 1958), 628.

9.

See Lloyd I. Rudolph and Susanne Hoeber Rudolph, The Modernity of Tradition: Political Development in India (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967), 3, quoted and discussed in Carl J. Friedrich, Tradition and Authority (New York: Praeger, 1972), 39.

10.

See, for instance, Joseph M. Gusfield, “Tradition and Modernity: Misplaced Polarities in the Study of Social Change,” in Social Change: Sources, Patterns and Consequences, ed. Amitai Etzioni and Eva Etzioni-Haley (New York: Basic Books, 1973), 333–341; J. C. Heestennan, “India and the Inner Conflict of Tradition,” Daedalus 102 (Winter 1973): 97–113; Rhoda Lois Blumberg, “Family Values and the Educated Working Woman in India,” in Tradition and Modernity: The Role of Traditionalism in the Modernizing Process, ed. Jessie G. Lutz and Salah El-Shakhs (Washington, D.C.: University Press of America, 1982), 129–146.

11.

See Ying-shih Yü, “The Radicalization of China in the Twentieth Century,” Daedalus 122, no. 2 (Spring 1993): 125–150.

12.

Liang Qichao 梁啟超, “Shige” 釋革, in Yinbing shi heji 飲冰室合集 (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1989 [reprint]), 40–44. However, it must be pointed out that his advocacy of the revolutionary transformation of China did not commit him to revolutionary violence. See Hao Chang, Liang Ch’i- ch’ao and Intellectual Transition in China (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1971), chap. 7.

13.

English translation by Mary Backus Rankin in Early Chinese Revolutionaries: Radical Intellectuals in Shanghai and Chekiang, 1902–1911 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1971), 18.

14.

On this point, see the perceptive discussion of Michael Gasster in his Chinese Intellectuals and the Revolution of 1911 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1969), 99, 245–247.

15.

Mary Backus Rankin, Early Chinese Revolutionaries, 17.

16.

See Xin Qingnian 新青年 6, no. 1 (January 15, 1919): 15–16.

17.

See Chow Tse-tsung, The May Fourth Movement: Intellectual Revolution in Modern China

18.

See Stephen Toulmin, Cosmopolis: The Hidden Agenda of Modernity (New York: Free

(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1960), 297. Press, 1990), 175. 19.

Tucker, Marx-Engels Reader, 321.

20. According to Christopher Hill, however, the modern meaning of “revolution” already emerged in late seventeenth- century England. See “The Word ‘Revolution,’ ” in A Nation of Change and Novelty: Radical Politics, Religion and Literature in Seventeenth- Century England (London: Routledge, 1990), 92–101. 21.

Steven B. Smith, “Hegel and the French Revolution: An Epitaph for Republicanism,” in The French Revolution and the Birth of Modernity, ed. Ferenc Fehér (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), 221–223.

22. See D. W. Y. Kwok, Scientism in Chinese Thought (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1965). 23. Their numbers were estimated to be under two million in 1918. See Chow Tse-tsung, The May Fourth Movement, 381.

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24. Michael Polanyi, Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post- Critical Philosophy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962), 230. 25. See Richard Pipes, The Russian Revolution (New York: Knopf, 1990), 798–799. 26. See Thomas C. Kuo, Ch’en Tu- hsiu (1879–1942) and the Chinese Communist Movement (South Orange, N.J.: Seton Hall University Press, 1975), 80–81. 27. Robert  N. Bellah, Ann Swidler, William Sullan, Steve Tipton, and Richard Madsen, eds., The Good Society (New York: Knopf, 1991), 250. Here Bellah is commenting on Theodore  H. Von Laue’s The World Revolution of Westernization (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987). What Bellah refers to as “anti-Western westernization” is called “anti-Western counterrevolution” in Von Laue’s book, but I find Von Laue to be overstating his case of “cultural determinism.” 28. Quoted in Von Laue, The World Revolution of Westernization, 84. 29. See Thomas C. Kuo, Ch’en Tu-hsiu, 182. For Marx’s notion of permanent revolution, see Tucker, Marx-Engels Reader, 505; for Lenin’s view, see Pipes, The Russian Revolution, 362. 30. David Kopf, “Modernization and Westernization: Process and Pattern in History,” in Tradition and Modernity: The Role of Traditionalism in the Modernizing Process, 8. 31.

See Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic Books, 1973), 222.

32. See, for example, Jerome B. Grieder, Hu Shih and the Chinese Renaissance: Liberalism in the Chinese Revolution, 1917–1937 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1970), 236–244. 33.

See Wen-hsin Yeh, The Alienated Academy: Culture and Politics in Republican China, 1919–1937 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1990), 5:167–182.

34. John King Fairbank, China: A New History (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1992), 9:311. For a study of “modernization” during the Nanjing decade, see Frank Dikötter, The Age of Openness: China Before Mao (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008). 35.

See Ambrose Yeo- chi King, “Kuan-hsi and Network Building: A Sociological Interpretation,” Daedalus 120, no. 2 (Spring 1991): 71–72.

36. Li Rui, Mao Zedong ti zaonian yu wannian 毛澤東的早年與晚年 (Guizhou: Guizhou Renmin, 1992). 37.

Quoted in Von Laue, The World Revolution of Westernization, 282.

38. See Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, trans. T. M. Knox (New York: Oxford University Press, 1967), 22. 39. Li Rui, Mao Zedong, 137. 40. R. H. Tawney, Land and Labor in China (New York: Harcourt and Brace, 1932), 193–195. Quoted and discussed in W. W. Rostow, Theorists of Economic Growth from David Hume to the Present (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), 315–317.

11. The Idea of Democracy and the Twilight of the Elite Culture in Modern China

I

n his famous Democracy in Amer ica (4 vols., 1835–1840), Alexis de Tocqueville made the following most illuminating observation: If ever a democratic republic similar to that of the United States came to be established in a country in which earlier a single man’s power had introduced administrative centralization and had made it something accepted by custom and by law, I have no hesitation in saying that in such a republic despotism would become more intolerable than in any of the absolute monarchies of Europe. One would have to go over into Asia to find anything with which to compare it.1

Needless to say, Tocqueville had France in mind when he spoke these words, which, however, have turned out to be startlingly prophetic regarding twentiethcentury China. As we all know, China was the first country in Asia to abolish a highly centralized imperial system— one fully two millennia old— and establish in its place a republican form of government. On the other hand, exactly as Tocqueville had predicted, Chinese despotism in the twentieth century has indeed grown ever more intolerable on the waves of one revolution after another. In this chapter, however, I propose to discuss, not the reality of Chinese despotism, but the idea of democracy. The very fact that China, in 1912, was able to cast off its imperial past and adopt a republican system based primarily on the

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American model testifies unmistakably to the power of democracy as the political faith of the Chinese revolutionary elite. This simple but fascinating fact may serve well as the starting point of our inquiry into the vicissitudes of the idea of democracy in the political and intellectual history of twentieth- century China. This fact is fascinating because it raises a number of thought-provoking questions deserving further exploration. To mention just a few: Why did so many Chinese intellectuals at the turn of the century, whose national history knew no other political model than hereditary monarchy after China’s first unification in 221 b.c.e., become so readily attracted to the idea of democracy? Since the May Fourth Period, Confucianism has been viewed as a major intellectual obstacle to China’s democratization. As Chen Duxiu 陳獨秀 (1879–1942) stated explicitly in 1919, “In order to advocate democracy, we are obliged to oppose Confucianism.”2 However, it is also an irrefutable fact that most, if not all, of the leading Chinese advocates of democracy at the turn of the century were, each in his own way, committed Confucians, notably Yan Fu 嚴復 (1853–1921), Kang Youwei 康有為 (1858–1927), Liang Qichao 梁啟超 (1873–1929), Zhang Binglin 章炳麟 (1868–1936), and Liu Shipei 劉師培 (1884–1919). Such being the case, how are we to account for their great enthusiasm for the creation of a democratic order in China? With the founding of the Republic of China in 1912, the idea of democracy enjoyed, indeed, a strong and auspicious beginning to its career in China. But, ironically, its subsequent career in China has turned out to be marked by frustrations and failures—at times, even of tragic proportions. Then a further question inevitably arises: Why was the idea of democracy able to help induce a fundamental change in political structure under the monarchical rule of China’s last dynasty, while it has ceased to function in any meaningful way since the founding of the Republic? The rest of the chapter will address itself to these intriguing questions. Due to limitations of time and space, however, no attempt will be made to deal with them in a general and comprehensive manner. Instead, I shall discuss them by specifically relating the idea of democracy to the elite culture in modern China.

1 There can be no question that the idea of democracy is of Western origin, traceable to ancient Greece. Even if we grant the possibility of some remote Phoenician influences on the beginning of Greek political wisdom, the historical fact nevertheless remains unaltered that it was in the Athenian polis that the idea of democracy was most fully institutionalized for the first time in the ancient world.3 When the idea was imported to China in the late nineteenth century, Chinese scholars showed no intellectual curiosity about its history. Rather, they were enormously interested in its modern institutional expressions as they found them in Britain, France, and the United States. They gave the idea

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several Chinese names—including minzhu 民主 (people’s rule), minquan 民權 (people’s power), and minzhi 民治 (government by the people), all of which have survived to this day. However, the first one, minzhu, is now generally accepted as the standard Chinese translation of the Western term “democracy.” It is significant that in the late nineteenth century, open-minded Confucian scholars who visited the West for the first time almost invariably returned to China deeply impressed by the ideals and institutions of Western constitutional democracy. A few examples will suffice to illustrate this point. After a two-year trip to the British Isles and Europe in the late 1860s, Wang Tao 王韜 (1828– 1897), the Chinese assistant to James Legge in the English translation of the Confucian classics, gave the following characterization of the British government and people: The real strength of England, however, lies in the fact that there is a sympathetic understanding between the governing and governed, a close relationship between the ruler and the people. . . . My observation is that the daily domestic political life of England actually embodies the traditional ideals of our ancient Golden Age. In official appointments the method of recommendation and election is practiced, but the candidates must be well known, of good character and achievements before they can be promoted to a position over the people. . . . And moreover the principle of majority rule is adhered to in order to show impartibility. . . . The English people are likewise public-spirited and law-abiding: the laws and regulations are hung up high (for everyone to see), and no one dares violate them.4 Later, in 1877, when Yan Fu and Guo Songtao 郭嵩燾 (1818–1891), China’s first ambassador to England, were both in London, they often spent days and nights together discussing differences and similarities in Chinese and Western thought and political institutions. It is interesting to note that both men arrived at essentially the same conclusions as Wang Tao’s, apparently without being aware of the latter’s writings. In the end, Guo heartily agreed with Yan Fu’s observation that “the reason why England and other countries of Europe are wealthy and strong is that impartial justice (gongli 公理) is daily extended. Here is the ultimate source.”5 My last example is Xue Fucheng 薛福成 (1888–1894), who was concurrently China’s minister to England, France, Italy, and Belgium from 1890 to 1894. In the May 1, 1890, entry of his diary, he wrote: Formerly Guo Songtao frequently praised the merits of the governmental administration and popular customs of the West, which caused him to suffer criticism and ostracism from scholars who like to criticize others. I was also slightly surprised at the exaggeration of his words, which I

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checked with Chen Lanbin 陳蘭彬 [China’s envoy to the United States in the 1870s] . . . who said that his statement was correct. This time when I came to Eu rope and traveled from Paris to London I began to believe that the statements of Guo Songtao could be verified in the parliaments, schools, prisons, hospitals, and streets. Later in the same entry, he also praised the United States highly, saying, “America is like the time of the Golden Age of Ancient China.” 6 I take the above examples as illustrative of the initial response of the Confucian elite to the idea of democracy, for all of them were deeply committed to Confucian values and therefore expressed their appreciative understanding of Western democratic ideals and institutions from a distinctly Confucian point of view. It is particularly revealing that Wang Tao and Xue Fucheng praised, respectively, but independently of each other, England and the United States in terms of the Golden Age in China’s high antiquity. This would seem to suggest that they saw the democratic West as the Second Coming of the Confucian Golden Age. This is indeed the highest possible tribute the traditional Confucian elite could have paid to the idea of democracy. It is true that in their own times, they constituted only a small minority and therefore can by no means be taken as representative of the Confucian elite as a whole. With the advantage of hindsight, however, we also happen to know that they were a “creative minority” charting the future of China. The equation of the Confucian idea of a Golden Age with that of Western democracy was soon to undergo a dexterous twist in the hands of Confucian reformers. When Kang Youwei became acquainted with the ideas and institutions of Western democracy by reading journalism in the 1880s, he began to develop a theory that may be called the indigenous genesis of democracy in ancient China. He distinguished three types of government in Chinese history, namely, “the people’s rule” (minzhu), “joint rule of monarch and people” ( junmin gongzhi 君民共治), and “autocracy” (zhuanzhi 專制). The first type, minzhu, was actualized during the time of the legendary sage-emperors Yao and Shun. It was the highest and most perfect form of democracy. He attributed the second type, junmin gongzhi, to the reign of King Wen of the Zhou dynasty. It was a sort of constitutional monarchy. The last type, zhuanzhi, the lowest and worst possible form of government, was what China had practiced since its unification under the First Emperor of the Qin dynasty in 221 b.c.e. By way of extensive exegesis of certain Confucian texts, Kang came to the conclusion that Confucius was a most enthusiastic advocate of democracy.7 It may be noted in this connection that it was Wang Tao who first identified these three forms of state in Europe, which he called, respectively, minzhu guo, or democracy; junzhu guo 君主國, or monarchy; and junmin gongzhu guo 君民共主國, or constitutional monarchy.8 Quite possibly, Kang may have been initially inspired by Wang’s writing and built his theory on its basis. Thus, Kang introduced a completely new paradigm

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in Chinese intellectual history that dominated Confucian classical scholarship until the May Fourth Period. The paradigm was not only taken over but also greatly extended by his political rivals— Confucian advocates of a republican revolution. Liu Shipei, for example, wrote a book entitled Zhongguo minyue jingyi 中國民約精義 (Essentials of the Chinese Theory of Social Contract) in the early years of the twentieth century, which purports to trace the origins and evolution of democratic ideas in China—including democracy, equality, freedom, rights, etc.—from the ancient classics all the way to the philosophical writings of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.9 During the first decade of this century, the influential Guocui xuebao 國粹學 報 (Journal of National Essence), with which Liu Shipei and Zhang Binglin were closely associated, carried numerous learned articles elaborating on this theme. As a result, there gradually formed a climate of opinion among the Confucian elite that democratic ideas had long ago been developed in ancient China by Confucius, Mencius, and other sages independently of the West and that it was the duty of modern Confucians to rediscover and repossess them from the Confucian texts. The following statement by Dr. Sun Yat-sen, Founder of the Republic, is worth quoting: In ancient China there were the abdications of Yao and Shun as well as  the changes of the Mandate of Heaven (geming 革命 “revolution”) of King Tang (of the Shang dynasty) and King Wu (of the Zhou dynasty). As for theories, there were such statements [as] “Heaven sees with eyes of its people. Heaven hears with the ears of its people,” “I have indeed heard of the punishment of the outcast named Zhou [i.e., the “bad last ruler” of the Shang dynasty], but I have not heard of any regicide,” and “the people are of supreme importance: the sovereign comes last,” etc. So we cannot say that democratic ideas have been lacking in China. However, what we have are ideas but not institutions.10 Sun was not a Confucian scholar. As Martin Wilber rightly observes, however, “Sun’s reformist prescriptions seem at all stages of their development to reflect the ideas currently fashionable among the then-radical Chinese intellectuals.”11 Therefore, this statement may be justifiably taken as representative of the view of the Chinese elite in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The idea of democracy proved to be so attractive to the Chinese elite that they not only adopted it, but went to great lengths to completely naturalize it.

2 With the beginning of the May Fourth era, the historical findings of the preceding generation with regard to the indigenous origin of democracy in ancient

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China was rapidly discredited. After 1919, few scholars, if any, would seriously believe that ideas such as “democracy,” “liberty,” “rights,” and “social contract,” when truthfully interpreted in their original context, could be found in the Confucian tradition. Instead of viewing the Confucian classic as a repository of “democratic ideas,” Confucianism was now repudiated as the very ideological cornerstone on which Chinese monarchy had stood from beginning to end. This anti- Confucian sentiment was so powerfully, as well as multifariously, expressed that it would still find a sympathetic echo in many minds today. Thus, we find in modern Chinese intellectual history, two major interpretations regarding the nature of Confucianism that are diametrically opposed to each other. Which one, then, should we follow? A detailed account of this controversy lies beyond the scope of the present chapter.12 Suffice it to say that Confucianism is such a complex system of values, beliefs, and ideas and has, moreover, undergone so many historical transformations that it does not easily yield itself to any one-sided characterization no matter how well grounded. Indeed, Confucianism can mean different things not only to different people but also to the same people in different contexts. Chen Duxiu, for example, made the following remark to a friend in his prison cell in the early 1930s: Every feudal dynasty worshipped Confucius as a sage. The act of worship was inauthentic. Its true purpose was to strengthen dynastic rule . . . This is the reason that during the May Fourth Movement, we came up with the slogan “Down with Confucius and Sons.” However, intellectually speaking, the sayings of Confucius and Mencius are worth studying. Statements like “The people are of supreme importance; the sovereign comes last” (Mencius) and “In teaching, there should be no distinction of classes” (Confucius) all deserve to be further explored.13 Clearly, at the time of this conversation, when his radicalism had subsided, he also distinguished Confucianism as state ideology from the true teachings of Confucius, Mencius, and other Confucians, thereby retreating from his earlier position that “Confucianism and monarchy were indissolubly bound.”14 Hu Shi 胡適 (1891–1962), another intellectual leader of the May Fourth Movement, provides us with a slightly different example. He was responsible, more than anyone else, for making the anti- Confucianist battle cry—“Down with Confucius and Sons”—a household phrase in China. As a moderate liberal, however, he seemed to recognize from the beginning that Confucianism as state ideology must not be confused with those Confucian values that constituted the core of what he called “the humanistic and rationalistic China.”15 It is particularly interesting that in many of his English writings, he often emphasized the compatibility of Confucianism with Western liberalism. He was, of course, intellectually sophisticated enough not to make any claim for China’s independent discovery of the idea of democracy in ancient times. Nevertheless,

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he was bold enough to suggest that certain Confucian ideas and institutions might prove to be capable of furnishing China with a solid foundation on which constitutional democracy could be successfully established.16 In “The Natural Law in the Chinese Tradition” (1953), he further proposed that both the Confucian Canon (Classics) and the Neo- Confucian idea of li, or principle, are more or less comparable to Natu ral Law in the West, which “ha[s] always played the historical role of a fighting weapon in mankind’s struggle against the injustice and the tyranny of unlimited human authority.”17 By contrast, he rarely favored Confucianism with such high credit in his Chinese writings, at least not so explicitly and in such a focused way, presumably for fear of making his compatriots too self- complacent to struggle for China’s modernization. The cases of Chen Duxiu and Hu Shi seem to suggest that in spite of their belligerent anti- Confucianist stance on the surface, at a deeper level of consciousness, their early Confucian breeding, I suspect, may well have in some way helped to predispose them more readily to the idea of democracy. Chen was a most enthusiastic advocate of democracy during this period, and it was he who personified the idea, calling it “Mr. Democracy.” In the winter of 1919, John Dewey delivered a lecture on democracy in Beijing. He analyzed the idea using four categories: 1. political democracy, including principally constitution and legislative representation; 2. people’s rights, including freedom of speech, press, belief, residence, etc.; 3. social democracy, namely, the abolition of social inequalities; and 4. economic democracy in terms of the equal distribution of wealth.

Chen agreed with Dewey’s analysis completely and supported it with an article entitled “The Basis for the Realization of Democracy,” which appeared in the December 1919 issue of the influential New Youth magazine, together with Dewey’s lecture. He emphatically pointed out that China must follow the British and American models in political democracy, and at the same time, also pay attention to the problem of social and economic democracy, which had yet to be achieved anywhere in the world.18 It was probably Chen’s concern with social and economic democracy that led him to the socialist revolution in the decade that immediately followed. Still, his faith in democracy was never completely shaken, though it was temporarily suspended during his revolutionary years. In 1940, he expressed his final views on democracy in a number of letters and essays. He now realized that the so- called proletarian democracy was only a euphemism for totalitarian dictatorship. After six to seven years of deep thinking, he became fully convinced that democracy in any society, capitalist or socialist, must of necessity consist of a parliamentary system, elections, due process of law, and civil rights protecting freedom of thought, speech, the press,

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association, etc. On the basis of his own political experience, he stressed that “most impor tant of all is the freedom of opposition parties.”19 What Dewey said in 1919 about democracy probably stayed in the back of Chen’s mind throughout the last two decades of his life. There can be no doubt that Chen’s political, social, and ethical ideas as shown in his published writings through several stages of intellectual development are all, essentially, of Western origin. Unlike late Qing Confucian reformists or revolutionaries such as Kang Youwei and Zhang Binglin, as far as I can judge, Chen does not seem to have ever justified his views by reference to the authority of Chinese classics. Such being the case, then on precisely what grounds are we justified in suggesting that his advocacy of democracy, and for that matter, of socialism (“economic democracy”), may have been helped by his background in the essentially Confucian culture of the Chinese elite? I would like to suggest two possible grounds, one specific and one general. The specific ground is the fact that in his early years, Ch’en first followed Kang Youwei and then shifted to the revolutionary camp of Zhang Binglin and Liu Shipei. Therefore, he was quite familiar with the common discourse of the two Confucian groups discussed earlier. By the May Fourth Period, he must have already dismissed the theory of the Chinese origin of the idea of democracy as nonsense. The possibility cannot be completely ruled out, however, that his initial acceptance of democracy as a value may well have been facilitated through the mediation of the sayings of Confucius and Mencius, such as those quoted by him in the early 1930s. The general ground is that in traditional Chinese elite culture, Confucian education often inculcates into the minds of the young, along with other values, a sense of justice, social responsibility, human equality, the well-being of the people, etc., which may be regarded as some of the closest Confucian equivalents to Western “civic virtues.” Many late Qing reformers and revolutionaries coming from the Confucian elite background were individuals imbued with this kind of public spiritedness. It was also these Confucian intellectuals who were often susceptible to Western democratic ideas and ideals. In the end, they might reject every established Confucian doctrine, thereby assuming an antiConfucianist role. Nevertheless, they would still retain the public spiritedness of Confucian origin. Of course, here I am speaking of an ideal type. I would not hesitate to take Chen Duxiu as a concrete illustration, however. In this sense, we may indeed speak justifiably, with William Theodore de Bary, of a liberal tradition in China, if the term “liberalism” is interpreted liberally without tying it to the Western conception of freedom under law. Having reexamined certain “liberal tendencies” in Neo-Confucianism from Zhu Xi 朱熹 (1130–1200) to Huang Zongxi 黃宗羲 (1610–1695), de Bary deplores that these tendencies had become obscured by the May Fourth Period. As a result, many young Chinese of the May Fourth generation viewed Neo- Confucianism as “a repressive, reactionary system.” The following comment by de Bary’s is insightful:

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Proponents of the New Culture movement in the twenties, whose newly Westernized education had made a sharp break with classical Confucian learning, their own thought processes may well have remained unconsciously subject to lingering Neo- Confucian influences. As members of what was still a privileged intellectual elite, they easily identified Westernstyle liberalism with the autonomy of the self which had already been a value in the earlier literati culture.20 I heartily agree with this observation. It also lends considerable support to my contention that, with all its imperfections, Chinese elite culture has proven to be, paradoxically, more receptive than hostile to the idea of democracy.

3 With the founding of the Republic in 1912, Confucianism ceased to serve as the philosophical foundation of China’s political system. Before the advent of totalitarian dictatorship on the Stalinist model in 1949, the Chinese intellectual elite generally regarded constitutional democracy as the only acceptable norm of politics. Even as late as 1957, when Chinese intellectuals were urged to voice criticisms by Mao, they still had the audacity to demand the reestablishment of parliamentary systems and multiparty politics, only to be brutally suppressed as “rightists.” This is clearly the legacy of the May Fourth Movement, as many of these “rightists” were students of the May Fourth generation. If Confucianism has become politically marginalized almost to the point of irrelevance in China since the May Fourth Period, can we say the same about it culturally? Undeniably, the influence of Confucianism in cultural and social realms has also been receding in the twentieth century. However, Confucian values and ideas have permeated Chinese everyday life for so many centuries that it is inconceivable that they can be eradicated in a span of several decades, even by revolutionary violence. Though considerably modified, and perhaps also somewhat distorted, Confucianism as a whole must nevertheless be taken seriously as a major component of Chinese culture at both the elite and popu lar levels. As Chinese society (as opposed to the state) has been gradually but ever increasingly regaining its vitality in recent years, signs are not lacking that Confucian culture is beginning to reemerge in a modern dress. In late Ming China, as despotism was growing increasingly intolerable, many members of the Confucian elite abandoned their hopes concerning the imperial state above and began to focus their attention on opening up and expanding cultural and social space below. Some founded private academies, others devoted their lives to building local communities in various forms (including the well-known xiangyue 鄉約, or community compacts), and still

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others threw themselves into the business world. As a result, a profound reorientation was also taking place in Confucian social and political philosophy. For example, between 1600 and 1800, a number of leading Confucian thinkers advocated the primacy of “the private” over “the public” in the sense that private individuals can take care of their own interests much more effectively than the emperor could on their behalf. There was also a growing emphasis on the idea that wealth must remain in the hands of those who created it, and not be entrusted to the state treasury.21 Today, we seem to be witnessing a recurrence of this late Ming historical process in China. If both Confucianism in its modern form and democracy are to coexist in China in, it is hoped, a not too distant future—as is already beginning to happen in Taiwan—how will the two relate to each other? In this connection, I would like to borrow a new concept developed by John Rawls after the appearance of his 1971 classic, A Theory of Justice. I refer to the concept of a “comprehensive doctrine.” In Political Liberalism, Rawls says: An essential feature of a well- ordered society associated with justice as fairness is that all its citizens endorse this conception on the basis of what I now call a comprehensive philosophical doctrine. . . . Now the serious problem is this: A modern democratic society is characterized not simply by a pluralism of comprehensive religious, philosophical, and moral doctrines, but by a pluralism of incompatible yet reasonable comprehensive doctrines. No one of these doctrines is affirmed by citizens generally. Nor should one expect that in the foreseeable future one of them or some other reasonable doctrine, will ever be affirmed by all, or nearly all, citizens. Political liberalism assumes that, for political purposes, a plurality of reasonable yet incompatible comprehensive doctrines is the normal result of the exercise of human reason within the framework of the free institutions of a constitutional democratic regime. Political liberalism also supposes that a reasonable comprehensive doctrine does not reject the essentials of a democratic regime.22 Confucianism in its modern form clearly qualifies as a “comprehensive doctrine” as here described. In traditional China, theoretically speaking, political life was guided by Confucian ethical principles. As Confucius said: “Guide them by edicts, keep them in line with punishments, and the common people will stay out of trouble but will have no sense of shame. Guide them by virtue, keep them in line with the rites, and they will, besides having a sense of shame, reform themselves.”23 “Edicts” and “punishments” refer to legal principles, whereas “virtues” and “rites” refer to ethical ones. The sage preferred the latter. By contrast, the political tradition of the West from its inception in the Greek polis has followed legal principles.24 By embracing the Western idea of constitutional

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democracy, the Chinese intellectual elite actually abandoned the traditional “rule of virtue” for the “rule of law.”25 This led inevitably to the end of Confucianism as a dominating political force. Dissociated from political power, Confucianism in its modern form no longer occupies any privileged position and therefore becomes one of the comprehensive doctrines. Rawls, however, further distinguishes “reasonable comprehensive doctrines” from “unreasonable” ones. Unreasonable doctrines could undermine the unity and justice of a constitutional democratic regime and therefore must be contained. He does not specify, but we can reasonably assume, that they refer to certain forms of religious fundamentalism and, perhaps, also to some of the modern totalitarian ideologies.26 On the other hand, he deliberately defines the idea of “reasonable comprehensive doctrine” in a loose way so that it could accommodate as many religious, philosophical, and moral doctrines as possible. His examples include utilitarianism, Kant’s moral philosophy with its ideal of autonomy, as well as “all the main historical religions.”27 In this light, Confucianism is not only a “comprehensive doctrine” but also a “reasonable” one at that. Furthermore, according to Rawls, a conception of political justice shared by everyone in a democratic regime can be obtained only through an “overlapping consensus” of most, if not all, reasonable comprehensive doctrines. Each reasonable doctrine endorses the conception, but from its own point of view.28 This seems to suggest that reasonable comprehensive doctrines as cultural resources contribute positively to the building of a commonly accepted conception of justice in a democratic society. Perhaps this is why he also refers to them as “background culture.”29 But not all reasonable comprehensive doctrines in a society can contribute equally to the “overlapping consensus” necessary for the establishment of a democratic order. This is logically implied in the following statement: “there are many reasonable comprehensive doctrines that understand the wider realm of values to be congruent with, or supportive of, or else not in conflict with, political values as these are specified by a political conception of justice for a democratic regime.”30 If I understand Rawls correctly, then what he says about how reasonable comprehensive doctrines and a conception of justice for a democratic regime are related to each other generally can apply with equal validity to the question of how Confucianism will be related to democracy in China specifically. Of all the reasonable doctrines in the Chinese tradition, Confucianism is clearly the most comprehensive and therefore also has the most to offer a Chinese conception of political justice. I am fully aware that Confucianism and Western liberalism are two entirely different and incommensurable systems of thought, each being the product of its unique historical experience. They cannot be translated into each other’s terms without serious distortions. However, shorn of its accidentally acquired and now outmoded features, on the one hand, and with necessary readjust-

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ments to the changed and ever- changing conditions, on the other, the central ideas and principles of Confucianism may be shown to be largely compatible with many of the reasonable comprehensive doctrines of the West, liberalism itself included. Many people have already done valuable work along this line. In concluding this section, however, let me add one more example. Recently, American liberals have turned their attention to the vice of cruelty. Of all the ordinary vices, Judith  N. Shklar has chosen to “put cruelty first.” As she expressed so powerfully, “Indeed, hating cruelty, and putting it first, remain a powerful part of the liberal consciousness.”31 Following Shklar, Richard Rorty specifically calls our attention to the books of what he calls “liberal ironists” that help us become less cruel. He tells us that both Nabokov and Orwell, each in a way uniquely his own, “met Judith Shklar’s criterion of a liberal: somebody who believes that cruelty is the worst thing we do.”32 Hating cruelty, I must emphatically point out, has also been a powerful part of the Confucian consciousness from the very beginning. Confucius says, “How true is the saying that after a state has been ruled for a hundred years by good men, it is possible to get the better of cruelty and do away with killing.”33 This is how Confucius “put cruelty first.” Mencius also characterized Confucius’s and two earlier sages’ profound abhorrence of cruelty in the following words: “Had it been necessary to perpetrate one wrongful deed or to kill one innocent man in order to gain the Empire, none of them would have consented to it.”34 Rorty writes of “participative emotion” in the case of Nabokov thus: “the ability to shudder with shame and indignation at the unnecessary death of a child— a child with whom we have no connection of family, tribe, or class—is the highest form of emotion that humanity has attained while evolving modern social and political institutions.”35 This remark reminds me immediately of a well-known passage of Mencius on human compassion, which may be reproduced, in part, as follows: No man is devoid of a heart sensitive to the suffering of others. . . . Suppose a man were, all of a sudden, to see a young child on the verge of falling into a well. He would certainly be moved to compassion, not because he wanted to get in the good graces of the parents, nor because he wished to win the praise of his fellow villagers or friends, nor yet because he disliked the cry of the child. From this, it can be seen that whoever is devoid of the heart of compassion is not human, whoever is devoid of the heart of shame is not human, whoever is devoid of the heart of courtesy and modesty is not human, and whoever is devoid of the heart of right and wrong is not human.36 Here we encounter the earliest Confucian discovery of “the highest form of emotion that humanity has attained.” Space does not allow me to mention

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numerous Confucian writers of later ages who each had something to say about cruelty and suffering. However, I cannot pass this topic without quoting a few lines from Du Fu 杜甫 (712–770), China’s greatest poet: Behind the red-lacquered gates, wine is left to sour, meat to rot. Outside these gates lie the bones of the frozen and starved. The flourishing and the withered are just a foot apart— It rends my heart to ponder on it.37

This great Confucian poet surely deserves to be called a “liberal ironist.”

4 As shown above, the idea of democracy found its most sympathetic audience in China among the intellectual elite. From the late nineteenth century to 1919, leading advocates of democracy came almost invariably from the intellectual elite with a strong background in Confucian culture. For example, reformers such as Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao, revolutionaries such as Zhang Binglin and Liu Shipei, and May Fourth leaders such as Hu Shih and Chen Duxiu were also top-notch scholars and thinkers holding the highest academic positions in China at one time or another. With the exception of Chen Duxiu, the Confucian elite from the late Qing to the early Republican years generally endorsed the idea of democracy. On the contrary, it is not difficult at all to cite numerous instances showing that conservative Confucians during the same period were strongly opposed to change in general and to democracy in par tic u lar. All this suggests is that if the idea of democracy wanted to fi nd a hospitable social space in China, it could only look to the Confucian elite, because other social groups, including merchants and peasants, were generally unmotivated to be actively involved in national or local politics. This was true in the last years of the nineteenth century as well as in the middle of the twentieth century. A sociological survey conducted in the late 1940s shows that “much of the Chinese peasantry . . . remained indifferent to and ignorant of political affairs.”38 Even today, a survey by Andrew J. Nathan and Tianjian Shi suggests that the same patterns still persist: the educated elite are more likely to be aware of the influence of government, whereas the rest of the population has a very low level of awareness. In the judgment of the authors, “The contrast between the two patterns suggest that if a political crisis between the regime and the intellectuals occurs again, the majority of the population may once again not offer much backing for the demands for democratic changes.”39 Why for a whole century has China not made much headway toward democracy? This is an immensely complex question, a truthful answer to which would involve God-knows-how-many historical factors. Here I would venture to

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suggest that the waning of elite culture in twentieth- century China may have been one of the factors. In hindsight, the New Culture Movement of the May Fourth era proved to be the last efflorescence of Chinese elite culture. It was in this era that both Chinese scholarship and Western studies reached a new height. In the humanities, especially, many great names date from this era. It was indeed a generation of “clusterings of genius,” to borrow A. L. Kroeber’s apt phrase. The idea of democracy is, after all, a Western concept. To translate it into a Chinese reality, in this early phase it needed native defenders as well as opponents. Only through penetrating debates and discussions, not only on the idea itself but also on many other topics directly and indirectly relating to it, could a clearer understanding be reached. Only then could it hope to take root in and grow on China’s soil. A high level of elite culture is therefore an essential precondition. As Rawls says, the search for a generally acceptable conception of political justice must begin in the “background culture” or “public culture” as “the shared fund of implicitly recognized basic ideas and principles.” It is very unlikely that democracy can flourish in a culturally impoverished land. To give a most recent example, the democracy movement in Tiananmen Square in 1989 was clearly related to the revival of elite culture in post-Mao China. Michael Walzer is certainly correct in suggesting that student elitism was rooted in “pre- Communist cultural traditions specific to China.”40 Unfortunately, post– May Fourth China immediately entered into a period of national crisis, revolution, and war. At the same time, as I have pointed out elsewhere, Chinese intellectuals were also undergoing a historical process of social and political marginalization, thanks particularly to revolution.41 As a result, elite culture in the 1940s declined markedly in a war-ridden China. Without a powerful intellectual elite to champion it, the idea of democracy soon began to go through several ideological twists until it was distorted beyond recognition. In linking the idea of democracy to Chinese elite culture so closely, I am running the risk of being seen as an advocate of elitism. However, I am not really proposing anything new. On the contrary, I am only rethinking the wisdom of Kang Youwei, Sun Yat-sen, and a host of other early Chinese advocates of democracy who insisted that, in the case of China, it is a matter of historical necessity that democratization in its initial state must begin with an elite leadership.42 Subsequent history seems to reveal that by reducing the intellectual elite to a nonentity, on the one hand, and relying on the so-called masses, on the other, democracy in China only degenerated into demagoguery. There indeed exists a tension between democracy and elitism. Nevertheless, since democracy cannot function by itself without some kind of leadership, I am afraid, the tension is going to remain. As Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. forcefully argues: Of all the cants canted in this world, the cant about elitism is the most futile. Government throughout human history has always been government

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by minorities—this is, by elites. This statement is as true for democratic and communist states today [1986] as it was for medieval monarchies and primitive tribes. Masses of people are structurally incapable of direct selfgovernment. They must delegate their power to agents. Who says organization says oligarchy. Historians hardly needed Pareto, Mosca and Michels to demonstrate this point. The serious question is not the existence of the ruling elites but their character.43 Few today have Schlesinger’s courage to tell this simple historical truth. He is also correct to say that it is the character of the elites that is really at issue. This emphasis on character leads me directly to Irving Babbitt, a great American humanist and admirer of Confucius. In his Democracy and Leadership, first published in 1924, he made quite a point about the great value of Confucian ethics in the molding of the character of a democratic leader. His view has been well summarized by Thomas R. Nevin as follows: In Babbitt’s conception, Confucian ethics were the oriented complement of the Aristotelian, but with the critical difference that in the former there was a stress upon humility as a check upon self-reliance and, in the aggregate, upon popular will. Like Aristotle, Confucius placed mediatory virtues in a social setting; his teaching concerned not merely the individual of breeding but such a person’s power to influence and regulate the masses. Babbitt’s claim that “not justice in the abstract but the just man” or “man of character” was the only security for society was inspired by the Confucian keynote of exemplification. As a check upon the democrat’s belief in the divinity of numbers, Babbitt posed a basically Confucian model in finding “here and there a person who is worthy of respect and occasionally one who is worthy of reverence.”44 So, after all, there is also the possibility that Confucianism may offer something to democracy in return. Let my essay rest on this Confucian note.

notes 1.

Quoted in Stephen Holmes, “Tocqueville and Democracy,” in The Idea of Democracy, ed. David Copp, Jean Hampton, and John E. Roemer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 51.

2.

Chow Tse-tsung, The May Fourth Movement: Intellectual Revolution in Modern China

3.

Simon Hornblower, “Creation and Development of Democratic Institutions in Ancient

(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1960), 59. Greece,” in Democracy: The Unfinished Journey, 508 B.C. to A.D. 1993, ed. John Dunn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 2.

t he ide a of de m o c r ac y a nd th e t wil igh t of t h e el it e 4.

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Ssu-yü Teng and John K. Fairbank, China’s Response to the West: A Documentary Survey (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1954), 140.

5.

Benjamin Schwartz, In Search of Wealth and Power: Yen Fu and the West (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1964), 29.

6.

Teng and Fairbank, China’s Response, 143–144.

7.

Kung-chuan Hsiao, A Modern China and a New World: K’ang Yu-wei, Reformer and Utopian,

8.

Teng and Fairbank, China’s Response, 136–137.

1858–1927 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1975), 197–200. 9.

Liu Shipei 劉師培, Zhongguo minyue jingyi, in Liu Shenshu xiansheng yishu 劉申叔先生 遺書 (Taipei: Huashi, 1975 [reprint]), 1:673–713.

10.

Quoted in Ying-shih Yü, “Sun Yat-sen’s Doctrine and Traditional Chinese Culture,” in Sun Yat- sen’s Doctrine in the Modern World, ed. Chu-yuan Cheng (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1989), 94.

11.

C. Martin Wilbur, Sun Yat- sen: Frustrated Patriot (New York: Columbia University

12.

For an overview, see Chow Tse-tsung, “The Anti- Confucian Movement in Early Repub-

Press, 1976), 7. lican China,” in The Confucian Persuasion, ed. Arthur  F. Wright (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1960), 288–312. 13.

Quoted in Zheng Xuejia 鄭學稼, Chen Duxiu zhuan 陳獨秀傳 (Taipei: Shibao wenhua, 1989), 2:960.

14.

Chow Tse-tsung, The May Fourth Movement, 302.

15.

See Hu Shih, “The Chinese Tradition and the Future,” in Sino-American Conference on Intellectual Cooperation: Report and Proceedings (Seattle: University of Washington Department of Publications and Printing, 1962), 13–22.

16.

Hu Shih, “Historical Foundations for a Democratic China,” in Edmund J. James Lectures on Government: Second Series (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1941), 1–12.

17.

Hu Shih, “The Natural Law in the Chinese Tradition,” in Natural Law Institute Proceed-

18.

See Chow Tse-tsung, The May Fourth Movement, 228–231.

19.

Chen Duxiu, Chen Duxiu de zuihou duiyu minzhu zhengzhi de jianjie 陳獨秀的最後對於

ings (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1953), 5:119–153.

民主政治的見解, with a preface by Hu Shih (Hong Kong: Ziyou Zhongguo chubanshe, 1950). 20. Wm. Theodore de Bary, The Liberal Tradition in China (Hong Kong: CUHK Press, 1983), 104. 21.

I have traced this new development in Confucian social and political thinking in a long article and, moreover, linked it to the acceptance of Western ideas by the Chinese intellectual elite in the late Qing. See my “Confucianism in the Modern World: A Retrospective and Prospective Study” (in Japanese translation), Chûgoku—Shakai to Bunka 10 (June 1995): 135–179.

22. John Rawls, Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), xvi. 23. Confucius, The Analects, trans. D. C. Lau (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1979), 2.3, 63. 24. As Frederick Watkins pointed out, “Unlike the Chinese and other highly civilized peoples, whose political thought always tended to be ethical rather than legal in character, the

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t h e ide a of de m o c r ac y a nd th e t wil igh t of t h e el it e Greeks had from the beginning to devote most of their political energies to the creation and enforcement of law.” Watkins, The Political Tradition of the West: A Study in the Development of Modern Liberalism (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1948), 8.

25. It may be noted that Huang Zongxi made an impor tant move by reversing the traditional Confucian formula to say that “only if there is governance by law can there be governance by men.” Waiting for the Dawn: A Plan for the Prince, trans. Wm. Theodore de Bary (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), 99. See also de Bary’s introduction, 21–24. As Huang’s book was a chief source of inspiration for late Qing Confucians, his new emphasis on the primacy of law over man must have had some influence on them. 26. Rawls, Political Liberalism, xvi–xvii, 64. 27. Ibid., 58–60, 169–170. 28. Ibid, 134. 29. Ibid, 14. Rawls also says, “We start, then, by looking to the public culture itself as the shared fund of implicitly recognized basic ideas and principles. We hope to formulate these ideas and principles clearly enough to be combined into a political conception of justice congenial to our most firmly held convictions” (8). It seems safe to assume that these “basic ideas and principles” are largely provided by reasonable comprehensive doctrines. I must make myself clear that here I am only borrowing Rawls’s idea of “comprehensive doctrine” as “background culture” to illustrate my own point about the Chinese case. This does not, however, commit me to Rawls’s political conception of justice as a whole, early or late. 30. Ibid., 169. 31.

Judith N. Shklar, Ordinary Vices (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1984), 43.

32. Richard Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 146. 33.

The Analects, 13.1, 120.

34. Mencius, trans. D. C. Lau (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1970), 2A.2, 79. 35.

Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity, 147. Here I am only comparing Chinese Confucians and Western liberals with respect to their attitudes toward cruelty. I am not exactly following Rorty’s definition of “liberal irony.” Nor am I accepting his antifoundationalism. For a criticism of Rorty’s views, see Richard Wolin, The Terms of Cultural Criticism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992), chap. 7.

36. Mencius, 2A.6, 82–83. 37.

William Hung, Tu Fu: China’s Greatest Poet (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1952), 88.

38. Kung- chuan Hsiao, A Modern China and a New World, 219, where C. K. Yang’s A Chinese Village in Early Communist Transition (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1959) is cited and discussed. 39. Andrew  J. Nathan and Tianjian Shi, “Cultural Requisites for Democracy in China: Findings from a Survey,” Daedalus 122, no. 2 (Spring 1993): 116.

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40. John Rawls, Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), xvi, 12–14; Michael Walzer, Thick and Thin: Moral Argument at Home and Abroad (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1994), 59–60. 41.

See Ying-shih Yü, “The Radicalization of China in the Twentieth Century,” Daedalus 122, no. 2 (Spring 1993): 142–146.

42. Kung- chuan Hsiao, A Modern China and a New World, 228–230. 43. Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., The Cycles of American History (Boston: Houghton Miffl in, 1986), 428–429. 44. Thomas R. Nevin, Irving Babbitt: An Intellectual Study (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1984), 108.

12. China’s New Wave of Nationalism

S

amuel P. Huntington’s idea of the “third wave” of democratization has been remarkably influential and continues to figure importantly in democracy studies today. Ironically, by 1993, Huntington had already shifted his attention from the third wave to the clash of civilizations. In his 1991 article “Religion and the Third Wave,” Huntington suggests a causal relationship between Christianity and democracy that anticipates his much- debated thesis of 1993.1 In his book The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, the third wave is summed up as follows: During the 1970s and 1980s over thirty countries shifted from authoritarian to democratic political systems. . . . Democratization was most successful in countries where Christian and Western influences were strong. New democratic regimes appeared most likely to stabilize in the Southern and Central European countries that were predominantly Catholic or Protestant and, less certainly, in Latin American countries. In East Asia, the Catholic and heavily American influenced Philippines returned to democracy in the 1980s, while Christian leaders promoted movement toward democracy in South Korea and Taiwan. . . . In the former Soviet Union, the Baltic republics appear to be successfully stabilizing democracy; the degree and stability of democracy prospects in the Muslim republics are bleak. By the 1990s, except for Cuba, democratic transitions

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had occurred in most of the countries, outside Africa, whose peoples espoused Western Christian ity or where major Christian influences existed.2 Clearly, in Huntington’s view, the third wave of democratization was largely a Christian phenomenon. This helps explain why he attributes democracy movements in South Korea and Taiwan in the 1980s to the promotion of “Christian leaders.” As far as Taiwan is concerned, his statement is extremely misleading. Taiwan’s successful political transformation has many causes, but Christianity has not yet proved to be one of them. Huntington’s emphasis on Christianity in the third wave is quite natural given his Western point of view, and as a historical explanation, it is well grounded. However, it is also closely related to his negative view of Confucianism and Islam with respect to democratic development. Huntington consistently maintains that both Islamic and Confucian cultures are inhospitable to democracy. If so, then the third wave is practically over. Moreover, since Huntington identifies Chinese Communists as “Confucians” (as evident from his talk of a “Confucian-Islamic connection”), from his point of view, the prospect of democracy in mainland China must be as bleak as it is in the Muslim republics of the former Soviet Union. This point has some bearing on Pei Minxin’s arguments in “ ‘Creeping Democratization’ in China,” as well as those of Andrew Nathan in “China’s Constitutionalist Option.”3 Neither Nathan nor Pei takes very seriously Huntington’s notion that “Confucian culture” is an obstacle to democracy; both seem to assume that the third wave will eventually sweep through China. Both essays may be read as variations on a theme: China’s peaceful transition to democracy under the Communist regime. While Nathan explores the possibility of a constitutional option through empowerment of the National People’s Congress (NPC), Pei suggests “creeping democratization” through “endogenous institutional changes” in the following three areas: (1) the rule of law, (2) the NPC, and (3) experimental grassroots self-government in the countryside. In Chinese cosmological terms, Nathan’s point of view embodies the yang 陽 principle and Pei’s the yin 陰, principle. Constitutionalism initiated by the NPC can only be promoted openly and formally; it must of necessity take the form of some political movement with the approval of the party leadership in power. In contrast, Pei’s “creeping democratization” refers to a process of change that takes place under the very noses of the totalitarian rulers without attracting notice. By the time the leaders realize what is happening, the process of democratization will have already advanced to such a stage that it is irreversible. In other words, for Nathan, democracy will come to mainland China through the front door, whereas for Pei it will creep through the back door and windows. From a historical perspective, Nathan is certainly right when he says that “China’s twentieth- century history is littered with constitutions and attempts

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to make them work” (229). He lists seven constitutions between 1911 and 1949 and four under the Communist regime. In fact, political reform in modern China began with constitutionalism. The earliest attempt was Kang Youwei’s advocacy of constitutional monarchy in 1898; the first draft constitution, based on the Japanese model, was promulgated by the Qing imperial court in 1908.

WHY DID CONSTITUTIONALISM FAIL? How are we to understand China’s century-long obsession with constitutionalism as a historical phenomenon? I agree with Arthur Waldron’s observation, as quoted by Nathan, that “the search for a constitutional order to replace the dynasties has been the most impor tant theme in twentieth- century China’s history,” as well as with his prediction that “when Deng dies, the search for constitutional order is certain to resume” (228). This is only one side of the question, however. We must also ask why constitutionalist reform in China failed time and again over an entire century.4 First, from the 1890s to the 1990s, enthusiastic advocates of constitutionalism in China consisted mainly of intellectuals and reform-minded bureaucrats who were, as a rule, not at the center of power. Second, those who held despotic or dictatorial power invariably disregarded the constitution. Authoritarian rulers appealed to the constitution only when they perceived their absolute power or the legitimacy of their regime to be threatened. This was true for Empress Dowager Cixi, Yuan Shikai, Chiang Kai-shek (Jiang Jieshi), and Mao Zedong. For example, Chiang Kai-shek allowed the constitution of 1947 to be adopted only because his regime desperately needed a coating of legitimacy in postwar China. When he was driven to Taiwan in the early 1950s, Chiang seriously explored dismantling the constitutional apparatus altogether.5 Mao never respected the constitution, not even when Zhou Enlai was negotiating a draft constitution with the Nationalist Party in Chongqing in early 1946.6 The only time Mao showed any interest in it was in January 1965, when, having been interrupted by Liu Shaoqi on a previous occasion, Mao brought a copy of the constitution to a meeting saying that as a citizen, he had the constitutional right to speak his mind.7 Third, since 1911, power struggles between political parties or factions of the ruling party were often engaged in the name of the constitution. Once the struggle was over, however, the winner would immediately shelve the constitution as if it never existed. This happened not only between Chiang Kai-shek and Hu Hanmin in early 1930 (nominally over the controversy of a “provisional constitution”) but also between the Nationalists and the Communists in 1946 and  1947. In 1980, when Deng Xiaoping talked of making the “constitution more perfect,”8 he was engaged in a power struggle with the ultraleftist faction of the party with Hua Guofeng as a rallying force.9

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In light of this history, I am skeptical that China is experiencing a “new constitutionalist movement” simply because discussions of constitutionalism have bloomed in recent years. Other than the air in the conference room and the printing machine, little has really moved. Over the past two or three years, I have met a number of visiting intellectuals from mainland China who pin their hopes on the NPC as an engine capable of generating new political reforms and on Qiao Shi as a leader likely to be converted to constitutionalism. If history is any guide, however, the recent revival of constitutionalist discourse most likely signifies the current power struggle within the party. After all, Qiao Shi is one of the few qualified contenders for top leadership in the post-Deng era. Two of Nathan’s arguments in “China’s Constitutionalist Option” are particularly noteworthy. On the negative side, constitutionalism “may be less probable than anything but the alternatives” (229). On the positive side, constitutionalism “would serve the [Chinese Communist Party’s] interests in legitimation and stability.” Both arguments are reasonable and powerful; I would be the last person on earth to delight in seeing them refuted by history. The trouble with history, however, is that it often plays tricks on us. It not only reveals its reasons after the fact, but also offers more alternatives than the human mind can possibly calculate beforehand. The same applies, mutatis mutandis, to Pei’s “creeping democratization,” although more should be said about his “rule of law” and “grassroots selfgovernment.” First, it seems more appropriate to speak of “rule by law” than “rule of law.” Second, by Pei’s own admission, China’s enforcement record is still “abysmal” (216) even though more than six hundred laws were passed by the NPC between 1979 and 1992. Third, as a recent legal study shows, Chinese judges generally lack adequate legal training. Until 1994, about half of Chinese judges had failed to reach a college-graduate level of legal education. Moreover, the judicial system as a whole is no more than a tool for the implementation of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) rule. It is neither an end in itself nor a servant of justice.10 It is difficult to imagine how the present legal system can help China’s democ ratization, especially democ ratization of a “creeping” variety. “Grassroots self-government” does not fare any better. Here I need only quote Pei himself: “Still, the gains in grassroots democratization in Chinese villages have been meager. Genuinely free elections have been held in only a tiny fraction of them. Even in the small number of villages where such elections were held, the results have been mixed” (224). The proof of the pudding is, after all, in the eating. “Creeping democratization” as yet lacks proof. As a reader, I would like to see the term “creeping” further clarified. Can democracy “creep” all the way to consolidation without discovery? What will happen when “creeping” democratization inevitably confronts head on the “four insistences in the constitution”?11 To put it in Marxist terms, will this “creeping” always remain a “quantitative change,” or will it reach the point

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where a “qualitative jump” is required? In a theoretical construction, questions of this kind must be faced squarely.

CONFUCIANISM AND DEMOCRACY I conclude by returning to Huntington’s thesis about the third wave and the clash of civilizations. By linking democracy specifically to Christianity, Huntington implies that the difficulties of China’s democratization lie deep in its Confucian background. Both Nathan and Pei leave this cultural aspect virtually untouched. They seem to assume that the third wave is universal and thereby cuts across cultural boundaries. Is there then a conflict of assumptions between Huntington on the one hand and Nathan and Pei on the other? The answer must be no. In all fairness, Huntington does not believe that Confucian culture is a permanent barrier to democratization. On the contrary, he says the following about cultural traditions and democracy in the non- Christian world: Great historic cultural traditions, such as Islam and Confucianism, are highly complex bodies of ideas, beliefs, doctrines, assumptions, writings, and behav ior patterns. Any major culture, including even Confucianism, has some elements that are compatible with democracy, just as both Protestantism and Catholicism have elements that are clearly undemocratic. Confucian democracy may be a contradiction in terms, but democracy in a Confucian society need not be.12 Yet I find Huntington’s discussion of Confucian societies being “inhospitable to democracy” rather oversimplified, both theoretically and historically.13 The problem of identifying the source of this “inhospitableness” is far more complicated than he has indicated. As I have pointed out elsewhere, the earliest Chinese discoverers of the Western idea of democracy in the late nineteenth century were none other than the reform-minded Confucians.14 From the end of the Qing dynasty to the May Fourth Movement of 1919, leading advocates of democracy—including reformists, revolutionaries, and antitraditionalists— came almost exclusively from the intellectual elite, which had a strong background in Confucian culture. Many were also leading interpreters of Confucianism of their own day: Kang Youwei, Liang Qichao, Zhang Binglin, and Liu Shipei. In later years, even Chen Duxiu and Hu Shi, who were largely responsible for the rise of anti-Confucianism in the May Fourth era, modified their views. These thinkers have helped us understand elements in Confucianism that are compatible with democracy. Hu Shi in par ticular took great pains to explain to U.S. audiences of his lectures and writings in the 1940s and 1950s how some Confucian ideas and institutions may prove capable of furnishing China with a solid foundation on which to establish constitutional democracy. Confucianism

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had formed a central part of what John Rawls calls the “background cultures” of traditional Chinese society; with readjustment, it could become a “reasonable comprehensive doctrine” in the formation of a modern concept of political justice.15 Confucian education often inculcated in the minds of the young a sense of justice, social responsibility, human equality, and the well-being of people, which are some of the closest Confucian equivalents to Western civic virtues. It was this Confucian public spiritedness that disposed many Chinese intellectuals to Western democratic ideas at the turn of the century. Dr. Sun Yat-sen, founder of the Republic of China, is famous for his espousal of Confucian values on the one hand and advocacy of democracy on the other. He showed no sign of psychological tension resulting from his embrace of both cultures.16 Much as I sympathize with Huntington’s thesis, I cannot follow him so far as to see the conflict between the West and mainland China as the clash between Western and Confucian civilizations. Given Confucianism’s early reception of the idea of constitutional democracy, one cannot help but wonder if the notion of a “clash of civilizations” applies to China at all. Moreover, for decades, the Communist regime has denounced Confucianism as the “poisonous remains of Chinese feudalism”; Confucian values in both elite and popular cultures are ruined or distorted beyond recognition.17 As far as the CCP is concerned, a return to Confucianism may prove to be more difficult than a transition to constitutional democracy.

N AT I O N A L I S M , N O T D E M O C R A C Y What is really happening in China today is not a revival of Confucian culture but a new wave of nationalism, which seems to be a universal phenomenon in postcommunist countries. In a recent report from Belgrade, we read that students, professors, and many Serbs have shifted from a Marxist paradigm to a fierce form of Serbian nationalism. Chris Hedges of the New York Times tells us, “For two or three years following Tito’s death in 1980, academics, freed from party dogma, reached out to Western intellectual traditions. But this was swiftly terminated with the rise of Serbian nationalism.”18 This is revealing, for Chinese intellectuals, especially the younger generation, have traveled the same spiritual road in the short span of a decade. They began with a “culture fever,” showing an unbounded admiration for the West in the mid-1980s that ended tragically in Tiananmen in 1989. In the early 1990s, nationalistic sentiments suddenly resurged. Today, Chinese nationalism has attained monstrous proportions, as evidenced in such virulent xenophobic tracts as China Can Say No.19 The wave of democracy has given way to a wave of nationalism. There are signs that the CCP is trying to manipulate this new wave of nationalism to its own advantage. With the bankruptcy of Marxist ideology, the

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CCP faces its most serious legitimacy crisis ever. Theoretically, the CCP’s interests in legitimation and stability are better served by nationalism than constitutionalization, which carries the inevitable risk of being voted out of power someday. By contrast, it is only a small step from socialism to national socialism, which is practically synonymous with “socialism with Chinese characteristics.” It is unclear how far the CCP can manipulate the rising Chinese nationalism; the more dangerous impulses of nationalism can easily spiral out of control. These are not predictions but observations. What will eventually become of nationalism in China is anybody’s guess. The evidence seems clear, however, that the CCP is moving toward nationalism, not constitutionalism or democracy. Should the third wave continue to find mainland China impenetrable in the years to come, it may be advisable to focus our analytical attention on the combined forces of a totalitarian system of Western origin with a new wave of nationalism, which seems to be the order of the day in the non-Western world. In any case, it is high time that Confucian culture be absolved of all blame.

notes 1.

Samuel P. Huntington, “Religion and the Third Wave,” The National Interest 24 (Summer 1991): 29–42, and “The Clash of Civilization?,” Foreign Affairs 72 (Summer 1993): 22–49. In the latter article, Huntington argues that in the post– Cold War world, global politics would take the form of conflict between groups from differing civilizations.

2.

Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996), 192–193.

3.

Pei Minxin, “ ‘Creeping Democratization’ in China,” in Consolidating the Third Wave Democracies, ed. Larry Diamond, Marc  F. Plattner, Yun-han Chu, and Hung-mao Tien (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997), 213–227; Andrew Nathan, “China’s Constitutionalist Option,” in Consolidating the Third Wave Democracies, 228–249. Respective in-text page references for Pei and Nathan in this chapter are from these essays.

4.

The Republic of China on Taiwan’s recent success in constitutionalist transition be-

5.

Hu Shi 胡適, Hu Shi de riji 胡適的日記 (Taipei: Yuanliu, 1990), vol. 17, January 16, 1953,

6.

See a firsthand account by Liang Shumin 梁漱溟, Yiwang tanjiu lu 憶往談舊録 (Beijing:

7.

Li Zhisui, The Private Life of Chairman Mao (New York: Random House, 1994), 416–417.

longs to a different category, which will not be considered here. entry (unpaginated). Zhongguo wenshu, 1987), 181. This account is corroborated by other sources. See, for example, Ye Yonglie 葉永烈, Chen Boda 陳伯達 (Hong Kong: Wenhua jiaoyu, 1990), 237. 8.

See Nathan, “China’s Constitutional Option,” 228–249 (quote from p. 230).

9.

See Ruan Ming 阮銘, Deng Xiaoping diguo 鄧小平帝國 (Taipei: Shibao wenhua, 1992), chap. 6.

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See He Weifang 賀衛方, “Duikang zhi yu Zhongguo faguan” 對抗制與中國法官, Faxue yanjiu 法學研究 4 (1995): 85–92.

11.

The four “insistences,” also known as the Four Cardinal Principles, are (1) the socialist path, (2) the dictatorship of the proletariat, (3) the leadership of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), and (4) Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong thought. As John Fairbank said, “This promised that the self-selected CCP dictatorship, like any dynasty, would continue its monopoly of power.” See John King Fairbank, China: A New History (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1992), 407.

12.

Samuel P. Huntington, The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century (Norman and London: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991), 310.

13.

Huntington, The Third Wave, 300–307.

14.

See my “Sun Yat-sen’s Doctrine and Traditional Chinese Culture,” in Sun Yat- sen’s Doctrine in the Modern World, ed. Chu-yuan Cheng (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1989), 79–102.

15.

John Rawls, Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), xvi, 12–14.

16.

See Ying-shih Yü, “The Idea of Democracy and the Twilight of the Elite Culture in Modern China,” paper presented at the Seventh East-West Philosophers’ Conference, East-West Center, Honolulu, January 8–20, 1995. Published in Ronald Bontekoe and Mariétta Tigranovna Stepaniants, eds., Justice and Democracy: Cross- Cultural Perspectives (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1997), 199–215.

17.

See a report on field studies in the vicinities of Shanghai by Godwin C. Chu and Yanan Ju, The Great Wall in Ruins: Communication and Cultural Change in China (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993).

18.

Chris Hedges, “Student Foes of Belgrade Leader Embrace Fierce Serb Nationalism,” New York Times, December 10, 1996, A1 and A8. For a discussion of the resurgence of nationalism after the collapse of communism as a universal phenomenon, see Mitchell Cohen, “Rooted Cosmopolitanism,” in Toward a Global Civil Society, ed. Michael Walzer (Providence: Berghahn Books, 1995), 223–233.

19.

See Song Qiang 宋強, Zhang Cangcang 張藏藏, and Qiao Bian 喬邊, Zhongguo keyi shuo bu: lengzhanhou shidai di zhengzhi yu qinggan jueze 中國可以說不: 冷戰後時代的政 治與情感抉擇 (Beijing: Zhonghua gongshang lianho, 1996).

13. Democracy, Human Rights, and Confucian Culture

A

s concepts, both “democracy” and “human rights” are of distinctly Western origins, the former being traceable to ancient Greece and the latter to theories of “Natural Law” and “Natural Rights” developed between the Renaissance and the Enlightenment.1 Since the end of the nineteenth century, however, Chinese intellectuals have become so fascinated with them, together with a host of other related Western concepts or values such as liberty, equality, social contract, etc., that they have made every effort to transplant them to China. It is true that during the entire Mao Zedong era (1949–1976), Chinese intellectuals under the Communist regime were completely silenced, and as a result, talk of democracy or human rights with any degree of seriousness was out of the question. During the very same period, however, Chinese liberal thought advanced by leaps and bounds in Taiwan and Hong Kong, in which “democracy,” “liberty,” “equality,” and “human rights” figured prominently. Two schools of thought may be distinguished in this new intellectual development outside mainland China. On the one hand, the mainstream Chinese liberal tradition, with its antiConfucianist stance, was carried on and furthered by the May Fourth and post–May Fourth intellectuals rallying around the Taiwan-based popular journal Ziyou Zhongguo 自由中國 (Free China) with none other than Hu Shi 胡適 (1891–1962) as its “publisher.” On the other hand, cultural conservatives of a new Confucian persuasion also began to take “democracy” and “human rights”

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seriously. In the face of the unprecedented large-scale persecutions then going on wave after wave in mainland China, they came to the realization that the Confucian values they cherished so much would have no chance of being saved if they were deprived of the very right to hold them. They nevertheless insisted that unless and until a way of articulation were found to fit ideas and values of Western origin into the frame of Confucian culture, these imported ideas and values as such could never take root in and grow on Chinese soil, “democracy” and “human rights” being among them. Now allow me to turn to the revival of democracy and human rights discourse in mainland China from the 1980s into the present century. As is generally known, an immediate result in the realm of thought following the policies of “reform” and “opening up” in the early 1980s was that a generation of Chinese intellectuals looked to Western culture for spiritual guidance. During this era of “culture fever,” as it was then called, ideas current in the West ranging from the New Left, Critical Theory, Modernization Theory, to Neoliberalism, to mention only a few examples, all found a sympathetic ear among young Chinese intellectuals. This sudden inundation of Western ideas alarmed the hard-liners within the Communist Party, on whose insistence a campaign against the so- called Western spiritual pollution was launched as early as 1983. Throughout the decade of the 1980s, however, the most inspiring and powerful idea reintroduced from the West proved to be that of democracy. With it also came a number of closely related values such as freedom and rights, which Chinese intellectuals took to be among the defi ning features of a democratic society. During those optimistic years, Chinese intellectuals, especially young students, exhibited a passionate and unbounded faith in democracy as a panacea for all of China’s troubles. It was this faith that gave rise to the democracy movement, which ended tragically in Tiananmen on June 4, 1989. Another central theme widely discussed as well as hotly debated during the “culture fever” period was the relationship of the Chinese (Confucian) tradition to China’s democratization. Needless to say, there was a wide spectrum of views on this question of vital importance. However, as intellectual heirs to the May Fourth antitraditionalists, the majority of Chinese advocates of democracy in the 1980s took a very negative view of Confucianism. In their eyes, Confucianism had all along functioned as a stumbling block to China’s transition to liberal democracy. On the other hand, I must hasten to add, it was also during the very same period that a number of scholars and intellectuals began to rediscover and reevaluate the Confucian humanist tradition, partly as a revolt against party ideology but partly also as a positive response to the Confucian studies outside the Chinese mainland since 1949. These two discourses, one on democracy and the other on Confucianism, were parallel developments in the late 1980s, but began to intersect at various points in the 1990s. The above historical overview is intended as an introduction to what I am going to say about “democracy” and “human rights” in relation to Confucian

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culture. A great deal has already been written on this immensely complex subject. With regard to how the relationship ought to be viewed, practically all the possibilities, from the extremely positive to the extremely negative, have been exhausted. What I propose to do here, therefore, is not to make this longstanding controversy more entangled by offering yet another view of my own. Instead, in what follows I shall suggest a historical perspective in light of which the very nature of the whole controversy may be better understood. To begin with, allow me to draw a distinction between the concepts of “democracy” and “human rights” as culturally and linguistically specific to the West and the general notions or ideas of democracy and human rights as values common to many, if not all, civilizations. By democracy and human rights in the latter category, I refer, respectively, to the idea of the common people as the source of political authority and the idea that human beings must be treated in ways worthy of their dignity as such, with the implication that they are entitled to certain goods basic to a decent human life. The absence of some specifically Western concepts or terms in a non-Western civilization such as China is no proof of the nonexistence of the general ideas or notions expressed by those concepts or terms. A clear case in point is the Western concept of “science.” The concept itself cannot be found in traditional Chinese categories of learning, but no one today would think of making the suggestion that Joseph Needham’s multivolume Science and Civilization in China (1954–2008) is a misnomer. I  cannot go into details about this distinction with respect to democracy and human rights at this point. However, I shall try to substantiate my argument as my discussions proceed. In actual practice today, democracy and human rights are inseparable and imply each other. For the purpose of analysis, however, it seems advisable to discuss them separately so that we may develop a clearer sense as to how they stand in relation to Confucian culture. The Chinese term for “democracy” (minzhu 民主) was probably first used by Wang Tao 王韜 (1828–1897), the famous Chinese assistant to James Legge in the English translation of the Confucian classics. From his travels in England and Europe with Legge, 1867–1870, he gained firsthand knowledge about Western political systems. He identified altogether three types of state in Europe, which he named, respectively, minzhu, or democracy; junzhu 君主, or monarchy; and junmin gongzhu 君民共主, or constitutional monarchy.2 Inspired by Wang’s observations, the Confucian philosopher Kang Youwei 康有為 (1858–1927) proposed a scheme of periodization for Chinese political history according to this typological classification. In his influential Kongzi gaizhi kao 孔子改制考 (A Study of Confucius as a Reformer; 1896), Kang divided Chinese history into three periods: “democracy,” the most perfect form of government, was first actualized in the Golden Age of China under the reigns of the legendary sageemperors Yao and Shun; “constitutional monarchy,” the second best form of government was established in the early Zhou; finally, monarchy (or autocracy), the worst form of government, emerged in China since the Qin unification in

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221 b.c.e. and lasted to his own day. It was the central thesis of this book that Confucius as a “reformer” was the first Chinese philosophical advocate of democracy showing posterity how to create a second Golden Age through a complex process of institutional changes.3 We could easily dismiss the whole exercise as sheer nonsense in terms of historical scholarship, but that would be rather beside the point. Since we are primarily concerned with the Confucian response to the Western concept of democracy, the evidential value of this strategic move on the part of Kang Youwei can hardly be exaggerated. In this instance, Kang not only embraced the Western concept without showing the slightest sign of hesitation, but even tried to naturalize it. This immediately raises a serious question about the conventional wisdom concerning the incompatibility between Confucianism and democracy. At this juncture, allow me to turn to the prevailing incompatibility thesis, which is clearly formulated by Samuel P. Huntington of Harvard University as follows: Almost no scholarly disagreement exists on the proposition that traditional Confucianism was either undemocratic or antidemocratic. The only moderating element was the extent to which in the classic Chinese polity the examination system opened careers to the talented without regard to social background. Even [if] this was the case, however, a merit system of promotion does not make a democracy. . . . Classic Chinese Confucianism and its derivatives in Korea, Vietnam, Singapore, Taiwan, and, in diluted fashion, Japan emphasized the group over the individual, authority over liberty, and responsibilities over rights. Confucian societies lacked a tradition of rights against the state; to the extent that individual rights did exist, they were created by the state. Harmony and cooperation were preferred over disagreement and competition. The maintenance of order and respect for hierarchy were central values. The conflict of ideas, groups, and parities was viewed as dangerous and illegitimate. Most impor tant, Confucianism merged society and the state and provided no legitimacy for autonomous social institutions to balance the state at the national level. . . . In practice Confucian or Confucian-influenced societies have been inhospitable to democracy.4 This is too sweeping a generalization to be susceptible to critical analysis. I quote it only because it is, unfortunately, a view likely to be encountered in many popular writings, especially in the West. However, I am tempted to make a few remarks for the purpose of clarification. First, Huntington’s “Confucian” or “Confucianism” seems too broad, almost identical with “Chinese” or “China.” His formulations are more characteristic of imperial China as a whole than Confucianism per se. He ignores not only the critical dimensions of Confucianism but also the positive features of imperial China. Second, the contrast between China and the West is vastly overdrawn. Emphasis on authority, order,

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hierarchy, and supremacy of the collectivity over the individual was not less true in medieval Europe than in imperial China. It may also be found in some of the Christian countries in modern times. Last, if we accept Huntington’s thesis about the supposedly inherent hostility of Confucianism to Western values associated with democracy, then how are we going to account for the simple historical fact that it was Confucians such as Wang Tao and Kang Youwei, mentioned above, who were among the earliest Chinese admirers and advocates of the democratic political system in the West? In this connection, it is desirable to see how Wang Tao’s Confucian background led him to appreciate the Western political and legal system in actual practice as he witnessed it in England. In an essay on the British government, he said: The real strength of England, however, lies in the fact that there is a sympathetic understanding between the governing and the governed, a close relationship between the ruler and the people. . . . My observation is that the daily domestic political life of England actually embodies the traditional ideals of our ancient Golden Age. In official appointments the method of recommendation and election is practical, but the candidates must be well known, of good character and achievements before they can be promoted to a position over the people. . . . And moreover the principle of majority rule is adhered to in order to show impartiality. . . . He who violates the law goes to the court only to have his confession taken; when the real truth has been obtained, then a verdict made, and he is imprisoned. There has never been such cruelty as torturing and beating him by bamboos and clubs so that his blood and flesh spread all over. In prison the convict is supplied with food and clothing, so that he may not be hungry or cold. He is taught to work and not allowed to become idle. He is never maltreated by those in charge of the prison. The excellence of the prison system is what China has never had since the Golden Age.5 Strongly motivated by reformism on the Western model, he undoubtedly idealized the British system. Wholly ignorant of English legal history, he could not have possibly known that not long before, torture had also been used in England as a requirement of “complete proof” in the inquisitorial system, which bore a remarkable resemblance to the system of confession and judicial torture in his own country.6 What is particularly remarkable about the above- quoted passage, however, is that Wang Tao’s attention was specifically drawn to two things: first, the idea that a good relationship between the ruler and the people can be best developed only under a democratic system of government; second, the idea that what we would call “human rights” violations, such as confession obtained through torture, can be effectively checked only by a sound judicial system. Nowhere was Wang Tao’s Confucian background more clearly revealed than in

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his ideals of China’s Golden Age as described in Confucian classics. In his case, the compatibility between Confucianism on the one hand and democracy and human rights on the other was simply taken for granted. Thus, Wang Tao initiated a line of thinking that may be called the indigenous genesis of democratic ideas in Chinese high antiquity independent of the West. This line of thinking and inquiry was extremely influential from the end of the nineteenth century to the early decades of the twentieth. Reformists and revolutionaries alike fell under its spell. It may not be too much of an exaggeration to suggest that without this ideological support from Confucianism, neither the constitutional reform movement of 1898  nor the republican revolution of 1911 could have been set in motion in the first place. We have already seen how the reformist leader Kang Youwei tried to naturalize “democracy.” Now allow me to quote a passage from Dr. Sun Yat-sen, the founder of the Republic of China, to make my point. Speaking of the Chinese origin of his “principle of democracy” (minquan zhuyi 民權主義), Sun said: In ancient China . . . there were statements like “Heaven sees with the eyes of its people. Heaven hears with the ears of its people,” “The people are of supreme importance; the sovereign comes last,” “I have indeed heard of the punishment of the outcast Zhou, but have not heard of any regicide,” “the people are of supreme importance; the sovereign comes last.” So we cannot say that democratic ideas have been lacking in China. However, what we have are ideas but not institutions.7 It may be pointed out that all three statements are from Mencius. The first one is clearly the Chinese counterpart of vox populi, vox Dei, which is of very early origin and quoted by Mencius. The second one is the Confucian idea of the people’s right to revolution. The latter expresses the notion of the common people as the ultimate source of political authority. Sun, as we all know, was equally familiar with Western political theories and the Confucian heritage, but he honestly believed that his democratic revolution was as much inspired by the French and American revolutions as by Confucian “democratic ideas.” This contrasts interestingly with Huntington’s judgment that “China’s Confucian heritage . . . creates obstacles to democratization.”8 No meaningful discussion of Confucianism with respect to the Western concept of democracy is possible without some clarification of its political principles. Specifically, it is impor tant to determine those Confucian political ideas that happened to circulate widely at the end of the nineteenth century that predisposed Chinese intellectuals so favorably to the idea of democracy. In this regard, I consider it most pertinent to make a brief mention of Huang Zongxi’s 黃宗羲 (1610–1695) Mingyi daifang lu 明夷待訪録 (Waiting for the Dawn: A Plan for the Prince), which has become a classic in the history of Chinese political thought.9 Though written in the mid-seventeenth century, this treatise remained

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obscure until it was rediscovered by reform- or revolution- oriented intellectuals at the end of the nineteenth century. Since then, its influence on a whole generation of scholars and thinkers in China and Japan is too well known to require elaboration here. It is therefore quite safe to take Waiting for the Dawn as the end product of a long tradition of Confucian political thinking. Limited by time, I can only mention three points. First, following the Mencian tradition, Huang developed the notion of the people as the ultimate source of political authority. To use his language, in China’s Golden Age, the people were the “master” while the supreme ruler ( jun 君, meaning “prince,” “king,” or “emperor”) was only a “tenant.” In other words, the ruler was no more than a servant chosen by the people to manage their affairs in the public world. Since, however, the world is too big for one man to govern, governance must be shared with colleagues who have been known in later history as “ministers” (chen 臣). It should then be clear that the “minister” must also be responsible to the people, not the “prince.” But Huang deplored the fact that all these basic principles were reversed since the emergence of the unified empire in 221 b.c.e. From that time on, the emperor has assumed the place of “master,” taking the whole empire to be his private estate. As a result, the people have become “tenants” subject to the emperor’s capricious exploitation and oppression, and the “ministers” are likewise treated as if they were his personal servants. In short, the Chinese political world had long been turned upside down and Huang wrote his treatise with a clear intention to set it in the right order. Second, Huang also developed the Confucian tradition of political criticism to a new height. In the chapter “Schools” (Xuexiao), he emphasized that the Confucian school must perform both an educational function and a political function. In addition to the training of scholar- officials, the school ought also to be a place where political criticisms are openly expressed; the emperor and his ministers have the duty to sit periodically as students in the Imperial College and listen while critical discussions of current issues are conducted among the scholars in attendance. This is necessary because, he reasoned, what the emperor thinks is right might not be necessarily right; what he thinks is wrong might not be necessarily wrong. The emperor must not decide right and wrong by himself, but share with the schools the determination of right and wrong. Of course, this idea did not originate with Huang. Confucius had already said, “When the Way prevails in the Empire, the commoners do not express critical views” (Lunyu [Analects], 15.1.2). The implication is clear enough: when the empire is misgoverned, even a commoner has the right to criticism. Moreover, according to the Zuozhuan 左傳 (Zuo Commentary to the Spring and Autumn Annals), Duke Xiang, year 31, the Prime Minister Zichan of Zheng refused to take any action against village schools where his policies were harshly criticized. When Confucius learned about this, he praised the prime minister highly.10 This tradition is not only very old but also continues, as shown in the student movements in Han, Song, and Huang’s own times. However, Huang

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was the first Confucian scholar who proposed to accord political criticism in schools a legal status and an institutional form. Last, Huang’s emphasis on the “rule of law” as opposed to the “rule by men” must be recognized as a significant new development in Confucian political thought. It was his firm belief that “only if there is governance by law can there be governance by men,” a view almost opposite to the Confucian tradition. However, his “law” must not be mistaken as a simple and direct borrowing from the Legalist school. The Legalist law as embodied in the legal codes since the Qin dynasty was, in his eyes, only to serve the interests of the emperor, which he called “un-Lawful laws.” The “Law” he proposed to establish, on the contrary, was to safeguard the world for the people. As de Bary rightly points out, Huang was primarily concerned with the establishment of a few “basic laws” conceived “as more in the nature of a constitution or system of government than a legal code; they should be laws serving the interests of the people and conforming to moral principles.”11 On the basis of these ideas and others in Waiting for the Dawn, Chinese intellectuals in the late Qing, from both the reformist and revolutionist camps, came to take great pride in claiming Huang as one of China’s foremost democratic thinkers. Writing in 1923, Liang Qichao 梁啟超 (1873–1929), who acknowledged the shaping influence of this book on his early political life and thought, still considered it marvelous that Huang’s treatise could have antedated Rousseau’s Social Contract (1762) by “several decades” (actually, to be exact, a whole century).12 In 1895, Sun Yat-sen also presented a newly printed copy of the first two essays of the treatise to his Japanese friend, which saw the light of day only in the early 1990s. It has been taken by scholars as evidence of a Chinese ideological origin in Sun’s revolutionary republicanism.13 Thus, Huang’s Waiting for the Dawn provides us with a vivid illustrative example showing how the seventeenth-century version of Confucian political thought prepared the Chinese intellectual elite to appreciate and accept Western democratic ideas and values. I must make myself clear; here I am not saying that Huang is comparable to J. J. Rousseau, John Locke, or J. S. Mill, as some earlier scholars suggested. All I am saying is that Huang did develop certain new interesting ideas that can best be explained to the Western audience in terms of democracy. If my earlier distinction between “linguistically specific concepts” and “general ideas” contains a grain of truth, then I may say that Huang developed a general Confucian notion of the people as the source of political authority to its limit, which is at the same time similar and dissimilar to the Western conception of democracy in impor tant ways. Now, let me turn to the question of human rights and its historical relevance to Confucian culture. Like “democracy,” “human rights” as a concept is nonexistent in Confucian discourse in traditional China. However, if we agree that the concept of “human rights” as defined in the United Nation’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) is predicated on the double recognition of a

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common humanity and human dignity, then we are justified, as in the case of democracy, to speak of a Confucian idea of “human rights” without the Western term. Moreover, it is interesting to note that in the Western history of rights theories, there is this famous argument: The language of rights is difficult to use straightforwardly: it is the famous argument . . . to have a right is merely to be the beneficiary of someone else’s duty, and that all propositions involving rights are straightforwardly translatable into propositions solely involving duties. If this is true, then the language of rights is irrelevant, and to talk of “human rights” is simply to raise the question of what kinds of duty we are under to other human beings, rather than to provide us with any independent moral insights.14 Needless to say, I am not qualified to make any judgment on the validity or invalidity of this argument. I introduce it here only because it strikes me as surprisingly relevant to my discussion of the question of “human rights” in Confucian culture, especially when this argument is further clarified as follows: If any right can be completely expressed as a more or less complex set of duties on other people towards the processor of the right, and those duties can in turn be explained in terms of some higher-order moral principle, then the point of a separate language of rights seems to have been lost, and with it the explanatory and justificatory force possessed by references to rights.15 Taking it out of its original Benthamite context with a twist, I consider this argument admirably satisfactory as a historical explanation of the total absence of the concept of “human rights” in the Confucian tradition. Throughout Chinese history, Confucians used the language of duties instead of that of rights. Take as example the following advice that Mencius gave to King Hui of Liang: When determining what means of support the people should have, a clear-sighted ruler ensures that these are sufficient, on the one hand, for the care of parents, and, on the other, for the support of wife and children, so that people always have sufficient food in good years and escape starvation in bad; only then does he drive them towards goodness; in this way people find it easy to follow him. . . . If you wish to put this into practice, why not go back to fundamentals? If mulberry is planted in every homestead of five mu 畝 of land, then those who are fifty can wear silk; if chickens, pigs and dogs do not miss their breeding season, then those who are seventy can eat meat; if each lot of a hundred mu is not deprived of labour during the busy seasons, then families with several mouths to feed will not go hungry. Exercise due care over the education provided by village schools,

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and discipline the people by teaching them duties proper to sons and younger brothers, and those whose heads have turned grey will not be carry ing loads on the road. When the aged wear silk and eat meat and the masses are neither cold nor hungry, it is impossible for their prince not to be a true King.16 Here Mencius is giving a detailed description of what kinds of duty a true king is under to his people. However, if we translate his language of duties into the language of rights, it would then become immediately clear that people not only have the right to the use of land and the right to be left alone during agricultural seasons but also the right to education. Confucian texts as well as historical records are full of discussions of duties or responsibilities expected of individuals in all kinds of political and social roles. Many of them, I believe, can be transposed to read as rights of their beneficiaries. Rights and duties entail each other; they are two sides of the same coin. Here lies a peculiarity of the Confucian idea of human rights. Its meaning can be better grasped by a close examination of the other side of the coin. Recognition of a common humanity and respect for human dignity are both clearly articulated in the Analects, Mencius, and other early Confucian texts.17 It is remarkable that by the first century c.e. at the latest, the Confucian notion of human dignity was openly referred to in imperial decrees as sufficient grounds for the prohibition of sale or killing of slaves. In 9 c.e., Wang Mang, the emperor of the Xin dynasty, condemned the previous Qin dynasty for the practice of selling slaves in the marketplace with the following words: [The Qin state] also established market-places for male and female slaves, putting [human beings] in like enclosures with those for cattle and horses. In their rule over their common people and subjects, [the Qin rulers] made arbitrary decisions about their lives. [As a result] villainous and oppressive persons took advantage of the opportunity to make profit, even kidnapping and selling other people’s wives and children, going contrary to the will of Heaven and disordering human relationships. This is contradictory to the principle that “of all living things [i.e., animals and plants, produced by] Heaven and Earth, the human person is the noblest.”18 In 35 c.e., Emperor Guangwu of the Later Han also promulgated the following brief edict saying: “Of all living things produced by Heaven and Earth the human person is the noblest. [From now on,] anyone who commits the crime of killing male or female slaves will not receive reduced punishment.”19 These two examples suffice to show how the Confucian idea of human dignity was translated into legal action. Slavery as an institution was never accepted as legitimate by Confucianism. Hu Shi once told a story about the famous poet Tao Qian 陶潛 (365–427) who sent a young servant to his son. In the letter to his son, the

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poet wrote: “Do treat this boy with kindness. For he is also the son of another father just like me.” Hu Shi was still a teenager when he read about this touching anecdote, but he admitted that it produced an enduring effect on his relationship with whoever happened to work for him later in his life.20 This story reminds us of the point made emphatically by Mencius that even a “beggar” must be dealt with in a way fully worthy of his human dignity.21 Finally, I wish to say a word about the Confucian view of the individual self. Nowadays, it has been generally held, especially in the West, that “human rights” in China, if they can be developed at all on the Confucian foundation, are mostly likely to be of the communal variety. The Western kind of individual rights runs counter not only to Confucianism but to Chinese culture as a whole. As far as I can see, the view seems to have been an offshoot of the still ongoing debate between communitarianism and individualism in the West.22 I cannot possibly discuss this question here. All I wish to say is that the contrast between Chinese communitarianism and Western individualism has been vastly overdrawn. Many Western writers, it seems to me, have read too much twentiethcentury Chinese totalitarianism back into the Confucian tradition. If we turn our eyes from academia to realities, the West is not so individualistic and China is not so communitarian. As a matter of fact, the Chinese may be much more individualistic than most scholars have imagined. Other wise, Dr. Sun Yat-sen would have to register the famous complaint that “China is like a tray of sand,” by which he probably meant that each grain represents a single Chinese family. Allow me to make one more historical observation to conclude my discussion. From the sixteenth century onward, Confucianism was moving slowly but unmistakably from communitarianism to individualism. In philosophy, this shift can be most clearly discerned in Wang Yangming’s theory of liangzhi 良知 (innate knowledge). Originally, Wang identified liangzhi with the Heavenly Principle (Tianli 天理), which is an all- embracing concept emphasizing “man’s oneness with Heaven, Earth, and the myriad things.” In 1521, however, he reformulated his theory in terms of individuation. When one disciple asked him, “Innate knowledge is one. Why did each sage view principle differently?” Wang offered the following answer: “How could these sages be confined to a rigid pattern? So long as they all sincerely proceeded from innate knowledge, what harm is there in each one’s explaining in his own way? . . . You people should just go ahead and cultivate innate knowledge. If all have the same innate knowledge, there is no harm in their being different here and there.”23 Clearly, Wang Yangming’s version of Confucianism was beginning to move away from the traditional emphasis on unity of thought and toward diversity and individuation of views. It was this subtle shift of emphasis that led to the rise of NeoConfucian individualism.24 The same individualist turn also occurred in Confucian social thought. Here it suffices to take the polarity of “common good” (gong 公) versus “selfinterest” (si 私) as an illustrative example. In the Confucian tradition up to the

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sixteenth century, it had been an unquestioned principle that “self-interest” must at all times be subordinate to “common good,” which was predicted on the more fundamental principle of the priority of community to individual. Suddenly, in the middle of the sixteenth century, a scholar-turned-merchant named Yu Xie 喻燮 (1496–1583) challenged this traditional view thus: “Common good can be established only if self-interest is realized in the first place.” He was followed by a long list of famous names in Ming- Qing intellectual history, including Li Zhi 李贄 (1527–1602), Huang Zongxi, Gu Yanwu 顧炎武 (1613–1682), and Dai Zhen 戴震 (1724–1777). This new conception is best expressed by Gu Yanwu, who said: It is natural and normal for everyone in the world to be concerned about his own family and cherish his own children. The Son of Heaven may care for his subjects, but he cannot possibly do better than they can for themselves. This has been the case even before the Three Dynasties. What the sage does is to transform the self-interest of every individual person into a common good for all with his own person as the key link. In this way, a universal order is established. . . . Therefore, what is self-interest to every individual person in the world is common good to the Son of Heaven.25 What he is really saying in a nutshell is that “self-interest” and “common good” are not opposed to each other and the only function for the government (symbolized by the “Son of Heaven”) to perform in the name of the “common good” is to see to it that the “self-interests” of all the people in the world are to be fulfi lled each in his individual way. This point further sharpened when he remarked elsewhere that “with all the self-interests in the world combined, the common good is thus formed.”26 Clearly, in this new formulation, the common good is conceived as but the sum total of all the individual self-interests and therefore depends entirely on the latter for its very existence. I must also add that in this view, we sense a deep distrust of the imperial state on the part of its author.27 This individualistic turn in Confucian political sociopolitical thinking, it may be argued, created a new frame of mind that much facilitated the Chinese reception of Western values and ideas in the last years of the Qing dynasty. Take Liang Qichao’s discussion of “rights” between the individual and the state in 1903 as an example. He said: “The combination of fractions of rights will make up the right of a totality. All the individual senses of right will add up to a collective sense of rights of the whole nation. Thus cultivation of the sense of national right must start with the individual.”28 We need only substitute “selfinterest” and “common good” for “individual rights” and “national right” in the above passage to discover that he is actually making the same point that Gu Yanwu or Yu Xie made long ago: “With all the self-interests in the world combined, the common good is thus formed,” or “common good can be established

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only if self-interest is realized in the fi rst place.” The structural similarity between these propositions is unmistakable. In his letter to Liang, dated “the fourth month, 1902,” Yan Fu 嚴復 discussed in considerable detail the concept of “rights” (quanli 權利) and how it ought to be rendered into classical Chinese.29 By this time, it may be further noted, Yan had already completed his translation of Mill’s On Liberty, to be published in 1903 under the title On the Boundaries of the Rights of Society and of the Individual.30 We can safely assume that Liang’s two essays on “Rights” and “Liberty” in his justly famous Xinmin shuo (On the New Citizen; 1902–1906) must have been written under Yan’s influence. There can be no question, therefore, that when Liang wrote the above- quoted passage, he was consciously struggling with the Western concept of “rights.” At the subconscious level, however, his thinking was inevitably conditioned by his familiarity with the new formulation of the polarity between “self-interest” and the “common good” as proposed by earlier Confucians. This interesting case seems to lend special support to my contention that it was precisely Confucianism as background culture that made it possible for the Chinese intellectual elite to be so readily receptive to Western concepts regarding “democracy” and “human rights,” along with a host of others.31 The trouble with “democracy” and “human rights” in present- day China comes from an entirely different source. Since Confucian values in both elite and popular cultures have been ruined or distorted beyond recognition, particularly between 1949 and 1976,32 it is extremely difficult to see precisely in what sense that Confucianism must continue to bear the blame for posing an insurmountable obstacle to China’s democratization. Given its present condition in China, I am also doubtful whether Confucianism alone can offer an alternative system of sociopolitical arrangements in which the language of “democracy” and “human rights” is completely absent. As we have seen, both concepts have been naturalized in China over a full century. It is simply inconceivable that from now on the Chinese intellectual elite can engage in any serious political discussion without the use of terms such as “democracy” and “human rights,” and for that matter, also “freedom” and “individual autonomy.” The real question, it seems to me, is rather how to make Confucian culture continuously relevant in such a discussion.

notes 1.

Simon Hornblower, “Creation and Development of Democratic Institutions in Ancient Greece,” in Democracy, the Unfinished Journey, 508 BC to AD 199, ed. John Dunn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 1–16; Richard Tuck, Natural Rights Theories: Their Origin and Development (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979).

2.

Ssu-yü Teng and John K. Fairbank, China’s Response to the West: A Documentary Survey (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1954), 136–137.

de mo c r ac y, h um a n r igh t s , a nd c onf uc ian c ul t ure 3.

273

Kung- chuan Hsiao, A Modern China and a New World (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1975), 197–200.

4.

Samuel P. Huntington, The Third Wave: Democratization in the Later Twentieth Century

5.

Teng and Fairbank, China’s Response to the West, 140.

6.

Alison  W. Conner, “Confucianism and Due Process,” in Confucianism and Human

(Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991), 300–301.

Rights, ed. William Theodore de Bary and Tu Weiming (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998), 181 and 190n18. 7.

Quoted in Ying-shih Yü, “Sun Yat-sen’s Doctrine and Traditional Chinese Culture,” in Sun Yat- sen’s Doctrine in the Modern World, ed. Chu-yuan Cheng (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1989), 94.

8.

Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996), 238. I consider the following judgment made by Francis Fukuyama very balanced and reasonable: “While Huntington argues, correctly, that modern liberal democracy grew out of Christian culture, there were many forms of Christianity inimical to liberal tolerance and democratic contestation (including at one point, the Catholic Church itself) that had to be overcome before modern democracy could emerge. The obstacles posed by Confucian culture do not seem greater than those of other cultures, and when compared to Hinduism or Islam, would appear to be much less significant.” See his “Modernization and the Future of Democracy in Asia,” in The Predicament of Modernization in Asia, ed. Eric Wu and Yun-han Chu (Taipei: National Culture Association, 1995), 20.

9.

William Theodore de Bary, trans., Waiting for the Dawn: A Plan for the Prince: Huang

10.

James Legge, trans., The Ch’un Ts’ew with the Tso Chuen (Hong Kong: HKU Press, 1960),

Tsung- hsi’s “Ming-i- tai-fang lu” (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993). 565–566. 11.

de Bary, Waiting for the Dawn, 24.

12.

Liang Qichao, Zhonguo jin sanbai nian xueshu shi 中國近三百年學術史 (Shanghai: Zhonghua, 1936), 46–47.

13.

Ono Kazuko 小野和子, “Son Bun ga Minakata Kumagusu ni okutta ‘Genkun, Genshin’ ni tsuite” 孫文か南方熊楠に贈つた “原君, 原臣” について, Son Bun kenkyu 孫文研究 14 (April 1992): 19–24. Translated into Chinese with comments by Chinese scholars in Zhongguo zhexue 中國哲學 16 (September 1993): 527–540.

14.

Tuck, Natural Rights Theories, 1.

15.

Ibid., 6.

16.

Mencius, 1A.7 in D. C. Lau, Mencius (Hammondsworth: Penguin, 1970), 58–59.

17.

See Irene Bloom, “Fundamental Institutions and Consensus Statements: Mencian Confucianism and Human Rights,” in Confucianism and Human Rights, 94–116.

18.

Ban Gu 班固, The History of the Former Han Dynasty, trans. Homer H. Dubbs (Balti-

19.

Fan Ye 范瞱, HHS (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1965), 1:57.

more, Md.: Waverly Press, 1955), 3:285, with modifications. 20. Hu Shi 胡適, Hu Shi lunxue jinzhu 胡適論學近著 (Shanghai: Shangwu, 1935), 514. It may be noted that this story is included in Zhu Xi’s 朱熹 “Xiaoxue” 小學, a basic primer

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de mo cr ac y, h um a n r igh ts , a nd c onf uc ian c ul t ure in Confucian education that was a household reader in China from the late thirteenth to the early twentieth century.

21.

Mencius, 6A.10, Lau, 166–167, and the illuminating discussion of this passage in Bloom, “Fundamental Institutions and Consensus Statements,” 108. In emphasizing the central importance of the notion of human dignity in Confucianism, I do not mean to insinuate that there are fewer instances of violation of human rights in Chinese history than in other civilizations. Rather, I share de Bary’s view that it is historically unfounded to blame Confucianism for all the sins in the Chinese past. Foot binding is a case in point. As de Bary says, “foot-binding was often cited as a prime symbol of a cramped, cruel, male dominated Confucianism.” However, this par tic u lar form of violation of “woman’s rights,” as he shows clearly, had nothing to do either with Confucianism or with Buddhism. See Wm. Theodore de Bary, The Trouble with Confucianism (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1991), 104. In this connection, I would like to call attention to an impor tant but long neglected fact that all the descendants of Cheng Yi 程頤 (1033– 1107), a founder of Neo- Confucianism, faithfully followed their ancestral tradition of not practicing foot binding in the families down to the Yuan Period. See Ding Chuanjing 丁傳靖, comp., Songren yishi huibian 宋人軼事彙編 (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1981), juan 9: 2:455.

22. See Shlomo Avineri and Avner de-Shalit, eds., Communitarianism and Individualism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992). 23. Wang Yang-ming 王陽明, Instructions for Practical Living and Other Neo- Confucian Writings, trans. Wing-tsit Chan (New York: Columbia University Press, 1963), 230. 24. See Wm. Theodore de Bary, “Individualism and Humanitarianism in Late Ming Thought,” in Self and Society in Ming Thought (New York: Columbia University Press, 1970), 145–245. 25. Gu Yanwu 顧炎武, Gu Tinglin shiwen ji 顧亭林詩文集 (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1959), 15. 26. Gu Yanwu, Yuan chaoben Rizhi lu 原抄本日知録, punctuated by Xu Wenshan 徐文珊 (Taipei: Minglun, 1970), 68. 27. The above discussion of the polarity of gong versus si is based on my “Business Culture and the Chinese Traditions: Toward a Study of the Evolution of Merchant Culture in Chinese History,” in Dynamic Hong Kong: Business and Culture, ed. Wang Gungwu and Wong Siu-lun (Hong Kong: HKU Press, 1997), 60–61. 28. Liang Qichao, “Xinmin shuo” 新民說, in Yinbingshi heji 飲冰室合集 (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1989), 6:36; English translation by Hao Chang, Liang Ch’i- ch’ao and Intellectual Transition in China, 1890–1907 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1971), 195. 29. Yan Fu 嚴復, Yan Fu heji 嚴復合集 (Taipei: Gu Gongliang, 1998), 1:288–289. 30. See Benjamin Schwartz, In Search of Wealth and Power: Yen Fu and the West (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1964), chap. 6, “On Liberty.” 31.

See Yü Ying-shih 余英時, Xiandai Ruxue lun 現代儒學論 (River Edge, N.J.: Global Publishing, 1996), 1–59.

32. See a report based on field studies in the vicinities of Shanghai by Godwin C. Chu and Yanan Ju, The Great Wall in Ruins: Communication and Cultural Change in China (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993).

14. Changing Conceptions of National History in Twentieth-Century China

1 The concept of “national history” in its current Western usage was wholly unfamiliar to Chinese historians before the twentieth century. This was primarily because there was no notion of “nation” in traditional Chinese political parlance. A most revealing illustration may be found in a conversation between a Chinese official and a British trade representative in Canton prior to the outbreak of the Opium War in 1839. The official is reported to have been at a complete loss when the trade representative referred to China as a “nation.”1 Even after the Treaty of Nanking in 1842, many high-ranking Chinese officials at the Imperial Court still insisted that there could be no more than two or three “nations” in the Western world.2 Again, in 1872, James Legge, a great translator of Chinese classics, criticized China’s officials and people for their failure to “realize that China is only one of many independent nations in the world.”3 It was not until 1864, when W. A. P. Martin completed his Chinese translation of Henry Wheaton’s Elements of International Law (first published in 1836), that the Chinese Foreign Office (Tsungli [Zongli 總理] Yamen 衙門) formally acknowledged the fact that “nowadays there are many nations outside China.”4 By 1880, however, China had been drawn into the “family of nations,” much to its dismay and certainly not without reluctance.

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Instead of a “nation,” China perceived itself as “All-under-Heaven” (tianxia 天下), which, as generally agreed among historians of China today, is best interpreted as a Sinocentric world order. In this view of the world, China was supposedly surrounded by countries and peoples who not only were culturally inferior but also actively sought to be “transformed” by Chinese civilization. Needless to say, this self-image was more myth than reality. Nor is it difficult to find contradictory examples in Chinese history, especially between the tenth and thirteenth centuries, when China was forced to accept foreign states as equals.5 However, this has little relevance to the Chinese historiographical tradition. In traditional historical writings, official and private alike, China is always treated as tianxia, with attention focused largely on the activities of the Imperial Court, whereas all other known countries are described either as “vassal states” or as countries outside the Sinocentric world order. The relative importance of any country mentioned in these accounts is invariably determined by how close a relation it had with the reigning dynasty in China. It made little difference whether this dynasty was ethnically Chinese or non- Chinese (i.e., Mongolian or Manchu). In Confucian historiography, a non- Chinese dynasty would be regarded as being in possession of the Mandate of Heaven if it successfully ruled a unified China according to the standards of Chinese culture. As Mencius said of Shun the sage-ruler and of King Wen of Zhou, two dynastic founders in ancient China: “Shun was an Eastern Barbarian and King Wen was a Western Barbarian. Yet when they had their way in the central kingdoms [Zhongguo 中國; Central States, or “China”], their actions matched like the two halves of a tally-stick. The standards of the two sages, one earlier and one later, were identical” (Mencius, 4B.1). Thus, in the final analysis, the idea of tianxia was defined in cultural rather than ethnic terms. The Chinese perception of a Sinocentric world order exerted an equally formative influence on the Chinese historiographical tradition. As a result, “dynastic history” remained the dominant paradigm in Chinese historiography until the close of the nineteenth century. Then, however, a quiet revolution in historical thought took place— a revolution that led to the paradigmatic change from “dynastic history” to “national history.”

2 The idea of “national history” was introduced to Chinese historiography in the early years of the twentieth century. It resulted largely from Chinese historians’ realization that China was no longer “All-under-Heaven” but a member of the “family of nations.” This breakthrough started, however, not in China but in Japan. Around 1900, many leading Chinese historians took refuge in Japan as a result of their involvement in anti-Manchu political activities. Among them were Liang Qichao 梁啟超 (1873–1929), Zhang Binglin 章炳麟 (1869–1935),

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and Liu Shipei 劉師培 (1884–1919). While in Japan, they had the opportunity to familiarize themselves with Japanese works on Western history and social sciences, and thereby acquired a comparative perspective hitherto unknown in Chinese historiography. It is interesting that while Liang the reformist and Zhang the revolutionary were politically opposed to each other, they nevertheless joined hands as historians in starting a revolution in historical thinking that led to the rise of “national history” as a new paradigm. In July 1902, Zhang Binglin returned from his second trip to Japan and planned to write a general history of China. By “general history” (tongshi 通史), he meant two things. First, it was to be a history from remote antiquity to the recent past, thus cutting across all dynasties; and second, it was to be a comprehensive history focusing especially on institutional, psychological, social, and religious developments. In both themes, Zhang clearly wanted to break away from the “dynastic history” tradition. In a letter to Liang Qichao, he said that his decision to write a general history of China was prompted by reading works by Japanese sociologists. He believed that he could give Chinese history a new meaning as well as a new structure by integrating his extensive knowledge of traditional learning with modern sociological insights. He also wished to achieve two goals: first, to establish valid generalizations to explain the internal political changes in Chinese history, and second, to revitalize the ethos of the people in order to inspire and guide China in its search for a viable future.6 Liang Qichao responded to Zhang’s idea with great enthusiasm. In fact, around this time, Liang was also giving as great deal of thought to the very same task and had his own plan for a “general history of China.” His “Zhongguoshi xulun” (Prolegomena to Chinese History),7 written in 1901, marks the beginning of the transition of Chinese historiography from tradition to modernity. In this trailblazing essay, he tried to defi ne Chinese history vis-à-vis world history. China, he freely admitted, was no longer the center of world civilization. In the modern age, it was Western civilization that dominated the world. However, since China had only recently begun to participate in the Westdominated world, Liang expected Chinese civilization to play an impor tant role in the world in the centuries to come. According to his scheme of periodization, Chinese history could be divided into three periods. During the ancient period, from antiquity to the unification of China in 221 b.c.e., China was only “China’s China”; during the middle period, from 221 b.c.e. to around 1800, China was “Asia’s China”; and during the modern period, since around 1800, China had become “the World’s China.”8 Here our historian seems to be at pains to seek a new identity for Chinese history. Since China had ceased to be “All-underHeaven,” Chinese history could no longer be identified as the history of the Sinocentric world order. Nor could China simply be identified as one of the “nations” in the West- dominated world. Thus, Liang considered Chinese history as something more than “national history” in the ordinary sense of the term. He compared Chinese history not with the history of any other single nation, but

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with that of the West as a whole. In other words, China was more a “civilization” than a “nation.” Here he anticipated Arnold J. Toynbee by more than three decades. Roughly speaking, his “China’s China” and “Asia’s China” closely parallel Toynbee’s “Sinic Civilization” and “Far Eastern Civilization.” Liang’s interactions with Zhang Binglin in 1902, however, led him to a thoroughly critical reexamination of the Chinese historiographical tradition. His essay “Xin shi xue” (New History, 1902)9 was probably a direct and immediate response to Zhang’s letter mentioned above. At this time, Zhang, with his outstanding accomplishments in classical philology, was generally recognized as a master of traditional Chinese learning, equally at home with Confucian classics, history, philosophy, and literature. The advocacy of a revolution in historical scholarship by such a learned man must have emboldened Liang enormously. As a result, in his “New History,” Liang began to demolish the “dynastic history” model systematically. Of the four fundamental flaws he found in traditional Chinese historiography, the following three are considered to have been specifically rooted in the “dynastic” paradigm: First, “dynastic history” illustrates only the Imperial Court and not China as a “nation.” It would be no exaggeration to say that the twenty-four “dynastic histories” are no more than the genealogies of the ruling houses. The dynastic historian focuses his attention almost exclusively on how an Imperial house conquered, ruled, and finally lost the “All-under-Heaven.” Second, with “basic annals” and “biographies” as main categories, “dynastic histories” record only the activities of certain individuals and say nothing about China as a collective whole. As a result, national or social consciousness has been underdeveloped in China. Third, the history of a dynasty was traditionally compiled or written only after the dynasty in question had become defunct. This practice inevitably gave rise to the “antiquarian fallacy” whereby the traditional Chinese historian was a collector of dead facts, and shunned contemporary developments.10 Whether or not Liang’s criticism was exactly fair, his essay “New History” certainly did a great deal to discredit the “dynastic” tradition in Chinese historiography. Liang’s characterization of the twenty-four dynastic histories as “genealogies of the ruling houses” has since been quoted so often that it is almost proverbial in China. Even the apt observation by the European sinologist Étienne Balazs that most Chinese histories were “written by the bureaucrats and for the bureaucrats” can be shown to be a distant echo of a remark in Liang’s “New History.”11 Zhang Binglin’s idea about the importance of history in relation to national consciousness left a particularly deep impression on Liang’s mind. In his 1902 essay, we find Liang deploring the miserable failure of “dynastic” historiography and stressing the point that China’s very survival depends on a deep sense of national solidarity that only a new kind of historical knowledge can inspire and nourish. We thus detect a subtle shift of emphasis between “Prolegomena to Chinese History” of 1901 and “New History” of 1902. In the former essay,

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Liang was seeking to redefine Chinese history from the perspective of world history, whereas in the latter he was looking for the “spirit” or “ideal” in Chinese history from the national point of view. This change of heart was largely due to Zhang’s influence. Significantly, when Zhang visited Japan in late February 1902, he stayed at first with Liang in Yokohama, where the two spent many days in long and learned discussions. As Zhang’s letter of July to Liang indicates, it was during Zhang’s second trip to Japan, between February and July 1902, that their views on Chinese history gradually converged. Thus, they jointly started the modern transformation of Chinese historiography whereby “national history” has replaced “dynastic history” as the focus of historical research and writing.

3 In early 1905, the Society for the Preservation of National Learning was founded in Shanghai, whose Guocui xuebao 國粹學報 (National Essence Journal) was the leading influence in the Chinese world of learning until the fall of the Manchu dynasty in 1911. A circle of scholars formed around this society and its journal to start what came to be known as the National Essence Movement. Zhang Binglin was a dominant figure and published regularly in the journal. Another prime mover was the precocious Liu Shipei, who as chief editor was also a major contributor to the journal. Other impor tant members of the circle included Huang Jie 黃節 (1874–1935), Deng Shi 鄧實 (1877–1941), Chen Qubing 陳去病 (1874–1933), and Ma Xulun 馬敘倫 (1884–1970). The term “national essence” (guocui in Chinese and kokusui in Japanese) was a neologism borrowed from Japan, where a similar movement arose in the 1880s as a nativist reaction against the wave of Westernization. In the Japanese case, “national essence” seems to imply that each nation has a par ticular spirit that cannot be copied by another and that the survival of a nation depends on the preservation of this spirit. Japanese thinkers of the “national essence” persuasion were concerned that too much and indiscriminate Westernization would damage the national spirit. With the Chinese National Essence Movement, however, the case was somewhat different. The Chinese group used the idea of “national essence” to serve two purposes: to arouse the ethnic hostility of the Han Chinese against the Manchu dynasty, and to redefine China’s identity in response to the growing impact of the West. It was particularly characteristic of the Chinese movement that the study of Chinese history was accorded a central place in its agenda. Unlike their Japanese predecessors, who found it rather difficult to define Japanese “national essence” in precise terms, the Chinese group identified Chinese history as “national essence” from the outset. Zhang Binglin, Liu Shipei, Deng Shi, and Ma Xulun, for example, all regarded history as the fountainhead of Chinese traditional learning. Following the eighteenth- century philosopher of history,

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Zhang Xuecheng 章學誠 (1738–1801), they sacralized history and repeatedly quoted his famous saying that “all the classics are history.” In the view of these scholars, the national spirit of China is embodied in its history and the spirit survives as long as its history is preserved. Thus, the Chinese National Essence Movement devoted itself largely to the promotion of historical studies and it was here that the National Essence Journal made an impor tant contribution to the intellectual revolution in twentieth- century China. The National Essence group practiced what Liang Qichao and Zhang Binglin had preached regarding the paradigmatic shift from “dynastic history.” Echoing Liang’s criticism that “dynastic histories” are no more than genealogies of the ruling houses, one author insisted that the periodization of Chinese history must replace the idea of “dynasty” completely. Instead, such periodic concepts as “ancient,” “medieval,” and “modern” would be employed to show the changes of China as a nation. According to Deng Shi, dynastic histories are histories of the emperors and must give way to a “history of the nation or people” (minshi 民史). As a reaction against dynastic history, which was now seen as political history narrowly defined, Deng’s conception of “the history of the nation” consisted of a wide variety of specialized histories such as “racial history,” “intellectual history,” “history of education,” “history of arts and crafts,” “history of social customs,” “economic history,” “history of diplomacy,” etc.12 This conception also agrees with Zhang Binglin’s “general history” and Liang Qichao’s “New History.” However, the new conception of national history as enthusiastically espoused by the new generation of Chinese scholars in the early twentieth century was not an innovation on their part but primarily a borrowing from the West via Japan. Toward the end of the nineteenth century, Japanese historians of China had already published many Western-style textbooks on Chinese history, general as well as specialized. Some of these works, such as A General History of China13 by Naka Michiyo (1851–1908) and Oriental History by Kuwabara Jitsuzo,14 exerted an inspiring influence on Chinese historians. The latter work, published in 1898, was immediately translated into Chinese and enjoyed great success in the Chinese academic world.15 In their own writings, Zhang Binglin, Liang Qichao, and Liu Shipei also openly acknowledged their indebtedness to many Japanese sinologists. It may at first sight seem strange that a group of scholars professedly devoted to the preservation of China’s national essence should rely so heavily on Western conceptual schemes and methods for the study of their own history, but they were fully aware of the apparent contradiction and justified their endeavor by defining “national essence” in the broadest possible terms. Criticizing the Japanese scholar Inoue Kaoru (1835–1915), who identified “national essence” as something entirely indigenous, Huang Jie remarked that ‘ “national essence” consists not only in “what is indigenous and suitable, but also in what is borrowed and adaptable to the needs of our nation.” As one of the editorial rules of the National Essence Journal makes abundantly

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clear, “with regard to Western learning, we shall also elucidate all those new theories and special insights that prove to be capable of illuminating Chinese learning.”16 The changing conceptions of national history in twentieth- century China have, to a considerable degree, been related to the various Western ideas and approaches that have dominated the community of historians at different times. The National Essence group was the first generation of historians to carry out historical research and writing under the conceptual framework of “national history.” The search for a new identity for China as a “nation” in a Westerndominated world led them naturally to inquire about the origins of the Chinese race and civilization. In the 1880s, the French scholar Terrien de LaCouperie (1844–1894) had proposed a theory based on a highly dubious interpretation of Chinese etymology that the Yellow Emperor (Huangdi 黃帝), supposedly the father of the Chinese race, was actually the generic title of the Kings of Susiana (Nakhunti). According to this theory, in the third millennium b.c.e., he led a group of Chaldeans known as the “Baks” from Mesopotamia to Central Asia and reached China. Under his leadership, the “Baks” eventually defeated the natives and conquered China. These “Baks,” whom LaCouperie identified with the ruling aristocracy known as baixing 百姓 (Hundred Surnames) in early Confucian texts, were thought to have created the earliest civilization in China.17 Significantly, nearly all Chinese National Essence historians accepted this theory without showing the slightest sign of embarrassment. Naturally, this strange phenomenon must be understood in the historical context of the National Essence Movement itself, but it can also be explained on other grounds suggested by the following observations. First, it showed that the paradigmatic transition from Sinocentric “dynastic history” to “national history” was far more difficult than has generally been assumed. Chinese historians still wanted their history to retain the status of “world history,” as in the past. The theory of Western origins of Chinese race and civilization served this purpose well; China would still be seen as being in the center of the West-dominated modern world, not on the periphery. Thus, Zhang Binglin asserted not only that the Chinese race came from Chaldea, but also that China in high antiquity shared many cultural traits with the Greeks, Romans, Saxons, Franks, and Slavs.18 Liu Shipei was even more explicit. He speculated that the Han Chinese and the Caucasians were originally of the same race but later migrated to China and Europe respectively as a result of population expansion.19 Second, although National Essence historians accepted the theory about the Western origin of the Chinese race, they did not commit themselves to LaCouperie’s other view that “Chinese culture had been brought in from outside and preserved by the Chinese.”20 On the contrary, they viewed Chinese culture as something that had evolved in China through the ages. A host of factors had contributed to the gradual formation of a distinctly Chinese culture,

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among them geography, climate, and even “barbarian” peoples who had invaded China and mixed with the Han Chinese. In thus defining Chinese cultural identity historically, they felt that they could still justifiably speak of a “national essence” even if the Chinese race originally came from the West. The National Essence historians were certainly nationalists, and they also strove to promote Chinese national consciousness by means of historical research and writing. But a deeper look reveals that their nationalism was more related to culture than to race. In this respect, there was continuity between the “dynastic history” tradition and the “national history” paradigm. Third, the National Essence Movement has been persistently interpreted as a conservative strain in modern Chinese intellectual history. To judge by the readiness with which it embraced the theory of the Western origin of the Chinese race, however, National Essence historiography showed a remarkable openness to new ideas. It is noteworthy as well that Zhang Binglin and Liu Shipei were among the earliest Chinese historians to apply sociological theories, especially of the Spencerian variety, to the study of Chinese history. They were equally receptive to many of the basic values in modern Western culture such as “democracy,” “equality,” and “human rights.” However, they took these as universal values and insisted on their genesis in early China independently of the West. Much of National Essence historiography deals with these themes. Liu Shipei’s Zhongguo minyue jingyi 中國民約精義 (Essentials of the Chinese Theory of Social Contract; 1934),21 for example, traces the genesis and evolution of Chinese democratic ideas from philosophical writings of classical antiquity all the way to thinkers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It seems to make better sense to say that National Essence historians by and large tried to justify Western values in terms of Chinese tradition rather than the other way around. Taking the idea of social evolution as their fundamental assumption, they were primarily interested in the par tic u lar ways and forms in which cultural changes had taken place in China through various historical stages. In speaking of the evolution of Chinese literature, for instance, Liu Shipei observed that vernacular prose had been steadily gaining popularity since the Song dynasty and that through the influence of the popular novel, it would eventually dominate Chinese prose writing. “It is in the nature of evolution,” he said, “that things generally develop from simple to complex, and literature is certainly no exception.”22 In this, Liu actually anticipated Hu Shi 胡適 (1891– 1962)’s advocacy of vernacular literature by more than a decade. By the time of the May Fourth Movement of 1919, there may have been good reasons to regard Zhang Binglin and Liu Shipei as political and cultural conservatives, as many people actually did. But prior to the Revolution of 1911, National Essence historians must be recognized as pioneers who opened up the vast field of Chinese history along various new lines of investigation and who, above all, laid the groundwork for a bold modern program to study Chinese history as “national history.”

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4 An intellectual movement known as the Systematic and Critical Study of the National Past (zhengli guogu 整理國故) constituted the academic core of the May Fourth New Culture Movement, of which Hu Shi was an acknowledged leader. The term “national past” (guogu) suggests both its continuity with and its departure from the “national essence” (guocui 國粹) movement. Indeed, it was Zhang Binglin who in 1910 first adopted this term as the title for a collection of his learned essays, Guogu lunheng 國故論衡 (Critical Essays on the National Past), originally published in the National Essence Journal. Clearly, unlike “national essence,” which implies a positive value judgment, “national past” is a neutral term. This subtle change is symptomatic of the radical antitraditionalistic mood of the May Fourth era. The National Past Movement was almost as exclusively concerned with the study of Chinese history as the National Essence Movement, but its influence was far more enduring and widespread. It lasted roughly from 1917 to the 1930s, dominating the mainstream of Chinese historiography during this time. Several impor tant factors contributed to the great popularity of the National Past Movement. First, it was an integral part of the New Culture Movement, which, since May 4, 1919, had penetrated every corner of the Chinese intellectual world. Second, thanks to the literary revolution of 1917, the vernacular had since then replaced classical language as the writing medium. The scholarly writings of Zhang Binglin and Lin Shipei in the National Essence Journal, with their difficult classical style and sometimes archaic forms of Chinese characters, could be appreciated only by a very small elite circle. By contrast, new studies of Chinese history and classics written in the vernacular since 1917 reached a nationwide audience at practically all levels. Hu Shi’s Zhongguo zhexueshi dagang 中國哲學 史大綱 (Outline of the History of Chinese Philosophy, Shanghai: Shangwu), the first serious work on logic and philosophy in classical China written in the vernacular, for instance, underwent a second printing within two months of its publication in 1919. Third, the National Essence circle, based in Shanghai and Tokyo, could claim no more than fifty active members, including its journal’s founders as well as contributors. In contrast, participants in the National Past Movement came from all parts of China, and they were numerous. In this connection, mention must also be made of the changed institutional structure of the Chinese academic world. By the early 1920s, many modern universities and colleges existed in China at which a large number of professionally trained historians and humanists secured teaching and research positions. It was largely these well-trained scholars who carried on with dedication and perseverance the systematic and critical investigations of China’s national past. The tone of the National Past Movement was initially set by Hu Shi, whose Outline of the History of Chinese Philosophy was enthusiastically and widely accepted as something of an exemplar in the National Past historiography. Under

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the influence of Deweyan pragmatism and Anglo-American “scientific history,” he advocated more emphatically than anybody else the central importance of scientific methodology for the study of Chinese history. His study of ancient Chinese philosophy is characterized in par ticular by skepticism, critical spirit, and methodological rigor. He shocked everybody, first in his class lectures at Peking University and then in his book, by beginning the history of Chinese philosophy with Laozi and Confucius, thereby dismissing the long- established genealogy of pre- Confucian sages as historically unreliable. He justified this bold move on the grounds that the genealogy and the various ideas attributed to those sages are based on texts whose authenticity is very much in question.23 Thus, Hu chopped off the first half of Chinese history as given in traditional historiography. It may be recalled that less than a decade earlier, National Essence historians still took the Yellow Emperor very seriously as the ancestor of the Chinese race. Even a critically minded historian such as Xia Zengyou 夏曾佑 (1863–1924), who, as a follower of Kang Youwei 康有為 (1858–1927), took most of the Old Text Confucian classics to be spurious, did not hesitate to say in his justly famed Zhongguo gudai shi (Ancient History of China; 1904) that “the authentic history of China began in the age of the Yellow Emperor.”24 As a historian, Hu Shi was no iconoclast. Like Liang Qichao and Zhang Binglin, who, as he openly acknowledged, introduced him to Chinese intellectual history through their writings, Hu Shi was also deeply troubled by the question of China’s identity as a nation vis-à-vis the modern West. As he wrote in English in 1917: How can we Chinese feel at ease in this new world which at first sight appears to be so much at variance with what we have long regarded as our own civilization? For it is perfectly natural and justifiable that a nation with a glorious past and a distinctive civilization of its own making should never feel quite at home in a new civilization, if that civilization is looked upon as part and parcel imported from alien lands and forced upon by external necessities of national existence. And it surely would be a great loss to mankind at large if the acceptance of this civilization should take the form of abrupt displacement instead of organic assimilation, thereby causing the disappearance of the old civilization. The real problem, therefore, may be restated thus: How can we best assimilate modern civilization in such a manner as to make it congenial and congruous and continuous with the civilization of our own making?25 If we accept this statement as true, then his intention was really to enrich as well as revitalize Chinese tradition by means of cultural assimilation rather than to destroy or displace it.26 Since this ambitious project required a true understanding of Chinese culture from the outset, he placed the study of China’s past high on the agenda of the New Culture Movement. In an influential essay of

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1919, he defined the significance of New Culture as a “critical spirit.” Under this “critical spirit,” he emphasized, there were three impor tant tasks to be performed simultaneously, namely, to study problems immediately faced by China, to familiarize the Chinese intellectual community with new ideas, theories, and scholarly findings developed in the West, and last but not least, to subject the National Past to a comprehensive, systematic, and scientifically rigorous reexamination and reorganization.27 To carry out the last of these three tasks, he founded two journals, Dushu zazhi 讀書雜誌 (Reading Magazine) and Guoxue jikan 國學季刊 (National Studies Quarterly), in 1921 and 1923, respectively. Reading Magazine was a semipopular journal intended for the young, whereas National Studies Quarterly was an academic journal published by Peking University. Each of these two influential journals contributed in its own way to the emergence of a wholly new conception of Chinese history. The seeds of doubt about the historicity of the genealogy of the sage-kings in high antiquity sown by Hu Shi soon grew to a conviction. In 1922, Gu Jiegang (1893–1980), a leading disciple of Hu Shi, began to publish his systematic studies on Chinese antiquity in Reading Magazine. His central hypothesis was that most of the sage-kings in Confucian classics are actually legendary and symbolic figures. Following the methodology developed by Hu Shi in the study of Chinese novels, he traced the evolution of legends through the ages and showed how they grew as details were fabricated to enlarge them at an ever-increasing pace with every generation. In this first article, he dissected the legend of the sageking Yu, founder of the Xia dynasty (approximately 2200–1750 b.c.e.) and came to the startling conclusion that Yu was probably a totemic symbol. This little piece of scholarship touched a most sensitive spot in Chinese national consciousness and a heated nationwide controversy immediately broke out among historians. The “Critique of Ancient History,” as the controversy has been called, lasted for more than a decade and produced seven huge collections of essays entitled Gushi bian 古史辨 (Critiques of Ancient History; 1926–1941) and many monographs.28 Like his teacher Hu Shi, Gu was not by temperament an iconoclastic radical. Nor was his intention merely to demolish the Golden Age of China’s high antiquity for its own sake. On the contrary, his final aim was the reconstruction of an authentic history of ancient China, which, he believed, was possible only after fabricated history had been fully exposed. As was well summed up by Lawrence A. Schneider: Clearly, Ku [Gu] was a destroyer of traditional conceptions of the past and, concomitantly, the values for which these conceptions acted as vessels. However, implicit in all of his wide-ranging work has been a persistent drive to reconstruct a past which is consistent with his twentieth- century epistemology and sense of history, and, at the same time, consistent with his will to retain a Chinese identity for a twentieth- century China.29

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This said, it must also be pointed out that Gu’s as well as Hu Shi’s conscious efforts to “shorten Chinese history by two to three thousand years”30 did have important iconoclastic implications. To cultural conservatives, it meant the undermining of the spiritual foundation of Chinese culture, and to radicals, it was a message that nothing in the Chinese tradition was too sacred to be protected from revolution. Since the publication of the first volume of Gu’s Critiques of Ancient History in 1926, conceptions of Chinese history, particularly ancient history, have been fundamentally modified. In the first place, there has arisen a consensus among historians that authentic recorded history in China began only with the Shang dynasty (approximately 1750–1100 b.c.e.), especially the latter part of the dynasty, which has been authenticated by the newly discovered oracle bone inscriptions. Critically minded historians have generally tended to regard the Xia dynasty as “legendary.” Even today, when archaeology argues favorably for a Xia civilization either antecedent to the Shang dynasty or contemporaneous with both Shang and Zhou in their predynastic antiquity, many specialists—historians and archaeologists alike— still hesitate to confirm the historicity of Xia because of the absence of direct written evidence comparable to Shang inscriptions. In the second place, the emphasis on the necessity of subjecting historical data to a most rigorous “scientific” examination before any reconstruction of the past can be attempted soon became a universal creed for Chinese historians of all persuasions. Even the Marxist historian Guo Moruo, who was normally against every thing Hu Shi and his school stood for, specifically praised Gu Jiegang in 1930, for his critical study of forgeries.31 As a result, however, skepticism ran high and almost every single Chinese text was called into question. This hypercritical attitude eventually led, in the 1920s and 1930s, to a general conviction that Chinese historical texts, abundant as they are, are neither sufficient nor reliable enough for historical reconstruction. The work of Wang Guowei 王國維 (1877–1927) was held as a model for emulation by all Chinese historians of the time, traditional and new, conservative and radical, not only because of the genius and erudition of its author but also because it largely resulted from careful and meticulous comparisons of old Chinese texts with newly discovered or non- Chinese sources.32 In 1924, Wang himself also pointed out that the new learning developed in China since the turn of the century arose directly out of the new discoveries of new sources, such as Shang inscriptions, Han wooden documents, Dunhuang manuscripts, Ming- Qing archives, and non- Chinese records.33 In the same year when Hu Shi was working on the history of Chan (Zen) Buddhism, it suddenly occurred to him that his Chinese texts must have suffered from all sorts of fabrications and distortions and therefore could not possibly be relied upon for such an endeavor. He had to search for new source material among the Dunhuang manuscripts preserved in Paris and London.34 One thing led to another and in the mid-1920s, when Hu Shi was pushing to broaden the database of Chinese historiography, he had the good fortune to

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find another of his leading disciples, Fu Sinian 傅斯年 (1896–1950), just about ready to undertake this formidable task. After graduating from Peking University, Fu Sinian went abroad for several years to study history and other related subjects, first in London and then in Berlin. While abroad, he was exposed to the idea of “scientific history,” ultimately traceable to Ranke, and developed a passion for facts, sources, and archives. He emphasized the importance of philology and primary sources to the study of history, and in 1943, he specifically referred to Ranke and Theodor Mommsen as his Western guides.35 In 1928, he was appointed as director of the newly founded Institute of History and Philology of the Academia Sinica and with government backing, was able to collect historical as well as archaeological data, new and old, in a systematic way and on a large scale. He carried Wang Guowei’s and Hu Shi’s idea about new data to the extreme. In the inaugural issue of the prestigious and influential Bulletin of the Institute of History and Philology, he proclaimed: “Modern historiography is merely the study of historical data, using all the tools provided by natural sciences to put into order all the available historical data. . . . What we pay the most attention to is the acquisition of new data. . . . In short, we are not book readers. We go all the way to Heaven above and to Yellow Spring below, using our hands and feet, to look for things.”36 The last sentence quoted is almost certainly an adaptation of G. M. Trevelyan’s famous saying: “Collect the facts of the French Revolution! You must go down to Hell and up to Heaven to fetch them.”37 Fu’s identification of “modern historiography” with “the study of historical data” has earned him the name “Dataist,” with those sharing his views about modern historiography constituting the “Data school.”38 An adherent of logical positivism, Fu modeled his “scientific history” closely on the natural sciences, especially biology and geology.39 This is also true of Hu Shi and Gu Jiegang, though to a lesser degree. Applying their strictly defined ideas of “scientific objectivity” and “evidential investigation” to the study of Chinese history, they were often able to produce fine piecemeal scholarship, but on the whole, they shunned generalizations. They seemed to subscribe to the view that the “ultimate history” would emerge by itself when all the relevant individual facts had been firmly established. This perhaps explains why Hu Shi often resorted to “suspension of judgment” as a last defense when he was hard pressed to answer larger historical questions. Chinese “scientific historians,” including Hu, Gu, Fu, and their numerous followers, have often been criticized, especially by Marxists, as seeing only the trees but no forest. For a militant Dataist such as Fu Sinian, however, it is not even clear whether he would accord the “forest” an ontic status in his historical epistemology. As he remarked of speculative historians, “they are the ones who mistake some clouds in the sky for forests on the horizon.”40 Hu Shi, Gu Jiegang, and Fu Sinian were the three dominant figures in mainstream Chinese historiography from 1917 to 1937, as Liang Qichao, Zhang Binglin, and Liu Shipei had been before them. Together they succeeded in

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demolishing the unrealistic traditional conception of Chinese history. However, since they were unable or unwilling to build a new one in its place, China was left with a much fragmented historical identity.

5 In retrospect, the two decades between 1917 and 1937 truly deserve to be called the golden age of Chinese historiography. Not only was there strong institutional support for research and an abundance of new source materials, but the historical profession as a whole was also held in high esteem. In the wake of the New Culture Movement, historians generally enjoyed a high degree of intellectual freedom, at least during the 1920s. All sorts of conceptual schemes— conservative, radical, and middle-of-the-road—were formulated to study Chinese history. As a result, never before or after in this century have so many Chinese talents been attracted to the historical profession. The preceding section has focused on mainstream Chinese historiography of this period mainly because of its immense influence, but this is not to suggest that mainstream conceptions were everywhere accepted in the community of historians. Nor were there unifying conceptions among mainstream historians. Hu Shi, Gu Jiegang, and Fu Sinian, when examined individually and in close detail, were very different from one another and did not even necessarily practice what they preached. This divergence is well illustrated by two towering figures in mainstream historiography, Chen Yuan 陳垣 (1880–1971) and Chen Yinke 陳寅恪 (1890–1969). In their emphasis on the importance of new data and textual criticism to the study of history, both were very much at home in mainstream historiography. Indeed, both were officially associated with Fu Sinian’s Institute of History and Philology before 1949. However, each developed a distinct conception of his own. Chen Yuan was more in the tradition of Qing philology but sufficiently modern to undertake middle-range monographic studies on religious history as opposed to the “shreds and patches” of a Dataist kind. Chen Yinke was thoroughly trained in philosophy, history, Buddhology, and classical languages in Berlin, in Paris, and at Harvard. His extraordinary erudition combined with a critical and sharp mind made him a legend in his own time. Yet he was so deeply committed to traditional Chinese values that Western ideas associated with the New Culture Movement were anathema to him. His wide-ranging study of the middle period between the third and tenth centuries in a broad East Asian context led him to see a unique rhythm of change in Chinese social and cultural history. He skillfully combined textual criticism with a hermeneutical approach. Thus, on the one hand, he paid every attention to the most minute details of his textual evidence, and yet on the other, he did not eschew interpretation when necessary.

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In this connection, brief mention must also be made of Chinese Marxist historiography, which lies beyond the scope of this study. With the exception of Kuo Moruo’s Zhongguo gudai shehui yanjiu 中國古代社會研究 (Studies of Ancient Chinese Society; Shijiazhuang: Hebei jiaoyu chubanshe, 2004 [1930]), which was modeled on Engels’s The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State (1884), Chinese Marxists failed to produce works of importance to historical scholarship during this period. It is true that between 1928 and 1933, the Social History Controversy not only familiarized Chinese historians with the Marxist theory of history but also made them fully aware of its relevance to the study of Chinese history. In reality, however, this controversy was about revolution rather than history. Both Marxist and non-Marxist participants in the controversy needed to determine the exact historical state (according to the Marxist scheme) at which China then found itself so that a certain type of political action could be taken with justification. Moreover, a central figure in the Social History controversy, Tao Xisheng 陶希聖, was not a Marxist but a legal historian who drew his inspiration from Henry Maine’s Ancient Law (first published in 1861).41 Ironically, it was largely through the influence of Tao, an enemy of Chinese Marxism, that Marxist concepts and methods gradually gained access to academic historiography. In the early 1930s, Tao joined the Faculty of Law at Peking University and founded Shihhuo 食貨 (Food and Money [Commodities]) magazine to promote the study of Chinese social and economic history. He was able to attract a number of talented young scholars in mainstream historiography to this vast new field. Judging by their published work, Marxist historians in China were hardly distinguishable from revolutionary propagandists before the 1940s. Still, it was undeniable that with its emphasis on the social and economic base, the Marxist approach to history did provide Chinese historians with a vantage point from which their nation’s past could be reconstructed in an entirely new way. By the early 1930s, China was already deep in the national crisis that eventually culminated in the outbreak of the War of Resistance against Japan in 1937. Historians responded to the crisis quickly, though the response varied from one to the other, as the following few examples illustrate. To everybody’s surprise, the Dataist Fu Sinian rushed to produce an outline history of northeastern China (i.e., Manchuria) right after Japan had seized the region in 1931, only to be severely criticized for its numerous scholarly imperfections. In the mid1930s, Gu Jiegang also turned to the study of frontier history and ethnic minorities with the explicit purpose of promoting patriotic feeling and national solidarity. He spent the whole academic year of 1937–1938 traveling in the northwestern frontier provinces. Chen Yinke finished his political history of the Tang dynasty in Hong Kong in 1940. In this brilliant work, he specifically stressed the point that the fate of Tang China was interlocked with the rise and fall of neighboring peoples. He also demonstrated the close interaction between civil

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government and national defense at this time, with effective defense often depending on good government. While living in Peking under the Japanese occupation, Chen Yuan wrote to a friend in free China in 1943 that historians in Peking had turned their research in a new direction since 1937. Now, he said, they would not write on any historical topic without some relevance to the national crisis.42 After 1937, many leading historians turned away from narrow research topics and devoted themselves wholeheartedly to the writing of general histories of China. Two monumental works were Guoshi dagang 國史大綱 (Outline History of the Nation; Taipei: Guoli bianyiguan, 1940) by Qian Mu 錢穆 (1895– 1990) and Zhongguo shigang 中國史綱 (Outline of Chinese History; Chongqing: Qingnian shudian, 1941) by Zhang Yinlin 張蔭麟 (1906–1942). The first, in par ticular, deserves attention. Through his Outline History, Qian delivered a powerful message to his fellow Chinese. He did not deny that China at the present time was sick, but as a historian, his faith in China was unbounded. China, he assured the reader, not only had a great past, but would have a still more glorious future if only its people chose to fight for their national identity. Various nationalistic ideas and feelings, essentially of a cultural sort, were skillfully blended with historical material in his text and the result was a magnificent epic. Needless to say, his Outline History was, from its very conception, designed and formulated in an effort to arouse the deeply humiliated China of his day. In this regard, it is not wholly dissimilar to Fichte’s Reden an die Deutsche Nation (1808), which in Chinese translations had attracted numerous readers. The publication of the Outline History caused something of a furor, for it provoked strong and immediate response from all sides. Marxists and Dataists, as expected, attacked it bitterly and relentlessly. Yet it was also showered with praise. At any rate, it has gone through numerous printings and is still widely read not only by college students but by laypeople as well in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and other Chinese overseas communities. The spirit of this modern classic in Chinese historiography has been captured by Jerry Dennerline, who describes it as follows: The history [Qian] Mu produced in this detached setting was a monument to national pride. Drawing on the author’s thorough familiarity with the histories, the classics, the institutional compendia and the literature of the past, it describes a pattern of native expansion and contraction, imperial coercion and amelioration, economic, social and intellectual evolution over a period of three thousand years. The pattern, according to [Qian] Mu, is China’s, and it differs from the West’s as a poem differs from a drama. The one develops in a meter from rhyme, always by the same rules; the other develops in stages, from act to act, always with a different end plot. The one expands to fill a space when it is ordered and disintegrates when it is not. The other progresses from conflict to conflict toward

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some inevitable tragic conclusion. The historians who tried to understand the course of Chinese history by applying Western science were right to look for facts. In this regard they surpassed the New Text revisionists. But they failed to comprehend that their theories presumed the universality of the dramatic form.43 Throughout his life as a historian, Qian Mu had been torn between the universal and the par tic u lar, as well as between the Western and the Chinese. Implicitly or explicitly, Chinese historians with a positivistic inclination, from Liang Qichao through Hu Shi and Fu Sinian to the Marxist, have all assumed that in the study of Chinese history, universal laws or models can only be provided by the scientific West while the particularity of historical data must of necessity remain Chinese. Now what Qian Mu was contending seems to amount to this: Is it possible to see in Chinese history and in Western history two distinct patterns, say, as between a poem and a drama? Even if history is a science, no more and no less, it is, after all, an empirical as opposed to a theoretical science. If we are committed to seeking “universal laws” or to building “universal models” in history, is it too much to ask that any such attempt also take into full account the historical experiences of China? Must we always take a Procrustean approach by making the Chinese evidence fit Western theories? With these questions, the present inquiry must come to a close, at least for the time being.

notes 1.

See Immanuel C. Y. Hsü, China’s Entrance Into the Family of Nations (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1960), 13.

2.

Qian Zhongshu 錢鍾書, Qizhui ji 七綴集 (Shanghai: Guji, 1985, 1994), 123.

3.

James Legge, “Prolegomena,” in The Ch’un Ts’ew with the Tso Chuen (Hong Kong: HKU Press, 1960), 52.

4.

Quoted in Hsü, China’s Entrance Into the Family of Nations, 134.

5.

See Morris Rossabi, ed., China Among Equals: The Middle Kingdom and Its Neighbors, 10th–14th Centuries (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983), and Jing-shen Tao, Two Sons of Heaven (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1988).

6.

Zhang’s letter to Liang is quoted in Tang Zhijun 湯志鈞, Zhang Taiyan nianpu changbian 章太炎年譜長編 (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1979), 1:139–140.

7. 8.

In Yingbing shi heji 飲冰室合集 (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1936). Liang Qichao, Yinbingshi wenji 飲冰室文集, in Yingbing shi heji 飲冰室合集 (Beijing: Zhonghua, [1936] 1989), 6:11–12.

9.

Liang Qichao, “Xin shixue” 梁啟超 (新史學), in Liang Qichao shixue lunzhu sizhong 梁啟 超史學論著四種 (Yuelu shushe, 1985).

10.

Liang Qichao, Yinbingshi wenji, 9:3–4.

292 11.

cha nging c once pt ions of nationa l h istory Étienne Balazs, “History as a Guide to Bureaucratic Practice,” in China’s Civilization and Bureaucracy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1964), 129–149. See also Arthur Wright, introduction, ibid., xvii.

12.

See Hu Fengxiang 胡逢祥, “Lun xinhai geming shiqi di guocui zhuyi shixue” 論辛亥革 命時期的國粹主義史學, LSYJ 5 (1985): 151–152.

13.

Naka Michiyo 那珂 通世, Shina tsûshi 支那通史, (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1938–1941).

14.

In 1899 Shanghai Dongwen xueshe 東文學社 introduced and published this book to Chinese readers. It was translated by Fan Bingqing 樊炳清 with a preface by Wang Guowei 王國維 and was published under the title Dongyang shiyao 東洋史要.

15.

Zhu Weizheng 朱維錚, ed., Zhou Yutong jingxueshi lunzhu xuanji 周予同經學史論著選集 (Shanghai: Shanghai renmin, 1983), 534–536.

16.

Hu Fengxiang, “Lun xinhai geming shiqi di guocui zhuyi shixue,” 149–150.

17.

See Martin Bernal, “Liu Shih-p’ei and National Essence,” in The Limits of Change: Essays on Conservative Alternatives in Republican China, ed. Charlotte Furth (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1976), 96–98.

18.

Zhang Binglin, Qiushu 訄書 (Shanghai: Guji, 1958), 44–45.

19.

Liu Shipei, “Zhongguo minzu zhi” 中國民族志, in Liu Shenshu xiansheng yishu 劉申叔先 生遺書 (Taipei: Daxin shuju, 1975), 1:721–722.

20. Bernal, “Liu Shih-p’ei and National Essence,” 97. 21.

寧武南氏 [China]: Ningwu Nan shi, Minguo 23 [1934]

22. Liu Shipei, “Lunwen zaji” 論文雜記, in Liu Shenshu xiansheng yishu, 2:851. 23. See Gu Jiegang 顧頡剛, “Zixu” 自序, in Gushi bian 古史辨 (Hong Kong: Taiping shuju, 1962), 1:36. 24. Xia Zengyu, Zhongguo gudai shi 中國古代史 (Shanghai: Shanghai shudian, 1933), 11. 25. Hu Shih (Hu Shi), The Development of the Logical Method in Ancient China (Shanghai: Dongfang, 1922), introduction, 6–7. This passage is quoted and discussed in Jerome B. Grieder, Hu Shih and the Chinese Renaissance: Liberalism in the Chinese Revolution, 1917–1937 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1970), 160–164. 26. This seems to be the view he held until his death. In his opening speech at the SinoAmerican Conference on Intellectual Cooperation at the University of Washington, July 10–15, 1960, he emphasized that the “Chinese bedrock—the humanistic and rationalistic China—has not been destroyed and in all probability cannot be destroyed.” See Hu Shih, “The Chinese Tradition and the Future,” in Sino-American Conference on Intellectual Cooperation: Reports and Proceedings (Seattle: University of Washington, 1960), 13–22. 27. Hu Shi 胡適, “Xin sichao di yiyi” 新思潮的意義, in Hu Shi wencun 胡適文存 (Taipei: Yuandong, 1971), 1:727–736. 28. There have been several reprints of Gushi bian. See Shanghai: Shanghai guji, 1982. For a factual account of the “Critiques of Ancient History,” see Liu Qiyu 劉起紆, Gu Jiegang xiansheng xueshu 顧頡剛先生學述 (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1986), 85–155. For a study of the “Critiques” in the context of Chinese intellectual history since the late Qing, see Wang Fansen 王汎森, Gushi bian yundong di xingqi 古史辨運動的興起 (Taipei: Yunchen, 1987). 29. Lawrence A. Schneider, Ku Chieh- kang and China’s New History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971), 3–4.

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30. Hu Shi, letter to Gu Jiegang, January 28, 1921, in Gushi bian, 1:22. 31.

Guo Moruo 郭沫若, Zhongguo gudai shehui yanjiu 中國古代社會研究 (Beijing: Renmin, 1954), 272–275.

32. Chen Yinke’s 陳寅恪 foreword to Wang Guowei’s collected works in Haining Wang Jingan xiansheng yishu 海寧王靜安先生遺書 (Taipei: Shangwu, 1976), 1:1–2. 33.

Wang Guowei, “Zuijin ersanshi nian zhong Zhongguo xin fajian zhi xuewen” 最近二三 十年中中國新發見之學問, in Haining Wang Jing-an xiansheng yishu, vol. 4 (Changsha: Shangwu, 1940, [1875–1884].

34. Hu Shi, Hu Shi lunxue jinzhu 胡適論學近著 (Shanghai: Shangwu, 1935), 291–293. 35.

Fu Sinian, Fu Mengzhen xiansheng ji 傅孟真先生集 (Taipei: Guoli Taiwan Daxue, 1953), 4:276.

36. Ibid., 170–180. English translation by Kwang-chih Chang, Shang Civilisation (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1980), 60–61. 37.

Xu Guansan 許冠三 has pointed this out in his Xin shixue jiushi nian 新史學九十年 (Hong Kong: Zhongwen Daxue, 1986), 1:221.

38. Zhu Weizheng, ed., Zhou Yutong jingxueshi lunzhu xuanji, 521. See Ying-shih Yü, “The Study of Chinese History: Retrospect and Prospect,” trans. Thomas  H.  C. Lee and Chun- chieh Huang, Renditions (Spring 1981): 7–26. 39. See Fu Mengzhen xiansheng ji, 4:181. 40. Quoted in Xiao Gongquan 蕭公權, Wenxue jianwang lu 問學諫往録 (Taipei: Zhuanji wenxue, 1972), 64. However, Xiao mistakenly attributed it to Lien-sheng Yang of Harvard University. Professor Yang told me that he borrowed the saying from Fu Sinian. 41.

Arif Dirlik, “T’ao Hsi-sheng: The Social Limits of Change,” in Furth, The Limits of Change, 305–331. For a comprehensive study of Marxist historiography, see Dirlik’s Revolution and History: The Origins of Marxist Historiography in China, 1919–1937 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978).

42. See Chen Yuan, letter to Fang Hao 方豪, November 23, 1943, in Chen Lesu 陳樂素 and Chen Zhichao 陳志超, eds., Chen Yuan shixue lunzhu xuan 陳垣史學論著選 (Shanghai: Renmin, 1981), 624. 43. Jerry Dennerline, Qian Mu and the World of Seven Mansions (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), 66.

15. Reflections on Chinese Historical Thinking

W

ith a historiographical tradition as long and variegated as China’s, any attempt at a sweeping generalization of Chinese historical thought with a view to clearly distinguishing it from its Western counterpart is hazardous. To suggest that there are essential determinate characteristics in Chinese historiography that are wholly absent in the West is to lapse into a false essentialism. The more I know about the history of Western historiography, the less I am sure about the possibility of drawing a sharp distinction between the two traditions. As far as the individual component parts of Chinese and Western historiographies are concerned, they appear to be more similar than dissimilar. On the other hand, however, the shapes of the two traditions do look different when viewed historically. I am inclined to believe that the differences lie in constellation and emphasis, which, if further investigated, may turn out to be, to a large extent, culturally determined. Peter Burke’s ten-point characterization of historical thought and historical writing in the West provides me with a good starting point for some reflections on the Chinese tradition in a comparativist light.1 In what follows, I shall choose to discuss only a few interrelated ideas that may be considered central to traditional Chinese historiography. Burke is quite right to suggest that the most impor tant characteristic of Western historical thought is its stress on development or progress, which originated in the Judeo- Christian notion of Destiny or Providence. E. H. Carr also

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pointed out, “It was the Jews, and after them the Christians, who introduced an entirely new element by postulating a goal towards which the historical process is moving—the teleological view of history.”2 Burke further notes, citing Karl Löwith, “modern concepts of historical development may be viewed as secular forms of these religious ideas.”3 However, I wish to make the observation that it is precisely in its secular forms that this Judeo- Christian idea of “development” or “progress” has exerted its greatest influence on modern Western historiography. Hegel’s Geist and Marx’s “mode of production” are clearly latter-day successors to the “plan of God.” Paradoxically, the idea has also found its most powerful ally in modern science, which has inspired the intensive search, since the eighteenth century, for universal laws governing the development or progress of history. Thus, Marx, in his preface to Capital, speaks with great confidence of “the natural laws of capitalist production” working “with iron necessity towards inevitable results.” Even the American modernization theory in the 1950s and 1960s was also formulated on the assumption of a single process of economic development for all societies. This universal model, needless to say, was built on the Western historical experience since the Industrial Revolution. The reason I begin my discussion of Chinese historical thinking with this peculiar Western idea of “development” or “progress” is twofold. First, the notion that human history is an irreversible process guided by some transhuman forces such as Divine Providence or natural laws is wholly alien to indigenous Chinese historiography; but, second, it is none other than this strange idea disguised as “science” that has captivated Chinese historical imagination in the twentieth century. Especially with the establishment of Marxism-Leninism as state ideology in 1949, this teleological view of history has become a Procrustean bed on which Chinese history, in all its aspects, must be placed at all times. A central task set for historians by the party is to periodize their national history according to the five-stage theory of social development. While the Marxist approach to history may be credited with discovery of interesting historical data in areas previously neglected in traditional historiography, its total impact on Chinese historical scholarship is rather disastrous: Chinese history has been falsified, misinterpreted, and distorted on a massive scale. As a result, today a new generation of Chinese historians is beginning to question practically every large generalization about Chinese history established during the past decades. There are also signs of a revival of interest in traditional historiography on its own terms. In the last few years of the twentieth century, a noticeable intellectual movement grew up in China to celebrate the first generations of historians who made a systematic attempt to recognize Chinese classical and historical scholarship in a modern way in the early decades of the twentieth century. These Great Masters of National Learning, as they came to be called, relied primarily on their traditional training in textual and philological studies to make important new historical discoveries, even though conceptually they had been

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enlightened by the Western learning of their own day, including natural and social sciences. It has been generally recognized that the great achievements of Chinese historical scholarship in the early Republican Period were a direct outgrowth of the indigenous historiographical tradition, which reached its full maturity in the course of the previous three centuries. The contribution of Western learning during this period lay in the widening of general intellectual horizons rather than in providing Chinese historians with specific historical theories and methods. Indeed, when the Chinese historical mind in the post– May Fourth Period gradually turned away from its own tradition and looked with ever-growing veneration to theories and practices in Western historiography for guidance, the quality of historical research and writing in China began to deteriorate markedly.4 In the preface to his last book, The Origins of History, Herbert Butterfield identifies science and historiography as two of the most distinguishing features of Western civilization. According to Butterfield, the only known parallel to it in both respects is to be found in early China. However, the scientific revolution and the historiographical revolution that took place in Europe in the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries, respectively, have left China far behind. As a result, “in both fields the Chinese themselves have had to become the pupils of the West.”5 I do not so much disagree with Butterfield’s statement as I would like to qualify it by making a further distinction. It is true that the Chinese of the twentieth century did, of their own accord, become “the pupils of the West” not only in science but in historiography as well. However, Chinese acceptance of Western historiography is fundamentally different from that of Western science. In the latter case, the acceptance is total. As we know only too well, modern Chinese have simply ignored the existence of their own past scientific achievements (as reconstructed in Joseph Needham’s multivolume Science and Civilization in China [1954–2008]) and started completely anew by following the Western model to its minutest detail. This has been possible because scientific and technological studies in traditional China had been confined to a small coterie of specialists, but were never a part of the general Confucian curriculum. By contrast, for over two thousand years, the Chinese elite had been molded by a type of Confucian education centered around classics and history. Moreover, from the twelfth century to the eighteenth, Confucian scholars made a series of methodological breakthroughs in historical research as their critical reexamination of classical and historical texts gradually deepened with time. Writing in 1937, Charles S. Gardner rightly pointed out: “Within the past two decades there has grown up in China a new school of history, new in inspiration, new in historical technique. This school seeks and fi nds one side of its ancestry among China’s past historians. . . . During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries especially, important advances were made towards the scientific method.”6 It is this background that accounts, to a large extent, for the astonishing readiness with which Western historiography was accepted by Chinese his-

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torians in the early decades of the twentieth century. As clearly acknowledged by Hu Shi 胡適 (1891–1962), a leading member of what Gardner calls “a new school of history,” he was able to feel at home “in the new age of modern science” because he had come from “a scientific tradition of dispassionate and disciplined inquiry, of rigorous evidential thinking and investigation, of boldness in doubt and hypothesis coupled with meticulous care in seeking verification.”7 He may have somewhat exaggerated his case about the “scientific tradition” in early China, but his inner experience is nevertheless amply borne out by his diary written during his student years in the United States (1911–1917). Hence, unlike in science, when modern Chinese became “pupils of the West,” they did not, and could not, come to embrace historiography with minds as clean as tabula rasa. Instead, they looked at Western historiography through the lens of their own tradition, assimilating the “scientific method” to “evidential thinking and investigation” developed by the Qing philologists. They were willing to become “pupils of the West” because they believed that this “scientific method” had been developed to a most advanced state only in the modern West. In actual practice, however, the first generation of Chinese historians were still largely following their own research tradition with only limited innovations and modifications of Western origins. At this juncture, allow me to return to the recent discovery of the Great Masters of National Learning by a new generation of Chinese historians, mentioned above. I take it as symptomatic of an awakening on their part that the time has finally arrived for Chinese historians to take stock of what has really happened during their long apprenticeship in Western historiography. From hindsight, it appears very paradoxical that the first generation of historians who were exposed to Western influence only in a limited way have produced historical scholarship now generally judged to be far superior to that of the later generations, who are obviously much more sophisticated in their application of the so- called scientific method. This immediately calls into question the validity of Western historiography as a universal model on a par with natural science. Here, too, the very idea of “scientific method” may well have played a role that was more negative than positive. Excessive obsession with “scientific method” has been particularly characteristic of scientism in modern China.8 However, method has turned out to be neither ideologically neutral nor clearly separable from the context in which it originated. As a result, historical terms, categories, and theories unique to Western experience have also been indiscriminately transferred to Chinese historiography along with the so-called scientific method. As rightly observed by Arthur F. Wright, “twentieth- century Chinese historians borrowed methods, then concepts, and finally systems from the West.”9 Now, with the close of the twentieth century, historiography in the West, or at least in the United States, has lost its original “vision of a unified and cohesive historical discipline.”10 In this allegedly “postmodern” culture of ours in which “chaos” reigns supreme, the historical profession is said to be describable in the

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last verse of the Book of Judges: “there was no king in Israel.”11 History as an academic discipline finds itself in a similar situation in China today. Inspired by a postmodern critique of Orientalism on the one hand and the post– Cold War struggle for recognition of non-Western cultures on the other, Chinese intellectuals are also beginning to search for spiritual resources in their own tradition. Since the early 1990s, there has been much talk about the “Chinese humanist spirit” and “New Confucianism.” It is in this new climate of opinion that historians have first rediscovered the Great Masters of National Learning and then, through them, moved further back to reexamine the Chinese historiographical tradition in an affirmative mood. This trend is much in evidence in recent Chinese publications. If we compare traditional Chinese historiography as a whole with theories and practices of history developed in the West since the eighteenth century, the differences are truly striking. Moreover, the comparison inevitably casts the former in an extremely unfavorable light. This is precisely why the eminent historian Liang Qichao 梁啟超 (1873–1929) proposed in 1902 that the “dynastic history” paradigm in the Chinese tradition be swept aside to make room for a “New History” based essentially on Herbert Spencer’s interpretation of the course of human development as evolution, for he was utterly overwhelmed by the Western style of historical writing as he encountered it while an exile in Japan.12 However, if we take a concrete and analytical approach by comparing two of the earliest Chinese historical works (e.g., Confucius’s Chunqiu 春秋 [Spring and Autumn Annals] with its later commentaries, and Sima Qian’s Shiji 史記 [Records of the Grand Historian]) with two of the earliest works in the West (e.g., Herodotus’s Histories and Thucydides’s History of the Peloponnesian War), the picture that emerges from the comparison would be quite different. As far as underlying assumptions, principles, and methods are concerned, there appear to be as many similarities as differences between the Chinese and the Greek texts.13 For example, an impor tant principle Herodotus followed in his recording of events is the distinction between what he has seen and what he has heard. Thucydides, too, “first trusted his own eyes and ears and next the eyes and ears of reliable witnesses.”14 We find the same principle in Confucius’s Annals and Sima Qian’s Records. According to tradition, Confucius distinguished between three types of sources: what he had seen, what he had heard, and what he had learned through transmitted records.15 This is corroborated by his Lunyu (Analects), where he deplored that he was not able to discourse on the rites of the Xia and the Yin dynasties because there were “not enough records and men of erudition” to support him with “evidence” (3.9). Sima Qian also always reports what he has seen and what he has heard from eyewitnesses in addition to the vast amount of written documents at his disposal.16 To give one more example, Arnaldo Momigliano takes great pride in what he calls the “critical methods” of Greek historians, especially Herodotus and Thucydides. By “critical methods” he means that “the user, after reflection

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and study, was satisfied as to their reliability.”17 He even goes so far as to assert that “no historiography earlier than the Greek or independent of it developed these critical methods.”18 However, similar critical methods seem to have been already present in Chinese historiography in the time of Confucius (551–479 b.c.). Sima Qian tells us that in preparation for his Spring and Autumn Annals, Confucius not only made extensive investigations of old historical records of the royal house of Zhou and edited the texts but also established “meaningful principles” and laid down “methods of writing.”19 Confucius’s guiding “principle” for recording events, according to the Guliang Commentary to the Spring and Autumn Annals, was to “transmit what is reliable as reliable and what is doubtful as doubtful.”20 True, we can by no means be sure about the accuracy of these statements as descriptions of the Spring and Autumn Annals because they may well have been attributed to Confucius by Confucians of later centuries. Nevertheless, there can be little question that Confucius did exhibit a general critical attitude toward learning along the lines indicated above. In the Analects, he has the following to say to a student: “Use your ears widely but leave out what is doubtful; repeat the rest with caution and you will make few mistakes” (2.17). At any rate, by the fourth century b.c.e. at the latest, a critical consciousness with regard to the reading of historical texts was already highly developed in China. This is nowhere more clearly shown than in the words of Mencius: “If one believed every thing in the Shujing [Book of History], it would have been better for the Book not to have existed at all. In the ‘Wu cheng’ chapter, I accept only two or three strips” (Mencius 7B.3). There is no need to elaborate on Sima Qian’s Records of the Grand Historian, in which historical criticism can be detected in almost every part of the book. It suffices to quote a few sentences from his famous “Bao Ren-an shu” 報任安書 (Letter in Reply to Ren-an): “I have gathered up and brought together the old traditions of the world which were scattered and lost. I have examined the deeds and events of the past and investigated the principles behind their successes and failure, their rise and decay, in one hundred and thirty chapters.”21 Clearly, the Records qualifies as historia in the sense of “inquiry,” “research,” or “investigation.”22 We can certainly push this kind of parallelism between the two historiographical traditions down to recent centuries. The philological movement and its revolutionary impact on historical research in the early and middle Qing Period, for instance, bears a remarkably high degree of resemblance to the rise of philology in Europe since Lorenzo Valla.23 Burke raises the interesting question about legal metaphors in the Western historiographical tradition and wonders whether historians of other traditions, including the Chinese, have also taken over assumptions from their indigenous legal system. My reply to this question is in the affirmative. As Hu Shi has convincingly shown, Chinese historical methodology known as kaozheng 考證 (evidential investigation) was developed out of the legal system from the twelfth century on. Terms such as

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“evidence,” “judgment,” and “witness” are all borrowed from the practice of law. While serving as local officials, Confucian scholars often had extensive experience in the administration of justice. Zhu Xi 朱熹 (1130–1200) stated repeatedly, and in no uncertain terms, that a scholar must deal with his texts as if he were a judge struggling with a very difficult and complicated litigation. He must listen with an open mind to the presentation of all sides and check the legal documents carefully with special attention given to the possibilities of forgery and anachronism, the two methods often decisive for reaching a reasonable judgment in lawsuits.24 Even in the highly speculative domain commonly called “philosophy of history,” parallelism also existed between China and the West. Zhang Xuecheng 章學誠 (1738–1801), for example, developed ideas about history that may be fruitfully compared to those of Vico and Collingwood, though the historical and intellectual contexts are vastly different.25 Now, allow me turn to the other side of the coin, namely, some of the central features that distinguish Chinese historical thought from its Western counterpart. The differences are many and fundamental. Due to space and time limitations, however, I can only offer a few general observations without elaboration. To being with, I wish to stress the point that the differences cannot be located in the historiographical domain itself. Instead, they may be shown to have been deeply rooted in the two distinct cultural traditions of China and the West. In this connection, I wish to say a word about the origins of historical writing in ancient China. Butterfield was impressed by the fact that as early as well before 1000 b.c.e., the character shi 史 (historian) already appeared in China. Shi could be translated in many ways, such as “scribe,” “archivist,” “historiographer,” or “astrologer,” depending on the text in which it appeared.26 The discovery of thousands and thousands of oracle bone inscriptions datable roughly between 1300 to 1100 b.c.e. has amply confirmed this early origin of shi as a “scribe” or “archivist.” The practice of divination involved several individuals: the zhenren 貞人, who made the inquiry on behalf of the king; the buren 卜人, who carried out the divining act; the zhanren 占人, or prognosticator, who specialized in the interpretation of the cracks on the burned bones or shells; and, finally, the shi scribe or archivist, who inscribed the notations.27 However, at this early date, the function of the shi was clearly religious and cannot be interpreted as “historiographer.” It was probably in the late seventh century b.c.e. at the latest that the shi was gradually transformed from an archivist in charge of religious matters to a court historiographer. Confucius, for example, praised one such shi who had, in 605 b.c.e., shown the moral courage of recording the truth at the risk of his own life. He was, Confucius said, “a good historiographer of old time: his rule for writing was not to conceal.”28 From the above account, a few observations may be made with a view of distinguishing the Chinese historiographical tradition from its Western counterpart. First, Chinese historiography began at a very early date and grew up in a remarkably long and continuous tradition. Second, from the very beginning, it was inseparable from official archives and

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documents. Third, the office of shi, already in existence as a hereditary and prestigious institution by Western Zhou times (1027?–771 b.c.e.), placed the court historiographer at the very center of the Chinese political world. In light of these unique beginnings of Chinese historical writing, it is little wonder that historiography occupied a central place in Confucian learning throughout the traditional period. This contrasts sharply with the Western cultural context in classical antiquity in which historiography was accorded a secondary place at best. The following succinct characterization of the Greek attitude toward historiography by Momigliano is worth quoting for the purpose of comparison: The Greeks liked history, but never made it the foundation of their lives. The educated Greek turned to rhetorical schools, to mystery cults, or to philosophy for guidance. History was never an essential part of the life of a Greek—not even (one suspects) for those who wrote it. There may be many reasons for this attitude of the Greeks, but surely an important factor was that history was so open to uncertainties, so unlikely to provide undisputed guidance.29 I am tempted to extend this characterization to cover the cultural tradition of the West as a whole, needless to say, only for the purpose of sharpening the contrast between China and the West. Very impressionistically speaking, it seems to me that the Western mind has always been looking to philosophy or religion for spiritual guidance. It turns sometimes more to philosophy and sometimes more to religion, but most of the time, a combination of both. Since the seventeenth century, of course, science has been ever-increasingly made the foundation of Westerners’ lives, even though it has not succeeded completely in replacing religion and philosophy altogether. In this regard, however, science may also be viewed as being continuous with religion and philosophy in the sense that all three are ultimately concerned with the search for “certainty.” As far as my limited knowledge goes, Western historiography over the many centuries has advanced by being nourished and enriched by the religious, philosophical, and scientific developments at every new turn. By contrast, Chinese historiography has grown together with Confucian classical scholarship and literary art. But I must hasten to point out that the intellectual emphasis on a holistic approach in the Chinese tradition has made the trio practically undifferentiated and undifferentiable; the relationship between them can by no means be understood in terms of the Western system of classification of knowledge. Of the so- called Six Classics, two are clearly historical and one literary in nature, if we follow the Western system. The idea that “all classics are history” had long been in currency before Zhang Xuecheng gave it a definitive reformulation.30 The point I wish to emphasize here is that any fruitful comparison between Chinese and Western historical ideas must, of necessity, take into full

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account the two different cultural traditions in which they originated and grew, respectively. To the best of my judgment, fundamental to Chinese historical thought is the centrality of human agency in the making of history. By this I do not mean the naive view that man, and man alone, makes history as he wills. It is rather the principle that whatever other forces—natural or supernatural—may have been at work in the course of history, the historian’s chief attention must always be directed at the human factor, for it is his business to find out which individuals or groups were responsible, positively or negatively, for certain states of affairs, especially at some critical moments in history such as the rise or fall of a state or dynasty. This special emphasis on the role of human agency in history was in all likelihood related to what is generally referred to as the rise of Confucian humanism during the sixth century b.c.e. In 524 b.c.e., a senior contemporary of Confucius made this famous remark: “The Way of Heaven is distant, while that of man is near. We cannot reach to the former; what means have we of knowing it.”31 It is generally accepted today that this casual remark had a profound influence on Confucius’s thinking, which is amply borne out in the Analects (5.13; 6.22). I would like to quote the following conversation between Confucius and Duke Ding of Lu (r. 509–495) to illustrate the former’s view about the role of human agency in history: Duke Ding asked, “Is there such a thing as a single saying that can lead a state to prosperity?” Confucius answered, “A saying cannot quite do that. There is a saying amongst men: ‘It is difficult to be a ruler, and it is not easy to be a subject either.’ If the ruler understands the difficulty of being a ruler, then is this not almost a case of a saying leading the state to prosperity?” “Is there such a thing as a saying that can lead the state to ruin?” Confucius answered, “A saying cannot quite do that. There is a saying amongst men: ‘I do not at all enjoy being a ruler, except for the fact that no one goes against what I say.’ If what he says is good and no one goes against him, good. But if what he says is not good and no one goes against him, then is this not almost a case of a saying leading the state to ruin?” (Analects 13.15) I quote this conversation in full because it was taken so seriously by later historians that they, as a rule, recorded in their writings words with consequences uttered by impor tant individuals. It is quite illuminating to note that Confucius, in both cases, used “cannot quite” and “almost” to modify his statements. This clearly suggests that while he would definitely hold man’s words and deeds responsible for what happened or might happen, he was also fully aware that factors beyond human agency matter in history as well.

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According to tradition, Confucius was the first historian to establish the principle of praise and blame in Chinese historiography, which, needless to say, is logically implicit in his fundamental notion about the reality of human freedom in history. Of course, the didactic function of history can also be found in many other historiographical traditions, including Western ones. However, none has developed it to so central a place, with such pervasiveness and continuity, as in China. What is even more remarkable is that it not only penetrated, but also grew luxuriantly in the fertile soil of popular culture. Through historical novels and plays such as, especially, Sanguo yanyi 三國演義 (The Romance of the Three Kingdoms), the principle of praise and blame reached countless readers and audiences since the twelfth century, if not earlier. In the Romance, for instance, it is easy to see the author’s conscious intention to condemn some of the major characters while honoring others.32 Although later historians, fearing that excess in moral judgment would impair historical objectivity, from time to time counseled restraint, the principle has never been wholly rejected in Chinese historiography even to this day. In the Chinese case, the historiographical principle of praise and blame served not only a didactic function but, perhaps more significantly, a critical one as well. Speaking of why Confucius wrote the Spring and Autumn Annals, Sima Qian said: Confucius realized that his words were not being heeded, nor his doctrines put into practice. So he made a critical judgment of the rights and wrongs of a period of two hundred and forty-two years in order to provide a standard of rules and ceremonies for the world. He criticized the emperors, reprimanded the feudal lords, and condemned the high officials in order to make known the business of a true ruler and that was all. Confucius said, “If I wish to set forth my theoretical judgments, nothing is as good as illustrating them through the depth and clarity of actual events.”33 This statement probably represents more Sima Qian’s view than that of Confucius. Understood in this way, we may say that writing history in the Chinese tradition is an act of political and moral criticism. The quoted saying of Confucius surely reminds us of the famous rhetorical formula of Dionysius of Halicarnassus, “History is philosophy teaching by example.” Perhaps in our case, the term “philosophy” should be replaced by “theory of morality.” There can be little question that Sima Qian intended his Records to be also a work of criticism. Through a variety of literary devices, he criticized not only the powerful and the rich of past and present but also the reigning emperor—Wu Di— and some of his policies. This is precisely why in 192 c.e., a high official in the Han court called the Records “a defamatory book.”34 As late as the Qing Period, when the Manchu court launched large-scale political persecutions against the Chinese intelligentsia, it was the historians who suffered the heaviest toll because

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they were generally under suspicion of using their enormous critical power to question the legitimacy of the Manchu rule in China. Throughout the traditional age, Chinese historians were able to perform this critical function to a greater or lesser degree, sometimes even in the face of extreme adversity. The noted historian Liu Yizheng 柳詒徵 (1880–1956) takes this function to be a unique feature in the Chinese historiographical tradition and proudly calls it “the authority of the historian.”35 Thus, history may be understood as having provided Confucian scholars with a much-needed critical distance. However, the historian as critic in traditional China may best be understood as what Michael Walzer calls a “connected critic” or “an insider”: He is not a detached observer, even when he looks at the society he inhabits with a fresh and skeptical eye. He is not an enemy, even when he is fiercely opposed to this or that prevailing practice or institutional arrangement. His criticism does not require either detachment or enmity, because he finds a warrant for critical engagement in the idealism, even if it is a hy pothetical idealism, of the actually existing moral world.36 This critical tradition is so strong that it continues to linger on even to this day. In modern Western thinking, however, moral judgment in history has long been rejected as an obstacle to scientific objectivity. Isaiah Berlin’s powerful defense of praise and blame in his Historical Inevitability (1954) seems to have fallen on deaf ears. In this connection, then, a question inevitably arises, namely, what was the Chinese historian’s attitude toward what we call objectivity? Our answer is that in its own way, Chinese historiography was also very much concerned about the Rankean notion of “What had actually happened?” Truthful recording, as a Chinese historiographical principle, can be traced to pre-Confucian antiquity. Paradoxically, from the Western point of view, value judgment and truthful recording are taken as two sides of the same coin rather than two confl icting principles in the Chinese tradition. Thus, for example, the statement “A minister murdered his king,” if true, expresses a moral judgment and conveys a historical truth at the same time. To state other wise, such as “The king died,” is to distort a historical fact despite the objectivity of the language. Similarly, when the case is established on evidence, the traditional Chinese historian would say, “Hitler exterminated millions of Jews out of racial hatred,” not, “Millions of Jews died during the Second World War.” To guarantee truthful recording, a remarkable tradition was established in imperial China that the emperor must refrain from reading the diary of his own reign kept by a court historian.37 Obviously, this historiographical practice was intended to accord the historian the freedom to record “what had actually happened.” Needless to say, tensions of various kinds did exist between the principle of moral judgment and that of truthful recording in the Chinese tradition. On the other hand, however, the Chinese case also suggests the possibility of reopening the

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issue of whether moralizing history and historical objectivity are as mutually exclusive as has been generally assumed on the model of the natural sciences. As suggested above, traditional Chinese historiography does recognize the fact that natural or transhuman forces are also at work in history even though its general emphasis was placed on human agency. It is now necessary to pursue this problem a little further in connection with the absence of the teleological view of history in the Chinese tradition. In his above quoted “Letter in Reply to Ren-an,” Sima Qian describes his Records thus: “I wished to examine into all that concerns Heaven and man, to penetrate the changes of the past and present, completing all as the work of one family.”38 A reading of the Records can easily bear him out. There are many cases in the Records that suggest that its author (or authors if we include his father) is constantly weighing factors pertaining to human agency on the one hand, and those pertaining to tian, or “Heaven,” on the other, in his search for answers regarding “changes of the past and present.” But as scholars generally agree, Sima Qian is notoriously vague about the role of “Heaven” in history and he seems to move freely between the two poles of “Heaven” and “Man.” In some cases, he assigns the rise or fall of a state or dynasty to the work of “Heaven,” and in other cases, to human responsibility.39 This is also true for traditional Chinese historiography as a whole. As Lien-sheng Yang rightly points out: In traditional terms, the factors were often vaguely grouped into those belonging to Tian “Heaven, or Nature” and those belonging to Jen “Man.” The human factors cited in tradition are usually based on common sense and consequently are easy to understand. The Tian factors, however, are rather slippery for comprehension, often in terms of such semi-mystical concepts as the Five Elements, qiyun “vitality and fortune” or qishu “vitality and number.”40 A reasonable explanation for the vagueness of the Chinese conception of “Heaven” as a transhuman force in history seems to lie in the general belief that Heaven, in its supernatural sense, does not directly interfere with human affairs. Whatever role it plays in history, it is still played through human agency. Mencius already made this point very clear when he said, “The Emperor can recommend a man to Heaven but he cannot make Heaven give this man the Empire.” Mencius then quoted a passage from the Book of History, saying: “Heaven sees with the eyes of its people. Heaven hears with the ears of its people” (5A.5). This quoted saying is obviously a Chinese version of “The voice of the People is the voice of God.” However, unlike the Western God, the Chinese Heaven has no “divine plan” for humankind to carry out in history. Nor would Heaven strike down a state or dynasty out of wrath. Heaven is seen as only passively waiting to review human proposals, accepting good and rejecting bad ones. Thus, the notion of Providence can find no place in Chinese historical thought.

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Neither Sima Qian nor later historians showed any inclination, as Herodotus did, “to persuade the reader that history conforms to a divine plan.” 41 Following the example of Confucius not to speak of prodigies and gods (Analects, 7.21), Chinese historians generally refrained from making references to the supernatural. A most remarkable example is provided by Sima Guang 司 馬光 (1019–1086)’s Zizhi tongjian 資治通鑑 (Comprehensive Mirror for Aid in Government), a general history in chronicle form covering the period from 403 b.c.e. to 959 c.e. In such a long chronicle, we rarely encounter reports on strange occurrences of a supernatural kind. On the contrary, when evidence is available, he does not hesitate to expose the so- called auspicious omens faked by court flatterers. In a letter to his research associate, he gave specific instructions concerning the inclusion or exclusion of “strange and uncanny happenings” in the early draft of the Comprehensive Mirror. For instance: “Prophecies . . . which gave rise to slaughter and rebellion should be retained. Ones which wantonly try to show coincidences . . . need not be recorded.” “If uncanny occurrences give warnings . . . or if as a result of them something is started . . . they should be retained. The rest need not be.”42 Clearly, he intended to keep “strange and uncanny happenings” to a minimum even in the first draft; only those that had produced actual consequences in history were to be retained. However, a check of this letter against the Comprehensive Mirror as we now have it further shows that some of the specific “happenings” originally listed for inclusion were also dropped in his final draft. In this long chronicle, as in the Records of the Grand Historian, we cannot find the slightest trace that history is going somewhere— toward a predestined end. Indeed, some elements of “providence” can be detected in Chinese popular religions, early and late, but they have failed to penetrate the domain of historiography. As I have pointed out in the beginning of this essay, it is the providential view of history in its modern secular forms that has captivated the Chinese historical mind since the turn of the twentieth century. Ideas such as “progress,” “evolution,” and “development” have been generally accepted by Chinese historians as what Collingwood calls “absolute presuppositions” for the study of history. It is therefore also desirable to direct my reflections on Chinese historical thought to this modern version of historical teleology. It seems to me that the modern idea of “progress” is different from its original, religious version in one essential way: The “end,” “goal,” or “purpose” of history is no longer imposed from outside by a transcendent force called God. Instead, it is immanent in history and ceaselessly seeks self-realization from inside. It makes little difference if this prime mover inside history is called “spirit” or “matter.” As long as it pushes to fulfi ll its own “end,” history moves forward in one, and only one, predetermined direction. As a result, the whole process of history must of necessity take a definite shape or exhibit an overall pattern. In this irreversible process, individual human beings and their personal intentions and beliefs are of no importance, for they are not fundamen-

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tally different from molecules and their consciousnesses are false. They exist only as means for this prime mover to realize itself in history. If we take the modern teleological view of history as thus caricatured, then we must say that it is just as alien to the Chinese historical mind as the idea of providence, discussed above. In this connection, however, a brief mention of the Chinese understanding of “impersonal forces” in history seems very much in order. At times, I find it difficult to resist the temptation to interpret what Sima Qian calls “Heaven” in his Records as a vague reference to “impersonal forces,” which may also involve human agency as a collectivity as well. For example, when he referred to the unification of China by the First Emperor of Qin in 221 b.c.e. as commanded by Heaven, he may well have had in mind a vague sense of change generated by a historical trend too vast for individuals to stop or resist. For want of an adequate term, he could only resort to the traditional concept of Heaven. In later times, however, a new term, shi, was adopted to explain historical changes involving “impersonal forces.” Speaking of the same event of 221 b.c.e. in institutional terms—the change from the “feudal system” to the “prefectural system,” Liu Zongyuan 柳宗元 (773–819) takes as his explanatory concept, not the old idea of tian 天, or Heaven, but the new notion of shi 勢, which may be rendered as “condition,” “situation,” “trend,” “tendency,” etc., as the context requires. (This is a different character from the character shi mentioned earlier, meaning “scribe,” “archivist,” or “historiographer.”) According to Liu Zongyuan, the Chinese “feudal system” ( fengjian 封建) did not come into existence purely by human design as tradition says. It was not the case that ancient sages invented this idea and then established it as a political system. Nor was it the case that the First Emperor of Qin arbitrarily abolished it for the convenience of centralization of power. On the contrary, the beginning and end of the system were both necessitated by the “conditions of the times” (shi). Here, Liu clearly perceived what we would call “impersonal forces” in history.43 After Liu, the term shi became firmly established as a category of historical analysis. Two outstanding examples will suffice to illustrate our point. Wang Fuzhi 王夫之 (1619–1692), particularly, made extensive use of the term in his philosophical discourse on Chinese history. He often appealed to the notion of shi when he tried to give an account of why certain major historical changes had occurred. In a manner very reminiscent of Liu, he also attributed the abolition of the “feudal system” and the emergence of the “prefectural system” under the Qin to the operation of forces generated by the historical “condition of the times” (shi). He even went a step further to raise the question of the possibility that there may have been “principles” (li 理) governing impersonal forces of change in history. As one of his formulations says, “Historical conditions (shi) change with the times while principles (li) vary with historical conditions.”44 In his best-known essay, “On the Dao,” Zhang Xuecheng also used shi to explain the evolution of the Dao 道 (Way) in history. True to the spirit of his age, Zhang historicized the Dao to a point dangerously close to the borderline

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of his Confucian faith. In his conception, as the Dao gradually evolved in history, it took forms in human society through all kinds of institutional developments—political, social, economic, and cultural. It was a process of evolution in the sense that the Dao began in the simplest form of the family (“three persons living together in one house”), and then grew more and more complex with the increase of population and the ever-increasing differentiations of social functions. What particularly interests us here, however, is how Zhang brings “impersonal forces” to bear on this evolutionary process. The emergence of many great institutions in pre- Confucian antiquity, the above- discussed “feudal system” among them, marks the earliest breakthrough in the evolution of the Dao. According to the Confucian tradition, these institutions were created by a long line of sage-rulers ending with the Duke of Zhou, for whom Confucius showed unbounded admiration. Like Liu Zongyuan before him, Zhang argues against this traditional Great Men theory, but in a more systematic and sophisticated way. In his view, even with “sagely wisdom” as enormous as that of the Duke of Zhou’s, the Duke could not have accomplished so much had it not been for the fact that he happened to live in the times when all necessary conditions converged to make such institutional creations possible. As aptly expressed by David S. Nivison, “A sage cannot ‘create’ just anything. What he achieves is strictly limited by the possibilities of the historical moment.”45 In his discussion of ancient institutions, Zhang invariably attributes their origins to historical situations (shi) that he describes as “inevitable.” But he goes beyond Liu to suggest that these inevitable historical situations or conditions arise, ultimately, from “the daily activities in human relations” (renlun riyong 人倫日用) of the unreflective common people, which he identifies as none other than the Dao itself. This is why he says that only by “learning from the common people” can the sage seek to know the Dao.46 This idea is not exactly new in the Confucian tradition. Nevertheless, Zhang is certainly the first Confucian thinker to apply it to the study of history, thereby making more explicit what he means by “inevitable historical situations.” From the middle of the seventeenth century on, Chinese historiography underwent a significant change due partly to the rise of evidential scholarship and partly to external factors that cannot be discussed here. For our purpose here, I wish only to mention three impor tant developments. First, historians moved beyond political history and their research branched out in all directions. Second, they tended to focus their attention on special topics and problems, and began to present their findings in a protomonographic form. I say “protomonographic” because their favorite medium of scholarly communication was the highly condensed “note,” which was capable of being developed into modern monographs or dissertations. As a matter of fact, many twentieth-century Chinese historians have indeed used these “notes” as starting points for their monographic research. The leading authority on Chinese religious history, Chen Yuan 陳垣 (1880–1971), once made the interesting analogy that an insightful

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“note” by a Qing scholar may be compared to a spoonful of milk powder, with which boiling water will make a full cup of milk.47 Third, the philological turn during the early Qing made scholars increasingly aware of the historical changes of language. A central concern common to both classicists and historians was to discover the changing meanings of words and terms from the times of Confucius down through the centuries. As a result, scholars’ horizons were broadened, research was specialized, and historical sense was sharpened. Both Wang’s and Zhang’s ideas about historical changes must be understood in light of these intellectual reorientations. Among practicing historians, there was also a growing interest in the origins, evolution, or changes of par ticular aspects of Chinese civilization, in realms as diverse as kinship systems, religious rituals and beliefs, philosophical ideas, civil ser vice examinations, poetry, art, music, printing, and foot binding, to give only a few examples. Some (such as Zhao Yi 趙翼, 1727–1814) even ventured to offer general observations on patterns of change in longer or shorter historical periods and explore their possible causes. None of us will probably go so far as Liang Qichao and assert that “the Qing scholars’ pursuit of knowledge was based solely on the inductive method and a scientific spirit.”48 Nevertheless, it is undeniable that some of the impor tant elements of modern (Western) historical scholarship were beginning to emerge in Qing evidential research. It is probably safe to conclude that on the eve of the coming of the West, Chinese historiography reached its own peak, both conceptually and methodologically. It cannot be purely accidental that at exactly the same time, in the last years of the eighteenth century, Zhao Yi, in his Nianershi zhaji 廿二史劄記 (Notes on Twenty-two Histories, Shanghai: Shanghai guji, 1995 [1795]), proposed a fundamentally new way of reading Chinese history, while Zhang Xuecheng, in his Wenshi tongyi 文史通義 (General Principles of Literature and History), developed theories and ideas about history in a systematic fashion. To the best of my judgment, Zhang’s is the only work in the long Chinese intellectual tradition truly worthy of the name “philosophy of history” in its several senses. The significance of Zhao and Zhang in the history of modern historiography is well summed up by E. G. Pulleyblank in his part of the introduction to Historians of China and Japan: in the former “we find a man who could see beyond the isolated details and make the kind of inductive generalizations about trends of social and institutional history that modern historians seek to establish.” On the other hand, the latter propounded “general ideas about the nature and meaning of history which for the first time tried to break out of the traditional mould and approached a conception more like our modern one” (7). Even as late as the eighteenth century, however, when Chinese historiography came closer to its counterpart in the West, as shown in the cases of Zhao Yi and Zhang Xuecheng, there is still no evidence that Chinese historians ever conceived of history as a process of linear progress toward some definite end. In other words, no Hegel, Marx, Spengler, or Toynbee can be found in the Chinese

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tradition. It is true that Liu Zongyuan, Wang Fuzhi, and Zhang Xuecheng all developed the idea that the Dao evolved in history. Yet a closer scrutiny shows that none of them conceived of the Dao in terms of Hegel’s Geist, which uses “history” to realize its own end. On the contrary, the Dao really does nothing and its evolution depends entirely on the work of Man, especially the sages, for all Chinese historians still believed in the fundamental truth first discovered by Confucius that “It is Man who is capable of broadening the Dao. It is not the Dao that is capable of broadening Man” (Analects 15.29). As shown above, Chinese historians were not wholly unaware of the operation of “impersonal forces” in history. They also recognized the existence of “historical trends” or “patterns of change” in the past. However, when they ventured generalizations, these generalizations were invariably limited in time and confined to a par ticular aspect. It never occurred to them that it was their business to establish “universal historical laws” or theorize about the entire process of human history. Deeply influenced by the cosmology of the Yijing 易經 (Classic of Changes), it was one of their “absolute presuppositions” that the historical process would never be complete. Every educated person in traditional China knew that the last hexagram in the Changes is called “Before Completion” (weiji 未濟): “Things cannot exhaust themselves. Hence there follows, at the end, the hexagram of ‘Before Completion.’ ”49 The idea of “end of history” in both its senses was simply inconceivable to the mind of the traditional Chinese historian. In this connection, Wang Fuzhi, whose historical ideas are primarily based on the cosmology of the Changes, may be called back to the witness stand. As succinctly summed up by Ian McMorran: One can only appreciate how a trend in shi (condition) works by a thorough analysis of the various factors which constitute it. . . . Such a trend, however, is not necessarily irreversible; only change itself is inevitable. With the constant evolution of the universe, conditions are constantly changing, too, but the manner of their change is neither predetermined nor absolutely inevitable. Man must do what he can to influence it.50 Needless to say, what Wang thought about the universe applies with equal validity to history. The central importance of human agency in Chinese historical thought leaves little room for a thoroughgoing determinism of any kind. The lack of an impulse to speculate on the whole process of history on the part of Chinese historians makes it rather difficult for us to assert with any degree of definiteness whether Chinese historical thought is linear or cyclical. There is a general tendency among Western scholars to put China on the cyclical side largely because of the great popularity of the idea of “dynastic cycle,” which, as far as I can see, is a highly misleading term. Even in the realm of political history, there has been an unmistakable trend among Confucian scholars since the Song dynasty to make the claim that their own dynasty surpassed the previ-

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ous ones in certain aspects. Yang Liansheng has proposed to characterize this mentality as “dynastic competition,” which implies “progress” in a limited sense. With regard to material life and social customs, the T’ang institutional historian Du You 杜佑 (735–812) stated in no uncertain terms that the Chinese had progressed from barbarism in high antiquity to a highly civilized way of life in his own day.51 In philosophy, Huang Zongxi 黃宗羲 (1610–1695) also said that the Ming was by far superior to earlier dynasties.52 Very often, we find the same historians holding a cyclical view on one occasion and the idea of linear development on another, Sima Qian included. In the Chinese case, however, progress does not necessarily imply irreversibility. Nor does the process of evolution presuppose “universal laws” or a specific “end.” In this context, I would like to suggest that the difficulties in applying the distinction between “progress” and “cycle” to Chinese historical thought may extend just as well to all the long- established Western dichotomies such as “the universal versus the par ticular,” “objectivity versus moral judgment,” “explanation versus interpretation,” or “history versus chronicle.” From Hegel to modern sinologists, Chinese historiography as a whole has been consistently described, when compared with that of the West, as being mainly concerned with “facts” and lacking “opinion or reasoning” (Hegel) or “the kind of abstract thinking required for reaching a synthesis.”53 I choose not to respond directly to this kind of judgment here because it would take a great deal more “reasoning” or “abstract thinking” than I can possibly afford in this context. But I must say it does have some basis in fact and cannot be lightly brushed aside as another Western “prejudice.” To bring my reflections to a close, I wish to relate this allegedly negative feature of Chinese historiography to some other points raised in Burke’s paper, such as the West’s preoccupation with epistemology and causal explanation. Yüeh-lin Chin (Jin Yuelin 金岳霖) (1896–1984), a noted Chinese philosopher thoroughly trained in Western philosophy and logic, made a rough comparison between Chinese and Western philosophy. In his view, “One of the features characteristic of Chinese philosophy is the underdevelopment of what might be called logico- epistemological consciousness.” As a result, there was also a lack of systematic development of science. Moreover, the emphasis in Chinese philosophy on “the unity of Heaven and Man” (“Heaven” here perhaps means more “nature” than “the supernatural”) also prevented the Chinese from developing a Baconian attitude toward the natural world.54 I believe Chin’s characterization of Chinese philosophy applies mutatis mutandis to Chinese historiography. As Burke points out, the early origin of “cause” in Greek historical writing indicates that “the Western ideal of a historiography modeled on the natural sciences is an old one.”55 For simplicity, I would take both epistemology and causal explanation as ultimately rooted in what is usually referred to as “theoretical reason” in Western culture. Thus, the so- called lack of reasoning or lack of abstract thinking, quoted above, can be understood as resulting from the

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underdevelopment of “theoretical or speculative reason” in the Chinese tradition. I emphasize the word “underdevelopment” advisedly, for underdevelopment is not the same as total absence. If we look at Chinese philosophy, especially Neo- Confucian philosophy, instead of Chinese historiography, we can also find a great deal of abstract reasoning even though it still pales before its Western counterpart. According to my own reading, traditional Chinese historians were equally concerned with why a par ticular event of some historical significance happened as it did. Sima Qian’s inclusion of Jia Yi’s essay, “Guo Qin lun” 過秦論 (The Faults of Qin) at the end of the “Basic Annals of the First Emperor of Qin” (Qin Shihuang benji) is but one example showing that the Grand Historian was looking for the “causes” of the fall of the Qin Empire. By and large, however, no systematic attempt was made to theorize about “ultimate causes” or search for “general laws” in history as such. In contrast to Western theorists of history, nor was the Chinese historian disposed to develop a systematic theory out of an impor tant historical observation, due perhaps to his rather underdeveloped “theoretical reason.” For example, the importance of the economic basis to moral consciousness and social order had long been emphasized by Chinese historians, as clearly shown in Ban Gu’s “Shihuo zhi” 食貨志 (Treatise on Food and Money) in the Hanshu 漢書 (History of the Former Han Dynasty).56 Nevertheless, a theoretical development along the lines of The German Ideology (1846) by Marx and Engels was not even dreamed of. Perhaps there is some truth in Karl Mannheim’s suggestion that “in Germany there has always existed a tendency to go to extremes in pushing logical arguments to their ultimate conclusions.”57 As far as I can see, this seems to be a general feature characteristic of Western thought not unrelated to its fully developed “theoretical reason.” But the development of “theoretical reason” in historiography has its own high cost as well. It tends not only to proliferate one theory after another, but also, at times, to be pushed by its own inner logic to attempt to create a grand system of this or that kind with pretension to universal validity. Chinese historians in the twentieth century have been primarily captives of Western grand theories. The time has indeed come for them to be liberated from this century-long captivity. There can be no question that “theoretical reason” deserves to be developed in Chinese historiography, not to try another grand theory, but to reach meaningful synthesis—in whatever manageable research topics—without doing injustice to the nature of the source material, which necessarily varies from case to case. The noted Russian historian Aaron I. Gurevich, very recently freed from the straitjacket of what he calls “historiography” (which is, of course, of Western origin), has this message to offer: It seems to me that all these considerations imply the necessity of elaborating an epistemology specific to history. In contrast to historiography, which is now discredited, the specific epistemology of history suggested

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here need not create a single universally-applicable framework. Instead of a single system applied from without to the infinitely varied materials of history, we suggest an ad hoc hermeneutical method that will develop within the process of research itself. This method should be based both on the par ticular historical sources being studied and the analytic methods being used.58 With this wise counsel, my reflections rest.

notes 1.

Peter Burke, “Western Historical Thinking in a Global Perspective: 10 Theses,” in Western Historical Thinking: An Intercultural Debate, ed. Jörn Rüsen (New York: Berghahn, 2002), 15–30.

2.

E. H. Carr, What Is History? (New York: Macmillan, 1962), 145–146.

3.

Burke, “Western Historical Thinking,” 18.

4.

This view has been expressed in many Chinese journal articles. It can also be found in a general preface to the Guoxue dashi congshu 國學大師叢書. See, for example, Guo Qiyong 郭齊勇 and Wang Xuequn 汪學群, Qian Mu pingzhuan 錢穆評傳 (Nanchang: Baihuazhou wenyi chubanshe, 1995), esp. Zhang Dainian 張岱年, general preface, 1–4.

5.

Herbert Butterfield, The Origins of History (New York: Eyre Methuen, 1981), 13.

6.

Charles  S. Gardner, Chinese Traditional Historiography (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard

7.

Hu Shih, “The Scientific Spirit and Method in Chinese Philosophy,” in The Chinese

University Press, 1961), 3. Mind: Essentials of Chinese Philosophy and Culture, ed. Charles A. Moore (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1967), 130–131. 8.

D. W. Y. Kwok, Scientism in Chinese Thought, 1900–1950 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1965), 28–29; Charlotte Furth, Ting Wen- chiang: Science and China’s New Culture (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1970), 13–14.

9.

Arthur E. Wright, “On the Uses of Generalization in the Study of Chinese History,” in Generalization in the Writing of History, ed. Louis Gottschaulk (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963), 47.

10.

Peter Novick, That Noble Dream: The “Objectivity Question” and the American Historical

11.

Novick, That Noble Dream, 628.

12.

Ying-shih Yü, “Changing Concepts of National History in Twentieth- Century China,”

Profession (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 589.

in Conceptions of National History: Proceedings of Nobel Symposium 78, ed. Erik Lönnroth, Karl Molin, and Ragnar Björk (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1994), 157–159. 13.

Teng Ssu-yü, “Sima Qian and Herodotus: A Comparative Study,” Bulletin of the Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica (Tapei), no. 28 (December 1956): 445–463.

14.

Arnaldo Momigliano, The Classical Foundations of Modem Historiography (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), 42.

314 15.

r e fle ct ions on c h ine s e h is tor ic a l t h inking Fung Yu-lan, A History of Chinese Philosophy, trans. Derk Bodde (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1953), 2:81.

16.

Gu Jiegang 顧頡剛, Shilin zazhi 史林雜誌 (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1963), 226–233.

17.

Arnoldo Momigliano, “Tradition and the Classical Historian,” in Essays in Ancient and

18.

Momigliano, Classical Foundations, 30.

19.

Sima Qian 司馬遷, Shiji (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1973), 2:509.

Modern Historiography (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1982), 163.

20. Qian Zhongshu 錢鍾書, Guanzhui bian 管錐編 (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1979), 1:252. 21.

Burton Watson, Ssu-ma Ch’ien: Grand Historian of China (New York: Columbia University Press, 1958), 66.

22. Charles William Fornara, The Nature of History in Ancient Greece and Rome (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983), 47. 23. Ying-shih Yü, “Some Preliminary Observations on the Rise of Ch’ing Confucian Intellectualism,” Tsing Hua Journal of Chinese Studies, n.s., 10 (1975): 105–146; Donald  R. Kelley, Foundations of Modern Historical Scholarship, Language, Law and History in the French Renaissance (New York: Columbia University Press, 1970). 24. Hu Shi, “The Responsibility and Methodology of Evidential Research” (in Chinese), in Hu Shizhi xiansheng nianpu changbian chugao 胡適之先生年譜長編初稿, ed. Hu Songping 胡頌平 (Taipei: Lianjing, 1984), 5:1933–1942. 25. Paul Demiéville, “Chang Hsüeh- ch’eng and His Historiography,” in Historians of China and Japan, ed. W. G. Beasley and E. G. Pulleyblank (London: Oxford University Press, 1961), 184–185; David S. Nivison, The Life and Thought of Chang Hsüeh- ch’eng (1738–1801) (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1966), 291–293; Yü Ying-shih 余英時, “Chang Hsüeh- ch’eng and Collingwood: A Comparative Study of Their Historical Ideas” (in Chinese), in Lun Dai Zhen yu Zhang Xuecheng 論戴震與章學誠 (Hong Kong: Longmen, 1976), 197–242. 26. Butterfield, The Origins of History, 140. 27. Kwang- chih Chang, Shang Civilization (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1980), 34. 28. James Legge, The Ch’un Ts’ew with the Tso Chuen: The Chinese Classics (Hong Kong: HKU Press, 1960), 5:290–291. 29. Momigliano, Classical Foundations, 20. 30. Nivison, Chang Hsüeh- ch’eng, 101–104. 31.

Fung Yu-lan, History of Chinese Philosophy, 1:32.

32. In chapter 85 of the Romance, a poem explicitly says that the novelist follows the rules of praise and blame as laid down by the Neo- Confucian philosopher Zhu Xi (1130–1200). For a detailed study of the novel, see C. T. Hsia, The Classic Chinese Novel (New York: Columbia University Press, 1968), chap. 2, “The Romance of the Three Kingdoms”; Andrew Plaks, The Four Masterworks of the Ming Novel (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1987), chap. 5, “San-kuo chih yen-i: Limitations of Valor.” 33.

Watson, Ssu-ma Ch’ien, 30.

34. Sima Guang, Zizhi tongjian 資治通鑑 (Beijing: Guji, 1956), 5:1934–1935.

r e f le c t ions on c h ine s e h istoric al t h inking 35.

315

Liu Zengfu 柳曾符 and Liu Dingsheng 柳定生, eds., Liu Yizheng shixue lunwen ji 柳詒徵 先生論文集 (Shanghai: Shanghai guji, 1991), preface, p. 4.

36. Michael Walzer, Interpretation and Social Criticism (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1987), 61. 37.

Lien-sheng Yang, “The Organization of Chinese Official Historiography: Principles and Methods of the Standard Histories from T’ang Through the Ming Dynasty,” in Beasley and Pulleyblank, Historians of China and Japan, 50. For an authoritative account of the so- called court historians in Tang China, see Denis Twitchett, The Writing of Official History Under the T’ang (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992).

38. Watson, Ssu-ma Ch’ien, 61. 39. Ibid., 144–150. 40. Lien-sheng Yang, “ Toward a Study of Dynastic Configurations in Chinese History,” in Studies in Chinese Institutional History (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1961), 12f. 41.

Fornara, Nature of History, 78.

42. E. G. Pulleyblank, “Chinese Historical Criticism: Liu Chih- chi and Ssu-ma Kuang,” in Beasley and Pulleyblank, Historians of China and Japan, 163. 43. Jo-shui Chen, Liu Tsung-yuan and Intellectual Change in T’ang China, 773–819 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 96. It should be noted, however, that before Liu, several writers in the mid- eighth century had already proposed to see history as a long-term impersonal process with patterns and trends. See David McMullen, “Historical and Literary Theory in the Mid-Eighth Century,” in Perspectives on the T’ang, ed. Arthur F. Wright and Denis Twitchett (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1973), 321–326. 44. Ian McMorran, “Wang Fu- chih and the Neo- Confucian Tradition,” in The Unfolding of Neo- Confucianism, ed. Wm. Theodore de Bary (New York: Columbia University Press, 1975), 455–457; On- cho Ng, “A Tension in Ch’ing Thought: Historicism in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth- Century Chinese Thought,” Journal of the History of Ideas 54 (1993): 568. 45. Nivison, Chang Hsüeh- ch’eng, 145. 46. Zhang Xuecheng, Wenshi tongyi 文史通義 (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1956), 34–40. 47. Chen Zhichao 陳智超, ed., Chen Yuan laiwang shuxin ji 陳垣來往書信集 (Shanghai: Guji, 1990), 686. 48. Liang Ch’i- ch’ao, Intellectual Trends in the Ch’ing Period, trans. Immanuel  C.  Y. Hsü (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1959), 70. 49. Richard Wilhelm, The I Ching or Book of Changes, trans. Cary E. Baynes (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1977), 714. 50. McMorran, “Wang Fu- chih,” 457. 51.

Yang Liansheng 楊聯陞, “Chaodai jian bisai” 朝代間比賽, in Yang Liansheng lunwen ji 楊聯陞論文集 (Beijing: CASS, 1992), 126–138. Du You’s remark is quoted on p. 133.

52. Huang Tsung-hsi, The Records of Ming Scholars, ed. Julia Ching (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1987), 46.

316 53.

r e fle ct ions on c h ine s e h is tor ic a l t h inking G. W. F. Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of History (New York: Dover, 1956), 135; Étienne Balazs, “History as a Guide to Bureaucratic Practice,” in Chinese Civilization and Bureaucracy (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1964), 129.

54. Yüeh-lin Chin, “Chinese Philosophy,” Social Science in China, no. 1 (1981): 83–93. 55.

Burke, “Western Historical Thinking,” 24.

56. Nancy Lee Swann, Food and Money in Ancient China: The Earliest Economic History of China to A.D. 25 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1950), 114–115; 132–134. 57.

Karl Mannheim, “Conservative Thought,” in Essays on Sociology and Social Psychology (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1953), 79.

58. Aaron I. Gurevich, “The Double Responsibility of the Historian,” in The Social Responsibility of the Historian, ed. François Bédarida (Oxford: Berghahn, 1994), 80–81.

16. Modern Chronological Biography and the Conception of Historical Scholarship

C

hronological biography (nianpu) is a special form of Chinese historical writing. Leaving aside the lost Zibian nianpu 自編年譜 (Autobiographical Compilation) of Bai Juyi 白居易 (772–864), this form of writing can be traced to the Song dynasty (960–1279) beginning with the chronological biographies of Han Yu 韓愈 (768–824) and Liu Zongyuan 柳宗元 (773–819). In the one thousand years since, thousands of nianpu, including chronological autobiographies, have been produced in China. More than twelve hundred chronological biographies are listed in Li Shitao’s Zhongguo lidai mingren nianpu mulu (Bibliography of Chronological Biographies of Famous Figures by Dynasty).1 Today, new chronological biographies are published almost every year in both mainland China and Taiwan. Clearly, chronological biography is still full of vitality in Chinese historiography. Although it originated much earlier, chronological biography flourished during the Qing dynasty (1644–1911). Liang Qichao 梁啟超 (1871–1929) points out that “Qing Confucian scholars were so excellent at the writing of chronological biography that they outdistanced such writings from earlier times.”2 Liang’s judgment is well grounded. The Evidential Research Movement of the Qing dynasty expanded the Chinese conception of history. As a result, chronological biography gradually assumed an independent existence instead of remaining just an appendix to collected works, and became an integral component of Chinese historiography. Zhang Xuecheng 章學誠 (1738–1801) discusses

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the characteristics of chronological biography in the postscript to “Han Liu er xiansheng nianpu” 韓柳二先生年譜 (Chronological Biographies of Han Yu and Liu Zongyuan) in his Wenshi tongyi (General Principles of Literature and History). He argues: The form of chronological biography began in the Song Period, when scholars took the opportunity to edit previous writings to chronologize their authors’ time and lives so that we may understand why they said things as they actually did. This is what is called the learning of knowing people against their times. Although a literary collection is only the history of one person, it nevertheless provides evidence for the history of a family, a state, or a dynasty. So it must be done with great care.3 He further states: Compilation of the chronological biography of the literary writer did not occur until the Song dynasty. It has proven quite useful not only to the study of a writer’s collected works in par tic u lar, but also generally helpful to our understanding of past writers against the times in which they lived and wrote. Writings are done for the purpose of establishing one’s ideas. However, different ideas were expressed in different times, and even the same idea will be greatly different in meaning because of time differences. . . . Earlier generations did not understand the meaning of using literary writings as history, so the methods were not perfected. Therefore, we must await profound scholars to explore and discuss the methods with their best efforts. Only then are we able to understand a person’s life from the beginning to the end.4 What merits attention here is Zhang Xuecheng’s emphasis on the concept of time. This means that we should not only know who said what, but also make clear when and under what circumstances those words were written. This new point of view arose from a highly developed historical sense. Scholars before Zhang Xuecheng obviously possessed this concept to a certain degree, but it was not manifested in a clearly defined form, at least not on the fully conscious level as was Zhang Xuecheng’s. As a result, the rise of chronological biography shows that Chinese historiography from the Song to Qing was becoming progressively more mature. Since 1911, the writing of chronological biography has developed even further. Yuxisheng nianpu huijian (A Chronological Biography of Li Shangyin; 1963) by Zhang Caitian and Zhang Shizhai nianpu (A Chronological Biography of Zhang Xuecheng; 1922) by Hu Shi 胡適 (1891–1962) are both famous works. Following the style of Zhu Heling 朱鶴齡 (1606–1683) and Feng Hao 馮浩 (1719–1801) of the Qing dynasty, Zhang’s work can be regarded as bringing

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Qing biographical writing to its methodological perfection. What was original in Zhang’s judging of Li Shangying’s subjective intentions against chronological objectivity was his application of the method of “carefully examining the poet’s life year by year, and probing his inner world with great depth.”5 This was a “breakthrough” in terms of the writing of chronological biography.6 In style and form, Hu Shi’s work broke new ground. He believes that “the chronological biography is a major evolution of Chinese biographical writing.” 7 He also applied chronological biography to the study of intellectual history. Liang Qichao commented quite justly that Hu’s work “not only outlined the academic accomplishments of the subject but also summarized the trends of the time.”8 Therefore, the impact of Hu’s work became more extensive than that of Zhang’s. Later, the emergence in China of many chronological biographies of scholars and thinkers was, by and large, encouraged by the success of Hu’s work. Nevertheless, Hu Shi holds that China’s biographical literature was less developed than that of Eu rope. In 1914, he summarized the differences between biographical writings produced in China and the West, “biographies of our country depict only the character of a person, while biographical writing in the West not only depicts a person’s character but also his character development.”9 In 1932, he wrote in Lingxiu rencai de laiyuan 領袖人才的來源 (The Sources of Leadership): The development of European biographical literature was most complete. Impor tant figures of history were the subject of detailed biographies. One biography was often as long as several hundred thousand words in length, and there were also cases when scores of biographies were written about a single person. . . . Biographical writing in China was underdeveloped. As a result, Chinese historical figures were usually made known through inscriptions on stelae or biographical entries in official histories. As historical sources, most Chinese biographies were unreliable and the readable ones were very few. There were absolutely no inspiring and soul-stirring biographies in China.10 The few lively and readable biographies and autobiographies identified by Hu Shi included such works as Zhuzi nianpu 朱子年譜 (A Chronological Biography of Zhu Xi) by Wang Maohong 王懋竑 (1668–1741), Yangming nianpu 陽明年譜 (A Chronological Biography of Wang Yangming) by Qian Dehong 錢德洪 (1496–1574), and Bingta menghen lu 病榻夢痕録 (Record of Dreams on a Sickbed: A Self-Edited Chronological Biography) by Wang Huizu 汪輝祖 (1730– 1807). Generally speaking, this overall impression of Hu’s is well grounded. Sinologists in the West more or less share the same view. For example, in one of his articles on China’s biographical writing, Denis Twitchett maintains

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that although there is a wealth of Chinese biographical data, they are almost all stereotyped into an epitaph-memorial and seldom reveal a subject’s personality. Twitchett notes that a reader would be disappointed if he read Chinese biographies by the standards of Western biography. Like Hu Shi, Twitchett appreciates the style of chronological biography that had developed since the Song dynasty. He believes that this style of writing not only provides accurate dates but also meets the Western demand to emphasize “the life and the times” of the subject. However, he also faults the style of chronological biography. To him, the advantage of chronological biography is its accuracy in dates, but the disadvantage is that it could not provide a connected narrative of events in the style of Western biographies. He concludes, “The nien-p’u [nianpu] is not so much a biography as a collection of notes for a biography.”11 Twitchett’s critique is valid with respect to most Chinese chronological biography. However, his assertion that because Chinese chronological biographies could not present a “continuous narration,” they are not so much biographies as they are collections of notes for biographies, raises a serious question. If we exclude nianpu from the field of biographical writing, China would have an even poorer collection of biographical literature. In this connection, it is necessary to explain the similarities and differences between the Chinese and Western traditions of biographical writing. Biographical writing in the West indeed has a long tradition. Geschichte der Autobiographie (History of Autobiography), written by Georg Misch (1878–1965) of Germany, is generally acknowledged as the most authoritative work in the field. Misch began to work on this book in 1904. By 1965, when he died, he had only reached as far as Alighieri Dante (1265–1321). By then, there were already four thousand pages in the four volumes published in eight parts. The extraordinary richness of data in antiquity, as reflected in this book, does not mean that autobiographical writing had long ago developed as a tradition because Westerners had a consciousness of “self” in the very beginning of their history. As a matter of fact, there were few Western works in the classical period that could be called autobiographies by modern standards. Information on autobiographies dating before the fourth century b.c.e., collected by Misch, comes mostly from poems that accidentally reveal the background of the subject. Some specialists in ancient Greek biographical literature even suggest that the Greek practice of self-narration had been adopted from ancient Persia or from somewhere else in the Orient.12 Until the medieval period (500–1400), independent and comprehensive autobiographies were very limited in number—probably no more than ten.13 Strictly speaking, the practice of biographical writing (including autobiography) in the West started in the eighteenth century. Hu Shi’s view of a highly developed biographical literature in Europe most likely refers to the works of the modern age. Prior to modern times, Chinese biographical writing does not seem to have been inferior to its European counterpart. The following works were definitely

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autobiographies: “Zixu” 自序(Dual Biography) and “Bao Ren-an shu” 報任安書 (In Response to Ren-an) by Sima Qian 司馬遷 (145–86 b.c.e.), “Xuzhuan” 敘傳 (Genealogical Sketch) by Ban Gu 班固 (32–92), “Ziji pian” 自紀篇 (Self-Sketch) by Wang Chong 王充 (27–97), Zixu 自敘 (Autobiography) by Ge Hong 葛洪 (284–364), and Zixu 自敘 (Autobiography) by Liu Zhiji 劉知幾 (661–721). Autobiographical writing in China not only originated earlier than in the West, where Confessions by St. Augustine (354–430) is generally regarded as the earliest form of autobiographical writing, but also had developed a tradition, as Yu Xin 庾信 (513–581) points out in his rhapsody “Ai Jiangnan fu” (Lament for the South): “In the past, Huan Tan’s career and Du Yu’s life story were both described in the autobiographical accounts appended to their scholarly works. In Pan Yue’s essays, he began with recounting the family tradition ( jiafeng 家風), and also in Lu Ji’s rhapsodies, he began with recounting the ancestral virtues (shide 世德).”14 Some would argue that Chinese autobiographical writing emphasized “family tradition” and “ancestral virtues,” but not the subject himself. In fact, the same phenomena occurred in early European autobiographical writing. In ancient Greece and Rome, since the upper classes were linked by kinship, family status and family genealogy were matters of serious concern. The heroes of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey claimed to be sons of famous families. The Romans also prided themselves on their “ancestral virtues.” In societies such as ancient Greece or Rome, autobiographical sources were embodied in poetry and prose, which hardly gave priority to the subject’s character. St. Augustine’s Confessions perhaps comes nearest to modern autobiography; however, there is still controversy among specialists over the nature of the work, that is, whether or not it should be regarded as an autobiography. In the Confessions, St. Augustine devoted half of the book to an account of his past, and yet this part did not address his main purpose: to articulate a Christian worldview. Therefore, in respect to autobiography, Confessions has an inherent limitation.15 Classical Western autobiography faced the same situation as did biographical writing. The limitations of biography and tablet inscriptions in China are also found in Western works. The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers by Diogenes Laetius (c. 412–328 b.c.e.) is an impor tant source for the study of the history of ancient philosophy. However, it contains many careless mistakes, contradictions, and some unbelievable descriptions.16 Moreover, numerous epitaphs from Roman gravestones have survived to modern times, the writing of which, in most cases, followed almost the same pattern, and seldom, if ever, reflected the achievements and ideas of the dead.17 As Peter Brown points out: In so many ancient and medieval biographies, for instance, we meet heroes described in terms of their essentials, ideal qualities. It is almost as if they had no past: even their childhood is described only in terms of omens of the future “peak” of their life—St.  Ambrose plays at being a bishop, St. Cuthbert refused to turn cartwheels. We meet them full face:

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it is as if they had sloughed off, in their past, all that did not point directly to the image of perfection to which they conformed.18 Brown’s passage will immediately remind those who are familiar with Chinese traditional biographical literature of the stories about “prodigies.” It is thus clear that before modern times, differences between Chinese and Western biographical writing were not as great as once imagined. There are, of course, differences, but they are only cultural differences. It is clearly an overstatement to say that Western biography was lively and reliable from its very beginnings, while Chinese biography was always stereotyped and unreliable. Western biographical writings since the eighteenth century have been truly lively and detailed, but not necessarily always reliable. For example, the tale had been told for over one hundred years that George Washington (1732–1799), the first president of the United States, when he was a child, cut his father’s cherry tree with a hatchet and admitted it afterward without any hesitation. This tale first appeared in Mason L. Weems’ The Life of Washington published in 1806. But it has since been discovered that the story was invented.19 It was mentioned previously that chronological biography is a relatively new form of biographical writing in traditional Chinese historiography. This was the result of efforts by Song scholars who used chronicles as the vehicle for writing the “history of one person.” Therefore, the appearance of chronological biography can be regarded as a breakthrough in Chinese historiography. Zhang Xuecheng’s point is well taken when he emphasized that chronological biography “can enhance our understanding of a person’s character as well as his world” (youbuyu zhi ren lun shi zhi xue 有補於知人論世之學). This development in Chinese historiography cannot be seen easily from the viewpoint of modern Western historiography. This is because the understanding of “chronicle” is quite different in China than in the West. In China, forms of historical writing included both biography and chronicle. Neither of these two forms could be ignored, though each of them had its advantages and disadvantages. This became generally settled ever since Zizhi tongjian 資治通鑑 (The Comprehensive Mirror for Aid in Government) by Sima Guang 司馬光 (1019–1086) of the Song dynasty, developed the “chronicle” as a form of historical writing to a new height. This work not only maintained the strong points of ancient chronicles, i.e., “recording events in every possible way” (bei zai qi shi 備載其事) and “avoiding unnecessary repetition in wording” (yu wu chong chu 語無重出), but also avoided their shortcomings, namely, “leaving out nothing and failing to see the whole picture” (lun qi xi ye, ze jie wu yi; yu qi cu ye, ze qiu shan shi qi 論其細也, 則纖介無遺; 言其粗也, 則丘山是棄).20 As a result, when we read The Comprehensive Mirror for Aid in Government, we do not feel that it fails to narrate events continuously or to explain their cause and effect. The West has taken another approach toward the chronicle. The theory and method of modern Western historiography was basically established in the

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eighteenth century. Before that, the chronicle reflected the orthodox school of historiography belonging to the medieval period. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, British scientists such as Sir Isaac Newton (1642–1726), philosophers such as John Locke (1632–1704), and men of letters such as Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) all regarded the medieval chronicles as classics indispensable for the education of the upper classes. In addition to chronicles, “annals” constituted another branch of Western historical writing. The “annals” originated in British monasteries of the sixth century. Abbots in monasteries created calendars every year. Later, they kept records of major events on the calendar, which thus became a tradition. This practice passed from British to European monasteries in the seventh century, and subsequently, annals were produced in all Western European monasteries. Those annals today are still impor tant sources for the study of medieval history. Differences between chronicles and monastery annals are generally held to be that the former are universal history, and the latter, regional history. In the late nineteenth century, some scholars still regarded the chronicle as integral history, since it reflected the whole course of an event from beginning to end in uniform style, while the annals consisted of nothing but data for the use of historians, somewhat similar to China’s imperial gazettes.21 However, in the modern Western conception of history, the chronicle as a form of historical writing has been generally repudiated. Benedetto Croce (1866–1952) was perhaps the most severe critic of chronicles. He thought that there was neither spirit nor life in the empty body of a chronicle, for it lacked an inner understanding of a historical event. He argued that “history is a living chronicle, a chronicle is dead history.”22 Croce’s remark was obviously critical, but a bit too abstract, and rather difficult to grasp. James Johnson more recently analyzed the differences between chronicle and historiography by raising three arguments. He notes first that modern historiography gave priority to human affairs, while in the so- called universe of the chronicle, first place was given to nature or even the supernatural. The reason for this was that Western historiography was influenced by astrology in ancient times, and then in medieval times it was overshadowed by the theory of “God’s will.” Thus, the so- called universe in the chronicle actually included much that was “cosmic.” His second criticism of the chronicle holds that whereas modern historiography took cause and effect as its central issue, the chronicle explained the changes in human affairs in terms of God’s will, a case in which events in the human world are but epiphenomenal to cosmic events. Finally, Johnson argues that because the chronicle neglected cause and effect in human terms and emphasized the influence of the cosmos, it did not consider the truth or falseness of historical facts, but focused instead on the temporal sequence in which historical events happened. In Johnson’s estimation, the chronicle was merely a chronological table and review; creating a continuous narrative, on the contrary, was no longer a task for the chroniclers to assume.23

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Criticism of traditional Western chronicles by modern Western historians helps explain why sinologists have difficulty in appreciating the Chinese style of the chronicle (including chronological biography). The previously cited criticism by Denis Twitchett that China’s chronicles lacked continuous narration reflects his different cultural heritage. Even  E.  G. Pulleyblank, who admired Sima Guang’s achievements in historical writing, criticized Sima Guang for adopting the annalistic (biannian 編年) form in composing his Comprehensive Mirror for Aid in Government. He states: “The annalistic (pien-nien [biannian]) form which he adopted for history was not new and might even be thought retrograde in comparison to the topical arrangement of the Standard Histories— basic annals, monographs, tables, biographies.”24 As for myself, I do not think that the annalist form could have remained the main form of Chinese historiography; neither do I agree with the argument that the annalist form has completely lost its value as a result of the impact of modern historiography. For example, a book by Karl Ploetz (1819–1881), a famous nineteenth- century German historian, entitled An Epitome of Ancient, Medieval, and Modern History (English translation published in 1883), was a very successful example of the chronicle form of historical writing. After the publication of the original German edition and the English translation, this book enjoyed great popularity and has been reprinted many times. Later, in 1940, William L. Langer (1896– 1977), a professor of modern European history at Harvard University, edited An Encyclopedia of World History. This is also in the chronicle form, and has been revised and reprinted many times as well. Almost everybody engaged in the study of history in the United States has a copy of this book. This shows that historical works in the annalist form are still in great demand and that the annalist form has its modern usage. In China, Guo Tingyi’s 郭廷以 (1903–1975) Taiping tianguo shishi rizhi (Chronicle of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom) and Zhonghua minguo shishi rizhi (Chronicle of the Republic of China) are also useful reference works.25 Although the Chinese annalist form has not been adopted in Western historical writing, I have found that in their works, Western scholars occasionally write special chapters on the life and thought of famous characters along chronological lines. For example, the first chapter of  J.  P. Stern’s A Study of Nietzsche (published by Cambridge University Press in 1979) is entitled “A Chronology of Nietzsche’s Life.” Chronologies of this kind clearly help readers to get to “know historical characters and to understand the world in which they live” (zhi ren lun shi 知人論世). As far as the mainstream of modern Western biographical writing is concerned, however, the concept of the chronicle is not accepted by many Western biographers. This is especially the case in life-history studies, which became popular after the rise of psychohistory, and are largely incompatible with the chronicle form of writing. Psychohistory has so far mainly taken the form of biography. Typical examples are Leonardo da Vinci: A Memory of His Childhood

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(1910) by Sigmund Freud and Thomas Woodrow Wilson (1967), by Sigmund Freud and William C. Bullit. This new practice has not yet been applied in the field of Chinese history, but probably quite a number of historians in both China and the West are ready to try. Once psychohistory becomes common in Chinese biographical writing, our evaluation of chronicles will surely change. I would like to take this opportunity to express some of my own opinions on this project. I am willing to see people trained in psychohistory study Chinese historical figures, but I do not believe that new biographies following psychohistorical perspectives can completely replace the role of chronological biography. In addition, I think that the development of chronological writing will help the study of psychohistory.26 As an example of how chronological biography can provide some impor tant clues for psychohistorians, I presume that Zhang Xuecheng had possibly experienced an identity crisis in his early years, based on Zhang Xuecheng’s own account of his sixteenth through twenty- eighth years contained in Hu Shi’s A Chronological Biography of Zhang Xuecheng. The reason that Western-style psychohistorical biography has not become accepted in chronicle-style writing is because the former arose against a specific cultural background. Ancient Jews believed that the focal point of historical time was kairos, meaning “decisive moment” or “crucial time,” instead of chromos, meaning “chronological time.” The “crucial time” was a major event that took place in the early history of a nation. A crucial event is thought to have a decisive influence on the character of a nation. As a result, it was forever kept in the memory of that nation. Although the event occurred long ago, the freshness is still felt. This is called “contemporaneity.” Sigmund Freud advanced a bold and enlightening view in his famous work Moses and Monotheism, written in his later years and first published in 1939. Based on some ancient legends, he repudiated the account of Moses in the Old Testament and came to the conclusion that Moses was originally an Egyptian. According to Freud, after Moses led the Jews out of Egypt, they killed him. The Jews became remorseful after killing Moses. This event became the “crucial moment” in the national history of the Jews. Hence, a unique religious sentiment was developed from a deep sense of guilt. The national character of the Jews was thus firmly formed, including a strong sense of morality and an indomitable spirit. The later death of Jesus, according to Freud, was a repeat of the death of Moses. Freud’s interpretation touched off many controversies. It raised many problems, especially when considered from the viewpoint of historical evidence. In view of these problems, one commentator said, “this ingenious structure will appear as but a magnificent castle in the air.”27 Freud once hoped that archaeological discoveries would help verify his hypothesis. Unfortunately, nothing has been discovered yet to support it.28 Whether Freud’s hypothesis is correct or not, his point about the importance of the “critical moment” in the minds of ancient Israelites is nevertheless valid. Therefore, some psychologists do recognize the profound significance of Freud’s hypothesis, despite its lack of empirical evidence.

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I am tempted to think that this unique Hebrew concept of time may have served as the cultural background for Freud’s breakthrough in psychoanalysis, especially the theory that early childhood (from birth to five years old) is the “crucial moment” in one’s life.29 If Freud’s psychoanalysis is understood against this par ticular cultural origin and background, then we can treat it only as a hypothesis to be verified, not as a universal scientific truth.30 As a matter of fact, if we take the period before five years old as the “crucial moment” in a person’s life, it would be very difficult to apply psychoanalysis to the study of historical figures because the psychological experience of their childhood is not adequately documented.31 Therefore, in practice, psychohistorians often find it necessary to revise Freud’s theory. In Young Man Luther, Erikson examined Luther’s period of spiritual struggle from his teenage years until his thirties.32 This is comparable to Confucius’s recounting a similar stage in his life as follows: “At fifteen I set my heart upon learning (shiwu er you zhi yu xue 十五而有志於學). At thirty, I had planted my feet firmly on the ground (sanshi er li 三十而立).”33 From the standpoint of historians, we cannot simplify a historical character’s life by focusing solely on his childhood and youth. Moreover, we cannot reduce the level of consciousness to the level of unconsciousness. It should be the task of psychohistorians to explain the connections between different periods of a character’s life, before and after the “crucial moment,” and the inner relation between the conscious and the unconscious. After turning thirty, Confucius experienced further character development. He is reported as saying: “At forty, I no longer suffered from perplexities. At fifty, I knew what was the bidding of Heaven.”34 Such changes, experienced late in life, cannot be ignored by psychohistorians who write biographies. Even if we do not subscribe to the Chinese saying “final judgment comes with nailing down the lid of the coffin” (gaiguan dinglun 蓋棺定論), at least we should give serious consideration to Confucius’s statement that “a man can reach the age of forty or fifty years and still not be famous” (sishi wushi er wu wen yan 四十五十而無聞焉).35 Since Erikson’s work was able to expand psychoanalysis beyond his character’s childhood, there will most likely be future historians continuing to expand the applicability in biographical studies. In this light, the “crucial moment” approach stressed by Western psychohistorians is certainly not the only approach to biographical writing. More specifically, to discover the unconscious in a historical character’s psychological makeup undoubtedly contributes to a better understanding, but there are other ways of “knowing a person.” Surprisingly, Freud himself admitted that “for practical purposes in judging human character, a man’s actions and conscious expressions of thought are in most cases sufficient.” This is what historians usually take as their position.36 Freud’s words actually confi rm the value of biographical writing in general. In the study of historical fi gures where psychoanalysis is used, at least two internal restraints can be found. First, the

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restraint of data: few historical fi gures leave behind psychological data. Second, the restraint of theory: the hypothesis of the “crucial moment” is likely to drive researchers to concentrate their studies exclusively on their subjects’ early psychological experiences, with the inevitable result of neglecting the “career” and “life” that follow these early experiences. I asserted previously that the study of biography through psychoanalysis needs to be developed in China. Because of the restrictions inherent in this approach, however, it cannot be expected to displace other styles of biography, including chronological biography. Having first been baptized by the Evidential Research Movement during the Qing dynasty, and then challenged by modern Western historiography, the writing of chronological biography in China has already matured to a remarkable degree. This is indicated by the fact that chronological biography can present “continuous narration” (lianguan xushi 連貫敘事) perfectly. As an old saying goes: “Although the Zhou is an old state, its mandate is new.” We have good reason to believe that in the field of Chinese historiography, chronological biography will continue to display its considerable vitality.

notes 1.

Li Shitao 李士濤, Zhongguo lidai mingren nianpu mulu 中國歷代名人年譜目録 (Chang-

2.

Liang Qichao, ZJSNXS (Taipei: Zhonghua, 1962), 334.

3.

Zhang Xuecheng, WSTY (Beijing: Guji, 1956), 253.

4.

WSTY, 254.

sha: Shangwu, 1941).

5.

Zhang Caitian 張采田, Yuxisheng nianpu huijian 玉谿生年譜會箋 (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1963).

6.

Wu Piji 吳丕績, “Qianyan” 前言, ibid., 1.

7.

Hu Shi, Zhang Shizhai xiansheng nianpu “Xu” 章實齋先生年譜 “序” (Shanghai: Shangwu,

8.

Liang Qichao, ZJSNXS, 335.

1929), 2. 9.

Hu Shi, Hu Shi liuxue riji 胡適留學日記 (Taipei: Shangwu, 1959), 2:415.

10.

Hu Shi, Hu Shi lunxue jinzhu 胡適論學近著 (Shanghai: Shangwu, 1937), 513–514.

11.

Denis Twitchett, “Chinese Biographical Writing,” in Historians of China and Japan,

12.

Arnaldo Momigliano, The Development of Greek Biography: Four Lectures (Cambridge,

ed. W. G. Beasley and E. G. Pulleybank (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1961), 112–113. Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1971), 37. 13.

Kail Joachim Weintraub, The Value of the Individual: Self and Circumstance in Autobiog-

14.

Yu Xin 庾信, “Ai Jiangnan fu” 哀江南賦, in Yu Zishan ji 庾子山集 (Shanghai: Shangwu,

raphy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), 49. 1935), 65. 15.

Weintraub, The Value of the Individual, 18–48.

328 16.

m oder n c h ronolo g ic a l b io g r a ph y Frederic Copleston, A History of Philosophy, vol. 1 (Garden City,  N.Y.: Image Books, 1962), part 1, pp. 296–297.

17.

Samuel Dill, Roman Society from Nero to Marcus Aurelius (London: Macmillan, 1925), 496–497.

18.

Peter Brown, Augustine of Hippo (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969), 173.

19.

Marcus Cunliffe, introduction to The Life of Washington by Mason Weems (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1962). See also William Hung, Banbu Lunyu zhi tianxia bian, in Hong Ye lunxue ji (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1981), 426.

20. Liu Zhiji, Shitong 史通 (Shanghai: Guji, 1978), 28. 21.

James Westfall Thompson, A History of Historical Writing (New York: Macmillan, 1942), 1:159–160.

22. Benedetto Croce, History: Its Theory and Practice (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1923), 19. 23. James William Johnson, “Chronological Writing: Its Concepts and Development,” History and Theory 2 (1962): 124–145. 24. E. G. Pulleyblank, “Chinese Historical Criticism: Liu Zhiji and Ssu-ma Kuang,” in Beasley and Pulleyblank, Historians of China and Japan, 152. 25. See Guo Tingyi, Taiping tianguo shishi rizhi 太平天國史事日誌 (Taipei: Shangwu, 1963), and Zhonghua minguo shishi rizhi 中華民國史事日誌 (Taipei: Zhongyang yanjiuyuan, 1978 and 1985). 26. Yü Ying-shih 余英時, Lun Dai Zhen yu Zhang Xuecheng 論戴震與章學誠 (Hong Kong: Longmen, 1976), 67. 27. Salo W. Baron, review of Moses and Monotheism, in Psychoanalysis and History, ed. Bruce Mazlish (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1963), 55. 28. Robert Waelder, “Psychoanalysis and History: Application of Psychoanalysis to Historiography,” in The Psychoanalytic Interpretation of History, ed. Benjamin B. Wolman (New York: Basic Books, 1971), 25–27. 29. Philip Rieff, “The Meaning of History and Religion in Freud’s Thought,” in Mazlish, Psychoanalysis and History, 23–44. 30. According to David E. Stannard’s Shrinking History: On Freud and the Failure of Psychohistory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980), the few scholars who applied Freud’s concept to their writings of psychohistory have many problems. Their contribution, at most, is merely hypothesis. However, I now wish to call the reader’s attention to the critical comments on Stannard’s book in Peter Gay, Freud for Historians (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), esp. pp. 213–214.— Author’s note (1993). 31.

Erik Erikson, Insight and Responsibility (New York: Norton, 1964), 47–80.

32. Erik Erikson, Young Man Luther: A Study in Psychoanalysis and History (New York: Norton, 1958), 24. See also Henry Stuart Hughes, History as Art and as Science (New York: Harper and Row, 1964), 59–60. 33.

Arthur Waley, trans., The Analects of Confucius (New York: Vintage, 1938), 88.

34. Ibid., 88. 35.

Ibid., 143.

36. Cushing Strout, “Ego Psychology and the Historian,” History and Theory 3 (1968): 290.

17. The Study of Chinese History

Retrospect and Prospect

H

istory has always been the most glorious of all branches of knowledge in the scholarly tradition of China. It has declined markedly nowadays, however. This decline is not an isolated or unusual phenomenon; it is merely a part of the poverty of the Chinese scholarly world in modern times. Not only natural sciences, but social sciences and the humanities have not had adequate opportunities for development during the last fifty or sixty years. Even in philosophy, a subject that has the most to do with raising the intellectual level of the average educated person, research and instruction have not gone much beyond the rudimentary stage. History is a knowledge of a synthetic and comprehensive nature and must constantly absorb all kinds of sustenance from other disciplines to flourish. It is no wonder that Chinese historiography has withered under these circumstances. Nonetheless, it still stands out in achievement among all the scholarly disciplines in modern China, if only because it has a long and rich tradition to fall back on. The development of modern Chinese historiography has seen the emergence at one time or another of a number of schools, of which two have been particularly influential. The first may be called “the school of historical data,” whose work consists mainly of the collection, analysis, collation, and criticism of the source materials of history. The second one may be called “the school of historical interpretation,” which takes as its central task a systematic interpretation of the entire course of Chinese history. In theory, these two schools have

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each identified themselves with an essential element of modern historical scholarship: the search for historical data lays the foundation of historical study, while interpretation constitutes its superstructure. Without foundation, one cannot begin any historical study, but without a structure, historical study will remain incomplete. As such, historical data and historical interpretation are complementary endeavors: together, they reinforce each other, separated, they work to each other’s detriment. In practice, however, it has been most unfortunate that these two schools have been polarized to the point of mutual exclusion. As a result, the “Data school” accuses the “Interpretation school” of engaging in building castles in the air, whereas the latter mocks the former as seeing only the trees and not the forest. This is not the place to pass judgment on the rights and wrongs of these schools. It is necessary, however, to call attention to some of the unfortunate consequences that continue to flow from their work. An investigation of them is meaningful because it may serve as a useful guide to the future development of Chinese historiography.

OBJECTIVITY AND SUBJECTIVITY IN HISTORICAL STUDIES The Data school is most strikingly characterized by its total indifference to its own times. Owing largely to their limited understanding of the issue of “objectivity,” historians of this school assume that all facts available to us are one hundred percent objective, capable of revealing to us their authenticity if scientific criticism is applied. Once all facts are investigated, then the “ultimate history” will emerge by itself. Based on this assumption, they deny that historical studies are in any way relevant to the times of the historian. They are committed to the belief that the subjective elements derived from the times in which a historian finds himself will eventually be eliminated, since purely objective facts can be established by strictly following a kind of scientific procedure of evidential investigation. We admit that the truth or falsity of some of the concrete conclusions arrived at by way of evidential investigation are not likely to be affected by time. For example, identification of objects, institutions, and geography in antiquity, dating of historical events and personages, and philological explication of a text are all concrete studies. Conclusions about them, once established, do not usually change with the change of time. Investigations of these topics are only related to what historians regard as “basic facts,” however, and are not to be treated as pertinent to “historical facts.”1 Basic facts provide only a framework to historical studies; they do not carry any intrinsic significance, and cannot account for historical changes. Moreover, even investigations of this nature cannot completely escape the influence of the historian’s own times. We might legitimately ask: Why did

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historians of a par ticular time become interested in investigating par ticular sorts of objects, institutions, documents, people, or geographies in history? Historians of the Data school not only mistake all basic facts for historical facts; they are also prone to treat individual facts in vacuo. They stress the importance of “criticism,” at the expense of “explanation.” Belief in the doctrine of “history as the study of historical data” has led them to confine “criticism” to the mere determination of the authenticity of source materials. Real historical investigation is impossible under such circumstances. Recent progress in historical knowledge has shown that a historical fact appears to us as such because that is the way historians understand it. Historical facts with which a historian must initially deal in order to carry out a research project are always innumerable. After careful examination and repeated scrutiny, however, he will be able to distinguish among them those that are relevant from those that are not relevant to the par tic u lar historical phenomenon he is investigating. Moreover, he will also be able to establish the complicated hierarchical relationships among a multitude of relevant facts. Recognition of these hierarchical relations constitutes a par excellence explanation of a historical phenomenon. It is in this sense that the Shujing 書經 (Classic of History) has been defined as “to interpret so as to know the past,” and the purpose of the Shiji 史記 (Records of the Grand Historian) is described by Sima Qian 司馬遷 (ca. 145 or 135–86 b.c.e.) himself as “to comprehend the changes of the past and present.” Therefore, while we are sympathetic to the emphasis the Data school places on critical examination of evidence, we do not take this as the be-all and end-all of historical studies. A modern-day historian must, on the one hand, establish the authenticity of facts by employing the most rigorous critical methods and, on the other, utilize both the new achievements in various related disciplines and his own fresh point of view derived from time to illuminate the relations among various historical facts. Historians often differ in their approaches to history. They may offer different explanations of the same historical change according to their various conceptions of the historical facts and their interrelationships. A consensus is hard to achieve. It is especially true that historical interpretations change with the changes of time. This is so for two obvious reasons. First, since every period of human history has its own par ticular problems, the historian’s attention must necessarily shift according to the changing problems of the times. Second, as learning advances with the passing of each day, the historian’s understanding of past events also becomes ever-increasingly profound. One example will suffice for the purpose of illustration. The state of Lu’s initiation of a tax on an acre in 594 b.c.e. was a very impor tant historical event that was emphatically noted in all three commentaries to the Chunqiu 春秋 (Spring and Autumn Annals). Later institutional historians also called attention to this event. And yet, its full significance is only understood after modern social and economic historiography has advanced enough to enable historians to place it in the proper perspective.

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But the rise of modern social and economic historiography is exactly where the problem of our age lies. If historical studies change with the changing times, and historians often disagree in their interpretations, then is there such a thing as objectivity in history after all? In reality, there is no basis at all for doubting the objectivity of historical knowledge. Observed by historians of different viewpoints, history can only become ever more objectively evident. As the scenic wonders of Mount Lu are proverbially described—“Looked at horizontally, it appears to be a mountain range; sideways, it assumes the shape of a peak. It can be all things to all men, according to whether they are far or near, high or low.” Indeed, the “true face” of Mount Lu can objectively exist in the eyes of travelers approaching it from various directions. We are, of course, not to conclude that Mount Lu has numberless forms or that it has no form at all. As early as two thousand years ago, Sima Qian stated that the purpose of historical inquiry was “to comprehend the changes of the past and present and to propose one school of interpretation.” In so saying, he touched on the very center of the issues relating to objectivity and subjectivity in historical studies. “The changes of the past and present” are objective history; Sima Qian’s attempt to “comprehend” them was, of course, a subjective interpretation by the historian. In the case of the Records of the Grand Historian, one can see that Sima Qian’s subjective interpretation not only does no violence to objective history but has actually illuminated for us those “changes of the past and present.” Sima Qian allowed that his own book was but “one school of interpretation.” Although his interpretation was challenged by Ban Gu 班固 (32–92), the latter had to concede that the Records of the Grand Historian was soundly based on a critical investigation of evidence: “I have gathered up and brought together the scattered old traditions of the world and compared them with the deeds and events of the past as known to us,” as Sima Qian put it.2 The Records of the Grand Historian represents the union between “interpretation” and “criticism” in the tradition of Chinese historiography; it is an excellent model for combining subjectivity and objectivity in historical writing. That Sima Qian should have such a remarkable achievement is attributable in part to his profound empathy for his own times. Still, Ban Gu criticized Sima Qian, saying: His moral judgments stray greatly from those of the sages; in discussing the great Way, he places the teachings of the Yellow Emperor and Lao Tzu [Laozi] ahead of the Six Classics; in his account of the Wandering Knights, he honors the wicked and disparages the worthy, and in his treatise on economic affairs, he gives precedence to the powerful and the wealthy and holds in contempt the poor and the lowly.3 These criticisms, however, only serve to show the admirable qualities of Sima Qian as a historian. His history was completed during the time when the court

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was carry ing out the policy of making Confucianism the philosophy of the state. Yet these official policies did not blind him to the variety of active social and cultural forces that a monolithic government was not pleased to condone. The Records of the Grand Historian made a point of presenting the activities of the Huang-Lao Daoists, the Wandering Knights, and the merchants. On the one hand, the author was committed to the goal of “one school of interpretation,” and on the other, he succeeded in faithfully reflecting his own times. The subjectivity and objectivity of historical studies are here unified, and not contradictory to each other.

“ H I S T O R I C A L L AW S ” A N D T H E N E E D S OF THE TIMES If we characterize the attitude of the Data school toward its own time as being deliberately indifferent, then we might say that the Interpretation school is just the opposite. There is too close a connection between an interpretation and the times in which the interpretation is made—so much so that at times, the distinction between the past and the present is blurred. That these two schools should run counter to each other to such an extent is understandable, as they each hold to their own way of dealing with history. The Data school pursues history for its own sake; it does not consider elements not directly related to historical studies at all relevant, including what we may call the “times.” Data school adherents take satisfaction in examining one isolated historical fact after another. The Interpretation school in modern China, on the other hand, has all along not been studying history from a purely scholarly viewpoint. Interpretation school adherents mainly aim to make the past serve the present—in more concrete terms, to seek historical justification for their political activities. I must add that there is nothing wrong in such an idea; on the contrary, it is a virtue if one is purely motivated by love of his country and his people in his study of history. We see this in late Qing historians, such as Zhang Binglin 章炳麟 (1869–1936) and Liang Qichao 梁啟超 (1873–1929), who arrived at many impor tant conclusions in Chinese history from their anti-Manchu, revolutionary viewpoint. Indeed, there has been a long tradition of interpretive historiography in China, and Marxist historical materialism is but one of them. Today, however, in examining the Interpretation school, we have no choice but to take Marxism as our main object. Since “Interpretative” historians are dictated exclusively by the demands of political reality, they inevitably fail to distinguish between the past and the present, and as a result, deny the possibility of historical objectivity. Because he is writing history to meet an immediate need, an “Interpretative” historian may appear to be analyzing the past but is, in reality, ever concerned with its application to present conditions. Thus, the past becomes merely a storehouse for historians to dip in for selective information, and whatever objective existence and

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development history might claim to have becomes completely meaningless. Moreover, this attitude toward history is in direct proportion to the urgency of political commitment; when political demands are great, all rules and regulations governing the search for historical truths can be relegated to the ash can. In the late 1970s, the dominance of what is called history by innuendo (yingshe shixue 影射史學) in mainland China is an extreme example.4 In principle, we are sympathetic to the belief that historical studies should answer to the needs of the times, but we must also make it clear that a historian should try to keep a distance between historical inquiry and the reality in which he finds himself. History enlightens us, passes on lessons to us, but it can never directly serve reality. Historiography as a discipline should be respected for its integrity. Not to respect it will not only destroy history itself but also confuse us in our understanding of our own times. Take natural science, for example: there is basic or theoretical research in any branch of science, and this is the primary requirement for a scientific discipline. Naturally, we hope that basic research will eventually prove to have practical usefulness, but we should by no means interfere with the disciplinary requirements of science in our haste to seek its practical application. This is equally true in the study of history. Without basic research, history cannot stand as an independent scholarly discipline. As to when and how such basic research could be applied, and what kind of use it could generate, no one can say beforehand. What we do know is that, like any other science, history cannot be totally useless if research is carefully conducted with the needs of the times in mind. The Interpretation school has its own theoretical dilemma. We have pointed out the inadequacy of the “Dataist” conception of historical objectivity, but the Interpretation school, especially its Marxist branch, fails to give a clear account of the so- called historical laws. “Interpretation” historiography carries with it the responsibility of supporting political movements, and the strongest support historiography can give to any political movement is to proclaim that it represents an irresistible historical tide. Any such declaration could easily dissolve the will to resist on the part of all opponents. The effect is similar to the Mandate of Heaven theory with which a new dynasty in China’s past always proclaimed that it “was acting according to the will of Heaven.” But the Mandate of Heaven theory has long since been declared bankrupt, and in this day and age, only science has the persuasive force that is irresistible. And so the “tide of history” presents itself to us under the guise of scientific inevitability. The “inevitability theory” is founded on the basis of “historical laws.” It claims that a certain historical trend is irresistible because the law of history dictates it so. Modern science has already proved beyond a doubt that all things in nature develop according to natural laws. Now that historiography has proved to its own satisfaction that the development of history also follows certain laws, then any historical trend that follows these laws must of necessity be irresistible. Al-

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low me to cite historical materialism as an example to see how “historical laws” are defined. In Marxist materialism, there are two basic components that carry with them the meaning of “law,” or, more appropriately, are emphatically declared as “law” by Marxists. First, chronologically, human society must necessarily go through five stages, namely, primitive communism, slavery, feudalism, capitalism, and socialism. Second, in terms of structure, modes of production in our material life are the bases that determine the superstructure of political, social, and cultural achievement. In the first place, Marx based his five-stage theory on what he observed to have occurred in Western Europe, and he did not consider it to be universally applicable. He was strongly opposed to having it applied to Russia, as suggested by his followers. He clearly pointed out that the par ticular historical experience of Western Europe could not be transformed into a historio-philosophical theory of a general path that all people were fated to tread. He further pointed out that anyone attempting to apply a general historio-philosophical theory does not understand history because such a theory is by nature suprahistorical.5 Frustrated by his followers’ zeal in their loose application of his historical theories, he once even declared angrily in French, “Je ne suis pas Marxiste.” Since Marx did not claim that his historical generalizations should be extended beyond Western Europe, this five-stage theory cannot be said to have the universality of a scientific law. As to the second point, Marx indeed stated it in universalistic terms. However, modern philosophical analysis shows that the relationship between modes of production and the so- called superstructures still lacks clarity and thus cannot be recognized as being even close to what scientists would define as “law.” If all the superstructures such as philosophy, art, and religion are determined by modes of production, then a given mode of production could at best determine one kind of philosophy, art, or religion. How, then, are we to determine which one of them is typical? How are we to explain the modes of production on which other types are based? When we say “determine,” how is it defined? Questions such as these are never clearly spelled out. Generally speaking, it is indeed a profound observation to say that there are inner affinities between material and spiritual lives, and this observation has had a tremendous impact on the development of modern historiography and sociology. Nonetheless, until now, we are still at a loss as to how those affinities can be formulated as precise laws. Actually, Engels made some revision in his old age concerning this point. In a letter he wrote to Joseph Bloch on September 21, 1890, he had the following to say: “According to the materialist conception of history, the determining element in history is ultimately the production and reproduction in real life. If therefore somebody twists this into the statement that the economic factor is the only determining one, he transforms it into a meaningless, abstract and absurd phrase.”6

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Therefore, according to Engels’s definitive thinking in his later years, the second component of historical materialism did not qualify as scientific law in the strict sense of the term.

MODELS BASED ON WESTERN EXPERIENCES “Interpretationist” historians have subjected modern Chinese historiography to another negative influence, and that is their use of models based on Western historical experience to comprehend the actual development of Chinese history. The Marxist five-stage theory, discussed above, is a case in point. This trend is by no means limited to those who advocate historical materialism, however. For example, the once-fashionable practice of periodization, that is, dividing Chinese history into ancient, medieval, and modern periods, is obviously a reflection of Western historiography. Naitô Torajirô once compared the Song with the Renaissance, and regarded the Song as the beginning of modern China. While this “Naitô hypothesis” has taken every possible effort to incorporate the special characteristics of Chinese historical development, it remains basically modeled on the West. Both “laws” and models share a common assumption that all nations in the world go through a universally similar process of historical development. There are two sides from which to view this assumption: the theoretical and the practical. On the theoretical side, we can neither affirm nor deny this assumption. Analytical philosophers and professional historians alike tend to reject it on the theoretical level, because they have been frustrated by the difficulties encountered in the speculative philosophy of history. However, the rejection may be taken more as a revelation of their profound sense of frustration at this stage than as a definite indication of a “dead-end street.” The present state of historical studies varies greatly from country to country, and comparative historiography is still in its infancy. In short, we are unable as yet to make a final pronouncement with any degree of assurance. On the practical side, because historical and social sciences are better developed in the West, many people tend to accept the conclusions derived from studies of Western historical experiences as a universal “law” or model. Is capitalist society a necessary stage of every social development? Strictly speaking, Western Europe (with the United States as its extension) is the only historical example of this proposition; Marx’s cautious attitude in this connection is, therefore, still appreciated today. One or two examples do not make for universal laws, nor do they set up any models. Bertrand Russell once remarked, only half seriously, that “China has always been an exception to all rules.”7 Even if this is true, I am afraid the problem does not lie with China but with all those rules. Russell was undoubtedly talking about rules derived from Western experiences. However, China cannot actually be an exception to all rules. I quote Russell only to remind historians that any attempt in the search for a universally valid

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law in the realm of human affairs cannot do without taking Chinese experiences into account in the first place. The problem with historians of the Interpretation school does not lie in their commitment to seeking universal laws or models; it lies in their failure to adequately understand the concept of “law” as rigorously defined in science. They have mistaken certain partially effective generalizations about Western history for universally valid historical laws. Thus, instead of searching for a pattern of historical development based on the rich Chinese data, they have chosen to make the Chinese evidence fit Western theories. Such a Procrustean approach has aroused strong nationalistic feelings in historians who value Chinese tradition. In their eyes, to hold up the West as a model is indicative of a total psychological capitulation to Western culture. Some of them even question the very wisdom of introducing Western historiography to China at all. Though China has lagged behind in natural sciences, they ask, is there any reason why we should have to follow the West in historiography, in which China has had a glorious tradition of her own? We respect such feelings of national pride. However, what is involved here are not just simple emotional issues. “Models” and “laws” are attractive not merely because they are Western in origin; a more impor tant reason, perhaps, is that they have come marching under the banner of science. Science has had an immense power of persuasion since the nineteenth century, and historical studies have constantly been under its pressure. The impact is still visible today, with not a few Western positivist philosophers and social scientists believing that history is concerned merely with the investigation and organization of facts and that theoretical work should be left to the social scientists. Professional historians in the West feel equally hard-pressed to face up to this kind of challenge. We might say that it is against this background that we have seen the rise of the critical philosophy of history in the past few decades, with the problem concerning the nature of historical knowledge at its center. It is also against this background that the growing influence, in recent years, of the Collingwoodian and Hermeneutic theories concerning historical understanding must be understood. Hence, in the fi nal analysis, this is a dispute of a crucial nature between modern natu ral science and the humanities. Therefore, it would be grossly misleading to identify this as a dispute between Western theories and Chinese data, which would allow excessive nationalistic feelings to be aroused over the question of historical research.

BEYOND THE POSITIVISTIC CONFINES OF D ATA I S M A N D I N T E R P R E TAT I O N I S M Above, we have tried to delineate the main trends of modern Chinese historiography through a critical review of the two major historical schools. We are not primarily interested in criticizing the past, however, much less in denying the achievements of Chinese historiography since the beginning of this century.

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Historical thinking today has reached a new level of sophistication. The time has come to pause and reconsider for a moment. To seek new breakthroughs in Chinese historical studies, we must first reflect, theoretically as well as practically, on the course that we have so far traveled. Reflection provides the point of departure for a new journey. However dissatisfied we are with the “Dataists” and the “Interpretationists,” due recognition must nevertheless be given to their respective contributions to the study of Chinese history. Indeed, they will undoubtedly constitute the basis for future development. As science, history must also be founded on the shoulders of giants. Even if there have been only ordinary people and no giants, we still must stand on their shoulders so as to have a better vision of the road that lies ahead of us. As a matter of fact, both schools of Chinese historiography have their own strong bases. Though blown out of proportion on a massive scale, their core beliefs will nonetheless stand the test of time. After all, as pointed out in the beginning of this essay, “data” and “interpretations” are the two essential elements of historical inquiry. In terms of origins, Dataism and Interpretationism in Chinese historiography can be demonstrably shown to have been deeply rooted in two different approaches in the West seeking to transform history into science. We have already noted that concepts such as “laws” and “models” of the Interpretation school are borrowings from natural science. But we need to be further reminded that the Dataist emphasis on “data” and “facts” also derives its inspiration from science. According to nineteenth- century positivists, every natural science must begin with collection of data and establishment of facts. However, in the positivist program, one finds a symbiotic relation between facts and laws, for the ascertaining of the former would necessarily lead to the discovery of the latter. In general, late nineteenth- to early twentieth- century European, and especially German, historians were divided into two opposing camps with each having been exclusively concerned with one part of the positivist program. Thus we see, on the one hand, that Leopold von Ranke’s method dealing with the criticism of historical documents evolved into a tradition known as “scientific history”; on the other hand, Karl Lamprecht led an anti-Rankean movement in quest of general historical laws.8 The dichotomy between Dataism and Interpretationism in China is quite reminiscent of this German scene. As a matter of fact, evidence shows that while the Chinese Interpretationists owe a heavy spiritual debt to Hegel and Marx, the Dataists are no less true intellectual heirs of the Rankean school than of the Qing philological tradition. In criticizing the mutually exclusive attitudes held by the Dataists and the Interpretationists, however, we are not suggesting some kind of modus vivendi. It would be naive optimism, for instance, to think that one could discover the general historical laws as advocated by Lamprecht with the help of Ranke’s “scientific method.” Instead, we believe that we can now transcend the positivistic perspectives of both Dataism and Interpretationism. It is an indisputable fact that Clio has

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been steadily gaining scientific respectability in the modern world without becoming Mr. Science. Once we break through the positivistic confines of Dataism and Interpretationism, our expectations as to the prospect of historical inquiry in China will also be of a different kind. With this understanding in mind, we wish to make some perhaps all-too- common observations. We have all along stressed that history is a knowledge of a synthetic and comprehensive nature and that it must thrive on results achieved in other fields of knowledge. We should now give a clearer explanation. Many scholarly disciplines are directly or indirectly related to history; these include, in the past, diplomatics and philology, and now, social sciences and even some branches of natural sciences. Now, in the face of the ever-growing sophistication and specialization of knowledge, how are we to expect historians to first familiarize themselves with all branches of knowledge before they engage in historical research? A few special branches of historical studies now require very specialized knowledge and have long gone beyond what we normally consider to be within the bounds of history proper. For example, economic history in the strict sense has become a branch more of economics than of history. Similarly, history of science has long declared its independence. Therefore, when we speak of the synthetic and comprehensive nature of historical knowledge, all we are saying is that historians, in investigating a historical phenomenon of a certain period, should take into account not only the chronological perspective in which this phenomenon is related to its antecedents and consequences but also the structural perspective in which this phenomenon is related to other events of the same period. This activity is quite different from that of the social scientists, who are primarily concerned with the search for abstract principles common to all similar phenomena or with understanding a certain type of phenomenon by referring it to some established laws. Take, for example, the study of the aristocratic clan system (mendi 門第 or menfa 門閥) in medieval China. To arrive at a comprehensive understanding, historians have to consider on the one hand its evolutionary changes both before and after, and on the other, its place in the context of contemporary political, social, economic, and cultural developments. As such, we find that the historian’s task is different from that undertaken by sociologists or anthropologists in their study of the kinship system in medieval aristocracy. A historian will unavoidably touch upon the problem of the kinship system or whatever problems other social scientists are interested in, but he “touches upon” them only as and when historiographic needs dictate. He does not have to go into the study of any social science systematically. Any historian with some training in modern scholarship is capable of doing this, even as a sociologist merely refers to some basic historical findings to explain a certain historical background in the process of his research, without finding it necessary to conduct an independent historical inquiry. Indeed, this has been much discussed in the Chinese scholarly tradition as the issue of “erudition versus specialization.” As Zhang Xuecheng 章學誠 (1738–1801) aptly put it: “Of all the

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things in the universe, there are those which are of our immediate concern, and we will not miss even the tiniest particle of them. There are also those which are of no immediate concern to us, and we will not worry about them even if they are as big as Mount Tai.”9 Thus, individual historians all have their auxiliary sciences; these sciences are, however, dictated by the “immediacy of concern” of their specialized fields.

“METHOD” AS UNDERSTOOD BY CHINESE HISTORIANS There is the question of methodology. Both the Dataist and the Interpretationist schools in China emphasize methods, and each claims that its own method is the most scientific one. As a result, the idea has prevailed among modern Chinese historians that the progress in historical studies depends mainly on the progress in historical methods. There is some truth in this, but what are historical methods? Nobody seems to have given the question much thought. A careful examination of the term “method” as understood by modern Chinese historians will show that it contains two meanings. The first is to think of it as merely an extension of scientific method in historical inquiry. The famous dictum of the late Dr. Hu Shi, “boldness in doubt and hypothesis coupled with a meticulous care in seeking verification,” belongs to this first kind of meaning.10 The concept of “hypothesis” started with the publication of La Science et l’hypothèse by the French mathematician Henri Poincaré in 1902. Poincaré suggested that since the word “law” connotes something immutable, it would help to reduce confusion by replacing it with the term “hypothesis,” for the so- called laws in science are often overthrown by new discoveries. This conceptual change naturally affected social sciences and history as well. Those nineteenth- century “laws of social development” or “historical laws,” including that of historical materialism, are now merely considered “hypotheses.” In any case, whether one calls it “law” or “hypothesis,” neither belongs uniquely to historiography. The second meaning of “method” is to understand it as the analytical techniques in various special disciplines, such as astronomy, geology, archaeology, and biology, which can often be useful in solving problems in historical studies. Obviously, these techniques are not methods unique to history. In fact, even those methods that are closely related to traditional historiography, such as diplomatic and textual criticism, cannot, strictly speaking, be regarded as unique to historical research. A person who specializes in the criticism of documents is a philologist; he is not a historian, even though historians must necessarily devote some time to textual studies. It is not hard to imagine a situation, especially in the study of modern or contemporary history, in which a historian does not have to face any problem requiring serious textual criticism, much

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less the employment of philological knowledge to collate texts. Naturally, a historian has his own unique procedure of work, such as ascertaining evidence, establishing the authenticity of facts, discovering the relations between historical facts, and interpreting changes, but these tasks are closely related to the development of other scholarly disciplines. The rise of new scholarship sometimes opens up a new vista for the historian, leading him to a new understanding of “evidence” or “fact.” What did not use to constitute “evidence” or “fact” may now become some very impor tant “evidence” or “fact.” The rise of “psychohistory” in the West is an immediate example. What we have discussed above is not intended to prove that there is no historical method; we wish only to point out that there are no permanent or fi xed methods. On the technical level, history is constantly appropriating methods from other related sciences for its own use. This is in accord with what we mentioned above as the synthetic and comprehensive nature of history as a discipline. If there is no permanent or fi xed method in historical studies, does that mean history relies completely on other sciences and has lost its own identity? This is an unnecessary worry. As pointed out by Robert F. Berkhofer Jr., himself a strong advocate of social science methods in the study of history, a historian’s attempts to study man’s past holistically and his interest in historic time as a total dated system distinguish his “concern as to both goal and method from those of the social scientists.”11 However, as the saying goes, “Scholarship is like assisting a drunkard to walk—no sooner do you help him move to the right than he falls to the left.” Although we think it impor tant to be always open-minded about new historical methods, we should at the same time warn against blind acceptance of every new method because it is fashionable. Any method that is derived from empirical science has its limits; therefore, if we are to borrow its use, we must take into consideration the different results that may obtain because of the differences in empirical background. Furthermore, it takes repeated experiments on the part of experts before a new method can fully develop. The best works in psychohistory are written by psychologists rather than historians. Up to now, we have had more failures than successes in the writing of psychohistory, a fact that caused Jacques Barzun to raise his voice in serious criticism of certain unhealthy tendencies in the development of this field. What Barzun had to say is a useful rectifying warning to historians who tend to fancy methodological fashions.12 There are no fi xed methods for the study of history, and every new method brings with it numberless pitfalls. This fact alone is enough to show that there is no shortcut in historical inquiry, and historians have to grope laboriously and patiently for their own methods. It has always been like this; this is nothing new. A century ago, Theodor Mommsen said: “It is moreover a dangerous and harmful illusion for the professor of history to believe that historians can be trained at the University in the same way as philologists or mathematicians most assuredly can be. One can say with more justification of the historian than of the mathe-

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matician or the philologist that he is not trained but born, not educated but selfeducated.”13 This is the testimony of a great practitioner of our craft. Herein lies the difficulty of the study of history, and herein lies its attraction.

T H E B A S I C P AT T E R N O F C H I N E S E C U LT U R E Since we do not accept the concept of “law” advanced by the Interpretation school and are equally dissatisfied with the departmentalized and fragmentary approach represented by the Dataist historians, then what do we wish to see in terms of the future of Chinese historiography? What kind of direction should we follow? As to the first point, to put it in the simplest terms, we hope that historical research will help us to gradually understand from various angles the basic pattern of Chinese culture and its process of development. At the same time, we hope that a clearer knowledge of the past will enlighten us on our present historical situation. We cannot deny that in thus phrasing our expectation as to the future of Chinese historical studies, we are already advocating something. First, we affirm that cultures have patterns, and Chinese culture likewise has its own unique pattern. This is a hypothesis now largely shared by scholars, especially historians, anthropologists, and sociologists, but it still needs to be reemphasized. The reason is that there are people who, under the severe influence of the Western model of thinking, regard the difference between Chinese and Western cultures as lying not in different patterns but in different stages of development—that is to say, they believe that the West has moved into the modern era while China is still in the Middle Ages. Conceptions like this are still very influential today, and the Marxist periodization of Chinese history is founded on this basis. Second, we reaffirm the belief that history is a developmental process. In other words, we believe that history is not just an accidental aggregation of disconnected events; history is rather a continuum and manifests itself in what historians speak of as trends, currents, or tendencies. In traditional Chinese historiographical terms, this continuity is called shi 勢 (potentiality or momentum). Behind the trends or currents, however, we do not see such things as “providence,” “reason,” or “law,” which are hypotheses neither proven nor disproved, at least as of the present. We cannot therefore be certain whether any trends or currents in history are “inevitable” or “irresistible.” We only believe that, if there are historical trends or currents, they can be found through historical research and can be interpreted rationally. On this point, we differ basically from both the Dataists and the Interpretationists. Finally, we recognize that it is possible to have a dialogue between the past and the present (and to some extent, even the future), a recognition that receives its strongest support from the fact that there are indeed continuities in history. We stress the need to maintain a proper relationship between historiography and the times

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mainly because we are aware of the importance of continuity. The Chinese present is naturally not just determined by the Chinese past, but the unique pattern and process of development of Chinese culture created enough “momentum” (shi) to provide the dynamics for China to come into its present form. The same “momentum” has not died out and shall continue to pressure us to move forward. Historians nowadays no longer believe that the past serves as a mirror to reflect a knowledge of the future, and prediction in the strict scientific sense indeed lies outside the province of historiography. Nonetheless, thanks to the insightful studies of historians, we are better able to understand the nature and impact of the “historical momentum,” and this understanding sometimes does help indicate the way out of our present condition. The great French medievalist, Marc Bloch, wrote a book entitled Strange Defeat during the agony of the Second World War and published in 1946; his analysis of the fall of France is profound and powerful because “the tragedy is seen through the eyes of a man who has traced with affectionate attention more than a millennium of his country’s history.”14 There is no example more vivid and moving than this of what E. H. Carr called “an unending dialogue between the past and the present.”15 Even if historical studies do not enable us to predict, historians after all cannot help but constantly remind themselves of what might happen in the future. The more we understand the past, by that much more we will add to the basis on which to judge the development of the future. The famous Dutch historian Johan Huizinga hit the nail on the head when he said, “As for history, the question is always ‘Whither?’ ”16 What, then, is the road that lies ahead for Chinese historiography? It is difficult to give a concrete answer to this question. We rather wish again to discuss some principles. The Dataist historians take the collection and examination of historical data as their main task, and consciously resist any attempt at “interpretive comprehension.” As a result, there is no desire on their part to touch upon large issues such as the pattern and process of development of Chinese culture. By contrast, the Interpretationist historians place special emphasis on these questions, but unfortunately, they have been entrapped by Western models of interpretation. Extremists among these Interpretationist historians even sought to fit Chinese historical data into one specific school of Western theory. More than merely narrowing the possible range within which historians look for answers, this also severely limits their capacity to ask new questions. The Dataist historians reject historiography on a theoretical level; the Interpretationist historians trade off their own productivity for foreign credit. The consequence is the same: both fall back on China’s historical data and take pride in the wealth of them. As a result, modern Chinese historiography presents the strange spectacle of an abundance of materials but a paucity of scholarship. From here on, we who are engaged in the study of history will have to proceed in two directions: to hold up the challenge of the aforementioned big questions

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as our ultimate goals, and to maintain an open-minded attitude toward all kinds of theories, methods, and viewpoints. We are aware that big questions such as those raised above cannot have a once-and-for-all answer, but once we have made them the ultimate goal of our studies, historians will more clearly recognize the direction and significance of their endeavors. An open-minded attitude is especially impor tant, for it is with this kind of attitude that we could hope gradually to arrive at sensible judgments that are in accord with Chinese historical realities. In the process of historical research, competing interpretations are unavoidable, and indeed, this is only normal in scholarly progress. There can never be one absolute historical interpretation, but it is not too much to hope that a common basis of discussion be established on the major issues of history. There, the results that are founded on reason and reliable data will have the power of lasting persuasion.

COMPARISON AND ANALOGY IN HISTORICAL INQUIRY The search for the unique pattern and developmental process of Chinese culture implicitly takes on a comparative viewpoint. Without comparison, we shall not be able to illustrate the special pattern of Chinese culture. By comparison we mean comparison in relation to other cultural systems, such as what are commonly referred to as Indian culture, Western culture, or Islamic culture. The cultural categorization proposed by A. J. Toynbee is useful for reference here. Those who criticize Toynbee criticize his attempt to search for generalities or laws, but not his advocacy of comparative viewpoints. Not only can historical developments of other cultures be used in our comparative studies, but community studies (not confined to primitive societies) conducted by social scientists (especially anthropologists and sociologists) that lead to better understanding of culture will also enlighten us. Max Weber once said that man is an animal suspended in “webs of significance” spun by himself. The anthropologist Clifford Geertz takes those “webs” as culture. Geertz further points out that the study of culture is “not an experimental science in search of law but an interpretive one in search of meaning.”17 There can be no doubt that historiography is much closer to sociology and anthropology than to experimental science. “Interpretation” as used by Geertz is at least partially similar to the “interpretive comprehension” that has characterized traditional Chinese historiography. Naturally, we are aware that we are not simply seeking to understand a static “web of significance”; rather we are searching for the metamorphoses that culture experiences in historical time. In the past several decades, the importance of the comparative point of view to the study of Chinese history has been clearly recognized among historians of all persuasions in China. Unfortunately, comparison in practice often turns

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into analogy of one dubious kind or another. Thus, we find Confucius being compared analogously to Socrates, Mencius to Plato, and Xunzi to Aristotle. In this connection, a particularly notable example is provided by Liang Qichao’s influential book Qingdai xueshu gailun 清代學術概論 (A general introduction to Qing dynasty scholarship). Throughout this work, as rightly observed by Benjamin I. Schwartz, there is a “sustained and forced analogy between European Renaissance and the Qing period.”18 It may not be too harsh to say that analogies of this kind, when carried to extremes, serve only to conceal from view rather than reveal the salient features of Chinese history. On the other hand, it must also be pointed out that analogy as a comparative method, with all its imperfections, is often unavoidable and, indeed, sometimes even necessary in the early stages of cultural contact. The Buddhist method of analogy known as geyi 格義 (matching the meaning) is a case in point. As late as the fourth century, Chinese Buddhists still found it desirable to “equate the contents of the sûtras with external writings in order to establish examples that would create understanding.”19 The so- called external writings referred mainly to Daoist philosophical works. In other words, Indian ideas were explained in the familiar terminology of Chinese thought. It was only when the Chinese Buddhists were able to distinguish the various nuances of these imported concepts that they found the geyi analogy too distortive to be useful, and therefore abandoned it. Nevertheless, the comparative perspective provided by Buddhism has since been firmly established in the Chinese intellectual tradition. As of today, the introduction of Western learning to China has remained largely in the Buddhist geyi stage. We are still far from being able to employ the comparative point of view in historical inquiry with confidence and ease. As we look back and reflect on the development of Chinese historiography in the past decades, however, we must admit that progress has been made in this respect, even if the progress is relatively slow. As time goes on, we shall see that the period of independent growth of Chinese Buddhism will also come for Chinese historiography. There is thus no reason for us to lament the fallacious analogism in this early stage; there is even less reason for us to abandon the comparative perspective all together. It is true that in the philosophy of history, fallacies or false analogy are topics that are constantly subject to extensive as well as intensive analysis. Philosophers and historians alike nonetheless admit that analogy has many uses when it comes to the methodology of explaining a concept or a phenomenon. Simply stated, an analogy not only tries to find similarity among diversity, it also attempts to find diversity in similarity. Metaphor is an abridged form of analogy often used by historians. A metaphor concentrates on the similarities of two entities and uses them to explain one another. However, a similarity in part cannot obliterate the dissimilarity in the whole, and even within the similar parts there is room for dissimilarities in detail. Therefore, if we are able to employ analogy appropriately, then continued progress in historical inquiry will be

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assured. Therefore, in the study of Chinese history, what we must guard against is not the use of analogy as a comparative method but its abuse. It is certainly misleading to speak analogously of the intellectual history of the Qing Period as a whole in terms of the Renaissance. Nevertheless, on certain levels with reference to par ticular developments, such as the rise of philology and scholarship as the sure basis for faith, the Qing scholars may indeed be fruitfully compared to the Christian Humanists of the Renaissance and Reformation. It is also questionable to draw an analogy between the rise of the “Hundred Schools” in classical China and philosophical development in ancient Greece. Still, the notion of “philosophic breakthrough” as used by historians, philosophers, and sociologists today does provide us with a comparative perspective in terms of which transcendence in ancient China may be more intelligently explained in connection with a similar development in other ancient cultures such as  Greece, Israel, and India. Other Western concepts such as “despotism,” “feudalism,” “revolution,” “class,” “social mobility,” “social structure,” etc., have also been widely used in Chinese historical works, and though the empirical content of these terms is found in the Western experience, with appropriate defi nition, they could be employed to analyze Chinese history. Liu Xie 劉勰 (ca. 465–ca. 522) once said in the “Bixing” 比興 chapter of his Wenxin diaolong 文心雕龍 (Literary Mind and the Carving of Dragons): “Things which are as far apart as Hu [in the north] and Yue [in the South] may through their similarities be as close as liver and gall.” He further said: “Throughout all the varieties of the bi, its excellence lies in the aptness of the representation. A writer is valueless if, trying to carve a swan, he succeeds only in approximating a duck.”20 What Liu Xie had to say here about the idea of bi 比 (metaphor) in Chinese literature may be just as useful when borrowed to represent the basic attitude we hold about the comparative viewpoint in historical studies.

A “MIDDLE-RANGE” APPROACH TO CHINESE HISTORIOGRAPHY Finally, we wish to point out that in stressing the importance of “the unique pattern of the Chinese culture and its process of development” we are only suggesting that this should be taken as our ultimate goal in historical inquiry. In actual practice, however, we must emphasize that the study of history is a concrete and pragmatic endeavor, and has to be grounded on cumulative efforts. Without the effort of constant and adequate drilling, it is impossible to hope for any new breakthroughs either in approach or in conception. The “pure conversation” (qingtan 清談) of the Six Dynasties has been known as “speculation” par excellence, but Yan Zhitui 顏之推 (531–591) found it necessary to give the following advice: “He who has not looked over all the books in the world should not thoughtlessly make corrections or criticisms.”21 Of course, today, we cannot

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expect anyone to read all the books in the world, but a student of history should take upon him- or herself to adequately grasp all the basic sources relevant to the topic studied. Other wise, he or she shall look very much like the kind of person Wang Sengqian 王僧虔 (426–485) admonished his son against: You have read only about five feet each of the scrolls of the Laozi and the Yijing [Classic of Changes]. You have neither known what Wang Bi 王弼 and He Yan 何晏 had to say, nor the differences between the commentaries of Ma (Rong 馬融) and Zheng (Xuan 鄭玄), and much less the meaning of various nuances and examples. And yet you have already picked up the fly-whisk and styled yourself as a Conversationalist. Nothing is more dangerous than this.22 To engage in Pure Conversation without adequate scholarly maturity is dangerous enough; then what about historical studies, which require solid and concrete research? The revolutionary progress in modern Western historiography cannot be attributed entirely to new viewpoints or new methods. It is also a result of ever-intensifying effort in basic training over a long period of time. This latter fact should command more of our attention. The discovery and collation of ancient inscriptions, the preservation and study of archives, as well as the collection and editing of all kinds of historical documents and publication of monographs and journal articles—these are concrete examples of the results of intensive hard work in Western historiography. Indeed, it is on this solid foundation that concepts and new methods were developed. As the adage has it: “Keep your eye on what is big, but try your hand at what is small.” We are now sure of the main task of Chinese historiography at the present stage; this is what is meant by “keeping your eyes on what is big.” If we could indeed keep our eyes on the main issue, we shall not fall into the pitfalls of fragmentations and blindness as the Dataist historians do. But however impor tant the target, it is no substitute for actual work. We should not let concepts such as “cultural patterns” or “process of development” become mere slogans, working them into every single piece of historical writing. To do this is to be guilty of what the Interpretationist historians did, namely, to replace history with interpretation. There is no shortcut in historical studies, and we must perforce start with “what is small.” There are all kinds of critical problems in Chinese history that need continual analysis and synthesis, and it is our responsibility to work on those that are close to our respective intellectual inclination and professional training. There exists a dynamic and dialectical relationship between analysis and synthesis. We have to try to synthesize when a problem of a specific time or subject has been analyzed to the extent of requiring primary synthesis. However, if in the process of synthesis we find that there are still inadequacies, then we shall have to start analyzing anew. It goes without saying that oftentimes the study of historical problems demands of historians that

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they simultaneously conduct analysis and synthesis on different levels. In any case, the value of a piece of historical work above all depends on the quality of its scholarship. From the practical standpoint, one naturally prefers that the range of the topic treated be small and easily manageable than big and tending toward the speculative. The “middle-range theory” proposed by the sociologist Robert Merton probably could provide historians with the best guidance. Merton chose to propose such a “golden mean” probably because he had been troubled by some of the overblown sociological theories that he felt could hardly admit of any empirical substantiation. His own scholarly achievement bears ample witness to such a principle, showing that it is both practical and workable.23 History is also an empirical discipline, and Merton’s suggestion should serve its purpose well. The field of Chinese historiography is immensely resourceful and should not be made a “happy hunting ground” for only a handful of bright and talented heroes. The need is to mobilize all earnest workers in the field so that they can devote their efforts to long-term and steady tilling to turn it into a fertile green land. If we compare the study of history to drinking water, then the most a historian could hope for is to acquire the ability of a Li Deyu 李德裕 (787–850), who is said to have been able to tell the difference between the water of the upper Yangzi and that of the lower Yangzi. He should never dream that he would be able to acquire the magical power of the Zen Master Mazu Daoyi 馬祖道一 (709–788), who claimed to have “swallowed all the water of the West River in one gulp.” It is here that Zhuangzi’s wisdom has the best to offer: “When the mole drinks at the river, he takes no more than a bellyful.”24 Let this be the highest ideal of every student of history, and let us borrow this saying to symbolize our expectations for the future of Chinese historiography!

notes The original version of this essay had the following two notes. By the editors of Translation of Things Past: This article is translated from the inaugural issue of Shixue pinglun 史學評論 (Taipei, July 1979), an independent scholarly journal published quarterly by and for students of Chinese history. The article incorporated the views of a group of young historians who organized and edited the publication, and was originally intended as an Inaugural Message for the journal, hence the use of the editorial “we.” But since it was written by Professor Yü, and does not necessarily reflect the editors’ views in every respect, the decision was reached to publish the article under the name of the author and labeled “in lieu of an Inaugural Message.” In the present English version, the subheadings are supplied by Renditions. [That is, Renditions-English Translation Magazine (Chinese University of Hong Kong), no. 15 (Spring 1981): 7–26.—Eds.] By Professor Yü Ying-shih: The English text of this article, as originally prepared by Drs. Thomas H. C. Lee and Chun- chieh Huang, is a remarkable achievement in the art of transla-

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tion. It has met all three classical Principles of Translation set forth by A. F. Tytler two centuries ago: to give a complete transcript of the original ideas; to imitate the styles of the original author; and to preserve the ease of the original text— the three principles that have been immortalized by Yan Fu in China since the turn of the century in terms of xin 信 (faithfulness), da 達 (comprehensibility), and ya 雅 (elegance). [See Alexander Fraser Tytler, Essay on the Principles of Translation (New York: Dutton, [1791] 1907).—Eds.] No one is more aware than the author of the numerous pitfalls and difficulties that must have been encountered in the course of undertaking this formidable task. I cannot thank the translators enough for their invaluable contributions. As I was going through the translated text, however, it suddenly occurred to me that the original article should not be presented to an entirely different audience without changes. I felt that some of the things I said in my Chinese original need not be said in translation, and a good deal of them could be said better by saying them differently in a different language. These considerations eventually led to a revision of the text to an extent that I had not expected in the beginning. As a result, a few passages have been omitted, several paragraphs completely rewritten, and many expressions cast anew. In addition, a minimum of footnotes has also been provided. I am therefore solely responsible for the discrepancies that now exist between this English version and its Chinese original. Hopefully, in this case, a violation of the principle of faithfulness on the linguistic level will be compensated for by a better representation of the original ideas. 1.

I owe these two terms to E. H. Carr. See his What Is History? (New York: Knopf, 1962), 7–11.

2.

See Sima Qian, “Bao Ren An shu” 報任安書, in HS (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1962), 6:2735. Cf. Burton Watson, Ssu-ma Ch’ien: Grand Historian of China (New York: Columbia University Press, 1958), 66.

3. 4.

See HS, 6:2737–2738; cf. Watson, Ssu-ma Ch’ien, 68. On this subject, see Ying-shih Yü, “Chinese History at the Crossroads,” in Early Chinese History in the People’s Republic of China (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1981).

5.

See Marx’s “Reply to Mikhailovsky” (1877), in David McLellan, The Thought of Karl Marx (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1971), 135–136.

6.

See Dona Torr, ed. and trans., Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels Correspondence, 1846–1895 (New York: International Publishers, 1934), 475.

7.

Bertrand Russell, Power: A New Social Analysis (London: Allen & Unwin, 1938), 148.

8.

Whether Ranke was really the founder of “scientific history” or still in the tradition of

9.

See Zhang Xuecheng’s essay, “Jia nian” 假年, in Wenshi tongyi 文史通義 (Beijing: Guji,

10.

This is Dr. Hu’s own translation of his dictum: dadan jiashe, xiaoxin qiuzheng 大膽假設,

German idealism is, of course, another matter and need not concern us here. 1956), 190. 小心求證. See Hu Shih, “The Scientific Spirit and Method in Chinese Philosophy,” in Philosophy and Culture: East and West, ed. Charles A. Moore (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1962), 221. 11.

See Robert F. Berkhofer Jr., A Behavioral Approach to Historical Analysis (New York: Free Press, 1969), esp. pp. 265–267.

350 12.

t he s t u d y of c h ine s e h is tory See Jacques Barzun, Clio and the Doctors: Psycho-History, Quanto-History and History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974).

13.

See Mommsen’s “Rectorial Address,” translated in Fritz Stern, ed., The Varieties of History (New York: Meriden Book, 1956), 193.

14.

H. Stuart Hughes, History as Art and as Science (New York: Harper and Row, 1964), 106.

15.

Carr, What Is History?, 30.

16.

J. Huizinga, “The Idea of History,” in Stern, The Varieties of History, 293.

17.

Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic Books, 1973), 5.

18.

Benjamin  I. Schwartz, foreword to Liang Ch’i- ch-ao, Intellectual Trends in the Ch’ing Period, trans. Emmanuel  C.  Y. Hsü (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1959), xiii; Liang Qichao, Qingdai xueshu gailun梁啟超, 清代學術概論 (Taipei: Zhonghua shuju, 1959).

19.

“Biography of Zhu Faya” 竺法雅, in Hui Jiao’s 慧皎 Gaosengzhuan 高僧傳, as quoted and translated in Fung Yu-lan, A History of Chinese Philosophy, vol. 2, trans. Derk Bodde (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1953), 241–242.

20. See Liu Hsieh (Xie), The Literary Mind and the Carving of Dragons, trans. Vincent Y. C. Shih (New York: Columbia University Press, 1959), 198. 21.

See Yen Chih-t’ui (Yan Zhitui), Family Instructions for the Yen Clan, trans. Ssu-yü Teng (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1968), 84.

22. See Nan Qi shu 南齊書 (Bona edition), 33:10b–11a. The “sambar-tail chowry” (zhuwei 麈尾), or “fly-whisk,” was always used by the Pure Conversationists in their discussions. 23. See Robert K. Merton, Social Theory and Social Structure (New York: Free Press, 1968). 24. See the Complete Works of Chuang Tzu, trans. Burton Watson (New York: Columbia University Press, 1968), 32.

18. Confucianism and China’s Encounter with the West in Historical Perspective

INTRODUCTION

T

he thesis of a “clash of civilizations” has been much debated since Samuel P. Huntington published his famous article in Foreign Affairs in 1993.1 In The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996; page numbers in parentheses for this title only), Huntington gives his original thesis a more detailed documentation and, at the same time, also somewhat modifies some of the sharp formulations in the earlier article. However, the book is essentially an elaboration, not a revision, of the original argument. To avoid distorting Huntington, I would like to present the core of his argument by quoting him: In the late 1980s the Communist world collapsed, and the Cold War international system became history. In the post- Cold War world, the most impor tant distinctions among people are not ideological, political, or economic. They are cultural. . . . People defi ne themselves in terms of ancestry, religion, language, history, values, customs, and institutions. They identify with cultural groups: tribes, ethnic groups, religious communities, nations, and, at the broadest level, civilizations. People use politics not just to advance their interests but also to defi ne their identity. (21)

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Then he explains to us why this “reconfiguration of global politics” is likely to lead to a “clash of civilizations.” Again, in his own words: Peoples and countries with similar cultures are coming together. Peoples and countries with different cultures are coming apart. Alignments defined by ideology and superpower relations are giving way to alignments defi ned by culture and civilization. Political boundaries increasingly are redrawn to coincide with cultural ones: ethnic, religious, and civilizational. Cultural communities are replacing Cold War blocs, and the fault lines between civilizations are becoming the central lines of conflict in global politics. (125) Now, how are we to evaluate such a grand theory? Since it lies beyond the limit of my expertise to comment comprehensively on Huntington’s thesis, I shall make only a few observations relating, directly or indirectly, to the purpose I have set myself in this essay. To begin with, I agree with Huntington that “a civilizational approach may be helpful to understanding global politics in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries” (14). This is so because it recognizes “culture” as very much relevant to the process of modernization in non-Western societies. In the case of China, for example, when American modernization theory was in its heyday, leading historians such as John  K. Fairbank, Joseph Levenson, and Mary C. Wright generally viewed Confucianism as an obstacle to the modernization of China. In 1991, I also made the observation that “Clio has been taking a new turn in the direction of culture in the past two decades”; as a result, “culture as a relatively autonomous force in history is now more clearly recognized than ever before.”2 To the extent that Huntington sees the Confucian tradition as a living cultural force in today’s China, I have no quarrel with the new “paradigm” he has proposed. In the second place, however, it is my considered opinion that Huntington’s sweeping discussion of post– Cold War reconfiguration of global politics requires serious qualifications. With the total collapse of the Communist system in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, the Cold War era indeed came to an abrupt end in the Western world in 1991. However, the same cannot be said of Asian communism. The Chinese mainland, North Korea, and Vietnam taken together— about 1.3 billion Asian people— comprise one-fifth of the world population and still live under Communist rule. The premature announcement of the coming of a worldwide post– Cold War era by Huntington and others in the West seems to suggest that communism in the East simply does not count. Here, the deep-seated West- centric bias of Western observers is unmistakably shown at its worst. It is true that since the adoption of the so- called openness and reform policies in the 1980s, mainland China has been undergo-

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ing very considerable economic change, and the ability of the Chinese Communist Party to control its people has also been decreasing. However, no one in his or her right mind can possibly deny the continuing existence of communism as a political system in China. The Four Cardinal Principles—the socialist path, the dictatorship of the proletariat, the leadership of the Chinese Party, and Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought— are still very much in operation and, moreover, repeatedly emphasized by the party leadership. The beginning of the post– Cold War era in the West cannot be dated from the 1980s when the Soviet Union pursued a course of glasnost and perestroika. For the same reason, we cannot say, even by the widest stretch of imagination, that the Cold War is completely over in East Asia as it is in Europe. As a matter of fact, it is interesting to note that when then-Vice President Gore of the United States toured the DMZ (Korean Demilitarized Zone) in the Korean Peninsula in early 1997, he reportedly remarked, “The Cold War is still with us here!” When the Chinese Communists launched their missile exercises over the Taiwan straits in March 1996, the Cold War even turned heated. I agree with one critic who contends that Huntington at times tends to interpret the facts to suit his theory.3 It is obviously his overenthusiasm for the allencompassing idea of a “clash of civilizations” that has led him to make the following statement: “In the post- Cold War world, culture is both a decisive and a unifying force. People separated by ideology but united by culture come together, as the two Germanys did and as the two Koreas and the several Chinas are beginning to” (28). In this case, Huntington’s distortion of facts to suit his theory is complete. He makes no distinction between a post– Cold War Europe and a Cold War Asia. There can be no question that ideology still separates the two Koreas as well as the two Chinas on the opposite sides of the Taiwan Strait. Even in the case of the two Germanys, it is also too superficial and simplistic to suggest that they “come together” because of “culture” yet are still separated by “ideology.” I am convinced that it is his obsession with his grand theory that has led him to believe that the Chinese Communists have somehow resumed their Confucian identity. Last but not least, let me say a word or two about his idea of a “clash of civilizations” with respect to Confucianism. In his Foreign Affairs article of 1993, Huntington straightforwardly identified Chinese Communists as “Confucians.” It is to his credit that he toned down this kind of talk considerably in the 1996 book. However, he continues to define present- day China in terms of Confucianism, as if communism no longer mattered to the Chinese conduct of international affairs. This is clearly shown in his repeated reference to the so- called Confucian-Islamic connection. Central to the thesis of a “clash of civilizations” is his deep worry about a “Confucian-Islamic alliance.” Anyone who refuses to be blinded by theories can readily see that the “connection” exists only between the Communist regime in Beijing on the one hand and some of the anti-Western

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Islamic states on some others. The following words of Mu’ammar al- Qadhafi quoted in The Clash of Civilizations are worth quoting here: The new world order means that Jews and Christians control Muslims and if they can, they will after that dominate Confucianism and other religions in India, China, and Japan. . . . Now we hope to see a confrontation between China that heads the Confucianist camp and America that heads the Christian crusader camp. We have no justification but to be biased against the crusaders. We are standing with Confucianism, and, by allying ourselves with it and fighting alongside it in one international front, we will eliminate our mutual opponent. (239–240) Needless to say, Colonel Qadhafi’s rhetoric fits the “clash of civilizations” paradigm perfectly. However, one wonders whether Huntington really takes seriously and at face value the words of a man who, after all, is not particularly known for his understanding of Confucianism. Speaking of a “clash of civilizations,” the confrontation between Christianity and Islam indeed has its deep historical roots traceable to the Crusades of the twelfth century, if not earlier. Both religions derive their monotheism from a Jewish source. As such, both are equally possessive and exclusive in character, requiring total commitment on the part of their believers. In a sense, the clash between the two may be viewed as inevitable in hindsight, but what can we say about the possibility of a confrontation between China and the West? All I can say is that the present rivalry between China and the West (mainly the United States) makes sense only if it is understood, basically, as the unfinished business of the Cold War. Our minds become confused on this point for the following two reasons: fi rst, many of us have been misled by the recent “post– Cold War” language, a language originated, as pointed out above, in a deep-seated West- centric bias. Second, in the last two years or so the Chinese Communist Party has skillfully manipulated Chinese nationalistic feelings of a fanatic kind directed specifically against the United States. With the bankruptcy of Marxist ideology, the party faces its most serious legitimacy crisis ever. It is much in evidence that the party is making a subtle move to resuscitate the bankrupted totalitarian ideology by pumping nationalism into it. This is clearly a move from “socialism” to “national socialism,” which is practically synonymous with Deng’s slogan “socialism with Chinese characteristics.” It is this new wave of nationalism that has often been mistaken as a revival of Confucian culture in China.4 Whether it is “socialism” or “national socialism,” China today is still very much under the sway of an avowedly anti-Western ideology of Western origins. In the name of “revolution,” this ideology must also of necessity take anti- Confucianism as its very point of departure. Up to this day, we have yet

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to discover a single instance of a positive statement about the Confucian tradition in the party’s official publications. Should the confrontation between communist China and the West become unavoidable, which no one in his or her right mind would like to see happen, the blame could in no way be laid on Confucianism. Whatever causes it might possibly involve, it will most certainly have nothing to do with a “clash of civilizations.” In what follows, I wish to give a brief account of how the Confucian elite responded to Western civilization when China came face to face with the West in recent centuries. I shall discuss this encounter under three headings: religion, science, and democracy. I believe that only through such a historical analysis can we get a more realistic sense as to the possibility of a clash between Confucian and Western civilizations.

RELIGION Confucianism is not a religion in the ordinary Western sense. However, scholars today are in general agreement that there is a religious dimension in Confucianism with such notions as Heaven and Dao 道 as its focus. As a religion, Confucianism has shown from the beginning an open, flexible, and inclusive character; it contrasts sharply with the possessiveness and exclusiveness of both Christianity and Islam. As a matter of fact, this is also generally true of all other Chinese religions, including Daoism and the various sinified sects of Buddhism. This impor tant fact perhaps explains, at least partly, why religious wars were virtually unknown in Chinese history. Almost without exception, modern historians of Chinese religion assure us that Chinese religious life is characterized, above all, by a syncretic outlook, with religious tolerance as a central builtin feature. Historically speaking, religious syncretism reached its peak in Ming China (1368–1644). Ming Taizu 明太祖, the founding emperor (r. 1368– 1398), openly espoused harmony and mutual complementarity of the Three Teachings— Confucianism, Buddhism, and Daoism—thereby setting the tone for religious syncretism during the entire Ming Period. The greatest influence on syncretism, however, came from the leading philosopher, Wang Yangming 王陽明 (1472–1529), who initiated a Confucian discourse on the unity of the Three Teachings. He was probably the first major Confucian thinker in Chinese history to admit that each of the Three Teachings captures a partial vision of the same Dao (Way). As a consequence, his followers in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries developed this syncretic outlook in different directions.5 It was in a religious atmosphere marked by pervasive syncretism that Jesuit missionaries came to China. The culturally sensitive Matteo Ricci (1552–1610), who arrived in China in 1584, was very quick to discover the prevailing syncretism among the Confucian elite. He wrote:

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The most common opinion today amongst those who believe themselves to be the most wise is to say that these three sects [i.e., the Three Teachings of Confucianism, Buddhism, and Daoism] are one and the same thing and all be observed at once. By this they deceive themselves and others, too, creating the greatest confusion, for it seems to them that, where religion is concerned, the more ways there are of putting things, the better for the kingdom.6 Needless to say, from his exclusivist Christian point of view, syncretism was unacceptable because it was “a betrayal of principle” or “an attempt to secure unity at the expense of truth.”7 Ironically, however, it was largely syncretism that accounted for the early success of the Jesuits’ work in China. One of Ricci’s crowning achievements was undoubtedly his conversion of many leading members of the Confucian elite. Among them were Xu Guangqi 徐光啓 (1562–1633) and Li Zhizao 李之藻 (1565– 1630), who, together with Yang Tingyun 楊廷筠 (1557–1627), were collectively known as the “three pillars of evangelization.” However, the interesting fact is that Chinese converts among the Confucian elite “were expecting to operate a kind of synthesis with Christian ity itself.” What Xu was advocating “was not  the pure Christian doctrine, but an amalgamation of Confucianism and Christianity similar to that which had emerged in the sixteenth century between Confucianism and Buddhism.” In the case of Yang Tingyun, he wanted to enlarge the Chinese syncretic framework to include Christianity in order to establish the “unity of Four Teachings.” According to Father Niccolo Longobardo (1559–1654), Yang Tingyun really believed that the universal principles underlying all three Chinese teachings were in agreement with the Christian “Holy Law.”8 It is also highly interesting to note that both Jesuit missionaries and Chinese converts made common efforts to prove that ancient Chinese ideas in the Confucian classics coincided with those of the Bible. For their part, the Jesuits were persuaded that such terms as Shangdi 上帝 (Lord on High) and Tian 天 (Heaven) in Confucian texts must be references to the Christian god. They even speculated that the Chinese in very early times must somehow have already known about the God of the Bible. Even as late as 1704, the Jesuit Joachim Bouvet (1656–1730) still insisted that the Confucian classics contained “a mysterious and prophetic summary of all the principles and of the whole economy of the Christian religion and nothing else.”9 On the other hand, Chinese converts seem to have been less concerned about the absoluteness and exclusiveness of the Christian Truth than about the Confucian emphasis on the sameness of the human mind and the universal accessibility of Dao to everyone. This Confucian faith is most vividly expressed by the twelfth- century Confucian philosopher Lu Xiangshan 陸象山 (1139–1193):

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If in the Eastern Sea there were to appear a sage, he would have this same mind and this same Principle (li 理). If in the Western Sea there were to appear a sage, he would have this same mind and this same Principle. If in the Southern and Northern Seas there were to appear sages, they too would have this same mind and this same Principle. If a hundred or a thousand generations ago, or a hundred or a thousand generations hence, sages were to appear, they likewise would have this same mind and this same Principle.10 Whatever the original intention of this statement, it has since then suggested to Confucians that neither Confucianism nor China could have an exclusive claim to the true Way. Indeed, this common understanding probably made it easier for many members of the Confucian elite to be converted to Christianity in the seventeenth century. Li Zhizao, for instance, showed his admiration for Matteo Ricci by paraphrasing Lu Xiangshan, saying, “There are the same minds and the same principles in Eastern and Western seas.” This may well be understood as an impor tant reason why he finally accepted the religious faith of the sage from the Western Sea.11 I have chosen the Jesuit mission to China in the late Ming and the early Qing (1644–1911) dynasties to illustrate my point because, unlike in the late Qing, Christianity and commerce remained largely separate. Therefore, it can give us a clearer idea with regard to the Confucian response to Christianity in more purely religious terms. The relationship can by no means be described as a confl ictual one. In the fi rst six or seven decades, Chinese Confucians and European missionaries generally accommodated each other, resulting in a basic convergence between Confucian and Christian ideas. The final break between the papacy and the Qing court in 1724 involved many factors that do not concern us here. As far as religion itself was concerned, the break became inevitable only when the papacy abandoned the early accommodation policy of Ricci and took an exclusivist approach. Confucianism, by all accounts, played no significant role in it.12

SCIENCE Confucian response to Western science has always been positive and enthusiastic. China’s earliest systematic exposure to Western science also occurred in the seventeenth century. As is widely known, it was the Jesuits’ strategy to use their scientific knowledge, particularly of astronomy and mathematics, to attract Chinese interest in the Christian faith. Though living and working in the age of the Scientific Revolution in the West, the Jesuits refrained, for theological reasons, from transmitting some of the most spectacular new discoveries to the Chinese world of learning, notably Copernicus’s heliocentrism. Nevertheless,

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the total body of scientific knowledge they brought to China, despite its limitations, was rich enough to create a revolutionary impact on Chinese scientists.13 According to Nathan Sivin, Wang Xishan 王錫闡 (1628–1682), Mei Wending 梅文鼎 (1633–1721), and Xue Fengzuo 薛鳳祚 (d. 1680), the first scholars in China to respond to Western science were “responsible for a scientific revolution” in China.14 The introduction of Western science also affected the development of Confucian learning in impor tant ways. One was a growing emphasis on the importance of knowledge of the external world. Here we may take Fang Yizhi’s 方以智 (1611–1671) redefinition of the Confucian concept of gewu 格物 (investigation of things) as an example. He was greatly fascinated by Western astronomy, mathematics, physiology, and natural philosophy as he found them in the books published by the Jesuits. Having critically examined and carefully compared them with their Chinese counter parts, he became convinced that investigation of physical objects in the external world had been an impor tant part of sagely learning in ancient China, which had contributed enormously to humans’ physical well-being. As a result, he gave the concept gewu an interpretation diametrically opposite to the one offered by Wang Yangming that had dominated Confucian thinking since the sixteenth century. Wang took wu to be “things within our minds,” not “things in the external world,” which he dismissed as irrelevant to moral cultivation. On his part, Fang not only extended the concept of wu to include “things” external to our minds but, more specifically and emphatically, “things” in the natural world. Consequently, he also understood the Confucian notion of li 理 (principle) differently. Li for him refers not only to “moral principles” but “principles of things” (wuli 物理) as well. Among his writings are a series of studies on the structure of the universe (astronomy) and on the human body (physiology). This was clearly impossible without the help of the scientific literature provided by the Jesuits.15 The extremely favorable response from leading scholars such as Fang did much to redirect the attention of scholars of younger generations to mathematical and scientific studies, among whom were Wang Xishan, Mei Wending, and Fang’s second son, Fang Zhongtong 方中通. Throughout the Qing Period, we find indigenous scientific tradition carried on in China continuously. Rediscovery and critical examination of ancient works of mathematics, science, and technology formed an impor tant part of Confucian classical scholarship in the eighteenth century. Some of the leading classicists, including Dai Zhen 戴震 (1724–1777) and Qian Daxin, 錢大昕 (1728–1804), were also first-rate mathematicians. Confucian scholars continued to study Western mathematics and science. In 1799, Ruan Yuan 阮元 (1764–1849) compiled, with the help of Qian and others, a collection of biographies of 280 astronomers and mathematicians, among them thirty-seven Europeans. He also shared the view with many others that mathematics and science must be made a component part of Confucian training.

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Confucian response to Western science, early and late, serves particularly well as a caution that we must not blindly trust the sweeping generalization about so- called Sinocentrism, as Huntington apparently does (234–235). Contrary to conventional wisdom, “Sinic civilization” has been remarkably open to foreign influence. Had it been the Chinese propensity to reject things and ideas on the grounds of pure outlandishness, Buddhism would have had no chance at all to become one of China’s Three Teachings. Fang Yizhi justified his acceptance of certain Western scientific theories by citing the example of Confucius as his defense. Even a sage like Confucius did not hesitate to learn from a “foreigner” who knew something about “birds.” Eighteenth- century Confucians often expressed their great admiration for Western science, which, they openly admitted, was superior to its Chinese counterpart. Ji Yun 紀昀 (1724–1804), general editor of the imperial project known as Siku quanshu 四庫全書 (The Complete Library of the Four Treasures), said in no uncertain terms that the West far surpassed China in mathematics, astronomy, water control, weaponry, etc.16 A comparison between Western science and its Chinese counterpart also led Qian Daxin to come to the same conclusion. Then he went on to explain why this had been the case: It is not possible that the ingenuity of Europeans surpasses that of China. It is only that Europeans have transmitted [their findings] systematically from father to son and from master to disciple for generations. Hence, after a long period [of progress] their knowledge has become increasingly precise. Confucian scholars have, on the other hand, usually denigrated those who were good mathematicians as petty technicians. . . . In ancient times, no one could be a Confucian who did not know mathematics. . . . Chinese methods [now] lag behind Europe’s because Confucians do not know mathematics.17 Here Qian Daxin obviously took Europe to be a civilization comparable to China. In the earlier part of the above-quoted essay, he also repeated Lu Xiangshan’s statement that “there are the same minds and the same principles in Eastern and Western seas,” but added that “there is also the same number” referring, in his case, to the universality of mathematical knowledge. Confucian universalism is not necessarily Sinocentric. This continuing presence of Western science in Confucian consciousness throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries had much to do with the response of the Chinese intellectual elite to the crisis of Western invasion in the post– Opium War period. Leading Confucian scholars concerned about China’s “self-strengthening” immediately focused their attention on the promotion of Western science as a matter of utmost urgency. Feng Guifen 馮桂芬 (1809– 1874), who first served as an assistant to Commissioner Lin Zexu 林則徐 and later as secretary to Li Hongzhang 李鴻章, wrote a highly influential essay in

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1860 advocating “adoption of Western knowledge.” By this term, he meant primarily Western science. Trained in Confucian classics as well as in mathematics, astronomy, and geography, he clearly recognized science as the source of Western power. In his opinion, “Western books (in Chinese translation) on mathematics, mechanics, optics, light, chemistry and other subjects contain the best principles of the natural sciences”; it is also remarkable that he emphasized the central importance of mathematics in the early scientific training of students.18 From this time on, Western science was steadily moving toward the center of the Chinese educational system until it eventually replaced Confucian classics in the early decades of the twentieth century. Chinese worship of science reached its first peak during the May Fourth era when the idea was personified to become “Mr. Science.”19

DEMOCRACY Democracy is actually the core area of Huntington’s grand theory. In his 1991 article, “Religion and the Third Wave,” he suggests a causal relationship between Christianity and democracy that anticipates the theory of a “clash of civilizations.”20 In The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, his view on this subject remains substantially unchanged. He writes: During the 1970s and 1980s over thirty countries shifted from authoritarian to democratic political systems. . . . Democratization was most successful in countries where Christian and Western influences were strong. New democratic regimes appeared most likely to stabilize in the Southern and Central European countries that were predominantly Catholic or Protestant and, less certainly, in Latin American countries. In East Asia, the Catholic and heavily American influenced Philippines returned to democracy in the 1980s, while Christian leaders promoted movement toward democracy in South Korea and Taiwan. . . . [I]n the former Soviet Union, the Baltic republics appear to be successfully stabilizing democracy; the degree and stability of democracy in the Orthodox republics vary considerably and are uncertain; democratic prospects in the Muslim republics are bleak. By the 1990s, except for Cuba, democratic transitions had occurred in most of the countries, outside Africa, whose peoples espoused Western Christianity or where major Christian influences existed. (192–193) As far as democratization is concerned, Huntington’s view of both Confucianism and Islam has been consistently negative. This perhaps explains why he thinks democratic prospects in the Muslim republics of the former Soviet Union “are bleak” on the one hand and attributes movements toward democ-

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racy in South Korea and Taiwan in the 1980s to the promotion of “Christian leaders” on the other. I cannot pretend to know anything about the Muslim republics and South Korea mentioned here. As far as my knowledge goes, however, Christianity does not seem to have played any significant role in the recent democratization of Taiwan. Once again, he is interpreting the facts at will to suit his theory. In The Third Wave (1991), Huntington offers a brief critical discussion of “Confucianism” based on the received view in the West that “traditional Confucianism was either undemocratic or antidemocratic.”21 He seems to be very confident in reaching an overall conclusion that “In practice Confucian and Confucian-influenced societies have been inhospitable to democracy.”22 To be fair to Huntington, he does not say that Confucian culture is a permanent barrier to democracy. Moreover, he even allows the possibility that Confucianism may also have “some elements that are compatible with democracy, just as both Protestantism and Catholicism have elements that are clearly undemocratic.”23 In the end, however, he is unswerving in his belief that “China’s Confucian heritage, with its emphasis on authority, order, hierarchy and the supremacy of the collectivity over the individual, creates obstacles to democratization” (238). Needless to say, this is not the place to engage in a comprehensive and detailed debate with Huntington on the nature of Confucianism and its changing political and social ideas over the past twenty-five centuries. For the sake of brevity, allow me to ask a very simple historical question: Given the supposedly inherent hostility of Confucianism to Western values associated with democracy, who were those Chinese first attracted to the very idea of democracy? Even a casual examination of the historical record will show that the earliest Chinese discoverers and advocates of democracy in the late nineteenth century were none other than the reform-minded Confucians. Wang Tao 王韜 (1828–1897), Guo Songtao 郭嵩燾 (1818–1891), and Xue Fucheng 薛福成 (1838–1894), for example, all returned from their respective years-long trips to Europe deeply impressed by the democratic ideals and institutions of the West. Wang and Xue, independently of each other, praised England and America in terms of the Golden Age in China’s high antiquity. Wang Tao was probably the first Chinese scholar who identified three forms of state in Europe, which he called, respectively, minzhu 民主, or democracy; junzhu 君主, or monarchy; and junmin gongzhu 君民共主, or constitutional monarchy.24 At the turn of the century, there were two rival Confucian schools in China. The New Text school claimed Kang Youwei 康有為 (1858–1927), Tan Sitong 譚 嗣同 (1865–1898), and Liang Qichao 梁啟超 (1868–1936) as its leaders; the Old Text school was led by Zhang Binglin 章炳麟 (1868–1936) and Liu Shipei 劉師培 (1884–1919). It is interesting to note that both schools advocated democracy, though each in its own way. The New Text Confucians were reformists in favor of constitutional monarchy while their Old Text rivals became revolutionaries pushing for republicanism. What is particularly remarkable about the two

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groups is that they shared the very same interest in searching for the origins and evolution of democratic ideas in the Confucian past. Kang Youwei was the first late Qing scholar to carry out such a project. Inspired by Wang Tao’s writings, he divided Chinese history into three periods. He deemed the highest and most perfect form of government to be the “democracy” of the time of the legendary sage- emperors Yao and Shun; the second best form of government was “constitutional monarchy” in the early Zhou; and the worst form of government was the “autocracy” in place since the unification of China in 221 b.c.e. Through an extensive exegesis of certain Confucian texts, he concluded, finally, that Confucius was a most enthusiastic advocate of democracy in ancient China.25 We can easily dismiss this whole exercise as sheer nonsense. Nonetheless, it is extremely valuable as evidence showing the extraordinary enthusiasm with which Confucians responded to the Western idea of democracy in this early stage. Thus, Kang Youwei set an example to be followed not only by his disciples but by his rivals as well. Liu Shipei, for instance, wrote a book entitled Zhongguo minyue jingyi 中國民約精義 (Essentials of the Chinese Theory of Social Contract),26 which purports to trace the development of such ideas as democracy, freedom, rights, etc., throughout Chinese history. During the May Fourth era, antitraditionalism reigned supreme and democracy and Confucianism were viewed as antithetical to each other, a view that has now also been widely accepted in the West. However, if we examine more closely the writings of the two May Fourth leaders largely responsible for the dissemination of this view, Chen Duxiu 陳獨秀 (1879–1942) and Hu Shi 胡適 (1891–1962), we see that the matter is rather complicated. Both men received classical educations in their early years and remained to the end of their lives committed to certain Confucian values. Chen made the following remark from his prison cell in the early 1930s: Every feudal dynasty worshipped Confucius as a sage. The act of worship was inauthentic. Its true purpose was to strengthen dynastic rule. . . . This is the reason that during the May Fourth Movement we came up with the slogan “Down with Confucius and Sons.” However, intellectually speaking, the sayings of Confucius and Mencius are worth studying. Statements such as “The People are of supreme importance, and the sovereign comes last” (Mencius) and “In teaching, there should be no distinction of classes” (Confucius) all deserve to be further explored.27 It may be noted that by this time Chen had already been expelled from the Chinese Communist Party of which he was the founder. It is very revealing that he now not only had his second thoughts about Confucian culture but also reembraced Western democracy, which he had repudiated during his Communist period. On the other hand, Hu Shi as a moderate liberal never wholly abandoned some of the Confucian values that constituted the core of what he called

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“the humanistic and rationalistic China.”28 In many of his English writings, he often emphasized the compatibility of Confucianism with Western liberalism and suggested that certain Confucian ideas and institutions might prove to be capable of furnishing China with a solid foundation on which constitutional democracy could be successfully established.29 The above historical sketch clearly shows that the idea of democracy found its most sympathetic audience in China among the Confucian elites. By contrast, other social groups, including merchants and peasants, were generally not motivated enough to be actively involved in politics, social responsibility, human equality, the well-being of the people, etc., which are some of the closest Confucian equivalents to Western civic virtues. It was this Confucian “civic” spirit that disposed many Chinese intellectuals to Western democratic ideas at the turn of the century. This may smack of elitism today. However, it is elitism in the best sense of the word. I heartily agree with Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., who says: “Of all the cants in this canting world, the cant about elitism is the most futile. Government throughout human history has always been government by minority—that is, by elites. This is as true for democratic and communist states today as it was for medieval monarchies and primitive tribes. . . . The serious question is not the existence of the ruling elite but their character.”30 To give a most recent example, the democracy movement in Tiananmen Square in 1989 was to a large extent related to the partial revival of elite culture in postMao China. Commenting on this tragic event, Michael Walzer suggests that student elitism was probably rooted in “pre- Communist cultural traditions specific to China.”31 I believe he is right. If I may borrow a new concept recently developed by John Rawls, I would like to think that Confucianism will do well as one of the “reasonable comprehensive doctrines” that forms part of the “background culture” of a constitutional democratic regime. Since democracy cannot flourish in a culturally impoverished land, a high level of elite culture is a precondition for the initial success of democratization.32 As beautifully expressed by Vaclav Havel: “In the moral world of antiquity, Judaism, and Christianity, without which the West would hardly have come to modern democracy, we can find more points of agreement with Confucius than we would think, and more than is realized by those who invoke the Confucian tradition to condemn Western democracy.”33 I only wish to add that it is equally unwise to invoke Western democracy to condemn the Confucian tradition.

CONCLUSION Religion, science, and political systems are the three key areas in which a “clash of civilizations” are most likely to occur. The brief review above, however, shows that Confucian responses to the challenge of Western civilization in all these

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three areas have been, by and large, very positive. From the late nineteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries, Confucians actively sought to incorporate what they considered to be the quintessence of Western culture into their own civilization without losing its identity altogether. This attitude is best expressed in Hu Shi’s introduction to The Development of the Logical Method in Ancient China, written before he became an ardent advocate of “total Westernization.” He wrote: How can we Chinese feel at ease in this new world which at first light appears to be so much at variance with what we have long regarded as our own civilization? For it is perfectly natural and justifiable that a nation with a glorious past and a distinctive civilization of its own making should never feel quite at home in a new civilization, if that new civilization is looked upon as part and parcel imported from alien lands and forced upon it by external necessities of national existence. And it would surely be a great loss to mankind at large if the acceptance of this new civilization should take the form of abrupt displacement instead of organic assimilation, thereby causing the disappearance of the old civilization. The real problem, therefore, may be stated thus: How can we best assimilate modern civilization in such a manner as to make it congenial and congruous and continuous with the civilization of our own making?34 Of the three elements discussed above, science and democracy, in par ticular, have been accepted by Confucians as essential to the rebirth of Chinese civilization in the modern world. Contrary to the conventional assumption, science and democracy are not promoted only by Westernized antitraditionalists in China. Liang Shuming 梁漱溟 (1893–1988), now known as a leading New Confucianist in twentieth-century China, was famous for his systematic exposition of the incompatibility between Chinese civilization and Western civilization during the May Fourth Period. Nevertheless, he admonished in earnest that the Chinese must take an “attitude of ‘complete acceptance’ of Western culture. . . . The two spirits [of science and democracy] are completely correct. We must accept them unconditionally. The urgent task facing us today is [to know] just how to introduce [them effectively].”35 What is widely known today as New Confucianism was born in Hong Kong in 1958 when four Confucian scholars published “A  Manifesto to the World on Chinese Culture.” As rightly observed by Hao Chang, its authors tend to “interpret the Chinese intellectual heritage in ways that could accommodate modern Western values such as democracy and science”; it is the belief of these four New Confucianists that the basic Confucian value orientation, when understood broadly and in perspective, “would dispose the Chinese toward accepting Western science and democracy.”36 It is this New Confucianism that has been most sympathetically received by a new generation of intellectuals in mainland China since the 1980s.

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It is rather unfortunate that Huntington speculates a great deal about the prospect of a clash between Chinese and Western civilizations without a basic historical grasp of the developments of Confucianism in modern and contemporary China. He seems to rely heavily on Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore as the sole authoritative interpreter of Confucianism, who, as Havel says, takes great interest in the Confucian tradition only to invoke it to condemn Western democracy. I do not deny that a deep-seated antagonism does seem to exist between the regime in Beijing and the West. However, the source of this antagonism clearly lies elsewhere. It is only fair that Confucian culture be absolved of all blame.

notes 1.

Samuel  P. Huntington, “The Clash of Civilizations?,” Foreign Affairs (Summer 1993):

2.

Ying-shih Yü, “Clio’s New Cultural Turn and the Rediscovery of Tradition in Asia,”

22–49. keynote speech to the Twelfth Conference, International Association of Historians of Asia, Hong Kong, June 24–28, 1991, published in Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy 6, no. 1 (2007): 39–51. 3.

Richard Bernstein, “A Scholar’s Prophecy: Global Culture Conflict,” New York Times (Books of the Times section), November 6, 1996.

4.

Ying-shih Yü, “China’s New Wave of Nationalism,” in Consolidating Third Wave Democracies: Regional Challenges, ed., Larry Diamond, Marc F. Platters, Yun-han Chu, and Hungmao Tien (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997).

5.

See Judith A. Berling, The Syncretic Religion of Lin Chao- en (New York: Columbia University Press, 1980) and Ying-shih Yü, “The Intellectual World of Chiao Hung [1540– 1620], Revisited,” Ming Studies 23 (1988): 32–39.

6.

Jacques Gernet, China and the Christian Impact (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 64.

7.

Berling, The Syncretic Religion of Lin Chao- en, 4.

8.

See Gernet, China and the Christian Impact, 66–67.

9.

Ritchie Robertson, introduction to Cultures in Conflict, ed. Urs Bitterli (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1989), 8.

10.

Fung Yu-lan, History of Chinese Philosophy, trans. Derk Bodde (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1953), 2:573.

11.

See Willard J. Peterson, “Why Did They Become Christians?,” in East Meets West: The Jesuits in China, 1582–1773, ed. Charles E. Ronan, S. J. and Bonnie B. C. Oh (Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1988), 142.

12.

See Zhang Guogang 張國剛, Cong Zhongxi chushi dao liyi zhi zheng 從中西初識到禮儀之爭 (Beijing: Renmin, 2002), 413–502.

13.

See Willard J. Peterson, “Western Natural Philosophy Published in Late Ming China,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 117, no. 4 (1973): 295–322.

366 14.

c on f ucia nis m a nd c h ina’ s e nc oun t er wit h t h e west See Nathan Sivin, “Wang Hsi-shan (1628–1682),” in Dictionary of Scientifi c Biography, (New York: Charles Scribner’s, [1970–1980] 1978), 14:159–168; quote from p. 160.

15.

Willard J. Peterson, “Fang I- chih: Western Learning and the ‘Investigation of Things,’” in The Unfolding of Neo- Confucianism, ed. Wm. Theodore de Bary (New York: Columbia University Press, 1975), 369–409.

16.

Luo Bingmian 羅炳綿, “Ji Yun de xueshu sixiang yu siku tiyao de lichang” 紀昀的學術思 想與四庫提要的立場, Xinya xuebao 新亞學報 8, no. 8 (April 1981): 4–5.

17.

Benjamin  A. Elman, From Philosophy to Philology: Intellectual and Social Aspects of Change in Late Imperial China (Cambridge, Mass.: Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University, 1989), 83.

18.

Teng Ssu-yü and John  K. Fairbank, China’s Response to the West (Cambridge, Mass.:

19.

See D. M. Y. Kwok, Scientism in Chinese Thought, 1900–1950 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale

Harvard University Press, 1954), 50–51. University Press, 1965), and Charlotte Firth, Ting Wen- Chiang: Science and China’s New Culture (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1970). 20. See Samuel  P. Huntington, The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century (Norman and London: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991), 29–42; see also discussion in Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (New York: Free Press, 1992), 374. 21.

Huntington, The Third Wave, 300.

22. Ibid., 301. 23. Ibid., 310. 24. See Teng and Fairbank, China’s Response, 136–137. 25. 寧武南氏 [China] : Ningwu Nan shi, Minguo 23 [1934]. 26. See Hsiao Kung- chuan, A Modern China and a New World (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1975), 197–200. 27. Zheng Xujia 鄭學稼, Chen Duxiu zhuan 陳獨秀傳 (Taipei: Shibao wenhua, 1989), 2:960. 28. See Hu Shih, “The Chinese Tradition and the Future,” in Sino-American Conference on Intellectual Cooperation: Report and Proceedings (Seattle: University of Washington Department of Publications and Printing, 1962), 13–22; quote from p. 22. 29. Hu Shih, “Historical Foundations for a Democratic China,” in Edmund J. James Lectures on Government, 2nd ser. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1941), 1–12. 30. Arthur M. Schlesinger, The Cycles of American History (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1986), 428–429. 31.

Michael Walzer, Thick and Thin: Moral Argument at Home and Abroad (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1994), 59–60.

32. See John Rawls, Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), xvi– xvii, 14, 64, and Ying-shih Yü, “The Idea of Democracy and the Twilight of the Elite Culture in Modern China,” in Justice and Democracy: Cross- Cultural Perspectives, ed. Ron Bontekoe and Marietta Stepaniants (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1997), 208–210. 33.

Vaclav Havel, The Art of the Impossible (New York: Knopf, 1997), 201.

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34. Hu Shih, The Development of the Logical Method in Ancient China (New York: Paragon Book Reprint, 1963). Jerome B. Grieder, Hu Shih and the Chinese Renaissance: Liberalism in the Chinese Revolution, 1917–1937 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1970), 160. 35.

Guy S. Alitto, The Last Confucian: Liang Shu-ming and the Chinese Dilemma of Modernity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979), 119–120.

36. Hao Chang, “New Confucianism and the Intellectual Crisis of Contemporary China,” in The Limits of Change: Essays on Conservative Alternatives in Republican China, ed. Charlotte Furth (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1976), 276–302.

19. Clio’s New Cultural Turn and the Rediscovery of Tradition in Asia

I

deeply appreciate the great honor of being asked to speak before this distinguished assembly of historians of Asia. I must confess, however, that I accepted this impor tant assignment not entirely without hesitation. I hesitated because I was not quite sure that I could find things to say that might interest all of you. By professional training, I am only a tender of the small garden of early Chinese history and wholly ignorant of other vineyards of Asian history in which many of you have productively labored. It seems that the only way for my speech to make some sense on this par ticular occasion is that I must speak not only as a historian of China but also as a historian-at-large, if that is possible at all. As I understand it, the general theme of this conference is “Tradition and Development,” which in many ways provides me with an ideal opportunity for some reflecting on my lifelong quest for a true understanding of the Chinese cultural tradition and its place in world history. I offer my apologies if my reflections occasionally turn out to be somewhat autobiographical. But I hope in the end that what I am going to say might have some relevance to the historical inquiry of cultural traditions in the non-Western (in this case, the Asian) nations as a whole.

1 In the past two decades or so, some of the most fundamental assumptions of our historical discipline have been called into serious question. As a result,

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there is neither a dominant paradigm nor any consensus about what constitutes the normal practice in historical studies. In Clio’s temple, it appears, hierarchy has given way to anarchy and order to chaos. If philosophers nowadays can only define their trade as “whatever we philosophy professors do,”1 then we can also say that “history as an academic discipline consists in whatever the historians are doing.” At any rate, it is obvious that historians today are united only by a common concern with the past, but little else. Recently, the current state of historical scholarship was most vividly described in the last verse of the Book of Judges: “In those days, there was no king in Israel; every man did what was right in his own eyes.”2 As a Chinese reader, this description reminded me immediately of the famous saying in the Yijing (Classic of Changes): “A flock of dragons without a leader.” This is, however, considered an auspicious sign in the divination text. Now, we must ask: Who was the “king” that had last occupied the throne of the kingdom of history? Under what circumstances did this last king somehow get himself dethroned? I believe this last king can be broadly identified as the positivistic conception of history. His royal genealogy is a long one that is traceable ultimately to Enlightenment notions of reason, tradition, human nature, progress, etc., but it was particularly during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that his dynasty reigned triumphant. Over the centuries, historical positivism has outgrown its early crudity and developed into something profoundly subtle and complex, often taking unexpected turns as well as assuming variegated forms. It is therefore impossible for me to attempt a sketch of the doctrine here even in its barest essentials. To give you a general idea about some of the significant changes in recent historical thinking, however, I would like to call your attention specifically to those interrelated elements of historical positivism that are being most critically reexamined in recent years. First, central to the positivistic conception is the notion that history as a discipline must remain a scientific enterprise. It is indeed true that the nineteenthcentury belief in the possibility of a natural science of history modeled on, if not physics, at any rate the biological sciences had long been abandoned. No historian today, in the West anyway, would take seriously J. B. Bury’s catchword that “history is a science, no less and no more.” As late as the 1960s and the early 1970s, however, history was generally identified as a social science with a growing emphasis on quantification. As one distinguished Annales historian put it, “history that is not quantifiable cannot claim to be scientific.”3 This brief statement testifies fully to the fact that the ideal of “scientific history” was still greatly cherished even though the very conception of “science” may have undergone drastic changes. Second, if history is social science, then it must of necessity share all the basic assumptions on which rest the idea of the objectivity of scientific knowledge, for mainstream social scientists are generally convinced that their discipline is on the secure path of becoming a genuine natural science. In the case

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of historical objectivity, however, Ranke’s notion that the past be shown “as it really was” has been taken as its classical expression. Due to the unique nature of historical evidence, which cannot be produced under direct observation, many historians are willing to admit that history as a scientific discipline must always remain a highly inexact one. Nevertheless, it is still a science as long as it follows the same scientific methods, procedures, and criteria for testing hypotheses and theories. This perhaps explains why historical positivism has always been predicated on the correspondence theory of truth, which is also generally implied in the positivist conception of science. As a matter of fact, the objective-subjective distinction in history itself presupposes that there is a reality of the past to which truth is correspondence. Moreover, truth is one, not relative to historian’s perspectives. The historian’s business is to discover objective historical facts and then establish hypotheses or theories to account for his facts. It is the underlying faith of the historical positivist that the discipline of history will progress with every new discovery of objective facts, just as science does; each generation’s revision of the past would be an improvement. Third, another impor tant aspect of the positivist program is the transformation of history into a natural science by establishing universal laws of social evolution that will enable us to predict the future and retrodict the past. The first systematic attempt was made by Auguste Comte, the founder of positivism, in the early nineteenth century, even though his “law of the three periods”— theological-metaphysical-positive—is now totally forgotten. By the late nineteenth century, however, evolutionary ideas under the impact of Darwin and Spencer further strengthened the positivist search for laws in history. In this connection, I must also mention Marx’s contribution. The Marxist five-stage theory of history is a much more powerful formulation than Comte’s “law of the three periods.” It may well have been the case that Marx originally did not intend his generalizations based on historical experiences of Western Europe to be taken as universal laws in history.4 But it is also undeniable that Marx’s own language sometimes does suggest that he believed he had discovered “laws” that govern social change. Thus, in 1867, he spoke with great confidence of “the natural laws of capitalist production . . . working with iron necessity towards inevitable results.”5 At any rate, since Stalin’s time, the five-stage theory of history has been firmly established in orthodox Marxism as a uniform pattern of development for all societies. Moreover, during the 1970s, this theory was also reiterated by a number of European Marxist historians in their discussions of the transition from feudalism to capitalism.6 This belief in the possibility of a universal historical model, it may be emphatically noted, has had a considerable influence on Asian historians’ treatment of their own national histories, especially in China and Japan. Fourth, economies and social determinism comprise the last element in historical positivism that merits mention here. The origin of this type of determinism, as we all know, can be traced to the distinction between base and

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superstructure in Marxism. But the notion “social being determines consciousness” as a general assumption has somehow found its way into practically every field of modern historical and social inquiry. It goes extremely well with the reductive mode of thinking, a salient feature of positivism. For example, assertions about mental events are reducible to facts about behav ior according to some philosophers, or, as some behaviorist psychologists believe, human behav ior can be reduced to that of lower animals, which, in turn, can itself be reduced ultimately to the physical laws governing the behav ior of inanimate matter. In fact, determinism and reductionism are two sides of the same coin. In the discipline of history, the two decades of the 1960s and 1970s witnessed a rapid growth of social history at the expense of intellectual and, especially, political history in the United States. Between 1958 and 1978, the percentage of American doctoral dissertations in social history quadrupled.7 This move toward social historical research was, to a great extent, influenced by the new trend to write “history from below” advocated by European Marxist historians and the French Annales school in the 1960s. The latter, under the guiding spirit of Braudel, distinguished three “levels” in history. The first level was the infrastructure consisting of material forces of climate, biology, demography, and economy that operated as the prime movers of the historical process; the next level was the structure of long- enduring social relationships; the last was the superstructure of political, cultural, and intellectual life. This is clearly a slightly modified and expanded version of the Marxist model of base and superstructure. It must be pointed out, however, that by the end of the 1970s, this deterministic model had already become totally discredited. As a noted social historian wrote in 1979: “Models of historical determinism based on economies, demography or sociology have collapsed in the face of the evidence, but no full blown deterministic model based on any other social science—politics, psychology or anthropology—has emerged to take its place.”8

2 Each of the four elements in historical positivism discussed above has been separately disputed over the years, some earlier than others. What is more significant, however, is that in the last decade or so, historical positivism as a whole, in its insistence on identifying history as a scientific enterprise based by and large on the correspondence theory of truth, has been seriously challenged, if not undermined. The challenge comes not only internally from history itself but also from other disciplines on which history is now largely parasitical. Needless to say, the whole story about this reorientation of historical studies is too complicated to be told here. What I propose to do below is, first, to indicate a new direction in which the discipline of history seems to have been moving during the past decade as historical positivism has been gradually but surely

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ebbing. Then I shall discuss this reorientation in the context of parallel developments in other related fields. Writing in 1983, a keen observer of current trends in historiography remarked, “Most recently there has been a turn away from a hard social-scientific approach to a pronounced concern with intangible factors of culture and consciousness.”9 This observation is now further confirmed by the editor of a collection of historical studies on culture under the title The New Cultural History (1989). The editor, Lynn Hunt, tells us more specifically that models of historical explanation have been undergoing a major shift in emphasis as both Marxists and Annalists have been moving from social history to cultural history in recent years.10 We may take some Annales historians as illustrative examples. According to Michel Vovelle, a third-generation Annalist, between 1960 and 1980, several members of the school moved from the “cellar” (social structures) to the “loft” (cultural superstructure such as “mentalities”) as a reaction against the social and economic determinism of Braudel.11 Fourth-generation Annales historians such as Roger Chartier are even more radical in their revolt against historical determinism; Chartier deems Braudel’s three-level theory no longer admissible. Instead, he proposes to view what he calls “cultural structure” and “social structure” as equally primary determinants of historical reality.12 The move toward the cultural has been made not only by social historians but by intellectual historians as well. At the Wingspread Conference on New Directions in American Intellectual History held in Racine, Wisconsin, in December 1977, one of the clear tendencies was the redefinition of intellectual history in terms of cultures as structures of meanings. Drawing on the work of some interpretive sociologists and anthropologists, intellectual historians now extend what they call “ideas” to include meanings inherent in human behav ior. As a human person gives meaning to every thing he or she does, social action must be seen as being determined by meanings. Redefined in this way, intellectual history is inseparable from social history. It is therefore groundless to say that the latter is at the center while the former is on the periphery of the historical profession. “For the meanings of man’s action,” says Gordon S. Wood, “form the very structure of his social world.”13 It is also significant that onethird of the Wingspread Conference papers fell into the category of “History of Culture.” In 1980, a leading intellectual historian, William  J. Bouwsma, perceptively characterized this shift as being “From [the] History of Ideas to [the] History of Meaning.” According to him, the increasing tendency of historians to substitute the word “cultural” in places they might earlier have employed the word “intellectual” has resulted mainly from the association of “culture” with meaning in a large sense.14 The rise of the new cultural history has another impor tant implication, namely, the recognition of the plurality of cultures. The very conception of the cultural autonomy of different societies, whether divided by space or time, serves well to undermine that tacit assumption of a West- centered universal-

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ism since the Enlightenment. Isaiah Berlin’s repeated celebration of Vico and Herder as the founding fathers of cultural history is clearly a plea for seeing cultures of different historical stages as well as of different nations in their own terms. What is particularly remarkable about both thinkers is, Berlin suggests, the realization on their part that “cultures are many and various, each embodying scales of value different from those of other cultures and sometimes incompatible with them, yet capable of being understood, that is, seen by observers endowed with sufficiently acute and sympathetic historical insight, as ways of living which human beings could pursue and remain fully human.”15 In this connection, however, I must point out that what Berlin calls “acute and sympathetic historical insight” is actually a reference to what is generally known as “empathetic understanding,” which is central to hermeneutics but dismissed as nonsense by positivists of all persuasions. Now let us move on to the hermeneutic challenge to positivism and its bearing on Clio’s cultural turn in recent years. There can be little doubt that hermeneutics is the single most impor tant intellectual force behind the search for meanings in contemporary cultural studies. In the English-speaking academic world, however, the term “hermeneutics” has gained currency only very recently. I remember when I read R. G. Collingwood’s The Idea of History for the first time in 1955, I was greatly fascinated by many of its eye- opening pages about the unique nature of historical knowledge. Ideas such as “the outside and inside of an event” and historical knowing as “reenactment of past thought” then suggested to me a move toward a more reasonable and convincing way of explaining the human past than the “covering law model” of Carl G. Hempel, which was, however, the order of the day. The internal difficulties involved in Collingwood’s theory of “empathetic understanding” were extensively discussed by critical philosophers of history during the 1950s, who often linked Collingwood to Dilthey, Croce, and the European tradition of Geistwissenschaften. The term “hermeneutics” was not even mentioned in these discussions, however. It was not until the 1970s when works by Paul Ricoeur, Hans- Georg Gadamer, and a host of other European hermeneutists began to invade not only the humanities but also social sciences in the United States that the hermeneutic approach obtained full respectability as an alternative to the positivist program. A quarter of a century later, I was greatly delighted to see Collingwood treated with respect and understanding in Gadamer’s Truth and Method. The very starting point of hermeneutics is that human sciences—that is, Geistwissenschaften—must be distinguished from natural sciences because a human being, as diametrically opposed to a molecule in a chemical reaction, is a being with intentions and purposes. However, hermeneutics is not primarily concerned with seeking to understand the intentions and purposes of individual actors in history, as Collingwood’s “reenacting a past thought” seems to suggest. It is rather concerned with the collective mentality of a society or community. This is perhaps why Gadamer often speaks of “the fusion of horizons,” a notion

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that Ricoeur, too, considers very fruitful.16 Whether it is called “horizon,” “structure of meaning,” “objective mind,” or some other name, it seems unmistakable that the true center of the hermeneutical enterprise is what we call “culture.” In fact, Dilthey already made it clear that the object of human studies (Geistwissenschaften) is “culture” and “meaning.”17 The impact of hermeneutics on human and social sciences as a whole has been considerable, though varying in degree from one individual discipline to another. The emergence of so- called interpretive social science, including anthropology, sociology, politics, and psychology, is an obvious result. Some disciplines in the humanities in which interpretation has always played a prominent role such as philosophy, art history, and literary criticism are now becoming more hermeneutical in analysis. This development has led to a blurring of the line separating objectivity from subjectivity; ideas and social realities imply each other. As a result, ideas can no longer be viewed as epiphenomenal. It may not have been a pure coincidence that the conception of natural science has also undergone a similar change in recent years. Thomas Kuhn’s theory of scientific revolution, for instance, transformed science into a human and historical matter subject to interpretation. Some physical scientists even find it necessary to “give up the naïve concept of reality, the idea that the world is made up of things, waiting for us to discover their nature.”18 New scientific insights have also caused a partial collapse of the correspondence theory of truth. The distinguished astrophysicist John  A. Wheeler told us in 1982: “The universe does not exist ‘out there’ independent of us. We are inescapably involved in bringing about that which appears to be happening. We are not only observers. We are participators. In some strange sense this is a participatory universe.”19 These new scientific views have been developed, needless to say, independently of hermeneutics, but they have strengthened our faith in the relative autonomy of the human mind. The relative autonomy of the mind argues for the relative autonomy of culture as the mind’s creation. It is very interesting that, according to a noted sociologist, there has been a convergence in emphasis on the autonomy of culture from social structure in recent cultural studies.20 What is even more revealing is the contribution of cultural Marxism in this regard, traceable to Gramsci’s idea of “cultural hegemony.” The very fact that the masses appear to adhere voluntarily to dominant ideas of the ruling class suggests that culture is a somewhat independent force to be reckoned with. Under the influence of cultural Marxism, Marxist historians also turned, in the 1970s, to stress the decisive role of cultural factors in defining a historical situation.21 Some Marxists have even carried the notion of cultural autonomy to the point of “culturalist fallacy.” The New Historicists, for instance, identify historical context as  the “cultural system” and take social institutions and practices to be its functions—a complete reversal of base and superstructure in the original Marxist formulation.22

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Of all the interpretive social sciences, I wish to use the anthropology of Clifford Geertz as evidence for my argument for Clio’s cultural turn. This is justifiable on two grounds: First, history and anthropology are moving increasingly in each other’s direction in dealing with problems of cultural change. Second, Geertz is perhaps the most influential anthropologist among historians; he was described by John Higham, for instance, as “virtually the patron saint” of the Wingspread Conference on American Intellectual History, mentioned above. Geertz has offered two well-known definitions for the concept of culture. On one occasion, he says: “Believing, with Max Weber, that man is an animal suspended in webs of significance he himself has spun, I take culture to be those webs, and the analysis of it to be therefore not an experimental science in search of law but an interpretive one in search of meaning.”23 The very way in which Geertz defines culture here shows clearly that he is determined to take the side of hermeneutics and openly break with the positivist tradition. On another occasion, he takes culture as denoting “an historically transmitted pattern of meanings embodied in symbols, a system of inherited conceptions expressed in symbolic forms by means of which men communicate, perpetuate, and develop their knowledge about and attitudes toward life.”24 Here, it is noteworthy that the historical dimension of culture is very much emphasized. In both cases, meaning is taken to be central to culture. Elsewhere in developing an anthropological theory of religion he also takes a hermeneutic position by focusing on the problem of meaning in order to establish the autonomy of culture.25 Little wonder that cultural historians often find Geertzian interpretive strategies congenial. For the search for meaning, rather than the search for laws, is taken to be also the central task of cultural history.

3 Culture and tradition are sometimes interchangeable in meaning. In the 1930s, the social anthropologist Robert Redfield made the observation that within some societies there are two cultural traditions that he proposed to call, respectively, the “great tradition” and the “little tradition.” According to his definition, “the great tradition is cultivated in schools or temples; the little tradition works itself out and keeps itself going in the lives of the unlettered in their village communities.”26 Today, both terms—“great tradition” and “little tradition”— have fallen into disuse and have been replaced by “elite culture” and “popular culture” as a result of revision and modification.27 I take this to be a most obvious case showing that tradition and culture sometimes can be the same thing only viewed from different perspectives. Geertz’s conception of culture as “an historically transmitted pattern of meanings embodied in symbols,” quoted above, may apply to “tradition” with equal validity. Such being the case, I propose

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to examine, briefly, the changing attitudes toward tradition in recent decades in the hope of throwing some further light on Clio’s cultural turn. Unfortunately, “tradition” acquired a rather negative meaning in the twentieth century. It has been generally perceived as antithetical to all the values we associate with modernity such as reason, progress, freedom, and, especially, revolution. Historically speaking, this negative view of tradition has its origin in the Enlightenment. On the whole, Enlightenment thinkers viewed tradition— any tradition— chiefly as a hindrance to human progress. Modern positivism, especially in its extreme form of scientism, is hostile to traditions. With the possible exception of Max Weber, modern social scientists rarely touched on the topic of tradition. Weber, indeed, made tradition a major category of analysis in his political sociology, but even he “did now allow much of a place for tradition in his account of modern society.”28 Not until the late 1960s and the early 1970s did some social scientists of note begin to take tradition seriously and systematically as an object of study. It is very interesting that both Edward Shils and Carl J. Friedrich complained, almost simultaneously, that there had been very little monographic basis for undertaking a theoretical analysis of the idea of tradition.29 Tradition particularly suffered during the 1950s when “modernization” was first put on the agenda of social sciences. In those early days, eradication of tradition was almost regarded as a precondition for modernization. As empirical studies of processes of modernization grew mature, however, the true value of tradition was also being slowly but surely rediscovered. In their study of the role of tradition in the political modernization of India published in 1967, Lloyd and Suzanne Rudolph were able to show how Gandhi turned elements of the Indian tradition to use in modernizing India. As they pointed out, “the assumption that modernity and tradition are radically contradictory rests on a misdiagnosis of tradition as it is found in traditional societies, a misunderstanding of modernity as it is found in modern societies, and a misapprehension of the relationship between them.”30 By the 1970s and the 1980s, it had become firmly established that the relationship between tradition and modernity is definitely a constructive one.31 Tradition has also been ably defended by the humanists as well. In The Vindication of Tradition, Jaroslav Pelikan draws many illuminating examples from the Christian tradition to show how tradition can be appreciated as a “beauty ever ancient, ever new.”32 He distinguishes between “tradition” and “traditionalism.” In his own beautiful words, “tradition is the living faith of the dead, traditionalism is the dead faith of the living.”33 Needless to say, it is the former, not the latter, that he is defending. The most impor tant thing to know about tradition is that it actually exists, he tells us (53). It is there waiting to be rediscovered, and then either recovered or rejected. The choice between recovery and rejection is ours to make, but we must understand our tradition before we choose. Understanding may involve us in the historical- critical study of our

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tradition, and no tradition is too sacred to be protected from such a critical inquiry, for to base recovery or rejection on ignorance “is not worthy of a free and rational person” (54). The idea that we can do away with tradition and start life completely anew is also powerfully criticized by a philosopher of science in the person of Stephen Toulmin. He calls this idea “the myth of the clean slate” and links it to the positivist conception of science in the seventeenth century. This conception rested not only on the quest for certainty and the equation of rationality with formal logic but also on the belief that the modern, rational way of dealing with problems is to sweep away the inherited clutter from traditions, clean the slate, and start again from scratch. It was also this “myth of the clean slate” that led to the most radical antitraditionalism of the French Revolution. Now, as the conception of science in our own time has been undergoing a profound change, the positivist intellectual structure has largely collapsed. As a consequence, Toulmin emphasizes not only the significance of tradition but also the plurality of cultural traditions. Without going relativist, he assumes that “all societies and cultures are equally good in their own ways.”34 Finally, I wish to conclude my discussion of tradition with a hermeneutic critique of the Enlightenment view. Gadamer, in Truth and Method, rejects the oppositions that have been so entrenched since the Enlightenment, such as those between reason and tradition, reason and authority, etc. Like Pelikan, he believes that tradition exists. Therefore, human beings are always situated within traditions. On the one hand, there is always an element of freedom in tradition, and on the other, tradition is also active in all historical change. Tradition needs to be preserved and preservation is an act of reason. But also like Toulmin, he does not think it possible for us to cut ourselves off from the inherited ideas of our cultures. As Gadamer assures us: “Even where life changes violently, as in ages of revolution, far more of the old is preserved in the supposed transformation of everything than anyone knows, and it combines with the new to create a new value.”35 Thus, in his own way, Gadamer also reaches a conclusion with regard to the dialectical relationship between tradition and modernity that is essentially similar to that of social scientists.

4 In the above, I hope I have somewhat succeeded in showing that Clio has been taking a new turn in the direction of culture in the past two decades. By making this observation, however, I do not mean to suggest that cultural history is to become the order of the day in Clio’s temple. What I am saying is rather that culture as a relatively autonomous force in history is now more clearly recognized than ever before. In light of this reorientation in historical thinking, I wish to explore the possibility of the rediscovery of tradition in Asia.

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Owing to my own ignorance of the historiographical developments in other Asian societies, I can only illustrate my point by referring to the cases of China and Japan. However, since Chinese history and Japanese history have both been traditionally included in the broad field known as “Oriental Studies,” it seems pertinent to say a word about Edward Said’s provocative Orientalism. According to Said, the whole idea of Orientalism was an invention of the Eurocentric imperialist mentality. Western European missionaries, scholars, philosophers, historians, novelists, poets, and travelers, especially since the nineteenth century, had been fascinated by the vast cultural differences as they found them in the Orient, first in the Near East and then in the Far East. A sharp contrast between the Orient and the Occident was thus formed. In the course of time, however, the cultural differences between the Occident and the Orient became gradually crystallized into the ineradicable distinction between Western superiority and Eastern inferiority. In nineteenth-century Europe, Said tells us: “Every writer on the Orient, from Renan to Marx (ideologically speaking), or from the most rigorous scholars (Lane and Sacy) to the most powerful imaginations (Flaubert and Nerval), saw the Orient as a locale requiring Western attention, reconstruction, even redemption. The Orient existed as a place isolated from the mainstream of European progress in the sciences, arts and commerce.”36 The case of Marx is particularly illuminating. Much as he was sympathetic to the Indian people under British colonial rule, he nevertheless considered that rule beneficial to India in terms of its long-range historical evolution. Thus, Orientalism as a Western view of the Orient was imposed on the so- called oriental peoples as a whole. The discussions in Said’s Orientalism are focused on the Arabic societies, where, he says, this imposed view has been generally accepted by native “Orientalists.” I am not qualified to judge whether Said’s thesis is valid. As far as I can see, Orientalism was as much intellectually informed by positivism as it was ideologically shaped by imperialism. If Western Orientalists viewed anything particularly Oriental as a deviation from the normal course of civilization, it was probably because they held their own civilization in Western Europe as the universal model. Moreover, Orientalism, with its emphasis on philology as the master-key to historical knowledge, was also conceived from the outset as a scientific enterprise. As a leading French Orientalist of the nineteenth century, Ernest Renan (1823–1892), put it, philology “is to the sciences of humanity what physics and chemistry are to the philosophic sciences of bodies.”37 By the end of the nineteenth century, Orientalism had already been well established in Japan and China as an academic discipline in which history figured centrally. However, it must be emphatically pointed out that in both cases, Orientalism was self-imposed rather than imposed by Western imperialists or Orientalists. I shall begin with Japan, where Orientalism not only had developed earlier and better but also influenced Chinese historians at the turn of the century. According to a recent survey by Watanabe Hiroshi of the Univer-

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sity of Tokyo, Japanese historiography since the Meiji Period has been dominated by the Western model. Generally speaking, modern Japanese mainstream historians over the past hundred years or so have, on the one hand, taken the historical development of Western civilization as the universal norm, and on the other, interpreted the “peculiarities” of Japanese history as deviations from the norm. It was such deviations that caused Japan to fall behind the West in the progress of civilization. Watanabe divides modern Japanese historiography into several stages. First, during the 1870s and  1880s, “civilization historiography” arose. Inspired by Western positivists such as François Guizot (1787–1874), Henry  T. Buckle (1821–1862), and Herbert Spencer (1820–1903), “civilization” historians tried to show that Japanese history basically followed the same “law of civilization” as that found in the West; it was merely a little slower due to its “peculiarities.” Then, at the turn of the century, a new generation of historians appeared on the scene. Under the influence of Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) and Thomas B. Macaulay (1800–1859), they were more sensitive to historical details and avoided a simple and direct application of the idea of “civilization” to their own history. Nevertheless, they retained the faith in the universal progress of civilization as exemplified by the West. During the 1920s and early 1930s, Marxists became very active in the field of Japanese history. Needless to say, as positivists of the most militant type, they naturally took the historical process in Europe as “typical,” against which Japanese history with all its “peculiarities” must be measured. Finally, during the post–World War II period, Marxism became the mainstream in Japanese historiography, with a strong competition from the socalled Modernist school. The Modernists have adopted as their conceptual framework the paradigm of modernity versus tradition, which was very much in vogue in the West during the 1950s and 1960s. Again, the modernization process of the West served as the universal model and whatever remained uniquely Japanese in post-Meiji Japan has been taken by Modernists as nothing but vestiges of “premodern” or “traditional” times. This state of affairs has been fundamentally altered since the 1970s, however, when Japan clearly emerged as an economic superpower. Instead of viewing the “peculiarities” of Japanese history as obstacles to a full-fledged modernization of Japan, they are widely regarded as causes of the exceptional “success” of the Japanese economy. In concluding, Watanabe expresses the hope that the time has probably arrived that historians of Japan come up with new concepts and frameworks specifically suited to their task and cease to look to the West as the universal model. “Perhaps,” says he, “every society or region is ‘par ticular’ in its own way, like an individual.”38 It is clear that over the past century, the changing views Japanese historians developed regarding their own national history vis-à-vis Western civilization fit remarkably well with the idea of Orientalism as defined by Said. As clearly shown above, however, these views were all homegrown; there is no evidence that they had been influenced by Western Orientalism. Instead, they seem to

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have directly resulted from the fact that many Japanese historians had wholeheartedly accepted Western historical positivism in its various versions as universal truth. Now let us move on to China. The birthplace of modern Chinese historiography was actually Tokyo, where leading Chinese historians such as Liang Qichao 梁啟超 (1873–1929) and Zhang Binglin 章炳麟 (1869–1935) came to seek refuge in the early years of the century and became exposed to the influence of Japanese “civilization historiography.” As a result, Chinese historians also began to follow the Japanese example by reconstructing and reinterpreting the Chinese past according to the historical model of the West. This is clearly discernible in the two essays on “New History” written by Liang Qichao in 1901 and  1902, which practically started a revolution in Chinese historiography. Liang’s adoption of the European scheme of periodization (ancient, medieval, and modern), as well as his unquestioning acceptance of the Spencerian theory of social evolution, were to exert a shaping influence on Chinese historiography in the decades to come. It hardly needs mentioning that both had long been in practice in the Japanese historical profession. The same is true with the influential National Essence historiography headed by Zhang Binglin and Liu Shipei 劉師培 (1884–1919). The term “national essence” (guocui 國粹 in Chinese and kokusui in Japanese) was a neologism borrowed from Japan, where a cultural movement arose in the 1880s as a reaction against the wave of Westernization. However, while the Japanese kokusui was primarily a group of cultural critics, the Chinese guocui historians were most enthusiastic to apply all kinds of Western theories— sociological, anthropological, political, and historical—to the Chinese past. As a matter of fact, a careful examination of some of the leading historians’ writings reveals that what they identified as “national essence” consisted primarily of values and ideas dominant in the modern West such as “democracy,” “equality,” “liberty,” “ human rights,” etc. They justified this identification on the grounds that these values and ideas had long been recognized as well as developed by Chinese thinkers completely independently of the West. Liu Shipei, for example, traced the indigenous origins and evolution of the so- called Chinese theories of “social contract” from the classical age to the nineteenth century. In other words, the Chinese “national essence” was by and large the Western model in disguise.39 With the rise of scientism since the May Fourth Movement of 1919, positivism has further tightened its grip on the Chinese historical mind. Time does not permit me to go into details. Suffice it to say that the central influence in mainstream Chinese historiography between 1919 and 1949 was the so- called scientific history as vigorously advocated by Hu Shi 胡適 (1891–1962) and Fu Sinian 傅斯年 (1896–1950), and since 1949, the study of history in China has been completely dominated by the state-imposed Marxism. To be fair, neither Hu nor Fu was a radical antitraditionalist. However, like guocui historians be-

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fore him, Hu also redefined the Chinese tradition in terms of Western values, particularly democracy and science. There can be no doubt that the learned movement known as Zhengli guogu 整理國故 (systematic and critical study of the National Past) led by Hu contributed immensely to the modernization of Chinese historical scholarship, but it must also be pointed out that the whole movement was cast in a positivistic mold. As Hu made clear, a central purpose of the movement was to apply the procedure of science to historical studies.40 Moreover, his interest in the Chinese tradition was also narrowly focused on its compatibility with “the scientific and democratic civilization” of the modern West.41 In his most radical moments, he could even go so far as to state categorically that what is good in the Chinese tradition is universally present in all higher civilizations, whereas what is uniquely Chinese in the tradition often turns out to be undesirable from the modern point of view.42 On the other hand, built on the foundation of the May Fourth iconoclastic antitraditionalism, Chinese Marxist historiography seems particularly biased against tradition. In spite of the often-quoted rhetoric of “preserving the essence of dismiss the dregs,” it is generally negative toward the Chinese past. The extreme hostility with which the Confucian tradition is viewed, for example, made Marxist historians contemptuously dismissive of practically all the major thinkers, scholars, writers, and poets from the age of Confucius to the nineteenth century. As a result, their historical studies of aspects of the Chinese cultural tradition often amount to condemnation and indictment. It is not my intention at all to discredit modern Chinese historiography. The peculiar Chinese mentality of cultural self-indictment and self-immolation in the twentieth century is deeply rooted in a historical predicament of immense complexities. Nor does the responsibility for failure to discover any positive meaning in the Chinese tradition rest wholly with the way Chinese historians have treated their own past. What I am trying to say is that positivism, especially in its extreme form of scientism, tends to harden the historian’s mind to the point that he or she is no longer capable of sympathetic understanding and sensitive appreciation of tradition or culture. Unfortunately, the four core elements of historical positivism, as discussed in the beginning of my speech, have been taken by twentieth- century Chinese historians as self- evident truths, sometimes in part and sometimes wholly. This, coupled with Western history as the universal model, has prevented them from studying Chinese history on its own terms, with the inevitable result that the possibility of Chinese culture as a tradition with characteristics distinctly its own has been too readily ignored. Now, with the positivist project as a whole and historical positivism in particular being seriously and critically questioned on the one hand and Clio’s new cultural turn on the other, it seems possible for Chinese historians to be freed from being obsessed with the Western model as well as awakened from the century-long illusions that universal truth must be sought from the West. It is

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disheartening to see that nowadays even when Chinese intellectuals are “critical” of the West, they are still uncritically following some of the critical theories that happen to be in currency in the West. Needless to say, I am far from proposing any kind of intellectual isolationism in the study of Chinese history. From time to time, Chinese historians will surely find concepts, methods, paradigms, generalizations, etc., developed in Western historical scholarship suggestive and illuminating for comparative or some other purposes; however, it is imperative that Chinese historians begin to design and develop their own concepts and methods uniquely suited to coping with the par ticular shapes of Chinese historical experience independent of, but not in isolation from, theories and practices of history in other parts of the world, including the West. I must also make myself clear that although I have been critical of the positivist frame of mind, I am nevertheless fully aware of the fact that what Hu Shi called the “critical and scientific method” does have its due place in the study of history. I also believe that historical objectivity, though difficult, is possible. Nihilism or unrestrained relativism abhors me no less than does extreme positivism. If we agree with Geertz, however, that the study of culture is “not an experimental science in search of law but an interpretive one in search of meaning,” then the “critical and scientific method” alone is hardly adequate to the task. From the cultural point of view, therefore, history as a discipline is more an interpretive enterprise than a scientific one. It is my biased view that the history of every society of people deserves to be studied not only as part of world history but also because of its intrinsic value. Only in this way will rediscovery of the Chinese tradition in all its richness and individuality, and for that matter, all the traditions in the Asian world, become a real possibility.

notes 1.

Richard Rorty, Consequences of Pragmatism (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota

2.

Peter Novick, “That Noble Dream,” in The “Objectivity Question” and the American His-

3.

Quoted in Georg G. Iggers, New Directions in European Historiography, rev. ed. (Middle-

4.

See Ying-shih Yü, “The Study of Chinese History: Retrospect and Prospect,” trans.

Press, 1982), 220. torical Profession (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 628. town, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1984), 175. Thomas H. C. Lee and Chun- chieh Huang, Renditions (Spring 1981): 13–14. 5.

Robert C. Tucker, ed., The Marx-Engels Reader, 2nd ed. (New York: Norton, 1978), 296.

6.

On this question, see Leszek Kolakowski, Main Currents of Marxism: The Founders (Ox-

7.

Robert Darnton, “Intellectual and Cultural History,” in The Kiss of Lamourtte (New

ford: Oxford University Press, 1978), 350–351; Iggers, New Directions, 179. York: Norton, 1990), 201–203. 8.

Lawrence Stone, The Past and the Present (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1981), 91–92.

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9.

Iggers, New Directions, 200.

10.

Lynn Hunt, ed., The New Cultural History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), 4.

11.

Michel Vovelle, Ideologies and Mentalities (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), 10; Peter Burke, Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe (New York: New York University Press, 1978), 28; Peter Burke, The French Historical Revolution: The Annales School, 1929– 89 (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1990), 67.

12.

Roger Chartier, “Intellectual History or Sociocultural History? The French Trajectories,” in Modern European Intellectual History: Reappraisals and New Perspectives, ed. Dominick LaCapra and Steven L. Kaplan (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1982), 44–45.

13.

Gordon S. Wood, “Intellectual History and the Social Sciences,” in New Directions in American Intellectual History, ed. John Higham and Paul K. Conkin (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1979), 32.

14.

William J. Bouwsma, A Usable Past: Essays in European Cultural History (Berkeley: Uni-

15.

Isaiah Berlin, The Crooked Timber of Humanity: Chapters in the History of Ideas (New

16.

Paul Ricoeur, Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences: Essays on Language, Action, and

versity of California Press, 1990), 341. York: Knopf, 1991), 58. Interpretation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 62. 17.

Jeff rey C. Alexander, Twenty Lectures: Sociolog ical Theory Since World War II (New York:

18.

Quoted in Wood, “Intellectual History and the Social Sciences,” 32.

19.

Quoted in Henry Skolomowski, “Quine, Ajdukiewicz, and the Predicament of 20th

Columbia University Press, 1987), 285–288.

Century Philosophy,” in The Philosophy of W. V. Quine, ed. Lewis Edwin Hahn and Paul Arthur Schilpp (New York: Open Court, 1986), 479. 20. Jeff rey C. Alexander and Steven Seidman, eds., Culture and Society: Contemporary Debates (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 25. 21.

Iggers, New Directions, 178–189.

22. Hayden White, “New Historicism: A Comment,” in The New Historicism, ed. H. Aram Veeser (London: Routledge, 1989), 294. 23. Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic Books, 1973), 5. 24. Ibid., 89. 25. Alexander, Twenty Lectures, 304–307. 26. Robert Redfield, Peasant Society and Culture (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1956), 42. 27. Peter Burke, Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe, 28. 28. Edward Shils, Tradition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), 10. 29. Edward Shils, “Tradition,” in Center and Periphery: Essays in Macrosociology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976), 183; Carl J. Friedrich, Tradition and Authority (New York: Praeger, 1972), 33. 30. Quoted in Friedrich, Tradition and Authority, 39. 31.

S. N. Eisenstadt, “Post-Traditional Societies and the Continuity and Reconstruction of Tradition,” Daedalus 102 (1973): 1–27; Jessie G. Lute and Salah El-Shakhs, introduction

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c l io’ s c ul t ur a l t ur n a nd r edisc ov ery of tr adition to Tradition and Modernity: The Role of Traditionalism in the Modernization Process (Washington, D.C.: University Press of Amer ica, 1982), 1–5.

32. Jaroslav Pelikan, The Vindication of Tradition (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984), 8. 33.

Ibid., 65. (Subsequent in-text page citations refer to same work.)

34. Stephen Toulmin, Cosmopolis: The Hidden Agenda of Modernity (New York: Free Press, 1990), 189. 35.

Hans- Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method, 2nd rev. ed. (New York: Crossroad, 1989), 281.

36. Edward W. Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage Books Edition, 1979), 206. 37.

Quoted in ibid., 133.

38. See Watanabe Hiroshi 渡邊浩, “Historiography as a Magic Mirror: The Image of ‘Nation’ in Japan, 1600–1990,” paper presented at the 1990 Nobel Symposium on Conceptions of National History, Stockholm, September 5–8, 1990. 39. See Zhang Binglin, “Guocui xuebao zhuci” 國粹學報祝詞, in Zhang Taiyan quanji 章太 炎全集 (Shanghai: Renmin, 1985), 4:207–208. For a general discussion of guocui historiography, see Ying- shih Yü, “The Changing Conceptions of National History in Twentieth- Century China,” in Conceptions of National History: Proceedings of Nobel Symposium 78 [1990], ed. Erik Lönnroth, Karl Molin, and Ragnar Björk (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1994), 155–174. 40. Hu Shih (Hu Shi), The Chinese Renaissance: The Haskell Lectures (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1934), 77. 41.

Hu Shih, “The Chinese Tradition and the Future,” in Sino-American Conference on Intellectual Cooperation: Report and Proceedings (Seattle, Washington, 1960), 13–22.

42. Hu Shi, “ Women zou natiao lu” 我們走哪條路, in Hu Shi zuopin ji 胡適作品集 (Taipei, Yuanliu, 1986), 18:47–70.

ac k now led g m e n t s

Chapter 1 originally appeared in Tsing Hua Journal of Chinese Studies, n.s., 11, nos. 1 and 2 (December 1975): 105–144. Chapter 2 originally appeared in Chan Ping-leung, ed., Essays in Commemoration of the Golden Jubilee of the Fung Ping Shan Library, Studies in Chinese Librarianship, Literature, Language, History and Arts (Hong Kong: HKU Press, 1982), 376–392. Chapter  3 originally appeared in Asia Major, 3rd. ser., 2, no. 1 (1989): 79–108. Chapter 4 originally appeared in Philip J. Ivanhoe, ed., Chinese Language, Thought and Culture: Nivison and His Critics (Chicago: Open Court, 1996), 121–154. Chapter 5 originally appeared in Antonio S. Cua, ed., Encyclopedia of Chinese Philosophy (New York: Routledge, 2003), 115–125. Chapter 6 originally appeared in “The Two Worlds of ‘Hung-lou meng’ ” by Ying-shih Yü (translated by Diana Yu). First published in Renditions, no. 2 (Spring 1974): 5–22. Reprinted by permission of the Research Centre for Translation, The Chinese University of Hong Kong. Chapter  7 originally appeared in Chu-yuan Cheng, ed., Sun Yat-sen’s Doctrine and the Modern World (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1989), 79–102. Chapter 8 originally appeared in Daedalus: Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 122, no. 2 (Spring 1993): 125–150. Reprinted by permission

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of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Daedalus editors note that the article was originally written using the Wade- Giles Romanization system; they supplied Pinyin Romanization.—Eds. Chapter  9 is reprinted by permission of the Harvard Asia Center from Milena Doleželová-Velingerová and Oldrich Král, eds., The Appropriation of Cultural Capital: China’s May Fourth Cultural Project (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Asia Center, 2001), 299–324. © The President and Fellows of Harvard College, 2001. Chapter 10 originally appeared in Eric Wu and Yun-han Chu, eds., The Predicament of Modernization in East Asia (Taipei: National Cultural Association, 1995), 59–74. Chapter 11 originally appeared in Ronald Bontekoe and Mariétta Tigranovna Stepaniants, eds., Justice and Democracy: Cross- Cultural Perspectives (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1997), 199–215. Chapter 12 originally appeared in Larry Diamond, Marc F. Plattner, Yun-han Chu, and Hung-mao Tien, eds., Consolidating the Third Wave Democracies (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997), 257–264. Copyright by JHUP. Chapter 13 originally appeared in The Fifth Huang Hsing Foundation Hsueh Chun-tu Distinguished Lecture in Asian Studies ([Conference] November  10, 1998), Asian Studies Centre, St. Antony’s College, University of Oxford (2000): 1–22. Chapter 14 Originally appeared in Erik Lönnroth, Karl Molin, and Ragnar Björk, eds., Conceptions of National History: Proceedings of Nobel Symposium 78 [1990] (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1994), 155–174. Chapter 15 Originally appeared in Jörn Rüsen, ed., Western Historical Thinking: An Intercultural Debate (New York: Berghahn Books, 2002), 152–172. Chapter 16 originally appeared in Chinese Historians 6, no. 1 (Spring 1993): 31–43. Translated by Shao Dongfang 邵東方. Professor Yu noted that this article was originally published in 1984 as an appendix to his Zhongguo jindai sixiangshi shang de Hu Shi 中國近代思想史上的胡適 (Hu Shi in the History of Modern Chinese Thought) (Taipei: Lianjing, 1984). Chapter 17 originally appeared in George Kao, ed., The Translation of Things Past: Chinese History and Historiography (Hong Kong: CUHK Press, 1982), 7–26. Translated by Thomas H. C. Lee and Chun- chieh Huang. Chapter 18 originally appeared in Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy 4, no. 2 (2005): 203–216. Chapter  19 is from a keynote address to the Twelfth Conference, International Association of Historians of Asia, University of Hong Kong, June 24–28, 1991, reprinted in Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy 6, no. 1 (2007): 39–51.

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ADDRESS OF PROFESSOR YÜ YING-SHIH ON THE O C C A S I O N O F R E C E I V I N G T H E J O H N   W. K L U G E P R I Z E AT T H E L I B R A R Y O F C O N G R E S S I feel enormously honored to be a corecipient of the John W. Kluge Prize in 2006, for which I am grateful. After much reflection, however, I have come to the realization that the main justification for my presence here today is that both the Chinese cultural tradition and Chinese intellectual history as a discipline are being honored through me. The former has been the subject of my lifetime scholarly pursuit, and the latter my chosen field of specialization. When I first became seriously interested in the study of Chinese history and culture in the 1940s, the Chinese historical mind happened to be cast in a positivistic and antitraditionalistic mold. The whole Chinese past was viewed negatively, and whatever appeared to be uniquely Chinese was interpreted as a deviation from the universal norm of progress of civilization as exemplified in the historical development of the West. As a result, studies of aspects of the Chinese cultural tradition, from philosophy, law, and religion to literature and art, often amounted to condemnation and indictment. Needless to say, I was at a complete loss as to the Chinese cultural identity and, for that matter, also my personal identity. It was my good fortune that I was able to finish my college education in Hong Kong and pursued my graduate studies in the United States, now my adopted country.

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As my intellectual horizon gradually widened over the years, the truth was beginning to dawn on me that Chinese culture must be clearly recognized as an indigenous tradition with characteristics distinctly its own. The crystallization of Chinese culture into its definitive shape took place in the time of Confucius (551–479 b.c.e.), a crucial moment in the ancient world better known in the West as the Axial Age. During this period, it has been observed, a spiritual awakening or “breakthrough” occurred in several highly developed cultures, including China, India, Persia, Israel, and Greece. It took the form of either philosophical reasoning or postmythical religious imagination, or, as in the case of China, a mixed type of moral-philosophic-religious consciousness. The awakening led directly to the emergence of the dichotomy between the actual world and the world beyond. The world beyond as a new vision provided the thinking individuals, be they philosophers, prophets, or sages, with the necessary transcending point from which the actual world could be examined and questioned, critically as well as reflectively. This is generally known as the original transcendence of the Axial Age, of which the exact shape, empirical content, and historical process varied from culture to culture. The transcendence is original in the sense that it would exert a long-lasting, shaping influence on the cultures involved. As a result of the Chinese original transcendence in the time of Confucius, the all-impor tant idea of Dao (Way) emerged as a symbol of the world beyond vis-à-vis the actual world of everyday life. But the Chinese transcendental world of Dao and the actual world of everyday life were conceived from the very beginning to be related to each other in a way that was different from other ancient cultures undergoing the Axial breakthrough. For example, there is nothing in the early Chinese philosophical visions that suggests Plato’s conception of an unseen eternal world of which the actual world is only a pale copy. In the religious tradition, the sharp dichotomy of a Christian type between the world of God and the world of humans is also absent. Nor do we find in classical Chinese thought in all its varieties anything that closely resembles the radical negativity of early Buddhism, with its insistence on the unrealness and worthlessness of this world. By contrast, the world of Dao was not perceived as very far from the human world. As best expressed by Confucius: “The Dao is not far from man. When a man pursues the Dao, and remains away from man, his course cannot be considered the Dao.” I must hasten to add, however, that the notion of Dao was not the monopoly of Confucius and his followers but was shared by all the major thinkers in the Chinese Axial Age, including Laozi, Mozi, and Zhuangzi. It was their common belief that Dao is hidden and yet functions everywhere in the human world; even men and women of simple intelligence can know and practice it in everyday life to a larger or lesser degree. Indeed, judging from the ever-growing and everdeepening influences of the ideas originating in the Axial Age, especially Confucian and Daoist ideas, on all aspects of Chinese life down through the centuries, it may not be too much an exaggeration to suggest that Dao and history constitute the inside and the outside of Chinese civilization.

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Taking the Chinese cultural tradition to be essentially one of indigenous origin and independent growth, I have tried over the decades to study Chinese history along two main lines. First, Chinese culture must be understood in its own terms, but at the same time, also in a comparative perspective. By “comparative perspective,” I refer to both Indian Buddhism in the early imperial period and Western culture since the sixteenth century. Needless to say, China’s second encounter with the West in the nineteenth century was a historical event of world-shaking magnitude. Since the beginning of the twentieth century, the Chinese mind has been largely preoccupied with the problematique of Chinaversus-the-West. To interpret the Chinese past solely in its own terms without a comparative perspective would surely run the risk of falling into the age-old trap of simple-minded Sinocentrism. Second, in my study of Chinese intellectual, social, and cultural history, from classical antiquity to the twentieth century, my focus has always been placed on periods of change when one historical stage moved to the next. Compared to other civilizations, China’s is particularly marked by its long historical continuity before, during, and since the Axial Age. But continuity and change went hand-in-hand in Chinese history. Therefore, the purpose I have set myself is twofold: first, to identify the major intellectual, social, and culture changes in the Chinese past and, second, to discern if at all possible the unique pattern of Chinese historical changes. More often than not, such broad and profound changes in Chinese history transcended the rise and fall of dynasties. Thus, the notion of “dynastic cycle,” long held in traditional China but also briefly in vogue in the West, is highly misleading. In the early years of the twentieth century, Chinese historians, following the example of their Japanese colleagues, began to reconstruct and reinterpret the Chinese past according to the historical model of the West. Since then it has been generally assumed that China must have undergone similar stages of historical development as shown in European history. In the first half of the twentieth century, Chinese historians adopted the earlier European schemes of periodization by dividing Chinese history into ancient, medieval, and modern periods, which has been replaced since 1949 by the Marxist-Stalinist five-stage formulation. The latter remains the orthodoxy in China up to this day, at least in theory if not always in actual practice. This procrustean approach, whatever merits it may other wise have, cannot possibly do full justice to Chinese culture as an indigenous tradition. Only by focusing on the unique course and shape of Chinese historical changes, I am convinced, can we hope to see more clearly how that great cultural tradition moved from stage to stage, driven mainly, if not entirely, by its internal dynamics. Now let me turn to the question of how, as two different systems of values, does Chinese culture stand vis-à-vis Western culture in historical perspective? My earliest exposure to this question occurred in the late 1940s when the problematique of China-versus-the-West, mentioned earlier, dominated the Chinese intellectual world. It has not been out of my consciousness ever since.

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Living in the United States for half a century, the question has acquired a truly existential meaning for my life as I move between the two cultures from moment to moment. With some initial psychological readjustments, I have long been able to enjoy the American way of life while still retaining my Chinese cultural identity. However, the best guide with regard to whether Chinese culture is compatible with the core values of the West can only be provided by Chinese history. China first encountered the modern West at the end of the sixteenth century when the Jesuits came to East Asia to do their missionary work. The culturally sensitive Matteo Ricci, who arrived in China in 1583, was very quick to discover that the Chinese religious atmosphere at that time was highly tolerant; Confucianism, Buddhism, and Daoism were generally regarded as one and the same thing. As a matter of fact, under the influence of Wang Yangming (1472–1529), late Ming Confucians firmly believed that each of the three religions in China captured a vision of the same Dao (Way). It was this spirit of religious tolerance that accounted for Ricci’s extraordinary success in his conversion of many leading members of the Confucian elite, notably Xu Guangqi (1562–1633), Li Zhizao (1565–1630), and Yang Tingyun (1557–1627)—the “three pillars of evangelization.” The Confucian faith in the sameness of human mind and the universal accessibility of Dao to every human person anywhere led some Chinese converts to promote a synthesis of Christianity with Confucianism. The Chinese Dao was now further expanded to include Christianity. This early relationship between China and the West at the religious level can by no means be described as a conflictual one. In the late nineteenth century, it was also the open-minded Confucians who enthusiastically embraced values and ideas dominant in the modern West, such as democracy, liberty, equality, rule of law, autonomy of the individual person, and, above all, human rights. When some of them visited Europe or America for the first time and stayed there long enough to make firsthand observations, they were all deeply impressed, first of all, by the ideals and institutions of Western constitutional democracy. Wang Tao (1828–1897), who assisted James Legge in his English translation of Confucian classics, returned to Hong Kong from England in 1870 praising her political and legal systems to the sky. He was probably the first Confucian scholar to use the term “democracy” in Chinese (minzhu). Wang exerted a considerable influence on Confucian political thinking in the late Qing. At the turn of the century, there were two rival Confucian schools in China known as the New Text and Old Text, respectively. Both advocated democracy, though each in its own way. The former was in favor of constitutional monarchy, while the latter pushed for republicanism. Perhaps inspired by Wang Tao, who compared the British political and judicial systems favorably to China’s Golden Age as described in Confucian classics, both Confucian schools began a systematic search for the origins and evolution of democratic

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ideas in early Confucian texts. In so doing, it is clear that they took the compatibility between Chinese culture and Western culture as two systems of values for granted. Last but not least, I wish to say a word about “human rights.” Like “democracy,” “human rights” as a term is linguistically specific to the West and nonexistent in traditional Confucian discourse. However, if we agree that the concept of “human rights” as defined in the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of 1948 is predicated on the double recognition of a common humanity and human dignity, then we are also justified to speak of a Confucian idea of “human rights” without the Western terminology. Recognition of a common humanity and respect for human dignity are both clearly articulated in the Analects of Confucius, the Mencius, and other early texts. It is remarkable that by the first century c.e. at the latest, the Confucian notion of human dignity was openly referred to in imperial decrees as sufficient grounds for the prohibition of the sale or killing of slaves. Both imperial decrees, dated 9 and 35 c.e., respectively, cited the same famous Confucian dictum: “Of all living things produced by Heaven and Earth, the human person is the noblest.” Slavery as an institution was never accepted by Confucianism as legitimate. It was this Confucian humanism that predisposed late Qing Confucians to be so readily appreciative of the Western theory and practice of human rights. If history is any guide, then there seems to be a great deal of overlapping consensus in basic values between Chinese culture and Western culture. After all, recognition of common humanity and human dignity is what the Chinese Dao has been about. I am more convinced than ever that once Chinese culture returns to the main flow of Dao, the problematique of China-versus-the-West will also come to an end. Princeton University, December 1, 2006 (This talk was delivered on December 5, 2006, and published by the Library of Congress at http://www.loc.gov/today/pr/2006/06 -A07.html)

A C C E P TA N C E S P E E C H O N T H E O C C A S I O N O F R E C E I V I N G T H E TA N G P R I Z E FOR SINOLOGY To be awarded the inaugural Tang Prize in Sinology is the greatest honor I have received in my life. Needless to say, I feel grateful and elated even though deep in my heart, I must confess, lurks an indelible sense of undeservedness. Sinology, my own field of research, writing, and teaching, calls for a comment. To begin with, I must pay tribute to the Tang Prize Foundation for its farsightedness in recognizing Sinology as one of its four prize categories. In my

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considered opinion, Sinology as a scholarly endeavor of ever-growing world importance is more in need of encouragement and support now than ever before. It is truly remarkable that the Tang Prize comes right in the nick of time. In recent decades, Sinology as a field of study has been undergoing a gradual but very significant transformation. China has come to be viewed more and more as a civilization of indigenous origin and independent growth very much comparable to other long-lasting ancient civilizations such as India, Persia, Israel, and Greece. Unlike in the past, we begin to move away from the practice of reconstructing and interpreting the Chinese past according to the historical model of the West. Instead, Sinologists, in ever-growing numbers, tend to be interested in understanding the growth of Chinese civilization on its own terms. It is generally assumed that only by focusing on the unique course and shape of Chinese historical changes can we hope to see more clearly how that great cultural tradition moved from stage to stage, driven primarily by its internal dynamics. However, this must not be mistaken as advocacy of isolationism. On the contrary, the importance of a comparative perspective in Sinological studies is more emphasized today than ever before. The reason is not far to seek. The uniqueness of Chinese civilization and its developmental pattern cannot be firmly and fully established without comparisons with other civilizations, especially the Western one. On the other hand, to study Chinese history in total isolation would inevitably fall into the age- old trap of Sinocentrism. As a result, Sinology today has become thoroughly globalized. Unlike in the first half of the twentieth century, we rarely, if ever, speak of Sinology along national lines such as Chinese, Japanese, French, or American. Sinology is one anywhere on the globe. At this very juncture, my memory naturally goes to my late mentor Yang Lien-sheng, who introduced me to world Sinology at Harvard in the late 1950s. In his 1967 introduction to Yang’s path-breaking Excursions in Sinology [Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1969], Paul Demiéville, the dean of Sinology in Europe, characterizes the latter’s scholarship as “international, truly tianxia (天下).” This clearly suggests that globalization of Sinology was already well under way at the time, and my mentor Yang was positively identified by Demiéville as one of its earliest practitioners. In this age of rapid globalization of ours, this new development in Sinology urgently needs to be carried further on an ever-growing scale. It is therefore my earnest hope that the Tang Prize may serve to attract more young talents with vibrant minds that will bring fresh perspectives to the Sinological world. (This talk was delivered at the Academia Sinica in Taipei on September 18, 2014.)

index

accumulation ( ji), 44 “Ai Jiangnan fu” (Lament for the South), 321 Ai Siqi, 201, 202, 216n17 Analects (Lunyu, Confucius), 22, 46–47, 55n42, 82n40, 131, 266, 269, 298–299, 302, 306, 310, 391. See also Confucius analogy in historiography, 344–346; in May Fourth, 183, 198–206. See also historiography, May Fourth Movement Ancient History of China (Zhongguo gudai shi), 284 annals tradition, 323–324 anti-intellectualism, 5–6, 25–31, 42–44 aristocratic clan system (mendi, menfa), 339 assimilation, 166, 190–191, 284, 364 Autobiographical Compilation (Zibian nianpu), 317

autobiographical tradition, 135, 139–140, 159–160, 317, 319–321. See also nianpu (chronological biography) Babbitt, Irving, 210, 212–213, 217n55, 248 Babbitt and humanism (Baibide yu renwen zhuyi), 213 Baibide yu renwen zhuyi (Babbitt and humanism), 213 Bai Juyi, 317 Ban Gu, 26, 94, 101, 312, 321, 332 Bao Jinyan, 181 “Bao Ren-an shu” (In Response to Ren-an), 299, 305, 321 Bao Shichen, 130 “Basic Annals of the First Emperor of Qin” (Qin Shihuang benji), 312 “Basis for the Realization of Democracy, The” (Chen), 240 Bell, Daniel, 214 Bellah, Robert N., 227, 233n27

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Berkhofer, Robert F., Jr., 341 Berlin, Isaiah, 3, 31, 61, 89, 304, 373 bi (beclouding), 45 bi (metaphor), 346 Bibliography of Chronological Biographies of Famous Figures by Dynasty (Zhongguo lidai mingren nianpu mulu), 317 Bingta menghen lu (Record of Dreams on a Sickbed), 319 biographical tradition. See nianpu (chronological biography) biran (necessary) vs. ziran (natural), 49–50, 78 Bi Yuan, 99 Bloch, Marc, 343 Bouvet, Joachim, 356 Bouwsma, William J., 372 bo (erudition) vs. yue (essentialism). See erudition (bo) and essentialism (yue) boxue (extensive learning), 3 British governmental system, 236, 264, 323. See also Western culture and society Brown, Peter, 321–322 Buckle, Henry T., 379 Buddhism, 8, 27–28, 44, 48, 119, 274n21, 345, 355–356, 388–390 Bulletin of the Institute of History and Philology, 287 Bullit, William C., 325 buren (diviner), 300 Burke, Peter, 294–295, 299, 311 Bury, J. B., 369 Butterfield, Herbert, 296, 300 Cao Xueqin, 134–136, 139. See also Honglou meng (Dream of the Red Chamber) capitalism, 171, 203, 228, 335, 370. See also state capitalism Carlyle, Thomas, 379 Carr, E. H., 294, 343 Catalogue of the Complete Library of the Four Branches (Siku quanshu zongmu tiyao), 75

Chan (Zen) Buddhism, 8, 27–29 Chang Binglin. See Zhang Binglin Chang Hao. See Zhang Hao Changxing xueji (Kang Youwei, Record of the Changxing Academy), 159 Chartier, Roger, 372 Chen Boda, 201 Chen Duxiu, 167, 183–185, 205, 213, 224, 226–227, 235, 239–241, 246, 256, 362 Chen Fuliang, 13–14 Cheng Jinfang, 70 Cheng Yaotian, 60 Cheng Yi, 6, 13, 19, 43, 46, 48–49, 77, 274n21 Cheng-Zhu school: criticisms of, 43, 69–71, 73–74, 210–211; on knowledge vs. morality, 5, 6, 46, 49; transition from philosophy to philology, 113–115, 121–122. See also Lixue (“Rationalism”); Lu-Wang school; Neo-Confucianism; specific scholars Chen Li, 9–10 Chen Qianqiu, 161 Chen Qubing, 181, 279 Chen Que, 116, 128 Chen Tianhua, 166 Chen Xianzhang, 12 Chen Yinke (Chen Yinque), xv–xvi, xxin12, 213, 288, 289 Chen Yuan, 288, 289–290, 308–309 Chen Zilong, 158 Chiang Kai-shek, 254 Ch’ien Mu (Qian Mu), 7–8, 43, 62, 84n79, 100, 109n1, 290–291 China: marginalization of, 186–188; modernization and, 220–222, 231; theories of racial origins, 166, 189–190, 281. See also specific persons and concepts “China’s Constitutionalist Option,” 253, 255 Chinese Communist Party (CCP): altered strategy of, 170, 216n17; Chen Duxiu and, 226–227; China vs. Soviet Union, 191; constitutionalism and, 254, 255; Enlightenment project by, 200–201, 205; Four Cardinal Principles and, 255, 259n11, 353; Ambrose King on, 229; on

inde x new wave of nationalism, 257–258. See also Mao Zedong; Marxism; socialism Chinese Enlightenment: Communist Party on, 200–201, 205; December Ninth Movement, 201–202; Hu Shi on, 167, 173, 183, 198–200, 203–204; vs. Renaissance, May Fourth Movement as, 198–207, 215n10; as term, 182–183, 198. See also May Fourth Movement Chinese learning as substance, Western learning for practical application (Zhongxue wei ti Xixue wei yong), 162, 187 Chinese Renaissance: vs. Enlightenment, May Fourth Movement as, 198–207, 215n10; Hu Shi on, 167, 173, 183, 198–200, 203–204, 210, 216n28; Li Changzhi on, 206–207, 208. See also May Fourth Movement Chin Yüeh-lin (Jin Yuelin), 311 Christianity: faith vs. reason conflict in, 1–2, 6; Jesuit missionaries in China, 354, 355–357; third wave of democracy and, 252–253. See also “clash of civilizations” theory; Western culture and society Chronicle of the Republic of China (Zhonghua minguo shishi rizhi), 324 Chronicle of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom (Taiping tianguo shishi rizhi), 324 Chronological Autobiography (Zhuting jushi ziding nianpu), 58 Chronological Autobiography (Zibian nianpu), 159–160 Chronological Biographies of Han Yu and Liu Zongyuan (“Han Liu er xiansheng nianpu”), 318 chronological biography (nianpu), 317–327 Chronological Biography of Li Shangyin, A (Yuxisheng nianpu huijian), 318 Chronological Biography of Wang Yangming, A (Yangming nianpu), 319 Chronological Biography of Zhang Xuecheng, A (Zhang Shizai nianpu), 318, 325

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Chronological Biography of Zhu Xi, A (Zhuzi nianpu), 319 Chunqiu (Spring and Autumn Annals), 18, 129–131, 266, 298, 299, 303 Chunqiu Gongyang zhuan (Gongyang Commentary to the Spring and Autumn Annals), 156, 181, 298, 331 cizhang (literary art), 129 “Clash of Civilizations?, The” (Huntington, Foreign Affairs), 258n1, 351, 353 Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, The (Huntington), 252–253, 351–355, 380 “clash of civilizations” theory, 252–253, 256–257, 258n1, 273n8, 351–355. See also Western culture and society Classic of Changes (Yijing), 27, 35n61, 43, 91, 310, 369 Classic of History, in ancient script (Guwen Shangshu), 116–117 Classic of History (Shujing), 15, 61, 172, 299, 331 cleanliness vs. dirtiness in Honglou meng, 142, 146, 148–149 Cold War, 352–353 Collingwood, R. G., 306, 373 Commentary on the Meaning of Terms in Mencius. See Mengzi ziyi shuzheng (Commentary on the meaning of terms in Mencius) Commentary to the Classic of Waterways (Shuijing zhu), 57, 79n1, 93 Communist Party. See Chinese Communist Party (CCP) comparison in historiography, 344–346. See also historiography Complete Library of the Four Treasures, The (Siku quanshu), 359 Comprehensive Mirror for Aid in Government (Zizhi tongjian), 306, 322, 324 Comte, Auguste, 370 Confessions (St. Augustine), 321 Confucianism and Confucian culture: vs. democracy, 235, 239–245, 248,

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Confucianism and Confucian culture (continued) 253–254; democratic principles of, 256–257, 262–272, 361–363; on human rights, 245–246, 268–270; Huntington on, 252–253, 256–257, 273n8, 351–355, 380; on individualism, 270–272; modern historical overview, 260–261, 363–365; polarities in, 3–4; principles and democracy, 256–257, 262–272, 361–363; religious characteristics of, 355–357; science and, 357–360. See also Dao; historiography, Chinese; Neo-Confucianism; Qing Confucianism; Six Classics Confucian Scholars (Rulin), 13 Confucian Way to light (mingdao), 115 Confucius: Chunqiu (Spring and Autumn Annals), 18, 129–131, 298, 299, 303; on cruelty, 245; on governance, 243, 266; on human agency in history, 302–303, 310; on knowledge vs. action, 172, 300; on knowledge vs. morality, 1–4, 32nn9–10; Li Changzhi on, 207; as reformer, 131, 160, 262; on xue (learning) and si (thinking), 3. See also Analects (Lunyu, Confucius) consanguinity, 165–166 Conservative Mind from Burke to Eliot, The (Russell Kirk), 184 constitutional democracy. See democracy constitutional monarchy, 237, 262, 361 Correcting Youthful Ignorance (Zhengmeng), 22 Crescent Moon Society, 213 Critical Essays on the National Past (Guogu lunheng), 283 Critical Evaluation of Han Learning (Hanxue shangdui), 9, 71 Critical review (Xueheng), 210, 212 Critiques of Ancient History (Gushi bian), 285 Croce, Benedetto, 323 cruelty, 245–246. See also human rights culinary arts, xvii

culturalism and cultural movements, 165–168, 189–190, 207–214, 256, 283–288, 374–376. See also historiography, Chinese “culture fever” period, 261 da (comprehensibility), 349 Daedalus, 219 Daguanyuan. See Honglou meng (Dream of the Red Chamber) Dai Zhen: on accumulation, 44–45; on Cheng-Zhu school, 69–71, 73–74; as classical philologist, 61–62, 77, 85; on classical scholarship, 51, 58–59, 117–118; Confucian philosophy as central concern, 62–65, 72–75, 84n93, 92; on Dao, 15, 46, 120; on dao wenxue (following the path of inquiry and study), 42, 46, 53, 109; on empty talk, 66, 68, 69, 72, 75, 82n40, 121; first encounter with Zhang Xuecheng, 86–90; on Han vs. Song Learning, 8–9, 14, 41–42, 69–70, 81n25; intellectual development of, 41, 57–58, 76–79, 84n92, 119–121, 124; on li (principles), 48–52; mathematics and, 358; on morality and knowledge, 23, 45–50; on philology vs. philosophy, 60–61, 70, 76; plagiarism charges towards, 79n1; reputation of, 85–86; sedan-chair analogy, 71–72; Xuyan (Preface), 44, 59, 62; Yuanshan (Inquiry Into Goodness), 49, 56n44, 59–60, 62, 65–68, 81n35; Zhang Xuecheng on, 40, 57, 64–65, 69, 102, 103–109; on Zhu Xi, 40, 42. See also Dao; Mengzi ziyi shuzheng (Commentary on the meaning of terms in Mencius) Danghua Jiaoyu, 229 Dante, Alighieri, 320 Dao: Dai Zhen on, 15, 46, 120; Daoti (substance of the Way), 157; daotong (succession of the Way), xvi, 154; Daoxue or Lixue, 10, 12–16, 35n61; in everyday life, 178; Gong Zizhen on, 90–91, 118; historiography of, 307–310;

inde x jingshi (ordering the world) movement, 17, 125–129, 156–165; Liu Yi on, 15; Yü on, xv–xvi. See also Confucianism; dao wenxue (following the path of inquiry and study); Six Classics; specific principles and scholars Daoti (substance of the Way), 157 daotong (succession of the Way), xvi, 154 dao wenxue (following the path of inquiry and study), 41–43; Dai Zhen on, 42, 46, 53, 109; Gong on, 90–91, 118–119; Liu Yi on, 20; Zhu Xi on, 4–5. See also intellectualism Daoxue or Lixue, 10, 12–16, 34n46, 35n61 Das Kapital (Marx), 225, 295 Data school, 330–333. See also historiography, Chinese dati (large whole), 124 Datong shu (Book of Great Unity), 160, 161 Daxiao pin duibi yaochao xu (Preface to a Selection of Comparative Excerpts from the Greater and Smaller Chapters), 28 Daxue (“Great Learning”), 43, 51 Daxue guben (Old Text of the Great Learning), 21, 114 De Bary, William Theodore, 241–242; on Dao, 15; on foot-binding, 274n21; on laws of Huang Zongxi, 267; on learning vs. thinking, 2–3 December Ninth Movement, 201–202 dejun xingdao (bringing Dao to the world with the blessing of the sovereign), 127 Demiéville, Paul, 72, 73, 392 democracy: Chen on, 235, 240–241; vs. Confucianism, 235, 239–245, 248, 253–254; Confucian principles and, 256–257, 262–272, 361–363; Dewey on, 240; elitism and, 246–248; failure of constitutionalism, 254–256; Huntington’s theory on, 360–361; Hu Shi on, 239–240; introduction to China, 235–238; May Fourth generation on, 241–242; in Ming period, 242–243; minquan zhuyi (people’s power), 168–170, 265; minzhi (government by

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the people), 236; minzhu (democracy), 168, 169, 236–237, 262, 361, 390; modern historical overview, 260–261; vs. revolution, 228–229; Sun on, 168–170, 238, 257, 265; third wave of, 252–253; Tiananmen Square demonstration, xiii, 247, 257, 261, 363; Tocqueville on, 234; Yan Fu on, 180–181. See also human rights; nationalism Democracy and Leadership (Babbitt), 248 Democracy in America (Tocqueville), 234 Deng Shi, 181, 279 Deng Xiaoping, 254 Dennerline, Jerry, 290 despotism, 126, 223, 234, 242 Development of the Logical Method in Ancient China, The (Hu), 364 Dewey, John, 172, 212, 217n55, 240 Diogenes Laetius, 321 Discussions of the vernacular language (Prose della volgar lingua), 200 divination, 300 Doctrine of Sun Wen, The (“Sun Wen xueshuo”), 172 Doctrine of the Mean (“Zhongyong”), 3, 118, 178 Documents on statecraft ( Jingshi wenbian), 158 Dongxi wenhua ji qi zhexue (Eastern and Western cultures and their philosophies), 209–210 Dong Zhongshu, 129 Dream of the Red Chamber. See Honglou meng (Dream of the Red Chamber) Dual Biography (“Zixu”), 321 dualities in Chinese tradition, 128; biran-ziran (necessary-natural), 49–50, 78; bo-yue (erudition-essentialism), 3–4; dao wenxue -zun dexing (following the path of inquiry and study-honoring moral nature), 4–5, 20, 42–43, 90–91, 118–119; intellectualism-antiintellectualism, 25–31; knowledgemorality (See morality vs. knowledge); li-qi (metaphysical entity-vital energy),

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dualities (continued) 47–49; ti-yong (substance-function), 15–17, 19, 156, 162; xue-si (learningthinking), 2–3 Duanmu Ci (Zigong), 3 Duan Yucai, 58, 60, 64, 71–72, 74, 78, 80n2, 81n35, 89, 118 Du Fu, 246 Dushu zazhi (Reading Magazine), 285 Du You, 311 dynastic tradition: vs. national history, 275–282, 298; overthrow of, 222–223 education system reform, 192–193 Eisenstadt, S. N., 219 elitism, 246–248 empty talk and Dai Zhen, 66, 68, 69, 72, 75, 82n40, 121 Encyclopedia of World History, An (Langer), 324 Engels, Friedrich, 225, 289, 335–336 enlightenment. See Chinese Enlightenment Epitome of Ancient, Medieval, and Modern History, An (Ploetz), 324 equalization ( jun), 170–171 Erikson, Erik, 326 erudition (bo) and essentialism (yue), 3–5, 10–11, 47–48, 72–73, 83n65 Essentials of the Chinese Theory of Social Contract (Zhongguo minyue jingyi), 238, 282, 362 evidential investigation. See kaozheng (evidential investigation) Evidential Research Movement, 85, 299, 317, 327. See also kaozheng (evidential investigation) Evolution and Ethics (Huxley), 154, 180 Evolution of Rites (“Liyun”), 160, 161, 168 examination system reform, 192–193 Fairbank, John K., 229, 259n11, 352 faith vs. reason in Christianity, 1–2, 6 Fang Dongshu, 9, 33n36, 71 Fang Yizhi, 37n85, 358–359 Fang Zhongtong, 358

Fan Zhongyan, 13–14, 194 Faults of Qin, The (“Guo Qin lun”), 312 Feng Guifen, 163, 164, 165, 167, 186–187, 359–360 Feng Hao, 318 fengjian (feudal system), 307 Feng Youlan (Fung Yu-lan), 7–8, 11 fetishism of revolution, 219–233, 225, 228–231 Food and Money [Commodities] (Shihhuo), 289 foot-binding, 274n21 Foreign Affairs (journal), 258n1, 351, 353 Four Books, 21, 41, 42, 88, 125, 153 Four Cardinal Principles, 255, 259n11, 353 Free China (Ziyou Zhongguo), 260 Freud, Sigmund, 324–326, 328n30 Friedrich, Carl J., 376 Fukuyama, Francis, 220, 273n8 Fukuzawa Yukichi, 221 Fung Yu-lan (Feng Yulan), 7–8, 11 Fu Sinian, 201, 287–289, 291, 380 Gadamer, Hans-Georg, 373, 377 Gao Wenhua, 201–202 Gardner, Charles S., 296 Gasster, Michael, 188 Geertz, Clifford, 344, 375, 382 Ge Hong, 321 Geistwissenschaften, 373–374 geming (kakumei, revolution), 154, 165, 168, 222, 232n12, 238 Geming jun (The Revolutionary Army), 223 Genealogical Sketch (“Xuzhuan”), 321 General History (Tongzhi), 93, 277 General History of China, A (Naka), 280 General Introduction to Qing Dynasty Scholarship (Qingdai xueshu gailun), 345 General Meaning of Bibliography ( Jiaochou tongyi), 93–97 General Principles of Literature and History (Wenshi tongyi), 85, 93–95, 112n69, 309, 318 German literary tradition, 320, 324, 338. See also Western culture and society

inde x Geschichte Der Autobiographie (History of Autobiography), 320 gewu (investigation of things), 41, 51, 56n44, 358 geyi (analogy, “matching the meaning”), 344–346 golden age of Chinese historiography, 288–291. See also historiography, Chinese gong (common good), 127, 171, 270 gongli (impartial justice), 236 Gongyang Commentary (Gongyang zhuan), 129–131, 156, 157, 181, 298, 331 Gongyang Commentary to the Spring and Autumn Annals (Chunqiu Gongyang zhuan), 129–131, 156, 157, 181, 298, 331 Gongyang school. See New Text school Gongyang tongyi (A general interpretation of the Gongyang Commentary), 157 Gongyang zhuan (Gongyang Commentary), 129–131, 156, 157, 181, 298, 331 Gong Zizhen, 9, 14, 23, 53, 90–91, 118–119, 130, 157 Goose Lake Temple Debate, 19 governance. See specific types Gramsci, Antonio, 179–180, 183 Great dictionary of philosophy (Zhexue da cidian), 200 Great Leap Forward, 191, 230, 231. See also Mao Zedong Great Masters of National Learning, 295–296, 297–298 Greek culture and tradition: biographical tradition, 320, 321; historiography of, 298–299, 301, 311; political, 235, 243, 249n24. See also Western culture and society Guizot, Francois, 379 Gu Jiegang, 53n2, 285–286 Guliang Commentaries (Guliangzhuan), 156, 299 Guliangzhuan (Guliang Commentaries), 156, 299

399

Guochao Hanxue shicheng ji (Record of the transmission of the masters of the school of Han Learning), 72 guocui (kokusui, national essence), 168–169, 181–182, 211, 283, 380. See also National Essence Movement Guocui xuebao (Journal of National Essence), 181–182, 238, 279 Guogu lunheng (Critical Essays on the National Past), 283 guogu scholars, 213–214 guoji minsheng (finance of the state and the people’s livelihood), 170 “Guo Qin lun” (The Faults of Qin), 312 Guoshi dagang (Qian Mu, Outline History of the Nation), 290–291 Guo Songtao, 236–237, 361 Guo Tingyi, 324 Guoxue jikan (National Studies Quarterly), 285 Gurevich, Aaron I., 312 Gushi bian (Critiques of Ancient History), 285 Guwen Shangshu (Classic of History in ancient script), 116–117, 172 Gu Yanwu, 112n71; on classical learning, 21, 22, 36n61, 48, 91, 100; as founder of Qing classical scholarship, 10, 107, 115, 117–118; on jingshi (ordering the world), 127; on self-interest, 271; on Six Classics, 125 Haiguo tuzhi (Treatise on the maritime countries), 159 Han Chinese racial theories, 165–166, 189, 281–282 Han Learning: Dai Zhen and, 8–9, 14, 41–42, 69–70, 81n25; New Text School and, 129–130; vs. Song Learning, 7–12, 33n30 “Han Liu er xiansheng nianpu” (Chronological Biographies of Han Yu and Liu Zongyuan), 318 Hanru tongyi (Penetrating the meanings of the Han Confucians), 9–10

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Hanshu (History of the Former Han Dynasty), 312 Hanxue shangdui (Critical evaluation of Han Learning), 9, 71 Hanxue shicheng ji (Record of the transmission of the Masters of the School of Han Learning), 9 Han Yu, 101, 154–155, 180, 317 Hao Chang (Zhang Hao), 364 Havel, Vaclav, 363 Heaven in Shiji (Records of the Grand Historian), 305, 307 He Changling, 128 Hedges, Chris, 257 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 230, 311 Hempel, Carl G., 373 He Qi (He Gai), 169 Herder, Johann Gottfried von, 166 hermeneutics, 373–375 Herodotus, 298, 306 Hezhou zhi yu (A synopsis of the history of Hezhou), 95 Higham, John, 375 Historians of China and Japan (Pulleyblank), 309 Historical Inevitability (Berlin), 304 historical positivism, 369–373, 377, 379–382 Histories (Herodotus), 298 historiography, Chinese: characteristics of new schools, 294–311, 329–330, 337–340; comparison and analogy in, 344–346; critical tradition of, 304–305, 308–309; of Dao, 307–310; Data school of, 330–333; golden age of, 288–291; Interpretation school of, 333–336; methodology in, 340–342, 346–348; praise and blame in, 303, 314n32; on progress and cycle, 310–311, 315n43, 342–344; rise of, 275–279, 380; shi and, 307, 308, 310; teleology in, 300, 305–307; vs. Western, 295–296, 298–302, 311–313, 336–337. See also Confucianism and Confucian culture; culturalism and cultural movements;

nationalism; philological tradition; specific scholars and texts history as discipline: hermeneutic approach, 373–375; historical positivism, 369–373, 377, 379–382; tradition and, 375–382. See also specific scholars and texts history by innuendo (yingshe shixue), 334 History of Autobiography (Geschichte Der Autobiographie), 320 “History of the Chinese Revolution, A” (Sun), 165–168 History of the Former Han Dynasty (Hanshu), 312 History of the Peloponnesian War (Thucydides), 298 History of the Song Dynasty (Songshi), 12–13 Hofstadter, Richard, 25–26 Hong Bang, 66–68 Hong Kong, 222, 231 Honglou meng (Dream of the Red Chamber), xvii; autobiographical approach theory of, 135, 139, 150n7, 150n8; cleanliness vs. dirtiness, 142, 146, 148–149; distinction among worlds, 135–141; flower-burial episode, 141–143; garden architectural design in, 144–146; on hostility of the world, 143; on love and lust, 144, 146–148, 151n12; Redology on, 134–135; Tianxiang Lou, 140–141, 150n9; translations of, 150 Hou Wailu, 33n30, 202 Hsiao Kung-chüan (Xiao Gongquan), 165, 175n32 Huainanzi, 27 Huangchao jingshi wenbian (Illustrious Qing dynasty documents on statecraft), 128, 158 Huangdi (Yellow Emperor), 189, 223, 281, 284, 332 Huang Jie, 181, 182, 189, 279, 280 Huang Ming jingshi wenbian (Illustrious Ming dynasty documents on statecraft), 128, 158 Huang Xing, 212

inde x Huang Yizhou, 10 Huang Zongxi, 11–13, 17, 22, 35n61, 104, 105, 106, 107, 122, 124, 125–127, 241, 250n25, 265–267, 271, 311 Hu Hanmin, 171, 254 Hui Dong, 8–9, 43–44 Huineng, 28 Huizinga, Johan, 343 Hu Liyuan, 169 human agency in history, 302–305, 310–311, 373–375 human rights: Confucian culture on, 245–246, 268–270; Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 267–268; Wang Tao on, 264; as Western cultural value, 260–261, 262. See also democracy; guocui (national essence) Huntington, Samuel P., 252–253, 256–257, 258n1, 263–264, 273n8, 351–355 Hu Qian, 70 Hu Shi (Hu Shih): on assimilation, 190–191; on Chan (Zen) Buddhism, 28; on Chinese Renaissance, 167, 173, 183, 198–200, 203–204, 210, 216n28; on Confucianism and democracy, 256–257, 362–363, 364; on Dai Zhen, 68, 79n1; on gewu (investigation of things), 56n44; on historiography, 340, 380–381; on human rights, 269–270; on knowledge and morality, 46; on Neo-Confucianism origins, 7–8; New Culture project of, 208–209, 210–213, 224, 283–286, 292n26; nianpu (chronological biography) and, 318–319; as republican spokesman, 212, 239–240; Ziyou Zhongguo (Free China) and, 260 Hu Yuan, 13 Idea of History, The (Collingwood), 373 Illustrious Ming dynasty documents on statecraft (Huang Ming jingshi wenbian), 128, 158 Illustrious Qing dynasty documents on statecraft (Huangchao jingshi wenbian), 128, 158

401

individualism, 270–272. See also si (self-interest) Inoue Kaoru, 280 Inquiry Into Goodness. See Yuanshan (Inquiry Into Goodness) In Response to Ren-an (“Bao Ren-an shu”), 299, 305, 321 intellectualism: of 19th century, 156–160; anti-intellectualism and, 25–31; marginalization of, 191–194, 246–247, 260. See also dao wenxue (following the path of inquiry and study); May Fourth Movement; zhishi fenzi (intellectual) Interpretation and Social Criticism (Walzer), 178 Interpretation school, 333–336. See also historiography, Chinese Islam, 252–253, 354 Japan: -China relations, 187–188; historiography of, 378–379; kokusui (national essence) movement, 169, 279, 380; modernization and, 220–222 ji (accumulation), 44 jiafeng (recounting family tradition), 321 Jiang Fan, 9, 66–67 Jiang Yong, 41, 81n26 jianlong reign period, 13 Jiaobinlu kangyi (Straightforward words from the lodge of Early Zhou studies), 163 Jiaochou tongyi (General meaning of bibliography), 93–95 Jiao Hong, 116 Jiao Xun, 23 Jia Yi, 312 jing (seriousness), 5, 46, 48–49, 53 jingshi (ordering the world), 16, 17, 125–129, 156–165 Jingshi wenbian (Documents on statecraft), 158 jingshi zhi yong (practical use of the Confucian principles in reordering the society), 158 jingtian (well-field system), 170–171

402

inde x

jingxue (classical scholarship), 113 Jinsi lu (Reflections on Things at Hand), 41 jinwen school. See Modern Text school ( jinwen) Jin Yuelin, 311 Ji Yun, 75, 359 Johnson, James, 323 Johnson, Samuel, 323 Johnston, R. F., 183 Journal of National Essence (Guocui xuebao), 181–182, 238, 279 jun (equalization), 170–171 junmin gongzhi (joint rule of monarch and people), 237 junmin gongzhu (constitutional monarchy), 237, 262, 361 juntian (equal field system), 171 junzhu (monarchy), 237, 262, 361 kakumei (revolution), 222 Kang Youwei, 129–131, 157, 159–161, 164, 168, 169, 171, 180–181, 184, 188, 193, 235, 237, 241, 246, 247, 254, 256, 262–265, 284, 361–362 Kant, Emmanuel, 225 kaoju (evidential investigation), 7, 57. See also Han Learning; philological tradition kaozheng (evidential investigation), 7, 41–42, 57, 115, 156–157, 299–300. See also Han Learning; philological tradition Kaozheng (School of Classical Evidentialism), 156–157 King, Ambrose, 229 Kluge Prize, John W., xiii, xiv, xv, xxn5, 387–391 knowledge. See morality vs. knowledge kokusui (national essence), 169, 279, 380. See also guocui (national essence) Kong Guangsen, 157 Kongzi gaizhi kao (Kang Youwei, A study of Confucius as a reformer), 131, 160, 262 Kopf, David, 228 Kroeber, A. L., 247 Kuhn, Thomas S., 135

kuochong (gradual development), 44 Kuo Moruo, 289 Kuwabara Jitsuzo, 280 LaCouperie, Terrien de, 189, 281 Lament for the South (“Ai Jiangnan fu”), 321 Lamprecht, Karl, 338 Langer, William L., 324 Laozi (Laozi), 26–27, 180, 284, 332, 388 learning vs. thinking, 1–3, 32n10, 32n14. See also morality vs. knowledge Leclercq, Jean, 2 Legalist school, 103, 152, 267 legal systems, 236, 249n24, 250n25, 255, 267, 299–300 Legge, James, 187, 236, 262, 275 Lenin, Vladimir, 226 Leonardo da Vinci (Freud), 324–325 “Letter to Li Hongzhang” (Sun), 162 Levenson, Joseph, 352 Levy, Marion J., Jr., 219 Liang Qichao: on Dai Zhen, 57, 66; on geming (revolution), 222–223, 232n12; on Han-Song Learning, 8; historiography and, 276–279, 280, 298, 333, 380; New Text school and, 361; on Qing intellectual history, 7, 157, 202, 317; on Waiting for the Dawn, 267 Liang Shiqiu, 213 Liang Shuming, 209–210, 364 lianguan xushi (continuous narration), 327 liangzhi (innate knowledge), 44, 48, 109, 121, 270 liberalism, 241, 244–246, 260. See also intellectualism Li Changzhi, 206–207, 208 Li Dazhao, 185, 227 Li Deyu, 348 Life of Washington, The (Weems), 322 Li Gou, 18 Liji (Classic of Rites), 160 li (metaphysical entity) vs. qi (vital energy), 48–49

inde x Lingxiu rencai de laiyuan (The Sources of Leadership), 319 Lin Yutang, 213 li (principles), 43, 47–52; Dai on, 63, 120; li vs. wuli concept, 358; Song-Ming Neo-Confucianism on, 113, 122; Wang Fuzhi on, 307. See also morality vs. knowledge Li Rui, 229, 231 Li Shitao, 317 Literary Mind and the Carving of Dragons (Wenxin diaolong), 346 Liu Fenglu, 130, 157 Liu Shaoqi, 201, 254 Liu Shipei, 57, 181, 184, 189, 238, 276–277, 281, 282, 361, 380 Liu Xianglian, 140 Liu Xie, 346 Liu Yi, 15 Liu Yizheng, 304 Liu Zongyuan, 307, 317 Liu Zongzhou, 22 livelihood principle, 170–171 Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers (Diogenes), 321 Lu Xiangshan, 356–357 Lixue (“Rationalism”), 10, 12–16, 34n46, 35n61. See also Cheng-Zhu school Li Yong, 126 “Liyun” (“Evolution of Rites”), 160, 161, 168 Li Zhi, 181 Li Zhizao, 356, 357 Locke, John, 323 love and lust in Honglou meng, 144, 146–148, 151n12 Löwith, Karl, 295 Lu Cui, 202 Lunyu. See Analects (Lunyu, Confucius) Luo Jialun, 206 Luo Qinshun, 91, 114–115 Lu-Wang school, 42–43, 113–115, 122. See also Cheng-Zhu school; NeoConfucianism; specific scholars Lu Xiangshan, 4–6, 11, 17, 19, 28, 41–43, 48, 91, 103–109, 122, 123–124, 356–357, 359

403

Lu Xun, 210, 224 Lü Zuqian, 19 Macaulay, Thomas B., 379 Mannheim, Karl, 312 Mao Qiling, 116–117 Mao Zedong, 184–186, 254, 259, 260, 353; constitutionalism and, 254; fetishism of revolution by, 225, 229–231; Great Leap Forward by, 191, 230, 231; on May Fourth Movement, 205; on Western influence, 208. See also Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Marx, Karl, 221, 225, 335, 378 Marxism, 185, 202, 205–206, 225–227, 257, 289, 333–335, 374. See also Chinese Enlightenment; radicalism material vs. spiritual culture, 166–168 Ma Xulun, 181, 279 May Fourth Movement: beginning of, 167, 182–186, 224–226; as a cultural movement, 207–214; on democracy, 241–242, 256; demonstration on May 4 (1919), 226; as Enlightenment vs. Renaissance, 198–207; Hu Shi and, 167, 173, 183; Luo Jialun on, 206; summary of, 193, 195, 214, 232n23. See also Chinese Enlightenment; Chinese Renaissance; intellectualism; New Culture Movement; radicalism Mazu Daoyi, 348 McMorran, Ian, 310 Meaning of New Thought, The (Hu Shi, “Xin sichao de yiyi”), 208–209 Mei Guangdi, 210–213, 217n55 Mei Wending, 358 Mencius and Mencius: on bo-yue (erudition-essentialism) duality, 4, 32n14; on democracy, 265; on historiography, 299, 305; on human rights, 245, 268–269; on learningthinking, 32n14; on tianxia (all under Heaven), 276 mendi (aristocratic clan system), 339 menfa (aristocratic clan system), 339

404

inde x

Mengzi ziyi shuzheng (Commentary on the meaning of terms in Mencius): criticism of, 46, 67–68, 70, 84n79; development of, 59–60, 62–63; li (principles) in, 43, 48, 50. See also Dai Zhen Merton, Robert, 348 metaphor, 299, 345–346. See also historiography Middle Kingdom complex, 188, 194–195, 197n30 mingdao reign period, 13–14, 34n54 Ming learning. See Song-Ming Neo-Confucianism Ming Taizu, 355 Mingyi daifanglu (Waiting for dawn: A plan for the prince), 126, 265–267 minquan zhuyi (people’s power), 168–170, 265. See also democracy minsheng zhuyi (livelihood principle), 170–171 minshi (history of the nation or people), 280 minzhi (government by the people), 236. See also democracy minzhu (democracy), 168, 169, 236–237, 262, 361, 390. See also democracy Misch, Georg, 320 modernization: as historical phenomenon, 220–222; radicalism and modernity, 184–185; vs. revolution, 222–231; summary of theory, 219–220, 231 Modern Text school ( jinwen), 154, 156–157, 159, 161. See also specific scholars Momigliano, Arnaldo, 298–299, 301 Mommsen, Theodor, 341 monarchy, 237, 262, 361 morality vs. knowledge, 1–5, 20–21; Confucius on, 32nn9–10; Dai on, 45–50; intellectualism-antiintellectualism, 25–31; Zhu Xi on, 4–6, 26, 30–31, 52–53, 55n30. See also dao wenxue (following the path of inquiry and study); li (principles); zun dexing (honoring moral nature) Moses and Monotheism (Freud), 325–326

Naitô Torajirô, 336 Naka Michiyo, 280 Nathan, Andrew J., 246, 253–254, 255 Nation, The, 199 National Essence Journal, 280–281, 283 National Essence Movement, 279–282, 380. See also guocui (national essence) nationalism, 202; China’s New Wave of, 252–258; December Ninth Movement, 201–202; vs. dynastic history, 275–278, 282, 298; National Essence Movement, 279–282; National Past Movement, 283–284; New Culture Movement, 207–214, 224, 283–288, 292n26; Sun on, 165–168, 197n43, 227–229. See also democracy; historiography, Chinese; May Fourth Movement Nationalist Party, 229, 253, 254–255 National Past Movement, 283–284, 381 National Studies Quarterly (Guoxue jikan), 285 “Natural Law in the Chinese Tradition, The” (Hu), 240 Needham, Joseph (Science and Civilization in China), 262, 296 negative will (or negative freedom), 230 neisheng waiwang (sageliness within and kingliness without), 16, 125 Neo-Confucianism: developmental stages of, 16–25; Han vs. Song Learning, 6–12, 33n30; on knowledge vs. morality, 2–5; May Fourth generation on, 241–242; Mei on, 210–211; Song-Ming Neo-Confucianism, 113–117, 122. See also Dao; Qing Confucianism; specific schools Nevin, Thomas R., 217n55, 248 New Cultural History, The (ed. Hunt), 372 New Culture Movement, 207–214, 224, 283–288, 292n26. See also May Fourth Movement New Enlightenment Movement. See Chinese Enlightenment New History (Liang Qichao, “Xin shi xue”), 278

inde x New Text school, 118, 129–130, 361–362 New Tide (Renaissance), 206 New Tide (Xinchao), 199 Newton, Isaac, 323 New York Times, 257 New Youth. See Xin Qingnian (New Youth) Nianershi zhaji (Notes on Twenty-two Histories), 309 nianpu (chronological biography), 317–325; autobiography, 135, 139–140, 159–160, 317, 319–321; of Western cultures, 320, 321–324. See also psychohistorical biography Nivison, David S., 86, 94, 96, 99, 105, 308 Notes on Twenty-two Histories (Nianershi zhaji), 309 Oakeshott, Michael, 191 objectivity in historiography, 330–333 Old Text school, 130–131, 168, 284, 361–362, 390 “On the Adoption of Western Learning” (Cai Xixue yi), 186 On the Boundaries of the Rights of Society and of the Individual (Mill), 272 “On the Dao” (Zhang), 307 On the New Citizen (Xinmin shuo), 272 oracle bone inscriptions, 300 ordering the world. See jingshi (ordering the world) Oriental History (Kuwabara), 280 Orientalism, 378–380 Orientalism (Said), 378 Origins of History, The (Butterfield), 296 Outline History of the Nation (Qian Mu, Guoshi dagang), 290–291 Outline of Chinese History (Zhang Yinlin Zhongguo shigang), 290 Outline of the History of Chinese Philosophy (Hu Shi, Zhongguo zhexueshi dagang), 283–284 Ou-yang Xiu, 13, 14, 34n52 Pan Yue, 321 patriotism. See nationalism

405

Pei Minxin, 253, 255 Pelikan, Jaroslav, 376–377 Penetrating the Meanings of the Han Confucians (Chen Li, Hanru tongyi), 9–10 Peng Shaosheng, 46, 60, 70 philological tradition, 6–12, 21–23, 34n55. See also historiography; kaozheng (evidential investigation); wen (literary expressions); specifi c scholars and texts philosophical tradition, 6–12, 23–31, 34n55. See also morality vs. knowledge; specific scholars and texts “Pi Han” (Yan Fu, In Refutation of Han Yu), 180 pingjun diquan (land power equalization), 170 Plato, 179, 183, 206, 207, 345, 388 Ploetz, Karl, 324 Poincaré, Henri, 340 Polanyi, Michael, 226 polarities. See dualities in Chinese tradition Political Liberalism (Rawls), 243 positivism. See historical positivism praise and blame in historiography, 303, 314n32 Preface. See Xuyan (Preface) Principles of Translation (Tytler), 349 progress and cycle in historiography, 310–311, 315n43, 342–344 Prolegomena to Chinese History (Liang Qichao, “Zhongguoshi xulun”), 277, 278 Prose della volgar lingua (Discussions of the vernacular language), 200 psychohistorical biography, 325–327, 328n30, 341. See also nianpu (chronological biography) Pulleyblank, E. G., 309, 324 al-Qadhafi, Mu’ammar, 354 Qian Daxin, 58, 65, 66, 72, 73, 74, 75, 88, 158, 358, 359 Qian Dehong, 319

406

inde x

Qian Mu, 7–8, 43, 62, 100, 109n1, 290–291 Qian Xuantong, 167 Qian Xuesen, 231 Qiao Shi, 255 qing (feelings), 48 Qing Confucianism, xvii–xviii; of 19th century, 128–131, 156–160; Dai and Zhang intellectual mode, 90–99; historiography and, 308–309; new developments in, 124–128; nianpu (chronological biographies) and, 317–319; philological tradition of, 10–11, 113, 117–124; vs. Song-Ming NeoConfucianism, 113–117. See also Neo-Confucianism Qingdai xueshu gailun (A general introduction to Qing dynasty scholarship), 345 qingtan (pure conversation), 346 Qin Huitian, 58 Qin Shihuang benji (“Basic Annals of the First Emperor of Qin”), 312 Quan Zuwang, 13, 34n50, 104, 106, 122 race, 165–166, 189, 281 radicalism: emergence of, 179–182; on interpretation of Dao, 178–179; of Mao, 185–186, 191; marginalization of China and, 188–191; marginalization of intellectuals and, 191–194, 246–247, 260; of 1910–1919, 182–186; of twentieth-century China, 178–197. See also May Fourth Movement; revolution Ranke, Leopold von, 287, 304, 338, 349n8, 370 “Rationalism” (Lixue), 10, 12–16, 34n46, 35n61 rationalism and radicalism, 184–185 Rawls, John, 243, 244, 247, 250n29, 257, 363 Reading Magazine (Dushu zazhi), 285 reason vs. faith in Christianity, 1–2, 6 Record of Dreams on a Sickbed (Wang Huizu, Bingta mengheng lu), 319

Record of the Changxing Academy (Kang Youwei, Changxing xueji), 159 Record of the Transmission of the Masters of the School of Han Learning (Jiang Fan, Hanxue shicheng ji), 9, 72 Records of the Grand Historian (Shiji), 92, 298, 299, 303, 306, 312, 331, 332, 333 Redfield, Robert, 375 Redology on Honglou meng, 134–135 Reeves, James H., 193 Reflections on Things at Hand (Zhu Xi and Lü Zuqian, Jinsi lu), 41 religion: democracy and, 252–253; religious syncretism, 355–357. See also specific religions “Religion and the Third Wave” (Huntington), 252, 360 Renaissance. See Chinese Renaissance Renaissance, The (Sichel), 199 “Renaissance of China, The” (Hu), 210 Renan, Ernest, 378 Renxue (Tan Sitong, A study of humanity), 181 revolution: fetishism of, 225, 228–231; vs. modernization, 222–224, 228; transition from French to Russian model, 224–227. See also May Fourth Movement; radicalism Revolutionary Army, The (Geming jun), 223 Ricci, Matteo, 355–357, 390 Ricoeur, Paul, 373, 374 Rites of Zhou (Zhouli), 18, 41 Romance of the Three Kingdoms, The (Sanguo yanyi), 303, 314n32 Rorty, Richard, 245, 250n35 Ruan Yuan, 129, 358 Rudolph, Lloyd and Suzanne, 221, 376 Rulin (Confucian Scholars), 13 Russell, Bertrand, 336 Russian Revolution, 224–227 Ryle, Gilbert, 32n10 Said, Edward, 378 Sanguo yanyi (The Romance of the Three Kingdoms), 303, 314n32

inde x sanmin zhuyi (Three Principles of the People), 152. See also Sun Yat-sen sanshi (Three epochs), 156, 161 Schlesinger, Arthur M., Jr., 247, 363 Schneider, Lawrence A., 285–286 Scholarly Cases of Song and Yuan Classical Scholars (Song-Yuan Xue-an), 13 scholar to intellectual transition, 191–194 School of Classical Evidentialism. See kaozheng (evidential investigation) Schwartz, Benjamin I., 23, 345 Science and Civilization in China (Needham), 262, 296 science and Confucianism, 357–360 Science et l’hypothèse, La (Poincaré), 340 “scientific history”, 287, 296–297, 349n8 “scientific socialism”, 185, 225 Scripture of Great Peace (Taipingjing), 179 Self-Sketch (Wang Chong, “Ziji pian”), 321 Serbia, 257 seriousness. See jing Shangdi (Lord on High), 356 Shao Tingcai, 16, 106 Shengshi weiyan (Zheng Guanying, Warnings to a prosperous age), 163 shensi (careful thinking), 3 Shen Yao, 192 shi (historiographer, scholar, scribe), 191–194, 300–301, 307, 308 shi (impersonal forces), 307, 310 shide (recounting ancestral virtues), 321 Shihhuo (Food and Money [Commodities]), 289 “Shihuo zhi” (Treatise on Food and Money), 312 Shiji (Sima Qian), Records of the Grand Historian), 92, 101, 298, 299, 303, 305–306, 307, 311–312, 331, 332 Shils, Edward, 376 Shklar, Judith N., 245 Shuijing zhu (Commentary to the Classic of Waterways), 57, 79n1, 93 Shujing (Classic of History), 15, 61, 172, 299, 331 si (self-interest), 127, 270–272

407

si (thinking), 2–3 Siku quanshu (The Complete Library of the Four Treasures), 58, 64, 69, 359 Siku quanshu zongmu tiyao (Catalogue of the Complete Library of the Four Branches), 75 Sima Guang, 29, 306, 322, 324 Sima Qian. See Shiji (Records of the Grand Historian) Sino-Japanese war (1894–1895), 187–188 Sishu wujing daquan (Complete Collection of the Four Books and Five Classics), 21 Sivan, Nathan, 358 Six Classics, 21, 301; Dai Zhen on, 51, 58–59; Duan Yucai on, 60, 78; Gu on, 125; Xun Can on, 27; Zhang Xuecheng on, 99–103, 121–122 slavery, 269 Smith, Stephen B., 225 Snow, Edgar, 202 social hierarchy, 192 socialism, 170–171, 185, 227, 241, 258, 354. See also Marxism Society for the Preservation of National Learning, 279 Song Learning: Daoxue or Lixue, 10, 12–16, 34n46, 35n61; vs. Han Learning, 7–12 Song-Ming Neo-Confucianism, 113–117, 122. See also Neo-Confucianism Songshi (History of the Song Dynasty), 12–13 Song Xiangfeng, 130 Song-Yuan Xue-an (Scholarly Cases of Song and Yuan Classical Scholars), 13 Soong, Stephen C., 135, 144, 148 Sources of Leadership, The (Hu Shi, Lingxiu rencai de laiyuan), 319 Spencer, Herbert, 180, 182, 282, 298, 370, 379–380 Spring and Autumn Annals. See Chunqiu (Spring and Autumn Annals) state capitalism, 171 St. Augustine, 2, 321 Stern, J. P., 324 St. Jerome, 2

408

inde x

Straightforward words from the lodge of Early Zhou studies (Feng Guifen, Jiaobinlu kangyi), 163 Strange Defeat (Bloch), 343 Studies of Ancient Chinese Society (Guo Moruo, Zhongguo gudai shehui yanjiu), 289 Study of Confucius as a reformer, A (Kang Youwei, Kongzi gaizhi kao), 131, 160, 262 Study of Humanity, A (Tan Sitong, Renxue), 181 Study of Nietzsche, A (Stern), 324 Study of Sociology, A (Spencer), 180 Study of the Forged Classics of the Xin Period, A (Xinxue weijing kao), 130, 160 subjectivity in historiography, 330–333 Sublime Words of the Classic of Changes (Hui Dong, Yi weiyan), 43 suffering, 245–246. See also human rights Sun Baoxuan, 85 Sun Fu, 13, 18, 34n54 “Sun Wen xueshuo” (Sun Yat-sen, The Doctrine of Sun Wen), 172 Sun Xiangyan, 69 Sun Yat-sen: on daotong, 154; on democracy, 168–170, 238, 257, 265; on individualism, 270; intellectual development of, 153–155; jingshi (ordering the world) movement and, 161–165; on knowledge vs. action, 172–173; on livelihood, 170–171; on nationalism, 165–168, 197n43, 227–229; self-analysis by, 152, 153; Waiting for the Dawn and, 267 Synopsis of the History of Hezhou (Zhang Xuecheng, Hezhou zhi yu), 95 Systematic and Critical Study of the National Past (zhengli guogu), 283–284, 381 taiping (three stages of evolution to reach the world of Universal Peace), 160 Taiping tianguo shishi rizhi (Guo Tingyi, Chronicle of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom), 324

Taiwan, 222, 231, 243, 253, 361 Tang Prize, xiii, xiv, xxn1, 391–392 Tang Yongtong, 213 Tang Zhen, 127 Tang Zhong, 19 Tan Sitong, 180–181, 188, 361 Tao Xisheng, 289 teleology, historical, 300, 305–307 “Ten Thousand Word Memorial” (Kang Youwei), 188, 193 Tertullian, 2, 6, 31 Theory of Justice, A (Rawls), 243 thinking vs. learning. See learning vs. thinking Third Wave, The (Huntington), 361 Thomas Woodrow Wilson (Freud), 325 Three Principles of the People. See sanmin zhuyi (Three Principles of the People) Thucydides, 298 ti (substance), 15–17, 19, 156, 162 tian (Heaven), 307, 356 Tiananmen Square demonstration, xiii, 247, 257, 261, 363 Tianjian Shi, 246 tiansheng reign period, 13 tianxia (all under Heaven), 187, 276 tianxia weigong (he nation is for all), 169 tiaoli (internal texture of things), 48 Tocqueville, Alexis de, 234 Tongzhi (General History), 93, 277 Toulmin, Stephen, 185, 377 Toynbee, Arnold J., 278, 344 tradition and history, 375–382. See also history as discipline Treatise on Food and Money (“Shihuo zhi”), 312 Treatise on the maritime countries (Wei Yuan, Haiguo tuzhi), 159 Treaty of Nanjing (1842), 186, 275 Treaty of Shimonoseki (1895), 188 Truth and Method (Gadamer), 373, 377 Twitchett, Denis, 319–320, 324 Tytler, A. F., 349 United States, 219, 234, 236–237. See also Western culture and society

inde x Universal Declaration of Human Rights (United Nations), 267–268 upāya (expediency), 27 vernacular language, 199–200, 214, 215n8 Vindication of Tradition, The (Pelikan), 376–377 Vovelle, Michel, 372 Waiting for the Dawn (Mingyi daifanglu), 126, 265–267 Waldron, Arthur, 254 Walzer, Michael, 178–179, 247, 304, 363 Wang Anshi, 18 Wang Chong, 321 Wang Fuzhi, 22, 37n85, 124–127, 165–166, 307, 310 Wang Guowei, 57, 79n1, 151n10, 213, 286–287 Wang Huizu, 319 Wang Mang, 269 Wang Mouhong, 69, 319 Wang Niansun, 60 Wang Sengqian, 347 Wang Tao, 236–237, 262, 264–265, 361, 362, 390 Wang Xishan, 358 Wang Yangming, 11, 21–22, 26, 28, 31, 41, 42, 104–105, 319; influence of, 91, 116, 126, 355, 390; on liangzhi (innate knowledge), 44–45, 48, 121, 270; on religious syncretism, 355; Sun on, 172; on textual authority, 114, 115; on wu (things within our minds), 358 Wan Sida, 61 war, 187–188 Warnings to a Prosperous Age (Zheng Guanying, Shengshi weiyan), 163 Washington, George, 322 Watanabe Hiroshi, 378–379 the Way. See Dao Weber, Max, 193, 220, 344, 375–376 Weems, Mason L., 322 Wei Yuan, 128, 130, 157, 158, 159, 162, 186

409

well-field system, 170–171 wen (literary expressions), 15–18, 20. See also philological tradition Weng Fanggang, 70 Wenshi tongyi (Zhang Xuecheng, General principles of literature and history), 85, 93–99, 102, 112n69, 309, 318. See also Zhang Xuecheng Wenxin diaolong (Liu Xie, Literary Mind and the Carving of Dragons), 346 Western culture and society: biographical tradition of, 320, 321–324; characteristics of historiography, 311, 336–337, 342; concepts and values of, 245–246, 260–262, 267–268, 270, 273n8; historiography of, 294–296, 298–302, 311–313, 338; institutions vs. technology, 162–163; religious tradition, 1–2, 6, 252–253; Wang Tao on, 264; Westernization (as term), 221. See also “clash of civilizations” theory; modernization Western learning (“Xixue”), 162 Wheeler, John A., 374 Wilbur, Martin, 152 Wingspread Conference (USA, 1977), 372, 375 Wright, Arthur F., 297 Wright, Mary C., 164, 352 wu (things in external and internal world), 358 Wu Cheng, 19–20 wuli (principles of things), 358 Wu Mi, 210 xiangyue (community compacts), 242 Xiao Gongquan, 165, 293n40 xin (faithfulness), 349 xin (human mind), 113, 114–115, 124 Xinchao (New Tide), 199 xing (acting), 48 xing (human nature), xiii, 27, 65, 67–68, 113, 114–115, 120, 122, 127, 369 Xinmin shuo (Lliang Qichao, On the New Citizen), 272

410

inde x

Xin Qingnian (New Youth), 167, 183, 205, 212, 224 “Xin shi xue” (Liang Qichao, New History), 278 “Xin sichao de yiyi” (Hu Shi, The meaning of new thought), 208–209 Xinxue weijing kao (A study of the forged classics of the Xin period), 130, 160 xiushen (cultivation of the person), 48 “Xixue” (Western learning), 162 xue (learning), 2–3, 48–49 Xue Fengzuo, 358 Xue Fucheng, 236–237, 361 Xueheng (Critical review), 210, 212 Xu Guangqi, 356, 390 Xun Can, 27 Xunzi (Xunzi), 4, 32n15, 44–45, 345 Xuyan (Preface), 44, 59, 62. See also Dai Zhen “Xuzhuan” (Ban Gu, Genealogical Sketch), 321

yingshe shixue (history by innuendo), 334 Yi weiyan (Hui Dong, Sublime words of the Classic of Changes), 43 yong (function), 15–17, 19, 30,156, 162 Yongluo dadian, 79n1 Young Man Luther (Erikson), 326 yu (desire), 44, 48 Yuan Mei, 69 Yuanshan (Inquiry Into Goodness), 49, 56n44, 59–60, 62, 65–68, 81n35. See also Dai Zhen Yuan Shikai, 212 yue (essentialism) vs. bo (erudition), 3–5, 10–11, 46, 47–48, 72–73, 83n65 Yu Pingbo, 135 Yu Xie, 271 Yu Xin, 321 Yuxisheng nianpu huijian (Zhang Caitian, A Chronological Biography of Li Shangyin), 318 Yü Ying-shih, xiii–xxi

ya (elegance), 349 Yan Fu, 154, 180, 181, 184, 188, 235–236, 272, 349 Yang Liansheng (Lien-sheng), 34n43, 293n40, 305, 311, 392 Yangming nianpu (Qian Dehong, A Chronological Biography of Wang Yangming), 319 Yang Shi, 13 Yang Tingyun, 356 Yan-Li school, 211 Yan Ruoju, 42, 116–117 Yan Yuan, 17, 29–30, 124, 126, 211 Yan Zhitui, 346 Yao Nai, 70, 71 Yellow Emperor (Huangdi), 189, 223, 281, 284, 332 yiguan (one thread through), 3, 44, 46 Yijing (Classic of Changes), 27, 35n61, 91, 310, 369 yili (moral philosophy/principles), 7, 57, 66, 86, 129. See also philosophical tradition Yili (Book of etiquette and Ceremonial), 41

Zeng Guofan, 129 Zhang Binglin: culturalism and, 166; on Dai Zhen, 57, 109n1; on democracy, 235, 238; on governance, 169, 171; historiography and, 276–282, 333, 380; National Essence movement and, 181, 184, 283–285; Old Text school and, 361; on Western origin of Han Chinese race, 189, 281 Zhang Caitian, 318 Zhang Hao (Hao Chang), xxii, 181, Zhang Shizhai nianpu (Hu Shi, A Chronological Biography of Zhang Xuecheng), 318, 325 Zhang Xuecheng, 10–11; on Confucian learning, 77; on Dai Zhen, 40, 57, 64–65, 69, 102, 103–109; on Dao, 71–72, 307–308; fi rst encounter with Dai Zhen, 86–90; Hezhou zhi yu (A synopsis of the history of Hezhou), 95; on historiography, 300, 339–340; intellectual development of, 90–99, 121, 124; Jiaochou tongyi (General meaning of bibliography), 93–98;

inde x jingshi (ordering the world) movement and, 17, 158–159; on nianpu (chronological biography), 317–318, 322; Nivison on, 86, 94, 96, 105; reputation of, 85–86; self-analysis by, 89, 97–98; on Six Classics, 99–103, 121–122; Wenshi tongyi (General principles of literature and history), 85, 93–99, 102, 112n69, 309, 318; “Zhedong xueshu” (The Intellectual Tradition of Eastern Zhejiang), 103–107; “Zhu and Lu”, 103–109; on zun dexing (honoring moral nature), 121Zhang Yinlin, 290 Zhang Zai, 6, 22 Zhang Zhidong, 162–163, 164, 167, 187 zhanren (prognosticator), 300 Zhao Yi, 309 “Zhedong xueshu” (Zhang Xuecheng, The Intellectual Tradition of Eastern Zhejiang), 103–107 Zheng Guanying, 162–164 Zhengli guogu movement (systematic and critical study of the National Past), 283–284, 381 Zhengmeng (Zhang Zai, Correcting Youthful Ignorance), 22 zhengtong (tradition of political power), xvi zhenren (divine inquirer), 300 Zhexue da cidian (Great dictionary of philosophy), 200 zhi (intellect), 44, zhi (knowing), 48 Zhi Dun, 28–29 zhishi fenzi (intellectual), 192–194 Zhiyan Zhai, 136–138, 150n5 zhizhi (extension of knowledge), 41, 51 Zhongguo gudai shehui yanjiu (Guo Moruo, Studies of Ancient Chinese Society), 289 Zhongguo gudai shi (Xia Zengyou, Ancient History of China), 284 Zhongguo lidai mingren nianpu mulu (Li Shitao, Bibliography of Chronological

411

Biographies of Famous Figures by Dynasty), 317 Zhongguo minyue jingyi (Liu Shipei, Essentials of the Chinese Theory of Social Contract), 238, 282, 362 Zhongguo shigang (Zhang Yinlin, Outline of Chinese History), 290 “Zhongguoshi xulun” (Liang Qichao, Prolegomena to Chinese History), 277, 278 Zhongguo zhexueshi dagang (Hu Shi, Outline of the History of Chinese Philosophy), 283–284 Zhonghua minguo shishi rizhi (Guo Tingyi, Chronicle of the Republic of China), 324 Zhongxue wei ti Xixue wei yong (Chinese learning as substance, Western learning for practical application), 162, 187 “Zhongyong” (Doctrine of the Mean), 3, 118, 178 Zhou Enlai, 254 Zhouli (Rites of Zhou), 18, 41 “Zhu and Lu” (Zhang), 103–109 Zhuang Cunyu, 129–130, 157 Zhuangzi (Zhuangzi), 27, 44, 180, 348, 388 zhuanzhi (autocracy), 237 Zhu Daosheng, 28, 29 Zhu De, 230 Zhu Heling, 318 Zhuting jushi ziding nianpu (Qian Daxin, Chronological autobiography), 58 Zhu Xi: Dai Zhen and, 40–56; Goose Lake Temple Debate and, 19; kaozheng (evidential investigation) and, 9–10, 41–42, 300; on knowledge vs. morality, 4–6, 26, 30–31, 52–53, 55n30; on li (principles), 51; Zhang Xuecheng’s genealogy of, 103–109 Zhu Xi’s Final Conclusions Arrived at Late in Life (Wang Yangming, Zhuzi wannian dinglun), 114 Zhu Yixin, 73 Zhu Yun, 65, 66–67

412

inde x

Zhu Zeyun, 69 Zhuzi nianpu (Wang Maohong, A Chronological Biography of Zhu Xi), 319 Zhuzi wannian dinglun (Wang Yangming, Zhu Xi’s final conclusions arrived at late in life), 114 Zibian nianpu (Bai Juyi, Autobiographical Compilation), 317 Zibian nianpu (Kang Youwei, Chronological Autobiography), 159–160 Zigong. See Duanmu Ci (Zigong) “Ziji pian” (Wang Chong, Self-Sketch), 321 ziran (natural) vs. biran (necessary), 49–50, 78

Zixu (Autobiography, Ge), 321 Zixu (Autobiography, Liu), 321 “Zixu” (Dual Biography), 321 Ziyou Zhongguo (Free China), 260 Zizhi tongjian (Sima Guang, Comprehensive Mirror for Aid in Government), 306, 322, 324 Zou Rong, 223 zun dexing (honoring moral nature), 41–43, 46, 108–109; Gong on, 90–91, 118–119; Liu Yi on, 20; Zhang on, 121; Zhu Xi on, 4–5. See also dao wenxue (following the path of inquiry and study) Zuozhuan (Zuo Commentary to the Spring and Autumn Annals), 35, 156, 266