Lost Soul: “Confucianism” in Contemporary Chinese Academic Discourse 0674028112, 9780674028111, 9781684170487

Table of contents :
Lost Soul: “Confucianism” in Contemporary Chinese Academic Discourse
Acknowledgments
Contents
Introduction
Aims and Background
Key Themes and Arguments
Cultural Nationalism and Ruxue
Part I: Historical Background
1. The Singapore Experiment and Rujia Capitalism
Creative Transformation
An Incomplete Revitalization Movement
Institute of East Asian Philosophies
Rujia Capitalism
Yu Yingshi’s Historical Approach to Rujia Capitalism
Du Weiming’s Multicultural Confucianism with Chinese Characteristics
Critical Responses
Concluding Remarks
2. Developments in 1980s Taiwan and the Mainland
Ruxue and the Sinicization of Sociology
New Confucianism
Ruxue Organizations
Mutual Scholarly Influence
Concluding Remarks
3. The Rise of Ruxue in 1990s China
From Xin Ruxue to Ruxue
1994
National Studies and Marxism
Concluding Remarks
4. Ruxue Studies in Post-1990 Taiwan
New Confucian Conference Series
Academia Sinica’s Research Project on Contemporary Ruxue
The Hermeneutic Turn and Rujia East Asia
Concluding Remarks
Part II: Ruxue and Chinese Culture
5. Ruxue: The Core of Chinese Culture
Good Ruxue, Bad Ruxue
Critique of New Confucian Views
Transcendent Idealism Versus Historical Materialism
All-consuming Ruxue
The Mainstay of Chinese Culture
Ruxue in the Twentieth Century
The Deep Structure of Ruxue and Chinese National Identity
Four Periods of Ruxue
Post–New Confucianism and New New Confucianism
Concluding Remarks
6. Guo Qiyong, Zheng Jiadong, and Rujia Identity
Guo Qiyong
Zheng Jiadong
Concluding Remarks
7. Daotong and Chinese Culture
Yu Yingshi on Qian Mu and the New Confucians
Yu Yingshi on Daotong
Early Responses
Daotong as Culture
Concluding Remarks
Part III: The Politics of Orthodoxy
8. Lin Anwu’s Post–New Confucianism
Imperial-Style Ruxue
Liberation from Magic
Critique of Mou Zongsan
Critical/Post–New Confucianism
Dialogue and Marxism
Concluding Remarks
Appendix: A Note on Mou Zongsan’s Moral Metaphysics
9. Ruxue: Daotong Versus Zhengtong
Chen Ming and the Chinese Cultural Renaissance Movement
Taiwanese Perspectives
Concluding Remarks
10 From Doubting Antiquity to Explaining Antiquity: Reconstructing Early Ru Intellectual History in Contemporary China
Explaining Antiquity
Guodian Texts and Ruxue
Concluding Remarks
11. Marxism and Ruxue
Ruxue “Panmoralism” and the Sinicization of Chinese Marxism
Ruxue-Marxist Synthesis?
Accentuate the Positive, Eliminate the Negative
Abstract Inheritance
Fang Keli and the “Mainland New Confucians”
Luo Yijun
Mainland New Confucians: The Fourth Generation of New Confucians?
Concluding Remarks
Part IV Distinguishing Rujiao and Propagating Ruxue
12. Jiang Qing’s Ruxue Revivalism
Marxism-Leninism Versus Ruxue
Gongyang Learning and Cultural Nationalism
Political Ruxue and Institutional Reconstruction
Political Legitimacy and “Extolling Unification”
Chinese Rujiao Association
Concluding Remarks
13. Rujiao as Religion
Rujiao as a Religion
New Confucian Views
Ren Jiyu
Origins of Rujiao
Revival of the Debate in the New Millennium
Li Shen’s Critics
Knowledge Compartmentalization
Taiwanese Perspectives on Rujiao
Ecumenical Encounters
Tang Enjia and the Kongjiao xueyuan
Concluding Remarks
14. Popularization of Ruxue and Rujia Thought and Values
Traditional Virtues
The Beijing Oriental Morality Research Institute
Official Endorsement of Rujia Values?
Recitation of Classical Texts
Cultural Capital: The “Cash Value” of Rujia Values
Concluding Remarks
Conclusion
Reference Matter
Works Cited
Index
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Lost Soul “Confucianism” in Contemporary Chinese Academic Discourse

Harvard-Yenching Institute Monographs 64

Lost Soul “Confucianism” in Contemporary Chinese Academic Discourse

John Makeham

(

Published by the Harvard University Asia Center for the Harvard-Yenching Institute Distributed by Harvard University Press Cambridge (Massachusetts) and London 2008

© 2008 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College Printed in the United States of America The Harvard-Yenching Institute, founded in 1928 and headquartered at Harvard University, is a foundation dedicated to the advancement of higher education in the humanities and social sciences in East and Southeast Asia. The Institute supports advanced research at Harvard by faculty members of certain Asian universities and doctoral studies at Harvard and other universities by junior faculty at the same universities. It also supports East Asian studies at Harvard through contributions to the Harvard-Yenching Library and publication of the Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies and books on premodern East Asian history and literature. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Makeham, John, 1955– Lost soul : “Confucianism” in contemporary Chinese academic discourse / John Makeham p. cm. -- (Harvard-Yenching Institute monographs series ; 64) Includes bibliographic references and index. ISBN

978-0-674-02811-1

1. Confucianism--China. 2. Confucianism--Taiwan. BL1840.M35

2008

181'.112--dc22 2007032783 Index by the author Printed on acid-free paper Last number below indicates year of this printing 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 09 08

“O soul, come back! In the east you cannot abide. O soul, come back! In the south you cannot stay. . . . O soul, go not to the west! . . . O soul, go not to the north! . . . O soul, come back! Climb not to heaven above. O soul, come back! . . . Go not down to the Land of Darkness.” —Songs of the South (translation from David Hawkes, Chu Tz’u, The Songs of the South)

John Makeham - 978-1-68417-048-7

John Makeham - 978-1-68417-048-7

Acknowledgments

This study has received the support of many colleagues over an extended period. Almost two decades ago, David Kelly directed me to sources when I first started to collect material on my annual transTasman pilgrimages from Wellington to plunder the rich library resources at the Australian National University in Canberra. Fang Keli (then at Nankai University) provided an insider’s perspective on mainland developments when I interviewed him in 1994. Wang Gungwu (East Asian Institute) shared his views on developments in Singapore when I interviewed him in 2000, as did Lin Anwu (Taiwan Normal University) on the situation in Taiwan when I interviewed him in 2002. Since 2002 I have also regularly benefited from discussions on New Confucian studies with Liu Shuxian and Li Minghui (Academia Sinica). Guo Qiyong (Wuhan University), Zheng Jiadong (Chinese Academy of Social Sciences), Yan Binggang (Shandong University), and Wang Xingguo (then at Yunnan University) generously hosted my visits to their institutions in 2003 and provided much valuable feedback on my work. Huang Junjie kindly arranged for me to spend an extended period as visiting scholar in the Center for the Study of East Asian Civilizations, National Taiwan University, in 2005. More recently, Noel Barnard, Paul Rakita Goldin, John Hanafin, Andrew Kipnis, Lauren Pfister, and Nathan Sivin all provided valuable critical perspectives on individual draft chapters. Paul R. Katz introduced me to some important studies on rujiao and Tan Sor-hoon generously sent me material on Singapore’s “Confucian” experiment. Finally, I wish to express my gratitude to the reviewers of the manuscript for their careful reading and constructive criticisms, and to the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange and the Australian Research Council for providing grants to carry out the research underpinning this study. J.M.

John Makeham - 978-1-68417-048-7

John Makeham - 978-1-68417-048-7

Contents

Introduction

1

Aims and Background / 4 Key Themes and Arguments / 6 Cultural Nationalism and Ruxue / 9

Part I Historical Background 1

The Singapore Experiment and Rujia Capitalism

21

Creative Transformation / 22 An Incomplete Revitalization Movement / 24 Institute of East Asian Philosophies / 26 Rujia Capitalism / 28 Yu Yingshi’s Historical Approach to Rujia Capitalism / 31 Du Weiming’s Multicultural Confucianism with Chinese Characteristics / 34 Critical Responses / 37 Concluding Remarks / 40

2

Developments in 1980s Taiwan and the Mainland

42

Ruxue and the Sinicization of Sociology / 43 New Confucianism / 47 Ruxue Organizations / 48 Mutual Scholarly Influence / 50 Concluding Remarks / 54

3

The Rise of Ruxue in 1990s China

58

From Xin Ruxue to Ruxue / 59 1994 / 63 National Studies and Marxism / 67 Concluding Remarks / 72

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x 4

Contents Ruxue Studies in Post-1990 Taiwan

74

New Confucian Conference Series / 75 Academia Sinica’s Research Project on Contemporary Ruxue / 80 The Hermeneutic Turn and Rujia East Asia / 86 Concluding Remarks / 94

Part II Ruxue and Chinese Culture 5

Ruxue: The Core of Chinese Culture

99

Good Ruxue, Bad Ruxue / 99 Critique of New Confucian Views / 104 Transcendent Idealism Versus Historical Materialism / 107 All-consuming Ruxue / 111 The Mainstay of Chinese Culture / 112 Ruxue in the Twentieth Century / 115 The Deep Structure of Ruxue and Chinese National Identity / 118 Four Periods of Ruxue / 122 Post–New Confucianism and New New Confucianism / 125 Concluding Remarks / 130

6

Guo Qiyong, Zheng Jiadong, and Rujia Identity

132

Guo Qiyong / 132 Zheng Jiadong / 138 Concluding Remarks / 147

7

Daotong and Chinese Culture

149

Yu Yingshi on Qian Mu and the New Confucians / 149 Yu Yingshi on Daotong / 151 Early Responses / 153 Daotong as Culture / 154 Concluding Remarks / 167

Part III The Politics of Orthodoxy 8

Lin Anwu’s Post–New Confucianism

171

Imperial-Style Ruxue / 172 Liberation from Magic / 173 Critique of Mou Zongsan / 176 Critical/Post–New Confucianism / 180 Dialogue and Marxism / 185 Concluding Remarks / 187 Appendix: A Note on Mou Zongsan’s Moral Metaphysics / 188

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Contents 9

xi

Ruxue: Daotong Versus Zhengtong

192

Chen Ming and the Chinese Cultural Renaissance Movement / 192 Taiwanese Perspectives / 198 Concluding Remarks / 205

10 From Doubting Antiquity to Explaining Antiquity: Reconstructing Early Ru Intellectual History in Contemporary China

208

Explaining Antiquity / 209 Guodian Texts and Ruxue / 216 Concluding Remarks / 230

11

Marxism and Ruxue

234

Ruxue “Panmoralism” and the Sinicization of Chinese Marxism / 234 Ruxue-Marxist Synthesis? / 238 Accentuate the Positive, Eliminate the Negative / 242 Abstract Inheritance / 243 Fang Keli and the “Mainland New Confucians” / 250 Luo Yijun / 252 Mainland New Confucians: The Fourth Generation of New Confucians? / 254 Concluding Remarks / 256

Part IV Distinguishing Rujiao and Propagating Ruxue 12 Jiang Qing’s Ruxue Revivalism

261

Marxism-Leninism Versus Ruxue / 261 Gongyang Learning and Cultural Nationalism / 264 Political Ruxue and Institutional Reconstruction / 267 Political Legitimacy and “Extolling Unification” / 270 Chinese Rujiao Association / 272 Concluding Remarks / 275

13

Rujiao as Religion

277

Rujiao as a Religion / 277 New Confucian Views / 279 Ren Jiyu / 281 Origins of Rujiao / 283 Revival of the Debate in the New Millennium / 290 Li Shen’s Critics / 293 Knowledge Compartmentalization / 295

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xii

Contents Taiwanese Perspectives on Rujiao / 297 Ecumenical Encounters / 303 Tang Enjia and the Kongjiao xueyuan / 306 Concluding Remarks / 308

14 Popularization of Ruxue and Rujia Thought and Values

310

Traditional Virtues / 311 The Beijing Oriental Morality Research Institute / 313 Official Endorsement of Rujia Values? / 316 Recitation of Classical Texts / 319 Cultural Capital: The “Cash Value” of Rujia Values / 323 Concluding Remarks / 328

331

Conclusion

Reference Matter Works Cited

353

Index

393

John Makeham - 978-1-68417-048-7

Lost Soul “Confucianism” in Contemporary Chinese Academic Discourse

John Makeham - 978-1-68417-048-7

John Makeham - 978-1-68417-048-7

Introduction

In the 1996 preface to a collection of essays on modern ruxue 儒學, Yu Yingshi (Ying-shih Yu) 余英時 recalls that, in the Anhui province village where he lived between 1937 and 1946, “although rujia 儒家 culture was in a degenerate state, it nevertheless controlled the activities of daily life: by and large, all interpersonal relationships—from marriage and funeral customs to seasonal festivals—adhered to the rujia norms, supplemented by Buddhist and Daoist beliefs and practices.” Like everyone else, he was “an internal participant in rujia culture.” This all changed after 1949, however, and today on the mainland no one below the age of 50 can claim to have participated in rujia culture. Moreover, he continues, even in places like Taiwan, since the 1950s ruxue learned from books has been far more dominant than rujia values encountered in everyday living, a situation that has “decisively influenced” contemporary discussions of ruxue. As it happens, since the mid-1980s, Taiwan and mainland China have witnessed the most sustained resurgence of academic and intellectual interest in ruxue—variously conceived as a form of culture, an ideology, a system of learning, and a tradition of morally normative values— of the past century.1 By the mid-1990s, on the mainland this revival was sometimes referred to as “ruxue fever,” just as “culture fever” had burned a decade before. This discourse has led to a proliferation of contending conceptions of the historical form and function of ruxue (and “rujia thought” and “rujia culture”), as well as proposals to rejuvenate ruxue

( 1. The largest popular resurgence of interest in Confucius and his teachings in China came in 1973–74 during the anti-Confucius movement. See Louie, Critiques of Confucius in Contemporary China.

1 John Makeham - 978-1-68417-048-7

2

Introduction

in order to make it a vital cultural and psycho-spiritual ( jingshen 精神) resource in the modern world.2 For Yu Yingshi, however, this discourse on ruxue is little more than empty talk because it is devoid of practice/ praxis (shijian 實踐). Yu concludes that the “fundamental difference” between contemporary Chinese discussions of ruxue and discussions from the turn of the twentieth century until the May Fourth period is that contemporary discussions lack any personal, lived experience of rujia culture. Instead, the emphasis is placed on determining just what type of religion or philosophy ruxue is meant to be or on reconstructing the values-orientation dimension of ruxue. He particularly laments that ruxue is no longer relevant to the everyday lives of ordinary people. Rather, it has become a discourse and is no longer lived and experienced in the course of a person’s life on the mainland or even in Taiwan.3 In 1987, soon after publishing a study on changing conceptions of the soul and the afterlife in early China,4 Yu started to employ the image of the wandering spirit or disembodied soul (you hun 遊魂) as a metaphor for the modern fate of, variously, ruxue and “rujia culture.” In 1988, he argued that although ruxue was now freed from the institutional shackles to which traditional ruxue had been tied (and which had also enabled it to be given expression), it was now without a body, a home, a specific identity.5 Ruxue was thus caught in the dilemma: would it continue to exist as a disembodied, wandering soul or would it need (or, indeed, be able) to “borrow a corpse to enable the soul to return” ( jie shi huan hun 借屍還魂)?

( 2. New Confucianism is a neo-conservative philosophical movement, with religious overtones. Proponents claim it to be the legitimate transmitter and representative of orthodox ru values. (In English, the term “New Confucian” is to be distinguished from “Neo-Confucian,” which refers to certain thinkers of the Song, Yuan, and Ming dynasties, in particular.) The movement is promoted and/or researched by prominent Chinese intellectuals based in China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and the United States of America. Elsewhere I have argued that although most of the promoters and sympathetic interpreters of New Confucianism trace the movement to the early part of the twentieth century, in fact, there is little evidence that New Confucianism had attained a degree of integration or coalescence sufficient for it to be recognized and promoted as a distinct philosophical movement, or school of thought, before the 1970s. 3. Yu Yingshi, Xiandai ruxue lun, 1, 4–6 passim. 4. Yu Yingshi, “ ‘O Soul, Come Back! ’ ” 5. Yu Yingshi, “Xiandai ruxue de kunjing,” 32.

John Makeham - 978-1-68417-048-7

Introduction

3

A third possibility Yu entertains is that a few sincere individuals might offer their own persons as “hosts” for the return of ruxue. He is not, however, optimistic: This is not a matter of theory; it does not require lofty and profound philosophical theory. If you are incapable of realizing this, then no matter how brilliant [a philosophical theory you might develop about the rujia], that sort of rujia would be quite useless. It would be nothing more than practiced skill at clever talk (zuishang gong fu 嘴上工夫). Although Chinese people talk about practiced skill, the sort of practiced skill the rujia concern themselves with is putting into practice that which one stands for. What is being developed at present is nothing more than practiced skill at clever talk. . . . Mere clever talk is incapable of summoning the soul. Summoning the soul requires individual practice.6

One possibility that Yu did not entertain is that discourse itself might provide the requisite host for the soul’s return; that discourse is, in fact, a type of practice. For example, in responding to the criticism that certain representative New Confucians were simply writers and not practitioners of cultivation (xiuxingren 修行人), Zheng Jiadong 鄭家棟 (affiliated with, until 2005, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences [CASS]) maintains: “For Xiong [Shili], Mou [Zongsan], and the others, writing was itself a form of cultivation and could even be said to have been an aesthetic practice. . . . In their straitened circumstances, writing had become a kind of bitter struggle, a fundamental method of pursuing their ideals.” 7 Elsewhere, again appealing to the constraints imposed by changed historical and personal circumstances, Zheng considers cultural transmission, rather than cultivation, as an alternative hallmark of the New Confucian incarnation of the rujia: Against the backdrop of saving the nation from extinction, deep within the thinking of New Confucians, it was perhaps even more important to carry on the flame of national culture than to address the question of where the ultimate meaning of life was to be grounded. A related point is that those who were cultural transmitters were more deserving of the name rujia than were those who were concerned with the moral mind, the moral nature, and sagely cultivation. . . . In a way, they had a fierce sense of cultural mission and a sense of assuming a responsibility (this could also be called a sense of cultural salvation); it was not the pursuit of a thoroughgoing awakening to the meaning of life and a

( 6. Comments by Yu Yingshi cited in Du Weiming, ed., Ruxue fazhan de hongguan toushi, 774, 775. 7. Zheng Jiadong, “Gudu, shuli, xuanzhi,” 171.

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Introduction

commitment to that choice that determined they would become ruzhe 儒者 [one who is a ru].8

Significantly, however, this disagreement between Yu and Zheng over the characteristics of the ruzhe or rujia underscores one of the most striking features of contemporary academic discourse on ruxue: more than two decades of discourse have yielded fundamentally differing conceptions of just what it is that constitutes ruxue (in both its historical and its contemporary expressions). So long as consensus remains in abeyance, the status of ruxue’s soul will remain contested.

Aims and Background This book grew out of my earlier work on New Confucianism.9 The present study is more contemporary in focus and much broader in scope, being concerned with academic discourse on ruxue more generally rather than discussion of one particular subgroup, the New Confucians (although as we will see, that subgroup remains extremely influential). The principal architects of this body of discourse are academic writers in Taiwan, China, North America, and Hong Kong. With the exception of some of Du Weiming’s (Tu Wei-ming)10 杜維明 “Singapore writings” of the 1980s, the study focuses on Chinese-language contributions to this discourse. Only by studying the processes—the debates, discussions, and other forms of communication—that contemporary (1980–2000) Chinese academics have employed to talk about ruxue (and closely related concepts such as ru, rujia, and rujiao 儒教) can the discourse defining this subject be isolated as an object of study. In English, the import of the terms “Confucian” and “Confucianism” continues to be contested and is complicated by the fact that these terms can be used to translate a variety of Chinese terms.11 Accordingly,

( 8. Zheng Jiadong, Dangdai xin ruxue lunheng, 8. 9. See chaps. 1 and 2 in Makeham, ed., New Confucianism. 10. For his Chinese-language writings, I use pinyin to romanize his name; for his English-language writings I have followed the romanized form of his name provided in those publications (either Tu Wei-ming or Tu Weiming). In the Works Cited, all these works are found under “Du Weiming” in order to group all his writings in the same location. 11. For example: ru 儒, ruren 儒人, rusheng 儒生, ruxian 儒先, rulin 儒林, rumen 儒門, ruke 儒科, ruke 儒客, ruye 儒業, ruliu 儒流, rushi 儒士, ruzhe 儒者, rujia 儒 家, ruxue 儒學, rushu 儒術, rujiao 儒教, Kong jiao 孔教, Zhou Kong zhi jiao 周孔之 教, Kong Meng zhi jiao 孔孟之教, Kong-Meng zhi xue 孔孟之學, mingjiao 名教, li-

John Makeham - 978-1-68417-048-7

Introduction

5

I have chosen to transliterate the various Chinese terms conventionally translated as “Confucian” and “Confucianism” to reflect more accurately just how contemporary Chinese scholars employ terms such as ru, ruzhe, ruxue, rujia, rujiao, and so on.12 In the writings under study, the most commonly employed of these terms is ruxue, which can variously refer to “the learning of the ru” and to “ru studies” more generally. The scope of ruxue is so broad that it often subsumes “rujia thought” within its semantic field. The term ruxue has enjoyed a growing currency over the past century; it also seems to have been employed considerably more frequently than in previous periods. The appearance of the xue’an 學案 genre in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries may have had some indirect influence on twentieth-century notions of ruxue. According to Zhu Honglin’s 朱 鴻林 study, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the word xue in the title of works in this genre consistently referred to ruxue.13 Zhu’s findings suggest that at that time the scope of the “learning of the ru” was broad, embracing doctrines and “case studies” concerning methods of cultivation and practice, explanatory accounts of particular moral principles, glosses of sayings attributed to pre-Qin ru, and critiques of various scholarly interpretations. The broad scope of ru learning is also evident in earlier meanings associated with ruxue. In its oldest use, the term referred to the doctrines and learning (particularly in relation to classical studies) of the rujia. We find examples of this usage in such early texts as Shiji 史記 (Records of the Historian) and Hanshu 漢書 (History of the Han). Later, the term was also used to refer to men of learning who specialize in the writings associated with the rujia, hence the “biographies of ruxue” in official dynastic histories such as Jiu Tangshu 舊唐書 (Old history of the Tang dynasty), Xin Tangshu 新唐書 (New history of the Tang dynasty), and Yuanshi 元史 (History of the Yuan dynasty). Thus, by the twentieth century, there was sufficient precedent to treat the term as having a broad scope of application.

( jiao 禮教, lixue 理學, xingxue 性學, daoxue 道學, xinxue 心學, Songxue 宋學, shengxue 聖學, Hanxue 漢學, among others. 12. The main exception to this is my use of “New Confucian/ism” to translate (dangdai 當代 / xiandai 現代) xin rujia 新儒家 and (dangdai/xiandai ) xin ruxue 新儒學. 13. Zhu Honglin, “Wei xue fang’an,” 310. I am grateful to Nathan Sivin for this reference.

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Introduction

This study aims to show how ruxue has been conceived and represented in academic discourse in China and Taiwan from the mid-1980s until the early years of the new millennium, in order to assess the achievements of ru-focused intellectual enterprise over this period; to identify which aspects or areas of putative ru thought and values academics in Taiwan and China find viable at the beginning of the third millennium, and why they find them so; to highlight the dynamics involved in the ongoing process of intellectual cross-fertilization between academics in China and Taiwan made possible by the shared discourse of ruxue; and to examine the relationship between the discourse on ruxue and resurgent cultural nationalism in “cultural China.” In terms of volume and compass, Chinese-language discourse on ruxue since the 1980s is a huge topic. This study does not attempt to provide an exhaustive chronicle of the history and scope of that discourse, nor does it address specialist scholarship on historical ruxue (for example, studies on Zhu Xi or particular texts) other than to comment on the influence of ruxue revivalism on scholarly trends, such as the methodological-cumideological issues arising from contemporary uses of recently published texts recovered through archaeology (the subject of Chapter 10). The book consists of fourteen chapters divided into four parts. Part I provides information on trends in ruxue-focused discourse in Singapore, Taiwan, and China during the 1980s and 1990s. This historical and contextual information serves as a background for more detailed analyses and discussions developed in later chapters. The main focus of the detailed analysis is the decade from the early 1990s to the early years of the new millennium. Part II critically examines the writings of academics who have contributed to the influential thesis that the core or essence of Chinese culture is ruxue. Part III analyzes the various forms in which the prescriptive paradigms of intellectual orthodoxies (Mou Zongsan’s thought; contemporary reconstructions of classical ru thought and “school” genealogies) and political orthodoxies (political authority; Chinese Marxism) have impacted ruxue-centered discourse. Part IV examines the contemporary academic debate on the issue of whether rujiao is a religion and the activities of individuals and nonofficial organizations seeking to promote ruxue beyond the academy.

Key Themes and Arguments Four key themes and arguments are developed across the various chapters. First, since the mid-1980s, the ongoing process of intellectual cross-fertilization and rivalry between scholars in China and overseas

John Makeham - 978-1-68417-048-7

Introduction

7

Chinese scholars (particularly those based in Taiwan) has served as a key impetus sustaining academic interest in discourse on ruxue. Second, contrary to conventional wisdom, party-state support on the mainland for programs to promote patriotic education and “traditional virtues” does not underpin the phenomenon of the continuing academic discourse on ruxue. The widely held view that the promotion of ruxue in contemporary China is orchestrated by the party-state and its functionaries is untenable. Third, cultural nationalism rather than state nationalism better explains the nature of contemporary discourse on ruxue. And fourth, academic discourse on ruxue in China and Taiwan provides little evidence of a sustained or robust philosophical creativity in ruxue philosophy. In looking for evidence of cross-fertilization and rivalry, I have paid particular attention to the role of publications (journals, books, and conference volumes) and publishing houses; professional societies and academic departments; and conferences. The issue of cross-fertilization also bears on the question whether the ruxue revival of the 1980s and 1990s in China and Taiwan represents the beginnings of a genuine philosophical renaissance or whether the revival is better explained by appealing to a range of political and cultural factors. For example, in China the topic of “New Confucianism” was funded as a major project of philosophical research under the seventh and eighth national five-year plans for the social sciences (1986–90, 1991–95). This official support facilitated the organization of large-scale cooperative research activities (some involving fifty or more scholars at any one time) and resulted in voluminous book and journal publications, conferences, the establishment of research centers, and postgraduate training. Although this financial support did not lead to a burst of philosophical creativity, a number of scholars outside China have commented on the role played by state funding in shaping ruxue discourse to facilitate the deployment of ruxue as “an instrument to counter Western influence.”14 Others have asserted that “the Confucian tradition has been revived by the authorities as an important cultural resource from which a new national identity can be constructed.”15 Another pervasive view is that the state has supported ruxue because it sees ruxue as compatible with neo-conservatism and a rising

( 14. Meissner, “New Intellectual Currents in the People’s Republic of China,” 18. 15. Min and Galikowski, The Search for Modernity, 160.

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Introduction

state nationalism.16 In assessing these claims, I have first sought to ascertain which particular authorities have been involved and to identify whether there are policy documents and programs that promote the idea of an officially sanctioned “Confucianized” national identity. Of the latter, I have found none. Alternatively, is it perhaps “global capitalism”—rather than the partystate—that has found in ruxue an “ideology to correspond to its apparently new decentered structure” and so sustained ruxue’s discursive revival?17 In referring to “a resurgence in recent years of fundamentalistic nationalisms or culturalisms” opposed to “EuroAmerican ideological domination of the world,” Arif Dirlik relates that “the Confucian revival among Chinese populations” is used to argue that the “Chinese success in capitalist development” shows that “the Confucian ethic is equal, if not superior to, the ‘Protestant ethic’ which Max Weber had credited with causative power in the emergence of capitalism in Europe. A ‘Weberized’ Confucianism in turn appears as a marker of Chineseness regardless of time or place.”18 For Dirlik, “what makes something like the East Asian Confucian revival plausible is not its offer of alternative values to those of EuroAmerican origin, but its articulation of native cultures into a capitalist narrative.”19 His 1995 article “Confucius in the Borderlands: Global Capitalism and the Reinvention of Confucianism” makes a strong case for the applicability of these views to the 1980s and early 1990s. As I relate in Chapters 1 and 2, for the 1980s in particular, the popularity of the rujia capitalism thesis is consistent with Dirlik’s claims. By the early to mid-1990s, however, the growth of discourse on ruxue was no longer predominately parasitic on the rujia capitalism thesis. The capitalist narrative thesis neither explains the phenomenal wave of research on New Confucianism during the first half of the 1990s nor helps us understand subsequent multiple developments in broader discourse on ruxue in cultural China, including those developments animated in part by their opposition to “EuroAmerican ideological domination of the world” or committed to finding an alternative value stance from which to reflect on Western modernity.

( 16 . Suisheng Zhao, “Chinese Nationalism and its International Orientations,” 17; Yongnian Zheng, Discovering Chinese Nationalism in China, 70–76. 17. Dirlik, “Confucius in the Borderlands,” 237. 18. Dirlik, The Postcolonial Aura, 226. 19. Ibid., 92.

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Witness, for example, the following comments by Liu Dong 劉東 in regard to Dirlik’s 1995 “Confucius in the Borderlands” article: [He] does not deal with the substance of Confucianism’s contemporary appeal or with its intellectual significance. . . . The problem with Dirlik’s critique of contemporary Confucianism is that he fails to engage in a substantial and meticulous way with the circumstances of Confucianism’s decline prior to the 1980s. . . . [H]e fails to see that there has always been an undercurrent of Confucianism that has nurtured this cultural-spiritual tradition throughout the modern century of its relative isolation. . . . [The New Confucians] developed comparative cultural frameworks for discussing Confucianism that helped us define civilizational differences between China and the West.20

What is remarkable is not Liu’s failure to address Dirlik’s central arguments, but the fact that the author—a prominent Beijing University academic and editor of the influential academic journal Zhongguo xueshu— should offer this heartfelt apologist defense of “Confucianism” in the first place. Yet, as I hope to establish in this study, even more remarkable is that, already from the mid-1990s, similar views were being embraced and defended by increasingly larger numbers of the mainland academy. Central to this development has been the role of cultural nationalism.

Cultural Nationalism and Ruxue The concept of cultural nationalism—the conviction that the unique culture associated with the nation constitutes the basis of national identity—has proven useful in drawing attention to the widely held view that ruxue, rujia thought, and rujia culture constitute a form of cultural expression integral to Chinese identity. Although this is only one of many themes to emerge in contemporary Chinese discourse on ruxue, the sheer pervasiveness of cultural nationalism in this discourse across a wide spectrum of participants—academic and official, mainland and overseas-based—warrants a fuller account of how I understand and deploy this concept. The following excursus begins with an account of “culturalism” and various conceptions of the notion of “cultural China.” I argue that, as a concept, culturalism fails to convey adequately widespread contemporary views about the connection between ruxue and Chinese national identity. I then examine the relationship between

( 20. Liu Dong, “The Weberian View and Confucianism,” 208–9. Liu first espoused these views in the late 1990s.

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culturalism and nationalism by examining critical responses to Joseph Levenson’s culturalism-to-nationalism thesis. Finally, I introduce the notion of ruxue-centered Chinese cultural nationalism and its various expressions, some of which problematize the mechanical application of definitions of cultural nationalism based principally on studies of nationalist movements in Europe.

Culturalism and Cultural China At first blush, it might seem that views affirming the significance of ruxue to Chinese identity express a type of consciousness known as culturalism: the conviction that cultural identity “trumps” or is more primordial than political or even ethnic identity. (Nationalism, by contrast, is an ideological movement that posits the nation21 as the touchstone for community identity.) Culturalism thus understood has been persistent among culturally conservative (and neo-traditionalist) Chinese intellectuals throughout the twentieth century and has remained a fundamental article of faith for New Confucian partisans. A more contemporary expression of this thinking is the concept of “cultural

( 21. The concept of nation is difficult to define, as evidenced by the range of characteristics suggested by various theorists: a sense of solidarity; shared historical memory; notions of common descent; the possession of physical territory; and “primordial qualities” such as “congruities of blood, speech, custom.” Connor Walker provides a definition that has the advantage of drawing a distinction between “ethnic group” and “nation”: “A nation is a self-aware ethnic group. An ethnic group may be readily discerned by an anthropologist or other outside observer, but until the members are themselves aware of the group’s uniqueness, it is merely an ethnic group and not a nation. While an ethnic group may, therefore, be other-defined, the nation must be self-defined” (cited in Hutchinson and Smith, eds., Nationalism, 45). Anthony D. Smith (National Identity, 20) provides the following definition of an ethnic group/community (ethnie): a type of cultural collectivity that exhibits six main attributes: a collective proper name; a myth of common ancestry; one or more differentiating elements of a common culture; an association with a specific “homeland”; and a sense of solidarity for significant sectors of the population. Accordingly, I adopt the following working definition of nation in this study: a self-aware cultural collectivity that exhibits these six characteristics. I also follow Smith’s (p. 73) understanding of nationalism: “an ideological movement for attaining and maintaining autonomy, unity and identity on behalf of a population deemed by some of its members to constitute an actual or a potential ‘nation.’ ”

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China” (wenhua Zhongguo 文化中國), which first started to gain currency in “overseas” Chinese-language publications in the mid-1980s.22 According to Arif Dirlik, “in the idea of a ‘cultural China’ that has been promoted by proponents of a Confucian revival, cultural essence replaces political identity in the definition of Chineseness.”23 Others, such as Marxist intellectual historian Fang Keli 方克立, maintain that the concept reflects the idea that the identity of Chinese people is tied not to physical characteristics but to a shared “national culturalpsychological formation” (a concept borrowed from Li Zehou 李澤厚): China (Zhongguo 中國) is not disunited but united because Chinese (Zhonghua 中華) culture is united. Viewed historically, the disunity of China’s political territory was only ever able to be temporary because the concept of “cultural China” has a long-lasting, even eternal, significance. . . . There were many periods in Chinese history when the political territory was disunited, but culturally China has always been united. It is this cultural unity that has been an important element in helping to bring about China’s political unity.

Fang acknowledges that although the concept was first formulated by “overseas scholars,” it still has great value in serving to promote the unity of China’s political territory, and he recommends that it be widely adopted as a slogan for “united front” activities.24 Tu Wei-ming’s particular rendering of the concept has been the most influential. According to Tu, cultural China embraces “three symbolic universes”: The first consists of mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore—that is, the societies populated predominantly by cultural and ethnic Chinese. The second consists of Chinese communities throughout the world. . . . The third symbolic universe consists of individuals, such as scholars, teachers, journalists, industrialists, traders, entrepreneurs, and writers, who try to understand China intellectually and bring their conceptions of China to their own linguistic communities.25

What is distinctive about the third of these “universes” is that it includes commentators who are not ethnically (or [ironically] even “culturally”) Chinese, such as Western China scholars. Thus, as Paul

( 22. See, e.g., Fu Weixun, Wenhua Zhongguo yu Zhongguo wenhua, 13, and the appended comments of Wei Zhengtong 韋政通, p. 26. 23. Dirlik, The Postcolonial Aura, 226–27. 24. Fang Keli, “ ‘Wenhua Zhongguo’ gainian xiaoyi,” 506–7. 25. Tu Wei-ming, “Cultural China,” 12–13.

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A. Cohen notes, the substantive sense of the concept “refers to clusters of values, behavior patterns, ideas, and traditions that people agree to define as in some sense ‘Chinese,’ and to which, speaking more subjectively, those who identify themselves as ‘Chinese’ feel themselves to belong.”26 It is this “subjective” dimension—a cultural identification—that best expresses the idea of culturalism. Closer analysis of culturalism, however, reveals that the concept does not adequately convey widespread contemporary views about the connection between ruxue and Chinese identity, in particular, the ideas that ruxue (or rujia thought) has blended into the national character of the Chinese people; has created the national character; is the principal component of “the Han nation’s cultural-psychological formation” (wenhua xinli jiegou 文化心理結構); is the Chinese people’s national spirit; is the foundation of the Chinese nation’s (Zhonghua minzu 中華民族) identity; is the inner soul of the nation; and is the manifestation of the unconscious collective archetype of the Han nation. What, then, is the relation between culturalism and nationalism?

Levenson’s Culturalism-to-Nationalism Thesis Joseph Levenson’s thesis that the early part of the twentieth century marked a transition among Chinese intellectuals from the idea of culture as identity (culturalism) to nation-state as identity (nationalism)27 has been variously criticized. Prasenjit Duara, for example, characterizes Levenson’s notion of culturalism as “a natural conviction of the superiority that sought no legitimation or defense outside of the culture itself.” Duara argues that Levenson was mistaken “in distinguishing culturalism as a radically different mode of identification from ethnic or national identification.” For Duara, culture—“a specific culture of the imperial state and Confucian orthodoxy”—is no less a criterion for defining a community than is nationalism or ethnicity.28 James Townsend maintains that Levenson himself recognized two difficulties with the notion of culturalism as identity, in particular the problem of distinguishing between “culturalism as identity” and what

( 26. Cohen, “Cultural China,” 557. 27. Levenson, Confucian China and Its Modern Fate; idem, Liang Qichao and the Mind of Modern China, 108–20. 28. Duara, Rescuing History from the Nation, 56, 57, 58.

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Townsend calls “culturalism as movement” because “culturalism as identity easily slides into culturalism as movement”: In one context, loyalty to the culture and belief in its superiority is so profound that bearers of the culture recognize no competition. This is culturalism as identity, an unquestioned worldview that cannot conceivably be lost or proven wrong. The other context involves awareness of competition, hence the prospect of choice among alternatives and the need for some defense and legitimation of the culture, even by those—especially by those—who believe most intensely in its superiority. This is “culturalism as movement,” in which conscious argument and action become necessary to defend a culture under threat.29

Townsend’s critique of “culturalism” as a category focuses on “culturalism as movement’s” reversal of a key condition of “culturalism as identity,” thus exposing the concept’s incapacity to demarcate distinct phases of a genuine historical process (viz. culturalism to nationalism). Whereas for Duara, it is precisely the “hidden form of relativism” belying the “tacit idea of Chinese universalism” (or “culturalism”)30 that enables cultural identity to function as a criterion for defining a community, for Townsend, it is the failure of “culturalism as identity” to be able to sustain its absolutist claims (“bearers of the culture recognize no competition”) that render it problematic. The problem Townsend identifies really arises only when culturalism and nationalism are treated as radically different modes of identification (a problem both Duara and Townsend identify in Levenson’s account). When culturalism and nationalism are wedded or synthesized, however, the problem of “slippage” disappears. In cultural nationalism, slippage is avoided because national culture remains the basis for group/ community identity even though some in the nation believe that their national culture requires no legitimation beyond itself and others recognize the challenges posed by other national cultures. The fact that a hypothetical cultural absolutist might claim that national culture requires no legitimation beyond itself would not serve to undermine the idea of Chinese cultural nationalism because other nations would still be recognized even if that recognition consisted of the negative claim that other

( 29. Townsend, “Cultural Nationalism,” 8–9. 30. Duara, Rescuing History from the Nation, 57: “The universalistic claims of Chinese imperial culture constantly bumped up against, and adapted to, alternative views of the world order which it tended to cover with the rhetoric of universalism.”

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nations lack true culture. After all, even the most chauvinistic cultural absolutist would have difficulty denying the existence of other nations.31 Both perspectives can be accommodated without risk of one necessarily undermining the other. Whereas the culturalist posits culture, rather than polity or ethnicity, as the principal source of community identity consciousness or “subjectivity,” the cultural nationalist takes the further step of stipulating that it is the unique culture associated with a particular form of community identity—a nation—that constitutes the basis of that identity. As with nationalism, cultural nationalism is fundamentally an ideology about the nation rather than the state. In his influential 1987 study, The Dynamics of Cultural Nationalism, John Hutchinson distinguished cultural nationalism as a movement that is quite independent of political nationalism. Whereas political nationalists are concerned principally with securing “a representative state for their community,”32 the cultural nationalist perceives the state as an accidental, for the essence of a nation is its distinctive civilization, which is the product of its unique history, culture and geographical profile. . . . The aim of cultural nationalists is . . . the moral regeneration of the historic community, or, in other words, the recreation of their distinctive national civilization. . . . Cultural nationalism is a movement of moral regeneration.33

In 1999 he refined these views: “The primary aim of cultural nationalists is to revive what they regard as [a] distinctive and primordial collective personality which has a name, unique origins, history, culture, homeland, and social and political practices.”34

( 31. Peter Hays Gries (China’s New Nationalism, 8) raises another theoretical problem: “One group of scholars holds that Confucianism and nationalism are incompatible: Confucian universalism, which holds that all peoples can become Chinese if they adapt to a Sinocentric civilization, mitigates against the idea of a Chinese nationalism that defines itself in contradistinction to other nations.” The reality, however, is that no one today seriously espouses a strong from of “Confucian universalism.” 32. For a counter view of how state nationalism has functioned in the case of China, see Fitzgerald, “The Nationless State,” 57, 58. 33. Hutchinson, The Dynamics of Cultural Nationalism, 9–14 passim. 34. Hutchinson, “Re-Interpreting Cultural Nationalism,” 394. This revised description was clearly influenced by Anthony D. Smith’s National Identity (see chap. 1, esp. pp. 13–14).

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Ruxue-Centered Chinese Cultural Nationalism Although Hutchinson’s characterizations of cultural nationalism are based on studies of nationalist movements in Europe, some scholars have also applied them to East Asia.35 Generally speaking, these characterizations can be applied unproblematically to ruxue-centered Chinese cultural nationalism: a movement based on the ideological conviction that ruxue is a cultural formation fundamental to the identity consciousness of the Chinese (Zhonghua) nation. Nevertheless, it should also be borne in mind that there is considerable variation in how that nationalism is expressed. Consider, for example, the following sentiments expressed by Du Weiming: The revitalization ( fuxing 復興) of the Chinese (Zhonghua) nation should fundamentally be the revitalization of the national culture. The mainstream, core element in the revitalization of the national culture is the revitalization of ruxue thought, the revitalization of ruxue culture. If ruxue thought does not have a new future, if it is not creatively transformed, then the Chinese nation and the national culture will also have no new future, no new development.36

Du is by no means unique in championing these views (nor has he consistently endorsed such a strong form of cultural nationalism).37 It would, however, be mistaken to assume that the primary aim of all ruxuecentered Chinese cultural nationalists “is to revive what they regard as a distinctive and primordial collective personality” or to recreate “their distinctive national civilization.” Li Zehou, for example, has produced the most influential version of the thesis that ruxue is integral to Chinese cultural and national identity, yet he argues that precisely because ruxue became the main component in the character of the Chinese people

( 35. See, e.g., Yoshino, Cultural Nationalism in Contemporary Japan, 1; and Yingjie Guo, Cultural Nationalism in Contemporary China, 17–18, 72. 36. Du Weiming, “‘Gonggong zhishi fenzi’ yu ruxue de xiandaixing fazhan,” 28. 37. For example, in 1986, Du (“Ruxue di san qi fazhan de qianjing wenti,” 262) was unequivocal that “the rujia tradition” was but one element—albeit a key element—in China’s (Zhongguo) national culture. Moreover, “the rujia tradition belongs not only to China, it also belongs to Korea, Japan, and Vietnam. If we also consider the values orientation of overseas Chinese communities, then broadly speaking, the rujia tradition also belongs to Singapore, SE Asia, Australia, Europe and America.”

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(Zhonghua minzuxing 中華民族性), “it is not something that needs quickly to be saved or rejuvenated and promoted” (Chapter 5). In fact, for a number of ruxue-centered Chinese cultural nationalists, only certain aspects of ruxue warrant rejuvenation; hence the distinction Du Weiming draws between “the rujia tradition” and “rujiao China.” Whereas the former is to be encouraged, the latter is a “feudal evil”: Following the collapse of the autocratic system of government and feudal society, rujiao China also lost its previous form and currently continues to have a presence in the Chinese people’s cultural-psychological formation as an allpowerful lingering feudal evil. This presence can certainly be understood to be a lost soul (youling wanghun 幽靈亡魂) exerting a negative influence on political culture.38

As we will see in Chapter 13, Ren Jiyu 任繼愈 supports a similar assessment of rujiao, although the scope of rujiao for Ren is much wider than Du’s conception of rujiao China. Again, although ruxue-centered Chinese cultural nationalists seem to be unanimous in endorsing the view that the essence of a nation is its distinct civilization and culture, the issue is complicated by problematic notions such as “East Asian ruxue” and the “Han cultural circle,” which have been used to advance sinocentric claims about the derivative or dependent quality of the cultural-cum-national identity of other East Asian societies (Chapter 4), and philosophically reinforced by Hegelianlike notions of a unique kind of cultural consciousness that acknowledges and affirms the transcendent and absolute nature of the cultural spirit or cultural life of the Chinese nation (Chapter 7). Moreover, although there is no shortage of ruxue revivalists seeking “moral regeneration,” for others such as Chen Ming 陳明 (Chapter 9) and Gan Chunsong 干春松 (Chapter 5), a more pressing goal is institutional regeneration. Finally, although ruxue-centered Chinese cultural nationalism is a movement, it is a movement largely restricted to academics. Indeed, the movement is dominated by one particular section of that profession: academics employed in philosophy departments in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and the mainland. Although it would be inaccurate to describe the movement as “nascent”—given its historical depth and geographical spread—it has yet to attract significant levels of support from those intellectuals who might transform the ideals formulated by these

( 38. Du Weiming, “Ruxue di san qi fazhan de qianjing wenti,” 259–60.

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academic cultural nationalists into concrete forms of social or political mobilization. The most visible expression of the movement remains a body of discourse. It is my hope that the following chapters will assist readers in forming their own judgment of how adequately this discursive body has succeeded in hosting the wandering soul’s return.

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PART I

Historical Background

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1 The Singapore Experiment and Rujia Capitalism

To understand the genesis of the ruxue revivalism in 1990s China, we need to take into account a series of events that occurred in 1980s Singapore. In February 1982, the Department of Education in Singapore announced its commitment to introducing a “Confucian Ethics” unit as one of six options in the compulsory Religious Knowledge course for secondary students (grades/levels three and four). Within seven months, two hundred newspaper articles had been published on Confucius, Confucianism, 1 and the proposed new course. 2 With such effective mobilization of the media, as well as the support of Prime Minister Lee Kwan Yew and Minister of Education Goh Keng Swee, it is not surprising that “in subsequent years, what began as a program for moral education in the schools evolved to become a campaign among the general public.”3 The hypothesis I seek to develop and defend in this chapter is that despite the eventual demise of the Confucian Ethics course, and the closure of the Institute of East Asian Philosophies—an institution that played a key role in sustaining the high visibility of the Confucian revitalization movement—this “failed” movement was instrumental in the revival of ruxue in 1990s China. How was this possible? I argue that the crucial link

( 1. Most official publications relating to the course, including the Confucian Ethics readers, were written in English and used the terms “Confucian” and “Confucianism.” Chinese-language publications (principally newspapers) predominantly used the term rujia sixiang 儒家思想. 2. Su Xinwu, “Rujia sixiang jin wushi nian lai zai Xinjiapo de liuchuan,” 314–21. 3. Eddie Kuo, “Confucianism as Political Discourse in Singapore,” 1.

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was Du Weiming’s role in successfully promoting a particular discourse of capitalist development—“Confucian capitalism”—to argue that the “Confucian ethic” is not only a match for, but also superior to, the Protestant ethic. For Du, in turn, Singapore was pivotal in realizing his goal of revitalizing Confucianism in mainland China by first “exporting it and then importing it.”

Creative Transformation Planning for the design and content of the course involved significant input from overseas Chinese (huaren 華人) academics. In May 1982, Goh visited the United States to invite a number of Chinese-American academics to act as consultants and write reports for the introduction of the course. Later that year, eight prominent overseas “Confucian scholars” visited Singapore to present their ideas at public lectures, seminars, and meetings with government officials. Two of these overseas “Confucian scholars,” Du Weiming and Yu Yingshi, acted as consultants for the course. The objectives of the Confucian Ethics course were: To inculcate Confucian values in our pupils; To help them grow up as upright, moral beings imbued with Confucian beliefs and lead meaningful lives; To help them become aware of their cultural and moral heritage; To help them understand the importance of self-cultivation; To enable them to understand the historical development and modern relevance of Confucianism.4

The teaching materials consisted of a textbook, a workbook, supplementary readers, and a teacher’s guide. In the generic introduction to the supplementary readers, project director Lau Wai Har states: “Through lively tales and inspiring personalities the Readers aim to reinforce and enrich the pupils’ understanding of Confucian ideas and values.” Thus in addition to stories about the “molders of the Confucian tradition” and the “sage-kings,” a third part of each of the two volumes is devoted to “men and women who embody the Confucian spirit in their lives and deeds.” These include such diverse historical figures as military strategist Zhuge Liang 諸葛亮, poet Du Fu 杜甫, Judge Bao Gong 包公, minister Qu Yuan 屈原, historian Sima Qian 司馬遷, General Ban Chao 班超, physician

( 4. Confucian Ethics: Teacher’s Guide, preface.

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Hua Tuo 華佗, heroine Hua Mulan 花木蘭, revolutionary Qiu Jin 秋瑾, General Guo Ziyi 郭子儀, naturalist Li Shizhen 李時珍, and railway engineer Zhan Tianyou 詹天佑. In characterizing these historical figures cum cultural heroes as embodying the Confucian spirit, the designers of the textbook reveal how elastic their conception of “Confucian” was. The idea of a modern, transformed Confucianism is a recurrent theme in much of the literature on the project. In a lecture delivered in Singapore in 1982, Du Weiming stated: “I think that if Confucianism as a school subject is to have any chance of success in Singapore, it has to undergo a transformation to adapt to the new social, political realities and to cultural traditions of Singapore.”5 This message was reinforced even on the cover design of the teaching materials: “The cover shows a phoenix rising from the ashes, symbolizing the immortal teachings of Confucius and his followers. The phoenix represents the revival and modern significance of the Confucian teachings while its shadow represents the traditional Confucian values.”6 The theme of creative transformation not only lay behind the Singapore Confucian Ethics project but also informed many of the seminars and discussions held in the early 1980s to promote discussion of Confucianism within the wider community. In 1982, for example, Goh Keng Swee (then deputy prime minister and minister of education) proposed that “an Academy could be established to re-interpret Confucianism in line [with] the changing times, with Singapore even developing into a centre for the study of Confucianism.”7 (These comments presaged the establishment of the Institute for East Asian Philosophies the following year; see below.) Sociologist Eddie Kuo provided a clear recommendation for how this creative transformation should proceed: What we need to find out is what are the elements of Confucian ethics that may be compatible or incompatible with modernization. . . . As I see it, the task of the committee that drafts all the textbooks in the Singapore case [here he is referring to the Confucian Ethics teaching materials] is really to identify these elements. . . . The kind of Confucianism we need today cannot be totally the same as it has been for thousands of years. In these modern times, Confucianism needs new interpretation.8

( 5. Tu Wei-ming, Confucian Ethics Today, 19. 6. Note on the back cover of Confucian Ethics: Workbook. 7. Straits Times, June 13, 1982. 8. Comments made at the 1987 forum “The Role of Culture in Industrial Asia: The Relationship Between Confucian Ethics and Modernisation,” 37. On

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In a similar vein, archaeologist and early China historian Hsü Cho-yun (one of the Chinese-American “Confucian scholar” consultants) opined: I agree. . . that a kind of Singaporean ethic or ‘Lee Kwan Yewism’ should be developed. . . . Singapore’s surroundings and background are different from the rest of the Chinese world. . . . To offer any part of Confucianism, we should pick from the many schools of Confucian thought those aspects which could possibly respond to the needs of Singapore. We are not talking about wholesale Confucianism.9

An Incomplete Revitalization Movement The experiment with the Confucian Ethics project lasted less than eight years from the time of its conception in 1982. By 1989 fewer than 18 percent of Secondary 3 students—practically all them ethnically Chinese— chose Confucian Ethics as their Religious Knowledge elective (compared with 44.4 percent who opted for Buddhist Studies).10 Later that year, it was announced that Religious Knowledge would be phased out as a compulsory course from 1990. Ironically, only five years after Eddie Kuo spoke about the need for Confucianism to be reinterpreted and made compatible with modernization, he analyzed what he termed “an incomplete revitalization movement.” For Kuo, it was incomplete because “as a social movement, its future status and development depend eventually on the spontaneous support it can generate from concerned organizations, communities and the masses.” 11 In a similar vein, Yu Yingshi’s postmortem assessment was that without an organized church structure, “missionaries,” or a structure for rujia education, it was difficult to see how any form of intellectualized Confucianism discourse could survive outside the academy: “The failure of the Confucian Ethics project in 1980s Singapore is an object-lesson.” These comments have all the more resonance coming as they do from a protagonist in the drama.12 Kuo also suggested that it was inevitable that only a few students would take the Confucian Ethics option because, as a “secular subject,”

( the creative transformation of Confucianism in the Singapore context, see also comments by Charles Fu in Tu Wei-ming, ed., The Triadic Cord, 52. 9. Roundtable discussion recorded in Tu Wei-ming, Confucian Ethics Today, 148. 10. Eddie Kuo, “Confucianism as Political Discourse in Singapore,” 17. 11. Ibid., 21. 12. Yu Yingshi, Xiandai ruxue lun, preface, 6–7.

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Confucian ethics was “unable to compete with established and highly institutionalized religions. . . . [Few] followers of a religion would ‘betray’ their own religion and choose Confucian Ethics instead, even if they were convinced of the relevance of Confucian teachings to themselves and to Singapore.”13 In a 1994 speech given at a conference in Beijing to commemorate the anniversary of Confucius’s 2545th birthday, Lee Kwan Yew (in his capacity as honorary chairman of the Beijingbased International Confucian Organization) related that the government had decided to phase out the Religious Knowledge course because it had created an upsurge of interest in Christianity, Buddhism, and Islam. He did not explain why this was a problem.14 Eddie Kuo, however, relates that the topic of religion became politically charged in 1988–89 after a government-commissioned study on religion in Singapore was released. “The study found a strong upsurge of religious activities during the 1980s, especially in Christianity and to a lesser extent Buddhism and Islam. With the trend of fervent religious revivalism, the delicate religious equilibrium in multi-religious Singapore was being disturbed. The authors warned of the potential danger of inter-religious conflict and called for careful handling of a very sensitive situation.”15 It should, however, be borne in mind that Kuo himself was one of the authors of the report on the study and thus may have had his own agenda to pursue. (One might, for example, speculate that he played the religion hand to influence a political outcome.) Given that a decision to phase out the Institute for East Asian Philosophies was also announced in 1989, a more likely explanation for the failure of the Confucian revitalization movement was the government’s need to assuage those critics (many English-educated) who felt that the Confucian Ethics campaign was designed to reinforce authoritarian rule 16 and to constrain and

( 13. Eddie Kuo, “Confucianism as Political Discourse in Singapore,” 16–17. 14. See Kongzi yanjiu, no. 1 (1995): 7. 15. Eddie Kuo, “Confucianism as Political Discourse in Singapore,” 18. 16. This criticism was also adopted by Chinese intellectuals outside Singapore; see Huang Chün-chieh and Wu Kuang-ming, “Taiwan and the Confucian Aspiration,” 80. It should be noted that in 1985 Huang served as a consultant on the Confucian Ethics project to the Singapore Ministry of Education. In 1988 Du Weiming was similarly critical of “Western media and overseas Chinese (Huayi 華 裔 ) intellectuals influenced by liberal democracy” for creating the impression that Du’s involvement in the project was tantamount to aiding an authoritarian regime (although some of the praise he subsequently heaps upon “Singapore’s ruling strata” in the same essay may have led some readers to

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contain an emergent trend toward democratization.17 Given the thenrecent experience with the two Jiangs in Taiwan, it is perhaps understandable that some critics believed the campaign was designed “to prepare and legitimize a forthcoming power succession following the family line.”18 (If so, it would appear that from the government’s standpoint, the outcome was successful, despite the program’s early termination.)

Institute of East Asian Philosophies The Institute of East Asian Philosophies (IEAP), established in 1983, was supported by influential patrons such as Goh Keng Swee (then recently retired from politics), as well as entrepreneurs such as Hong Kong industrialist John Tung, who donated three million Singapore dollars to the institute in 1983. The IEAP was central to the Confucian revitalization movement: “As far as the Confucian movement is concerned, during its active years from 1983 to 1989, IEAP was no doubt the single most important institution which helped sustain high visibility (and hence continuity) of the movement.”19 Some of the Confucianrelated activities undertaken by IEAP staff include: A symposium under the chairmanship of Liu Shuxian 劉述先 on rujia ethics (published in 1987 by the IEAP under the title Rujia lunji yantaohui lunwenji 儒家倫理研討會論文集 [Essays from the Symposium on Rujia Ethics]);

( question where his loyalties really lay). See Du Weiming, ed., Ruxue fazhan de hongguan toushi, preface, 5–6. 17. For a critical analysis of the “political Confucianisation of Singapore” from the perspective of one such critic, see chap. 9, “Confucianisation Abandoned,” in Beng-huat Chua’s Communitarian Ideology and Democracy in Singapore, 158–67, in particular. Nor were the concerns of this group limited to the issue of democratization. According to Chua, “Local commentators have raised serious doubts about the extent to which, if at all, ‘Confucian notions’ have informed the economic thinking of Singapore entrepreneurs.” To support this claim, Chua cites Kernial S. Sandhu and Paul Wheatley (Management of Success, 1096), who argue that it has become increasingly difficult to sustain the “Confucian capitalism” argument in recent years “when more than two-thirds of investment in manufacturing has been provided by foreign firms, with more than a thousand foreign-owned enterprises locating themselves on the island.” 18. Eddie Kuo, “Confucianism as Political Discourse in Singapore,” 16. 19. Ibid., 10.

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Cosponsor with the Beijing-based China Confucius Foundation of an international conference at Qufu on Confucian learning and East Asian economic development in 1987; Publication of Tu Wei-ming, ed., The Triadic Cord: Confucian Ethics, Industrial East Asia and Max Weber. Proceedings of the 1987 Singapore Conference on Confucian Ethics and the Modernisation of Industrial East Asia (1991); Seminar on the problems and prospects of ruxue (1988); papers edited by Du Weiming and published under the title Ruxue fazhan de hongguan toushi 儒學發展的宏觀透視 (Macro-perspectives on the development of ruxue; 1997); Forum “The Role of Culture in Industrial Asia: The Relationship Between Confucian Ethics and Modernisation” (1987; published under the same title in 1988 by IEAP); Conference on Confucian Humanism and Modernisation: The Institutional Imperatives (1990). Despite these activities in the latter half of the decade, the death knell for the IEAP came in 1989 when it was announced that an economist would replace retiring Wu Teh Yao as director (a position he had held since 1986 after having served as chairman of the Local Committee on Confucian Ethics).20 “Given the crucial role of the IEAP as a key promoter of Confucianism, this inflicted a serious, possibly fatal, blow to the Confucian movement in Singapore.”21 In November 1989, the Straits Times reported: One major role of the institute has been to serve as a consultant of the Confucian Ethics curriculum and the teaching of the subject at school. . . . Now that RK [Religious Knowledge], including Confucian Ethics, will no longer be compulsory, it is natural that the institute will have to re-examine its role. . . . The institute . . . will widen its scope to include examination of the economic, political and social structures of East Asian societies, particularly their contemporary aspects. . . . The institute is changing course mainly to focus on a better

( 20. As Tu acknowledges in Confucian Ethics Today, 3, “When I was an undergraduate at Tunghai University [in the late 1950s and early 1960s], Professor Wu was the President. I am grateful to him because through his good offices I was offered a Harvard-Yenching Fellowship to study at Harvard University. I therefore feel particularly indebted to Professor Wu who is now chairman of the Local Committee on Confucian Ethics.” 21. Eddie Kuo, “Confucianism as Political Discourse in Singapore,” 19.

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and broader understanding of the cultural basis for East Asia’s economic success.22

(The cynic might even be tempted to suspect that these developments were the logical consequence of the successful promotion of the rujia capitalism thesis.) By 1991, the institute was publishing titles such as Economic Integration of Hong Kong and Guangdong, The Shanghai Stockmarket and China’s Financial Responsibilities, and Threat of Unemployment in China. In 1992, the replacement institution, the Institute of East Asian Political Economy, was established (later renamed the East Asian Institute), with research on contemporary China made a priority.23 In an interview I conducted in November 2000 with the director of the institute, Wang Gung-wu, he related that after Indonesia had re-established diplomatic relations with China in 1990, Singapore immediately followed suit, only to realize that Singapore knew nothing about China; hence the establishment of the Institute of East Asian Political Economy.

Rujia Capitalism It might be argued that one particular understanding of what ruxue represented (or could be made to represent) was so successful in 1980s Singapore that it not only overshadowed the notion of ruxue as a religion or tradition of ethical teachings but also rendered ruxue redundant in a modern, rapidly industrializing society such as Singapore. I am, of course, referring to the “rujia capitalism” thesis. The concept of rujia capitalism (or Confucian capitalism in English publications) was one of the products of ongoing debate in the 1980s about whether, historically, Confucianism (typically understood as an amorphous body of cultural traits) had produced an alternative to Max Weber’s (1864–1920) Protestant ethic. Weber’s work on the origins of capitalism (and modernity) led him to focus on the role of ideological factors. Although he conceded that some of the prerequisites for the emergence of capitalism could be found in China’s past (e.g., currency, a commodity economy, merchants), certain ideological factors had, in

( 22. Cheong Shoong Tat, “Institute of East Asian Philosophies to Get New Head and Direction,” 3. 23. Early in 1992, John Wong, the IEAP’s last director, confirmed the importance of China as a research priority, in an interview reported in the Straits Times, March 6, 1992, 31: “New Name for Institute of East Asian Philosophies.” See also “Dr Goh to Be Full-time Executive Chairman of Research Body,” 3.

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Weber’s view, held China back. His central argument is that the socalled Protestant ethic contained certain elements that promoted economically rational behavior patterns, which eventually led to economic success and progress. In the following passage, Weber contrasts the Confucian and Protestant attitudes: The Chinese lacked the central, religiously determined, and rational method of life which came from within and which was characteristic of the classic puritan. For the latter, economic success was not an ultimate goal . . . but was a means [for serving God. . . . The Confucian] gentleman was “not a tool”; that is, in his adjustments to the world and his self-perfection he was an end unto himself, not a means for any functional end. This core of Confucian ethics rejected . . . training in economics for the pursuit of profit. . . . Confucian rationalism meant rational adjustment to the world; Puritan rationalism meant rational mastery of the world.24

The upshot of these views is that, for Weber, Confucianism is not compatible with capitalism. After World War II, however, Weber’s theories of economic rationalization became fundamental for “modernization theory,” in which gradual change was emphasized, in contrast to the model of revolution favored in Marxist development theory. As summarized by Philip Clart: Japan served as the first laboratory for modernization theory and became its favourite practical example. In this line studies like Bellah’s Tokugawa Religion (1957) came into being, which looked at cultural, and more specifically religious and ethical, factors in Japanese development. Thus, when non-Communist Chinese societies started to repeat the Japanese success, the “Protestant Ethic Analogy,” as Bellah termed it later, was readily available to non-Marxist scholars as an explanatory model and was eagerly taken up as such. The central question posed under this paradigm was: was there some structure in Chinese religious or ethical thought that might produce effects (in terms of work ethic) similar to those attributed by Weber to the Protestant ethic in the development of European capitalism?25

( 24. Weber, The Religion of China, 248. 25. Clart, “The Protestant Ethic Analogy in the Study of Chinese History.” Japan has some noticeable examples of ru teachings being successfully propagated among the Tokugawa merchant class: the Kaitokudō 懷德堂 Academy in Osaka and the nationwide Sekimon shingaku 石門心學 movement founded by Ishida Baigan 石 田 梅 巌 (1685–1744). Indeed, it was the Sekimon shingaku movement that inspired Bellah’s influential (but now discredited) thesis that

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In the 1980s, the view that ruxue was incompatible with modernity (i.e., capitalism) started to be challenged by protagonists keen to promote variations on the Protestant Ethic Analogy. Almost overnight ruxue came to be viewed as a dynamic force of modernity. Over the course of that decade, Du Weiming emerged as the most influential “activist” to pursue the question of the relation between “Confucianism” and East Asian modernity. The following comments, made at a seminar at the Faculty of Business Administration, National University of Singapore, in 1982, present Du’s summary account of the “Confucian capitalism” perspective on why “we see capitalism and the entrepreneurial spirit flourishing in various parts of East Asia”: It begins by asserting that there is probably more than one approach to capital formation. This is, for example, unlike science. We recognize a category of operations and perceptions as being scientific. One cannot speak of a Chinese science, or a Japanese science, or an American science. Science is totally universalizable. . . . However, capital formation, if interpreted in relation to a complex network that involves a motivational structure, may evolve in a variety of ways.26

The motivational structure privileged by the proponents of the rujia capitalism thesis is “the Confucian ethic.” Du described the East Asian Confucian ethic to be the sum of the following concerns: the self being a center of human relationships, duty consciousness, personal discipline, personal cultivation, consensus formation and cooperation, education and ritual, and the fiduciary community and government leadership.27 In turn, the East Asian entrepreneurial spirit stresses the work ethic, discipline, cooperation and loyalty to a communal good. It requires consideration for one’s colleagues, for one’s friends, and for the larger context in which one dwells. Unexpectedly it has contributed to the rise of modern capitalism in East Asia. This is analogous to the influence of what Max Weber has described as the Puritan ethic in the rise of traditional Western capitalism. The issue is how this highly complex ethic of work, sensitivity and cooperation will continue to sustain the productivity of East Asia.28

On other occasions, however, Du was reluctant to commit himself to a view on “the relevance of Confucian ethics to the success of Industrial

( “Tokugawa religion” served as the functional equivalent of the Protestant work ethic in Japan. 26. Tu Wei-ming, Confucian Ethics Today, 78, 79–80. 27. Ibid., 84. 28. Ibid., 142.

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East Asia,” stating that although he was “excited to think that Confucianism might be very much linked to the modernizing spirit,” he was “currently in an exploratory mood. . . . I do not want to be misrepresented as having argued that there is a narrowly specified causal relationship between the Confucian ethic and economic success.”29

Yu Yingshi’s Historical Approach to Rujia Capitalism Yu Yingshi also adopted a similarly ambivalent attitude to this question. Yu introduces his 1985 essay “Zhongguo jinshi zongjiao lunli yu shangren jingshen” 中國近世宗教倫理與商人精神 (Early modern Chinese religious ethics and the mercantile spirit)30 as an enquiry into (1) whether China’s traditional ethics had any influence on “indigenously generated” commercial activities in the period before the introduction of Western capitalism; and (2) if there was such an influence, what was its specific content? He describes these questions as “Weberian.”31 Presumably this is because of his conviction that the unique contribution of Max Weber’s The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism was to point out that, in addition to economic factors, cultural factors were also involved in the rise of Western capitalism: Protestant ethics or, more specifically, Puritan-Calvinist inner-worldly asceticism.32 The first two parts of the essay examine developments in religious ethics from Tang times on, in particular in “new Chan” Buddhism from the mid-Tang, “new daojiao 道教” from the Song, and “Neo-Confucianism” (xin ruxue 新儒學) from the time of Han Yu 韓愈 (768–824) to Wang Yangming 王陽明 (1472–1529) and his disciples. The last part of the essay focuses on what he terms the spiritual foundation of Chinese merchants from the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries. Yu finds evidence of inner-worldly asceticism in Chan Buddhist attitudes to work and notes the affinity with Protestant notions of a “calling.”33 Similarly, he argues that the “new daojiao” affirmation of “this

( 29. Ibid., 21, 88. 30. The essay was originally published in the New York–based journal Zhishi fenzi 2, no. 2 (1985). I have used the version published in Yu’s Zhongguo sixiang chuantong de xiandai quanshi. 31. Ibid., 276. 32. Ibid., 264. 33. Ibid., 279–80.

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world” and mundane living (because the mundane world also has a religious dimension) surpassed even that of the Chan Buddhists. He maintains that the social function of this outlook served a role similar to that of a “calling.”34 Turning to the “Neo-Confucians” (xin rujia), Yu identifies Han Yu as representative of an “inner-worldly reorientation” in ruxue evident from the mid-Tang: a rejection of scholastic commentary on the Classics (in particular the ritual texts) and a new emphasis on inter-human relations in everyday life.35 By early Song times, the challenge from the Chan Buddhists had prompted the Neo-Confucians to develop a contrast between this world and the other world, even though in the Neo-Confucian version, the two realms were mutually entailing, co-existing in a relationship of immanent transcendence. There were, however, tensions between the two realms manifest in such conceptual pairs as li 理 and qi 氣 in cosmology; xing er shang 形而上 and xing er xia 形而下 in ontology; li 理 and shi 事 in human affairs; and tianli 天理 and renyu 人欲 in value theory.36 By approaching the relationship within each pair with the proper attitude— reverential attention ( jing 敬) —the experiential subject could overcome this tension. Yu maintains that this attitude is equivalent to the concept of a “calling” in Protestant ethics and is the source of the later Chinese emphasis on “respect for work/occupation” ( jingye 敬業). Moreover, the similarities between Neo-Confucianism and Puritanism extend to many shared values in social ethics that proscribed time-wasting, gossiping, and laziness and promoted diligence and industriousness.37 Having drawn attention to the pronounced blurring of the distinction between the merchant class and the shi 士 class (men of education and social standing) between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, Yu notes that already in the sixteenth century powerful salt merchants of Yangzhou 揚州 and Yizhen 儀真 were attracted to ru teachings through the proselytizing work of Wang Yangming’s disciples such as Wang Ji 王畿 (1498–1583) and Wang Gen 王艮 (1483–1541). (In fact, earlier in his life, Wang Gen had been a successful salt producer.) Yu also draws an equivalence between the concept of gudao 賈道, the way of the merchant, and Weber’s notion of the “process of rationalization,” because

( 34. Yu Yingshi, “Zhongguo jinshi zongjiao lunli yu shangren jingshen,” 292–93. 35. Ibid., 274–75. 36. Ibid., 306–7. 37. Ibid., 314–16.

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one of the key aspects of gudao was the most effective means of achieving one’s aims in business. The way of the merchant also encouraged a heightened sense of respect for enterprise.38 Yu distinguishes two different senses of the concept of ru, based on the way each sense influenced merchants. The first, or broad, sense refers to a level of intellectual and cultural training based on an education in the four traditional bibliographic categories: the Classics, histories, masters, and collected writings. “Any merchant who had received an education can be said to have a ru background.” The second sense refers to the indirect or direct influence of “rujia moral norms” on the behavior of merchants. 39 In discussing how moral concepts such as “being honest” and “not cheating” had “left a deep impression on the minds of merchants during the Ming and Qing dynasties,” however, Yu identifies these values as originating not only from rujia sources but also from popular religion, thereby problematizing any attempt to establish a connection between distinctly ru values and entrepreneurial behavior.40 Similarly, in the example of the attraction that the Yangzhou salt merchants had for certain ru teachings, it needs to be borne in mind that the issue is complicated by the fact that the Taizhou branch of Wang Yangming learning, associated with Wang Gen, is well-known for its syncretism (some of their critics calling them Wild Chan Buddhists). Wang Ji is similarly renowned for his Three Teachings syncretism.41 I will not dwell on these matters. Of more immediate relevance is that despite Yu’s portrayal of an indigenous “inner-worldly asceticism” in China’s merchant class between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, he does not attempt to argue that this provided either the sufficient or the necessary conditions for the development of endogenous capitalism. (Yu holds that China lacked certain necessary institutional conditions for this to be possible.) It remains the case, however, that the essay poses and addresses what Yu himself describes as a “Weberian” question: Did “China’s traditional ethics have any influence upon ‘indigenously generated’ commercial activities in the period before the introduction of Western capitalism”?

( 38. Ibid., 386, 389. 39. Ibid., 369. 40. Ibid., 381. 41. Ibid., 367.

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Du Weiming’s Multicultural Confucianism with Chinese Characteristics It was this flirtation with a Weber-inspired hypothesis that seems to have been the target of Du Weiming’s criticisms a short time later: “In order to prove that China indeed had a ‘work ethic’ similar to the Protestant ethic, recently many people engaged in the study of ruxue have expended great efforts but have been unable to remove themselves from the theoretical framework provided by [Talcott] Parsons in his translations of Weber’s writings.”42 Du characterizes Parsons as advocating the thesis that Protestant ethics alone was able to produce the capitalist spirit. Du wants to defend the thesis that modernization in nonWestern cultures does not have to exhibit the same characteristics as modernization in the West. He further maintains that the spiritual tradition of a given culture plays a decisive role in determining how modernization will be realized in that culture:43 “Even though modern civilization has as its characteristic a capitalism that has been guided by Protestant ethics,” this does not mean that “the process of modernization in other regions [non-European-American] will necessarily adopt a form that has similarities with Protestant ethics.”44 Having described the Confucian ethic in terms that bear distinct similarities to aspects of the Protestant ethic, it is understandable why Du might be understood to endorse “a narrowly specified causal relationship between the Confucian ethic and economic success.” It is also understandable why he should want to avoid being understood to endorse such a relationship: to equate “Confucianism” with the Confucian ethic as described by Du and others would be too prescriptive; it would also render problematic the “spiritual” side of Du’s Confucianism. “My feeling is that the whole question of the relationship between Confucian

( 42. Du Weiming, “Cong shijie sichao de jige cemian,” 322. Yu believed that these comments were directed at his essay, as he explained in a letter of response to the journal that published Du’s essay. In the letter, Yu (“Guanyu ‘xinjiao lunli’ yu ruxue yanjiu,” 427) states his belief that Du was criticizing him for attempting to draw forced analogies between Protestant ethics and rujia ethics. Yu declares that his purpose in comparing Protestant ethics and rujia ethics was simply to highlight Weber’s misunderstandings of Chinese religions and Chinese thought. 43. Du Weiming, “Cong shijie sichao de jige cemian,” 319. 44. Ibid., 322.

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ethics and the modernisation or industrialization of East Asia is only part of the story. There are much more important issues.”45 Here he is alluding to the role that Confucian ethics as a religious tradition might play in the modernization process. Connected with this is Du’s vision of a “newly-emerging Confucian ethic”: This ethic is often characterized as the functional equivalent of the Puritan ethic and is sometimes described as basically compatible or comparable to the work ethic of the West. Yet, it is also seen as having an entirely different structure and spiritual orientation. This ethic, which has contributed to economic development, stresses that the self is a centre of relationships. It promotes not individualism but one’s commitment to a larger entity, be that one’s family, one’s company, one’s group or one’s state.

Further characteristics of this emerging ethic include duty consciousness rather than rights consciousness; group solidarity; a harmonizing rather than a competitive model; stress on consensus formation and the importance of education; emphasis on the importance of government leadership and on a sense of history, culture, and tradition; and the value placed on “wisdom gained and transmitted by experience over an accumulation of information.” He notes that while it “is true that the Confucian ethic has contributed significantly to the success of East Asia,” there are, however, “many other types of motivational structures at play here.” Key among such motivations in this new Confucian ethic is a response to the impact of the West. As a creative response, this new Confucian ethic has already integrated some of the values taken for granted as Western within its ethical structure. It does not oppose Western ideas of rights, individual dignity, autonomy, or competitiveness in the healthy and dynamic sense. Therefore, I do not believe that this new ethic is exclusively Chinese or even exclusively Confucian.46

Thus, consistent with the vision of a creatively transformed Confucianism to suit a modern, dynamic (and multicultural) Singapore, Du presents a vision of a Confucian ethic that is neither exclusively Chinese

( 45. “The Role of Culture in Industrial Asia,” 40. Cf. Du Weiming, “Chuangzao de zhuanhua,” 144: “If it were to be said that ruxue merely has some values that are helpful to East Asian and Western entrepreneurs, such as the ability to withstand hardship, then . . . this would still be at a great remove from ruxue’s own spiritual essence.” 46. Tu Wei-ming, Confucian Ethics Today, 110–11.

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nor exclusively Confucian, a sort of multicultural Confucianism with Chinese characteristics. “If we also consider the values orientation of overseas Chinese communities, then broadly speaking, the Confucian tradition also belongs to Singapore, SE Asia, Australia, Europe and America.”47 In one essay, he expressed great optimism for the future of Confucianism in America, citing the example of Atlanta University’s celebration of Confucius’s birthday—supported by the sponsorship of Coca-Cola—as evidence of a growing interest in Confucianism.48 Du’s ultimate and unwavering goal has been to see Confucianism revitalized in China, and he unabashedly adopted a strategy of first “exporting it and then importing it” (chukou zhuan neixiao 出口轉内銷) to make it more marketable domestically: Whether Confucianism [will have] vitality in the [remaining period of the] twentieth century will principally be determined by whether it is able to make its way finally back to China via New York, Paris, Tokyo. . . . It must confront the challenges of American culture, European culture, and East Asian culture (that is, industrial East Asia), and furthermore sow seeds and take root in these cultures.49

He proceeds to argue that only after Confucianism has “sown seeds” in American, European, and East Asian culture can it “return to China” in a revitalized form; otherwise it may not be able to return at all. In order to be affirmed by the self (China), Confucianism needs to be recognized by the Other.50 The significance of Singapore is that it marked the beginning of this (surrogate) process of seed cultivation and transplantation. Indeed, at the International Symposium on Ruxue (Guoji ruxue yantaohui 國際 儒學研討會) convened in Singapore in 1988 to discuss issues and prospects for the development of ruxue, the following comments by the mainland scholar of New Confucianism and doctrinaire Marxist Fang Keli (then at Nankai University) confirmed that the message was being heard in China:

( 47. Du Weiming, “Ruxue di san qi fazhan de qianjing wenti,” 262. 48. See Du Weiming, “Rujia chuantong de xiandai zhuanhua,” 166. This article was originally published in Zhishi fenzi, Autumn 1985. 49. Ibid., 65. 50. In this connection, see the discussion that began in the early May Fourth period of how “the idea of the acceptability of Chinese civilization entered China through a complex global loop,” in Duara, “The Discourse of Civilization and Pan-Asianism,” 114.

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The New Confucians [Fang is referring principally to the so-called secondgeneration New Confucians] criticized the slogan “modernization is equivalent to Westernization” and aspired to an Oriental-style industrial civilization, that is, the path of “rujia capitalism.” Since the 1970s, it seems that the reality of rapid economic development in such East Asian countries and areas as Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore has provided an example of a possible path for “rujia capitalism.”51

Despite Du’s unwillingness to be labeled as proposing a clear-cut relationship between the Confucian ethic and economic development in East Asia, the very terms in which he defines the Confucian ethic are no less shaped by Weberian discourse than are Yu Yingshi’s 1985 views on traditional ethics and commercial activity in the period before the introduction of Western capitalism in China. Du’s commitment to finding a Confucian equivalent to the Protestant ethic remained just as entrenched in 2000, when he wrote: As the demarcation between the capitalist and socialist East Asia begins to blur, the shared ethical norms that cut across the great divide can very well be interpreted in Confucian terms. Economic culture, family values, and merchant ethics in East Asia and in China (including Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan) have also expressed themselves in Confucian vocabulary. We may, of course, reject such an explanation as a postmortem justification. Yet even if we agree that the Confucian articulation is but an afterthought, the persuasiveness of ideas such as network capitalism, soft authoritarianism, group spirit, and consensual politics throughout East Asian economy, polity, and society suggests the continuous relevance of Confucian traditions in East Asian modernity.52

Critical Responses Already in the 1980s there was a small band of scholars quite critical of the “rujia capitalism” thesis. Some, such as mainland intellectual Bao Zunxin 包 尊 信 (then affiliated with the History Institute, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences), found the proposition that ruxue and modernization are mutually compatible to be absurd.53 Gan Yang 甘陽 (then

( 51. Fang Keli, “Lüe lun xiandai xin rujia zhi deshi,” 542–43. 52. Tu Weiming, “Implications of the Rise of ‘Confucian’ East Asia,” 204. Having accepted the possibility of “postmortem justification” and “the Confucian articulation is but an afterthought,” it is difficult to see how the conclusion follows from the premises. 53. See, e.g., Bao Zunxin, “Rujia sixiang he xiandaihua.”

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affiliated with the Philosophy Institute, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences), another mainland intellectual prominent in the latter half of the 1980s, developed what might be called an intellectual-humanist response to discourse on ruxue and modernization. Gan asked why the value or significance of ruxue thought in modern times should necessarily be adjudicated on the basis of whether it is able to accord with or promote such elements of modernity as industry, the mercantile spirit, the methods of natural science, and democracy. At the 1988 International Symposium on Ruxue in Singapore, he argued that attempts to “creatively transform” ruxue along utilitarian and instrumentalist lines not only run contrary to the fundamental ruxue principle of “learning for oneself ” (wei ji zhi xue 為己之學) but also distort and pervert ruxue in the process by denying it an independent, critical voice. Gan insisted that even if ruxue is quite incapable of fostering the elements of modernity, “this in no way implies a diminution of the value of ruxue; much less does it imply that ruxue is without value.” He proposed that ruxue should resolutely uphold value rationality. Although Gan narrowly identifies ruxue as an expression of elite intellectual culture, his was one of a minority of voices in the 1980s to question the appropriateness of trying to find a value and relevance for ruxue by linking it with modernization discourse (in which the rujia capitalism thesis loomed large).54 Other critics drew attention to the tendency to conflate ruxue with Chinese culture. In 1990, the Taiwan-based critic Wei Zhengtong observed that in discussions during the 1980s of the relationship between ruxue and economic development “rujia has become an alias for the value system and ethical spirit of China’s cultural tradition” and not merely a particular “school” of thought.55 In the 1990s, other critics amplified these views. For example, National Chengchi University (Taiwan) academic Gu Zhonghua 顧忠華 criticized much of the discussion of “rujia ethics and economic development” for “overly Confucianizing”56 Chinese culture. He charged that discussions of rujia ethics which

( 54. Gan Yang, “Ruxue yu xiandai,” 595, 596, 599. Even stalwarts such as New Confucian Liu Shuxian (then head of the Philosophy Department, Chinese University of Hong Kong), who regularly appeals to the spiritual legacy of ruxue, seems to have been swayed by the rujia capitalism thesis in 1988; see Liu Shuxian, “Lun rujia sixiang yu xiandaihua, houxiandaihua de wenti,” 78–79. 55. Wei Zhengtong, “Rujia lunli zai ‘Taiwan jingyan’ zhong de jiaose,” 335. 56. Following his English rendering of guodu rujiahua 過度儒家化.

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invoke notions such as “family ethic,” “work ethic,” “values orientation,” and “Chinese-style management” amounted to no more than discussions of “the Chinese peoples’ character,” thus stripping the notion of rujia ethics of any real meaning. Not only are we like a Westerner who takes a very distant perspective to observe “mysterious China”—thereby no longer being able to distinguish between rujia, daojia, and fajia—moreover, we do not concern ourselves with the differences between rujia and rujiao, or fojiao and folk beliefs. In the end, all we can do is equate rujia with China and disregard the inherent differences between these two concepts.

He further complained that sociologists such as Peter Berger and his followers such as Jin Yaoji (Ambrose King) have tried to explain East Asian economic development based on a “cultural thesis” (wenhua lun 文化論) by identifying those cultural practices conducive to economic development and then characterizing them as elements of “vulgar Confucianism.”57 Gu argues that this is actually counterproductive because expressions of “instrumentalist rationality” conducive to economic competition—such as strategic thinking and planning—are in much greater evidence in those spheres of Chinese cultural expression (such as military strategy and tactics) not characterized as rujia.58 Perhaps the most trenchant critic of all has been Arif Dirlik: “Reduced to a few ethical principles conducive to social and economic order, [Confucianism] has been rendered in the process into an ideology of capitalist development, superior to the individualistic ideology of EuroAmerican capitalism in its emphasis on harmony and social cohesiveness.”59 For Dirlik, that which made the East Asian Confucian revival plausible during its formative phase in the late 1980s and early 1990s was not the offer of some alternative to EuroAmerican values “but its articulation of native cultures into a capitalist narrative.”60 And notwithstanding

( 57. Du Weiming was also influenced by this line of thinking. At a 1987 forum held in Singapore (see “The Role of Culture in Industrial Asia,” 39), Du distinguished between a highly politicized Confucian ideology and vulgar or popular Confucianism. Whereas the former was inimical to the entrepreneurial spirit, the latter was not. He associates this form of Confucianism with “the Chinese of the 19th century outside China, who became very successful entrepreneurs in South East Asia and in North America.” 58. Gu Zhonghua, “Rujia wenhua yu jingji lunli,” 88, 90–92. 59. Dirlik, The Postcolonial Aura, 227. 60. Ibid., 92.

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Du Weiming’s repeated disavowal of “a narrowly specified causal relationship between the Confucian ethic and economic success,” Dirlik is surely correct to conclude that Du “benefited in his activism from the prestige that has accrued to Confucianism from its alleged relevance to capitalist development.”61

Concluding Remarks Despite Singapore’s abandonment of the Confucian Ethics course, the closure of the IEAP, and an aborted revitalization movement, the Singapore experiment was, for Du Weiming at least, successful. By harnessing the achievements of huaren societies to argue that the “Confucian ethic” is not only a match for, but is also superior to, the Protestant ethic, Du was able to realize his goal of cementing a position for ruxue on the agenda of the academy in 1990s China.62 A watershed event in advancing toward that goal was the 1988 International Symposium on Ruxue convened by the IEAP in Singapore. Du himself described the symposium as a milestone in the third epoch of the development of ruxue in “cultural China” (in which he includes China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, and North America).63 Most notably, the Chinese contingent at the symposium included influential mainland scholars such as Bao Zunxin, Gan Yang, Fang Keli, Chen Lai, Jin Guantao, Tang Yijie 湯一介, Pang Pu 龐樸, and Wu Guang 吳光. Equally significant, it was the first major conference on ruxue to be convened in Singapore in which all papers were delivered in putonghua 普通話. And despite the fact that only three papers specifically addressed the topic of New Confucianism—those of Fang Keli, Lin Yusheng 林毓生 (University of Wisconsin), and Fu Weixun 傅偉勳 (Charles Fu; Temple University), all of whom were critical—it was at this symposium that Fang Keli announced to the international community the list of individuals he and his research team had identified as representative New Confucians and also his plans for a hugely influential book series on New Confucian thinkers: Xiandai xin ruxue jiyao congshu 現代新儒學輯要叢書 (Key selec-

( 61. Dirlik, “Confucius in the Borderlands,” 259. 62. For a “culturalist reading” that reveals Confucian capitalism to be “a rendering of the classic capitalist myth about just and justifiable returns of individual effort and striv[ing],” see Souchou Yao, Confucian Capitalism, 4. 63. Du Weiming, ed., Ruxue fazhan de hongguan toushi, preface, 2.

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tions from New Confucian studies). Du Weiming’s goal of revitalizing ruxue in mainland China by first “exporting it and then importing it” was beginning to pay dividends. As noted above, the significance of Singapore was that it marked the beginning of this (surrogate) process of seed cultivation and transplantation.

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2 Developments in 1980s Taiwan and the Mainland

What factors were instrumental in facilitating the revival of academic interest in ruxue in the latter half of the 1980s on the mainland, thereby preparing the way for a more sustained revival in the following decade? I will argue that the following were most the important factors. First, there was a growing interest in the purported efficacy of rujia capitalism—“a contestatory narrative of modernity”—to contribute to China’s program of economic modernization. Second, closely linked with the rujia capitalism thesis was the “sinicization of sociology” movement in the early 1980s in Hong Kong and Taiwan. Empowered by the immense prestige that accrued to huaren societies in the wake of their successful economic performance, the movement was instrumental in generating lists of unique “Chinese cultural characteristics,” which became incorporated into variations on “the rujia ethic.” Third, beginning in the mid1980s, research on New Confucianism undertaken in a major project, “Research on New Confucianism,” funded under the national seventh five-year plan (1986–90), increasingly provided the discursive space for more broad-based and ongoing academic discussion on the nature of ruxue and its relevance to modern society. Fourth, “unofficial” academies and foundations, such as the Academy of Chinese Culture and the China Confucius Foundation, were instrumental in promoting conferences, publications, commemorative events, and lecture series that highlighted the cultural significance of China’s ru legacy and stimulating new “unofficial” networks of communication and collaboration. Finally, there was the cross-fertilization and intellectual engagement made possible by Chinese-language journals in Taiwan and New York publishing articles by mainland- and overseas-based Chinese scholars. I find little 42 John Makeham - 978-1-68417-048-7

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evidence to support the still widely held but unconvincing thesis that the party-state supported the nascent ruxue rival of the late 1980s in order to find a “substitute utopian vision in the face of Marxist ideological disintegration” or that funding for the “Research on New Confucianism” project represents an ideological agenda to shore up the partystate’s waning legitimacy.

Ruxue and the Sinicization of Sociology Mainland Chinese academic interest in ruxue gradually intensified as opportunities for contact with scholars outside China increased in the early 1980s. 1 Du Weiming, in particular, contributed more than any other individual to promoting a renewed interest in ruxue through his lectures and networking in China, beginning in 1978. He spent about six months in China in 1980, traveling to eighteen cities and participating in 30 seminars. 2 In 1983 he returned again, and in 1985 he taught a course on rujia philosophy for six months at Beijing University.3 His long-term consultative role in planning and implementing the Singapore government’s 1982 Confucian Ethics option of the secondary curriculum Religious Knowledge course was also a matter of interest to Chinese academics and political authorities alike. Two “external” factors were even more significant in prompting a renewed interest in ruxue among Chinese academics. The first was the influential rujia capitalism thesis: the view that the rujia tradition had produced an alternative to Max Weber’s Protestant ethic and that this “cultural” factor—the so-called rujia ethic—explained East Asian

( 1. Two significant events were the 1981 conference on Song-Ming Principlecentered Learning (lixue 理學; “Neo-Confucianism”) convened in Hangzhou, in which leading overseas Chinese scholars participated; and the 1982 Zhu Xi 朱熹 (1130–1200) conference in Hawaii, which again brought leading overseas and mainland scholars together. Re-evaluations of Confucius and ruxue had already begun on the mainland in the late 1970s. See Song Zhongfu et al., Ruxue zai xiandai Zhongguo, 352–54. 2. See Tu Wei-ming, Confucian Ethics Today, 22. 3. In the judgment of Lin Tongqi, Roger T. Ames, and Henry Rosemont, Jr. (“Chinese Philosophy,” 734), it was not until Du’s 1985 sojourn that “his voice began to be heard more broadly in academia.” This may be true, but Du’s impact should also be borne in mind. In the judgment of Fang Keli (“Xiandai xin ruxue de fazhan licheng,” 160), Du’s lectures and networking were largely responsible for the New Confucian fad in the latter half of the 1980s.

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economic development. The second factor was the synergy provided by the “sinicization of sociology” movement in the early 1980s in Hong Kong and Taiwan. “Sinicization” (Zhongguohua 中國化) refers to the claim that the social sciences (or particular social science disciplines) should be grounded in local/regional culture, experience, and perspectives, where the “local/regional” variously refers to a somewhat vague notion of “China” or Chinese society (including Taiwan), or to particular huaren 華人 (sinitic) societies. The movement promoted a return to the cultural roots of “being Chinese” and the development of “sinicized” social and behavioral science approaches to research in response to the perceived threat that the universalist claims of theory (typically seen as Western in origin) pose to the particularity of local cultural identity. The movement to sinicize the social sciences in Taiwan can be traced to the 1970s. It was, however, at the 1981 conference Shehui ji xingwei kexue yanjiu de Zhongguohua 社會及行為科學研究的中國化 (The sinicization of the social and behavioral sciences) at the Institute of Ethnology, Academia Sinica, that the rationale for this mooted sinicization was formally presented. The key instigators of the conference were Yang Guoshu 楊國樞 (social psychologist), Wen Chongyi 文崇一 (sociologist), and Li Yiyuan 李亦園 (anthropologist)—all from the Institute of Ethnology, Academia Sinica—as well as Qiao Jian 喬健 (anthropologist) and Jin Yaoji 金耀基 (Ambrose King; sociologist) from the Chinese University of Hong Kong. The conference and the resulting conference volume 4 are identified as marking the beginning of the “sinicization movement” among “Chinese” (huaren) communities and contributed to the development of the “sinicization of anthropology” and the “indigenization of social psychology” in Hong Kong and mainland China.5 The simultaneous occurrence of the ruxue revivalist movement and the sinicization of sociology movement in huaren societies in the early 1980s is no mere coincidence. There is little doubt that the sinicization movement was empowered by the immense prestige that accrued to huaren societies in the wake of their economic successes. Jin Yaoji is a prime example of someone whose research in the early 1980s embraced both the sinicization of the social sciences and the rujia capitalism thesis. His 1983 article on the rujia ethic and its challenge to Weber was

( 4. Yang Guoshu and Wen Chongyi, eds., Shehui ji xingwei kexue yanjiu de Zhongguohua. 5. See Maukuei Chang, “The Movement to Indigenize the Social Sciences in Taiwan,” 223–24.

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one of the earliest written in Chinese.6 In turn, the sinicization movement helped generate lists of unique “Chinese cultural characteristics”7 that were incorporated into variations on the rujia ethic8 and, in doing so, contributed to the construction of a “ ‘Weberized’ Confucianism” that “appears as a marker of Chineseness regardless of time or place.”9 It

( 6. Jin Yaoji, “Rujia lunli yu jingji fazhan.” A decade later he still claimed that Weber’s views on Confucianism were more or less accepted without question in the West. Yet, as Thomas A. Metzger (“The Sociological Imagination in China,” 946) has pointed out, “Since at least the 1970s, Weber’s view of Confucianism has been strongly challenged in the West. Indeed, little was left standing but the usefulness of the questions he raised.” 7. Maukuei Chang (“The Movement to Indigenize the Social Sciences in Taiwan,” 227) points out that cooperation between Yang Guoshu, Wen Chongyi, Li Yiyuan, Qiao Jian 喬健, and Jin Yaoji “can be traced back to their earlier project on the ‘Chinese character,’ carried out between 1970 and 1972.” This collective project resulted in the publication of a very influential book: Li Yiyuan and Yang Guoshu, eds., Zhongguoren de xingge: keji zonghexing de taolun (The Chinese character: an interdisciplinary discussion). 8. Given this circumstance, Eddie C. Y. Kuo’s (“Confucianism as Political Discourse in Singapore,” 12) observation is worth noting: In the late 70s and early 80s, the economic “miracle” of several East Asian countries aroused great interest in the international academic community. The miracle was in part attributed to the common pro-development cultural ethos, believed to be Confucian in nature, of these East Asian societies. . . . The irony is . . . [that] it was through the works of Western scholars such as H. Kahn, E. Vogel, J. Hofheinz and K. Calder, and G. Redding and G. Hicks that East Asians and East Asian societies (like Singapore) gained a new awareness and cultural confidence that the Confucian ethic would not only provide a new moral order needed to confront the perceived moral crisis, but also to [sic] play an active role in social and economic development. This irony seems to have been lost on Tu Wei-ming (Confucian Ethics Today) when in 1982 he wrote: Comparative religionists, sociologists and political scientists in the West . . . have been greatly impressed by the general performance of the collective entity of East Asia since the Second World War, specifically industrial East Asia. . . . They are suggesting that the very Confucian ethic which has undergone such thorough criticism within the East Asian cultural context is now re-emerging . . . as an important motivating force for change in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and by inference—Singapore. 9. Dirlik, The Postcolonial Aura, 226. In commenting on the simultaneous occurrence of the sinicization of sociology movement in “Chinese” (or perhaps better, huaren) societies in the early 1980s and the Confucian revivalist movement,

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should also be borne in mind that before mainland scholars had even heard of New Confucianism—this started in 1986, the same year that a Chinese translation of Weber’s The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism was published10—and hence well before they developed a philosophical interest in the New Confucian thinkers, already in the early 1980s overseas Chinese academics had been discussing how New Confucian thinkers might contribute to modernization. At a roundtable discussion convened by Zhongguo luntanshe 中國論壇社 (China forum society)11 in Taipei in 1982, involving a number of prominent overseas Chinese scholars—including Yang Guoshu, Jin Yaoji, and Li Yiyuan12—to discuss the topic of “New Confucians and China’s modernization” (dangdai xin rujia yu Zhongguo de xiandaihua 當代新儒家與中國的現代化), some of the main questions discussed were: What role does the New Confucian model of modernization play in China’s modernization? Can the idealism and humanism of the New Confucians provide an impetus for China’s modernization? What are the positive and negative elements of New Confucianism in regard to China’s modernization?13

( Arif Dirlik (“Theory, History, Culture,” 97) claims: “To the extent that globalization refers to a rearrangement of global hegemony by admitting into it the resurgent economic powers of East Asia, it is easy enough to accord to ‘sinicization’ a privileged place that sets it apart from other postcolonial encounters with theory: it promised further globalization, and the consolidation of hegemony, not its fragmentation through indigenization.” Liu Dong (“The Weberian View and Confucianism,” 204) writes that “the title of Weber’s seminal work, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, might as well have been changed to Confucianism and the Spirit of Capitalism as far as its Chinese readers of the 1990s were concerned.” 10. First published by Sichuan renmin chubanshe. 11. In the second half of the 1980s, the Taiwan-based journal Zhongguo luntan 中國論壇 (China forum bimonthly) provided mainland and overseas Chinese scholars with a forum for genuine dialogue and debate. 12. Other well-known scholars to participate included Yu Yingshi, Lin Yusheng, Zhang Hao 張灝, Wei Zhengtong, Liu Shuxian, and Xiao Xinhuang 蕭新 惶. Xiao (Michael Hsiao), a sociologist in Taiwan, had also been actively involved in the sinicization movement since the early 1980s. 13. See the proceedings of the conference published in Zhongguo luntan, no. 169 (1982): 5–37.

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New Confucianism A number of scholars identity the “culture fever” (wenhuare 文化熱) phenomenon of mid- to late 1980s China as a significant “internal factor” in fostering a renewed academic interest in ruxue. 14 In 1990, Fang Keli maintained that together with Marxism and liberalism, ruxue revivalism (representing the conservative position) was one of three main “branches” ( paibie 派別) of the 1980s culture debates. 15 Zheng Jiadong identified the following areas in which the culture fever influenced the manner in which ruxue was studied and discussed: first, it refocused attention on traditional culture and its ongoing connection with contemporary society; second, it encouraged broad-based intellectual questioning of the “anti-traditionalism” ideology that had prevailed in the 1970s; third, it prompted people to ask “How should we identify and excavate those unique, historically enduring, and broadly significant intellectual values of our nation’s historical culture?”; and fourth, it led to interaction between mainland and overseas Chinese scholars in the field of Chinese philosophy, especially New Confucianism.16 It is this last point that was most significant. Despite the fact that “in the first half of the 1980s, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and overseas research on Chinese philosophy (especially research on ruxue) basically had not yet attracted the attention of mainland scholars,”17 this situation

( 14. For English-language studies, see also Jing Wang, High Culture Fever, chap. 2, “High Culture Fever: The Culture Discussion in the Mid-1980s and the Politics of Methodologies,” 37–117; and Song Xianlin, “Reconstructing the Confucian Ideal in 1980s China.” 15. See Guan Dong 關東 (pen name of Zheng Jiadong), “Xiandai xin ruxue yanjiu de huigu yu zhanwang,” 85. 16. Zheng Jiadong, “Jin wushi nian lai dalu ruxue de fazhan ji qi xianzhuang,” 25–26. 17. Ibid., 25. Evidence of this claim can be found in Li Shijia, Jinqi Taiwan zhexue. Although printed in 1989, the preface is dated August 1986, and the work is based on research conducted in the early to mid-1980s. In the two sections on rujia philosophy, Li ignores the contributions to this area of scholarship by scholars retrospectively identified as “New Confucians.” (The one seeming exception to this is his inclusion of Fang Dongmei 方東美 as a representative scholar of “orthodox Neo-Confucianism” [xin rujia; i.e., of the Song and Ming period]. Although some scholars identify Fang as a “contemporary New Confucian,” Li [pp. 180–84] identifies him with the Cheng-Zhu rather than the

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changed suddenly in November 1986 when “Research on New Confucianism” secured funding as a key research topic under the national seventh five-year plan for philosophy and the social sciences. Within a year, the project involved sixteen different work units and nearly fifty scholars.18 In 1987, project codirector Fang Keli (then at Nankai University; the other director was Li Jinquan 李 錦 全 , Zhongshan University) maintained that of all the schools of thought in modern China, New Confucianism ranked second only to Marxism in terms of its creative theoretical qualities, influence, and longevity.19 Two years later, Zheng Jiadong (then affiliated with Jilin University) described the New Confucian “school” as being the longest continuing and most influential conservative school of thought and cultural movement in modern Chinese history.20 Successfully transcending the geographical and political boundaries of China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, since the mid-1980s New Confucianism has increasingly played a leading role in bridging the cultural and ideological divide separating mainland and overseas Chinese scholars by providing a shared intellectual discourse. As I have argued elsewhere, New Confucianism has also proven to be the most successful form of philosophical appropriation, reinvention, and “creative transformation” of “Confucianism” in the mainland, Hong Kong, and Taiwan.21 And even though the “New Confucian fever” had cooled by the mid-1990s, it opened up an impressive discursive space for wider and continuing academic discussion on the nature of ruxue and its relevance to modern society.

Ruxue Organizations In addition, a number of institutional developments in the 1980s both contributed to, and were expressions of, this renewed interest in ruxue among Chinese academics. According to one account, between 1979 and 1990, fourteen ruxue-related organizations and groups were established

( Lu-Wang tradition of “Neo-Confucianism,” thereby removing any basis for associating Fang with the New Confucian camp.) 18. Fang Keli, “Guanyu xiandai xin rujia yanjiu de jige wenti,” 1. 19. Ibid., 7. 20. Zheng Jiadong, “Rujia yu xin rujia de mingyun,” 14. 21. See the introduction and first two chapters of Makeham, ed., New Confucianism.

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in China.22 (By the turn of the new millennium, this figure escalated to about a hundred.)23 The most important of these were the Academy of Chinese Culture (Zhongguo wenhua shuyuan 中國文化書院) and the China Confucius Foundation (Zhongguo Kongzi jijinhui 中國孔子基 金會). Although the Academy of Chinese Culture was concerned with a broad range of cultural issues, two prominent items on its agenda of activities were ruxue and the engagement of overseas Chinese ruxue scholars. The academy was established in Beijing in 1984 with Tang Yijie serving as director. Other prominent members included philosophers Feng Youlan 馮友蘭, Zhang Dainian 張岱年, Liang Shuming 梁漱溟, Zhu Bokun 朱伯昆, and linguist Ji Xianlin 季羨林. As part of its publishing activities, the academy launched the book series Gang-Tai haiwai Zhongguo wenhua congshu 港臺海外中國文化叢書 (Chinese culture in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and overseas) in 1988. Other activities included a symposium entitled The Predicament of New Confucian Philosophy (1986); an international conference on the thought of Liang Shuming (1987); and a conference on Chinese culture involving the participation of a number of overseas Chinese scholars (1988).24 Between 1985 and 1999, the Academy also held a large number of lectures, classes, and correspondence courses on aspects of traditional Chinese culture and comparative studies of Chinese and Western culture. The China Confucius Foundation was established in 1984 and launched the journal Kongzi yanjiu 孔子研究 two years later. In the 1990s, the foundation significantly expanded its activities to include the publication of books and book series, conference volumes, encyclopedias, and almanacs (such as Zhongguo ruxue nianjian 中國儒學年鑒 [China

( 22. According to Li Qiqian, “Jinnianlai Kongzi yanjiu de xin qushi,” 332. Li does not list them, but some of the smaller organizations established during this period include: the Zhonghua Kongzi xuehui 中華孔子學會 (The China Confucius Association), established in Beijing in 1985 (originally it was called Zhonghua Kongzi yanjiusuo 中華孔子研究所, but changed its name in 1989; Zhang Dainin served for many years as president and Tang Yijie as deputy president); the Kongzi yanjiusuo 孔 子 研 究 所 (Confucius Research Institute) at Qufu Teachers’ College in 1983 (which later changed to its current name, Kongzi wenhua shuyuan 孔子文化書院 [Confucius Culture Academy]); and the Ruxue yanjiuhui 儒學研究會 (Ruxue Studies Association) in Suzhou in 1987. 23. Zhang Shuhua, ed., Ruxue yanjiu lunwenji, preface, 1. 24. For some discussions presented at that conference, see “Liang’an xuezhe tan Zhongguo wenhua.”

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ruxue almanac]); it also provides funding support for conferences. Writing in 1996, Mou Zhongjian 牟鍾鑑 (Central University of Nationalities) drew attention to the following introductory statement in the inaugural issue of the journal by Gu Mu 谷牧, honorary chairman of the China Confucius Foundation (and deputy premier of the State Council): “Reflecting on the historical lessons to be drawn from either honoring Confucius or opposing Confucius, we seek neither blindly to worship Confucius or China’s traditional culture nor to adopt an attitude of denying history. Rather, we advocate that Confucius and China’s historical culture be treated as objects of penetrating and systematic scientific research.” According to Mou, this statement was a watershed marking the end of “the politicized anti-Confucius period” and the formal beginning of scholarly research on Confucius and ruxue. “From this moment, all sorts of differing perspectives on Confucius and ruxue were able to be expressed freely since there was no longer any connection being made between an author’s political stance and current political issues.”25 The foundation also cosponsored (with UNESCO) large-scale commemorative activities in Beijing and Qufu to mark the 2540th anniversary of the birth of Confucius in 1989. 26 Once again, the central message in Gu Mu’s address at this 1989 conference and also at an international symposium in Qufu on ruxue in 198727 was that ruxue, as a key constituent of traditional culture, has to be critically inherited: the dross and the refined have to be separated.28

Mutual Scholarly Influence In Taiwan, the latter half of the 1980s saw significant developments in democratization; in three key reforms, the Nationalist government allowed an opposition political party to be formed (1986); decided in 1986

( 25. Mou Zhongjian, “Dangdai dalu ruxue xunli,” 87. 26. Seven conferences on Confucius were convened on the mainland between 1978 and 1989 (the last being the international conference commemorating the 2540th anniversary of Confucius’ birth). For short summaries of each, see Liang Yuansheng, “Qiantu wei bu de fenghuang,” 104–7. 27. Co-convened with the Institute of East Asian Philosophies in Singapore. 28. For the 1987 speech, see Song Zhongfu et al., Ruxue zai xiandai Zhongguo, 357; and Zhongguo Kongzi jijinhui xueshu weiyuanhui, ed., Kongzi danchen 2540 zhounian jiannian yu xueshu yantaohui, 1–3. Even though Gu Mu was more effusive in acknowledging the positive aspects of the ruxue legacy in his 1989 address, his remarks were made in the context of “critical inheritance.”

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to end martial law, effective in July 1987; and permitted Taiwan residents to visit the Chinese mainland (1987).29 After a forty-year hiatus, contact with China—people, places, and ideas—again became possible. Fu Weixun30 has described 1987 as the year of “mainland fever” for the Taipei publishing industry, as publishing houses readied themselves to publish Taiwan versions (in full-character format) of mainland Chinese publications, including old and recent works of scholarship, to satisfy the new demands of the domestic market. In fact, Li Zehou’s books had been reprinted in Taiwan already in 1986. According to Fu, by about 1987, “in the hearts and minds of Taiwanese readers” Li Zehou “had become the most prominent figure in mainland Chinese philosophical circles.”31 By 1988, Liu Shuxian (then still based at Chinese University of Hong Kong) was prompted to write: “Recently, on both sides of the [Taiwan] Strait, there have suddenly appeared many essays and even edited volumes discussing tradition and modernization. . . . This is a matter to be grateful for. . . . Just a few years ago, it would have been difficult to imagine mainland and overseas scholars reasoning with one another and discussing scholarship through the same forum. It is encouraging to see such developments.”32 In fact, one such early publication forum was neither a Taiwan- nor a Hong Kong–based journal, but the New York–based Chinese-language journal Zhishifenzi 知識分子 (established in 1984). Of particular note is that three articles dealing with modern aspects of ruxue published in a 1985 issue of the journal33 were reproduced the following year in the influential mainland journal Zhexue yanjiu 哲學研究,34 the same year in which New Confucianism was put on the agenda of mainland scholars. Shui Binghe’s 水秉和 (Taiwan-educated, New York–based novelist) article “Rujia moxing ji qi xiandai yiyi” 儒家模型及其現代意義 (The rujia model and its modern significance) is presented as a challenge to Joseph Levenson’s influential account of the demise of Confucian China. Shui’s

( 29. In April 1989, the Taiwan government began to allow members of Taiwan’s mass media to conduct interviews and make films and programs on the Chinese mainland. 30. Fu was a very active scholar who published widely in English and Chinese. Most of his Chinese publications were published in Taiwan. 31. Fu Weixun, Wenhua Zhongguo yu Zhongguo wenhua, 1, 3, 4. 32. Liu Shuxian, “Lun rujia sixiang yu xiandaihu houxiandaihua de wenti.” 33. Zhishifenzi 2, no. 1 (1985): 46–49, 90–96, 97–104. 34. Zhexue yanjiu 1986, no. 11: 68–71, 61–67, 53–60.

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article expresses optimism about a rujia rebirth, based on the dynamism of the “considerable numbers of New Confucians active on American campuses” and the “astonishing economic growth” of those Asian regions “influenced by rujia thought.”35 Du Weiming’s “Rujia chuantong de xiandai zhuanhua” 儒家傳統的現代轉化 (The modern transformation of the rujia tradition) introduces four New Confucians: Xiong Shili 熊十力 (1885–1968), Fang Dongmei 方東美 (1899–76), Tang Junyi 唐君毅 (1909–78), and Mou Zongsan 牟宗三 (1909–95). Liu Shuxian’s article, “Dangdai xin rujia de tansuo” 當代新儒家的探索 (Exploration of the New Confucians), also takes as its point of departure a challenge to Levenson’s thesis and concludes with an outline of Liu’s Three Epochs of Ruxue thesis. Zhishifenzi was also a forum for mainland scholars, including those critical of the resurgence of interest in rujia values and the putative role of those values in fostering East Asian modernization and economic development. Bao Zunxin, for example, published several articles in Zhishifenzi in the mid- to late 1980s. Bao was an important figure in the 1980s. He founded the journal Zhongguo zhexue in 1978 (the journal ran until 1985), and in 1980 he became a researcher at the History Institute, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing. He also served as a deputy editor of the leading intellectual journal Dushu 讀書 and was the first chief editor of the influential Weilai congshu (Toward the future book series) between 1984 and 1987. As a fervent anti-traditionalist, during the 1980s he wrote a number of articles criticizing New Confucianism as an outmoded system of ethics that had no place in modern society. A number of these articles are included in his Pipan yu qimeng 批判與啟蒙 (Criticism and enlightenment), which was published not in Beijing but in Taipei.36 Thus even though his attitude to ruxue was critical, his active engagement of ruxue revivalists in his publications in New York, Taipei, and Hong Kong indirectly contributed to the success of the revivalist movement in China in the early 1990s. Consider, for example, his article “Rujia sixiang yu houxiandaihua” 儒家思想與後現代化 (Rujia thought and postmodernity), published in the Taiwan journal Zhongguo luntan.37 Even though he criticized New Confucians such as Mou Zong-

( 35. Shui Binghe, “Rujia moxing ji qi xiandai yiyi,” 68. 36. Bao Zunxin, Pipan yu qimeng. Bao was imprisoned for three and a half years for supporting the Tian’anmen protests. He was detained again in 1995. 37. Bao Zunxin, “Rujia sixiang yu houxiandaihua.”

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san, Du Weiming, and Liu Shuxian38 and argued that ruxue and rujia thought should be the object of criticism and that tradition should be overcome, he still stimulated debate and dialogue between mainland and overseas Chinese scholars, as evidenced by Liu’s Shuxian’s rejoinder.39 In the late 1980s, several Taiwan journals similarly provided a forum for mainland scholars more sympathetic to ruxue and rujia values to express their views. At one extreme of this category of publications is Jiang Qing’s 蔣 慶 (then affiliated with Shenzhen Administrative College) 40,000-character essay “Zhongguo dalu fuxing ruxue de xianshi yiyi ji qi mianlin de wenti” 中國大陸復興儒學的現實意義及其面臨的問題 (The practical significance of the revival of ruxue in mainland China and the problems it faces), spread over two issues of the pro–New Confucian journal Ehu yuekan 鵝湖月刊.40 Jiang’s essay—with which I deal in some detail in Chapter 12—is sometimes described as the “manifesto” of the mainland New Confucian movement.41 In 1988, Beijing University philosophy professor Chen Lai 陳來—then a visiting scholar at the HarvardYenching Institute—published an article in Zhongguo luntan defending the continued relevance of ruxue as a cultural tradition.42 In 1989, Mou Zhongjian published an article in the Taiwan journal Dangdai 當代, praising ruxue as a cultural and philosophical resource for China’s future. He also outlined recent developments in the renewed interest in the “rehabilitation” of ruxue in late 1980s China and credits the visits of several Japanese and overseas Chinese scholars as having played an important role in that rehabilitation: Okada Takehiko 岡田武彥, Kanaya Osamu 金 谷治, Takahashi Susumu 高橋進, Chen Rongjie 陳榮傑 (Wing-tsit Chan), Du Weiming, Cheng Zhongying, Yu Yingshi, and Fu Weixun.43 Zhongguo luntan also enabled other forms of “cross-strait” dialogue to be published, such as the selections from a talk by Du Weiming entitled “The Future

( 38. In particular, Liu Shuxian, Zhongguo zhexue yu xiandaihua. 39. Liu Shuxian, “Lun rujia sixiang yu xiandaihua, houxiandaihua de wenti.” 40. Jiang Qing, “Zhongguo dalu fuxing ruxue de xianshi yiyi ji qi mianlin de wenti.” 41. See Fang Keli’s comments in Shao Hanming, “Xiandai xin ruxue yanjiu shi nian huigu,” 132. 42. Chen Lai, “Duoyuan wenhua jiegouzhong de ruxue ji qi dingwei.” 43. Mou Zhongjian, “Ruxue de jindai mingyun.” Fu Weixun (Wenhua Zhongguo yu Zhongguo wenhua, 4, 5) claims that it was only due to the circulation among mainland intellectuals of his 1987 article on Jin Guantao 金觀濤 and Liu Qingfeng 劉清峰 in the Taiwan journal Wenxing 文星, that these intellectuals came to learn of Jin’s and Liu’s academic achievements.

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Prospects for the Development of Ruxue,” originally given at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences Philosophy Institute in 1986, with a commentary (shuping 述評) by Zhang Chunbo 張春波 (CASS).44

Concluding Remarks I believe we can identify two key “official” factors that contributed to the ruxue revivalism of late 1980s China: a growing interest in the purported efficacy of rujia capitalism45 to contribute to China’s program of economic modernization,46 and the provision of a discursive space for studying and discussing ruxue on the strength of its perceived role in the cultural tradition of the “Chinese nation.” It is important, however, to bear in mind that even as ruxue was accorded the status of “mainstay of traditional Chinese culture,” and despite the pronouncements of some of the more enthusiastic ruxue revivalists in the academic community, party-state authorities were generally careful not to reduce traditional culture to ruxue. A number of scholars have attributed the revival of interest in ruxue in the latter half of the 1980s in China to a combination of two factors. First, influential party ideologues believed that “rujia capitalism” might provide an alternative to the Western model of modernity—“a contestatory narrative of modernity”47—and thereby contribute to an alternative modernization, one appropriate to socialism with Chinese charac-

( 44. Zhang Chunbo, “Du Weiming jiaoshou tan ruxue fazhan de qianjing wenti.” 45. Wm. Theodore de Bary, a participant in the 1989 conference commemorating Confucius’s birth, notes that Goh Keng Swee (former minister of education and deputy prime minister of Singapore; see Chapter 1) was one of the conference sponsors. “He had played a major economic planning role in Singapore, proto-typical to Gu Mu’s in the People’s Republic, and his presence suggested that in Beijing, as in Singapore, the Confucian program was inspired by politicaleconomic, no less than cultural, considerations” (see de Bary, “The New Confucianism in Beijing,” 179). 46. This was despite the fact that in the latter half of the 1980s, a number of intellectuals also drew on Weber to support calls for a wholesale rejection of Chinese tradition. On the mainland, the rujia capitalism thesis did not bloom fully until the 1990s. On this point, see Liu Dong, “The Weberian View and Confucianism,” 203–6. Nevertheless, Liu does acknowledge (p. 208) that “economic progress in the East Asian region was, to some extent, a catalyst for the renewed transmission of Confucian doctrine in mainland Chinese society.” 47. Jing Wang, High Culture Fever, 73.

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teristics. As explained by prominent “New Left” intellectual and editor of the journal Dushu Wang Hui 汪暉 (Qinghua University): Clearly, Confucian capitalism is an ideology of modernization. In its rejection of Western values, Confucian capitalism enables exponents to embrace the capitalist mode of production and the global capitalist system—phenomena born of Western historical specificity—while adding a layer of cultural nationalism on top. In this context, Confucian capitalism and the contemporary Chinese socialist reforms are simply two sides of the same coin.48

Second, ruxue has certain resources that can contribute to the establishment of a socialist pyscho-spiritual ( jingshen) civilization. Chinese Cultural Studies academic Jing Wang (MIT), for example, argues: “The revival of neo-Confucianism (ruxue fuxing) [in the 1980s] can thus be taken as a response that the CCP and cultural conservatives made to the epochal demands of Deng’s China for a substitute utopian vision in the face of Marxist ideological disintegration.”49 The explanatory value of the first factor has some merit, given the growing international attention paid to the economic performance of a number of Asian countries in the 1980s—in particular, Japan and the Four Mini-Dragons—although it is less clear just how rujia capitalism might actually have contributed to China’s socialist modernization. The second factor is less persuasive. It is true that Gu Mu and others gave qualified endorsement to the portrayal of ruxue as a tradition that represented certain ethical norms and traditional values of enduring relevance. Nevertheless, perfunctory genuflection to a few vague, contextless cosmological notions (“harmony”; “the unity of heaven and humans”)50 and a couple of “traditional virtues” surely amounts to something less than a “utopian vision in the face of Marxist ideological disintegration.”51 Similarly, I find it difficult to concur with my antipodean colleagues Lin Min and Maria Galikowski, when they cite “the officially sanctioned Confucius Research Foundation [China Confucius Foundation?]” as a “prime example” of their thesis that “the Chinese authorities increasingly used cultural tradition in an attempt to strengthen the existing

( 48. Wang Hui, “Contemporary Chinese Thought and the Question of Modernity,” 22. 49. Jing Wang, High Culture Fever, 64–65. 50. Incidentally, traditional ru writings have no monopoly on the concept of “the unity of heaven and humans.” 51. Jing Wang, High Culture Fever, 65.

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power structure and boost their own legitimacy.”52 The existing power structure would have been in a truly parlous state if the authorities believed that their fortunes could be reversed by providing official sanction to the “Confucius Research Foundation.” Elsewhere Jing Wang talks of the CCP’s “official patronage” of the “neo-Confucianists,”53 referring to funding for the New Confucian project under the seventh five-year plan for philosophy and the social sciences. Yet, Fang Keli and Li Jinquan were anything but promoters of some form of rujia capitalism. Their whole approach to the study of this movement was highly critical. Their stated aim was not to endorse the New Confucian movement but to “critically inherit” it: “get rid of the dross and develop the refined.” Fang’s (the real leader of the project) approach to research on New Confucianism and ruxue more generally is that of an ideological struggle.54 Fang was able to secure a decade of funding support for his New Confucian projects55 because of his staunchly Marxist line (and his willingness to ostracize and vilify those in the research teams who deviated from that line; see Chapter 11). In the first collection of essays reporting on the project’s initial findings, Marxist scholar Jin Longde 金隆德 (Anhui Academy of Social Sciences) states: As an ideology of our country’s bourgeois class, New Confucianism represents one phase in the early period of an entire journey in which the Chinese (Zhonghua) nation moved from narrow feudal ideology toward modernization.

( 52. Lin and Galikowski, The Search for Modernity, 56. 53. Jing Wang, High Culture Fever, 78. Wang’s analysis is further hampered by the fact that she nowhere defines her idiosyncratic use of the term “neoConfucian.” At times the term is used to refer to Yu Yingshi and Du Weiming (both of whom she portrays as avid proponents of the “Confucian capitalism” thesis); at other times it is used to refer to scholars such as the secondgeneration New Confucians (Mou Zongsan et al.). More generally, it is shorthand for any proponent of the Confucian capitalism thesis. (In fact, in his 1979 publication Work Economic Development: 1979 and Beyond, Herman Kahn employs the term to refer to certain “East Asian economies.”) Nor is it apparent why the phenomenon of “neo-Confucianism” should be portrayed as a “revival,” especially as Wang is not suggesting a revival of aspects of Song and Ming ru philosophy (“Neo-Confucianism”). 54. See, e.g., Fang Keli’s 1987 essay “Guanyu xiandai xin rujia yanjiu de jige wenti,” 10. 55. In 1992, the Chinese government announced renewed funding to Fang Keli for research on the New Confucian Intellectual Movement (xiandai xin rujia sichao yanjiu 現代新儒家思潮研究) under the national eighth five-year plan (1991–95) for philosophy and the social sciences.

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Clarifying this intellectual phase is without doubt essential to effecting the modernization of our nation’s ideology. I feel that this should be the fundamental purpose of our studying the New Confucian movement.

Jin also remarked that some scholars in Taiwan and Hong Kong were planning to use New Confucian thought to oppose Marxism-Leninism and that, in order to combat this trend, it was necessary to study New Confucianism.56 These statements do not square with the thesis that the CCP actively sought to revive ruxue. I have already drawn attention to the prominence of the “critical inheritance” paradigm in several of Gu Mu’s speeches in the second half of the 1980s (discussed in more detail in Chapter 11). Similarly, Academy of Chinese Culture President Tang Yijie made it clear in his general preface (1988) to the Gang-Tai haiwai Zhongguo wenhua congshu book series that the academy’s approach to traditional culture was consistent with the paradigm of “critically inheriting” the past. Let us also consider some of the other “officially sanctioned” ruxue-related research that was being produced during this same period. Song Zhiming’s 宋志明 Xiandai xin rujia yanjiu 現代新儒家研究 (Studies on modern New Confucians)57 was probably the first monograph on the New Confucians written in China. Although not published until 1991, it was based on the author’s 1986 Renmin University Ph.D. dissertation. (The preface to the book by Shi Jun 石俊 is dated 1987, and Song’s own Foreword is dated 1988.) Many monographs on the New Confucians published in China during the first half of the 1990s were based on Ph.D. dissertations, the majority of which were completed at Nankai University under the supervision of Fang Keli. Song’s monograph is representative of early studies in which Marxist historiography dominates the framework of research. Indeed, the opening paragraph of the first chapter states: “The appearance of ‘New Confucian’ philosophy was intimately tied to developmental changes in the general trend of modern ( jindai ) bourgeois philosophy. It was a product of the declining state of bourgeois philosophy.” In the same chapter, we learn that New Confucian philosophy was the ideological product of a semi-feudal, semi-bourgeois society and was protected by the large landlord capitalist class, the ordinary capitalist class, and the local (i.e., Chinese) bourgeoisie. The idea that research such as this was at the forefront of an ideological agenda to shore up the partystate’s waning legitimacy is, quite simply, untenable.

( 56. Jin Longde 金隆德, “Tantan yanjiu xin rujia de mudi he fangfa,” 16, 15. 57. Song Zhiming, Xiandai xin rujia yanjiu.

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3 The Rise of Ruxue in 1990s China

Before we proceed to examine more specific topics and issues in later chapters, several of which span developments over the whole or the latter half of the 1990s and well into the new millennium, it is useful to have an overview of some key trends in mainland academic discourse on ruxue during the 1990s, in particular the first half of the decade. Foremost among these trends were the continued growth of New Confucian studies on the mainland and the increasing dominance of the field by mainland scholars as they vied with overseas-based Chinese scholars for proprietary rights (and hence interpretive authority) over individual first- and second-generation New Confucians. Increased interaction with overseas scholars introduced new methodologies and problematics, which in turn stimulated interest in ru studies more generally—not just New Confucian studies—during the first half of the 1990s. This is evidenced not only in the volume of book and journal publications but also by the predominant focus on the question of the contemporary relevance of ruxue to Chinese culture. By the end of the decade, the editors of the “neo-traditionalist” journal Yuandao 原道 were openly expressing their desire to establish a “mainland new ruxue,” as other scholars were describing the second half of the 1990s as marking the beginning of the Post–New Confucian age. Institutional factors contributing to the ruxue revival in 1990s China include the establishment of the International Confucian Association (Guoji ruxue lianhehui) and its associated publishing and conference activities and the growing official endorsement of ruxue as an important constitutive element in “China’s traditional culture.” The second notion was conscripted to serve the agenda of state-led nationalism in the wake 58 John Makeham - 978-1-68417-048-7

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of the patriotic education campaign promulgated over the course of the first half of the 1990s. The ruxue revival also gained political prominence as “ruxue fever” became elided with National Studies in critical debates between proponents of National Studies and Marxist scholars and ideologues during the mid- to late 1990s. This alignment developed as a consequence of the vexed problem of how to combine Marxism with China’s traditional culture in order to develop a socialism suited to China’s national conditions (guoqing 國 情 ).

From Xin Ruxue to Ruxue Successfully transcending the geographical and political boundaries of China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, New Confucianism has played a leading role since the mid-1980s in bridging the cultural and ideological divide separating mainland and overseas Chinese scholars by providing a shared intellectual discourse. By the early 1990s, a broad consensus had been reached among Chinese scholars that the New Confucianism movement could be traced to the early part of the twentieth century. There were, however, differences in scholarly emphasis. In part, this was due to the fact that overseas Chinese scholars had long been familiar with—and, just as important, had access to—the writings of the New Confucians; indeed, many of the overseas scholars had studied under the so-called second-generation New Confucians, either in Taiwan or Hong Kong. As such, they did not confront a “learning curve” (or an ideological barrier). By contrast, much of the mainland literature on New Confucianism published between 1986 and 1992 was concerned with retrospectively identifying which thinkers should be classed as New Confucian.1 Although some seven to twelve individuals are commonly identified as representative New Confucians, even today no lasting consensus has been reached. Another question of concern to mainland scholars at the time was whether New Confucianism was a philosophical movement or a cultural movement, or both.2 Up until at least the mid-1990s, the problem for many mainland scholars (and even a number of overseas Chinese scholars) was that “New Confucian” had become a much more exclusive category than

( 1. In his essay “Guanyu xiandai xin rujia yanjiu de jige wenti,” 1–2, written in 1987, Fang Keli outlines some of the early accounts in China about who should be classified as New Confucian. 2. See chap. 1 of Makeham, ed., New Confucianism.

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most were prepared to concede. Exclusion of major figures such as Feng Youlan (1895–1990) and He Lin 賀麟 (1902–93)—and sometimes even Liang Shuming (1893–1988)—from the New Confucian pantheon would severely diminish the proprietary rights of mainland scholars over the interpretation and definition of New Confucianism—past, present, and future. Conversely, the stock of a significant number of overseas Chinese scholars—buoyed through master-disciple connections with Mou Zongsan (1909–95), Tang Junyi 唐君毅 (1909–78), and Xu Fuguan 徐復觀 (1903–82), in particular—would be greatly enhanced. Fang Keli relates that his research project attracted considerable attention from “overseas New Confucians” right from its commencement, as evidenced by newspaper and journal articles. He claims that their response to the project was ambivalent. On one hand, overseas New Confucians were pleased that they were at last being noticed; yet, on the other hand, they were concerned that their monopoly of “interpretive authority” ( jieshiquan 解釋權) in matters New Confucian was under threat.3 Already by the mid- to late 1980s, it was apparent to many overseas Chinese scholars that the most coherent intellectual New Confucian lineage—and the succession they regard as the orthodox daotong 道統 (interconnecting thread of the way)—is the so-called Xiong [Shili (1885– 1968)]–Mou [Zongsan] lineage. Over the course of the 1990s, this view became more widely accepted by scholars on the mainland as well. (Some scholars had become less concerned about cross-strait academic rivalry; others found alternative ways to stake proprietary claims; still others found more substantive issues of scholarship commanding their interest.) Ironically, it was precisely the issue of the Xiong-Mou lineage that led to significant disquiet in the ranks of overseas Chinese scholars sympathetic to New Confucian teachings and proud of the cultural capital that had rapidly accrued to New Confucianism in “cultural China.” This disquiet arose in response to Yu Yingshi’s denial that Qian Mu 錢穆 (1895–1990) was a New Confucian, his attacks on Xiong Shili and Mou Zongsan, and his critique of the daotong concept—all in a long essay entitled “Qian Mu yu xin rujia” 錢穆與新儒家 (Qian Mu and the New Confucians; see Chapter 7). Despite the tensions generated by this incident, it did not impact negatively on the growth of New Confucian studies, either in Taiwan or on the mainland. Indeed, it seems to have functioned as a creative tension, or at least stimulated generally keen academic rivalry. In 1992, the

( 3. Guan Dong, “Xiandai xin ruxue yanjiu de huigu yu zhanwang,” 82.

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Chinese government announced renewed funding to Fang Keli for research on the Modern New Confucian Intellectual Movement (xiandai xin rujia sichao yanjiu 現代新儒家思潮研究) under the national eighth five-year plan (1991–95) for philosophy and the social sciences. In the 1997 assessment of Zheng Jiadong—at the time one of the mainland scholars most actively involved in this research—the influence of mainland research on New Confucianism and on ruxue studies more generally was twofold. It re-established exploration of how ruxue might be modernized (after a hiatus of forty years), and it introduced new “discursive systems” and hermeneutic models. These developments enabled scholars to transcend earlier, simplistic hermeneutic models (such as the binary idealist-materialist classification) and to engage with scholars and scholarship outside China.4 As an area of scholarly interest and activity on the mainland, ruxue studies rapidly expanded during the 1990s. According to Zheng, “If it is said that research on ruxue from the 1950s to the 1970s served politics as a subordinate part of an ideological struggle, and that in the 1980s it was part of an intellectual liberalization movement to break into a forbidden area, then in the 1990s, in terms of academic and cultural significance, it has exhibited a relative independence.”5 In the first half of the 1990s, close to 300 books on ruxue were published; most dealt with the preQin, Song-Ming, and modern (xiandai ) periods. Confucius, Zhu Xi, and Wang Yangming were the subjects of the largest numbers of booklength studies, followed by those on Liang Shuming, Xiong Shili, and Feng Youlan.6 Previously most studies had focused on the Ming-Qing transition and the early modern ( jindai ) periods. By the mid-1990s, a range of journals regularly published in the area of ruxue studies.7 In a study surveying ruxue studies on the mainland and in Taiwan for the period 1993–97, Guo Qiyong 郭 齊 勇 (Wuhan University) identified the following as prominent areas: ruxue of the pre-Confucius period; creative interpretations in the field of classical studies ( jingxue 經 學); the debate whether ruxue is a religion or has a religious nature; the

( 4. Zheng Jiadong, “Jin wushi nian lai dalu ruxue de fazhan ji qi xianzhuang,” 30. 5. Ibid., 28. 6. Ibid., 29. 7. These included Guoji ruxue yanjiu 國際儒學研究, Kongzi yanjiu 孔子研究, Zhongguo zhexueshi jikan 中國哲學史季刊, Zhouyi yanjiu 周易研究, Guoji yixue yanjiu 國際易學研究, Xueshu jilin 學術集林, Guoxue yanjiu 國學研究, Zhongguo wenhua 中國文化, Xueren 學人, Yuandao 原道, and Yuanxue 原學.

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relationship between ruxue and primitive and modern religions; and Song, Ming, and Qing ruxue. For the same period he also lists more than thirty conferences on ruxue.8 Over the course of the 1990s, a substantial number of “ruxue histories” were also compiled.9 A recent offering in this genre is Ershi shiji ruxue yanjiu daxi 20 世紀儒學研究大系 (Studies on twentieth-century ruxue) published in 2003 by Zhonghua shuju. The series comprises 21 volumes, totaling some 10.5 million characters. Even more ambitious were the several ruzang 儒藏 (ru canon) projects announced in the first decade of the twenty-first century. Despite the growth of ruxue scholarship since the mid-1980s, it is no exaggeration to claim that over this same period more journal articles, collected volumes, and conference proceedings have been devoted to variations on the theme of the contemporary relevance of ruxue to Chinese culture than to any other aspect of ruxue studies. Even in many works of historical scholarship, time and again, investigators seem animated by this issue above all else. This predominant focus on the contemporary cultural significance of ruxue, as distinct from the value of traditional ruxue writings as a rich philosophical legacy, has not always pleased scholars of a more purist academic bent. Chinese University of Hong Kong philosopher Zheng Zongyi 鄭宗義, for example, comments that the focus of ruxue studies since the early 1980s in China has been on the contemporary cultural significance of ruxue, on how intellectual ruxue (sixiangxing de ruxue 思想性的儒學) can be transformed into a practical and socially relevant ruxue. “Comparatively speaking, the reinterpretation and reconstruction of traditional ruxue has been given a cold shoulder. Consequently this has led people to feel that the connection between traditional ruxue and contemporary ruxue [i.e., New Confucianism] appears to have been severed into two unrelated categories: the former belongs to the field of the history of Chinese philosophy and the latter belongs to cultural discourse.” Zheng attributes this to the fact that the writings of the first- and second-generation New Confucians have been treated not as interpretations of traditional philosophy but as the personal perspectives of individual New Confucians: “In fact, the great body of interpretive work and achievements of the various New Confucians in the field of Chinese philosophy have been unable to

( 8. Guo Qiyong, “Zhongguo dalu diqu jin wunian lai (1993–1997) de ruxue yanjiu,” 119–22. 9. See Tan Baogang, “Ershi shiji jiushi niandai Zhongguo dalu ji bu ruxueshi zhuzuo shuping.”

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have much influence on the philosophical research of mainland scholars.”10 He argues that this “unhealthy phenomenon” threatens to undermine the project of tapping the intellectual resources of ruxue and thereby contributing to addressing the problems of the modern world. Unless traditional ruxue is reconstructed as the basis for this project, all that can be achieved is a “castle built on sand” with no potential to develop. Equally, in order to ensure the contemporary relevance of historical interpretation, the analytical framework of the tradition’s modern interpreters cannot be ignored. For Zheng, the historical and interpretive frames of inquiry must be linked.11

1994 This emphasis on the contemporary “cultural” significance of ruxue can be underscored by drawing attention to several events that distinguish 1994 as a watershed for ruxue studies on the mainland. First, the International Confucian Association (ICA) was established in October 1994. This occurred at the conference in Beijing celebrating the 2545th anniversary of Confucius’s birth. The first president was Gu Mu (former CCP Politburo member and former deputy premier of the State Council), and Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee Kwan Yew served as honorary director. Although the headquarters of the association is permanently based in Beijing, its standing committee includes representatives from a range of other, non-mainland ruxue associations. The ICA also publishes the journal Guoji ruxue yanjiu 國際儒學研究. Commenting on the significance of the founding of the ICA, Tang Yijie suggested that “Confucianism might one day play an important ideological [i.e., united front] role in several Asian countries” because the ICA’s inaugural conference “was attended by representatives from practically every country in East and Southeast Asia.”12

( 10. Zheng was able to identify only three exceptions to this: Chen Lai, You wu zhi jing: Wang Yangming zhexue de jingshen (The realms of having and nothaving: the spirit of Wang Yangming’s philosophy; 1991); Yang Zebo 楊澤波, Mengzi xing shan lun yanjiu (Studies on Mencius’s theory that the nature is good; 1995); and Dongfang Shuo, Liu Jishan zhexue yanjiu (Studies on Liu Zongzhou’s philosophy; 1997). 11. Zheng Zongyi, “Dalu xuezhe de Song-Ming lixue yanjiu,” 123, 124. 12. Tang Yijie, “Some Reflections on New Confucianism in Mainland Chinese Culture of the 1990s,” 123.

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The conference held in commemoration of the 2545th anniversary of Confucius’s birth was organized by the China Confucius Foundation. The foundation moved to Ji’nan in 1996 after an imbroglio concerning the fiscal relationship between it and the ICA, an organization it had helped to establish. The foundation has received funding from various levels of government, but since 2000 it has been actively involved in investment enterprises such as the China Confucius Cultural Property Investment Fund (Zhongguo Kongzi wenhua chanye touzi jijin 中國孔子 文化產業投資基金). When I visited its secretariat in October 2003, I was enthusiastically invited to discuss potential investment opportunities. This new entrepreneurial spirit is enshrined in the “Regulations of the Management Committee of the China Confucius Foundation” (1999). Article 2 of the regulations describes the committee’s guiding principles as follows: “Under the guidance of Marxism, Leninism, and Mao Zedong Thought and Deng Xiaoping’s Theory, to adhere to the policies and principles of the party and state and to endeavor to make full use of the foundation’s present personnel, material and financial resources, and further increase and accumulate personnel, material and financial resources.”13 The 1994 conference was significant because of the participation of several leading party figures. In the opening address, the chairman of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, Li Ruihuan 李 瑞環, stated: “Today’s descendents of Yan Di and Huang Di have a responsibility to use scientific methods to summarize ruxue, to invest it with contemporary significance, and to serve current realities. . . . Confucius was a great Chinese thinker and educator. The ruxue he established was the main pillar of traditional Chinese culture and is the pride

( 13. This information is included in a bilingual pamphlet, China Confucius Foundation, 23, presented to visitors to the foundation’s headquarters in Ji’nan. In recent years, the ICA has also come to rely increasingly on investments and donations from entrepreneurs and private benefactors. Its initial source of funding was a grant from the central government. The purpose of the grant was to enable the ICA to secure an income stream through investments. Unfortunately for the ICA, it became involved in financial difficulties after it lent a Beijingbased entrepreneur RMB 700 million(!) in 1999. Since then, 90 percent of its income has been from a core group of entrepreneurs and private benefactors. In 2004 plans were made to request another large grant from the central government so as to regain its previous financial strength. See the candid financial report in Guoji ruxue lianhehui mishuchu, ed., Guoji ruxue lianhehui di san jie huiyuan dahui wenjian huibian, 28–36.

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of the Chinese nation.”14 The theme of critical inheritance was stated more explicitly in the speech by Deputy Premier of the State Council Li Lanqing 李嵐清 at the opening ceremony: Today in coming together to commemorate Confucius and to study and discuss his thought and the rujia doctrines that he established, we must critically inherit, pass on, and promote this valuable cultural legacy. We must select its essence so that under the new historical conditions and according to the needs of the new times, we get rid of the old and bring forth the new, enabling ruxue to make a positive contribution to the construction of socialism with Chinese characteristics.

Li also addressed the topic of ruxue and moral education: Confucius and the rujia represented by him stressed the importance of moral cultivation and moral education. Regarding the perfection of subjective morality as the means to complete the foundation of social morality, they combined individual cultivation with the duties and responsibilities that should be accorded to other people, the country, and society. It is important to bear this in mind in the current social situation in which the market economy and the production of commodities are developing, since it provides a lesson for us as we nurture a new generation who have ideals, morals, culture, and discipline.15

Gu Mu, in his capacity as honorary chair of the China Confucius Foundation, also gave a speech at the opening ceremony in which he drew attention to the importance of raising the quality of research not only on Confucius and rujia thought but also on the task of popularizing and disseminating it. He emphasized the need for scholars to contribute to the cultivation of the people and to assist in solving social problems. Thus he recommended that rujia thought be made accessible in an easily understood format “and broadcast to the masses, especially the great numbers of young people. Moreover, we need to spark their interest in a way that is beneficial to raising the level of the broad masses’ cultural accomplishments and social morality.” He cited the example of Singapore as having been successful in doing this in schools and notes that “our country’s Ministry of Education is currently preparing and publishing a book series titled Zhongguo chuantong daode 中國傳統道德 [Traditional Chinese morals].”16

( 14. Renmin ribao, Oct. 6, 1994, 1. 15. Li Lanqing, “Kongzi danchen 2545 zhounian jinian dahuishang de jianghua,” 4. 16. Gu Mu, “Kongzi danchen 2545 zhounian jinian dahuishang zhici,” 4.

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Nineteen ninety-four was also the year in which the campaign for patriotic education reached its apex. The series of patriotic campaigns begun in 1989 soon after the suppression of the Tian’anmen protests17 expanded to include a youth education campaign in 1991. In 1991, the CCP Central Propaganda Department also issued a Circular on Fully Using Cultural Relics to Conduct Education in Patriotism and Revolutionary Traditions. In January 1993, the State Education Commission issued a policy document outlining the role of patriotism as a guiding principle in educational reform. In the following November, the CCP Central Propaganda Department, the State Education Commission, and two ministries jointly issued a circular on carrying out patriotic education in primary and secondary schools through film and television. In June 1994, “a national conference on education adopted a document, ‘Guidelines for Patriotic Education,’ which embraced the patriotic themes of the 1993 program and [was] disseminated . . . to all educational institutions from kindergartens to universities.”18 In August 1994, the CCP Central Committee issued the “Guidelines for Implementing Patriotic Education” (Zhonggong zhongyang guanyu yinfa “Aiguozhuyi jiaoyu shishi gangyao” de tongzhi 中共中央關於印發《愛國主義教育實施綱要》 的通知) drafted by the Central Propaganda Department.19 According to Chinese Cultural Studies academic Liu Kang, with this promulgation, “ ‘traditional culture’ becomes the core of the curriculum, and it is telling that in this document of some ten thousand words there is only one sentence mentioning Marxism.”20 It should also be noted that the document mentions neither Confucius nor ruxue.21 Nevertheless, several references are made to “traditional virtues” (without specifying which ones), the chief purpose of the campaign being to link pride in China’s cultural traditions with state-led nationalism.

( 17. For a description of some aspects of the early period (1989–90) of these campaigns, see Yingjie Guo, Cultural Nationalism in Contemporary China, 25–28, 31–32. 18. Suisheng Zhao, “A State-Led Nationalism,” 292; idem, A Nation-State by Construction, 218. 19. For a copy of the text, see http://news.xinhuanet.com/ziliao/2005–03/16/ content_2705546.htm. 20. Liu Kang, “Is There an Alternative to (Capitalist) Globalization?,” 172. 21. Suisheng Zhao’s (A Nation-State by Construction, 9) claim that the CCP “revived Confucianism” as part of the content of the patriotic education campaign is offered without any supporting evidence.

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Yuandao, which is linked to the National Studies movement, was also founded in 1994. The journal was launched by Chen Ming (see Chapter 9), a researcher at the CASS Institute for World Religions (Beijing), who continues to serve as the journal’s chief editor. The vast majority of the contributors to the first issue were academics at CASS, but already by the second issue, a much broader spectrum of academic institutional affiliations was represented. Although the stated mission of the journal is to promote the modern relevance of traditional culture, articles on, and sympathetic to, ruxue have predominated. In the editorial postface to the 1999 issue of Yuandao (vol. 5), Chen Ming and Zhu Hanming 朱漢明 stated that, like many of the generation born during the 1960s or 1970s, they developed a “sympathetic understanding of tradition” through their exposure to the writings of the New Confucians. They also pondered how they might now establish a “mainland new ruxue” to engage with the New Confucianism in Taiwan and Hong Kong (p. 466).22

National Studies and Marxism Nineteen ninety-four also marked the beginning of a series of heated debates over National Studies (guoxue 國學). In his 1991 general preface to the book series Guoxue congshu 國學叢書, Zhang Dainian (Beijing University) described National Studies as “an abbreviation for [traditional] Chinese scholarship.” He identified the following fields of scholarship as falling under its purview: philosophy, classical studies, literature, history, politics, military studies, natural science (astronomy, arithmetic, geography, agriculture, hydraulics), veterinary science, religion, and art. Although the rise of National Studies in the 1990s is generally traced to 1993, Zhang elsewhere made the point that even before the events at Beijing University in 1993 there had been quite a few book series and journals devoted to the broad area of National Studies and it was against this backdrop that the term “National Studies fever” came into use.23 A series of events marked the rise of National Studies in the early 1990s.24 First was the establishment of the Research Center for

( 22. Wen Zhao (pen name of Fang Keli), “Ruxue yanjiuzhong de lilun yu fangfa wenti,” 45, 50, describes some of the authors of articles published in the first two issues of Yuandao as “mainland new rujia.” 23. Zhang Dainian, “Guoxue yu shidai jingshen,” 1. 24. Li Minghui (“Jiedu dangqian Zhongguo dalu de ruxuere,” 83) argues that the introduction of Western hermeneutics in the late 1980s and early 1990s led

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Traditional Chinese Culture at Beijing University in early 1992, followed by the publication of the journal Guoxue yanjiu 國學研究 in May 1993. A full-page article in Renmin ribao on August 16, 1993, introduced the rise of National Studies at Beijing University. The article attracted attention because it was the first major article in a supplement of that paper to report on events at the university since 1989. Two days later, another article, this time on the front page of Renmin ribao, praised the National Studies research being promoted at the university. In October 1993, Beijing University student groups organized a “National Studies Month” with lectures and talks from prominent figures such as Ji Xianlin, Deng Guangming 鄧廣銘, and Zhang Dainian. This event was also reported in the national media. In November, China Central Television reported on the National Studies fever. In December, Beijing University and Central China Television agreed to produce a 150-part televised documentary on traditional Chinese culture. The agreement stated: “This production will be guided by Marxism, fully implement the principles of ‘critical inheritance’ and ‘making the past serve the present,’ and will pay attention to social benefit. . . . The aim is to promote the excellent traditional culture of the Chinese nation so as to boost the people’s self-confidence, self-respect, and patriotic thought.” As Chen Lai points out, this fad was very much limited to the campus of Beijing University; it was not orchestrated nationally.25 National Studies achieved greater national prominence in 1994 with the appearance of an article in the June issue of Zhexue yanjiu by Li Denggui 李登貴 (under his pen name Luo Bu 羅卜), an assistant editor in the Philosophy Institute, CASS. This piece was directed at an article in the previous issue by Chen Guoqian 陳國謙 (Beijing University environmental scientist), in which Chen argued that traditional Chinese dialectic26 treated subject and object as constituting a unity.27 According to Chen, in the prevailing form of dialectic in the West and in Marxism, subject and object are in opposition to one another. Thus, whereas in traditional Chinese dialectic the relationship is one of harmony, in the

( to the development of a kind of cultural conservatism conducive to the rise of the National Studies fad. It seems more likely that the National Studies trend was a further development of the “culture fever” in the second half of the 1980s. 25. “Chuantong wenhua wenti bitan,” 5. 26. Chen referred to Zhang Zai’s 張載 (1020–77) philosophical writings as representative of this traditional dialectic. 27. Chen Guoqian, “Guanyu huanjing wenti de zhexue sikao.”

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West and in Marxism the relationship is one of conflict and struggle. Li saw this as symptomatic of a more general tendency being promoted by the National Studies camp to banish the “new culture of socialism” from the fold of Chinese culture. He was also critical of those he characterized as attempting to construct a new theoretical system based on the teachings of Confucius and Dong Zhongshu to rival Marxism. 28 Li’s criticisms were later supported by the head of CASS and party theoretician, Hu Sheng 胡繩.29 From this point on, both the rise of National Studies and “the ruxue fever” became the focal point of critical debate, the two phenomena being conflated. Two months later, Wang Shengping 王生平, also an assistant editor in the Philosophy Institute, criticized the use of National Studies as a basis for dialogue with Western culture because “the object of study in National Studies is a product of feudal society, whereas modern Western culture is a product of capitalist society.”30 In January 1995, Jin Jingfang 金景芳 and Lü Shaogang 呂紹綱 (both at Jilin University) responded to Wang’s article, arguing from a Marxist perspective that it is unrealistic to believe that the study of ruxue would lead to the weakening or overthrow of Marxism in China. As for Western culture, the Chinese people should learn from the “successful experience and achievements of advanced cultures.”31 Wang (writing under the pen name Zhuge Ying 諸葛嬰), in turn, responded with another article, in which he widened his criticisms to include the New Confucians.32 Other criticisms of Jin and Lü’s article were made by Chen Shuyu 陳漱渝33 (director of the Lu Xun Museum) and Li Denggui.34 In January 1995, the China Confucius Foundation organized a symposium to discuss the relationship between the National Studies fad and Marxism. A counteroffensive directed at critics of National Studies was launched in 1995, in the second issue of the foundation’s journal Kongzi

( 28. Luo Bu, “Guocui, fugui, wenhua,” 36. 29. Hu Sheng, “Ruhe jianshe Zhongguo xin wenhua,” 3–4. Hu’s criticisms of “tradition” and its continuation date at least to the 1950s when he criticized Feng Youlan’s theory of “abstract inheritance”; see the discussion in Louie, Inheriting Tradition, 44–45. 30. Wang Shengping, “Tiaochu ‘guoxue’ yanjiu guoxue,” 39. 31. Jin Jingfang and Lü Shaogang, “Guanyu Kongzi ji qi sixiang de pingjia wenti,” 35. 32. Zhuge Ying, “Zhaiju fa bianxi,” 10. 33. Chen Shuyu, “Ru ci ‘guoxue’ re neng jiejue xianshi wenti ma.” 34. Li Denggui, “Wusi jingshen.”

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yanjiu, with the publication of a collection of short articles by prominent scholars, most of them in the field of Chinese philosophy. The lead article by intellectual historian Xin Guanjie 辛冠傑 argues that the state of National Studies was, in fact, very undeveloped and far from being at a “fever” pitch, as evidenced by the paucity of specialist journals (of which he identifies Kongzi yanjiu as representative), book publications, and conferences.35 He found doctrinaire Marxists misguided in their criticisms because “only by combining Marxism and China’s traditional culture is it possible to develop socialism’s new culture in a way suited to China’s national conditions ( guoqing ). China’s traditional culture certainly will not, and cannot, replace Marxism.” As for other critics, he claimed that they were either radical reformists who wished to eradicate traditional culture or philistines with no interest in understanding traditional culture.36 The common theme of this group of articles was not only that National Studies was compatible with Marxism but that China’s traditional culture was an important aspect of socialism with Chinese characteristics and needed to be studied and properly evaluated.37 The relationship between Na-

( 35. In a similar vein, in response to an article criticizing “new conservatism” in China, including the National Studies fever, Guo Qiyong posed the following question, “Does the National Studies fever really exist?” To which he replied: Today, we professors and doctoral supervisors who hold university posts in literature, philosophy, and history still rely on reference books in order to understand—with some considerable difficulty—the Book of Documents and the Book of Odes. University students are still unable to name the Four Books and the Four Masterworks of Ming and Qing novels. There is even a supposedly “famous” young poet who did not know what Laozi and Zhuangzi were, making him a laughingstock when he went to Germany. Given this situation . . . how can one glibly talk of “National Studies,” let alone complain that it has become a fad! See Guo Qiyong, “Ping suowei xin pipanzhuyi,” 149–50. 36. Xin Guanjie, “Yinggai gengjia jiji kaizhan Zhongguo chuantong wenhua yanjiu,” 3–4. 37. On these developments, see Li Minghui, “Jiedu dangqian Zhongguo dalu de ruxuere,” 87 ff. In 1996 Zhao Jihui 趙吉惠 (“Guoxue yu shidai jingshen,” 3) similarly argued that despite being “different types of culture,” Marxism and traditional culture have the potential to merge and benefit one another. He states that if Marxism is to guide National Studies research, it must be planted and nurtured in the fertile soil of National Studies. Moreover, “a living Marxism that combines with elite National Studies thought, that has the characteristics of the Chinese nation, and that can solve Chinese problems must be created—

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tional Studies and Marxism continued to be the focus of the debate throughout 1995.38 By 1997, a sort of compromise strategy emerged: National Studies was concerned not narrowly with the rujia tradition but with the whole range of traditional scholarly culture.39 Fan Guiping 范桂萍 and Gan Chunsong (at the time both employed at CASS), for example, argued that National Studies reflected a growing affirmation of “the national culture” and was an expression of pluralism born of the interaction between the fad for postmodernism and nationalism. They cited the following comments by Tang Yijie: “After World War II, following the retreat of Western-centrism, the cultures of the world evidenced a trend toward pluralism. If National Studies were to be blindly promoted in isolation [from this larger context], it is quite possible that it would become disassociated from the development of the global cultural movement.”40 The authors commented: “It is thus apparent that the purpose of National Studies is to promote the complete incorporation of the cream of Chinese culture within the context of global culture. There is a clear difference in intellectual orientation between this and the strong ‘protecting the way’ mentality of national-essence ideology and New Confucianism.” For the authors, the Post–New Confucian Age (which they traced to the rise of National Studies) is a development that signals the rejection of New Confucian moral idealism, as Chinese intellectuals adopt a new inclusive attitude toward China’s cultural heritage: “That is, when people affirm the contemporary value of China’s cultural tradition, they are already beginning to transcend blatant sectarian biases, and—against the backdrop of world culture—are emphasizing the

( not the sort of dogmatic Marxism that has simply managed to commit a few phrases to memory.” 38. In June 1995, the Philosophy Department of the Central Party School convened the Symposium on Traditional Chinese Culture (Zhongguo chuantong wenhua yanjiu xianzhuang xueshu yantaohui 中國傳統文化研究現狀學術討論會) and in October 1995 the Philosophy Institute, CASS, convened a conference on the same topic (Chuantong wenhua yu xiandaihua xueshu taolunhui 傳統文化與 現代化學術討論會). 39. On the ambiguous relationship between ruxue and National Studies in the mid-1990s, see also Liu Kang, “Is There an Alternative to (Capitalist) Globalization?,” 172–77. Unfortunately, Liu’s discussion is marred by an overly reductionist identification of ruxue as “an integral part of the ideology of global capitalism.” By the mid-1990s, such a thesis had become increasingly untenable. 40. Tang Yijie, Zai fei you fei wu zhi jian, 228.

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comprehensive assimilation of all forms of traditional wisdom: rujia, daojia, Mohist, and all the various schools of philosophers.”41 Readers of the day would have been quite familiar with the position that Tang Yijie has been promoting since at least the mid-1980s. For example, in his general preface (1988) to the Academy of Chinese Culture’s Gang-Tai haiwai Zhongguo wenhua congshu book series, in his capacity as academy president, Tang made it clear that the academy’s approach to traditional culture was consistent with the paradigm of “critically inheriting” the past: “Until such time that China’s traditional culture has undergone a rigorous process of criticism and remolding, its negative effects on our nation’s realization of modernization will be greater than its positive effects.” He further distinguished between “traditional culture” (static and fixed) and “cultural tradition” (fluid and active). Unlike traditional culture, the nation’s cultural tradition “will still be the nation’s cultural tradition no matter how it is changed.” In order to realize the historical mission of socialist modernization, Tang outlined his own vision. The contemporary development of culture must be a combination of “global consciousness” and “national consciousness”: Without “global consciousness” we will be unable to view cultural development from the elevated perspective of the whole world, nor we will be able to reflect upon the needs of our times. Consequently, we would inevitably have to leave the path of contemporary human cultural development. . . . As we know, the vitality of a national culture lies in maintaining its cultural tradition, in being able to absorb fully various foreign cultures that are suited to the needs of the age, and in moving beyond its traditional culture.42

Concluding Remarks As stated at the outset, the aim is this chapter is to provide background knowledge of key historical developments as a basis for examining more specific topics and issues in later chapters. The methodology of critical inheritance (and several related methodologies promoted by Marxist intellectual historians) and its adoption by powerful scholars as a leading paradigm in the study of New Confucianism and ruxue are explored more fully in Chapter 11, as is the vexed issue of the relationship between Marxism and the notion of “China’s traditional culture.” The

( 41. Fan Guiping and Gan Chunsong, “Hou xin rujia shidai,” 25, 26. 42. I have used the version of the general preface found in Feng Zusheng, ed., Dangdai xin rujia, 2–5 passim.

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issue has become vexed because for many scholars it is now an article of faith that ruxue, rujia culture, and rujia thought commanded a unique and historically privileged position in China’s traditional cultural identity, the topic of Chapter 5. Some mainland scholars have achieved both notoriety and celebrity for upholding and propagating extreme versions of this cultural nationalist thesis (Chapter 12); over the course of the 1990s, other scholars who formerly displayed strong Marxist sympathies have adopted the cultural identity premise to develop their own philosophical visions (Chapters 6 and 7). Still others see a central role for ruxue in articulating an unbroken tradition of 5,000 years of Chinese culture (Chapters 10, 13, and 14). More immediately, at the beginning of this chapter, I also drew attention to the connection between interpretive authority and an intensifying competition for proprietary rights over individual first- and second-generation New Confucians waged between overseas and mainland Chinese scholars. This is a central theme of the following chapter.

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4 Ruxue Studies in Post-1990 Taiwan

Conferences and research projects have defined much of the ruxuerelated research conducted in Taiwan since the early 1990s. What were the consequences of increasing contact between Taiwan-based scholars and mainland scholars in the 1990s? How did the dynamics of this interaction change over this period and why? What factors influenced Taiwanbased scholars to contextualize ruxue studies within the broader cultural-geographical region of China, Japan, and Korea during the latter half of the 1990s and the first years of the third millennium? Why is the idea of an East Asian ruxue problematic? A theme running throughout the chapter is the conscious sense of competition and rivalry between Taiwanese and mainland scholars of ruxue. The first of the chapter’s three parts examines a seminal series of conferences on New Confucianism convened between 1990 and 2005 and the criticisms Taiwanese scholars directed at the Research Project on the Modern New Confucian Intellectual Movement led by Fang Keli and Li Jinquan. The second part presents a summary analysis of the Taiwan-based response to Fang Keli’s project, the Academia Sinica’s Research Project on Contemporary Ruxue, led by Liu Shuxian and Li Minghui 李明輝 of the Institute for Chinese Literature and Philosophy. The third part introduces the “hermeneutic turn” in Taiwan ruxue studies, in particular the research conducted at the Center for the Study of East Asian Civilizations at National Taiwan University, and the problematic notion of “East Asian ruxue.”

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New Confucian Conference Series The early part of the 1990s brought increasing contact between Taiwanbased and mainland scholars. This was facilitated by several factors: personal, financial, and political. The first conference devoted to promoting exchange between scholars of ruxue in Taiwan and on the mainland was held in 1991 at Qufu and organized by the China Confucius Foundation.1 Although Taiwan-based scholars had been free to travel to the mainland for several years, opportunities expanded when the National Science Council of Taiwan enacted a regulation in 1992 for sponsoring cross-strait academic and cultural exchanges.2 Conferences were, and continue to be, the principal forum for academics on either side of the strait to meet and talk.3 By the mid-1990s, it became increasingly common for individual universities in Taiwan or Hong Kong and the mainland to co-convene ruxue-related conferences. The oldest and most regularly convened series is the International Academic Conference on New Confucianism (Dangdai xin ruxue guoji xueshu huiyi 當代新儒學國際學術會議). The seventh and most recent meeting in the series was held at Wuhan University in September 2005. The inaugural conference, held in 1990 in Taipei, was organized by several organizations, including the Legein Monthly Society (Ehu yuekanshe 鵝 湖 月 刊 社 ), the Chinese Philosophy Research Center of the Foundation for the Study of Chinese Philosophy and Culture (Dongfang renwen xueshu yanjiu jijinhui, Zhongguo zhexue yanjiu zhongxin 東方 人文學術研究基金會中國哲學研究中心), and the New Confucian Unit of the International Chinese Philosophy Association (Guoji Zhongguo

( 1. See Zhonguo Kongzi jijinhui xueshu weiyuanhui, ed., Haixia liang’an xuezhe shouci ruxue duihua. The foundation was also active in bringing these two groups of scholars together at the 1989 conference to mark the 2540th anniversary of Confucius’s birth. 2. The 1992 regulation allowed the National Science Council to provide grants for scholars in Taiwan to visit China on a short-term basis. To deal with the new situation, several related laws regulating cross-strait exchanges were enacted in the early 1990s: Regulations on the Relations Between People in Taiwan and Mainland China (Taiwan diqu yu dalu diqu renmin guanxi tiaoli 臺灣地區與大陸地 區人民關係條例) in 1992, and Permit Method for Taiwanese Entering the Chinese Mainland (Taiwan diqu renmin jinru dalu diqu xuke banfa 臺灣地區人民進入大陸地 區許可辦法) in 1993. 3. See Mou Zhongjian, “Dangdai dalu ruxue xunli,” 90–91, for ruxue-related conferences between 1990 and 1994.

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zhexuehui, Dangdai xin ruxuezu 國際中國哲學會當代新儒學組). 4 Although different organizing and funding bodies have sponsored the conference, the Legein Monthly Society has been the core association. The society publishes books (almost exclusively on ruxue) and the monthly journal Ehu yuekan. The journal was launched in 1975 by students from Taiwan Normal University and Fu-jen Catholic University who shared an interest in the writings of Mou Zongsan and Xiong Shili.5 Over time, the journal has had significant input from scholars in Hong Kong (disciples of the second-generation New Confucians). The name Ehu (goose lake) alludes to the famous debate between Zhu Xi 朱熹 (1130–1200) and Lu Jiuyan 陸九淵 (1139–93) at Ehu monastery in 1175, exactly 800 years earlier. Although the journal publishes on a variety of philosophical topics, most articles are on ruxue.6 The first International Academic Conference on New Confucianism represented a concerted effort by Taiwan-based scholars to place New Confucianism on a broader academic agenda by bringing mainland, Hong Kong, and Taiwanese scholars together. Papers covered the thought of individual New Confucians (especially Mou Zongsan), the New Confucian “school,” New Confucianism and democracy and science, and the future of New Confucianism. The timing of the conference may well have been a response to the rapidly developing research on New Confucianism on the mainland and the attendant implications that this had for proprietary rights over individual New Confucians. At both the first and the second conference (1992, also held in Taipei), mainland scholars were invited to participate but were unable to do so due to red tape imposed by the

( 4. The Foundation for the Study of Chinese Philosophy and Culture is based in Taiwan and supports conferences and publishing activities that promote various aspects of traditional Chinese culture. The International Chinese Philosophy Association was established in 1975 to promote the study of Chinese philosophy in both academic and nonacademic circles. It is an internationally based organization and sponsors the Journal of Chinese Philosophy. 5. See the interview with Lin Anwu, in Wang Yingming, ed., Taiwan zhi zhexue geming, 55–56. 6. According to Huang Junjie (Taiwan yishi yu Taiwan wenhua, 189–91), 70 percent of the articles published in the journal between 1975 and 1996 are on ruxue topics: Han, Wei, and Jin periods (1 percent), Qing (1.3 percent), Ming (16 percent), modern period (18.65 percent), Song Principle-centered Learning (25.1 percent), and pre-Qin (38 percent). Huang also reports that authors of articles on ruxue in the modern period were mostly first-, second-, or third-generation students of Tang, Mou, and other New Confucians.

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mainland authorities. (The first years after the Tian’anmen Incident continued to be politically repressive.) Nevertheless, the papers by the mainland scholars were distributed at both conferences, and most were published in the resulting conference volumes.7 The third conference was held in 1994 at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. The significance of Hong Kong as conference venue is outlined in the general preface to the conference volumes by Taiwanese academic Li Ruiquan 李瑞全 (National Central University): This will be the first time that the conference has left Taipei, the place where it started. It will also be the first time that it is held in Hong Kong, a place that has an extremely close connection to the rise and development of New Confucianism. For historical reasons, Hong Kong has an extremely intimate connection with the development of New Confucianism and overseas ruxue. In the early period, Messrs. Qian Mu and Tang Junyi were involved in establishing New Asia College. In the middle period, Messrs. Mou Zongsan and Xu Fuguan came to Hong Kong. In the later period, Mr. Liu Shuxian and other generations of students of the above-named gentlemen engaged in teaching and research on New Confucianism. In addition to living in Hong Kong for many years, many important and later works of Messrs. Tang, Mou, and Xu were completed and published in Hong Kong.8

The subtext of these comments clearly strengthens the collective proprietary claims that Hong Kong– and Taiwan-based scholars sought to exercise over individual New Confucians. The theme of most papers presented at the conference was the thought of first- and secondgeneration New Confucians. Other papers discussed the status and future prospects of New Confucianism as an intellectual movement more generally; the remainder covered other aspects of ruxue. The conference was also of historical importance because for the first time mainland scholars were able to attend and present papers. The pattern to have emerged since then is that the venue has alternated between Taiwan and the mainland, with the fifth conference being held in Ji’nan (Shandong) in 1998 and the seventh in Wuhan in 2005. Danjiang University (Taipei) academic Gao Boyuan 高伯園 commented on the significance of Ji’nan as the venue:

( 7. Liu Shuxian et al., eds., Dangdai xin ruxue lunwenji; Li Minghui et al., eds., Di er jie Dangdai xin ruxue guoji xueshu huiyi lunwenji. 8. Chen Dehe 陳德和, general preface to idem et al., eds., Di san jie Dangdai xin ruxue guoji xueshu huiyi lunwenji. This general preface is included in each of the four conference volumes.

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The principal academic group to follow on after Messrs. Tang, Mou, and Xu is the Legein Monthly Society. It is also the current representative of New Confucianism. . . . On one hand, Taiwanese New Confucians transmit; on the other hand, they create. The study and development of New Confucianism undertaken by Taiwanese New Confucians now commands a position of leadership and represents New Confucianism. . . . Confucius moved from China to Taiwan and Mr. Mou moved from Shandong to Taiwan. Today we move from Taiwan to Shandong and China. This is a common goal that Taiwanese New Confucians are striving toward. In the cultural domain, we regard ourselves as the transmitters and creators of Chinese culture. By the same token, this is the historical mission of Taiwanese New Confucians.9

Clearly, the proprietary imperative had not abated by 1998. In fact, one year before these comments were made, Fang Keli had published an article claiming that the activities of many prominent Taiwanese and Hong Kong promoters of a third epoch of ruxue, the New Confucian epoch, were directed at “re-nurturing” ruxue at its place of origin, the mainland ( fanbu yu guonei 反哺於國内). According to Fang, these promoters placed a high priority on remaining active in academic and cultural circles on the mainland; frequently participated in conferences and seminars on the mainland; accepted invitations to lecture in mainland institutions; and “strenuously support[ed] and foster[ed]” mainland scholars such as Jiang Qing 蔣慶, “creating opportunities and conditions for them to attend conferences abroad and to publish. . . . Some mainland scholars are even able to make use of funds from Hong Kong, Taiwan, and overseas to publish journals and book series on the mainland that serve their own interests and needs.” Fang concluded that one main consequence of these activities was that overseas New Confucians had succeeded in securing a group of “fellow travelers” (daoyou 道 友 )—the “mainland New Confucians”—and had promoted the gradual development of a “ruxue revival” on the mainland.10 As we will see in Chapter 11, Fang’s comments were intended to serve as more than idle observations. In another article published the same year, Fang launched a mainland counteroffensive, stating that mainland research on New Confucianism had stimulated the development of, and heightened the academic status of, New Confucianism in Taiwan and Hong Kong. Before the 1990s, he claimed, New Confucianism attracted marginal scholarly attention in Taiwan and Hong Kong. Academics associated with it could find posts

( 9. Gao Boyuan, “Dangdai xin ruxue de fazhan yu zhanwang,” editorial preface. 10. Fang Keli, “Ping dalu xin rujia ‘fuxing ruxue’ de gangling,” 38–87.

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only in “second- and third-tier institutions.” Thanks to the influence of mainland research, New Confucianism had become a prominent area of scholarly activity, as evidenced by international conferences and a major project on New Confucianism conducted by scholars at Academia Sinica (discussed below). “Mainland research on New Confucianism not only stimulated New Confucianism in Hong Kong and Taiwan but, moreover, in objective terms, provided scholars in Taiwan with the opportunity to pursue new developments.”11 These claims are not without foundation. Writing in 1998, leading Taiwan New Confucian Li Minghui noted that the first of a series of three triennial research projects on contemporary ruxue beginning in 1993 and coordinated by scholars at Academia Sinica freely acknowledged that the project was a direct response to the Research Project on the Modern New Confucian Intellectual Movement led by Fang Keli and Li Jinquan in China from the mid-1980s and early 1990s. He added the following rider, however: On the mainland, research on New Confucianism began only in the latter half of the 1980s. Hence, its focus has been on editing materials, collecting information, and absorbing different points of view. It is premature to talk of meaningful criticism, much less the construction of theory. In Taiwan, however, because the New Confucian school has continued uninterrupted and considerable research has been continuously developing, researchers here can therefore bypass the basic work undertaken by mainland scholars to engage directly in intricate theoretical explorations. An analogy would be that the Research Project on the Modern New Confucian Intellectual Movement is like large-scale extensive farming, whereas the Research Project on Contemporary Ruxue is like smallscale intensive farming. It is exceedingly difficult to compare the two.12

In making these claims, Li neglected to mention that by 1998, a significant number of prominent mainland scholars had participated in the Academia Sinica project. His real target, however, was Fang Keli: Fang Keli, the principal coordinator of the Research Project on the Modern New Confucian Intellectual Movement, has consistently identified himself as an orthodox Marxist. Indeed, he agrees with very few of the New Confucian theses. He does, however, emphasize the need for dialogue between the three main intellectual movements of New Confucianism, Marxism, and liberalism. Objectively

( 11. Shao Hanming, “Xiandai xin ruxue yanjiu shi nian huigu,” 129. See also Chai Wenhua, “Fang Keli yu xiandai xin ruxue yanjiu,” 77. 12. Li Minghui, ed., Rujia sixiang zai xiandai DongYa: zonglun pian, preface, 1–2, 6.

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speaking, Fang Keli has played an important role in enabling New Confucianism to be widely spread in China. Nevertheless, the baseline he put in place for research on New Confucianism is very clear: it “must be guided by the Marxist position, perspective, and method.”13

Since his retirement as director of the Graduate School of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in the late 1990s, Fang has not been actively involved in directing New Confucian studies. Nevertheless, more than any other individual scholar, Fang shaped the way New Confucian studies were researched from the mid-1980s to the late 1990s. As recently as September 2005 at the Seventh International New Confucian Conference convened at Wuhan University, a speech he wrote—in his capacity as “consultant” to the organizing committee—was read out at the opening ceremony. In it, Fang warned mainland scholars to be vigilant about the rise of what he termed the “fourth generation” of New Confucians, which consists principally of mainland scholars. (See Chapter 11.)

Academia Sinica’s Research Project on Contemporary Ruxue Since the early 1990s, Liu Shuxian and Li Minghui at the Institute for Chinese Literature and Philosophy, Academia Sinica, Taiwan, have been active in the production of ruxue studies. Given their strong professional and personal ties to the New Confucian movement, as well as the popularity of New Confucian studies during the first half of the 1990s in China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, the institute’s role in mounting a major research project on ruxue—in which New Confucian thinkers feature prominently—is understandable. For much of the 1990s (until his retirement from the Chinese University of Hong Kong in 1999), Liu Shuxian simultaneously held two posts: one as chair of the Philosophy Department at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and one as a researcher in the Institute for Literature and Philosophy, Academia Sinica, Taiwan. As such, he was particularly well positioned to promote New Confucian studies. During the 1990s, Li Minghui wrote widely on Mou Zongsan, New Confucianism, and Kant. (More recently he has written on aspects of East Asian ruxue, particularly in Korea, as well as on liberalism and ruxue.)

( 13. Li Minghui, “Jiedu dangqian Zhongguo dalu de ruxuere,” 94.

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First Triennium Between 1993 and 2003, Liu and Li directed and/or codirected 14 three triennial state-funded projects on ruxue under the general title Contemporary Ruxue Studies (Dangdai ruxue zhuti yanjiu jihua 當代儒 學主題研究計劃). The format for the triennial projects consists of a series of symposia at which collaborators and project affiliates present their findings; in turn, these studies are published in the project’s book series, Dangdai ruxue yanjiu congkan 當代儒學研究叢刊 (Contemporary ruxue studies series), published in-house by the institute. The first of these triennial projects (1993–96) was billed as the largest project on ruxue ever undertaken in Taiwan.15 Its theme was “New Confucian Responses to the Issues of the Times.” Most of the published essays from the project concern New Confucian thinkers and New Confucian philosophy. In 1995, in the editorial preface to the first volume from the project to be published in the series, Liu Shuxian noted that Fang Keli’s project had received state support and that if Hong Kong and Taiwan scholars did not embark on something similar, they would lose their right to speak on the subject of New Confucianism.16 This statement is perhaps the clearest, and surprisingly the earliest, acknowledgment by the institute’s scholars of the commanding influence that mainlander researchers were exerting on contemporary research on ruxue by the mid-1990s. Earlier essays commenting on mainland research on the New Confucian movement tended to be dismissive both of the results and of the degree to which Fang Keli’s project was ideologically driven. (Even in the late 1990s, this dismissive attitude persisted.) These comments made in 1991 by Li Minghui are typical: It resembles the situation in the Middle Ages in the West where philosophical debate about Christian philosophy could be carried out only under the premises of church dogma. . . . We cannot regard mainland New Confucian studies as pure scholarship. For a Marxist scholar such as Professor Fang Keli, there is no such thing as “pure scholarship” because all scholarship is ideology. A matter that he has debated robustly with Du Weiming is that rujia thought does not, in

( 14. Liu directed the first three-year project; he codirected the second and third with Li. 15. Li Minghui, ed., Rujia sixiang zai xiandai DongYa: zonglun pian, preface, 1. 16. Liu Shuxian, ed., Dangdai ruxue lunji, preface, 1.

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essence, consist of intellectual-spiritual principles that transcend class and history but rather is a “feudal ideology.”17

Liu Shuxian made a point of emphasizing that in the symposia organized by the Institute of Chinese Literature and Philosophy there was no attempt to enforce a unitary point of view.18 Nevertheless, although the first two volumes from the project published in the Dangdai ruxue yanjiu congkan series include papers by Taiwan- and Hong Kong–based scholars, no mainland scholars were involved. This situation changed with the publication of the third and fourth volumes from this first phase of the project.19 Both volumes were based on papers from a workshop held in 1996 that involved the participation of leading mainland and overseas Chinese scholars. Since then, prominent mainland scholars have regularly been invited to participate in the project.

Second Triennium The research project on Contemporary Ruxue Studies was extended for a new triennium (1996–99) under the theme “The State and Development of Rujia Thought in Modern East Asia.” Liu and Li explain that they “selected this topic after reflecting that up until now the horizon for ruxue studies had always been limited to China, overlooking other countries and regions in East Asia influenced by rujia thought.” (Presumably Li is referring to the agendas of the institute’s Research Project on Contemporary Ruxue and Fang Keli’s New Confucian research projects.)20 According to Li, one of the problems with the “rujia capitalism” thesis is that it overemphasizes the common character of rujia thought in East Asia and overlooks the differing manifestations of the “rujia tra-

( 17. See, e.g., Li Minghui’s 1991 essay “Zhongguo dalu youguan dangdai xin ruxue de yanjiu,” 183–84, which was reprinted in the first book in the Dangdai ruxue yanjiu congkan series. Fang’s rejoinder to Li’s essay, “Xiandai xin ruxue yanjiu de ziwo fanxing,” was published in China in Nankai xuebao and in the Taiwanese journal Dangdai in 1993. Li then published a surrejoinder, “Jing da Fang Keli jiaoshou.” 18. Liu Shuxian, ed., Dangdai ruxue lunji, preface, iii. 19. The two volumes are Li Minghui, ed., Rujia sixiang de xiandai quanshi; and Liu Shuxian, ed., Rujia sixiang yu xiandai shijie. 20. In fact, another researcher in the same Institute, Lin Qingzhang 林慶彰, has produced a large body of substantial reference works on aspects of ruxue in China and Japan.

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dition” in these countries and regions.21 Accordingly, the focus of the project shifted to “East Asia,” a region that the project directors define as embracing Taiwan, China, Japan, (South) Korea, Singapore, Malaysia, and Vietnam. The six volumes produced in this triennium of the project concern various aspects of East Asian ruxue. In the editorial preface to the first of these volumes, Li Minghui listed several conferences held in Japan, Taiwan, Korea, and China since the late 1980s that dealt in whole or in part with the theme of rujiao/ruxue in East Asia. He also noted the central role played by Du Weiming since the second half of the 1980s in promoting research on East Asian ruxue.22 Significantly, two of the volumes produced in this second phase of the project include essays by Japanese scholars, Mizoguchi Yūzō 溝口雄三 and Koyasu Nobukuni 子安宣邦, each of whom has made important critical contributions to the debate on the topic of “modernity” (kindaisei 近代性) in China and Japan. Inspired as a critical response to Takeuchi Yoshimi’s 竹内好 (1910–71) “Asia as method” (hōhō toshite no Ajia 方法としてのアジア)23 thesis and Tsuda Sōkichi’s 津田左右吉 (1873–1961) views on the role of “China Studies” (Shinagaku 支那學) in the construction of Japan’s modern identity, Mizoguchi’s “China as method” (hōhō toshite no Chūgoku 方法としての中國)24 thesis was widely reviewed in journals published in China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan during the 1990s. Koyasu, in turn, developed his own variation of this thesis, called “Edo as method” (hōhō toshite no Edo 方法として の江戶).25 In contrast to Mizoguchi, Koyasu is critical of the concept of Asia or, more particularly, of East Asia (see below).

( 21. Li Minghui, ed., Rujia sixiang zai xiandai DongYa: zonglun pian, 2. 22. Ibid., 3–4. 23. Takeuchi Yoshimi, Hōhō toshite no Ajia. Hōhō toshite no Ajia was originally the name of one in a series of lectures given at International Christian University in Tokyo by Takeuchi, Maruyama Masao 丸山真男, Ōtsuka Hisao 大塚 久雄, and others. See Takeda Kiyoko, ed., Shisōshi no hōhō to taishō. On Takeuchi’s “Asia as method” thesis, see Najita and Harootunian, “Japan’s Revolt Against the West,” 268–70. 24. Mizoguchi Yūzō, Hōhō toshite no Chūgoku. 25. Koyasu Nobukuni, Hōhō toshite no Edo. As Barry D. Steben (“Edo as Method,” 30) describes it, “Koyasu proposes ‘Edo as Method’ as a critical perspective aimed at rereading and reconceptualizing Japan’s modern history— formed as a resistance against Western modernity in the very process of pursuing that identity—from the point of view of the Edo period, through treating

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There is reason to suspect that the involvement of these scholars was again related to a form of cross-strait academic ruxue rivalry. Mizoguchi had already collaborated with mainland scholar Zhang Liwen 張立文 (Renmin University) in co-editing a new journal, Yawen 亞文 (an abbreviation for DongYa wenhua 東亞文化 [East Asian culture]), launched in 1996. Yawen’s third co-editor was the Korean scholar Yi Nam-yŏng 李楠永 (former president of the Korean Confucius Association).26 Although the journal lasted only for two issues,27 the theme of East Asian ruxue was taken up by Zhang in several of his publications, most significantly in Hehe yu DongYa yishi 和合與東亞意識 (Harmony and East Asia consciousness).28 The book is part of the East Asian Ruxue and the Twentyfirst Century series, of which Zhang is general editor. Zhang traced the origins of “East Asia consciousness” to the “rujia capitalism” thesis popularized in the 1980s. According to Zhang, “East Asia consciousness” refers to China’s, Japan’s, and Korea’s possessing ruxue as their “core cultural consciousness.” More specifically, he wrote, it refers to the profound influence that ruxue has exerted on the social structures, legal codes and institutions, ethics and morals, folk customs, psychological structures, behavioral norms, and sense of values of these countries, as well as the sense of East Asian subjectivity that has arisen as a consequence of this shared legacy.29 In the preface to the sixth volume produced in this triennium of the project, Li Minghui reiterated that hitherto Chinese-language research on ruxue rarely paid attention to the development of ruxue outside China. Furthermore, he commented, to the extent that these developments were noted, analyses tended to be sinocentric in focus, treating ruxue in other parts of Asia merely as extensions of Chinese ruxue and ignoring the particularities of localized appropriations of ruxue.30 One key concern of the second phase of the project was to examine these

( Edo not as an entity resisting modernity, but as the methodological foothold outside of modern Japan for a critical rereading of modern Japanese history.” 26. Yi transliterates his name as Lee Nam-Young. In 1996 he was also on the Board of the International Confucius Association, based in Beijing. 27. It was relaunched under a new title, DongYa wenhua yanjiu 東亞文化研究, in 2001, with an enlarged editorial board (which still included Mizoguchi Yūzō and Yi Nam-yŏng). 28. Zhang Liwen, Hehe yu DongYa yishi. 29. Ibid., 14. See also Zhang Liwen, “DongYa yishi yu hehe jingshen.” 30. Li Minghui and Chen Weifen, eds., Rujia sixiang zai xiandai DongYa: diyu yu fazhan, preface, 3.

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particularities. Indeed, the latter half of the 1990s and the first five years of the third millennium witnessed a push by both mainland and Taiwan-based scholars to contextualize ruxue studies within the broader cultural-geographical region of China, Japan, and Korea. Several factors might be identified as having led to this. In Taiwan, the ascendancy of the Democratic Progressive Party—a significant milestone of which was Chen Shuibian’s 陳水扁 election as president in 2000 and re-election in 2004—has been accompanied by a deepening movement to “indigenize” political, social, and cultural institutions on the island. Indigenization (bentuhua 本土化) functions as a type of nationalism that champions the legitimacy of a distinct Taiwanese identity, the character and content of which should be determined by the Taiwanese people. Many proponents of indigenization in Taiwan regard it quite specifically as a project of desinicization: an attempt to remove the yoke of “Chinese” colonial hegemony so that Taiwan’s putative native (bentu) identity can be recognized and further nurtured. For these proponents, the role of the Other in the indigenization paradigm is identified with a monolithic conception of China and Chineseness, which is typically portrayed as inimical to the integrity of Taiwanese identity. As academic research has become increasingly mired in identity politics, scholars with academic interests in traditional Chinese culture have developed various tactics to survive in this new political climate. One of these tactics has been to develop research projects that fall under the rubric of “East Asia.” This affords scholars the opportunity to conduct research on China and also to avoid perceptions of political partisanship associated with research that is more specifically China- or Taiwan-focused. Another factor is that many Chinese scholars genuinely believe that ruxue is a key element in a shared East Asian cultural identity. (Some scholars also acknowledge a role for Buddhism in this identity; many more do not.) Accordingly, the prospect of staking proprietary claims over how that tradition should be described, interpreted, and classified presumably plays some role in attracting scholarly attention to this relatively new domain of research.

Third Triennium The theme chosen for the third triennium of the Contemporary Ruxue Studies project (1999–2003) was Comparison of and Interaction Between Contemporary Ruxue and Western Culture. (Publications are still forthcoming.) Somewhat surprisingly, a decade after the project began— during which time many mainland scholars contributed to the project

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and the parameters of inquiry moved well beyond the limited frame of New Confucian studies—Mou Zongsan is still well represented in one of the more recent of the institute’s edited volumes.31 Mou was also a popular topic at the Seventh International Academic Conference on New Confucianism convened in Wuhan in September 2005. Of the 130 papers presented at the conference—to date, the largest number of papers in the conference series—more papers were devoted to Mou and his philosophy than to any of the other New Confucians. Thus, the expansion of ruxue as a topic for research and academic discussion on the mainland over the past fifteen years has not occurred at the expense of New Confucian studies—interest in New Confucian philosophy has not diminished. Indeed, for many younger scholars of Chinese philosophy, publishing on some aspect of New Confucian thought or on individual New Confucian philosophers has almost become a rite of passage into academic life. This would account for the fact that so many papers on New Confucian studies presented at conferences on the mainland or in edited volumes over the past fifteen years are unoriginal and derivative. The same hackneyed themes of “self-negation of innate moral consciousness” (liangzhi ziwo kanxian 良知自我坎陷), inner sageliness and outer kingliness, and how science and democracy might be developed by reflecting on innate moral consciousness appear in publication after publication, generally with little or no creative analysis of these themes. The real significance of these sorts of papers, whether delivered at conferences or published in edited volumes, is the performative role they play in initiating younger scholars into the ritual norms prescribed by a broader community of scholars. Creativity is not a criterion for acceptance; incantation of ritually privileged phrases and themes is.

The Hermeneutic Turn and Rujia East Asia In the preface to the sixth volume produced in the second triennium of the project, Li Minghui noted the affinities of this project to a major project on the East Asian hermeneutic tradition on classical texts in the modern period ( jindai ) directed by National Taiwan University histo-

( 31. Li Minghui and Chen Weifen, eds., Dangdai ruxue yu xifang wenhua: zhexue pian. This volume consists of six chapters, three of which are devoted specifically to Mou Zongsan and another of which is devoted primarily to presenting Mou Zongsan’s philosophy as a blueprint for East-West philosophical dialogue.

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rian Huang Junjie 黃俊傑.32 Although the idea of establishing a “rujia hermeneutics” can be traced to the early 1990s,33 it was only in the latter half of the 1990s, with calls by various scholars in China and Taiwan to develop a Chinese hermeneutics (or a hermeneutics with Chinese characteristics) that this project gained momentum. Since 1998, senior mainland scholar Tang Yijie has written a series of articles exploring how traditional hermeneutic strategies might serve as a basis for a “Chinese hermeneutics,” and in 2001 philosopher Li Qingliang 李清良 (Hunan University) published a volume on the same topic.34 These proposals also attracted the interest of scholars more specifically involved in ruxue revivalism. Guo Qiyong, for example, commented: Our knowledge training and discursive systems are Westernized and “panWesternized” ( fanxifanghua 泛西方化). While undoubtedly this is of great help in discovering and interpreting Chinese philosophical thought, in other respects it brings quite a few obstacles. We need to look for new systems of interpretation and evaluation. I play close attention to discussions on the interpretation of Chinese classics. . . . In the multiple layers of modern thought we will find many creative hermeneutic paths to explain Chinese thought and Chinese philosophy.35

Jing Haifeng 景海峰 (Shenzhen University) relates that over the past two thousand years, the vast majority of rujia writings have been commentaries. Even those that stand as original works in their own right for the most part advance interpretations of classical texts. For Jing, “the history of ruxue is the history of the interpretation of classical texts ( jingdian quanshi 經典 詮釋 ). To a large extent, rujia learning is learning concerned with interpretation (quanshi ).”36

( 32. Li Minghui and Chen Weifen, eds., Rujia sixiang zai xiandai DongYa: diyu yu fazhan, preface, 3. Huang holds a joint appointment in the Institute for Chinese Literature and Philosophy. 33. See, e.g., Fu Weixun, “Xiandai ruxue fazhan keti shilun,” 57–60. For Fu’s notion of “creative hermeneutics,” see his essay “Chuangzao de quanshixue ji qi yingyong.” Cheng Zhongying 成中英 (Chung-ying Cheng) has been promoting his vision of what he terms “onto-hermeneutics” for several decades. For an introduction and some of the responses to it by mainland scholars, see Cheng Zhongying, ed., Benti yu quanshi. For a recent account in English, see his essay “An Ontohermeneutic Interpretation of Twentieth-Century Chinese Philosophy.” 34. Li Qingliang, Zhongguo chanshixue. 35. Interview with Guo Qiyong, in Jing Yu 荊雨, “Zhongguo zhexue de chuangzaoxing zhuanhua,” 6. 36. Jing Haifeng, “Rujia quanshixue de san ge shidai,” 115.

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It is in Taiwan, however, that the greatest efforts have been applied to the study of ruxue hermeneutics. Between 1998 and 2000, under the leadership of Huang Junjie, faculty at National Taiwan University (principally in the History Department) commenced a project entitled “The Tradition of Exegesis37 of the Classics in Chinese Culture.” The project comprised more than ten subprojects. Beginning in 2000, the project was expanded to become “A Study of the Ruxue Exegetical Tradition of the Classics in Early Modern East Asia” under the Program for Promoting Academic Excellence in Universities funded by the Ministry of Education in Taiwan. The focus of this four-year project was on a number of the Classics associated with ruxue in China from the Song (960–1279) to the Qing periods (1644–1911); Tokugawa-period Japan (1600–1868); and Yi dynasty Korea (1392–1910), with the purpose of expanding the horizons of East Asian intellectual history and analyzing a tradition of exegesis of the Classics that has East Asian characteristics. . . . The socalled tradition of exegesis of the Classics in East Asia refers to the exegetical tradition in East Asian culture revealed in the long tradition of commentary writing on the Classics in the history of East Asian scholarship.38

The project consisted of eight “branch-projects” involving scholars from National Taiwan University, National Tsinghua University (Taiwan), National Central University, as well as the participation of scholars from other countries. Research continued to be conducted in the Center for the Study of East Asian Civilizations at National Taiwan University until September 2005, when the center was closed. (Some of its activities, however, are continuing under the new framework of the Project for East Asian Classics and Cultures [Taida DongYa jingdian yu wenhua yanjiu jihua 臺大東亞經典與文化研究計畫], Institute of Advanced Studies at National Taiwan University.) The project concentrated on two broad areas of study: East Asian ruxue and East Asian education and examinations.39 Although recognizing that hermeneutics did not exist as a specialized area of study in any East Asian country until the late twentieth century,

( 37. Typically the term quanshi has been rendered as “hermeneutics” in most English-language material introducing the project. 38. See Gu Yufeng and Liao Xiaopei, eds., Taida zhuoyue yanjiu zhuanji, 41. See also http://www.history.ntu.edu.tw/MOEProject/project.asp, accessed June 15, 2005. 39 . For an overview of the center’s history, see http://www.eastasia.ntu .edu.tw/main_intro.html.

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Huang Junjie has long been involved in research on the hermeneutic methods employed by traditional scholars in their interpretation of canonical texts.40 In particular, he has sought to draw on the exegetical resources of traditional East Asian scholarship on canonical Confucian texts (principally the Four Books and Five Classics) from the perspective of comparative East Asian intellectual history so as (1) to identify the hermeneutic dimension of traditional exegesis and (2) to prepare the groundwork for the construction of what he calls “a hermeneutics with East Asian characteristics.”41 Perhaps the biggest challenge confronting Huang in his quest is the very notion of “East Asia.” Just as the concept “Asia” has become problematized in modern scholarship (particularly in the wake of Edward Said’s orientalism thesis), so, too, have constructs such as “Asia-Pacific” and “East Asia.” In Japanese writings, in particular, the concept of “East Asia” has not always been an innocent one. The Japanese intellectual historian Koyasu Nobukuni, for example, has expressed strong reservations about the concepts DongYa/Tō’A 東亞 and DongYa ruxue / Tō’A jugaku 東 亞儒學, arguing that, historically, terms such as Tō’A and Tōhō 東方 (the Orient) were not merely geographical but also political. In particular, the term Tō’A is intimately tied to the history of Japanese imperialism up to the end of World War II.42 The term first appeared in Japan during the 1920s. In the beginning it had predominantly cultural associations, but by the 1930s it had acquired strong political associations, being co-opted to serve the imperialist agenda of the Greater East Asian Co-prosperity Sphere (Dai Tō’A kyōeiken 大東亞共榮圈).43 This development was, in part, premised on the notion, first articulated in 1930, of

( 40. Huang adopts a broad working definition of hermeneutics: “An intellectual tradition or type of philosophical thinking that is concerned with or seeks to clarify understanding.” See Huang Junjie, Mengzi sixiangshi lun, 2: 58n131. 41. See, e.g., the studies collected in his DongYa ruxueshi de xin shiye. Other scholars more focused on the study of Chinese hermeneutic traditions have been less willing to treat “Chinese hermeneutics of the Classics” (which for Huang is no more than the Four Books and Five Classics) and “Chinese hermeneutics” as effectively synonymous. See, e.g., Li Qingliang, “Huang Junjie lun Zhongguo jingdian quanshixue,” 265. 42. Koyasu Nobukuni, DongYa ruxue, 143. 43. Ibid., 8–15. For a sample of Japanese scholarly publications from the first half of the 1940s that expanded on various aspects of the geopolitical theme of “East Asia,” see ibid., 11n10.

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an East Asian cultural group (bunka dantai 文化團體), consisting of China as the principal component, the Korean peninsula, and Japan.44 Koyasu also expressed concern about the recent promotion of the concept DongYa ruxue / Tō’A jugaku because of its implicit “centerperiphery” dichotomy, in which the center represents political power and the fountainhead of culture. Traditionally this sort of sinocentric power relationship was typically expressed in terms of hua 華 and yi 夷.45 Koyasu notes that in the Japanese academic discipline of “the history of Chinese philosophy” (Shina tetsugakushi 支那哲學史), 46 Japanese ruxue was relegated to vassal-like status vis-à-vis Chinese ruxue. 47 Perhaps most significantly, he warns that if the notion of East Asian ruxue being developed by modern scholars still promotes the discourse of “ruxue’s origins in China and the development of rujiao culture in various regions of East Asia,” then it is no different in substance from the notion of a common East Asian cultural history promoted in the 1930s and 1940s by imperialist Japan, a history subsequently subsumed within the concept of a Greater East Asian history (dai Tō’A shi ) and conscripted to serve the imperialist ends of the Greater East Asian Co-prosperity Sphere.48 The connection between “Confucian/ru” and “East Asia” became the focus of attention for many sociologists and economists from the late 1970s on, as scholars in Europe, America, and Asia attempted to explain the phenomenon of East Asian economic development by identifying those cultural practices conducive to economic development and then characterizing them as “Confucian/ru.” By the 1980s, notions such as “Confucian/rujia ethic” and “Confucian/rujia capitalism” were invoked to explain the economic successes of Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, Hong

( 44. Koyasu Nobukuni, DongYa ruxue, 8–9. See also the analysis in Chen Weifen, “You ‘Tōyō’ dao ‘Tō’A,’ cong ‘Jukyō’ dao ‘Jugaku.’ ” 45. Koyasu Nobukuni, DongYa ruxue, preface, vi. 46. Shina came to be seen as a politically incorrect term after World War II. 47. Koyasu Nobukuni, DongYa ruxue, preface, vi–vii. 48. Ibid., 17. In this connection, we should also bear in mind Prasenjit Duara’s observations concerning the discourse of Eastern civilization that flourished in China from 1911 to 1945, exemplified in particular by Sun Yat-sen’s 1924 speech in Kobe, Japan, entitled “Da Yaxiyazhuyi” 大亞細亞主義 (Greater Asianism) and later by the journal Xin Yaxiya (New Asia) established by Chinese National Party theorist Dai Jitao 戴季陶 to keep Sun’s ideas alive. According to Duara, “Sun was rhetorically skillful at drawing the Japanese into a discourse of solidarity while simultaneously retaining a Chinese centrality by invoking the Chinese imperial tribute system”; see his Sovereignty and Authenticity, 101–2, 190–91.

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Kong, and Singapore. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, many conferences and symposia were convened in Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, and South Korea on the topic of the relation between ruxue and East Asian modernization. These developments, in turn, played a role in facilitating a climate conducive to the sudden outburst of research activities focusing on East Asian ruxue by mainland scholars during the first half of the 1990s.49 As noted in Chapter 1, one of the most influential figures in the discussions during the 1980s was Du Weiming. Du sought to identify the relationship between cultural factors and economic development and, in doing so, placed particular emphasis on the role of ruxue in the historical formation of an East Asian cultural identity. The following summary statement of this thesis is typical of many similar pronouncements he made during the 1980s: In the history of the development of human civilizations, during the Song and Ming periods the influence of ruxue on East Asian cultures was perhaps even greater than the influence of Martin Luther’s religious reformation on Western civilization. This is because ruxue was the main impetus behind that whereby East Asian society became East Asian society. This is the second period in the development of ruxue. Only with this development did a common cultural language appear in East Asian society. The principal content of this language was, fundamentally, the explanation of the Four Books based on Zhu Xi’s explanations. . . . Before it suffered the impact of Western civilization in the midnineteenth century, the tradition represented by Song-Ming ruxue constituted the fundamental value system of East Asian civilization. This value system embodied quite a complete [system of ] humanist thought.50

Even in 2000 he continued to reiterate this view: “Prior to the sudden appearance of the Western powers in the mid-nineteenth century, East Asian polity, society, and culture had been so much seasoned in the

( 49. See Guo Qiyong, “Zhongguo dalu diqu jin wunian lai (1993–1997) de ruxue yanjiu,” 112–15. Also published in the first half of the 1990s, Xu Yuanhe, Ruxue yu dong fang wenhua, 112–14, lists a number of historical comparative studies on ruxue in China, Japan, and South Korea. The year 1995 saw the publication of Hwang Byungtai, Ruxue yu xiandaihua. Hwang was serving as the South Korean ambassador to China when the book was published. The book is a translation of his English-language Ph.D. thesis (University of California, Berkeley, 1979), one of the first comparative studies of ruxue in China, Japan, and South Korea. Hwang argues that ruxue is not conducive to modernization, and only after modernity had been achieved in a given country might there be a role for ruxue. 50. Du Weiming, “Chuangzao de zhuanhua,” 149–50.

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Confucian persuasion that political governance, social ethics, and even habits of the heart in China, Vietnam, Korea, and Japan were characteristically Confucian in word and deed.”51 Given the profound influence that Du has exercised on contemporary mainland ruxue scholarship, it is not altogether surprising to see scholars such as Li Suping 李甦平 (CASS) maintain that in contemporary Asia, ruxue has crystallized as “East Asia consciousness.”52 Elsewhere Li and He Chengxuan 何成軒 expanded on the notion of East Asia’s rujia identity: “Rujia culture is the crystallization of the wisdom of the East Asian nations; it is also the symbol of Oriental psycho-spiritual civilization. It is the intellectual bond that maintains the common psychology and values of each nation in East Asia. It provides values orientation, cultural identity, and national cohesion for each nation in the region.”53 Although critics might respond to these sweeping claims with a degree of skepticism, in themselves they are fairly innocuous. Matters become more problematic when claims about East Asian ruxue are perceived to have the potential to advance certain cultural nationalist agendas. Consider remarks by Ma Zhenduo 馬振鐸 (CASS), Xu Yuanhe 徐遠和 (CASS), and Zheng Jiadong. Their comments about the extension of rujia civilization beyond China to Japan, Korea, and Vietnam might seem innocuous: “Under the almost continuous influence of rujia culture, the original civilizations of these neighboring countries also became ‘rujiahua 儒家化’ and together with China they constitute the East Asian rujia cultural circle.” The problem of perception—and one of the key concerns identified by Koyasu Nobukuni—begins when these statements are framed within a “center-periphery” or sinocentric mode of discourse. It is evident that such a discourse does, in fact, form the implicit frame of reference for this last group of authors’ approach to their subject: they explain that even though their book is entitled Rujia Civilization, it does not cover these other countries because China is most representative of rujia civilization.54 More explicit is Liu Zongxian 劉宗賢 (Shandong Academy of Social Sciences) and Cai Degui’s 蔡德貴 (Shandong University) statement that the spread of ruxue to China’s neighboring countries created the “Han cultural circle”: “Ruxue over-

( 51. Tu Wei-ming, “Implications of the Rise of ‘Confucian’ East Asia,” 195. 52. Li Suping, “Cong Hanguo Yangmingxue de fazhan kan ruxue de shengmingli,” 80. 53. He Chengxuan and Li Suping, Ruxue yu xiandai shehui, preface, 6. 54. Ma Zhenduo et al., Rujia wenming, 3.

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stepped national boundaries to become the shared psycho-spiritual treasure of all the nations in the Han cultural circle. In addition to the independent system of Chinese ruxue, ruxue produced (chansheng 產生) each of the distinctive intellectual cultures of Japanese ruxue, Korean ruxue, and Vietnamese ruxue.”55 For Liu and Cai (obviously drawing on Li Zehou’s notion of “cultural-psychological formation”), it is only in China that ruxue genuinely permeated the indigenous culture: “In contrast to Japan or Korea, where ruxue was received as a type of thought or doctrine, in China it has permeated the indigenous culture. Nor is it a type of moral preaching; rather, it is [something that] has permeated the Chinese people’s ways of thinking and behaving in their social life.”56 Koyasu’s intervention in this issue is significant because he was not an “outsider” but an affiliate of Huang Junjie’s project team. Indeed, many of his main points were made in essays written for the project “A Study of the Ruxue Exegetical Tradition of the Classics in Early Modern East Asia” coordinated by Huang Junjie.57 Huang is well aware of Koyasu Nobukuni’s critique of the concept of DongYa ruxue / Tō’A jugaku and the pitfalls of Han chauvinistic and sinocentric approaches to this topic.58 Thus while acknowledging that ruxue was originally a body of learning strongly influenced by Shandong culture, and that over the past two millennia ruxue values have had a profound effect on the cultures and societies of Japan, South Korea, and Vietnam, Huang also argues

( 55. Liu Zongxian and Cai Degui, eds., Dangdai dong fang ruxue, 108. 56. Ibid., 345. This passage contrasts with the more “ecumenical” formulation favored by Tu Wei-ming (“Implications of the Rise of ‘Confucian’ East Asia,” 215): “The designation of East Asia as ‘Confucian’ in the ethicoreligous sense is comparable to the validity and limitation of employing ‘Christian,’ ‘Islamic,’ ‘Hindu,’ and ‘Buddhist,’ in identifying geopolitical regions as Europe, the Middle East, India, or Southeast Asia.” Leaving aside the question of the validity of using these labels (which, when applied without sufficient qualification, can and do mask gross exclusionary practices), to the extent that they have any purchase, it is one secured on the basis of ongoing, vibrant, and objectively discernible religious practices associated with these regions. It is highly questionable if ruxue can be considered an ongoing, vibrant, objectively discernible ethicoreligious practice. 57. These essays were subsequently published as DongYa ruxue: pipan yu fang fa. 58. Not only was Koyasu’s book published in a series overseen by Huang Junjie—DongYa wenming yanjiu congshu 東亞文明研究叢書 (Studies on East Asian civilizations series)—but Koyasu’s book also includes a postface by Huang on the topic of Koyasu’s notion of modernity (kindaisei 近代性).

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that ruxue has become “the common property of East Asian civilization.” He notes that previous research in Vietnam, Korea, Japan, and China, in particular, has tended to ignore the cross-cultural dimension of ruxue, because researchers have generally confined themselves to studying ruxue within their own culture. He urges scholars to regard East Asian ruxue as a whole rather than as a collection of parts. Huang believes that by studying the development of ruxue in these countries and paying attention to both its general and its particular manifestations, the psycho-spiritual resources of ruxue can be fully utilized in the “dialogue between civilizations” of the new millennium “to serve as the foundation for facilitating interaction and fusion between East Asian civilization and [other] world civilizations.” 59 Even so, it remains unclear whether these sentiments will satisfy critics such as Koyasu, especially given Huang’s insistence that “Chinese ruxue was the main axis in the development of East Asian ruxue.”60 Perhaps more contentious is Huang’s claim that “the breadth and profundity of Chinese culture is why it is the common denominator of East Asian culture. What is the most important element therein? China’s classics. Which of the classics are key? The classics of the rujia, the mainstream of Chinese culture.”61

Concluding Remarks In this chapter, I have described a variety of academic developments in Taiwanese ruxue studies since the early 1990s, paying particular attention to institutional developments (academic societies, publishing, conferences, and research projects) and the sustained academic rivalry—and consequent mutual scholarly influence—that developed between Taiwan and mainland scholars of ruxue over this period. This rivalry was seen to be evident in the long-running conference series on New Confucianism (with the venue now alternating between Taiwan and the mainland) and also in Academia Sinica’s Research Project on Contemporary Ruxue (even as this project increasingly sought the involvement of mainland scholars in its workshops). The connection between “the hermeneutic turn” in Taiwan ruxue studies and the problematic notion

( 59. Huang Junjie, DongYa ruxueshi de xin shiye, preface, vii, viii. 60. Huang Junjie, “DongYa ruxueshi de xin shiye,” 325. 61. Huang made his remark in a roundtable discussion with Taiwanese and mainland scholars; see Huang Junjie et al., “Zhongguo quanshixue shi yi zuo qiaoliang,” 250.

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of “East Asian ruxue,” examined in the third part of this chapter, revealed some exclusivist tendencies in certain expressions of ruxuecentered cultural nationalism. As we will see in the following chapter, the claim that ruxue and rujia thought and values constitute the mainstream of Chinese (Zhonghua) culture has actually become an unquestioned dogma shared by large numbers of mainland and overseas Chinese scholars (and promoters) of ruxue alike.

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P A R T II

Ruxue and Chinese Culture

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5 Ruxue: The Core of Chinese Culture

What are the more influential views Chinese scholars have developed over the past two decades about the identity and nature of ruxue? What sorts of ruxue have been distinguished and created in the process? What tactics have been deployed to deal with contending notions of ruxue? Why are “culture” and “nation” so frequently posited as integral to the identity and function of ruxue? How historically informed are contending notions of ruxue? Which views have emerged as the most influential? In the period under study, Chinese commentators have tended to present ruxue either as a monolithic tradition or as a composite entity composed of discrete elements. Those who adopt the monolithic conception tend to do so unreflectively. The view of ruxue as a composite informs most academic discussions of ruxue and rujia thought. Accordingly, the literature deploys a welter of terms to distinguish different conceptions of ruxue—classical, official, unofficial, popular, political, secular, aristocratic, institutional, spiritual, social, imperial, deep structure, critical, real life, New, Post-New, and New New. This chapter examines these various conceptions of ruxue.

Good Ruxue, Bad Ruxue Many scholars have attempted to develop a basic distinction between “good” ruxue and “bad” ruxue. Writing in English in the first half of the 1980s, Du Weiming, for example, distinguished a highly politicized Confucian ideology from vulgar or popular1 Confucianism. The political form was inimical to the entrepreneurial spirit; the popular variety was

( 1. Peter L. Berger is generally credited with coining the term “vulgar Confucianism”; see his “Secularity—West and East.”

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not. He defined politicized Confucianism as “the power of the state over society; politics over economics; and bureaucratisation over individual initiative.”2 By contrast, he associated vulgar Confucianism with “the Chinese of the 19th century outside China, who became very successful entrepreneurs in South East Asia and in North America.”3 A few years later, he distinguished between the rujia tradition and “rujiao China” (Levenson’s “Confucian China”) as historical phenomena. Rujiao China is “a politicized rujia ethic that constituted the dominant thought in the ideology of China’s traditional feudal society, as well as the expression of various distortions in modern society.” The rujia tradition, by contrast, is “the essential constitutive element in China’s national culture and it played a decisive role in the norms of everyday human interaction.” The “shapers” of the rujia tradition were such figures as Confucius, Mencius, Xunzi 荀子(ca. 310–ca. 228 B.C.), Dong Zhongshu 董仲舒 (179–104 B.C.), Zhou Dunyi 周敦頤 (1017–73), Zhang Zai 張載 (1020–77), Cheng Hao 程顥 (1032–85), Cheng Yi 程頤 (1033–1107), Zhu Xi 朱熹 (1130–1200), Xu Heng 許衡 (1209–81), Wu Cheng 吳澄 (1249–1333), Wang Yangming, Liu Zongzhou 劉宗周 (1578–1645), Huang Zongxi 黃 宗羲 (1610–95), Gu Yanwu 顧炎武 (1613–82), Wang Fuzhi 王夫之 (1619– 92), and Dai Zhen 戴震 (1723–77).4 In the early 1990s, Hong Kong sociologist Jin Yaoji distinguished imperial (dizhi 帝 制 ) or institutional (zhiduhua 制度化) ruxue and social (shehuihua 社會化) ruxue. Institutional or imperial ruxue is a “complex mixture” of various “principles of rulership” as well as “strategic institutions” (such as the civil examination system and the imperial bureaucracy), whereas social ruxue is an informal system of beliefs guiding social behavior.5 Huang Junjie (National Taiwan University) similarly distinguishes two types of ruxue in the postwar period in Taiwan: official (zhengshi 正式; guanfang 官方) and unofficial ( fei zhengshi 非正式; minjian 民間). Official ruxue has functioned largely as a state-controlled ideological apparatus promulgated institutionally through primary and secondary textbooks, university entrance examinations, and civil service examinations. By contrast, unofficial ruxue is an “academic-intellectual or cultural movement” that bolstered Chinese cultural identity, resisted modern West-

( 2. Tu Wei-ming, Confucian Ethics Today, 90. 3. 1987 forum on “The Role of Culture in Industrial Asia,” 39. 4. See Du’s 1986 essay “Ruxue di san qi fazhan de qianjing wenti,” 258–64. 5. Jin Yaoji, Zhongguo shehui yu wenhua, 166.

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ern culture, and was expressed in folk beliefs, “phoenix temples,”6 community organizations, journals, morality books, lectures, novels, plays, private lectures, and ru organizations. It is fundamentally a type of cultural conservatism.7 Elsewhere he further breaks the category of unofficial ruxue down into “spiritual and secularized” ruxue, characterizing the former as “the common spiritual foundation of the intellectual elite” and the latter as the “folk value system” (minjian jiazhi xitong 民間價值系統).8 In an article on the secularization (shishuhua 世俗化) of ruxue, Jiang Guobao 蔣國寶 (Suzhou University) asserts that ruxue cannot meet the needs of the people’s psycho-spiritual life today because it is incapable of adapting to changed times and because its values-orientation is at odds with that of ordinary people. He makes a distinction between a secularized ruxue and an “aristocratized” (guizuhua 貴族化) ruxue,9 tracing the root cause of ruxue’s problems to the Han period when the secularized character of “primitive ruxue” of pre-Qin times was rejected in favor of an “aristocratized” path of development. In modern times, he claims, the New Confucians have merely entrenched and strengthened this development. Contrasting the historical development of ruxue with Christianity, he attributes the current popularity of Christianity around the globe to its transformation from an “aristocratized” to a secularized orientation. In the remainder of the article, Jiang portrays New Confucian thinkers such as Fang Dongmei and Mou Zongsan as having contributed to the demise of ruxue rather than to its revival because of their infatuation with a “scholastic rationality”—as exemplified by theoretical systematization and refinement—at the expense of neglecting how ruxue might be made relevant to ordinary people.10 These criticisms of the New Confucians echo those of Lin Anwu 林安梧 (Taiwan Normal University); Jiang’s notion of secularized ruxue also has similarities with Lin’s notion of “real-life ruxue” (shenghuohua de ruxue 生活化的儒學; see Chapter 8).

( 6. Reading luantang 鑾堂 as luantang 鸞堂. Luantang is sometimes rendered “spirit-writing hall.” 7. Huang Junjie, Taiwan yishi yu Taiwan wenhua, 175–76, 188–89, 200. 8. Preface to Huang Junjie, Ruxue yu xiandai Taiwan, 6–7. 9. Jiang defines “aristocratization” as “psycho-spiritually to reject worldly (shisu 世俗) feelings and worldly desires.” Secularization is the opposite: “having a sympathetic understanding of worldly feelings and worldly desires.” 10. Jiang Guobao, “Ruxue shisuhua de xiandai yiyi,” 26, 29.

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Song Zhiming (Renmin University) also employs the notion of an “aristocratized” ruxue but contrasts it with what he terms a “commonerized” ( pingminhua 平民化) ruxue. As with Jiang Guobao, Song maintains that in the pre-Qin period ruxue was predominantly a grassroots phenomenon, but Song argues that pingminghua ruxue, unlike Jiang’s secularized ruxue, continued to exist after Han times, citing the example of Wang Gen. Song also implicitly draws on Li Zehou’s “culturalpsychological formation” thesis (see below) to argue that the popular face of ruxue is nothing new: “After several thousand years of transmission, ‘commonerized’ ruxue has blended into the national character of the Chinese people. It conditions the values-orientation of the Chinese people and determines their behavioral norms. . . . It has seeped into every aspect of the Chinese people’s psycho-spiritual life to become the common conviction of the Chinese nation.” He further argues that the anti-ruxue rhetoric of the May Fourth period was directed at “aristocratized” ruxue, not the commonerized variety.11 Others have applied various tripartite divisions, with the aim again being to distinguish good ruxue from bad ruxue. Lin Anwu identifies three main types of ruxue in imperial China: real-life ruxue (shenghuohua de ruxue 生活化的儒學), which was rooted in “local folk traditions” (minjian xiangtu chuantong 民間鄉土傳統); critical ruxue (pipanxing de ruxue 批 判性的儒學), associated with a system of ethics based on certain qualities derived from human behavior and also the “interconnecting thread of the way as sustained and revealed through culture” (wenhua daotong 文化道統); and imperial-style ruxue (dizhishi de ruxue 帝制式的儒學), which was linked to an autocratic monarchy. He insists that imperialstyle ruxue was dominant historically (leading to the alienation of the other two types) and that it did not flow from the true source of ruxue. In contrast, the other two types helped to “soften” the excesses of imperial-style ruxue:12 critical ruxue counterbalanced imperial-style ruxue, and real-life ruxue played a mediating role by moderating the pernicious nature of imperial-style ruxue and fostering the roots of critical ruxue.13 (See Chapter 8.) Liu Shuxian (Academia Sinica) also distinguishes three types of ruxue: spiritual ruxue (Confucius, Mencius, the Cheng brothers, Zhu Xi, Lu

( 11. Song Zhiming, cited in Chen Shaoyan, ed., “Ruxue de yanjiu, puji yu dazhonghua,” 61, 63. 12. Lin Anwu, Ruxue yu Zhongguo chuantong shehui zhi zhexue xingcha, 178–79. 13. Lin Anwu, Zhongguo zong jiao yu yiyi zhiliao, 278.

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Xiangshan, Wang Yangming); politicized ruxue (an ideological tradition that served the interests of the court); and vulgar ruxue (beliefs and practices popular at the “grassroots” level of society that also incorporated elements of daojia thought and Buddhism and superstitious beliefs in ghosts and spirits).14 Just as Lin Anwu is critical in his portrayal and assessment of imperial ruxue, so, too, Liu is critical of “politicized” ruxue: By the Han dynasty, politicized ruxue had formed. . . . The ruzhe 儒者 and the rulers formed an intriguing interdependent yet mutually antagonistic relationship. On one hand, the ruzhe used the restraining principle of the virtue of humaneness to apply pressure on the rulers; on the other hand, the rulers exploited the ideology of [three] cardinal norms, [five] constant virtues ( gangchang 綱 常 ), and ritual-based social ethical instructions (lijiao 禮教) to control the thought of those who served the ruler in order to consolidate dynastic rule. This became the so-called ultra-stable structure of Chinese history.15

Although all these scholars deserve credit for rejecting the myth of a monolithic ruxue or rujia tradition, both the distinctions and the categories they employ are far too general and lacking in concrete historical detail to be regarded as academically rigorous. They thus prompt a host of questions—which I will not enter into here—about the effectiveness of their analytical purchase. Ironically, the attempt by ruxue revivalists to draw a distinction between good ruxue and bad ruxue mirrors the “one divides into two” (yi fen wei er 一分為二) and “critical inheritance” methodologies so favored by Chinese Marxist intellectual historians. (See Chapter 11.) Writing in 1990, even Fang Keli found clear evidence of this: “Today’s ruxue revivalists differ from the earlier National Essence group and the feudal restorationists in that they aspire to follow the path of ‘rujia capitalism.’ As such, it has not been possible for them to thoroughly endorse the feudal dross within ruxue.”16

( 14. Liu Shuxian, ed., Rujia sixiang yu xiandai shijie, preface, 1. Another variation on the tripartite division is developed in Zheng Zhiming, Ruxue de xianshixing yu zong jiaoxing. 15. Liu Shuxian, “Lun rujia lixiang yu Zhongguo xianshi de hudong guanxi,” 8, 7. He is clearly referring to Jin Guantao’s and Liu Qingfeng’s concept of “ultrastable system.” Both Lin’s and Liu’s views about politicized or institutional ruxue are consistent with the position Xu Fuguan 徐復觀 repeatedly articulated in various publications. See, e.g., Xu Fuguan, “Rujia dui Zhongguo lishi mingyun zhengzha yi li.” 16. Fang Keli, “Zhanwang ruxue de weilai qianjing bixu zhengshi de liang ge wenti,” 176.

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Critique of New Confucian Views Other scholars have been critical of some of these characterizations of ruxue, particular the sort of “good ruxue” that emerges in many accounts. For Yu Yingshi, rujia values are to be realized in the context of human relations in the course of everyday life: “they cannot be restricted merely to a set of academic moral doctrines or religious philosophy.”17 For the past several decades, he complains, discussions have concentrated on those aspects of ruxue that concern a transcendent realm. Yu explains that this situation developed because it has generally been accepted that Song-Ming Principle-centered Learning (Song-Ming lixue 宋明理學) represented the last period of ruxue, and therefore Principle-centered Learning must be concerned with abstract thought.18 Increasingly, this led to scholars’ focusing their attention on abstract, philosophical issues and on the writings of prominent Western philosophers such as Plato, Kant, Hegel, Bergson, Whitehead, and Heidegger. One immediate consequence of this one-sided focus, he complains, is that those aspects of ruxue that concern the mundane world (society, politics, the economy, and ethics) have been overlooked.19 His various studies on the relation between rujia ethics and “the mercantile spirit,” his research on Qing dynasty classical scholarship, and his more recent volumes on Zhu Xi20 can be understood as attempts to redress this perceived imbalance.21 Li Zehou (since 1992 Li has resided in the United States) has consistently stressed that ruxue cannot be reduced to a tradition associated with self-cultivation and “inner sageliness” and represented merely by a handful of figures such as Confucius, Mencius, the Cheng brothers, Zhu Xi, Lu Xiangshan, and Wang Yangming. For Li, ruxue also includes a long and rich tradition of “external kingliness” concerned with statecraft

( 17. Yu Yingshi, Xiandai ruxue lun, preface, 5. 18. The logic of this point is less than apparent. 19. Yu Yingshi, Xiandai ruxue lun, preface, 8. 20. Yu Yingshi, Zhu Xi de lishi shijie. 21. This “historian’s” perspective is, of course, not new. Seventy years ago, Chen Yinke 陳寅恪 (“Shenchao baogao san”) wrote: “There is a connection between [civil and penal] codes and all public and private political and social acts. These codes are where the doctrines of the rujia are given concrete expression. Hence for the past two thousand years, it has actually been in the areas of institutions, laws, and public and private life that the Hua-Xia nation has been most profoundly influenced by rujia doctrines.”

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and practical issues associated with such figures as Confucius, Xunzi, Dong Zhongshu, Wang Tong 王通 (d. 617), Chen Liang 陳亮 (1143–94), Ye Shi 葉適 (1150–1223), Gu Yanwu, and Huang Zongxi. He attaches particular importance to the formative influence that Xunzi, Dong Zhongshu, and Han dynasty ru exercised on Chinese culture. 22 (This perpective is reiterated in his interpretation of the Guodian texts; see Chapter 10.) More recently, Gan Chunsong (Renmin University) has developed this perspective to argue that, historically, the rujia should be understood as an institution rather than as representative of a particular philosophy, religion, or abstract ideology. He maintains that the rujia’s institutional mode of existence has long been overlooked by mainland scholars and proposes two explanations for this. First, China is a “weak culture,” and its institutions have been “comprehensively westernized.” Because many aspects of the rujia are difficult to reconcile with democracy, this has prompted scholarly efforts to “harmonize rujia [values] with democratic institutions, at the cost of overlooking the institutional dimensions of the rujia.” Second, the adoption of modern disciplinary categories has meant that the rujia’s complex existence has been broken into specific disciplines such as philosophy, history, sociology, and so on. This has led to a tendency to ignore the institutional mode of the whole. 23 Distinguishing the “institutionalization of the rujia” and the “transformation of institutions by the rujia,” he describes the first notion as referring to “a series of institutional plans” put in place to guarantee the rujia a unique, officially sanctioned status and to undergird the relationship between the rujia and state power. These plans include the transformation of Confucius into a sage, the canonization of rujia texts, and the development of the civil examination system. In contrast, the

( 22. Li Zehou, “He wei ‘xiandai xin ruxue’ ? , ” 111. 23. Gan Chunsong, Zhiduhua rujia ji qi jieti, 358. He does, however, undermine these claims to some extent on p. 2, where he claims that already in Song times the rujia had been transformed into “a type of conceptualized school of thought” in which cultivation of the mind and the nature became central to rujia identity. In support of this account of the change in rujia identity, Gan cites Qian Mu’s observation that up until the time of Han Yu, the collective term “Zhou Kong” 周孔 (the Duke of Zhou and Confucius) was common but from the time of the Cheng brothers, the collective term “Kong Meng” 孔孟 displaced it. Qian characterizes this new orientation as focusing exclusively on “the sagely way” rather than “the kingly way.”

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transformation of institutions by the rujia refers to the “permeation and presence” of rujia values in systems of social control and in institutional planning, as embodied in state ideology, the patriarchal clan system, and political-social structures, whose origins can be traced to the Han dynasty.24 Gan’s overall treatment suffers from a paucity of historical examples predating the late Qing to substantiate his more general claims. Writing in 1990, mainland scholars of ruxue Fang Keli and Zheng Jiadong argue that after the May Fourth period, ruxue became synonymous with China’s feudal past and feudal authoritarianism. Consequently the New Confucians sought to change ruxue’s image. Fang and Zheng describe the basic approach adopted by the New Confucians as “distinguishing between a feudalized, politicized, and institutionalized ruxue, on one hand, and a ruxue that functioned as a cultural ideal, a moral ideal, and a humanist spirit,25 on the other.” According to Fang and Zheng, the New Confucians (they specify Du Weiming, in particular) conceive of ruxue as “a ‘constant principle,’ ‘a constant way’ that possesses a universal value transcending particular social forms and historical periods. Unlike institutionalized ruxue or [Levenson’s] ‘Confucian China,’ it would certainly not disappear.”26

( 24. See Chapters 1 and 2 of his book. 25. Du Weiming (Ruxue di san qi fazhan de qianjing wenti, 10), for example, describes the “fundamental spirit” of ruxue as a type of humanism. This type of humanism is very different from the sort of Western humanism that opposes nature and theology. [The humanism of ruxue] promotes the unity of heaven and humans, with the myriad things constituting one reality ( yiti 一 體 ). This type of humanism is “engaged with the world” (rushi 入 世 ), and must participate in real life politics. It is not, however, a link in the power structure of real-life politics. It has a very solid critical spirit. That is, it seeks to change real-life politics by means of moral ideals. This is what is called “outer kingliness” thought. By the early 1990s, similar views were also being adopted by growing numbers of mainland scholars. Huang Kejian 黃克劍 (“Rudao, rujiao, ruzhe,” 74), for example, denies that a ruzhe is someone who belongs to a particular social class or follows a particular profession. “The term merely implies a [certain kind of ] aura emanating from a person’s personality (ren’ge qixang 人格氣象) or [a person who has] humanist concerns.” 26. Fang Keli and Zheng Jiadong, “Lun xiandai xin ruxue dui chuantong ruxue de jicheng, kaixin ji qi lilun kunnan.”

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Transcendent Idealism Versus Historical Materialism Fang Keli, at least, is being a little inconsistent here, given his criticisms of Du Weiming. In the same year, Fang elsewhere described the role of ruxue as having provided the ideological and doctrinal basis legitimating and protecting an entire feudal economic-political system. It penetrated every aspect of social life, to the extent that its value concepts and modes of behavior affected popular customs. However, the [three] cardinal norms, [five] constant virtues, social divisions and moral teachings (gangchang ming jiao 綱常名教) consistently remained as its unchanging core. The substance of ruxue was determined by this aspect of its own content, which was both relatively stable and had a fundamental significance.

In other words, for Fang, ruxue was a feudal ideology, whose unchanging core was gangchang mingjiao.27 Yet it is precisely New Confucian and ruxue revivalist claims about the capacity of ruxue’s core identity to transcend historical change that he—as a Marxist—finds so objectionable. Thus, in criticizing Du Weiming and Jiang Qing 蔣慶 (until the mid1990s affiliated with Shenzhen Administrative College) for promoting a circumscribed understanding of ruxue, he writes: In talking about the modern significance of ruxue, both start from the abstract premise that the substance of ruxue is the “philosophical study of man” (zhexue de renxue 哲學的人學) or “the personal realization of the sagely way of heaven.” If we infer what the future direction of this way of thinking might be, it will not be the use of history to explain thought but the use of thought to determine the course of history.28

Li Minghui (Academia Sinica) provides an apt illustration of the sort of position to which Fang is fundamentally opposed. In discussing three types of ruxue—institutional, social, and “deep structure” (shenceng 深層)29—Li argues: “If we admit that rujia thought is the manifestation of the psycho-spiritual life of the Chinese (Zhonghua) nation and is not

( 27. Fang Keli, “Zhanwang ruxue de weilai qianjing bixu zhengshi de liang ge wenti,” 180. 28. Fang Keli, “Ping dalu xin rujia ‘fuxing ruxue’ de gangling,” 440–41. 29. “Deep-structure ruxue” refers to the idea that ruxue is such a fundamental part of Chinese society that even if all forms of ruxue’s institutional expression ceased to exist, the deep structure of ruxue would still continue to influence and shape Chinese society.

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merely an unconscious passive response to historical conditions, then clearly none of these three senses of ruxue is able to determine the essence of ruxue.” Next, he cites intellectual historian30 Yu Dunkang 余 敦康 (CASS): “The question of ruxue’s essence is intimately connected with the characteristics of ancient Chinese society. If one discusses thought merely in terms of thought and fails to explore the real-life conditions that formed this thought, one will not find the correct answer.” Li objects that Yu’s claim effectively denies the transcendent nature (chaoyuexing 超越性) of all thought and culture and so falls into the trap of historical determinism. “So long as we admit that culture is an independent realm (lingyu 領域), possessing a relative transcendence visà-vis history and society, then we already have sufficient reason to deny that the essence of ruxue should be determined on the basis of the characteristics of ancient Chinese society. Accordingly, in order to determine the essence of ruxue, we need to discuss thought in terms of thought.”31 As early as 1994, Chen Lai had developed a position on this issue that suggests a compromise between the Marxist’s historical determinism and the New Confucian’s transcendent idealism. After surveying a range of traditional and twentieth-century Chinese accounts, Chen distinguishes four main hypotheses on the origin of the rujia: official scribes; men with specialist/technical knowledge; a type of profession; and an official rank. He is particularly critical of modern scholars for directing their inquiries solely at the origin of the term ru and failing to address the question of the origin of rujia thought. Thus he asks rhetorically, “How could an occupation concerned with assisting in matters of ceremonial produce rujia thought?”32 He then proceeds to outline his own views on the subject. One important reason rujia thought was able to play the “leading role” in Chinese culture was because it was the product of Chinese cultural development over the course of the Three Dynasties (Xia, Shang, Zhou). He describes rujia thought as having first evolved as the product of cultural growth during the Three Dynasties and then developing into an “orientation” with a normative significance for “the entire culture” during the

( 30. It should, however, be noted that Yu Dunkang’s adherence to Marxist paradigms increasingly waned over the course of the 1990s. 31. Li Minghui, Dangdai ruxue zhi ziwo zhuanhua, 9–10. 32. Chen Lai, Gudai zong jiao yu lunli.

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Western Zhou period. “The Western Zhou period served as the model for Chinese culture and was the period during which the cultural orientation [of the Chinese nation] began to become fixed and take on a definite shape.” For Chen, any account of the origins of rujia thought must take into account this process of cultural development over the Three Dynasties. If this process of development is ignored, then the early ru are likely to be misconceived as narrowly representing some technical skill (yi 藝) rather than as a way (dao 道), a system of thought.33 Several years before this, he had already developed a distinction between “ruxue as philosophy” and “rujiao as culture,” noting that by jiao 教 he did not mean a religious organization but “an overall cultural existence that covers far, far more than a philosophical form and structure.”34 These views on the relationship between ru thought and Chinese culture bear some striking resemblances to views expressed by Mou Zongsan (see Chapter 7); they have also become increasingly shared by other mainland scholars who subscribe to a ruxue-based cultural nationalism. Jing Haifeng (Shenzhen University) contends that the contemporary image of ruxue has been shaped by a variety of “critical discourses” that came into play over the past century, such as evolutionism, scientism, and materialism. He singles out historicism as having played the main role in shaping the scholarly image of ruxue: At the beginning of the twentieth century, in the wake of the disintegration of classical studies and the dissemination of Western learning, people’s understanding and evaluation of ruxue underwent a fundamental change: from the original inner identification with ruxue as a matter of personal esteem, to a situation in which it has become an object of external, objective description and research. The sacred nature of ruxue ceased to exist as it came to be an object for analysis and criticism. . . . In the modern evaluation of ruxue, historical studies have commanded the absolute leading role: influential writings on “tracing the ru to their source” ( yuan ru 原儒) are all by historians, and these writings have become the mainstream in shaping ruxue.35

( 33. Ibid., 356–57. 34. Chen Lai, “Ershi shiji Zhongguo wenhua de ruxue kunjing,” 30. 35. Jing Haifeng, Zhongguo zhexue de xiandai quanshi, 219. The writings he refers to here are Zhang Bingling’s 章炳麟 (1868–1936) influential essay “Tracing the Ru to Their Source” (“Yuan ru” 原儒; 1909); Hu Shi’s 胡適 (1891–1962) “Interpreting Ru” (“Shuo ru” 說儒; 1935); Feng Youlan’s “Tracing the Ru and the Mo to Their Source” (“Yuan ru mo” 原儒墨; 1935); and Guo Moruo’s 郭沫若 (1892–1986) “A Refutation of ‘Interpreting Ru’ ” (“Bo ‘Shuo Ru’ ” 駁“說儒”; 1937).

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Jing argues that historicist approaches to ruxue have been directed at the origins of the ru and as such are really about “pre-ru studies.” “They are at a great remove from the real meaning of ruxue.” As a consequence of the “doubting antiquity” ( yigu 疑古) movement (see Chapter 10), according to which many ancient texts were deemed to be forgeries or of spurious provenance, researchers have increasingly relied on studies by philologists and specialists in oracle bone writing. He concludes that the highly technical and specialized nature of this research has similarly failed to address the fundamental issue of “What is ruxue?” Jing’s position not only distinguishes him from more historically oriented scholars such as Chen Lai, but more significantly places him at ideological odds with Marxist scholars such Fang Keli. Elsewhere, Jing distinguished three different representations of ruxue in what he terms “the post-classical studies (jingxue) period”: ruxue as defined by historians (Zhang Binglin, Hu Shi); ruxue as defined by philologists (Guo Moruo, Xu Zhongshu 徐仲舒; which he subsequently subsumes within the “ruxue as defined by historians” category); and ruxue as defined by philosophers (New Confucians). He maintains that these disciplinary distinctions are the product of the professionalization and institutionalizaton of knowledge that started in the nineteenth century. For much of the twentieth century, the energies of the historians have been applied to identifying the original ru, that is, to pre-ruxue. As such they have been unable to answer the question “What is ruxue?” Even when they have addressed the issue of ruxue, it is a ruxue that no longer exists. As for the question “What is ruxue?” Jing states: It is not simply a historiographical problem or a matter that can be treated as a topic to be considered in the context of linear history. . . . Ruxue is both a historical accumulation and a formation—that is here and now; it is the complex interaction of the traditional and the immediate. If it is said that ruxue definitely still has a contemporary significance—irrespective of whether that relates to ruxue’s existence as a “wandering soul,” “sedimentation,” “hidden shadow,” or “distant echo”—it remains always connected to the situation here and now. This “here and now” can be creatively transformed into a source or resource of modernity.36

( 36. Jing Haifeng, “Ruxue dingwei de lishi mailuo yu dangdai yiyi.”

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All-consuming Ruxue Chen Lai and Jing Haifeng share the conviction that ruxue is integral to Chinese culture. Indeed, one of the most common characterizations of ruxue—adopted by its critics and defenders, as well as those in between—is the claim that it thoroughly penetrated every dimension and stratum of traditional society and its institutions. According to Yu Yingshi, ruxue is a “system of thought that comprehensively arranges ordered relations between people. Every component—from the course of a person’s entire life and extending to the family, the state, and the whole world—is within the scope of ruxue. Over the course of two thousand years, step by step, ruxue entered every aspect of the daily lives of Chinese people, by means of the establishment of political, social, economic, and educational institutions.” Yu particularly emphasizes the presence of ruxue in social institutions: unlike the church in the West, because “traditional ruxue did not have its own institution or organization, it embodied itself in all manner of social institutions.”37 There are many variations on this general theme. According to Liu Zongxian (Shandong Academy of Social Sciences) and Cai Degui (Shandong University), the emphasis that ruxue placed on the concept of “great unification” (da yitong 大一統)38 is evident in the relationship between the civil examination system and “feudal rule”; it enabled ruxue to become not merely the ruling ideology but also a constituent element of the mechanism of rule. Despite this, the authority of ruxue was principally expressed not as the ideology of political rule but as a set of core values. By means of the civil examination system, these values permeated the thought of intellectuals. Through social transmission and family education, these values influenced all members of society in a variety of ways, forming a social order founded on the values of ruxue. The primary influence of these values on rulers was in relation to selfcultivation for the purposes of enhancing the methods of rulership. Through its institutional forms, ruxue was also able to strengthen the psychological bonds maintaining the “great unification” within China’s “great family of many ethnic groups.” Thus Liu and Cai cite the examples of the Mongols of the Yuan period and Manchus of the Qing

( 37. Yu Yingshi, “Xiandai ruxue de kunjing,” 29, 33. 38. The term appears in Spring and Autumn Annals and became a central topic in the theories of the Gongyang tradition.

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period, maintaining that they were “transformed into Han” (Hanhua 漢化) during the early periods of their rule: The core of this so-called Hanhua was veneration of ruxue. This included employing rusheng, implementing Han law, revering Confucius and honoring the ru, translating Han-language classical texts and histories or carrying out editing work on the ruxue classics, implementing the civil examination system, and overhauling the content of the School of the Sons of the State (Guozixue 國子 學) curriculum. Through this process of Hanhua, the rule of the feudal empire was consolidated, the people’s hearts and minds were put at rest, and the traditional culture of the Chinese (Zhonghua) people was carried forward.39

In a similar vein, Chen Lai maintains that rujia thought exerted an “orthodox, broad, and absolute” influence on Chinese society, particularly since Song and Yuan times when it was supported by the ruler. This influence was manifest especially in the education system and the descentline system (zongfa 宗法), both of which he describes as “foundations of society”: Successive dynasties granted ruxue orthodox ideological status and stipulated that rujia classics (including Song and Ming dynasty interpretations) be used in the content of the civil examinations. From Song and Yuan times, the establishment of this system served as the political and educational foundation, and ruxue flourished. The family and descent-line systems, as well as the order of rule in the villages, constituted an even deeper historico-social foundation for the flourishing of ruxue. All of this constituted rujia culture or rujia society in its entirety.40

The Mainstay of Chinese Culture For many scholars, these and related views about the all-pervasive character of ruxue and rujia values in traditional Chinese society are beyond question. This is reflected in the frequent, almost ritualistic, invocation of the following mantras: the spirit of ruxue became the Chinese people’s national spirit;41 ruxue is the spirit of China’s overall culture;42 the ruxue tradition is the foundation of the Chinese nation’s (Zhonghua

( 39. Liu Zongyuan and Cai Degui, eds., Dangdai dong fang ruxue, 346–47. 40. Chen Lai, “Ershi shiji Zhongguo wenhua de ruxue kunjing,” 26. 41. Mou Zhongjian, “Ruxue de jindai mingyun,” 46. 42. Wang Bangxiong 王邦雄 (Taichung Normal University), cited in Lin Anwu, Lunyu: zouxiang shenghuo shijie de ruxue, 233.

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minzu) identity;43 rujia thought is the main guiding force in China’s cultural tradition;44 ruxue was the mainstream of thought in traditional culture;45 ruxue is the spirit of China’s overall culture;46 rujia culture is the mainstream of Chinese culture;47 ruxue is the main artery of Chinese culture; 48 and so on. Over the past decade, these assertions about the intimate relation between ruxue and Chinese cultural identity have become routinized in the discourse of a significant cross-section of mainland academic communities. For growing numbers of mainland academics, ruxue is now regarded as integral to both culture and the Chinese nation (Zhonghua minzu). Thus in a study reviewing mainland scholarship on ruxue between 1993 and 1997, Guo Qiyong claimed: “Through penetrating study of ruxue, mainland scholars have achieved a deeper level of understanding of the origins of Chinese culture and the national character (minzuxing).”49 The following comments by “mainland new rujia” (dalu xin rujia 大陸新儒家) Jiang Qing (see Chapter 12) reflect quite widely held views on the relation between culture and state: According to the Chinese people’s view of history, the demise of the state (wang guo 亡國) is not frightening because a fallen state can be revived and social life will continue to exist as before. The demise of the whole world is not frightening either, because a fallen world can also be revived and social life will continue to exist as before. Chinese people most fear the fall of culture because this means the demise of values. With the loss of values the social life of humankind becomes no longer possible; it spells the end for humankind. A world devoid of values is one that humankind cannot endure living in. Culture is nothing less than the medium and confluence of a nation’s life values and the meaning for its existence.50

( 43. Du Weiming, “Ruxue di san qi fazhan de qianjing wenti,” 261. 44. Li Minghui, quoted in Huang Junjie, Taiwan yishi yu Taiwan wenhua, 192. 45. Huang Junjie, Taiwan yishi yu Taiwan wenhua, 221; Yu Yingshi, preface to Huang Junjie, DongYa ruxueshi de xin shiye, iii; Mou Zhongjian, “Ruxue de jindai mingyun,” 46; Fu Weixun, “Rujia lunli(xue) de xiandaihua chongjian keti,” 24. 46. Wang Bangxiong, cited in Lin Anwu, Lunyu: zouxiang shenghuo shijie de ruxue, 233. 47. Jiang Qing, Zhengzhi ruxue, 360. 48. Luo Yijun, “Ruxue ye you fazhan de quanli,” 32. 49. Guo Qiyong, “Zhongguo dalu diqu jin wunian lai (1993–1997) de ruxue yanjiu,” 60. 50. Jiang Qing, Zhengzhi ruxue, 2. Cf. John Fitzgerald’s (“The Nationless State,” 66) claim: “The great dread of Chinese nationalists from nineteenth-

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Ergo, the demise of ruxue would presage the demise of the Chinese nation (Zhonghua minzu). Given these various portrayals of ruxue, it is not unexpected to find commentators explicitly presenting ruxue itself as a cultural system.51 According to Luo Yijun 羅義俊 (Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences), for example, “Ruxue thought is a cultural force. That which ruxue thought directly creates and forms is the quality (suzhi 素質) of humans, cultural ambience, socio-ethical relations, and historical tradition. . . . Without ruxue there is no way to discuss Chinese culture. Thus the relation between ruxue and modernization really amounts to the relation between Chinese culture and modernization.”52 Others have taken the next step of embracing the notion of a “ruxue civilization.” Ma Zhenduo, Xu Yuanhe, and Zheng Jiadong trace the birth of rujia civilization to Han Emperor Wu’s (r. 141–86 B.C.) adoption of Dong Zhongshu’s proposal to use “ru techniques” exclusively. This represented a new phase in the development of Chinese civilization, one in which “rujia thought was accepted by all levels of Chinese society as their ideology.” For the rulers, the shi 士 (men of education and social standing) class, and the masses of ordinary people “ruxue became their common ideology. . . . From this time on, rujia thought became the shared intellectual framework for the whole nation and the structure for the way of living in Chinese society.”53 According to Li Suping (CASS), the four largest, most influential civilizations are rujiao, Buddhist, Islamic, and Christian. Rujiao civilization differs from Christianity and Islam in that it does not posit a creator (and overseer) of the universe, instead emphasizing the importance of the individual, the “subjective spirit” (zhuti jingshen 主體精神), which takes responsibility for the individual’s moral self-realization and moral self-completion. This “subjective spirit” is further characterized by the emphasis placed on learning about life (sheng); this is in contrast to the Buddhists, who emphasize learning about death. “This unique characteristic of ruxue—‘the subjective spirit’—evolved to become the subjective

( century modernizers to twentieth-century communists has been the collapse of the unitary state, a fear well captured in the phrase ‘the death of the state’ (wang guo).” 51 . See, e.g., Mou Zhongjian 牟 鍾 鑑 , cited in Wen Li, comp. and ed., “Guanyu ‘rujia’ yu ‘rujiao’ de taolun,” 69. 52. Luo Yijun, “Ruxue ye you fazhan de quanli,” 32. 53. Ma Zhenduo et al., Rujia wenming, 2, 62.

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spirit of East Asian consciousness. The most important value of this subjective spirit is its assault on Western monism.” This assault was given expression as a model of modernity that differs from the modernization model of Europe and America: “the East Asian model” as represented by industrial East Asia.54 (Ironically this article was published a year after the onset of the Asian monetary crisis.)

Ruxue in the Twentieth Century For most of the twentieth century, ruxue was widely portrayed as moribund and effectively spent as a viable philosophical and cultural resource, with many scholars charting its demise and final disintegration in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.55 Over the past two decades, growing numbers of Chinese scholars have rejected this assessment. Even Zheng Jiadong—who has expressed grave concerns about the deleterious effects of professionalization and institutionalization on ruxue in the twentieth century—sees continuity in the rujia tradition: “The unity and identity of ruxue and real history already came to an end with Kang Youwei 康有為 [1858–1927]. One could say that from then on Chinese history was no longer rujia history. That does not, however, mean that the rujia tradition came to an end as well; it lived on, in thought but not in history.”56 Others have attempted to expand on the content of that ongoing tradition. Chen Lai insists that despite the assault on institutionalized forms of ruxue in the political and educational arenas during the twentieth century, rujia ethics has continued to be supported. He cites examples such as Kang Youwei’s and Chen Huanzhang’s 陳煥章 (1880/81– 1934?) calls for the establishment of Kongjiao (Confucian religion); Liang Qichao’s 梁啟超 (1873–1929) endorsement of the call to respect Confucius (even though Liang was opposed to students’ learning the Classics and abandoned his earlier support for Kongjiao); Sun Yat-sen’s 孫中山 (1866–1925) appeal to the “four norms and eight virtues” (siwei bade 四維 八德)57 as the means to “develop the national spirit”; and support for

( 54. Li Suping, “DongYa ruxue yu DongYa yishi,” 129. 55. Levenson, Confucian China and Its Modern Fate; Elvin, “The Collapse of Scriptural Confucianism.” 56. Zheng Jiadong, Mou Zongsan 牟宗三, introduction, 8. 57. The four norms: ritual propriety (li 禮), rightness ( yi 義), incorruptibility (lian 廉), sense of shame (chi 恥). The eight virtues: loyalty (zhong 忠), filial re-

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traditional cardinal virtues in the New Life movement (1934). Chen also claims, “To a large degree, the rujia ethical content in the social movements and educational practices implemented during the period of Nationalist rule was self-consciously preserved. . . . Rujia ethics became an important psychological-spiritual resource and moral force during the period of the Anti-Japanese War (1937–1945).” He even cites the example of Liu Shaoqi’s 劉少奇 promotion of “moral spirit and selfcultivation” in the 1930s: “Naturally and unavoidably, it significantly drew on the resources of rujia culture such that in the 1950s and 1960s young people and the masses found much to identify with in [Liu’s] book [Lun Gongchandangyuan de xiuyang 論共產黨員的修養 (On the selfcultivation of members of the Communist Party)].” As he points out, the book’s influence in the first half of the 1960s was profound.58 According to Chen, because the “values world” of ruxue did not disappear following the transformation of traditional society, in the sociocultural transformations of the twentieth century ruxue remained a topic that continually attracted people’s attention. Whenever society was in a situation of moral crisis, the calls for a return to traditional values resounded even more loudly. Ruxue values continued to be the focus of attention and to be supported, because morality and modernity became dislocated in the process of modernization. “The continual affirmation of ruxue values during the course of the twentieth century is not, essentially, an expression of so-called postcolonial discourse in China; much less is it the hegemonic discourse of global capitalism or the affirmation of the ideological significance of capitalist modernity.” Instead, Chen identifies several factors as playing a part in what he portrays as the continued affirmation of ruxue values: the acknowledgment of multicultural values; the belief that ruxue values can provide a therapy for modernity; a deep concern for value rationality (presumably a notion borrowed from Weber); an expression of longing for an ideal life and an ideal human character; a strong demand for identifying with the national culture; and a moral, humanist reflection on the enlightenment narrative.59 For Chen, consideration of whether rujia thought still has value and a reason to exist should not be influenced by the argument that, histori-

( spect (xiao 孝), humaneness (ren 仁), love (ai 愛), living up to one’s word (xin 信), rightness ( yi 義), harmony (he 和), stability ( ping 平). 58. Chen Lai, “Ershi shiji Zhongguo wenhua de ruxue kunjing,” 27–29. 59. Ibid., 30.

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cally, ruxue depended on certain institutions, such as the civil examination system, for its survival. This is because ruxue had a thousand-year history before the introduction of the civil examination system, and in Japan there was never a civil examination system. “Ruxue is certainly not dead. Since it was broken up and scattered and became a culturalpsychological tradition, unconsciously it has continued to exist in an invisible mode in the culture and in people’s behavior.”60 This conclusion has become surprisingly widespread in post-1994 China. For example, a report on the proceedings of a conference on “Ruxue and the Modernization of Chinese Culture” convened at Renmin University in 1996, noted the following “consensus” view of participating scholars: From the perspective of its national character (minzuxing), ruxue is the subject (zhuti ) and core of traditional Chinese culture. It accords with the psychospiritual manifestation and cultural form of the Chinese (Zhonghua) nation. It has an exceptionally important significance in relation to the intimate identification with the Chinese nation and the continued development of Chinese culture. So long as the Chinese nation exists, this cultural form [i.e., ruxue] will never completely disappear.61

After characterizing rujia culture as a kind of “ethical spirit,” Liu Zongxian and Cai Degui propose: “As a general socio-ethical consciousness, rujia ethics exists within our nation’s cultural-psychological structure, is infused within our blood, and constitutes the continuously creative inner soul of our nation. It has created our national character and today still influences people’s behavior, attitude, and ideological beliefs.”62 Even Yu Yingshi, whose constant refrain has been that the institutional basis of ruxue no longer exists, is willing to affirm that there is a future for ruxue.

( 60. Ibid., 28, 31. 61. See Zhang Fenglei, “Ruxue yu Zhongguo wenhua xiandaihua xueshu yantaohui zongshu,” 48. Echoing these sentiments, Guo Qiyong is optimistic that ruxue can “take root” at a popular level in society, because “after all, it is the product of thousands of years of cultural sedimentation.” Even many of ruxue’s most ardent critics “still carry the spirit of ruxue in their bones.” Guo proceeds to relate that even those who promote New Daojia thought “are, in terms of their sentiments, still rujia.” Remarks by Guo recorded in the transcript of the seminar “Rujia sixiang zai xiandai DongYa,” 236. 62. Liu Zongxian and Cai Degui, eds., Dangdai dong fang ruxue, 50, 51.

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In the post–Cold War world, we see the power of national cultures popping up everywhere. The powerful culture of the modern West has proved once and for all that differences between national cultures cannot be eliminated. . . . If Chinese culture does not completely disappear due to modern changes, then ruxue—one of the guiding spirits of Chinese culture—will not completely disappear either.

That is, so long as there is Chinese culture, there will be ruxue.63 (Yu’s concern is that the highly intellectualized form of ruxue represented by the New Confucians, in particular, is incapable of fostering a genuine rebirth of the rujia tradition.)

The Deep Structure of Ruxue and Chinese National Identity The most influential version of the thesis that ruxue is integral to Chinese cultural—and, indeed, national—identity was developed by Li Zehou. Indeed, it is probably not an exaggeration to claim that all Chinese scholars who have proposed this thesis since the early 1980s have been influenced by Li Zehou. The literature on ruxue studies is replete with invocations of concepts such as cultural-psychological formation (wenhua xinli jiegou 文化心理結構), sedimentation ( jidian 積淀), and the deep structure (shenceng jiegou 深層結構) of ruxue. Typically these terms are employed without reference to Li; this suggests that they have become routinized in the discourse of the wider academic community. After moving to the United States in 1992, Li evidenced an even more sympathetic attitude to ruxue than he had in earlier writings. In an essay written in 1996 and submitted as part of a volume of collected essays on the topic of “rujia thought and its modern interpretation”— edited by Academia Sinica New Confucian Li Minghui—Li Zehou insists that one of the characteristics of the term “ru” (regardless of whether the term refers to rujia, ruxue, or rujiao) is that its value and meaning are not necessarily tied to whether a person self-consciously identifies with and acknowledges being a ru. Rather, the value and meaning of ru is that it has been transformed into the principal component of the Han nation’s cultural-psychological formation (wenhua xinli jiegou).

( 63. Yu Yingshi, Xiandai ruxue lun, 38.

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For millennia, this cultural-psychological formation has operated as a norm for the intellectual-affective (sixiang qinggan 思想情感) and behavioral activities of “Chinese society in its entirety,” far eclipsing the influences of Buddhism, Daoism, and other philosophical and religious traditions. It so permeated Chinese society that people became unconscious of its normative force as it became “sedimented” ( jidian 積淀) in people’s psychological being. Today it continues to influence the intellectual sensitivities and behavioral activities of intellectuals. “So long as one does not take up the life of a monk, or a good-for-nothing who cares nothing about the affairs of the world, or an extreme individualist, then anyone can discover the connotations and characteristics of ‘ru’ in their own person (be it conceptually, behaviorally, intellectual-emotionally, or theoretically.)”64 He describes the deep structure of ruxue by citing the following passages from his earlier writings (1980 and 1990, respectively): Ru eventually became a manifestation of the unconscious collective archetype of the Han nation, and formed a nationalistic cultural-psychological construct. It was no chance occurrence that Confucianism (Kongxue 孔學) virtually became a synonym for Chinese culture.65 Although the broad mass of farmers did not read the books of Confucius and [may] not have even have known who Confucius was, principally it was the teachings of Confucius and the rujia that deeply permeated and became ‘sedimented’ in their behavioral norms, conceptual patterns, ways of thinking, and affective attitudes . . . , consciously and subconsciously.66

In a similar vein, but in slightly less sympathetic terms, in 1987 he wrote: “As an ideology of social control for several thousand years, ruxue was no longer the thought of a particular class, but rather became the main component in the character of the Chinese people (Zhonghua minzuxing), or the character of the people ( guominxing), or what we can term ‘cultural psychology.’ ” For this very reason, he concludes: “Obviously, ruxue is certainly not exhausted; it is not something that needs quickly to be saved or rejuvenated and promoted.”67

( 64. Li Zehou, “Chu ni ruxue shenceng jiegou jiangshuo,” 62. 65. Ibid., 63, citing Li Zehou, Zhongguo gudai sixiangshi lun, 32. The particular essay in which this passage appears was originally published in 1980. 66. Li Zehou, “Chu ni ruxue shenceng jiegou jiangshuo,” 64, citing Li Zehou, “Guanyu rujia yu ‘xiandai xin rujia,’ ” 237–38. 67. Li Zehou, “Guanyu ruxue he xin ruxue,” 7.

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Li draws a distinction between what he calls the superstructure (biao de jiegou 表的結構) and deep structure of ruxue. “Superstructure” refers to “the teachings of Confucius and his school (men 門), as well as the system of rujia political doctrines, codes and institutions, ethical norms, social order, ideology, and so on, developed since Qin and Han times. Manifested as socio-cultural phenomena, the superstructure of ruxue is fundamentally the values structure ( jiazhi jiegou 價值結構) or the knowledge/ power system of a particular form of rationality.” In contrast to the rational character of ruxue’s superstructure, its deep structure “contains a mixture of emotions and desires that are complexly intertwined with reason [rational knowledge] to form a composite entity.” He refers to his composite mixture of emotion, desire, and reason as an “affective-rational formation” (qingli jiegou 情理結構). The relation between reason and affective states is such that neither plays a ruling or dominating role; rather, they unite to permeate and blend with one another. “In my view, this is an important characteristic of the ruxue-constituted Chinese culturalpsychological structure.”68 For Li, the deep structure is equivalent to the “people’s character,” “national spirit,” and “cultural tradition.” The two most important characteristics of this deep structure are a “joyful culture” (legan wenhua) 樂感 文化 and “pragmatic reason” 實用理性 (shiyong lixing). These two concepts are given expression as manifestations of the superstructure; yet they also constitute the psychological characteristics of the deep structure. When combined, these two characteristics represent what Li calls the concept of a “single world” (yi ge shijie 一個世界). The single world is the main characteristic of the deep structure of ruxue and Chinese culture more generally; moreover, it provides the basis for the Chinese nation’s psychological structure and also distinguishes ruxue from Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism. “Ruxue is neither purely analytical philosophical reasoning nor a purely affective attitude of faith. It has both religious and moral functions, as well as a rational attitude of respecting experience. This is due to the blending of the affective and rational in the cultural-psychological structure.”69 From Han times on, large numbers of officials and ru scholars conducted “transformation by teaching” (jiaohua 教化) among the broad masses. In the process, ruxue—the intellectual doctrine that stressed the

( 68. Li Zehou, “Chu ni ruxue shenceng jiegou jiangshuo,” 65. 69. Ibid., 65–66.

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establishment of the affective-rational structure—gradually transformed the general social consciousness. Li traces ru teachings (rujiao) to these practices. “Although rujiao was not a standard religion, it became a belief, a doctrine, a norm, a standard, and a customary habit that was accepted generally throughout society. . . . Ruxue was able to become the mainstay, the core, of Hua-Xia culture principally because it was transformed into the cultural-psychological condition of the nation.” Precisely because of this, ruxue “commanded a leading role in both the ‘great tradition’ and the ‘small tradition.’ ” As the deep structure of the Chinese people’s culture and psychology, ruxue guided the sinicization of Buddhism and the activities of the Three Teachings sects. As it became increasingly sedimented into the bedrock of this culture and psychology, it also absorbed and assimilated new cultural elements, developing and renewing itself in the process.70 Already in the 1980s Li had developed most of his major ideas and concepts, including his views on “national culture.” More recently, some commentators have attributed to Li a seminal role in forming a “national cultural consciousness” (a concept also supported by New Confucians and ruxue revivalists, as well as those committed to the goal of achieving “modernization and the establishment of a socialist psychospiritual civilization”). Lin Tongqi, Roger T. Ames, and Henry Rosemont, Jr., offer the following account of how there emerged in the decade after 1978 a new intellectual discourse centrally concerned with the topic of China’s modernization, in which the controlling theme was how to modernize self and culture: The powerful impact of Li Zehou came . . . from his insightful analysis of the age-long process of “sedimentation” that has shaped the “cultural-psychological structure” of the Chinese nation. It is . . . the layer upon layer of aesthetic and moral ethos he has managed to excavate with this framework that created repercussions among the intellectuals. The collective search for national identity . . . fused with the individual’s search for self-identity, and the result [was] the rebirth of China’s national spirit or soul.

In an image that uncannily conjures up the specter of Hegel’s Absolute Spirit as it moves dialectically, unfolding as human history, toward the realization of its own essence and perfection as freedom, they conclude: “The urge for self-realization eventually merged with the quest for

( 70. Ibid., 69–70.

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cultural identity, foreshadowing the long process of the rebirth of China’s national spirit, or soul.” Curiously, this formulation also has the merit of appealing to neo-conservatives/traditionalists and Marxists alike.71

Four Periods of Ruxue Li proposes that ruxue underwent four periods of development: classical (Confucius, Mencius, Xunzi); Han ru; Song-Ming lixue; and present and future developments (Marxism, liberalism, existentialism, and postmodernism).72 The fourth period is still in a state of coming into being, but Li nevertheless characterizes it in terms of his own philosophical views. Thus he describes it as characterized by an “anthropological ontology”; its basic categories are a “humanizing nature” and a “naturalizing humanity,”73 sedimentation, the affective, cultural-psychological formation, and so on.74 Although Li’s basic philosophical orientation is Marxist or “neoMarxist,” there is an ideological double identity in his philosophical allegiances: ruxue and Marxist. Despite his fundamentally Marxist philosophical outlook, Sylvia Chan argues that it is “his answer to why we live that establishes his credentials as a New Confucian. His ethics and aesthetics are both concerned with inner sageliness. In both, he adopts the Confucian cardinal virtue of benevolence as the axis, and affirms the Confucian ideal of union with heaven as the ultimate standard for authentic living.” Chan further argues that Li should be recognized as a New Confucian on the grounds that if New Confucianism is true to the Confucian tradition it “should not be dogmatic and sectarian, but should be broad enough to accommodate and creatively transform all the trends either already in the Confucian canon or which can be adapted to harmonize with Confucian teachings.”75 This inclusivist approach to New Confucian identity is not inconsistent with the view of many mainland scholars of New Confucianism. Indeed, even leading Taiwan-based New Confucian Liu Shuxian, when

( 71. Lin Tongqi et al., “Chinese Philosophy,” 729–30, 741–42. 72. Li Zehou, Bo zhai xin shuo, 12–29. 73. These two concepts relate to Li’s appropriation of the traditional concept of “the unity of heaven and humans”; see ibid., 134–70. 74. Ibid., 28. 75. Sylvia Chan, “Li Zehou and New Confucianism,” 109, 115–16.

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discussing Li’s claim to be a “contemporary New Confucian” (dangdai xin rujia), was prepared to concede that “there is certainly no fixed interpretation of contemporary New Confucianism; all the one hundred flowers should be allowed to bloom.” He did, however, also point out that Li’s philosophical approaches placed Li at a considerable remove from contemporary New Confucianism, “as understood in the narrow sense” of the term,76 that is, the lineage principally associated with Xiong Shili, Mou Zongsan, and Mou’s disciples. Perhaps most telling of all is the fact that Li attended several of the invitation-only “Topics in Contemporary Ruxue” workshops convened by the Institute of Chinese Literature and Philosophy, Academia Sinica, in Taiwan in the mid- to late 1990s and has had several of his essays published in the Institute’s Contemporary Ruxue book series. This is significant for two reasons. First, it attests to a transition in both scholarly and partisan concerns, as New Confucianism increasingly yields to the broader category of contemporary ruxue. Second, it underscores the importance of the still emerging role played by syncretistic thinkers such as Li in this period of transition and “creative transformation.” Li also shares a number of characteristics with earlier New Confucians, such as his embrace of the philosophy of change and activity found in the cosmology of the Book of Changes. This is a “New Confucian” trait that goes back to Xiong Shili. Like Mou Zongsan, Li owes much to Kant.77 In

( 76. See Liu Shuxian, “Rujia yu xiandai shijie guoji yantaohui jianshu,” 274. 77. Roger T. Ames (“New Confucianism,” 94), however, argues that Mou Zongsan and Li Zehou have been “attempting to promote a ‘new Confucianism’ fortified by the prestige and rigor of Kant, while at the same time resisting the cultural imperialism entailed by taking Kant on his own terms,” a resistance that contributes to making Chinese philosophy “a real alternative to dominant Western sensibilities.” Opinion is more divided in the case of Mou Zongsan. Zheng Jiadong (Mou Zongsan, 231), for example, has argued that the influence of Western philosophy (including that of Kant) on Mou was not substantive: “Western philosophy did not affect or change Mou’s basic understanding of the cosmos and human life; it merely affected and changed the way he expressed this understanding. . . . The main thing he derived from Kant was a discursive framework. . . . The relation between rujia and Kantian philosophy in Mou’s thought was more a contrastive (duibi 對 比 ) relationship than a fusion.” Joël Thoraval (“Rujia jingyan yu zhexue huayu,” 12), however, argues that “at some strategic junctures” Mou was forced to adopt a technique of “equivalence” to enable him “to deal with the ruxue concepts of ‘principle’ (li ) and ‘mind’ (xin) and Kant’s concepts of ‘practical reason’ and moral consciousness within the same philosophical discourse. Because of this, he was forced to postulate that, in

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his own ethical theory, Li tries to synthesize ru and Kantian ethics. Where he parts company with some of the more representative New Confucian figures—even as he extends the conversation, and the opportunities for critical self-reflection, by engaging them in critical dialogue—is his argument that New Confucianism in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries should be regarded as the fourth period in the development of ruxue, rather than its third period, as claimed by Mou Zongsan and his disciples. Li objects to the three-period thesis on the grounds that it reduces ruxue to matters of the moral teachings associated with “learning of the mind and the nature” and ignores the contributions of Xunzi, Dong Zhongshu, and ruxue in the Han dynasty. For Li, what is at stake is a correct historical assessment of the function played by ruxue in Chinese culture. If ruxue is reduced to a set of ethico-religious teachings, then the only future for ruxue is a narrow religious teaching. If, however, ruxue is understood to embrace a range of cosmological thinking that can absorb and incorporate other systems of thought and theories, then the future for ruxue is more encouraging.78 Although these views are at odds with those thinkers committed to New Confucian “moral metaphysics,” they are consistent with more broad-based calls to “creatively transform” ruxue (or in Li’s own variation, “transformatively create”)79 and also with the “creative synthesis” agenda of Chinese Marxist philosophers. (See Chapter 11.) Indeed, the idea of recreating or transform-

( some sense, Mencius’s ‘original mind’ (ben xin 本心) is [equivalent to Kant’s] purely rational will (Wille).” Thoraval regards as inadequate the argument that Mou believed the particularity or uniqueness of Chinese philosophy would enable it to rise above the limitations of Kant’s approach; or more generally, that Mou was actually seeking to transcend the limitations of Western philosophy. “This strategy of transcending was premised precisely on a type ‘assimilation’ (tonghua 同化) and ‘equivalence.’ ” He cites the example of Mou’s “two-tiered ontology” (liang ceng cunyoulun 兩層存有論) in which Mou appeals to the Kantian concept of analytical a priori judgments to bridge the gap between the Buddhist distinction between an “attached (zhi 執 ) ontology” and a “nonattached (wuzhi 無 執 ) ontology.” Other scholars have also noted Mou’s debt to Kant in developing his “two-tiered ontology.” 78. Li Zehou, Bo zhai xin shuo, 2–3. 79. “Creative transformation” (chuangzaoxing de zhuanhua 創造性的轉化) of tradition was coined by Lin Yusheng and subsequently borrowed by Li. See Lin Yusheng, The Crisis of Chinese Consciousness, 35, 94, 105.

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ing ruxue to ensure its future relevance is also evident in the Singapore Project and in both Mou Zongsan’s and Du Weiming’s respective notions of a third period/epoch of ruxue.

Post–New Confucianism and New New Confucianism In the 1990s, other scholars developed their own variations on the idea of a new period of ruxue. One of the most controversial was Lin Anwu’s Post–New Confucianism or Critical New Confucianism. I deal with this topic in detail in Chapter 8; here I limit myself to a few introductory comments. The death of Mou Zongsan in 1995 provided a new impetus (and freedom) to promote the idea of a Post–New Confucian philosophy in what Lin terms the “post–Mou Zongsan age.”80 At the Fourth International Conference on New Confucianism, convened in Taipei in late 1996, a major topic of debate among the younger generation of scholars associated with the Ehu group was the evaluation of Mou Zongsan’s philosophical legacy and the future development of Chinese philosophy in the post-Mou period. The debate was sparked by Lin Anwu’s paper “ ‘Hujiao de xin ruxue’ yu ‘pipan de xin ruxue’ ” 護教的新儒學“與” 批判的新儒學 (“Apologist New Confucianism” and “critical New Confucianism”). These developments prompted the following assessment by mainland scholar Zheng Jiadong: “It is certain that from now on Chinese philosophy will not continue developing on the basis of past models (be they Feng Youlan’s or Mou Zongsan’s).” He also cited a passage he wrote a year earlier: “Moving away from Mou Zongsan’s New Confucianism will entail changing from ‘doctrinal classification’ to ‘dialogue,’ and from system to problematic. The central issue to be confronted is ‘How can the relationship between rujia and a concrete, pluralist, and living world be re-established?’ ”81 Other commentators identify Yu Yingshi’s 1991 essay on Qian Mu (see Chapter 7) as having already ushered in the post-Mou period. Writing in 2000, however, Guo Qiyong warns that proclaiming the postMou period may be premature since many scholars have yet to comprehend Mou’s philosophical legacy: they simply repeat what others say

( 80. Lin Anwu, Ruxue geming, preface, ii. 81. Zheng Jiadong, “Jin wushi nian lai dalu ruxue de fazhan ji qi xianzhuang,” 34–35.

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without making the effort to read Mou.82 Similar concerns were iterated in an address by Peng Guoxiang 彭國翔 (Qinghua University) at the Seventh International Conference on New Confucianism convened in September 2005 at Wuhan University. Upping the ante on these developments has been the call to establish a New New Confucianism. Ironically, one of the proponents of this new movement is University of Hawaii philosopher Cheng Zhongying, who— together with Du Weiming and Liu Shuxian—has long been regarded as a third-generation New Confucian. This new self-identification, however, is not altogether surprising, given Cheng’s track record of adapting to change and seizing opportunities as they present themselves. (One of his specialties is the Book of Changes.) He claims that he developed the notion of New New Confucianism in the first half of the 1990s. “Its principal meaning relates to advancing the self-transcendence of contemporary ruxue and its ongoing development.” More specifically, he states that it also aims to provide ruxue with a prospective view of possible future developments, given the challenges of “post-Kantian, post-Marxist, post-modern, and even post-post-modern Western thought and human social development” that now confront ruxue.83 Although he traces the origins of New New Confucianism to the New Confucian movement, he relates that New New Confucianism is a response to “the blind spots and damaging inflexibility of the New Confucians” and a “return to the starting point so as to set out again.” This return consists of two features: “self (ziwo) apprehension in order to apprehend the ontology of the cosmos and an apprehension of the cosmos in order to apprehend the self,” and “apprehension of the integrity of the unity of heaven and humans in order to deal with reality, discover problems, analyze problems, and resolve problems.”84 Cheng outlines the ten main principles of New New Confucianism as follows:

( 82. Guo Qiyong, “Zhongguo dalu diqu jin wunian lai (1993–1997) de ruxue yanjiu,” 95, 96. 83. Cheng Zhongying, “Di wu jieduan ruxue de fazhan yu xin xin ruxue de dingwei,” 9n1. This essay was also published the same year in Wei E, ed., Xin ru, xin xin ru. Of particular note is the preface and chapter contributed by Taiwanbased psychologist Huang Guangguo 黃光國, one of the contributors to the 1982 conference on the sinicization of the social sciences. Huang was a former student and, later, a close associate of social psychologist Yang Guoshu. 84. Cheng Zhongying, “Di wu jieduan ruxue de fazhan yu xin xin ruxue de dingwei,” 11.

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1. To establish an onto-cosmology and a theory of human-life development based on classical ruxue and Song-Ming ruxue. 2. To establish an epistemology that recognizes the separability and unity of subject and object, as well as a dynamic system of knowledge based on classical ruxue, modern rational philosophy, and science. 3. To establish a value system incorporating the interaction between reason and human nature, individual and group, based on classical ruxue, Song-Ming ruxue, and modern science. 4. To develop and continue developing the methodology derived from the mutual entailment of substance and function based on classical ruxue and a comparison of Eastern and Western cultures. 5. To integrate the functions and interconnectedness of principle, qi, mind, and the nature to form an intellectual strategy that combines knowledge and action based on a synthesis of Song-Ming principle-centered learning and mindcentered learning. 6. To establish an ethics of humanity that stresses the combination of rights and responsibilities, morality and utility, based on classical ruxue and modern ethics. 7. To establish a management structure and system that can be used in public administration and entrepreneurial management based on (i) a synthesis of the experience of ruxue over its previous four stages of development85 and its modern requirements, and (ii) the lessons learned from the successes and failures of Western modernization. 8. To create economic wealth and its equitable distribution modeled on the spirit of late Qing dynasty Gongyang learning and the New New Confucian methodology outlined under point 4, and based on a synthesis of the development experiences of capitalism and socialism. 9. To develop and prioritize democracy, the rule of law, and an environment of social advancement and cultural development based on the humanist concerns of classical ruxue and an attentiveness to apprehending the resources of reason, historical experience, cultural spirit, and social needs. 10. To promote education about reason and the humanities so that the values, ethics, and methodology of ruxue are able to create ongoing peace and prosperity for humanity based on the ruxue ideals of “the world is a commonwealth” and “great stability throughout the world.”

( 85. Cheng Zhongying (ibid., 6–9) distinguishes five stages ( jieduan 階段) in the development of ruxue: (1) original stage (sixth–fourth centuries B.C.); (2) classical to Han ruxue (second century B.C.–third century A.D.); (3) Song-Ming xin ruxue (tenth–seventeenth centuries); (4) Qing dynasty ruxue; (5) New Confucianism (or Contemporary Neo-Confucianism).

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Cheng provides no details about how these vaguely formulated (and largely nebulous) goals might be realized. The other leading proponent of New New Confucianism is Danjiang University academic Wei E 魏萼, who describes the New New Confucian ethos as follows: “In the twenty-first century, the development of ruxue must be combined with the humanities, social sciences, natural sciences, management sciences, and modern scientific and technological fields of learning. It is a utilitarian ruxue that is ‘of this world’ [unlike Buddhism].”86 Unfortunately, Wei does not identify any individuals whom he considers to be representative New New Confucians, but he evidently regards Lin Anwu as a fellow traveler—both emphasize that ruxue must be applied and realized in the “real world” and not in metaphysical speculation—because at this point in his essay he refers the reader to Lin’s “Outline of Post–New Confucian Philosophy,” which expounds similar themes albeit in a brief, schematic form (not unlike Cheng Zhongying’s ten principles).87 Wei continues: New New Confucianism must embrace the international, advance the international, and contribute to the international. New New Confucianism can also be called “rujia Protestantism” (rujia xinjiao 儒家新教): its significance is similar to Protestantism’s advancement of international modernization brought about in the wake of Martin Luther’s (1483–1546) Western European religious reformation of 1517. Whereas Protestantism is rich in religio-cultural significance, however, “rujia Protestantism” emphasizes an ethos of ethico-cultural values. The contribution that the Protestant enlightenment had on modern ( jindai ) Europe’s and America’s modernization was immense. Our main purpose in spreading the word about New New Confucianism—and the historico-cultural significance of so doing—is to aspire to this model.88

Wei proceeds to outline the New New Confucian account of the three periods of twentieth-century New Confucianism. The first period begins in the 1910s with the scholars associated with the journal Qingnian zazhi (later renamed Xin qingnian) and extends to 1949 to include such figures as Chen Duxiu 陳獨秀, Hu Shi, Li Dazhao 李大釗, Liang Shuming, Guo Moruo, Lu Xun 魯迅, Liang Shiqiu 梁實秋, and Qian Mu. The second period extends from 1949 to 1997 (just before the return of Hong Kong to mainland rule) and is represented by overseas Chinese

( 86. Wei E, “Xin ‘xin rujia’ shiyi” 新“新儒家”釋疑 (The meaning of new “New Confucian”), in idem, ed., Xin ru, xin xin ru, 64. 87. See Lin Anwu, “Hou xin rujia zhexue lungang,” 265–69. 88. Wei E, “Xin ‘xin rujia’ shiyi,” 64.

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scholars and intellectuals such as Tang Junyi, Xu Fuguan, and Mou Zongsan associated with New Asia College in Hong Kong. The third period begins in 1997 with the handover of Hong Kong and includes overseas and mainland figures (Wei does not identify representative figures). This group is distinguished by the belief that the study of ruxue should not be limited to ruxue theory but should focus principally on the practical application of ruxue in such arenas as the modernization of the nation and internationalization. “This resembles the sort of cultural reconstruction that was carried out in Western Europe after the Renaissance and also shares a degree of significance comparable to the modernization associated with democratic government, the market economy, and pluralist society brought about by the Enlightenment Movement in Western European countries.”89 Noteworthy is the challenge to both mainland and Taiwanese notions of who and what constitutes New Confucianism. Wei also identifies the areas in which New New Confucianism can build on traditional ruxue. In political development, for example, it can build on the rujia notion of “people as the foundation” (minben 民本); in economic development, on the notion of “the people’s livelihood” (minsheng 民 生 ); 90 and in social development, on the “essence of rujia thought and Chinese culture”: plurality within a single framework. He identifies the “four norms and eight virtues” (si wei ba de 四維八德) as representative of the “common value standards” that constitute this single framework. In regard to a policy on nationalities (minzu), it can build on the rujia principle of seeking “harmony but not conformity.” For thousands of years, the fundamental spirit of Chinese (Zhonghua) culture has been the inclusiveness embodied in the principle of plurality within a single framework such that different nationalities have been able to co-exist in harmony and respect one another. . . . This is not something that any other area of religious culture or national culture has come close to.

In international relations, it can build on the contributions that ruxue has made to economic development in East Asia, recommending ruxue models to the world community and so enhancing cultural harmony.91

( 89. Ibid., 69. 90. Minsheng is one of Sun Yat-sen’s “three principles”: the Principle of Nationalism, the Principle of the People’s Rights, and the Principle of the People’s Livelihood. 91. Wei E, “Xin ‘xin rujia’ shiyi,” 70–72.

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Over the past several years, there has been little if any follow-up on these proposals, indicating perhaps that New New Confucianism has passed as quickly as it rose. Nevertheless, the same vaguely formulated notions of harmony, inclusiveness, and pluralism are invoked regularly in a wider body of literature sympathetic to the idea that rujia values are crucial to re-establishing the cultural dominance of the Chinese nation on the world stage. Influential Renmin University philosopher Zhang Liwen has created his own academic subfield from an eclectic mix of traditional concepts and ideals that he markets under the rubric hehexue 合和學 (harmony learning). As noted in the preceding chapter, Zhang has also been active in promoting the notion of “East Asian ruxue.”

Concluding Remarks As this chapter has amply documented, by separating various (putative) historical expressions of ruxue into different categories—a sort of modern-day adaptation of the Buddhist hermeneutic technique of doctrinal classification—over the past two decades many scholars sympathetic to ruxue have sought to privilege some of these categories as “genuine” and unsullied expressions of ruxue, free from the taint of elements of “feudal dross.” These include such categories as classical, unofficial, popular, secular, spiritual, social, and deep structure ruxue. Attempts to sustain this tactic and apply it to the recent past, the present, and even to the future are evident in other newly created categories of ruxue, such as critical, real-life, New, Post-New, and New New. As noted, many of these categories are far too general and lacking in concrete historical detail to be regarded as academically rigorous. Yet this is beside this point, for we are dealing with something other than an academic exercise in rigorous historical analysis. The truly remarkable feature of this discourse is the pervasive commitment shown by its participants to the thesis that ruxue and Chinese cultural identity are inseparable. Li Zehou’s philosophical-cum-historico-cultural contribution to this discourse has exercised a profound influence in contributing to a cultural nationalism based on a positive assessment of ruxue as an expression of the integrity of “Chinese culture.” Yet Li was by no means the first thinker to have shaped this discourse (although he may well have unwittingly become the most influential). In ruxue philosophical circles, Mou Zongsan’s views on the notion of a wenhua daotong 文化道統 (interconnecting thread of the way for the transmission of culture) have also garnered increasing attention over the past forty

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years,92 first in Taiwan and Hong Kong and then, from the early 1990s, in mainland academic circles as well. Chapter 7 examines how Mou’s views on ruxue and Chinese cultural identity were critically introduced to mainland scholars of Chinese philosophy by Mou’s most influential mainland interpreter during the 1990s and the early 2000s, Zheng Jiadong. The next chapter first examines the remarkable phenomenon of how Zheng Jiadong and Guo Qiyong—two leading mainland scholars of New Confucianism—gradually came to identify with rujia values and ruxue more generally, over the course of the 1990s.

( 92. Particularly following the publication of his three-volume magnum opus, Xinti yu xingti 心體與性體 (Ontological mind and ontological human nature), in 1968–69.

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6 Guo Qiyong, Zheng Jiadong, and Rujia Identity

One of the most significant features of post-1980s discourse on ruxue in China and Taiwan is that mainland scholars have increasingly come to defend and to identify with ruxue and the “rujia tradition.” How has personal identification been expressed? What do they mean by rujia identity? Why is ruxue seen as inseparable from Chinese cultural identity? Both Guo Qiyong and Zheng Jiadong are prominent and influential exemplars of this trend and, as such, prove to be particularly illuminating case studies. This chapter examines each in turn. In the case of Zheng Jiadong, it pays particular attention to his critique of the institutionalization and professionalization of ruxue in the twentieth century, and how this in turn relates to the more problematic issue of whether “Chinese philosophy” is philosophy.

Guo Qiyong Throughout his academic career and postgraduate training, Guo Qiyong (b. 1947) has been associated with Wuhan University, Hubei, where he is dean of the Faculty of Humanities and a professor in the Philosophy Department. He has published widely in the area of ruxue and New Confucianism1 and is regarded as a leading authority on the thought of Xiong Shili, having published four research monographs and edited or

( 1. Guo’s representative publications include Xiong Shili sixiang yanjiu 熊十力 思想研究 (Studies on Xiong Shili’s thought; 1993); Guo Qiyong zixuanji 郭齊勇自 選集 (Selected works of Guo Qiyong; 1999); and Ruxue yu ruxueshi xinlun 儒學與 儒學史新論 (New discussions on ruxue and its history; 2002).

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co-edited six books on Xiong’s writings (including Xiong Shili quanji 熊十力全集 [The complete works of Xiong Shili]).2 Guo’s 1994 book, Tiandi jian yige dushuren: Xiong Shili zhuan 天地間 一個讀書人: 熊十力傳 (A scholar poised between heaven and earth: a biography of Xiong Shili), includes two essays criticizing the Taiwanbased researcher Zhai Zhicheng 翟志成. In 1992, Zhai published a controversial article based on the correspondence of Xiong Shili between 1948 and 1950 that revealed some less than admirable aspects of Xiong’s character.3 The essay raised the ire not only of Xiong’s family members in China but also of scholars in Taiwan who regard Xiong as the father of New Confucianism. The fact that a prominent mainland scholar should come to Xiong’s defense in 1994 highlights a transitional phase in ruxue studies: a number of mainland scholars were moving from a position of regarding New Confucianism simply as an object of research to one of “sympathetic understanding,” as they increasingly came to identify with some of the ideals of representative New Confucians. This, in turn, was matched by a growing willingness to show empathy for the ruxue tradition and its cultural resources (and in the process contributed to the conscious reconstitution of ruxue as a cultural tradition). Viewed purely from the perspective of “cross-strait academic rivalry,” this defense of Xiong might be open to an alternative interpretation. Although Xiong’s most influential New Confucian writings all predate 1949, he continued to live in China until his death in 1968, as did Liang Shuming (d. 1988), Feng Youlan (d. 1990), and He Lin (d. 1993). Many mainland scholars have identified this group of thinkers as New Confucians and, in doing so, have shored up the proprietary rights of mainland scholars vis-à-vis overseas Chinese scholars (particularly those in Taiwan and Hong Kong) to define the scope of the New Confucian “school” and the parameters for evaluating it. (We should also bear in mind that Xiong was a native of Huanggang 黃岡, which, like Wuhan, is located in Hubei province, thus potentially intensifying the proprietary

( 2. Xiong Shili, Xiong Shili quanji. In 1984 Guo completed his M.A. dissertation on Xiong Shili, “Xiong Shili de renshi bianzhengfa chutan,” two years before New Confucianism was officially recognized as a legitimate area of academic research in China. An expanded version of this thesis was published in 1985 as Xiong Shili ji qi zhexue and was subsequently revised and published as Xiong Shili yu Zhongguo chuantong wenhua in Hong Kong in 1988 and in Taipei in 1990. 3. Zhai Zhicheng, “Changxuan tianrang lun guxin.”

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prerogative. Much the same reason might be behind the convening of conferences on Xu Fuguan—a prominent second-generation New Confucian and also native of Hubei—at Wuhan University in recent years.) Although each of these factors might account for Guo’s defense of Xiong, it is Guo’s growing personal identification with rujia ideals from the mid-1990s on that provides the more pertinent explanation. As Guo himself wrote in 1998, “Ever increasingly, mainland scholars are engaging in soulful exchange and intellectual dialogue with former ru as their equals and personally experiencing the historical significance and modern value of ruxue.”4 This remarkable transition (by no means unique to Guo) is quite evident when we compare his writings from the early 1990s with those written in the late 1990s and later. In 1991, the procrustean frame of dialectical materialism, idealism and materialism, and “getting rid of the dross while preserving the refined” still informed Guo’s approach to the study of New Confucianism and ruxue more generally. Thus, he described the moral metaphysics of the New Confucians as an idealism at fundamental odds with materialism. He did, however, find (redemptive) elements of materialism in Xiong’s account of the history of the development of the cosmos, such as a “dialectical method” in Xiong’s account of phenomena, the world, and nature, which he described as a form of dialectical idealism (bianzheng de weixinzhuyi 辯證的 唯心主義). (Guo cited the authority of Lenin in invoking this term.) As for morality, it is a historical category ( fanchou 範疇). Changes in morality are fundamentally tied to changes in economic foundations. . . . Moral principles are not eternal— they change as the historical periods change. . . . The fatal wound suffered by moral idealism is that it is an out-and-out pipe dream, quite lacking in reality, and is incapable of being transformed into a force to address the realities faced by the masses.5

By 2001, his views on the ontological status of morality had changed fundamentally, even if the lingering charms of the “one divides into two” ( yi fen wei er 一分為二) approach to philosophy and intellectual history—once de rigueur with Chinese Marxist historians—had not entirely disappeared:

( 4. Guo Qiyong, “Zhongguo dalu diqu jin wunian lai (1993–1997) de ruxue yanjiu,” 59. The draft of this essay was prepared in 1998. 5. Guo Qiyong, “Lun Xiong Shili dui xiandai xin ruxue zhi xingershangxue jichu de dianji,” 154–55, 156.

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Once the values championed by the Chinese (Zhonghua) humanist spirit— humaneness, rightness, ritual propriety, wisdom, good faith, doing one’s best for others, filial piety, sincerity, empathy, and so on—have been disencumbered of the negative effects that adhered to them in the course of the historical past, then these values can be refined and their reasonable elements transformed. These values can then permeate the life of modern society and function as normative value guides to cure the ailments of modern society, recover human dignity, and reconstruct a meaningful world for people.6

Indeed, in 2002, Guo even identified a core group of rujia moral values as having transcendent and eternal value: Rujia ethics is [a type of ] universalism ( pubianzhuyi 普 遍 主 義 ), but at the same time it is founded on [a type of ] particularism and needs to be implemented in the context of concrete ethical situations. . . . Of course, we acknowledge that some of the content of such categories or virtues as humaneness, rightness, honesty, being upright, and justice have transcendent (chaoshikong 超 時 空 ) and eternal value and meaning. At the same time, we should note that [the import of the teachings of ] the rujia and one hundred lineages (baijia 百家) changes as time changes. Thus other specific connotations and meanings borne by the categories or virtues referred to above are also subject to change.7

His subsequent comments reveal that the basis for this distinction is an appeal to the coprinciples of jing 經 (the constant) and quan 權 (weighing priorities). Indeed, by 2000, Guo’s views on moral particularism were being attacked by Marxist theoreticians. Mu Nanke 穆南珂 (CASS) saw Guo’s defense of the principle of moral particularism as symptomatic of a more general trend in ruxue studies to promote the “universal values” of ruxue under the guise of National Studies and Oriental culture. As a prominent school of learning (xianxue 顯學) in Chinese history, ruxue was never a purely academic branch of learning but had extremely close familial ties to the ideology of feudal society. Moreover, it has been internalized as the psycho-spiritual structure of our nation, profoundly affecting the political and cultural life of our nation. This is the reality of ruxue. . . . Accordingly, the critical treatment of ruxue is not merely a principle to be applied in intellectual history; at the same time it is the duty of intellectual historical research. To deviate from this principle or to abandon this task—instead becoming infatuated with

( 6. Guo Qiyong, “Rujia renwen jingshen yu quanqiuhua.” Guo’s essay was originally published in 2001. 7. Guo Qiyong, “Ye tan ‘zi wei fu yin’ yu Mengzi lun Shun,” 28. Guo subsequently edited an entire volume, Rujia lunli zhengming ji, on the ethical dilemma illustrated by “the son covers up for his father” paradigm.

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unearthing the so-called transcendent and universal and eternal values of ruxue— amounts to nothing other than defrauding both history and reality.8

Elsewhere, Guo provided an example of how the meanings associated with some concepts can and should be transformed. Having first vigorously denied that the recovery and refashioning of the psycho-spiritual ( jingshen) resources of ruxue should be regarded as providing a “whitewash” for an authoritarian regime, he showed how key moral concepts such as zhong 忠 can be transformed by being invested with new significance. “Promoting the concept of zhong does not necessarily imply that one must be loyal to some political authority. This is because zhong can be given a modern interpretation. For example, in the context of modern entrepreneurial culture or in the construction of our overall national culture, [the concept can be] reinvested with a concrete modern significance.”9 Guo finds evidence of ruxue’s “universal” character in its various expressions beyond China, such as the diverse historical expressions of ruxue in different parts of East Asia. Despite the particularity of these diverse expressions, they share the common feature of “an interconnecting way” ( yiguan zhi dao 一貫之道). This interconnecting way is represented in certain “core value concepts” and “a generalized ethic.” The common “core value concepts” of East Asian ruxue include loving concern (ren ai 仁 愛 ), respect and sincerity ( jing cheng 敬誠), doing one’s best for others and seeing things from another’s point of view (zhong shu 忠恕), filial piety and respect for elder males (xiao ti 孝 悌 ), and humaneness and rightness (ren yi 仁義 ). They are universal and stable. Regardless of time or place, they function as sociocultural value norms. They are particular in that they are given different expressions at different times in different societies and, within limits, can undergo change. A loving concern for others is innate in human nature and a defining characteristic of being human; doing one’s best for others and seeing things from another’s point of view “can definitely become the foundation for a new global ethic.” For Guo, these core values not only function as generalized ethical concepts in China and East Asia (and will be able to continue to do so in the future) but also can meaningfully be ap-

( 8. Mu Nanke, “Rujia dianji de yujing suyuan ji fangfalun yiyi,” 43. 9. Remark by Guo recorded in the transcript of the seminar “Rujia sixiang zai xiandai DongYa,” 236.

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plied to business, commercial, professional, environmental, community, and global ethics.10 In his 1993 study of Xiong Shili—a revised version of his 1990 Ph.D. dissertation—Guo described Mou Zongsan, Tang Junyi, and Xu Fuguan as “excessive in their elevation of the rujia, in particular the value of the Mind-centered Learning (xinxue 心學) lineage within ruxue. Relative to this excessive elevation, they deprecated the function of other resources within the diverse developments of Chinese (Zhonghua) culture and the multiple functions that foreign cultures had in Chinese cultural development.”11 Over the course of the next decade, Guo’s position changed considerably. Compare the following comments, first made in 2001: Ruxue . . . is the psycho-spiritual formation ( jingshen xingtai 精神形態) of the Hua-Xia ethnie (zuqun 族群) and the crystallization of the culture of Chinese (Zhongguo) and East Asian societies. It embraces the national character of each of the East Asian nations, their ultimate beliefs, their standards for living, their existential wisdom, and their general plans for social conduct. . . . Ruxue . . . is the principal cultural form of traditional society and traditional culture. . . . It can be creatively transformed to become the fountainhead nurturing modern society and the modern soul; it is the root of the spiritual life of the descendents of Yan Di and Huang Di. Promoting the Chinese (Zhonghua) humanist spirit— in particular, its constituent inner core of the rujia humanist spirit—can help to overcome some of the difficulties of modern social life and is of particular use in reconstructing contemporary ethics.12

As noted above, 1994 stands out as a year when a number of mainland scholars of New Confucianism (and ruxue more generally) began to sympathize with and even publicly identify with aspects of New Confucian thought and ruxue. Thus at the Third International Conference on New Confucianism convened in 1994 at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Guo delivered a paper in which he demonstrated a clear sympathy for the psycho-spiritual resources of ruxue.13 A year later, he published an essay in which he reiterated the view that ruxue can provide a therapeutic for the negative effects of modernization.14 Although this thesis attracted the criticism of Marxist scholar Yi Junqing 衣俊卿

( 10. Guo Qiyong, “DongYa ruxue hexin jiazhiguan ji qi xiandai yiyi,” 109, 128, 131, 132. This essay was originally published in 2000. 11. Guo Qiyong, Xiong Shili yanjiu, 366. 12. Guo Qiyong, “Rujia renwen jingshen yu quanqiuhua,” 69, 70. 13. Guo Qiyong, “Lun Qian Mu de rujia sixiang,” 145–46. 14. Guo Qiyong, “Rujia de shengsi guanhuai ji qi dangdai yiyi.”

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(Heilongjiang University), who argued that Guo was recycling a vision promoted much earlier by Liang Qichao,15 it is also a vision shared by most representative New Confucian thinkers. As such, the significance of the view lies more in its reflection of Guo’s increasing identification with the ideals of New Confucianism than in its originality.

Zheng Jiadong Like Guo Qiyong, Zheng Jiadong (b. 1956) has been a leading mainland authority on New Confucian thought and New Confucian thinkers.16 Until mid-2005, he headed the Chinese Philosophy section of the CASS Philosophy Institute. Before 1993, he held appointments in the philosophy departments of Jilin and Nankai universities. Like quite a few Chinese academics who now specialize in New Confucian philosophy, Zheng was a former student of Fang Keli (formerly a professor of Chinese philosophy at Nankai University, then dean of Graduate Studies at CASS, and now retired), having completed his doctoral dissertation on Mou Zongsan (1991) under Fang’s supervision. As we have seen, Fang played a seminal role in the development of New Confucian studies in China from the late 1980s to the mid-1990s as director of two major state-funded projects on New Confucianism under the seventh (1986– 90) and eighth (1991–95) five-year plans for the social sciences. These projects supported large-scale publication activities, such as new collections of the works (or selections from the works) of leading New Confucians and edited volumes on New Confucianism and New Confucians. In contrast to Fang’s rigid adherence to the “guiding hand of Marxism” in directing research on New Confucian thinkers, Zheng developed his own approach to evaluating and interpreting the writings of key figures such as Xiong Shili, Feng Youlan, and Mou Zongsan. In addition to editing several collections of writings by, and studies on, New Confucian thinkers, between 1990 and 1997 he wrote four books introducing New Confucians and New Confucian thought (two of which were also pub-

( 15. Yi Junqing, “Ping xiandai xin ruxue yu houxiandaizhuyi sichao,” 9. 16. Zheng is no longer employed as an academic. A set of unusual personal circumstances led to his arrest and trial in mid-2005. He is unlikely to return to academia. The loss of this gifted and independent-minded scholar has shocked and disappointed many people. A number of senior figures within the ruxue studies field in China continue to be concerned about the impact that his fall from grace may have on the field.

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lished in Taiwan).17 Since then, his two most important publications have been an authoritative monograph titled Mou Zongsan and his influential Duanliezhong de chuantong: xinnian yu lixing zhi jian 斷裂中的傳統: 信念與 理性之間 (A tradition in fragmentation: between faith and reason). At the most functional level, Zheng has identified a twofold impact that New Confucian philosophy had on mainland ruxue studies in the 1990s: it filled a gap that had existed since the 1950s in which there was no dialogue between Chinese and Western philosophy;18 and it introduced a system of discourse and hermeneutic models that challenged the simplistic models commonly used in China up to that time.19 As for Zheng’s assessment of the New Confucians, the titles of a number of his writings may give the impression that he is critical or dismissive: for example, “An Age Without Sages and Worthies,” “A Group Marching Toward Dissolution,”20 “Solitariness, Alienation, and Being Placed in Suspension: Mou Zongsan and the Circumstances of Contemporary Rujia,”21 and, perhaps most suggestively, A Tradition in Fragmentation: Between Faith and Reason.22 On the other hand, when one actually reads these and his other writings, it is apparent that such titles are more an expression of genuinely felt loss and regret about the passing of a tradition rather than a celebration of its demise. This kind of “sympathetic understanding” was virtually unknown among mainland scholars before the 1990s and is one manifestation of an intensifying trend among

( 17. Zheng Jiadong, Xiandai xin ruxue gailun (An overview of New Confucianism; 1990); Benti yu fang fa: cong Xiong Shili dao Mou Zongsan (Ontology and method: from Xiong Shili to Mou Zongsan; 1992); Dangdai xin ruxue lunheng (A critical evaluation of New Confucianism; 1995); and Dangdai xin ruxue shi lun (Essays on the history of New Confucianism; 1997). 18. It is, of course, questionable just how much genuine dialogue has occurred since the early 1990s. The key writings of figures such as Xiong Shili, Mou Zongsan, and Tang Junyi continue to be virtually ignored and largely untranslated in the West. There are few references to these figures in the writings of “mainstream” Western philosophers, as indeed there are few references or attempts to engage in dialogue with most aspects of Chinese thought and philosophy, even when the works of Chinese thinkers are available in translation. 19. Zheng Jiadong, “Jiushi niandai ruxue fazhan yu yanjiuzhong de jige wenti,” 45. 20. These two essays are included in Zheng Jiadong, Dangdai xin ruxue lunheng. 21. Zheng Jiadong, “Gudu, shuli, xuanzhi.” 22. This is the title of Zheng’s representative collection of writings, Duanliezhong de chuantong: xinnian yu lixing zhijian.

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mainland scholars of ruxue and rujia thought to identify self-consciously with what they maintain are rujia values. For Zheng, the first- and second-generation New Confucians (who for him are represented principally by Liang Shuming, Xiong Shili, Feng Youlan, and Mou Zongsan) are unique in that they alone sustained a connection with the true spirit of the rujia tradition throughout the tumultuous first half of the twentieth century. Yet, Zheng argues, the price they paid for doing so would fundamentally alter the nature of the rujia and ruxue over the course of the twentieth century and beyond. Thus, in the introduction to his book Mou Zongsan, Zheng argues that up until the May Fourth period, rujia thought had been part of the fabric of history, informing and participating in historical reality and historical change through its embodiment in social institutions (presumably Zheng has in mind such institutions as the civil examination system and the role of academies in education, although he is somewhat vague on these points) and social mores. In the rujia tradition, thought and history are interconnected. Thought should be able to be embodied and realized in the specifics of history; thought divorced from history is considered abstract, unreal. . . . In a sense, a continuous separation of thought and history can be seen in New Confucianism after the May Fourth period, a process that was more or less completed by the time of Mou Zongsan. The historical ruxue that had developed a flesh-and-blood relationship with the lives of the Chinese people and the reality of Chinese society had been almost completely transformed into a ruxue of pure concepts far alienated from actual historical processes. . . . The person and the writings of Mou Zongsan really became contemporary testimony to the survival of ruxue, but this was a testimony of thought and concepts, not of history and practice. . . . With rujia history having come to an end, the continued survival of rujia thought depended on adopting an even more transcendental form. Mou Zongsan exemplifies the formal continuation of this purely intellectual kind of rujia or ruxue.23

Academic Institutionalization A regular refrain or guiding theme in many of Zheng’s writings over the past decade or so is the deleterious consequences of the intellectualization (zhishihua 知識化), institutionalization (zhiduhua 制度化), and professionalization (zhiyehua 職業化) of ruxue and rujia thought. Already in 1994 he had argued that the single largest threat to the continued actu-

( 23. Zheng Jiadong, Mou Zongsan, 7, 8, 12.

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alization of the rujia way was its ongoing intellectualization.24 It is a theme that he continued to develop and refine. Zheng understands the development of ruxue in the post–May Fourth period to have been influenced by a trend to highlight the overall integrity—relative to the situation in the West—of Chinese philosophy and the “cultural spirit,” which, in turn, fostered an everintensifying reinterpretation and systematization of rujia thought itself.25 This systematization was inimical to the nature and spirit of traditional ruxue—a philosophy that points the way for people to verify its teachings in real-life situations rather than relying on theory and rigorous logic. New Confucianism best exemplifies this new trend: In the later developments of New Confucianism, laying out theoretical distinctions, developing systems, and perfecting academic theories increasingly seem to have become the focus of attention. Moral practice, the “presentation of innate moral consciousness” (liangzhi chengxian 良知呈現), the question of whether moral consciousness can connect with the transcendent, and so on, to a large degree have all become academic matters rather than matters of genuine practice.26 . . . The essential characteristic of the New Confucians [here he is referring principally to figures such as Xiong Shili and Liang Shuming] was not “to engage in learning” but “to promote the way.” When the day came that the search for knowledge became the leading feature, New Confucianism, as a particular “school” (xuepai 學 派 ), lost its unique determinate character and became dissolved within the horizon of the pluralist developments of contemporary ruxue.27

More than any other of the first two generations of New Confucians, Mou Zongsan best exemplified the trend toward intellectualization. “It is more appropriate to describe Mou and others as having benefited from training in Western philosophical method than from traditional rujia learning and self-cultivation. The more successful they became in this, the more closely they resembled professional philosophers in the modern sense rather than ruzhe [one who is a ru] in the traditional sense.” 28 In the essay “Gudu, shuli, xuanzhi: Mou Zongsan yu dangdai rujia de jingyu,” Zheng explored in some detail the psychological-cumspiritual price that Mou paid for his Faustian commitment.

( 24. Zheng Jiadong, Dangdai xin ruxue shi lun, 51–52. 25. Zheng Jiadong, Duanliezhong de chuantong, 154, 155. 26. Zheng Jiadong, Dangdai xin ruxue shi lun, 6. 27. Ibid., 100–101. 28. Ibid., 7.

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Elsewhere Zheng has argued that even more so than earlier New Confucians, third-generation New Confucians have chosen to privilege the search for reason and the methodologies of modern knowledge over personal cultivation29 and that the threat to ruxue comes not from some external source but from the “internal cleavage of knowledge (zhi 知 ) and moral action (xing 行 ). The focus of intellectualized ruxue is ontology, not cultivation and practice.”30 He predicts that dissolution of the bond between zhi and xing will have a greater influence on the development of ruxue than the dissolution of the traditional relationship between xinxing ruxue 心性儒學 (that is, the ruxue tradition associated with Mencius, Wang Yangming, and the New Confucians) and political ruxue (the genesis of which is generally traced to Han times).31 In one of his more recent writings, Zheng appropriates the concepts of xuetong 學統 and daotong 道統 to elucidate a distinction between doctrine ( jiao 教) and learning (xue 學). He invests the term daotong with a new sense to mean a core moral doctrine or set of teachings and ideals that forms the basis for a system of belief. (Mou Zongsan’s account of Confucius’s “teaching of humaneness” would be an example of a daotong used in this sense.) By xuetong Zheng does not mean science (the sense in which Mou Zongsan used the term) but “the transmission, development, and evolution of a system of knowledge.”32 These distinctions are a resurfacing of the old tension between “honoring the moral nature” (zun dexing 尊德行) and “following the path of inquiry and learning” (dao wenxue 道問學). Since Song times, these two hermeneutic styles have been portrayed as alternating trends in the practice and pursuit of the rujia way, sometimes viewed as complementary, at other times as antithetical. For Zheng, they are not so much antithetical hermeneutical

( 29. Zheng Jiadong, Dangdai xin ruxue shi lun, 87. Other contributors to the recent debate over the “legitimacy of Chinese philosophy” in China have made similar points. Joël Thoraval (“Rujia jingyan yu zhexue duihua,” 10), for example, argues that unlike “Neo-Confucianism,” which was a combination of cultivation and thought, New Confucianism has been reduced to a form of philosophical discourse. Whereas Neo-Confucian reflections on the classical scriptures were given various forms of expression—from religious ceremonial to quiet-sitting; from social ceremonial and institutions to art—New Confucianism has been transformed on the model of Western philosophy (especially German idealism) and has taken on a rationalist form of philosophical discourse. 30. Zheng Jiadong, Dangdai xin ruxue shi lun, 6. 31. Ibid., 91. 32. Zheng Jiadong, Duanliezhong de chuantong, 189, 188.

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styles as different spheres of intellectual and spiritual engagement, and for him xuetong should be subordinate to daotong. (The relationship that Mou Zongsan proposed between practical reason and theoretical reason—to be achieved by “self-negation” [ziwo kanxian]—is an example of the proper form that this subordinate relationship should take.) Increasingly, however, this proper relationship has become distorted: The undertaking that Xiong, Mou, and others were engaged in was the so-called learning of normative principles ( yili zhi xue 義理之學) [associated with daotong rather than xuetong], yet their greatest contributions lay in the systematization, schematization, theorization, and objectification of “the learning of normative principles.” Their work relates to both “doctrine” and “learning.” In the rujia tradition, “doctrine” and “learning” could never be completely separated, yet in the current historical situation, the maintenance and promotion of daotong [= moral doctrine] could not but become increasingly dependent on the elucidation of xuetong [= academic systems of knowledge]. In a real sense, it can be said that an objectified xuetong has become the premise for subjective experience and also the foundation enabling ruxue to survive and to develop in the modern period. . . . The intellectualization of ruxue is an irreversible trend. The question is, Does this intellectualization necessarily mean the erosion of spirituality and religiosity? Or is the attempt to unify “doctrine” and “learning” itself a type of usurpation?33

In the latter half of the 1990s, one impetus prompting many scholars to shift their focus from New Confucian studies to more broad-based ruxue studies was the concern that New Confucian philosophy was too divorced from social realities; it lacked engagement with the real world. Thus Zheng comments: In a real sense, questions such as Can the rujia “spirit of practice” [i.e., moral action in the real world] and the cultural and social concern “to take responsibility for what happens in the world” [the maxim first formulated by Fan Zhongyan 范 仲淹 (989–1052)] be reconciled with specialist research? and How can this reconciliation be achieved? already go beyond the scope of so-called New Confucian studies because they are questions that every ruxue researcher who has a sense of cultural mission must face.34

Even though Zheng would appear to include himself in the category of “ruxue researchers,” the sense of cultural mission he refers to is precisely what he means by the “rujia ‘spirit of practice.’ ” In Zheng’s own case,

( 33. Ibid., 194. 34. Ibid., 201.

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this sense of cultural mission is most clearly exemplified in the broad cultural daotong he has sought to defend (the subject of Chapter 7).

The Legitimacy of Chinese Philosophy For Zheng, however, the institutionalization and professionalization of ruxue in the twentieth century is symptomatic of a different malady: the epistemic violence that accompanies the interrogation of traditional modes of Chinese thought through the deployment of Western concepts and paradigms. Over the past decade, a growing number of Chinese academics have argued that “Western philosophy” has yet to acknowledge the legitimacy of “Chinese philosophy” and to engage it as an equal partner in dialogue. Similar arguments had already been mounted by New Confucian philosophers in Taiwan and Hong Kong in the 1950s but to little effect. Other commentators see a need for Chinese thought and scholarship to occupy a position as benchmark or standard (benwei 本 位 ) when conducting research on Chinese philosophy and scholarship. Others portray Western philosophy as a hegemonic discourse complicit in cultural imperialist agendas. Still others are concerned by the assertion made by many Western philosophers that China has only thought but no proper philosophy. Discussion of these and related issues reached a watershed with the publication of two influential essays—one at the end of 2001 by Zheng Jiadong and the other early in 2002 by Chen Lai.35 These essays marked the beginning of a debate focused on the topic of the “legitimacy of Chinese philosophy.”36 The intensity of the debate has eased, but the issues raised are likely to continue to occupy many Chinese intellectuals. This is because the debate feeds into more pervasive and deep-seated concerns about the threat to Chinese cultural identity posed by subjugation to the cultural assumptions built into theories formulated under Western cultural circumstances. The historical roots of this debate can be traced to early twentiethcentury debates whether Confucius was a religious specialist (zongjiaojia

( 35. The two essays are Zheng Jiadong, “ ‘Zhongguo zhexue’ de ‘hefaxing wenti’ ”; and Chen Lai, “Zhongguo zhexue yanjiu de tiaozhan.” 36. For English translations of important contributions to the debate, see Contemporary Chinese Thought, 37, nos. 1–3 (Fall 2005, Winter 2005–6, and Spring 2006); all three issues are devoted to this topic.

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宗教家) or a philosopher (zhexuejia 哲學家).37 Early doubts about the status of traditional thought in China as philosophy were raised by such prominent figures as Wang Guowei 王 國 維 (1877–1927) and Liang Qichao, and in the 1930s Jin Yuelin 金岳林 (1895–1984) developed an influential distinction between “Chinese philosophy” and “philosophy in China.” At around the same time, Feng Youlan used the terms Zhongguo di zhexue 中國底哲學 and Zhongguo de zhexue 中國的哲學 to draw a similar distinction. In recent years, Chinese scholars have identified a number of factors conducive to a renewed discussion of the status of Chinese philosophy. These include the discovery of new archaeologically recovered texts; new developments in classical exegesis and the exploration of so-called Chinese hermeneutics; and calls to rewrite the history of Chinese philosophy, based on critical reflection of the paradigms used to define the discipline of Chinese philosophy.38 To these factors we might add the rise of socalled National Studies over the past decade (see Chapter 3) and the paradigm shift referred to as moving from “doubting antiquity” ( yigu 疑古) to “explaining antiquity” (shigu 釋古; discussed in Chapter 10). In a seminal essay on the legitimacy of Chinese philosophy, Zheng Jiadong wrote: The true import of the issue of the “legitimacy of Chinese philosophy” is as follows: In China, historically, was there a tradition of “Chinese philosophy” that existed independent of the European tradition of philosophy? In other words, is “philosophy” an appropriate way for us to interpret traditional Chinese thought? And in what sense can the concept “Chinese philosophy” and that which it connotes obtain an appropriate degree of explanation and sufficient rational justification?39

Of particular note is that for scholars such as Zheng and Jing Haifeng, Chinese philosophy is nothing other than rujia thought. More recently, Jing Haifeng has been one of the most trenchant critics of Chinese attempts to ape Western models of philosophy. He dismisses questions such as “Is Chinese philosophy really philosophy?” and “Does China have philosophy?” as passé and describes them as Westernstyle questions.40 For Jing, the institutionalization of philosophy as an

( 37. Kojima Tsuyoshi, “Rujiao yu ruxue hanyi yitong chongtan,” 206–7. 38. Jing Haifeng, “Zhongguo zhexue yanjiu de redian wenti ji fazhan qushi.” 39. Zheng Jiadong, “ ‘Zhongguo zhexue’ de ‘hefaxing wenti,’ ” 1. 40. Jing Haifeng, Zhongguo zhexue de xiandai quanshi, 243.

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academic discipline has meant that so-called Chinese philosophy has effectively become little other than Western-style philosophy with a Chinese mask. He complains that despite developments over the past century in the study of Chinese philosophy, as well as the professionalization and institutionalization of the discipline, the actual content of Chinese philosophy remains insubstantial and devoid of real content. The reliance on Western models and forms of philosophy to construct Chinese philosophy has proved incapable of meeting society’s need to mobilize the national spirit. It has provided neither a viable modern form for Chinese thought nor a bridge to connect tradition and modernity.41 Eighty years ago, in 1923, liberal educator Cai Yuanpei 蔡元培 complained that even after fifty years of importing elements of Western philosophy, an original and creative Chinese philosophy had yet to be established.42 In 1997, Zheng Jiadong similarly maintained: To a large extent, the flourishing state of Chinese philosophy in the 1990s is still only a flourishing of a kind of “history” and not a flourishing of “philosophy” in the true sense. Currently, the development of Chinese philosophy in mainland China is merely at the stage of “description” and is still a long way from truly having entered a period of pluralist creativity.43

According to Zheng, for a long time the capacity of Chinese academics to think creatively was hampered by their having to operate in a closed academic environment, by their employment of simplistic methodological principles, and by pursuing a “partial high degree of specialization” within a much broader context of nonspecialization: In this situation, the only things considered important were perspective (class struggle), method (idealist/materialist), political sensitivity, and enthusiasm, as well as being able to muster the courage to resolutely press forward in the revolutionary critique of something of which one has no understanding at all. As for those elements critical to philosophical research and philosophical creativity, such as grounding in specialist skills, theory, historical knowledge, specialist training, depth of thought, and so forth, these, on the contrary, were immaterial.44

He argues that parochial specialization has impeded mutual understanding between the two traditions:

( 41. Jing Haifeng, Zhongguo zhexue de xiandai quanshi, 210, 241–47 passim. 42. Cai Yuanpei, Wushi nian lai Zhongguo zhi zhexue, 351. 43. Zheng Jiadong, “Jin wushinian lai dalu ruxue de fazhan ji qi xianzhuang,” 34. 44. Ibid., 32.

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Those who work on Chinese philosophy can completely ignore the overall spirit and contemporary development of Western philosophy, while those who work on Western philosophy can disregard the core patterns of China’s indigenous thought and its philosophical traditions. Different academic groups lack even minimal understanding of one another; they lack mutual understanding, dialogue, and communication. This is what we mean by a partial high degree of specialization occurring in a much broader context of nonspecialization.45

Elsewhere Zheng has argued that since the 1950s the issues studied and methodologies employed in Chinese philosophy have been derived from outside the discipline of Chinese philosophy.46 As a result, Chinese philosophy has become merely a particular illustration of a notion of universal philosophy that is in fact based on a Western model.47 Although Jing Haifeng and Zheng Jiadong offer a similar diagnosis of Chinese philosophy’s current malaise, Zheng defends the view that, in addition to thought, philosophy already existed in traditional China. For Zheng, the crux to the issue of the legitimacy of Chinese philosophy lies in identifying how the “Chineseness” (Zhongguoxing 中國性) of Chinese philosophy can be realized. He describes “Chineseness” as the spirit and characteristic features of Chinese philosophy’s connection with China’s historical and cultural traditions. Even more fundamentally, he says, “it concerns how Chinese philosophy can engage with the psycho-spiritual life and historical praxis of Chinese people today” by providing “cultural values” and “psycho-spiritual ideals” ( jingshen linian 精神理念).48

Concluding Remarks Both Guo Qiyong and Zheng Jiadong have played a leading role in the development of ruxue studies from the late 1980s on. In particular, their gradual personal identification with ruxue as a system of values, practices, and cultural norms is representative of a widespread trend among mainland academics—particularly academics in philosophy departments— over the course of the 1990s. As prominent and influential members of this academic community, Guo and Zheng have been instrumental in shaping an attitude of “sympathetic understanding” toward ruxue in contemporary China, an attitude that continues to grow

( 45. Ibid., 33. 46. Zheng Jiadong, “ ‘Hefaxing’ gainian ji qi ta,” 3. 47. Zheng Jiadong, “Hou ‘yigu shidai’ de ‘Zhongguo zhexueshi’ xiezuo.” 48. Zheng Jiadong: “ ‘Hefaxing’ gainian ji qi ta,” 4.

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in sophistication and influence. Although Zheng is more critical than Guo of the modern academic fate of ruxue, his writings, like those of Guo, evidence a personal commitment to the revitalization of ruxue as a living cultural tradition. The following chapter continues to explore the theme of the inseparability of ruxue and Chinese cultural identity. In particular, I examine Zheng Jiadong’s critical reading of Mou Zongsan’s views on ruxue and Chinese cultural identity and what this reading reveals about Zheng’s commitment to the “ruxue persuasion.”

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7 Daotong and Chinese Culture

The concept of daotong 道統 (interconnecting thread of the way) has been employed since Song times as a powerful tactic in the retrospective creation of lineages and “schools” and also in the promotion of certain thinkers and exclusion of others from privileged versions of just who and what constitutes orthodoxy. Elsewhere I have argued that the New Confucian movement provides students of Chinese intellectual history with a rare opportunity to study this traditional strategy of orthodoxy formation in a contemporary context. 1 In certain hands, it has also served as a means to portray the “learning of the ru” as a unique body of teachings instrumental not merely in shaping the course of “Chinese culture” but also in enabling that culture to be nurtured, passed on, and illuminated. In this chapter, I seek to show how Mou Zongsan’s particular notion of a cultural daotong was interpreted and defended by mainland scholar Zheng Jiadong to advance a cultural nationalist vision that would have been inconceivable on the mainland even a year or two before it was first presented in 1994. As such, it marks a significant turning point in the ruxue revivalist movement on the mainland.

Yu Yingshi on Qian Mu and the New Confucians In the late 1980s, mainland scholars of New Confucianism and thirdgeneration overseas New Confucians were keen to include Qian Mu within the New Confucian fold (as some continue to do so even today). Taiwan- and Hong Kong–based scholars sought to exercise proprietary

( 1. See Makeham, ed., New Confucianism, chap. 2.

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claims over Qian, appealing to the long periods he lived and taught in Taiwan and Hong Kong (where he founded New Asia College). Moreover, by this time, mainland scholars were also regularly identifying Qian’s leading disciple, Yu Yingshi, as a New Confucian.2 In the eyes of many scholars, Yu’s long-standing relationship with Qian Mu (which started in Yu’s undergraduate days at New Asia College in the early 1950s), his involvement in planning and acting as an advisor to the Confucian Ethics project in Singapore, and his many publications on various aspects of early and modern ruxue were sufficient proof that Yu was a modern-day ru. In 1991, however, Yu Yingshi published a major essay claiming that Qian Mu had denied that he was a New Confucian; Yu also highlighted a number of disagreements between Qian and some of the so-called second-generation New Confucians.3 For several years after its publication, Yu’s essay continued to cause a stir both in the New Confucian camp and among mainland scholars either sympathetic to or who identified with the rujia tradition. Many found it especially disturbing that such a critique should have come from a supposed “insider.” Contrary to the claims usually made by third-generation New Confucians and mainland scholars of New Confucianism, Yu rejects classifying Qian Mu as a New Confucian on the grounds that Qian did not set out to develop new philosophical interpretations of ruxue in order to constitute a new system of thought. Yu proposes a twofold characterization of Qian’s view of ruxue. First, it encompasses a system of values that for the past two thousand years has molded every aspect of the Chinese people’s lives. Second, ruxue provided the principal impetus for the longevity and breadth of Chinese culture and could still provide modern Chinese culture with a psycho-spiritual foundation. Qian fur-

( 2. This act was consecrated with the inclusion of an edited selection of Yu’s writings in the series Xiandai xin ruxue jiyao, entitled Neizai chaoyue zhi lu: Yu Yingshi xin ruxue lunzhu jiyao (1992). Planning for this series had been in place since 1987. 3. Yu Yingshi, “Qian Mu yu xin rujia.” For a fascinating perspective on the relationship between Qian and the New Confucians, see the preface by Qian’s widow, Qian-Hu Meiqi, “Ye tan xiandai xin rujia.” The preface sheds much light on why Qian’s leading disciple, Yu Yingshi, wrote his devastating 1991 essay “Qian Mu yu xin rujia.” For a letter from Qian Mu to Xu Fuguan giving a somewhat different perspective on this relationship and also why he refused to sign the 1958 declaration (discussed below), see the transcript and analysis in Liu Shuxian, Dangdai Zhongguo zhexue lun, 19–20.

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ther believed that the subtle influence the ru value system exerted on both individuals and society served a positive function. Yu insists that because Qian was a historian, not a philosopher, he must be clearly distinguished from such figures as Xiong Shili, Liang Shuming, and Feng Youlan. Yu also goes to considerable lengths to show that the differences between Qian Mu and the so-called second-generation New Confucians were greater than the affinities and that Qian never identified as a New Confucian. Yu even denies that they shared a common vocabulary, maintaining that Qian was unreceptive to the terms and concepts of Kant and Hegel so favored by Mou and Tang in particular.4 His comments are significant, not simply because of the high esteem in which Yu is held in academic circles but more particularly because of his status as Qian Mu’s student. The issue of Qian Mu’s New Confucian affiliation, however, is not the most important issue addressed in Yu’s essay. More important still is Yu’s critique of the daotong concept, especially the New Confucian appropriation of the concept. Yu’s critique implicitly poses a fundamental challenge to those (such as Mou Zongsan and other New Confucians) who present ruxue principally as a system of moral philosophy and metaphysics.5 To date, none of the various responses to Yu’s essay has succeeded in refuting his main thesis. In what follows, I first present a summary account of Yu’s critique of the New Confucian daotong thesis and then examine some of the responses his critique engendered, in particular, that of Zheng Jiadong.

Yu Yingshi on Daotong Yu shows that Qian Mu was critical of the genealogical transmission model of the daotong developed during Song and Ming times because it was vulnerable to interruption. Instead, Qian proposed that the real dao-

( 4. Yu Yingshi, “Qian Mu yu xin rujia,” 199. Thomas A. Metzger (A Cloud Across the Pacific, 189, 242) takes evident pleasure in pointing out that Yu’s adoption of the notion of “inner transcendence” (neizai chaoyue 内在超越) in some of his writings was borrowed from the New Confucians. 5. Elsewhere, Yu (“Xiandai ruxue de kunjing,” 33) has made his position plain: “If ruxue merely develops a new and convincing system of ethical reasoning sufficient to match the West’s most brilliant moral philosophy, and yet this system of ethical reasoning is incapable of creating a living and breathing model of human dignity, then it is certainly problematical as to whether this system can still be considered to be ruxue at all.”

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tong was the “entire cultural tradition.”6 Yu calls this the daotong of the intellectual historian, not the daotong of the philosopher, which he associates with the New Confucians, in particular the Xiong Shili “lineage” or “school.”7 He argues that the New Confucian concept of daotong is not a simple continuation of the concept developed during the Song and Ming: Beginning with Xiong Shili, all the New Confucians had a strong daotong consciousness. The way they reconstructed the daotong, however, differed from the approach that had usually been followed since Song and Ming times. They did not emphasize “transmission of the way” lineages, nor did they talk about “mind-to-mind transmission.” Rather, they appealed to the understanding and personal verification of the “mind and the nature” by historical ruzhe as the basis for determining which of these figures had experienced the “reality of the way” (daoti 道體).

Yu further relates that the New Confucians upheld the belief that by reviewing extant biographical material on Song and Ming ru, they were able to determine which of these historical figures had followed Mencius in realizing the “reality of the way” and the means of cultivation by which they had achieved this realization.8 According to Yu, this was the most important internal evidence that the New Confucians had for reconstructing the genealogy of the “interconnecting thread of the way” (daotong). “By and large all of them maintained that after Mencius the daotong became severed, and it was only by the Northern Song that some people started to repair [its transmission]. After the end of the Ming, its transmission became interrupted for another three hundred years, becoming re-established once more with the New Confucians.” Yu does not specify which New Confucians used this internal evidence to reconstruct a daotong genealogy. Since Xiong Shili rarely used the term, presumably Yu has Mou Zongsan foremost in mind.9 In sum, for Yu, the so-called philosopher’s daotong is represented by individuals, whereas the intellectual historian’s daotong is represented by the entirety of Chinese culture. The philosopher’s daotong is characterized by its exclusivity, its subjective quality, and its vulnerability. That is, historically it has been realized only by a select group of sages and worthies; this realization has relied on personal, subjective verification;

( 6. Yu Yingshi, “Qian Mu yu xin rujia,” 190; Qian Mu, Zhongguo xueshu tong yi, 94. 7. Yu Yingshi, “Qian Mu yu xin rujia,” 183–91. 8. Ibid., 202, 203. 9. Ibid., 203.

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and because transmission of the daotong relies on a small cohort of enlightened individuals, it is constantly susceptible to interruption. There is a seeming inconsistency between Yu’s statement that the New Confucians “did not emphasize ‘transmission of the way’ lineages” and his statement about the New Confucians’ reconstructed “genealogy of the ‘interconnecting thread of the way’ (daotong).” By “transmission of the way,” Yu is evidently referring to Han Yu’s articulation of Yao, Shun, Yu, Tang, Wen, Wu, the Duke of Zhou, Confucius, and Mencius into a “transmission of the way” (chuan dao 傳道) genealogy. Yu contrasts this emphasis with the New Confucian emphasis on a particular teaching, xin xing zhi xue 心性之學 (learning of the mind and the nature). His point is that the New Confucians did not emphasize a lineage of person-to-person transmission. (Strictly speaking, neither did Han Yu.) Yet, as we shall see, because the xin xing zhi xue doctrine is intimately associated with Mou’s cultural understanding of daotong, a genealogy of transmission remains prominent in the thinking of Mou Zongsan and a number of third-generation New Confucians.

Early Responses Two papers at the Second International Conference on New Confucianism (Taipei, 1992) responded to Yu’s essay. “Lun Yu Yingshi xin rujia de piping” 論余英時對新儒家的批評 (Yu Yingshi’s criticism of the New Confucians) is by Taiwanese scholar and prominent disciple of Mou Zongsan Yang Zuhan 楊祖漢 (Zhongyang University). Yang’s paper embarks on a somewhat predictable, apologist defense of the basic tenets of New Confucian moral metaphysics. He does not attempt to use reasoned argument to counter Yu’s charges, being content to insist dogmatically that the philosophical schemes and doctrines laid out by representative New Confucians are beyond question. Although a section of the paper does comment on the daotong issue, Yang’s entrenched partisan views serve to bolster Yu’s case rather than weaken it. Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences historian Luo Yijun also submitted a lengthy paper in response to Yu’s essay, “Jin shiyu nian dangdai xin ruxue de yanjiu yu suo wei menhu wenti” 近十餘年當代新儒學的研 究與所謂門戶 問題 (The so-called problem of factionalism in New Confucianism over the past ten-plus years).10 Luo’s essay is notable for two

( 10. I have used the versions of Yang’s and Luo’s papers distributed at the conference (which I attended). As with the first and previous New Confucian

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reasons. First, he was a mainland scholar coming to the defense of New Confucianism. Before 1994, almost all mainland scholars of New Confucianism seemed to have been unanimous in treating New Confucianism (and ruxue more generally) as an object of research rather than as a body of teachings they personally identified with. Second, this paper earned Luo the ire of Fang Keli—the de facto chief of New Confucian studies on the mainland—on the grounds that it outlined a “mainland New Confucian” agenda hostile to Marxism. I return to the issue of Luo’s “mainland new rujia” identity and related issues in Chapter 11. Here it suffices to note that although Luo regarded Yu’s essay as the most serious assault on the New Confucians for more than a decade,11 his response was directed principally at Yu’s assessment of individual New Confucians and the claim that the New Confucians engaged in factionalism. He did not broach the daotong issue.

Daotong as Culture The first rigorous response to Yu’s criticism of the New Confucian daotong was made by Li Minghui in his 1993 essay “Dangdai xin rujia de daotong lun” 當代新儒家的道統論 (The daotong doctrine of the New Confucians), originally presented at a conference in Hong Kong.12 In the second part of the essay, Li challenges a view he attributes to Yu— that Xiong Shili established a genealogical model of the daotong transmission—by first pointing out that Xiong Shili seldom used the term daotong. He speculates that Xiong understood the term to refer to the cultural tradition integrated, developed, and passed on by Confucius and suggests that there is no fundamental difference between this understanding of daotong and that of Qian Mu. On this basis, Li rejects Yu’s claim that the New Confucian daotong genealogy is based on the apprehension of the “reality of the way” by enlightened individuals. Although Li is correct to argue that Xiong hardly used the term daotong in his writings, his rebuttal omits Yu’s emphasis on the “mind

( conferences held in 1990, because of problems with travel permits, mainland scholars were unable to attend in person. Luo’s paper was published in Yang Zuhan, ed., Di er jie Dangdai xin ruxue guoji xueshu huiyi lunwenji zhi er. Luo also published the paper as a preface to Luo Yijun, ed., Lixing yu shengming, vol. 1. 11. Luo Yijun, “Jin shiyu nian dangdai xin ruxue de yanjiu yu suo wei menhu wenti,” 12. 12. The version I have used is included as a chapter in his Dangdai ruxue zhi ziwo zhuanhua.

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and the nature.” (It also generalizes from the case of Xiong to make claims about the New Confucians generally.) According to Yu, the New Confucians of the Xiong Shili lineage—that is, Mou Zongsan and his disciples—“did not emphasize a genealogy for the transmission of the way nor did they talk about ‘mind-to-mind transmission.’ Rather, they appealed to the understanding and personal verification of the ‘mind and the nature’ by historical ruzhe as the basis for determining which of these figures had experienced the ‘reality of the way (daoti ).’ ”13 Yu was seeking to highlight the exclusive emphasis these New Confucians place on “learning of the mind and the nature” and the association of this teaching with the daotong. I return to this important point later in this chapter.14 Much more illuminating is Li’s account of Mou Zongsan’s understanding of the concept of tong 統 (lit. “to unite; to bring together”) as used in the three concepts, daotong, xuetong 學統 (scientific learning), and zhengtong 政 統 (democratic system of governance). Mou distinguished this sense of daotong from zhengtong and xuetong.15 Traditional Chinese culture had developed neither zhengtong nor xuetong (in the aforementioned sense) but would need to do so in the future.16 What China’s traditional culture did have, however, was a rich and vibrant daotong. Indeed, it is this daotong that makes China’s traditional culture unique, so much so that the two are inseparable. Li explains that it draws on Hegel’s notions of universal and particular (aspects of the

( 13. Yu Yingshi, “Qian Mu yu xin rujia,” 202. 14. Some of Li’s other arguments also fail to gain real purchase on Yu. Consider Li’s challenge to Yu’s claim that the New Confucians—emulating the Mencius-Lu-Wang tradition—sought to affirm “a universal and transcendent ‘ontological mind’ (xinti 心軆)” (Yu Yingshi, “Qian Mu yu xin rujia,” 202). Yet in citing the example of Zhu Xi to make his point (in which Li asserts that Zhu’s daotong doctrine was based on the affirmation of universal and objective “principle” rather than “ontological mind”), Li begs the issue because Zhu is not associated with the Mencius-Lu-Wang tradition. Similarly unsuccessful is Li’s claim that Yu characterized the New Confucians as having subscribed to a mind-tomind transmission model of the dao; see Li Minghui, “Dangdai xin rujia de daotong lun,” 158–59. In fact, Yu (“Qian Mu yu xin rujia,” 202) specifically denied that the New Confucians subscribed to a lineal model of transmission. 15. Mou’s santong 三統 (three unities) thesis is expounded in three of his writings, in particular: Lishi zhexue 歷史哲學; Zhengdao yu zhidao; and Daode de lixiangzhuyi. 16. See, e.g., Mou, Shengming de xuewen, 60–63; and idem, Daode de lixiangzhuyi, 152–57.

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Spirit as it moves dialectically to its own realization through the course of history), as set out in the latter’s Philosophy of History. For Mou, the history of each nation is given expression through concepts or concept formations (guannian xingtai 觀 念形態 ), a process that reveals the psycho-spiritual life of a particular nation: Because the histories of all nations are the manifestation (objectification) of psycho-spiritual reality, they possess a universality. Moreover, because these histories must give expression to psycho-spiritual reality through unique concept formations, they possess particularity. Mr. Mou thus referred to the duality of universality and particularity as tong. . . . Put simply, daotong is the path by which universality is given expression in particularity.17

Li further explains that for Mou, the daotong is centrally concerned with “learning about the moral nature.” We might thus infer that Mou’s daotong is a combination of the psycho-spiritual source of moral values (the universal) and the Chinese people’s particular expression of moral values (the particular), the transcendent and the immanent. Li then turns to showing how this understanding can be applied to rebutting Yu’s claims. According to Li, Song dynasty rujia talked of daotong in terms of a “universal and objective principle.” They required a genealogical model to reveal which enlightened men had “embodied” the principle because the daotong resided in those men. By contrast, Mou Zongsan “talked about daotong in terms of the meaning (yiyi 意義) that is given expression in the concept formations of a particular nation in the course of its history. This meaning certainly has a universal character, but the mode of its expression is [culturally] particular.” In Chinese culture, this meaning is humaneness. Although humaneness is universal, the culturally particular expression of humaneness is Confucius’s “teaching of humaneness.” Li concludes that this understanding of daotong is not tied to the enlightenment of a few sages and worthies— which would render it vulnerable to interruption—but “is imbued in the entirety of the nation’s historical culture. So long as the nation does not disappear, the daotong will continue on. . . . Accordingly, in the New Confucianism represented by Mou Zongsan, the establishment of a daotong genealogy has no fundamental significance.”18 Li thus characterizes the New Confucian concept of daotong represented by Mou Zongsan as one present in the entirety of China’s his-

( 17. Li Minghui, “Dangdai xin rujia de daotong lun,” 163, 165. 18. Ibid., 165.

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torical culture. “The historical culture is itself not the daotong; only the meaning given expression through the historical culture is the daotong.” This meaning is humaneness. 19 Yet, as already noted above and as shown in more detail below, because the xin xing zhi xue doctrine is intimately associated with Mou’s understanding of the daotong, a genealogy of transmission remains prominent in the thinking of Mou Zongsan and a number of third-generation New Confucians. The most developed response to Yu Yingshi’s critique of the New Confucian reformulation of the daotong doctrine is an influential essay by Zheng Jiadong, “Dangdai xin rujia daotonglun” 當代新儒家道統論 (The daotong thesis of the contemporary New Confucians). Like Luo Yijun’s paper, Zheng’s contribution is notable for its attempt to defend the New Confucians from Yu’s implicit and explicit criticisms. Zheng’s essay was first presented as a conference paper late in 1994 at the Third International Academic Conference on New Confucianism, convened in Hong Kong, and subsequently published in one of his books in 1997.20 He also incorporated it into an expanded study of daotong that formed a chapter in his Duanliezhong de chuantong: xinnian yu lixing zhi jian. In contrast to Yu Yingshi’s claim that it was no longer possible to be an internal participant in rujia culture, Zheng Jiadong’s essay should be understood as the response from someone who self-consciously identifies with the rujia tradition, a sort of mainland New Confucian. For Zheng, although the rujia tradition was fundamentally challenged and altered by intellectualization and institutionalization throughout the course of the twentieth century (and continues to be so), the tradition remains firmly rooted in the historical cultural tradition of the Chinese nation (minzu). In the essay, Zheng develops a key distinction between a narrow and a broad sense of daotong, arguing that by focusing exclusively on the genealogical model—based on the narrow sense of daotong—Yu had ignored the more important broad sense of daotong, which does not rely on a genealogical model of enlightened worthies. Zheng maintains that this broad daotong model is, in fact, more representative of the views of the New Confucians collectively. Although there are flaws in the details of Zheng’s argument, the pertinent issue is the notion of a broad daotong that Zheng himself constructs and defends. On one hand, Zheng points out that there are problems with the narrow or genealogical daotong doctrine criticized by Yu Yingshi; on the other hand, he insists that the

( 19. Ibid., 166. 20. Zheng Jiadong, Dangdai xin ruxue shi lun.

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broad daotong doctrine—to which, according to Zheng, the first- and second-generation New Confucians generally subscribed—transcends subjective and partisan interpretations. He describes this daotong as an “eternal, ever regenerating, successively transmitted cultural spirit.” 21 For Zheng, this daotong is a unique kind of cultural consciousness that acknowledges and affirms the transcendent and absolute nature of the cultural spirit or cultural life of the Chinese nation. The narrow concept of daotong that Zheng identifies in Mou’s writings is close to the sense in which the term was employed by Song ru: “It is realized in the specific transmission of the dao, in the genealogy of the transmission of the way. It is particularly concerned with how to recognize, evaluate, and confirm the place and function of Song and Ming ru in the development of ruxue.”22 Zheng identifies three “theoretical links” in Mou’s narrow concept of the daotong.23 The first link consists in reaffirming Confucius’s role as “school founder.” Unlike the daotong formulations of Song ru, in Mou’s daotong genealogy the daotong begins with Confucius and is not traced back to Yao, Shun, Yu, Tang, Wen, Wu, and the Duke of Zhou. This is because Mou regarded Confucius as a “creator” rather than a simple “transmitter.” In particular, Mou emphasized that “the teaching of humaneness” was Confucius’s creation.24 Precisely because the “original interconnecting thread of the way” (dao zhi ben tong 道之本統) was reestablished by Confucius, Mou referred to this as the “Confucius tradition” (Kongzi zhi chuantong 孔子之傳統), a new phase in the interconnecting thread of the way (daotong).25 Unlike Qian Mu, Mou sought to emphasize Confucius’s role as creator and downplayed his role as inheritor to the sages of antiquity. This was a paradigm shift. In Zheng’s words, “Seen in this light, Confucius’s thought not only interrupted the various traditions that had preceded him but also established his own tradition from scratch. Even with the New Confucian camp, Mou’s thinking on this matter was unique.”26 Although Confucius inherited and transmitted the original interconnecting thread of the way passed down from the Three Dynasties (Xia,

( 21. Zheng Jiadong, “Dangdai xin rujia de daotonglun,” 49. 22. Ibid., 21. 23. Ibid., 22–43. 24. Mou Zongsan, Xinti yu xingti, 1: 245. 25. Ibid., 192–93. 26. Zheng Jiadong, “Dangdai xin rujia de daotonglun,” 26.

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Shang, Zhou), the way (dao) passed down by the sages and sage-kings of the Three Dynasties was the way of “outer kingliness,” not the way of “inner sageliness.” The way of inner sageliness—Confucius’s teaching of humaneness—began with Confucius.27 Zheng points out that this understanding of daotong is fundamentally different from that of the Song and Ming ru. According to Zhu Xi’s genealogical account of the daotong, Confucius was the transmitter of the “sixteen-character” secret instruction about understanding the import of the Doctrine of the Mean as handed down by the sages of antiquity, 28 but he was not its creator. Moreover, Mou also differed from Xiong Shili and Liang Shuming in this respect in that they, like Zhu Xi, also stressed Confucius’s role as transmitter of what had been passed down by former sages.29 The second link in Mou’s narrow concept of the daotong gives prominence to the Analects, Mencius, Doctrine of the Mean, and the material (“commentaries” or “traditions”) appended to the main text of the Book of Changes. Mou describes these four bodies of writing as “having all been developed from the same root in Confucius’s teaching on completing virtue (the teaching of humaneness) that provides a unique orientation to life-wisdom.”30 By contrast, Mou insists that the Great Learning (which Zhu placed as the first of the Four Books) “certainly does not address matters by synthesizing the life-wisdom found in the Analects and Mencius but addresses matters from the perspective of educational institutions. As such, it takes up matters from an altogether different starting point. Although it is included within the sphere of rujia teachings, it does not inherit and pass on Confucius’s and Mencius’s lifewisdom.”31 Mou even made the following claim: “The main branch of the Song and Ming ru based itself on the teachings of the Analects, Mencius, Zhongyong and Yizhuan; only Cheng Yi and Zhu Xi based their teachings on the Great Learning.” 32 Zheng provides the following account of the rationale behind Mou’s doctrinal classifications: In criticizing the Great Learning, Mou aimed to criticize Cheng Yi and Zhu Xi and thereby make a major revision to ruxue’s history of development. Mou classified Zhu Xi—who, historically, was regarded as the orthodox [representative

( 27. Mou Zongsan, Xinti yu xingti, 1: 192–93. 28. See Wilson, Genealogy of the Way, 86–87, for translation and discussion. 29. Zheng Jiadong, “Dangdai xin rujia de daotonglun,” 22–23, 25–27. 30. Mou Zongsan, Xinti yu xingti, 1: 19. 31. Ibid., 3: 369. 32. Ibid., 1: 19.

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of ] Song-Ming ruxue and a great synthesizer [of ruxue]—as belonging to a collateral lineage. He also classified the Cheng Yi–Zhu Xi lineage as the “collateral lineage of Song-Ming ruxue.” This constituted the most crucial link in his reconstructed rujia daotong.33

The third link in Mou’s narrow concept of the daotong was to affirm the historical position of Xiong Shili’s philosophy. “Only the lifetime of learning of my teacher Mr. Xiong Shili inherited, carried on, and advanced the teaching of humaneness of the ru sages, and also inherited, carried on, and advanced the aspirations of the great ru of the late Ming.” 34 I return to Mou’s assessment of the pivotal role played by Xiong below. Having confirmed that Mou’s narrow concept of the daotong was based on a type of genealogy of transmission model (albeit not a personto-person or mind-to-mind transmission), Zheng advanced the following distinction: “The key feature of the daotong concept before the Song is that the ‘way’ was spoken of in reference to tong (interconnecting thread [i.e., the genealogy of enlightened figures]), whereas it may be said that with the daotong concept of the Song ru, tong was spoken of in reference to the ‘way.’ The former was inclined toward history, whereas the latter emphasized philosophy.”35 From Mencius’s claim that “every five hundred years a new king must arise,” to Han Yu’s arrangement of Yao, Shun, Yu, Tang, Wen, Wu, the Duke of Zhou, Confucius, and Mencius into a “transmission of the way” genealogy, all such accounts required a process of historical transmission in order to confirm the status of the Confucian rujia (Kongzi rujia 孔子儒家). . . . The Song ru, however, by and large arranged their historical “transmission of the way” genealogies based on how they themselves understood the rujia way.36

According to Zheng, Mou’s concept of the daotong was of the latter type. Even more so than most Song ru, Mou’s concept of the daotong was a “philosopher’s” daotong because Mou completely abandoned the historical model of transmission from person to person that characterized Chan “transmission of the lamp” accounts and Han Yu’s account.37

( 33. Zheng Jiadong, “Dangdai xin rujia de daotonglun,” 38. 34. Mou Zongsan, Shengming de xuewen, 38. 35. Zheng Jiadong, “Dangdai xin rujia de daotonglun,” 43. 36. Ibid., 43–44. 37. Ibid., 44.

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Zheng characterizes Mou’s broad concept of the daotong as referring principally to the “learning of the mind and the nature” associated with rujia inner sageliness (i.e., cultivation of one’s mind and nature to realize one’s immanent connection with the transcendent as made evident by the virtue of humaneness we all possess). Mou also referred to this as the “learning of the moral nature” (dexing zhi xue 德性之學). Zheng states that use of the daotong concept in the 1958 “Declaration on Behalf of Chinese Culture Respectfully Announced to the People of the World” (Wei Zhongguo wenhua jinggao shijie renshi xuanyan 為中國文化敬告 世界人士宣言), cosigned by Mou Zongsan, Tang Junyi, Xu Fuguan, and Zhang Junmai 張君勱 (1886–1969), is consistent with Mou’s understanding of the term.38 For Mou, xin xing zhi xue 心性之學 is China’s indigenous “learning of the moral nature” and so is intimately connected with China’s historical culture. Zheng believes that, even more than the Song ru, “the New Confucians highlighted the daotong concept in order to give expression to a general cultural consciousness,” and this enabled them to “avoid becoming mired in particular genealogies of transmission when discussing the daotong.” He continues: “In the theories and doctrines of the New Confucians, the word daotong often refers generally to the national cultural tradition and its fundamental spirit.” As such, he claims, the difference between the “philosopher’s concept of the daotong” and the “intellectual historian’s daotong” (a distinction proposed by Yu Yingshi)39 is not very important. 40 Presumably Zheng takes the view that both the philosopher’s and the intellectual historian’s concept of the daotong are interpretations of the same transcendent “cultural spirit.” Yu Yingshi was critical of the New Confucian account of the daotong on the grounds that historically it had often been interrupted. Zheng countered that this criticism fails to appreciate the emphasis Mou placed on the “national cultural tradition” in the broad concept of the daotong. Moreover, this broad concept of the daotong, in which the

( 38. Ibid, 21. 39. Qian Mu, Zhongguo xueshu tongyi, cited in Yu Yingshi, “Qian Mu yu xin rujia,” 123. 40. Zheng Jiadong, “Dangdai xin rujia de daotonglun,” 50. In his most detailed discussion of daotong, Zheng Jiadong (Duanliezhong de chuantong, 151–52) cites several passages from Qian Mu’s 1971 Zhuxi xin xue’an 朱子新學案 (Zhu Xi: new studies), arguing that they show that Qian subscribed to the Song (Zhu Xi) genealogical daotong doctrine. In none of the cited passages, however, does Qian do more than interpret and discuss Zhu Xi’s position. There is nothing to indicate that he was promoting or advocating a similar position.

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national cultural tradition played a central role, was shared by all the New Confucians, including Qian Mu. For Zheng, even though it might be objected that Qian Mu had endorsed a holistic (historical) view of the cultural tradition rather than a transcendent (philosophical) view, it cannot be concluded from this that Mr. Qian denied the existence of a transcendent, eternal, cultural spirit (cultural life) passed on through a single line of successive transmission ( yi mai xiangcheng 一脈相承). It is precisely the affirmation of the existence of this cultural spirit or cultural life that constitutes the most essential content of the rujia daotong.41

Zheng also argues that the understanding of daotong reflected in the 1958 declaration refers generally to the inner sagely learning of the mind and the nature.42 As we will see, this is a strategically important but questionable claim. Even though the declaration does state that “xin xing zhi xue is where the spiritual marrow of Chinese culture is to be found,”43 in fact, in the declaration daotong refers to the “general orientation of culture and thought” rather than to xin xing zhi xue.44 The declaration is talking about a cultural daotong: the objective expression of the Chinese nation’s spiritual life. Xin xing zhi xue is the teaching that gives expression to this spiritual life. The declaration also explicitly denies that Chinese philosophy or thought has determined China’s cultural history. 45 In the declaration, the daotong is a form of cultural transmission and continuity, whereas xin xing zhi xue is a teaching that illuminates this cultural transmission and continuity. To reduce daotong to xin xing zhi xue is a fundamental category mistake. Before we return to the significance of Zheng’s interpretation of the relationship between xin xing zhi xue and the New Confucian daotong, it is first necessary to introduce Xiong Shili’s role in the articulation of the New Confucian daotong. Although Zheng agrees that the daotong concept (as distinct from a daotong consciousness) is not developed in Xiong’s writings,46 he concurs47 with Yu Yingshi’s assessment that Xiong Shili and other New Confucians “appealed to the understanding

( 41. Zheng Jiadong, “Dangdai xin rujia de daotonglun,” 49–50. 42. Ibid., 20–21. 43. Tang Junyi et al., “Wei Zhongguo wenhua jinggao shijie renshi xuanyan,” 21, 25. 44. Ibid., 11. 45. Ibid, 10. 46. Zheng Jiadong, “Dangdai xin rujia de daotonglun,” 15, 16. 47. Ibid., 15.

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and personal verification of the mind and the nature by historical ruzhe as the basis for determining which of these figures had experienced the ‘reality of the way’ (daoti ).”48 How, then, did the thesis that Xiong advocated a particular daotong doctrine and a particular daotong genealogy gain currency and mature? As Zheng points out, Mou Zongsan played the crucial role here in his writings from the 1950s on:49 “The significance of Xiong’s philosophy [for Mou] lay not in establishing a new school but in maintaining the continuous transmission of the single thread of the rujia daotong.”50 Making Xiong a vital link in the transmission of the daotong from late Ming times to the twentieth century formed a key strategy in the retrospective creation of the New Confucian school generally, as well as in the revised daotong genealogy formulated by Mou Zongsan.51 This is why Zheng describes Mou as “the systematic elucidator of the New Confucian daotong doctrine”52 and proposes that just as Zhu Xi’s original articulation of the daotong concept “marked a maturing and deepening in the development of Song-Ming Principle-centered Learning (lixue), so, too, the New Confucian daotong concept was the product of New Confucianism’s being developed to a certain stage.”53 In order to highlight this thesis, Zheng cites a number of passages in which Mou refers to Xiong’s position in the daotong transmission: In the world today, only he [Xiong] is able to connect directly with the great life [transmitted] since the times of Yellow Emperor, Yao, and Shun and maintain

( 48. Yu Yingshi, “Qian Mu yu xin rujia,” 202. 49. Zheng Jiadong, “Dangdai xin rujia de daotonglun,” 16. 50. Ibid., 38. 51. For example, Mou (Xinti yu xingti, 1: 11–19) developed a tripartite division of rujia lineages for the Song-Ming period. The first lineage (literally “thread” [xi 系]) in this division consisted of Zhou Dunyi 周敦頤 (1017–73), Zhang Zai 張載 (1020–77), Cheng Hao 程顥 (1032–85), Hu Hong 胡宏 (1105–55), Lu Jiuyuan 陸九 淵 (1139–93), Zhang Shi 張栻 (1133–80), and Liu Zongzhou 劉宗周 (1528–1645). The second consisted of Cheng Yi 程頤 (1033–1107) and Zhu Xi 朱熹 (1130– 1200). The third consisted of Lu Jiuyuan and Wang Yangming. Mou links the first and third lineages because of their joint emphasis on a core group of texts: Analects, Mencius, the commentaries to the Book of Changes, and Zhongyong. He thus distinguishes two Song-Ming ruxue traditions: a major tradition represented by the first and third lineages and a minor (or inferior) tradition represented by the “divergent” and “collateral” second lineage. 52. Zheng Jiadong, “Dangdai xin rujia de daotonglun,” 20. 53. Ibid.

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this connection without interruption. This life is the combination of the life of the nation and the cultural life. . . . Mr. Xiong’s contribution has been to reconstruct the Han family (Hanjia 漢家) tradition transmitted continuously from the times of Yao, Shun, Yu, Tang, and Kings Wen and Wu. It was Mr. Xiong who begun to recover tradition. . . . It was with Mr. Xiong that the foundations for revitalizing ruxue and recovering China’s cultural life were established and the models for doing so were created. This has enabled those coming after to connect [with tradition], and to advance its continuation.54

More recently, comments such as this have been echoed and developed by Mou’s followers, thereby contributing to the maturing of an identifiable “New Confucian” daotong thesis. In his obituary for Xiong Shili, Cai Renhou 蔡仁厚 (Donghai University, Taiwan) claimed that “after the fall of the Ming, Chuanshan 船山 [Wang Fuzhi 王夫之 (1619–92)] died, learning was severed, and the way perished for three hundred years.” Cai then proceeded to identify Xiong as having been the first to take up the “thread” (xu 緒) left by Wang Fuzhi, thereby re-establishing a connection with Confucius’s distant teachings.55 (The parallels with early NeoConfucian accounts of the hiatus in the transmission of the daotong from Mencius to the Cheng brothers are unmistakable.) Liu Shuxian similarly describes Xiong as the first person after the May Fourth period to have “mastered the fundamental wisdom of Neo-Confucianism (xin ruxue)” and to have “applied his energies to reviving the thought of this tradition. . . . After the Song and Ming periods, the Qing Confucians lost the thread of the daotong once again, and it was not until the Republican period that Xiong Shili opened up the beginnings of New Confucianism.”56 Elsewhere, Liu noted that he was following Du Weiming in identifying Xiong as the founding figure of Third Epoch Confucianism or New Confucianism, and in regarding Xiong as the first to have taken up the thread of the daotong since it was lost in the late Ming.57 Zheng relates that

( 54. Zheng Jiadong, “Dangdai xin rujia de daotonglun,”39, 40, 41, citing Mou Zongsan, Wushi zishu, 102; idem, Xinti yu xingti, 20; and idem, Shengming de xuewen, 117. 55. Cai Renhou, Xin rujia de jingshen fangxiang, 277, 279. 56. Liu Shuxian, Zhuzi zhexue sixiang de fazhan yu wancheng, 1980 preface, 4; 425, 481. 57. Liu Shuxian, “Lun rujia sixiang yu xiandaihua, houxiandaihua de wenti,” 78.

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the tradition Mr. Xiong recovered is the tradition of the “way.” . . . It is a kind of “learning” but not intellectual learning. It is a learning concerned with life. This so-called tradition of the way or learning concerned with life actually refers to the rujia’s doctrine of the transcendent mind and the nature (chaoyue xinxing lun 超越心性論) or the ontological system of mind and the nature.58

On the basis of these comments, we might infer the following: even though this cultural tradition had itself never been interrupted, the “learning” that enables us to recognize and affirm this cultural tradition—xin xing zhi xue—had, in fact, been interrupted, otherwise it would make no sense to talk of its recovery and reconstruction. Zheng repeatedly emphasizes an intimate connection between xin xing zhi xue and the daotong, at times even reducing the latter to the former. He does this in order to show that Mou’s broad daotong doctrine was not based on a genealogical model. Despite this, the passages cited above in which Mou outlines Xiong Shili’s position in the daotong transmission clearly reflect a narrow concept of the daotong, one based on a genealogical model. We may further infer that precisely because this daotong doctrine is based on a genealogical model, it has only a relative truth-value. This is because of Zheng’s assertion that the true rujia daotong is a cultural consciousness that transcends the limited perspective and interpretation of individuals, and that only when it is set down in a specific genealogy of transmission does the daotong lose its transcendent and absolute character. “When absolute authority is accorded to one particular genealogy of transmission, such that it is equated with cultural transmission itself, the daotong concept will sink into conservatism and become ossified.”59 This being the case, then on the strength of Zheng’s own account, Mou’s broad concept of the daotong is still implicated in a genealogical model. Zheng is adamant that the daotong—understood as a single line of successively transmitted cultural spirit or cultural life—and xin xing zhi xue are intimately connected. Even though a range of differences in people’s specific understanding of this tradition of historical culture will be manifest, when the existence of the daotong is affirmed in terms of the transmission of our national historical culture—or more precisely, in terms of the significance of the “learning of the moral nature”

( 58. Zheng Jiadong, “Dangdai xin rujia de daotonglun,” 40. 59. Ibid., 50.

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(the inner sagely teaching for completing virtue)—then there should be no major differences of opinion.60

In making this claim, however, he overlooks a key point: Mou’s conception of xin xing zhi xue requires the enlightened awareness and understanding of sage-like figures such as Xiong Shili in order for that learning to be recovered and reconstructed. Zheng himself even acknowledged that, compared to diffusion of knowledge about Christianity, the transmission of the rujia daotong “relied more often on the personal verification and interpretation of later ru.” 61 Above I noted that Li Minghui’s account of the New Confucian concept of daotong, as represented by Mou Zongsan, is one that presents the daotong as being present in the entirety of China’s historical culture. “The historical culture is itself not the daotong; only the meaning given expression through the historical culture is the daotong.”62 As Li shows, for Mou this meaning is Confucius’s “teaching of humaneness.” Zheng would be unlikely to share this view. When he was explaining why it should not be inferred that Qian Mu “denied the existence of a transcendent, eternal, cultural spirit (cultural life) passed on through a single line of successive transmission,” Zheng particularly stressed it is precisely the affirmation of the existence of this cultural spirit or cultural life that constitutes the most essential content of the rujia daotong. Historical rujia doctrines of the daotong were formulated in terms of a genealogy of transmitting the way. Concealed behind these formulations, however, was a cultural consciousness committed “to carry forward what has been handed down and to open up to what is to come”; “to inherit the past and to open up the future.” This cultural consciousness refers to the ongoing transmission of the national culture. In terms of this cultural consciousness, the rujia daotong concept is transcendent and absolute.63

In other words, the daotong is a particular type of cultural consciousness. It is not the meaning given expression through the historical culture; nor is it Confucius’s teaching of humaneness.

( 60. Zheng Jiadong, “Dangdai xin rujia de daotonglun,” 21. 61. Ibid., 50. 62. Li Minghui, “Dangdai xin rujia de daotonglun,” 166. 63. Zheng Jiadong, “Dangdai xin rujia de daotonglun,” 49–50.

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Concluding Remarks The most significant point to emerge from this analysis of Zheng’s defense of the broad concept of the daotong is his own implicit identification with a particular conception of the rujia tradition. All the more remarkable is that this identification was first expressed as early as 1994. On one hand, Zheng points out the shortcomings of Mou’s narrow concept of the daotong. On the other hand, he still maintains that the broad concept of daotong overrides individual differences in interpretation: “The rujia daotong transcends historical space and time yet is also given continuity through history.”64 These views are not simply a critical response to Mou’s conception of the daotong; they also express Zheng’s own conception of the rujia daotong as a unique kind of cultural consciousness that acknowledges and affirms the transcendent and absolute nature of the cultural spirit or cultural life of the Chinese nation. The sort of cultural nationalism that emerges from these views is one premised on an essentialized conception of the unique historical cultural tradition of the Chinese nation (minzu). Crucially, it is by means of the rujia “learning of the mind and the nature” that participants in, and inheritors of, “Chinese culture” are able to recognize and affirm the cultural tradition of the Chinese nation. (“It is precisely the affirmation of the existence of this cultural spirit or cultural life that constitutes the most essential content of the rujia daotong.”) Yet, given that the “learning of the mind and the nature” is clearly associated with particular historical and modern thinkers, Zheng has still not avoided Yu Yingshi’s fundamental criticism that the New Confucians (principally Mou Zongsan) “appealed to the understanding and personal verification of the ‘mind and the nature’ by historical ruzhe as the basis for determining which of these figures had experienced the ‘reality of the way’ (daoti ).”65 Despite this, all the protagonists discussed above seem to concur with the proposition that a core “Chinese culture” has existed for thousands of years—some tracing its origins to the sage-kings and cultural heroes of high antiquity—molding every aspect of the Chinese people’s lives, and that it constitutes the essence of the Chinese nation and the objective expression of the Chinese nation’s spiritual life. Integral to this cultural tradition were the essential teachings of rujia thought and ruxue.

( 64. Ibid., 50. 65. Yu Yingshi, “Qian Mu yu xin rujia,” 202.

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PART III

The Politics of Orthodoxy

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8 Lin Anwu’s Post–New Confucianism

Professor of Chinese at Taiwan Normal University and a prominent member of the Ehu Monthly Society, Lin Anwu is a ruxue revivalist who emphasizes the primacy of a “critical ruxue.” In the mid-1990s, he achieved notoriety for his criticisms of Mou Zongsan and for promoting Post–New Confucianism (hou xin ruxue 後新儒學). Lin characterizes Post–New Confucianism as a reaction to an excessive emphasis on inner moral cultivation at the expense of practice or social application. He is particularly critical of the dominant and, in the eyes of many, orthodox form of contemporary ruxue that has developed over the past few decades in cultural China—Mou Zongsan’s New Confucian philosophy—for its overriding focus on moral metaphysics and personal cultivation at the expense of social praxis. He does not, however, see this as entailing a rejection or overthrow of core ru values; rather, it requires the adaptation of ruxue to the postmodern condition.1 In his criticism of what he perceives to be the damaging influence of the “formalism and subjectivism” of Kant’s moral philosophy and the subsequent “dogmatization” of Mou Zongsan’s influential teachings, Lin proposes a broader engagement not only with a wide range of ru thinkers but also with the various “schools” of Marxism, Three Principles of the People (Sun Yat-sen), liberalism, and the Taiwanese Scholastic (AKA “Shilin Catholic”) philosophers.2

( 1. Lin Anwu, “Mou Zongsan xiansheng zhi hou,” 11–12. 2. Lin Anwu, “Dangdai xin ruxue ji qi xiangguan wenti zhi lijie yu fanxing (shang),” 20.

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Much of his writing might be described as a combination of philosophy of history and philosophy of culture in which he attempts to diagnose a historically conditioned cultural crisis. Lin is noteworthy for being one of a small number of contemporary ruxue revivalists who have attempted to provide a blueprint for a reconstructed ruxue. His enterprise, however, is far from realized, and its piecemeal quality continues to garner criticism. Because many of Lin’s own critiques are directed at Mou Zongsan, I have appended a brief introduction to Mou’s complex moral metaphysics (and my critique of its fundamental weakness) as an appendix to this chapter for readers unfamiliar with key elements of his thought.

Imperial-Style Ruxue Lin’s writings give prominence to what he regards as the pernicious and lingering influence of “imperial-style ruxue.” As noted in Chapter 5, Lin distinguishes three main types of ruxue in imperial China: real-life ruxue (shenghuohua de ruxue 生活化的儒學), which has its roots in “local folk traditions” (minjian xiangtu chuantong 民間鄉土傳統); critical ruxue ( pipanxing de ruxue 批判性的儒學), which is associated with a system of ethics based on certain qualities derived from human behavior and also with the “interconnecting thread of the way as sustained and revealed through culture” (wenhua daotong 文化道統); and imperial-style ruxue (dizhishi de ruxue 帝制式的儒學), which is associated with an autocratic monarchy. Historically, imperial-style ruxue supported forms of political and social domination (zaizhi 宰制) that became institutionalized in the “emperor system” and “descent-line system feudalism” (zongfa fengjian 宗法封建),3 whereas “critical ruxue” and “real-life ruxue” were opposed to

( 3. It is not clear just what Lin means by this term, which presumably is a variation of the term zong fa feng jianzhuyi 宗法封建主義 used by some mainland Chinese scholars. See, e.g., Yu Dunkang, “Shenme shi ruxue 什麽是儒學?,” 328. I understand it to refer to the notion of a mutual reinforcing relationship between the father’s authority within the family and the ruler’s authority within the state. Kai-wing Chow (The Rise of Confucian Ritualism in Late Imperial China, 84) defines the descent-line system as “the method of designating an heir (tsungtzu), originally the firstborn of the main wife in the main line of the descent group. The ritual authority to make sacrifices to the ancestors in the main line is vested in the heir alone. . . . The heir’s kinsmen . . . would participate in the sacrifice conducted by the heir.”

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these forms of domination.4 Lin further contends that in postwar Taiwan imperial-style ruxue has continued to be dominant, and the intellectual community has largely neglected the other two. In the contemporary context, Lin has two targets in mind when he employs the term “imperial-style ruxue: the ruxue promoted (1) by the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (Zhongguo guomin dang) political ideology and (2) by New Confucianism, particularly the philosophy of Mou Zongsan. Before dealing with Lin’s criticisms of Mou Zongsan’s moral metaphysics,5 I first present Lin’s account of “magic-type causal logic,” which he identifies as endemic in traditional political ideology, SongMing ruxue philosophy, and Mou Zongsan’s philosophy.

Liberation from Magic Lin argues that the social foundations of ruxue are the descent-line system (zongfa 宗法), emotional attachment among family members, and consanguinity. Historically, “below” it was “the natural bonds of consanguinity” (xueyuanxing de ziran lianjie 血緣性的自然連結) that shaped the development of ruxue—encapsulated in the virtues of filial piety and deference to elder males—while “above” ruxue developed “moral bonds based on the human character” (ren’gexing de daode lianjie 人格性的道德 連結)—encapsulated as humaneness and rightness. The vestiges of ruxue’s roots in ancient shamanism are manifest in the belief that heaven, earth, other people, and oneself constitute a whole and that by means of cultivation, ceremonial practices, and mystical paths, spiritual powers can be influenced to effect change. Lin describes this as the “magical” dimension of ruxue. He is critical of the New Confucians generally for limiting practice/praxis (shijian) largely to the realm of personal cultivation and for failing to reflect sufficiently on such elements of traditional ruxue as the descent-line system, its feudal character, blood ties (consanguinity), and the emotional bonds shared by family members. Beginning in the Qin, China’s imperial autocracy emphasized “political bonds of domination” (zaizhixing de zhengzhi lianjie 宰制性的政治連結), under which “the natural bonds of consanguinity” and “moral bonds based on the human character” were subsumed. This resulted in rulers becoming ruler-fathers

( 4. Lin Anwu, Zhongguo zong jiao yu yiyi zhiliao, 278. 5. I take up Lin’s criticisms of the Chinese Nationalist Party in Chapter 9.

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( junfu 君父) and sage-rulers (shengjun 聖君), leading to a phenomenon that Lin calls (the fallacy of ) the Misplaced Dao (dao de wuzhi 道的誤置).6 Because the development of “original ruxue” was intimately linked to traditions of shamanistic belief, autocratic rulership, and small-scale agricultural cultivation, the core of ruxue has always been the political bonds of domination, situated against a background consisting of the natural bonds of consanguinity, and employing moral bonds based on the human character as its instrument ( gong ju 工具). Moreover, because ruxue emphasized “cultivation of the mind and the nature” as well as “the opening up of a spiritual realm” as its goals, it has overlooked moral practice directed toward the overall interconnectedness of history and society.

Autocracy, magic, the descent-line system, and cultivation of the mind and the nature together constitute a “magic-type tradition of practice” (zhoushuxing de shijian chuantong 咒術型的實踐傳統).7 The New Confucians have failed to appreciate that the “moral bonds based on the human character” were developed on the basis of the “natural bonds of consanguinity” and “political bonds of domination.” As such, the ethico-centrism (lunli zhongxingzhuyi 倫理中心主義) that Lin finds evident in the New Confucian “doctrine of innate moral consciousness” (liangzhixue 良知學) has been shaped (unwittingly) by the “autocratic, magical, and descent-line feudal” character of traditional ruxue, due to the ongoing influence of the “karmic power of history.”8 Liberation from this “magic” entails a rejection of ethico-centrism and an embrace of an open pluralism. The aim of modernizing ruxue is to ensure that its true humanist nature is revealed. To avoid becoming trapped in the “iron cage” of instrumental rationality, Lin proposes a reinterpretation of the original ruxue notions of xing 性, ming 命, tian 天, and dao 道, rather than their abandonment. Thus, tian is understood as the unity of heaven-and-earth (which he identifies as the Lebenswelt) rather than a metaphysical entity. Similarly, rather than taking the “unity of heaven and humans” (tian ren he yi 天人合一) to refer to the mystical union of humans with the ontological reality of the way (daoti

( 6. Lin Anwu, Ruxue geminglun, 41; Wang Yingming, ed., Taiwan zhi zhexue geming, 57. 7. Lin Anwu, Ruxue geminglun, 47. 8. Ibid., 42.

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道體), Lin advocates seeing it as the unity brought about by human engagement with, and participation in, heaven-and-earth.9 Lin acknowledges that the two concepts of “magic-type causal logic” (zhoushuxing de yinguo luoji 咒術性的因果邏輯) and “liberation from magic-type causal logic” ( jiezhoushuxing de yinguo luoji 解咒性的因果邏輯) are derived from Max Weber; presumably he is referring to Weber’s concept of Entzauberung (elimination of magic).10 Although inspired by Weber, Lin stresses that he does not seek to engage Weber’s thesis. Nevertheless, to the extent that Weber regarded the Protestant Reformation as having played a key role in paving the way for modernity through its criticism of magic, there are some implicit parallels with the role that Lin sees for his own philosophy of Post–New Confucianism in Taiwan’s continued modernization.11 Lin characterizes “magic-type causal logic” as the belief that humans can become mystically bonded to a transcendent absolute (chaoyue jueduizhe 超越絕對者), a force that, in turn, can directly control individual human lives, such that the relationship is one of complete dependence. Liberation from this “magic-type causal logic” is premised on the denial that such a mystical bonding is possible and that causality must be explained without appeal to a transcendent absolute.12 According to Lin, in traditional China, “magic-type causal logic” was an “alienated and degenerate expression” of what he terms the “continuum-type rationality” (lianxuxing de lixing 連續性的理性) encapsulated in such constructs as the unity of heaven and humans (tian ren he yi ), the unity of things and self (wu wo he yi 物我合一), and the unity of self and other (ren ji he yi 人 己 合 一 ). The proper type of rationality that is given expression through these constructs—a “practical rationality” (shijian de lixing 實踐

( 9. Ibid., 48. 10. Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, 105: The great historic process in the development of religions, the elimination of magic from the world which had begun with the old Hebrew prophets and, in conjunction with Hellenistic scientific thought, had repudiated all magical means to salvation as superstition and sin, came here to its logical conclusion. The genuine Puritan even rejected all signs of religious ceremony at the grave and buried his nearest and dearest without song or ritual in order that no superstition, no trust in the effects of magical and sacramental forces on salvation, should creep in. 11. Lin Anwu, Taiwan, Zhongguo maixiang shijieshi, 89. 12. Ibid., 90, 91.

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的理性)—is formed in concrete historical and social matrices; it is not an abstract concept of rationality, and as such there is no need to appeal to a “magic-type causal logic.” 13 He further argues that although the prevailing ideology in Taiwan (and China) remains the “magic-type causal logic,” Taiwan, unlike China, is in a position to escape the hold of “magic-type causal logic”—because it is no longer a one-party state. Furthermore, only Taiwan has the potential to help China construct a new culture.14 Although he fails to detail how this might be possible, the theme of Taiwan’s fate being linked to that of China runs throughout Lin’s writings.

Critique of Mou Zongsan Lin singles out key aspects of Mou Zongsan’s moral metaphysics as displaying the character of magic-type causal logic, claiming that the doctrine of innate moral consciousness (liangzhixue 良知學)—the core of Mou’s moral metaphysics—and imperial autocracy are structurally identical. Innate moral consciousness gives priority to the ontological mind (benxin 本心) as the highest absolute, whereas autocracy gives priority to the ruler. Moreover, the doctrine of innate moral knowledge itself mirrors this absolute, autocratic character. 15 More specifically, Lin expresses concerns about the nature of the relationship that Mou posited between the experiential subject (shijian zhuti 實踐主體), objective entities (keti 客體), and ontological reality (shiti 實體; or “ontological reality of the way” [daoti 道體]), asserting that, in Mou’s prescription, both the subject of experiential action and objective entities lose their independence and are “sealed within” the domain of ontological reality.16 The subject of experiential action defers his/her subjectivity to an imagined higher authority, rather than taking responsibility for his/her own actions. This deference is typical of superstition and fatalism. Elsewhere, Lin extends this criticism more generally, asserting that in both traditional and New Confucian conceptions of practice, objects (duixiang 對象), reality, and perception come to be realized through the apprehension of a spiritual realm (xinling shijie 心靈世界). In this process

( 13. Lin Anwu, Taiwan, Zhongguo maixiang shijieshi, 92–98. 14. Ibid., 103–6, 109–10. 15. Lin Anwu, “Dangdai xin ruxue de huigu, fanxing yu qianzhan,” 41, 42. 16. Lin Anwu, Taiwan, Zhongguo maixiang shijieshi, 100–102; see also idem, Zhongguo zong jiao yi yiyi zhiliao, 266–69.

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of apprehension, no acknowledgment is given to the key role that the objectification of the experiential subject plays in “setting up” (zhili 置立) the objectification of objects and “completing” (cheng 成) the objectification of reality. That is, objects, reality, and perception come to be realized only by being illuminated (guanzhao 觀照) through the subjectivity of this enlightened realm.17 The real target of Lin’s criticisms is Mou’s fundamental “two-tiered ontology” (liang ceng cunyoulun 兩層存有論)—and its development as “the perfect-good paradigm” (yuan shan lun 圓善論)—which is premised on the notion of “intellectual intuition” (zhi de zhijue 智的直覺). Lin traces this to Lu-Wang philosophical antecedents such as the “the mind is pattern” (xin ji li 心即理). He relates that in the “two-tiered ontology” Mou used Kant’s transcendental distinction between phenomena and noumena to treat the world of phenomenal objects as “an attached state of being” (zhi de cunyou 執的存有) and the world of noumena as “a nonattached state of being” (wu zhi de cunyou 無執的存有).18 As Lin quite reasonably points out, if one does not accept this notion (which cannot be demonstrated), then Mou’s entire system collapses.19 Lin is similarly critical of Mou’s theory of “self-negation of moral consciousness” (liangzhi ziwo kanxian 良知自我坎陷) 20 on the grounds

( 17. Lin Anuwu, “Mou Zongsan xiansheng zhi hou,” 2–3. 18. Lin Anwu, “Dangdai xin ruxue de huigu, fanxing yu qianzhan,” 36. Mou later used the concept of yi xin kai er men 一 心 開 二 門 (from Mahāyānaśrāddhotpāda-śāstra [Dasheng qixin lun 大乘起信論; The Awakening of Faith in Mahāyāna]) to refer to this same conceptual framework. 19. Lin Anwu, Zhongguo zong jia yi yiyi zhiliao, 273–75. 20. As described by Serina Chan, “What Is Confucian and New About the Thought of Mou Zongsan?,” 141–42, Mou, in his Zhi de zhijue yu Zhongguo zhexue 智的直覺與中國哲學 (Intellectual intuition and Chinese philosophy; 1971), argues on the basis of the “two-tier mind” paradigm that human beings can have intellectual intuition by virtue of the xinti (ontological moral mind; the true mind) innate in them. Thus, for Mou, human beings possess both intellectual and sensible intuition and can have knowledge of both the phenomenal and the noumenal worlds. A person’s xinti or true mind is united with all things in one homogeneous noumenon that has no distinction between self and non-self. As conceived by Mou, xinti has two important functions. One is to manifest itself as moral consciousness that guides the individual’s choice of action. The other is to derive from itself the discriminating mind that enables experience and knowledge, through a process Mou terms “self-negation of moral consciousness”—that is, moral consciousness negates its inherent

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that it is overly intellectualized, pays insufficient regard to the real world, and overlooks the presence of “magic-type causal logic” within China’s original cultural tradition.21 Mr. Mou was following China’s original cultural tradition in completely integrating into one whole the subject of experiential action and the ultimate ground of all existence, the ontological reality of the way. The subject of experiential action and the ontological reality of the way being inseparable, then every single thing unfolds from them. . . . Given that, in Mr. Mou’s system, he compressed the totality of traditional culture into a limitless ontological mind (xinti 心體)22—which functions both as the independent structure of intuitive knowledge as well as being the ontological moral mind (daode xinti 道德心體)—and in so doing, elevated the importance of intuitive knowledge . . . could this then lead to the formation of a so-called monistic domination ( yiyuan de zaizhi 一元 的宰制)? . . . Argued thus, given the emphasis that Mr. Mou has placed on the independent structure of intuitive knowledge, the ontological moral mind, and the unlimited freedom of the ontological mind—all of which can be seen as analogous to (even though they are not the same as) the logos (liti 理體)23—then it can, in one sense, be said that he does display the character of “monistic domination.” This character of monistic domination is what is referred to as “single stemmed-ness” ( yi ben xing 一本性). This single stem is distributed as the myriad particulars, and the myriad particulars return to the single stem, completely unified as a whole.24

In his mature writings, Mou used the term daotong 道統 to refer to what might be termed the “content” of the way (dao) that has been preserved in and transmitted through China’s traditional culture (the reality

( non-discriminating state in order to allow the discriminating mind to arise and to effect action. For my own summary views on Mou’s moral metaphysics, see the appendix to this chapter. 21. Lin Anwu, Taiwan, Zhongguo maixiang shijieshi, 107–9. 22. See note 20 to this chapter for a summary of Mou’s views on the mind. 23. By logos, Lin is referring not to the original Greek concept but to two aspects of what he terms the “modern Western soul,” one aspect of which (the fideistic and religious) assigns jurisdiction over the totality of the universe and existence to god, and the other of which (the epistemological and scientific) assigns jurisdiction over the totality of the knowledge world (zhishi de shijie 知識 的世界) to the epistemic subject (renshi zhuti 認 識 的 世 界 ). He regards each of these as exhibiting a type of monism. See Lin Anwu, Zhongguo zong jiao yi yiyi zhiliao, 276. 24. Ibid., 276, 277.

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or “presence” of which has been “personally experienced” and set down in specific teachings by past sages and enlightened philosophers): “China’s tradition of ‘learning of the moral nature’ (dexing zhi xue 德性之學) is called daotong.”25 Here, dexing zhi xue is synonymous with “learning of the mind and the nature” (xin xing zhi xue). The “truth” or “meaning” disclosed by xin xing zhi xue is that ultimate meaning (the transcendent: daoti 道體; benti 本體) is immanent in each person collectively (xingti 性體) and individually (xinti 心體)—everyone can realize this ultimate meaning. Lin refers to these views as an expression of monistic domination: Now we are able to point out unequivocally that Mr. Mou’s system is a system of monistic domination. One aspect of this system of monistic domination brings together in summary form China’s cultural tradition by taking the essence of the three “schools” of ru, fo, and dao, gathering them together as a totality centered on a core of limitless freedom. The other aspect of this system is that it employs this totality to bring about the collapse of China’s emperor system and “descent-line system feudalism,” pointing out that the advance toward democracy is a demand that flows from this totality.26

Thus, although not complicit in the type of monistic domination perpetuated in certain traditional political and social institutions, Mou subscribed to an alternative magic-type causal logic, which was given expression in his moral metaphysics in the form of “monistic domination.” Lin also criticizes Mou Zongsan for failing to show how democracy and science could be developed out of ruxue. Mou’s theory of “selfnegation of moral consciousness” merely provides a theoretical platform that can accommodate science and democracy, but it offers no practical details for how they might be developed. Inwardly focused, Mou’s theory gives no practical guidance for building democracy and science in China and ignores the particular economic, social, and political contexts surrounding their growth in the West.27 Lin maintains that in traditional China there was a “cultural daotong” characterized by a “continuum-type rationality,” which, when given expression in concrete historical and social matrices, displayed a distinctive “practical rationality” far removed from the rarefied atmosphere of abstract metaphysical speculation, which was more concerned with “abstract expressions of rationality.” As such, Lin’s objection is not to the

( 25. Mou Zongsan, Shengming de xuewen, 61. 26. Lin Anwu, Zhongguo zong jiao yi yiyi zhiliao, 278–79, 278. 27. Wang Yingming, ed., Taiwan zhi zhexue geming, 60–61.

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notion of daotong but to its overly metaphysical formulation (evident in Song-Ming ruxue philosophy and Mou Zongsan’s philosophy) and to the distortion of the continuum-type rationality by ruxue patriarchal modes of thought. In this connection, Lin identifies a mutually reinforcing relationship between ruxue, as a system of ethics based on certain qualities derived from human behavior, 28 and the imperial system of rulership based on absolute authority and control in the hands of the emperor. He claims that this relationship has been ongoing since Qin and Han times, with the ruler commanding absolute political domination and appropriating the patriarchal nature of the ruxue ethical system to reinforce that domination. As the political role of the ruler became more absolute, the need for the counterbalancing role of ruxue moralism increased accordingly, so as to sustain an equilibrium. Lin characterizes this as a relationship between daotong and zhengtong.29 To counterbalance the monopoly of power wielded by the autocratic monarchy, the rujia exercised monopoly over “meaning” ( yiyi 意 義 ) and “root ethics” ( genyuan lunli 根 源倫理 ) in the form of the daotong construct. Yet “this also embodied the character of magic . . . and was moreover monistic in orientation. . . . On one hand, it had the character of resisting autocracy; on the other hand, it also had an autocratic character.”30

Critical/Post–New Confucianism Critical New Confucianism (or Post–New Confucianism) is Lin’s response to the deficiencies of New Confucianism and to the turning tide of world history. Asking how Taiwan can act as a connecting point or intermediary for Chinese (Hua-Xia) civilization to enter the world stage, Lin outlines a revisionist version of Hegel’s theory of the development of world history, the unfolding of Spirit in time, in a procession from East to West: “Unlike Hegel’s conclusion that its ultimate destination lies in the West, clearly it has continued to proceed to develop. Having crossed the Atlantic Ocean to America, now it has crossed the Pacific again and has returned once more to the East.” 31 Lin describes the movement of world history as seemingly circular because it has returned to the place that Hegel identified as the starting point of history, the

( 28. Such as filial piety and respect for elder males. 29. Lin Anwu, Ruxue yu Zhongguo chuantong shehui zhi zhexue de xingcha, 130–45. 30. Ibid., 189, 190. 31. Lin Anwu, Ruxue geminglun, 194.

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East. However, the movement is really a spiral rather than a return to a point of origin. “The nucleus of world history moved from Europe to America and from America to East Asia. The movement of qi (qi yun 氣運) has caused this to be so.”32 He explains that whereas the ChengZhu school was concerned principally with pattern (li ) and the LuWang school (and the contemporary Apologist New Confucianism [hujiao xin ruxue 護教新儒學]) with mind (xin), Critical New Confucianism focuses principally on qi 氣. (Qi is here understood as a superordinate force that has both metaphysical and physical attributes.)33 Lin describes Critical New Confucianism as critical reflection on and examination into Mou Zongsan’s ruxue with the purpose of constructing a new or Post–New Confucianism. Critical, or Post–New, Confucianism contrasts with Apologist New Confucianism, a movement that he describes as continuing to uphold the paradigm of moral apriorism developed by the first- and second-generation New Confucians rather than developing their own theories and systems. In particular, Apologist New Confucianism emphasizes the importance of Mou Zongsan’s ruxue and seeks to defend the integrity of Mou’s moral metaphysics.34 (Lin identifies Li Minghui and Yang Zuhan as the most representative Apologist New Confucians.)35 Apologist New Confucians treat Kant as a resource for comparisons and as a thinker who can be absorbed within the New Confucian framework; Critical New Confucianism focuses its energies on Wang Fuzhi while also drawing on Western theories on the philosophy of history, social philosophy, phenomenology, and hermeneutics in order to reinterpret Xiong Shili and to transmit Mou’s philosophy critically. According to Lin, the primary concept in “genuine original ruxue” (he does not specify which thinkers this includes) is qi, not xin 心 or li 理. “The concept of li emphasizes a transcendent, formal principle; the concept of xin emphasizes an inner subjective principle; and the concept of qi emphasizes the genuine interactivity and resonance in the overall interconnectedness of history and society.” He understands qi 氣 not as a concept to be contrasted with li but as something that interconnects dao and qi 器 (the way and physical objects), the metaphysical and the physical. 36 Qi 氣 is an ontological force that exhibits both spiritual/

( 32. Lin Anwu, Taiwan, Zhongguo maixiang shijieshi, 2. 33. Lin Anwu, Ruxue geminglun, 32–33. 34. Ibid., 31, 34. 35. Wang Yingming, ed., Taiwan zhi zhexue geming, 75. 36. Lin Anwu, Ruxue geminglun, 34.

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ethical ( jingshen 精神 / lunli 倫理) and material (wuzhi 物質) characteristics; it is the dialectical synthesis of these two characteristics.37 (In singling out qi as the primary concept of “genuine original ruxue,” Lin is attempting to challenge the primacy of xin in Mou’s moral metaphysics on the grounds that it is too theoretical, transcendent, and metaphysical.) Critical New Confucianism also differs from Apologist New Confucianism in that, instead of moral subjectivity, it places greatest emphasis on the life-world or Lebenswelt (shenghuo shijie 生活世界): awareness of the reality of one’s own existence and seeing its connection with the larger living world; and a thorough understanding of the “interconnected totality of historical society.”38 Lin coined the term “Post–New Confucianism” in 1994 to refer to a broad philosophical reorientation that would promote a move away from inner ethical cultivation toward ethical practice.39 He stresses that Critical New Confucianism is set up in opposition not to Mou’s New Confucianism but to others’ “interpretation and reconstruction” of it. He describes the main difference as follows: The principal resource of [Mou’s New Confucianism] is its contrast to and fusion with Kant[’s philosophy. Critical New Confucianism] applies itself strongly to Wang Chuanshan’s [Wang Fuzhi] philosophy and also attaches importance to the development of Western philosophy of history, social philosophy, and even phenomenology and hermeneutics. Recalling the origins of New Confucianism, Critical New Confucianism reinterprets Xiong Shili and adopts a mode that both transmits and is critical of Mr. Mou[’s thought].40

The extent to which Lin’s Critical New Confucianism aims to “transmit” Mou’s thought is questionable.41 Although Lin states that Mou’s legacy is the seeds that preserve a system of metaphysics for the future of China (Hua-Xia) and describes his own task as one of taking up this legacy by “planting these seeds in the earth so that they can grow well” in the “impoverished and debilitated” cultural soil on either shore of the

( 37. Lin Anwu, Wang Chuanshan renxingshi zhexue zhi yanjiu, 100–101. 38. Wang Yingming, ed., Taiwan zhi zhexue geming, 89, 90. 39. See Lin Anwu, “Guanyu rujia zhexuezhong de shijian gainian zhi liqing.” 40. Lin Anwu, Ruxue geminglun, 31. 41. Nor is this claim of “continuity” easily squared with periodization of the history of ruxue into just two periods. Instead of the tripartite periodization (generally favored by second- and third-generation New Confucians) into preQin ruxue, Song-Ming ruxue, and New Confucianism, Lin (Ruxue geminglun, 63) distinguishes only between traditional ruxue and Post–New Confucianism.

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Taiwan Strait, he immediately cautions that “the task upon which the new generation fixes its aspirations cannot, of course, be to take the path of preserving this system of metaphysics.”42 The death of Mou Zongsan in 1995 provided a new impetus (and freedom) to promote the idea of a Post–New Confucian philosophy in what Lin terms the “post–Mou Zongsan age.” At a conference on the philosophy of Mou Zongsan convened by the Ehu yuekanshe in June 1996, Lin described Mou as belonging to a collateral line (bie zi wei zong 別子為宗) of rujia, not the main line. (Mou himself used this expression to separate the Cheng-Zhu line of Neo-Confucianism and so portray it as deviating from the main line.)43 In Lin’s clearest explanation of what he meant when he referred to Mou as “the biggest collateral line” rujia, he focuses on the influence of the Kantian distinction between noumena and phenomena on Mou’s system of thought, which, in turn, undergirds Mou’s own transcendent-immanent distinction (although with important differences). He even pays Mou the following backhanded compliment: “Mou’s theses are so brilliant. They constitute an extremely well-integrated Mind-centered Learning (xinxue 心學) system of thought. They really have enabled Mr. Mou to become the founding teacher (zongshi 宗師) of a generation. In this respect, I feel that Mr. Mou is the biggest collateral rujia.”44 Lin maintains that ruxue should be concerned not with developing foundational theoretical systems but with issues of how practice should be implemented. He proposes moving away from abstract theoretical considerations to ways of thinking based on conversational interaction, a proposal he describes as a new advancement in the development of ruxue.45 Yet the positive content of his Critical/Post–New Confucianism remains grossly undeveloped, schematic, and summary.46 Thus we have Lin’s repeated claim that Post–New Confucianism can somehow provide a “therapy” for alienation. Yet this amounts to little more than the nebulous claim that we need to return to the “source of being” (the way).

( 42. Ibid., preface, ii. 43. For a detailed account of the expression and Mou’s application of it to Zhu Xi, see Cai Renhou, Song Ming lixue, 391–96. 44. Lin Anwu, “Hou xin rujia zhexue de siwei xiangdu,” 12. 45. Lin Anwu, Ruxue geminglun, 25. 46. See, e.g., the schematic summary, “Hou xin rujia zhexue lungang” 後新儒 家哲學論綱 (An outline of Post–New Confucian philosophy), appended to Lin Anwu, Ruxue yu Zhongguo chuantong shehui zhi zhexue xingcha, 265–69.

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Lin also believes that by displacing the centrality of the cultivation of the mind and the nature as a guiding philosophical paradigm, new prominence can be given to social justice. He cites the virtues of zhong 忠 and xin 信 as evidence that early ruxue thought offers a possibility for developing an ethics of responsibility. Having undergone the constraints of two thousand years of imperial autocracy, patriarchy, and male chauvinism (as encapsulated in the “three bonds” formula), traditional ruxue was unable to develop a proper ethics of responsibility.47 Yet Lin provides no hint of how these virtues can be developed into an ethics of responsibility. (As such, his criticism that Mou Zongsan provided no practical details for how science and democracy can be developed through a process of “self-negation of innate moral consciousness” rings a little hollow.) Despite Lin’s assertion that ruxue should not be concerned with developing foundational theoretical systems, in recent years he would seem to have abandoned his own counsel. I am thinking in particular of his “theory of three states of being” (cunyou santai lun 存有三態論), an alternative to Mou’s “two tiered ontology.” Briefly, the first state is the “source of being” (cunyou de genyuan 存有的根源), a state of moral creativity in which innate moral consciousness (liangzhi ) and all existing things exist as an undifferentiated whole. The second state of being, the “opening manifestation of being” (cunyou de kaixian 存有的開顯), is the point at which subject and object first appear but are not yet differentiated, a state of primordial naturalness. The third state of being, the “fixedness of being” (cunyou de zhiding 存有的執定), is the state in which humans describe the world through spoken language and writing, using rational understanding, interpretation, construction, and manipulation to determine the nature of the world. In the process of creating this objective world, however, alienation is unavoidable. Lin describes this third state as equivalent to Mou’s “attached state of being.” Lin’s “three states of being” theory has obvious parallels with thinking in the Daode jing. 48 Indeed, not only does Lin select phrases from that text to

( 47. Lin Anwu, “Ruxue geming: yi ge keneng de fangfa,” 19. 48. Lin Anwu, “Cunyou santai lun yu cunyou de zhiliao zhi jiangou,” notes the Laoist influence on his “three states of being” theory. See also his discussion of the role that language plays in alienation, in which he draws on ideas about language expressed in the Daode jing, and his description of these ideas as a type of “existential therapeutics” (cunyou de zhiliaoxue 存有的治療學) in his Zhongguo zong jiao yu yiyi zhiliao, 139–75; and idem, “Renwenxue fangfalun.”

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describe his theory, he also states: “China’s traditional ru and dao have a common source. In fact ru and dao are two aspects of the one whole. . . . This [recognition] can help dissolve the notion that rujia is the mainstream and daojia is a secondary stream.”49 Whether his “theory of three states of being” indicates a move away from his longtime interest in ruxue or represents a new pluralist direction in his own philosophical affinities, it is difficult not to regard it as anything other than a “foundational theoretical system,” thus further beclouding the issue of just what Post–New Confucianism is or intends to be.50

Dialogue and Marxism As noted above, Lin also proposed moving away from abstract theoretical considerations to develop ways of thinking based on conversational interaction. This might be seen as a further indication of his recent pluralist orientation. A prime example of this new orientation is his edited volume Liang’an zhexue duihua: nian yi shiji Zhongguo zhexue zhi weilai 兩岸 哲學對話: 廿一世紀中國哲學之未來 (Cross-strait philosophical dialogue: the future of Chinese philosophy in the twenty-first century).51 The volume includes essays by Lin and three Wuhan University philosophers, Guo Qiyong, Ouyang Kang 歐陽康, and Deng Xiaomang 鄧曉芒, as well as a transcript of a public forum involving these four scholars on the topic “The Future of Chinese Philosophy: Exchange and Interaction Between Chinese Philosophy, Western Philosophy, and Marxist Philosophy.”52 Of particular note is the role that Lin sees for Marxist philosophy in helping to build a new Chinese philosophy: Here, in discussing how [Chinese, Western, and Marxist philosophies] might interact and connect with one another, how they might engage in dialogue, and how China’s entire future might develop, I actually take particular note of the emphasis within the Marxist tradition placed on the concept of praxis in thinking about such issues as human relations, the relation between people and nature, and the relation between people and society. I feel it should be said that such a tradition can be closely interrelated with Chinese philosophical discourse

( 49. Lin Anwu, “Dangdai xin ruxue de huigu, fanxing yu qianzhan,” 43, 44. 50. One of Lin’s more recent articles suggests that the direction is perhaps more of a syncreticism; see his “ ‘Dao’ ‘de’ shi yi.” 51. Lin Anwu, ed., Liang’an zhexue duihua. 52. Guo’s field of expertise is traditional Chinese philosophy and New Confucianism, Ouyang’s is Marxist philosophy, and Deng’s is Western philosophy.

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and the tradition of Chinese philosophy. Surprisingly, however, since the 1970s and 1980s there has been no appropriate dialogue. As such, we look forward to the new possibility of dialogue. On this point, if we look back beyond the sort of New Confucianism developed by Mr. Mou, in which there was interaction and connection between Kantian studies, ruxue, daojia, and Buddhism, [we will see that] after the tradition of German Idealism from Kant to Fichte to Hegel was overtaken by the Marxist tradition—the tradition from Feuerbach to Marx— then this humanist tradition, this tradition in which praxis is central, does, in fact, [represent] a possible orientation for the future development of Chinese philosophy and also an orientation for possible dialogue.53

Elsewhere he has argued that Marxist revolutionary praxis and social critical theory should be rooted in moral reflection based on the innate moral character of our human nature, and that China’s tradition of ruxue should be willing to draw from Marxist theory if it is to enhance its social relevance and to participate in social critique. Like Marxism, ruxue is concerned with alienation. He is critical of the ruxue understanding of alienation for being limited to the issue of whether an individual has realized his/her innate moral mind and overlooking the historical causes of alienation.54 On the interaction between mainland and Taiwanese philosophers since the early 1980s, Lin identifies New Confucianism as having exercised the greatest influence: Under the leadership of the Research on New Confucianism project-team, a group of people was brought together, and they produced extremely valuable and important results. Even though the ideological position of Taiwanese and mainland scholars is not quite the same, yet there is no question that [in Taiwan] less prominence has been given to the original anti-Communist roots of New Confucianism. This “oversight” has perhaps been deliberate; yet, on the other hand, it also shows that ideology no longer plays the commanding role on the mainland.55

The significance of Lin’s overture to Marxism is clearly not in the details (none are provided) but in the fact that he should turn to scholars on the mainland to serve as partners in dialogue, again suggesting that the rules of engagement for discourse and dialogue on ruxue and Chinese philosophy are increasingly being determined by mainland rather than by overseas-based Chinese scholars.

( 53. Lin Anwu, ed., Liang’an zhexue duihua, 41. 54. Lin Anwu, Ruxue geminglun, 120, 138, 136–137. 55. Lin Anwu, “Taihai liang’an zhexue fazhan de yi ge guancha,” 13.

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Concluding Remarks Although the vast majority of mainland and overseas Chinese scholars of contemporary ruxue are content to gloss aspects of Mou’s elaborate theoretical system, Lin Anwu has attempted to provide an alternative vision of what ruxue should be in the Post–New Confucian age. Despite his arguments that ruxue needs to be socially engaged, his attempts to critique Mou are, more often than not, responses to an intellectual agenda formulated by Mou. As noted above, on one hand, Lin maintains that ruxue should not concern itself with developing foundational theoretical systems; yet, on the other hand, he has spent the past decade or more developing a “theory of three states of being” (cunyou santai shuo 存有三態說) as a challenge to Mou’s “two-tiered ontology.” Lin’s alternative to Mou’s vision is hamstrung by its piecemeal formation and overly self-referential character (that is, Lin refers the reader to his own earlier writings rather than to engage a broader body of scholarship). Thus, although Lin provides a refreshing example of an energetic and original thinker willing to risk ostracism and ridicule in his attempts to challenge the, at times, stifling tyranny of Mou’s intellectual orthodoxy, the broad philosophical reorientation Lin champions remains light on detail in regard to how it might foster ethical practice. The next chapter examines some starkly opposed contemporary perspectives on the age-old dilemma of the extent to which it is appropriate to solicit the support of, or tacitly acquiesce to the overtures of, political authority in order to secure for ruxue the state’s imprimatur as the orthodox teaching.

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Appendix: A Note on Mou Zongsan’s Moral Metaphysics Mou Zongsan’s most fundamental departure from Kant’s metaphysics is his argument that the faculty of intellectual intuition (zhi de zhijue 智的 直覺)—which enables direct intuition of supersensible objects—is innately possessed by all people rather than being exclusive to God. Thus, unlike Kant, who held that humans have no faculty of intellectual intuition, that noumena, or “things-in-themselves,” can only be postulated and not directly intuited by humans, for Mou, noumena can be directly intuited (or “presented” chengxian 呈現); they are not merely epistemological concepts. Humans can apprehend both sides of the coin: the noumenal and phenomenal character of things.56 In his assessment of the consequence of the faculty of intellectual intuition’s being denied to humans, Mou bluntly revealed what he believed was at stake in this reworking of Kant’s metaphysics: “If humanity is, in reality, incapable of intellectual intuition, then the whole of Chinese philosophy would certainly collapse and the painstaking efforts of the past several thousand years would have been a complete waste, just a pipe dream.”57 This sort of grandiose pronouncement is typical of Mou; whether such a situation as this would, in fact, spell doom for the whole of Chinese philosophy is a moot point. More clear-cut is Lin Anwu’s observation that unless Mou’s theory of intellectual intuition is acknowledged as valid, then Mou’s own system of thought would suddenly collapse.58 In order to maintain the “transcendental” distinction between noumena and phenomena and so preserve the supposed priority of the noumena, Mou argued that noumena must be a value ( jiazhi 價值 ) concept.59 By “value,” he meant moral value. This, of course, is a strategic move rather than one entailed by logical necessity, since it is a foundational premise in his “moral metaphysics.” Where is this value to be found? It lies in our free will. For Kant, free will is a postulate of practical reason. (Practical reason is the form of reason concerned with the a priori grounds for action, in particular moral choice according to the moral law.) Free will is a practi-

( 56. Mou Zongsan, Xianxiang yu wu zishen, 111–12. 57. Ibid., preface, 3. 58. Lin Anwu, Dangdai xin rujia zhexueshi lun, 211. 59. Mou Zongsan, Xianxiang yu wu zishen, 7.

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cal necessity for the possibility of a categorical imperative, because we cannot act as autonomous moral agents without presupposing the idea of freedom. As such, it is a necessary condition of morality. For Kant, however, humans cannot discern how this presupposition is possible because we do not have intuitive knowledge of noumenal reality. Freedom cannot be proven. In claiming that all humans do have the faculty of intellectual intuition, however, Mou was asserting that humans can have direct intuition of noumenal reality and, in doing so, have direct intuition of freedom.60 Whereas for Kant the concept of free will is a postulate, for Mou it is a “presentation”: it can be directly intuited by the moral subject (daode zhuti 道 德 主 體 ).61 Mou characterizes the moral subject as having an unlimited capacity for moral knowledge because all humans have a moral mind: the Mencian “heart of pity and compassion” associated with the virtue of benevolence/humaneness (ren), which Mou identifies with Kant’s notion of the “good will.”62 For Mou, our innate capacity for humaneness, our heart of pity and compassion, is the source of moral value.63 It is our ontological mind (benxin): that which transcendentally grounds us in the unceasing creative process of the cosmos, an inherently moral process (analogous to God’s actions). Mou further maintained that practical reason (and hence the moral subject) harbors an inexorable inclination for dialectical development that propels it toward its own “contradiction”: from practical reason to theoretical reason (lilun lixing 理論理性).64 (Theoretical reason enables us to have knowledge of objects given in experience.) It is in this connection that Mou proposes his thesis of “self-negation of innate moral

( 60. Ibid., 76–79. 61. Li Minghui (Dangdai ruxue zhi ziwo zhuanhua, 50) draws attention to the influence of Fichte on Mou in this matter. Whereas Fichte sought to displace the concept of Ding an sich with his alternative concept of Ich an sich, Mou “elevated it to the level of a concept of implicit value.” 62. Mou Zongsan, Daode de lixiangzhuyi, 19. There are, of course, significant difficulties with such an identification, not least of which is that for Kant, a good will is one that acts for the sake of duty. Acting for the sake of duty is not a feature of Mencian virtue ethics. 63. Ibid, preface, 5. 64. Mou Zongsan, Zhengdao yu zhidao, 57. Yet if this were so, one wonders why theoretical reason was not developed much earlier in Chinese society. Mou repeatedly asserts that the Chinese had long exhibited a bias toward practical rationality at the expense of the development of theoretical reason.

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consciousness” (liangzhi ziwo kanxian 良知自我坎陷). Because practical reason requires its antithesis—theoretical reason—it artificially or forcefully instigates its own negation. Mou described the process as follows: Because “constitutive knowledge clearly intuited” (zhiti ming jue 知體明覺)65 cannot remain forever in a state of clear intuition, it must self-consciously negate ( fouding 否定) itself [also called ziwo kanxian] and transform into understanding (zhixing 知性).66 This understanding stands in opposition (dui 對) to things and can begin to cause things to become “objects” (duixiang 對象). . . . It must take this step of self-negation before it begins to be able to manifest itself fully. This is what is known as the dialectic’s opening manifestation. It proceeds from selfnegation and is transformed into understanding. It begins to be able to solve all those particular problems that belong to humans, and its moral aspirations also start to achieve smooth and unimpeded realization. If this were not the case, then dangers and impediments would not be able to be overcome, and its moral aspirations would wither and shrivel.67

In this dialectical process, the creative activity of practical reason is not predicated on an opposition between subject and object because, strictly speaking, this distinction is inapplicable within the sphere of practical reason. As Li Minghui comments, however: “If we force an analogy with cognitive activity, separating subject from object within the activity of practical reason, then this type of subject-object relationship can only be a top-to-bottom vertically subordinating relationship. In other words, the object is subordinate to and controlled by the subject.”68 That is, when practical reason is transformed into understanding, into theoretical reason, the resulting understanding and theoretical reason are moral in that they are controlled by and subordinate to practical reason. This is why Mou maintained that his is a moral metaphysics, not merely a metaphysics of morals.

( 65. A term purportedly adapted from Wang Yangming’s writings and synonymous with the moral self. 66. This is presumably Kant’s concept of understanding, Verstand. 67. Mou Zongsan, Xianxiang yu wu zishen, 122. Zheng Jiadong (Dangdai xin ruxue lunheng, 122) argues that once the moral subject has achieved the state of innate moral consciousness (daode liangzhi; or “constitutive knowledge clearly intuited”), there is no point in instigating a process of self-negation. This criticism is problematical on two counts. First, it ignores Mou’s account of the inexorable process of dialectical development; second, it ignores the possibility of the Bodhisattva ideal. Indeed, Mou uses the Bodhisattva analogy in lecture 13 of his Zhongguo zhexue shijiu jiang, 278, to explain this very point. 68. Li Minghui, Dangdai ruxue zhi zowo zhuanhua, 68.

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Just as Kant was unable to prove freedom and hence unable to prove the possibility of a categorical imperative, so, too, Mou was unable to prove that all of us possess the faculty of intellectual intuition. Yet in practical terms, the assumption of a free will is far less risky (and far less dogmatic) than the unproven and seemingly unprovable proposition that we all possess the faculty of intellectual intuition. The strength and weakness of Mou’s vision of a moral metaphysics turns on this proposition. (It does not, however, follow that the entire fate of Chinese philosophical thought hangs on the certainty of the proposition that we do possess such a faculty. For this we can be thankful.) It is thus ironic that Mou believed that the framework of Kant’s distinction between noumena and phenomena provided the sole possibility for Western philosophy and Eastern philosophy to achieve mutual understanding.69 By revising key features of this distinction, Mou seems to have succeeded merely in underscoring fundamental disparities between Kant’s metaphysics of morals and Mou’s own version of Chinese philosophy.

( 69. Mou Zongsan, Zhong-Xi zhexue de huitong shisi jiang, 225.

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9 Ruxue: Daotong Versus Zhengtong

Contemporary perspectives on the proper relationship that should obtain between ruxue and political authority mirror an issue that in traditional writings was couched in terms of the relationship between the daotong and the zhengtong (unified political system; ordered political rule). More than a decade ago, mainland academic Chen Ming outlined a revisionist reading of Taiwan’s Chinese Cultural Renaissance movement so as to promote a vision of how the daotong and the zhengtong might be harmoniously combined in a modern society. Chen also expressed a willingness to endorse the “rationality” of the “new authoritarianism” in the expectation that this would lead to party-state patronage for the revival of ruxue in China sufficient for it to attain a level of institutional legitimacy. In contrast, prominent contemporary Taiwanese ruxue revivalists now regard Taiwan’s Chinese Cultural Renaissance movement as a perverse exercise in party-state manipulation of ruxue for narrow political ends. This chapter examines and contrasts the perspectives of Taiwanese scholars Lin Anwu and Huang Junjie with those of Chen Ming. The contrast hinges on starkly different attitudes toward the issue of how far ruxue revivalists should support the party-state in its attempts to utilize the promotion of ruxue for its own agendas.

Chen Ming and the Chinese Cultural Renaissance Movement Chen Ming, an academic in the CASS Institute of World Religions, is better known as the founder and chief editor of the “neo-traditionalist” journal Yuandao (see Chapter 3). The journal is noted for its early association with the National Studies movement and for publishing the essays of younger scholars sometimes described as “cultural conser-

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vatives.”1 In the inaugural issue of Yuandao (1994), writing under the pen name Cheng Zhi 澄之, Chen published an essay entitled “Zhengzhi yu jingji: yi wenhua wei qizhi—Taiwan ‘Zhonghua wenhua fuxing yundong’ shuping” 政治與經濟: 以文化為旗幟—臺灣“中華文化復興運動”述評 (Government and the economy: taking culture as the banner—an account of Taiwan’s “Chinese Culture Renaissance movement”). The essay is remarkable for its positive evaluation of Taiwan’s Chinese Cultural Renaissance movement—an evaluation that contrasts sharply with the critique of prominent contemporary Taiwanese ruxue revivalists. Chen notes that, beginning with Sun Yat-sen, the Chinese Nationalist Party (GMD) consistently attached importance to “China’s traditional culture” (which both Chen and the GMD equate with ruxue). In support of this claim, he cites the following comment by Sun: “China has the daotong 道統. Yao, Shun, Yu, Tang, Wen, Wu, the Duke of Zhou, and Confucius all passed it on to one another without interruption. The basis of my thought is this daotong.” Against this background, Chen introduces the activities of the Chinese Cultural Renaissance Movement Council (Zhongguo wenhua fuxing yundong weiyuanhui 中國 文化復興運動委員會) in Taiwan during the 1960s and 1970s,2 under the leadership of the president of the Republic of China, Jiang Jieshi (Chiang Kai-shek) 蔣介石 (1887–1975). This semi-governmental organization was established in 1967 to oversee the activities of the Cultural Renaissance movement launched the previous year. The Taiwanese historian and ruxue revivalist Huang Junjie 黃俊傑 notes that this was “principally in response to the mainland’s Cultural Revolution and to

( 1. When I presented a seminar in the Philosophy Department of Renmin University in October 2003, several of the younger academics were keen to let me know that they were associated with the publication of this journal. 2. Chen Ming states that the movement was launched in 1966 and wound down in 1988 with the death of Jiang Jingguo, son and successor to Jiang Jieshi. Allen Chun (“Democracy as Hegemony,” 11–12) identifies three phases of postwar cultural policy in Taiwan: the era of cultural reunification (1945–67); the era of cultural renaissance (1967–77); and the era of cultural reconstruction (1977– mid-1990s). He describes the second phase, that of the cultural renaissance movement, as “a systematic effort to redefine the content of [traditional culture and values], to cultivate a large-scale societal consciousness through existing institutional means and to use the vehicle of social expression as the motor for national development in other domains, economic and political.” Chen Ming would seem to have partly elided the eras of cultural renaissance and cultural reconstruction.

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promote a ‘ruxue values’–centered traditional culture.” 3 The council’s promotion of ruxue values included such diverse activities as the establishment of the Council for the Citizens’ Guide to Living (Guomin shenghuo fudao weiyuanhui 國民生活輔導委員會); publications on moral cultivation and etiquette; seminars and conferences; and the Teach Filial Piety Month (from 1977 on). As Taiwanese anthropologist Li Yiyuan has commented, the anticommunist rhetoric of the movement meant that its political significance was greater than its cultural significance.4 According to Chen Ming, Jiang’s ideological program for the movement combined two aims. The first was to use the framework of Sun’s Three Principles of the People to combine “the essences of Eastern and Western cultures.” The second was to apply Zhang Zhidong’s 張之洞 (1837–1909) principle of “Chinese substance, Western application” (Zhong ti xi yong 中體西用) to link traditional culture with modern society. Chen then comments that, on the basis of the ideological program Jiang devised, he pointed out that the basic line (luxian 路綫) of the Chinese Cultural Renaissance movement was to “protect the norm and understand the constant (shoujing zhichang 守經知常); create the new and respond to change,” thereby indicating that “renaissance” did not mean a return to the past. On one hand, this required developing and promoting tradition; on the other hand, this required absorbing the positive elements of foreign cultures. The future of the Chinese Cultural Renaissance movement lay in “absorbing the essence of Chinese and Western culture to blend them into a new type of third culture.”

In Chen’s analysis, the Chinese Cultural Renaissance movement is surprisingly transformed into a practical illustration of Marxist intellectual historian Zhang Dainian’s “critical inheritance” ( pipan jicheng 批判繼承) and “synthetic creation” (zonghe chuangxin 綜合創新) methodologies. The parallels with the related views of Tang Yijie are also striking (see Chapter 11).

( 3. Huang Junjie, Ruxue yu xiandai Taiwan, 285. It might also be noted that in 1965 the South Korean government (through the offices of the Ministry of Education) had already established an Association for the Promotion of National Culture. See, e.g., Yi Ruofen, “Hanguo ‘Minjok munhwa chujinhoe.’ ” 4. Li Yiyuan, “Wenhua jianshe gongzuo de ruogan jiantao,” 309. The Taiwanese publicist and writer Wei Zhengtong (“Rujia lunli zai ‘Taiwan jingyan’ zhong de jiaose,” 347–48) further notes that the political nature of the movement also served an internal agenda: to promote idol worship. Wei’s essay was written in 1990.

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Chen outlines a range of activities that various organs of the council were responsible for and praises its alleged achievements in moral education and economic management: In the period of Japanese Occupation, students were forbidden to read about Chinese history. After the “glorious recovery” [of Taiwan in 1945], administrative departments responsible for education upheld “national education” and “moral education” as key policies. Such curricula as Shenghuo yu lunli 生活與倫理 (Life and ethics), Zhongguo wenhua jiben jiaocai 中國文化基本教材 (Basic resources for Chinese culture), and Guomin sixiang 國 民 思 想 (The people’s thought) were taught from primary school to technical and tertiary institutions. This led to Chinese culture’s and morality’s “securing the means by which to take root and be propagated.”

The remainder of the essay is devoted to drawing putative connections between the Chinese Cultural Renaissance movement and Taiwan’s economic growth in the 1970s and 1980s. In his conclusion, Chen argues that crucial to the GMD’s successes was the way it dealt with the relation between government and culture: “it made cultural values the axis of political activities.”5 The real import of the essay starts to become apparent when Chen cites the following passage on the relation between culture and government, which he attributes to Wang Fuzhi: Both the way of the ruzhe and the unified system (tong 統) of the ruler are active within the realm (tianxia), each one flourishing in turn. When the two combine, the realm is ordered by means of the way, and the way is illuminated by the son of heaven. When the two separate and the ruler’s unified system comes to an end, the ruzhe still protect their way through the solitary behavior of individuals, without relying on anything external. Because people preserve the way, it does not become lost.

( 5. This rosy assessment contrasts sharply with that of Wei Zhengtong, “Rujia lunli zai ‘Taiwan jingyan’ zhong de jiaose,” 350: Chinese culture has been promoted for more than two decades now, yet in the minds of most people Chinese culture has become increasingly alienated [from their lives]. In this movement [here Wei is referring collectively to the Cultural Renaissance movement and Cultural Reconstruction movement] rujia ethics has become an ossified dogma. It has become a tool by which old bureaucrats can line their pockets, and it also serves as a protective talisman for the government of the day.

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Chen explains that although it is part of the rujia tradition for individual ru to attempt to serve as teachers to rulers and to advise on matters of statecraft, for many centuries the daotong was suppressed by the zhengtong 政統 (unified political system), and this was still the case when the GMD ruled on the mainland. Having learned from its repeated mistakes, however, the GMD “finally became enlightened and turned its heart to the way. . . . ‘Those who possess the way flourish, while those who oppose it vanish.’ This should be regarded as the most important lesson to be drawn from Taiwan’s Chinese Cultural Renaissance movement.” The message Chen is trying to promote to the mainland authorities is obvious. It is also consistent with one of the “entrenched assumptions” that Xudong Zhang attributes to contemporary Chinese intellectuals: “that the intellectuals and the bureaucratic state are natural, inseparable partners in herding the people through wholesale social change while maintaining social order.”6 Although Zhang’s characterization is clearly exaggerated—as evidenced by various expressions of cultural nationalism in which intellectuals challenge the party-state’s legitimacy 7 —it does have some validity, as evidenced by the example of figures such as Chen Ming. Chen proceeds to argue that although “rujia capitalism” was an important element in economic development in various parts of Asia, Taiwan— under the leadership of the GMD—was unique in the region in that it consciously adopted the social ideals of ruxue as its goal: Because of this, not only were culture and the economy able to engage in multidimensional and multilayered interaction, moreover the achievements of several decades of hard work led directly to the revival of China’s ancient culture. This sort of movement cannot be limited merely to the academic and cultural spheres, nor rely merely on self-generated developments from within the nongovernmental spheres of society. It also requires leadership from the government and the conscious awareness of political leaders.

The message for the Chinese government as it pursues its goal of developing “socialism with Chinese characteristics” is to harness the unique characteristics of Chinese culture and distinctly Chinese social ideals and principles of human life (rensheng yuanze 人生原則) to develop an Oriental model of modernization (as distinct from a Western one).

( 6. Xudong Zhang, “Intellectual Politics in Post-Tiananmen China,” 3. 7. See, e.g., Yingjie Guo, Cultural Nationalism in Contemporary China.

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Perhaps to make his vision more amenable to the authorities, Chen explains that during the process of reorganizing society to develop the goal of socialism with Chinese characteristics, democracy should be regarded as a double-edged sword “that is extremely likely to destroy this very development. This being the case, then not only is new authoritarianism unavoidable, but we must also acknowledge that it has a certain rationality.” These sentiments would surely have found favor in 1970s Taiwan. The fact that a quarter of a century later these sentiments were rekindled on the mainland evidences that, unlike their counterparts in Taiwan, some contemporary mainland ruxue revivalists relish the opportunity for ruxue to be deployed in the service of the state, or at least for ruxue to secure a level of institutional legitimacy. There is thus some irony that ten years after this essay was published, Fang Keli should identify Chen Ming as one of “the fourth generation of New Confucians” promoting a “mainland new ruxue” and warn of the need to pay attention to this worrisome trend (see Chapter 11). Chen’s willingness to endorse “new authoritarianism” in order to secure some sort of political patronage for ruxue is, if nothing else, a pragmatic move. It is also consistent with the promotion of ruxue by party apparatchiks as part of a “united front” strategy directed at enforcing the One China principle. Consider the following passage from a 1997 issue of the mainland journal Taiwan yanjiu 臺灣研究 (Taiwan studies): The Chinese (Zhonghua) nation is a nation with a long and excellent tradition of historical culture. Ruxue represents the spiritual wealth of the Chinese nation. Historically it is rooted in the Chinese nation and is the cultural foundation connecting both sides of the strait. Party Secretary Jiang Zemin pointed out: Chinese culture “has always been the spiritual bond that holds together all the Chinese people”; “it is a key foundation in the realization of peaceful unification”; “compatriots on both sides of the strait must join together to carry forward and promote the excellent tradition of Chinese culture.” These farsighted and insightful propositions have been sympathetically received on both sides of the strait. Chinese culture is the bond connecting compatriots on both sides of the strait, and ruxue is the key foundation of culture on both sides of the strait. Only a joint effort to carry forward and promote the excellent cultural tradition of the Chinese nation—of which ruxue is the core—will assist in enhancing a fundamental consensus on both sides of the strait and in promoting the important task of peaceful unification of both sides of the strait.

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Having outlined a potted history of ruxue in Taiwan, the author claims, “As the pillar and core of traditional Chinese culture, ruxue doctrines were inseparably tied to Taiwan’s cultural development.”8

Taiwanese Perspectives Chen’s account of the Chinese Cultural Renaissance movement contrasts sharply with the perspectives of two prominent Taiwanese ruxue revivalists on the issue of the party-state’s manipulation of ruxue for political ends: Huang Junjie and Lin Anwu. Huang pays particular attention to three vehicles by which official ruxue 9 was propagated in Taiwan from the 1960s to the 1980s: the activities of the Chinese Cultural Renaissance Movement Council; primary and secondary textbooks; and the publishing activities of semi-governmental organizations.10 He singles out the Basic Resources for Chinese Culture (contrast Chen’s account above) as an egregious example of how party-state ideology manipulated the moral content of state-prescribed primary and secondary textbooks used from the 1970s to the early 1990s for its own political ends. Basic Resources was a compulsory text for senior high school students in the 1980s. Huang is particularly concerned that its interpretations of selections from the Analects, Mencius, Zhongyong, and Daxue were based on Chen Lifu’s 陳立夫 (1900–2001) Sishu daoguan 四書道貫 (The interconnecting thread of the way in the Four Books). Chen Lifu was a founding member, leading functionary, propagandist, and ideologue of the GMD; he was also the theorist of the New Life movement. Huang argues that the party-state’s real purpose in promoting ruxue was political: to promote the Three Principles of the People to students so that they might participate in opposing communism and take back the mainland. He cites several examples to show how passages from the

( 8. Lou Jie, “Ruxue yu haixia liang’an de wenhua genji,” 78, 83. 9 . He describes official ruxue as having functioned largely as a statecontrolled ideological apparatus promulgated institutionally through primary and secondary textbooks, university entrance examinations, and civil service entry examinations. 10. Huang Junjie, Ruxue yu xiandai Taiwan, 283–89; idem, “Confucianism in Postwar Taiwan,” 1992, 228–29; idem, Taiwan yishi yu Taiwan wenhua, 200–201.

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Four Books were distorted to produce interpretations suited to the GMD’s political agenda.11 In selecting the journal Kong Meng yuekan 孔孟月刊 (established in 1962) as an example of how the publishing activities of semigovernmental organizations were manipulated by the GMD, Huang’s analysis reveals that prior to the lifting of martial law in 1987 most of the journal’s editorials praised father and son Jiang Jieshi and Jiang Jingguo 蔣經國 (1909–88) and the GMD. He cites one editorial that clearly outlines a new daotong genealogy from the sages of antiquity to Jiang Jieshi. Another example links the daotong with the GMD’s zhengtong (unified political system): “The Three Principles of the People are the daotong. . . . The power of the daotong—which serves to ‘drive the rejuvenation of our nation’s vitality’—is founded on the successively transmitted spirit of Confucius’s and Mencius’s thought—the very culture of our people— as represented by the Three Principles of the People.”12 The concept of daotong has operated as one of the most potent forms of genealogical discourse in Chinese intellectual history. Thomas A. Wilson has described it as “a filiative lineage of sages who were regarded as the sole transmitters of the true Confucian Way.”13 Failure to distinguish the correct lineage of the dao 道 meant being unable to know “which of the many former Confucians correctly understood the Dao,” thereby putting “one at risk of sinking into heterodoxy.”14 One of its earliest formulations was by Han Yu, although he did not employ the term daotong. Han identified a lineage of sages and luminaries responsible for handing down the “way and virtue” from antiquity to Mencius. He relates that after Mencius, the transmission became interrupted, implying that he was the first after Mencius to have taken up the mantle of transmission. In the Northern Song, Cheng Yi claimed that he was the first to have taken up the mantle of transmitting the dao⎯the learning of the sages⎯having rediscovered its significance after an extended hiatus since the classical period. Elsewhere, he also

( 11. Huang Junjie, Taiwan yishi yu Taiwan wenhua, 177–82. In one passage, Chen Lifu clearly equates the way of Confucius with Sun Yat-sen’s Three Principles of the People. 12. Huang Junjie, Taiwan yishi yu Taiwan wenhua, 231–32, 233. 13. Wilson, Genealogy of the Way, 75. 14. Wilson, “Genealogy and History in Neo-Confucian Sectarian Uses of the Confucian Past,” 6, 7, 14.

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includes his elder brother as a transmitter.15 The great thinker Zhu Xi accepted this and refined it with his own modifications and additions. He subsequently coined the term daotong to describe this passing on of the way. Two aspects of Zhu’s appropriation of the daotong conceit are especially pertinent. First, Confucius, Zengzi, Zisi, and Mencius are identified as the last in a long line of early transmitters. By privileging this group, Zhu was able to present the Analects, Daxue, Zhongyong, and Mencius as an integrated body of texts, premised on the line of transmission from Confucius to Mencius. Second, by writing commentaries on these four books and identifying the Cheng brothers as the modern inheritors of the daotong transmission, Zhu sought to imply that he, too, was an heir to that transmission.16 Similarly, whereas previous editions of the Basic Resources included selections from the Analects and Mencius, from 1983 the text was revised and expanded to include selections from Daxue and Zhongyong, echoing Zhu Xi’s privileging of the Four Books as an integrated body of texts.17 Moreover, interpretations based on Chen Lifu’s commentaries to the Four Books were included in the Basic Resources in order to portray Sun Yat-sen and Jiang Jieshi as the modern inheritors of the daotong transmission.18 Huang sums up his criticisms of official ruxue as follows: In the official education system of postwar Taiwan, ruxue played the role of “supporter of state political ends.” Accordingly, to a certain degree it became a tool and lost its subjectivity. In other words, in the historical situation of postwar Taiwan, ruxue thought was not valued and promoted for the sake of the ruxue thought system itself, but rather for the sake of other forces external to

( 15. See the passages cited and translated in Bol, “Cheng Yi as a Literatus,” 177. 16. On the subject of Zhu Xi and daotong, see Wing-tsit Chan, Chu Hsi, 320–35. 17. First in the fourteenth century and then continuously from the midfifteenth century until the turn of the twentieth century, the Four Books were official texts used for examination essays, and candidates were expected to be thoroughly familiar with Zhu Xi’s commentaries on them. 18. Chen specifically states this connection in an article published in 1988. See Lin Anwu, Lunyu—Zouxiang shenghuo shijie de ruxue, 249. Intriguingly, as recently as 1997, leading New Confucian Liu Shuxian stated that what Sun Yatsen “carried on” ( jicheng) was “the way of Yao, Shun, Yu, Tang, Wen, Wu and the Duke of Zhou.” See the record of the roundtable discussion “Renshi Taiwan jiaokeshu wenti pingyi zuotanhui jilu (xia),” 52.

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ruxue (for example, political ends, economic development, or social harmony, etc.). Because of this, ruxue gradually became divorced from itself, becoming a means by which to achieve goals external to ruxue. . . . In order to render ruxue thought fully into a tool to serve “state political ends,” the authorities subjected the rich content of ruxue thought to a high level of selective interpretation.19

Like Huang Junjie, Lin Anwu has been critical of the GMD’s role in the Basic Resources for Chinese Culture debacle of the 1980s. Initially, his main objection to the 1983 new edition and the 1984 revised new edition of the Basic Resources was that the commentary is based primarily on Chen Lifu’s Sishu daoguan and displaces the primacy of the particular texts (the Four Books). In early comments (1984), Lin denied that the editing of the 1983 and 1984 Basic Resources signaled a strengthening of government thought control. He stated that he was not inclined to suspect the motives behind the editing; rather, his concern was methodological (exegetical). In his opinion the government was not seeking to manipulate the daotong for domestic political advantage but was working toward making the daotong the guiding principle rather than the zhengtong.20 Given that these comments were written in 1984, they should not be taken at face value. It seems clear that he was actually making the opposite point. By couching his rhetoric in terms of denial, he was able to make his critical point while minimizing risk of censure or even incarceration. Three years later, by the time that martial law was being lifted, Lin was prepared to be more forthright in his criticisms, arguing that the Basic Resources should not be used as teaching materials for GMD political ideology.21 Yet even in 1988, he was prepared to direct specific criticisms at Chen Lifu only, apparently wishing to avoid any perception of criticizing either Sun Yat-sen or Jiang Jieshi. Thus, while accusing Chen Lifu of having upset the distinction between the daotong and the zhengtong, he stopped short of dismissing Chen’s claim that Sun and Jiang were the modern-day inheritors of the daotong.22 A decade later, however, this reticence had long since been abandoned, as is evident in his criticism of Jiang’s Kexue de Xue Yong 科學的 學庸 (The scientific Great Learning and Doctrine of the Mean), which Lin identified as a representative work of politicized ruxue. In his critique,

( 19. Huang Junjie, Ruxue yu xiandai Taiwan, 286–87. 20. Lin Anwu, Lunyu: zouxiang shenghuo shijie de ruxue, 144, 150, 151. 21. Ibid., 184. 22. Ibid., 249, 250.

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Lin describes Jiang as having portrayed himself as the embodiment of the daoti 道體 (ontological reality of the way) and the transmitter of the daotong, and he charges Jiang with having appropriated the daotong to consolidate political power.23 Lin contends that there is a direct connection between the ideological hijacking of these core ru scriptures and the failure of China’s daotong to have achieved due realization as a concrete expression of practical rationality: The inability of China’s cultural daotong (wenhua daotong 文化道統)24 to become a concrete expression of rationality—remaining as an abstract expression of rationality25—is intimately related to the GMD’s monopoly of rule, whereby the daotong and GMD ideology became interconnected as one. On one hand, this led to the GMD ideology’s blocking of the power of the cultural daotong and, on the other hand, also sealing off the possibility for the local culture (bentu wenhua 本土文化) of our people here in Taiwan being able to ascend to the cultural daotong. This has led to the fragmentation of Taiwan’s local culture and Chinese culture.26

In terms of Lin’s daotong/zhengtong dichotomy, rightfully Chinese culture should belong to the realm of the daotong, but it was appropriated and made subservient to the GMD’s zhengtong ideology.27 He appeals to the notion of “cultural China” in discussing the proper relationship between the daotong (understood as a unified cultural system) and the zhengtong (unified system of governance), arguing that the daotong should rightfully “override” the zhengtong. This claim is premised on the primacy of cultural China: In theory, “cultural China” takes precedence over “political China” and “economic China.” . . . This idealized “cultural China” transcends any actual “political China.” . . . “Cultural China” belongs to the level of daotong whereas “political China” belongs to the level of zhengtong (unified system of governance). In theory, the daotong overrides the zhengtong. That is, the zhengtong must accept the

( 23. Ibid., 105, 104. 24. I render wenhua daotong as “interconnecting thread of the way as sustained and revealed through culture.” 25. Rationality here refers to Lin’s notion of “practical rationality” (shijian de lixing 實 踐 的 理 性 ), a rationality formed in concrete historical and social matrices. Not being an abstract concept of rationality, it had no need to appeal to a “magic-type causal logic.” See Chapter 8. 26. Lin Anwu, Ruxue geminglun, 76. 27. For an informative analysis of the GMT’s totalizing cultural agenda, see Chun, “Democracy as Hegemony,” 7–27.

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norms of the daotong. It is unacceptable for it to turn around and control the daotong. . . . Generally speaking, in theory, intellectuals continue to emphasize the absolute precedence that the daotong has over the zhengtong, with the daotong serving as a norm and guide for the whole of the zhengtong. In reality, the opposite holds true: those in possession of the zhengtong declare themselves to be acting in accord with the daotong, and even declare themselves to be protectors of the daotong.28

Here, Lin’s target is not China’s imperial past, but the legacy of the GMD in postwar Taiwan. In promoting ruxue culture, what the GMD actually promoted was but a “new form of imperial-style ruxue. They turned Jiang Jieshi into a sacred figure and made him into the transmitter of the daotong, thereby obfuscating the demarcation between daotong and zhengtong. . . . When the day comes that the tension between the daotong and the zhengtong ceases to be maintained, it becomes even more difficult to highlight the critical nature of ruxue.”29 The consequence of this in contemporary Taiwan is that ruxue has become intimately associated with the GMD legacy. Lin Anwu aims to show that “true” ruxue should not be deemed part of this association. Whereas Chen Ming, following Wang Fuzhi, promoted a vision of the daotong and the zhengtong being harmoniously combined (and thereby creating opportunities for ruzhe to ply their skills in serving as teachers to rulers and advising on matters of statecraft), Lin prescribes a relationship in which the daotong overrides the zhengtong such that “the zhengtong must accept the norms of the daotong.” For Lin, the daotong must have absolute authority, and the relationship cannot be compromised for the sake of political expedience. On this point, Lin and most third- and fourth-generation New Confucians are in agreement. This insistence on taking the high moral ground, however, comes at a price. As Liu Junning 劉軍寧 (then at CASS) noted: They want to establish a new orthodoxy represented by the rujia, but they do not want to allow this orthodoxy to become connected with the so-called three poisons—money, power, and position—for fear that ruxue will become politicized. At the same time, they also maintain an extremely offensive critical spirit. They want to enable ruxue to become the new orthodoxy, an intellectual fortress, the main focus of which is to engage in “life critiques” (shengming pipan 生命批 判). This has led to a profound identity conflict. On one hand, they have set themselves the mission of establishing ruxue as an orthodoxy; on the other hand,

( 28. Lin Anwu, Ruxue geminglun, 231, 237, 238. 29. Ibid., 8–9.

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they are extremely sensitive to the matter of the rujia orthodoxy’s becoming aligned, in any way, with [state] power, adopting a critical spirit that is reminiscent of the followers of a different teaching.

Liu refers to this as “the New Confucian paradox.”30 In comparison to Lin, Huang Junjie is far more willing to accept a role for ruxue in matters of statecraft, but not if this means accommodating political expediency or cooperating with authoritarian rulers. This is evident in his many writings on Xu Fuguan, whom he describes as a radical ( jinjin 激進) rujia31 in contrast to the transcendent (chaoyue 超越) rujia, represented by Mou Zongsan and Tang Junyi. Huang argues that Mou Zongsan, Tang Junyi, Xu Fuguan, and Qian Mu were grouped together as New Confucians for the convenience of academic study, but at the price of giving the false impression that they share a substantial common identity: In fact, there are profound differences between the historians Qian Mu and Xu Fuguan and the philosophers Tang Junyi and Mou Zongsan, all of whom are subsumed within the general category of “New Confucian.” Moreover, the differences between the two historians, Xu Fuguan and Qian Mu, are greater than their similarities. . . . Tang, Mou, and Xu can all be described as “modernizers of ruxue,” but the differences in their approaches to research, their emphases, and their intellectual orientations, are greater than their similarities.

He cites a number of examples to press the point home. Whereas Xu examined ruxue thought by contextualizing it historically, Mou divorced it from its historical context.32 Whereas Xu paid greater attention to the practical dimension of Mencius’s wai wang 外王 (outer king = statecraft) thought, Tang and Mou read Mencius from the perspective of the Song-Ming tradition of Mind-centered Learning. 33 For Xu, ruxue was concerned with social practice, not metaphysics; with statecraft, not transcendent systems of thought. Huang describes the basic differences as follows: “Xu Fuguan examined rujia thought by linking it to concrete historical contexts. Tang and Mou were able to make rujia thought into a philosophical system with a metaphysical core.”34 Moreover, whereas Qian Mu’s view about the role of men of education and social standing

( 30. Liu Junning, Gonghe, minzhu, xianzheng, 313. 31. Huang Junjie, Taiwan yishi yu Taiwan wenhua, 197. 32. Huang Junjie, Ruxue yu xiandai Taiwan, 93. 33. Ibid., 64. See also Huang Junjie, Taiwan yishi yu Taiwan wenhua, 199–200. 34. Huang Junjie, Ruxue yu xiandai Taiwan, 92.

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(shi 士) in limiting the ruler’s power was much more sanguine, Xu took the view that in the Han and post-Han periods ruxue had become the ruler’s puppet and was thus perverted and exploited.35 In this final example, the parallels with Huang’s own criticisms of postwar official ruxue36 are unmistakable.37 Thus, although Huang insists that there is a legitimate role for ruxue in the affairs of state, it must never be manipulated to serve the ends of political expediency. What is to be gained by weakening the link between Xu and the other figures now retrospectively identified as New Confucians? First, it reinforces Huang’s own emphasis on ruxue’s relevance being found in its social applications rather than in metaphysics and theoretical speculation. Second, the renewed emphasis on pre-Qin ruxue enables Huang (via Xu Fuguan) to propose a blueprint for a Reformation-like return to the scriptures: the teachings of Confucius and, especially, Mencius. Third, it distances Xu from those who would align themselves in name with the New Confucians for the sake of political expedience. Thus, in referring to the ideological vacuum brought about in the wake of Taiwan’s industrial modernization, which “smashed to pieces the shackles of agricultural social authoritarianism that has been supported by imperial Confucianism,” Huang notes that one of the paths followed by some newly industrialized countries (NICs) to fill similar ideological vacuums is “the familiar repulsive old imperial Confucianism, as used in Singapore, one of the NICs, to whitewash an authoritarian party-state.”38

Concluding Remarks Chen Ming’s essay is remarkable, first and most obviously, because of its glowing evaluation of Taiwan’s Chinese Cultural Renaissance movement—an evaluation that contrasts sharply with the criticisms of prominent contemporary Taiwanese ruxue revivalists. Second, the essay

( 35. Ibid, 85–92. 36. As mentioned in Chapter 5, Huang distinguished two types of ruxue in postwar Taiwan: official (zhengshi 正式, guanfang 官方) and unofficial ( fei zhengshi 非正式, minjian 民間). 37. Indeed, in some writings, Huang adopts the same position as Xu: “The socio-political history of China is a series of sad stories about how this classical Confucianism was twisted into a one-sided authoritarian institutionalism” (Huang Junjie and Wu Kuang-ming, “Taiwan and the Confucian Aspiration,” 76). 38. Ibid., 80.

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was one of the earliest attempts by a mainland ruxue revivalist to argue on pragmatic grounds that it was in the interest of ruxue—and, of course, in the interest of those who sought to represent ruxue—to be aligned with the party-state. A decade later, this belief in the fundamental importance of securing institutional and political patronage for ruxue has been more widely championed by other scholars of Chen’s generation, including Gan Chunsong (the author of Zhiduhua rujia ji qi jieti [Institutional rujia and its collapse]) and Jiang Qing. Overtures to political authority are one matter; successful outcomes are another. Despite Chen’s attempt to persuade his readers that the goals of the movement were consistent with the “critical inheritance” ( pipan jicheng) and “synthetic creation” (zonghe chuangxin) methodologies associated with Marxist intellectual historian Zhang Dainian and enthusiastically promoted by Fang Keli, as recently as 2005 Fang was identifying Chen Ming as one of the leading representatives of “mainland China’s new generation of new rujia” (dalu xinshengdai rujia 大陸新生代儒家) who are promoting a “mainland new ruxue” and warned of the need to “pay attention” to developments within mainland new ruxue. This particular interlude further underscores the highly problematic nature of the label “mainland New Confucians.” (See Chapter 11.) Chen’s account of the Chinese Cultural Renaissance movement contrasts sharply with the perspectives of Huang Junjie and Lin Anwu, both of whom experienced first-hand the degree to which the movement appropriated ruxue to bolster the political authority of Jiang Jieshi by appealing to the notion of daotong. It remains a fact, however, that by the early 1990s, as the GMD’s commitment to a program of cultural reconstruction modeled on “traditional Chinese cultural values” waned, and as the ruxue content of secondary textbooks ceased to be promulgated by force of government fiat, institutional support for Taiwan’s putative ruxue identity become increasingly attenuated, contributing to a deepening crisis of relevance for ruxue in modern Taiwanese society. Thus, although scholars in Taiwan today may rest content that they occupy the moral high ground, the reality is that ruxue lacks the official support it enjoyed thirty years ago and its influence beyond the academy is increasingly marginal. To compound this situation, despite the endeavors of scholars such as Lin and Huang to distinguish between different types of ruxue (see Chapter 5) and to repudiate the “official ruxue” and “imperial-style ruxue” of the GMD, they remain committed to an all-embracing vision of Chinese history and civilization—“Chinese culture”—whose essence they characterize as ruxue. And precisely be-

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cause these ruxue revivalists hold such strong views on the primacy of Chinese culture, they have been unable to escape the unwanted but inevitable lingering associations with former GMD policies in which culture was deployed for the purposes of defining a particular sort of political identity.39 The following chapter introduces and analyzes another subfield of ruxue studies in which ruxue-as-culture is again used to prescribe (national) identity, revealing how the politics of orthodoxy can be orchestrated just as effectively in the academic arena as in the political domain.

( 39 . In Allen Chun’s (“From Nationalism to Nationalizing,” 16) words: “Through his synthesis of a Nationalist Taiwan, Chiang [ Jiang Jieshi] constructed a homogenous nation-state in the classic sense, where cultural consciousness defined the basis for defining national identity.”

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10 From Doubting Antiquity to Explaining Antiquity: Reconstructing Early Ru Intellectual History in Contemporary China

Over the past three decades, the discovery and publication of an important body of archaeologically recovered texts—including many previously unattested texts—has stimulated debate about issues of authorship, transmission, and interpretation. The manuscripts excavated from tombs at Mawangdui 馬王堆, Dingxian 定縣, Guodian 郭店, and the collection of Chu 楚 bamboo strip texts purchased by the Shanghai Museum are of especial importance. The following assessment by palaeographer Xing Wen 邢文 conveys just how substantial the task of fully exploring the significance of the corpus of newly excavated materials is: “The task of redelineating the world of early Chinese thought with these excavated materials, despite their exciting and emergent nature, cannot possibly be finished within the lifetimes of two or three or even more generations of scholars due to the enormous quantity and sophisticated quality of the excavated bamboo and silk manuscripts themselves.”1 Paul R. Goldin notes that these newly excavated manuscripts “offer opportunities for a richer understanding of classical Chinese philosophy than was available to previous generations.”2

( 1. Xing Wen, Zhu hu zhu bo, 9. 2. Goldin, After Confucius, 36.

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Mainland-based Chinese scholars have tended to be even more effusive. Guo Qiyong, for example, insists that the study of silk and bamboo texts is not an antiquarian activity; rather, it has a vital contemporary relevance because “it can advance the creative interpretation and creative transformation of [our] traditional psycho-spiritual resources, providing nourishment for a modernized psycho-spiritual culture.”3 In this chapter, my principal concern is to examine critically some recent attempts to reconstruct facets of early ru intellectual history based on the interpretation of these recovered texts, particularly issues of authorship and transmission lineages, to show how these issues relate to contemporary issues of intellectual orthodoxy and to ruxue-centered cultural nationalism.4

Explaining Antiquity In addition to these texts, in recent years mainland Chinese scholars have also identified several factors conducive to renewed discussion of the status of Chinese philosophy. These include new developments in classical exegesis, the exploration of Chinese hermeneutics,5 the rise of so-called National Studies over the past decade, and the paradigm shift

( 3. Guo Qiyong, “Chutu jianbo yu jingdian quanshi de fanshi wenti,” 89. Guo’s comments are significant for two reasons. First, Guo has published widely in the area of ruxue and New Confucianism (see Chapter 6). Second, the Guodian and Shanghai strip manuscripts hold especial interest to Hubei scholars because of Hubei’s geographical links with the ancient state of Chu. (The Guodian strips were recovered from a site near the old capital of the state of Chu, Ying 郢, which lies in today’s Hubei province. The strips purchased in Hong Kong in 1994 by the Shanghai Museum were illegally excavated from Chu tombs from Hubei.) For one expression of this localist significance, see the editor’s preface to Ding Sixin, ed., Chudi chutu jianbo wenxian sixiang yanjiu, 1: 2. In the preface to Ding Sixin’s dissertation-turned-book, Guodian Chu mu zhujian sixiang yanjiu, 2, Guo Qiyong—Ding’s dissertation supervisor—emphasizes the localist significance of the study, by drawing attention to the roots of these texts in ancient Hubei culture. 4. The reconstructions contrast markedly with the views of Western scholars concerning the composite nature of early Chinese texts. See, e.g., Boltz, “The Composite Nature of Early Chinese Texts”; Kern, “The Odes in Excavated Manuscripts”; and Shaughnessy, Rewriting Early Chinese Texts, 49–93. It should also be noted, however, that there is considerable disagreement among Western scholars about the role of oral transmission in textual formation. 5. Jing Haifeng, “Zhongguo zhexue yanjiu de redian wenti ji fazhan qushi.”

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referred to by Chinese scholars themselves as moving from “doubting antiquity” ( yigu 疑古) to “explaining antiquity” (shigu 釋古).6 This change of attitude toward the interpretation of antiquity has also led to various calls to reconstruct early ru intellectual history. Yang Chaoming 楊朝明 (Qufu Normal University), for example, is typical of many scholars who argue that archaeologically recovered texts help to correct many of the distortions and misunderstandings created by the “doubters of antiquity” concerning early ruxue such as the origins of rujia thought, the relationship between Confucius and the Six Classics, the early dissemination of ruxue, the relationship between ruxue and other “schools,” and issues concerning the process by which certain ru texts were formed.7

( 6. This reorientation was highlighted with the publication of Li Xueqin, Zouchu yigu shidai. (His essay of the same title was published in Zhongguo wenhua, 1992, no. 9.) In fact, already in 1990 ruxue apologist Zhao Jihui 趙吉惠 (Shaanxi Normal University) had expressed strong criticism of the pervasiveness of the “doubting antiquity custom,” even linking it with the methods employed by the Gang of Four! To illustrate his claim, he declared that Hu Shi’s epithet—“boldly hypothesize, carefully seek verification”—was identical with the Gang of Four’s practice of first deciding what a particular outcome would be and then pursuing an investigation to confirm the predetermined outcome; see Song Zhongfu et al., Ruxue zai xiandai Zhongguo, 382 (Zhao wrote this section). For an example of how the “explaining antiquity” mentality is infiltrating even Japanese sinology, see Asano Yūichi, “Senkoku Sokan Shi’i no shisōshiteki yigi.” The triumphalist tenor in which the author sets about debunking the scholarship of earlier generations of Japanese sinologists is even stronger than that evident in most contemporary Chinese critiques of “doubters of antiquity” scholarship. The “doubting antiquity” movement is generally traced to Gu Jiegang 顧頡剛, who in 1926 argued that in many Warring States through to Han writings, the later a mythical emperor appeared in a text, the earlier the claim was made for when that figure lived. See his “Yu Qian Xuantong xiansheng lun gushi shu,” 60. Although Gu used the term yigu to refer to his own historical attitude, it was perhaps a decade later before yigu, xingu 信古 (believing antiquity), and shigu 釋古 (explaining antiquity) began to be distinguished. See, e.g., Feng Youlan, “Zhongguo jinnian yanjiu shixue zhi xin qushi.” More recently, Guo Yi has sought to promote the notion of zhenggu 正古 (getting antiquity right); see his “Cong ‘yigu’ zouxiang ‘zhenggu.’ ” 7. Yang Chaoming, Rujia wenxian yu zaoqi ruxue yanjiu, 191. For example, he argues (p. 212) that because both rujia and daojia 道家 texts were unearthed at Guodian, and that because these texts betray no sign of interschool rivalry, therefore the relationship between the two “schools” was much more harmonious than previously assumed. One implication of this, he argues, is that pian

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To illustrate how this trend toward explaining antiquity has been shaping parameters of scholarly inquiry, I begin by introducing an example from the so-called Shanghai strips. With the ongoing publication of the Shanghai strips, a frenzy of discussion (much of it to be found on fecund online sites such as http://jianbo.org and http://www.confucius 2000.com) has centered on issues of authorship and interpretation. One of the earliest of these texts to be published was the Shilun 詩論 (Discussions of the Odes). Li Ling 李零 (Beijing University), who on other occasions has been wary of undue speculation, was quick to conjecture that in part this manuscript may have recorded the views of Confucius’s disciple Zigao 子羔. Because some of these discussions (lun 論) contain the phrase Kongzi yue 孔子曰 (Confucius said), Li accepted that most of the text preserves the views of the historical Confucius as recorded by his disciples.8 Others have appealed to such criteria as the “tone” (yuqi 語氣) of the words in the text to support the claim that the Shilun records the words of the historical Confucius.9 Taking a different view on the authorship question, Li Xueqin 李 學勤 (Qinghua University) and others have argued that Shilun was written not by Confucius but by his disciple Zixia 子夏.10 This attribution is based principally on traditional accounts that link Zixia with the transmission of the Odes. Others have gone even further, arguing that Shilun is actually the preface (Shi xu 詩序) that Zixia wrote for the collection of odes edited by Confucius and that this subsequently became the original form of the preface to the Mao redaction of the Odes (later supposedly edited and rearranged by Xunzi 荀子, Mao Heng 毛亨, and Mao Chang 毛萇).11 In a similar vein, others have argued that the unique graph in the Chu strips that most scholars interpret as a combined form (hewen 合文) of the two characters 孔子, may in fact be the two characters 卜子, that is, Zixia 子夏.12 This view is clearly influenced by

( such as “Weizi” 微子 in the Analects often characterized as evidencing “Zhuangzian” interpolations need to be reassessed. 8. Li Ling, “Shangbo Shilun jian de zuozhe he zuonian.” Li also maintains that every single occurrence of the phrase “Kongzi yue” in Liji marks the words of the historical Confucius; see his Guodian Chujian jiaodu ji, 68. 9. See Ma Chengyuan, “Shilun jiangshouzhe wei Kongzi zhi shuo bu ke yi.” 10. Li Xueqin, “Shilun de ticai he zuozhe,” 56–57; Peng Lin, “Guanyu Zhanguo Chu zhushu, Kongzi Shilun de pianming yu zuozhe,” 9. 11. Jiang Linchang, “Shangbo zhujian Shilun de zuozhe,” 117. 12. This thesis was first proposed by Qiu Xigui 裘錫圭 at the International Symposium on Newly Excavated Bamboo and Silk Texts, convened at Beijing

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traditional accounts that depict Zixia as a transmitter of the Odes as edited by Confucius.13 This new enthusiasm to “explain antiquity” has not always been matched with scholarly rigor and caution. Yang Chaoming himself provides several notable examples of this questionable new trend. For example, he claims that the text named Chunqiu shiyu 春秋事語 excavated at Mawangdui “is a lost text that records major events during the Spring and Autumn period and suffices to prove that Zuochuan 左傳 is not a forged text.”14 Yet, as William G. Boltz has observed, although we do “find parallels in the Zuozhuan 左傳 for a few brief passages in the manuscript that the modern editors have titled Chunqiu shiyu . . . these are very fragmentary, and in the aggregate do not amount to more than a couple dozen lines.”15 Elsewhere, Yang maintains that a late dating for many key “ru” texts remains an impediment to research.16 In particular, he wants to argue for an early date for Yi Zhoushu 逸周書 (Lost book of Zhou). He counters objections that certain pian 篇 should be dated later rather than earlier due to the presence of wu xing 五行 (five phases) thought and the appearance of terms such as ren 仁, yi 義, and xin 信 in some pian of that text,17 on the grounds that they also appear in Zhouli 周禮 (Rites of

( University in August 2000. Qiu subsequently changed his mind to concur with the view that the combined graph was Kongzi not Buzi. See his “Guanyu Kongzi shilun,” 139. For an overview in English, see Shaughnessy, Rewriting Early Chinese Texts, 19–21. 13. For a much more balanced assessment of the authorship of Shilun, see Chen Tongsheng, Kongzi shilun yanjiu, 36–96. 14. Yang Chaoming, Rujia wenxian yu zaoqi ruxue yanjiu, 194. 15. Boltz, “Manuscripts with Transmitted Counterparts,” 253. 16. Yang Chaoming, Rujia wenxian yu zaoqi ruxue yanjiu, 198–99, 201. 17. Yang argues that the wu xing concept was already current during the Western Zhou. His support for this claim is based on two passages. The first is from Guoyu 國語, in which the five phases are listed in a passage that purports to quote the archivist of Zhou King Li 厲 (r. 857/53–842/28). This, however, begs the issue because the Guoyu itself was compiled possibly no earlier than the fifth and fourth centuries B.C. The second is a passage from the “Hongfan” 洪範 (Great Plan) pian of Shangshu 尚書 (Book of documents). Again, however, Yang begs the issue by assuming that the pian dates from the early Zhou, when it was compiled possibly no earlier than the fourth century (see Nylan, The Five Confucian Classics, 139–47; and Boltz in the following note). Cf. Li Xueqin’s view that “Hongfan” was compiled during the Western Zhou, in his Zhouyi jingzhuan suyuan, 16, 122.

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Zhou), a text he believes was compiled by the Duke of Zhou based on even earlier materials, some of which had been transmitted from the time of the Yellow Emperor and Zhuanxu 顓頊. “The content of the Zhouli is genuine and reliable; it can be believed.”18 For Yang, because these texts contain material transmitted from the time of the early sage-kings, they provide important information on the origins of ruxue. In particular, Yang singles out three pian from the Yi Zhoushu—“Duxun” 度訓, “Mingxun” 命訓, and “Changxun” 常訓—as examples of “normative instructions” handed down from the time of King Wen of the Zhou that provide insights into human nature.19 Yang refers to these three pian collectively as Zhouxun 周訓 (Zhou instructions). “There are many signs indicating that Confucius, as well as Zisi 子思 and Mencius—the representatives of the Zisi-Mencius branch [of ruxue]—were clearly influenced by Zhouxun in regard to the theory of human nature. In other words, Zhouxun is actually an important source for rujia doctrines on human nature.” Yang draws attention to similarities he finds between the content of Zhouxun and the Guodian text that modern scholars have titled Xing zi ming chu 性自命出 (The nature comes from the command), stating that both bodies of writing present a naturalistic theory of human nature: the nature is the way we are at birth. This view is broadly shared by major pre-Qin rujia such as Confucius, Mencius, and Xunzi. Xing zi ming chu is generally regarded as a writing of the Zisi lineage [of ruxue], and when compared with Zhouxun, the characteristics of that period [the

( 18. In his entry on Zhouli (Chou li ) in Loewe, ed., Early Chinese Texts: A Bibliographical Guide, 27, William G. Boltz writes: “The language of the text is clearly the classical Chinese of the late Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods, not the pre-classical language of Western Chou. . . . In many places the content of the text involves concepts and concerns that are identifiably characteristic of the late Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods, and are incompatible with an early Western Chou provenance. Among such features are references to the wu hsing 五行, wu ti 五帝 and wu yüeh 五嶽, none of which is appropriate to a text prior to the fourth century B.C.” Susan R. Weld (“The Covenant Texts from Houma and Wenxian,” 159) writes: “Sven Broman [“Studies on the Chou-li,” Bulletin of the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities, 33 (1961): 1–89] has suggested that the historicity of the official titles described in the Zhouli is supported by their frequent appearance in the Zuozhuan and other early works, although the context often indicates that the functions associated with the titles do not fit the Zhouli descriptions.” 19. Yang Chaoming, Rujia wenxian yu zaoqi ruxue yanjiu, 202.

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early Zhou] are noticeable. . . . When the two bodies of writing are compared, it is easy to see the influences of Zhouxun on Xing zi ming chu.

The connection between the Yi Zhoushu and Confucius rests on the belief that Confucius had handled the materials that eventually came to form that text. According to an entry in the Hanshu “Treatise on Bibliography,” the Yi Zhoushu is a collection of passages that Confucius did not include among the one hundred pian of the Shangshu 尚書 when he edited the latter.20 The Beijing-based International Confucian Association (see Chapter 3) has been the most active “nonofficial” scholarly association to highlight the ru dimension of archaeologically recovered texts, through its organization of a series of conferences and support of publishing activities.21 Of particular note is its participation in the joint editorship of two thematic issues of the prestigious series Zhongguo zhexue 中國哲學, entitled Guodian Chujian yanjiu 郭店楚簡研究 (Chu bamboo strips from Guodian; 1999) and Guodian jian yu ruxue yanjiu 郭店簡與儒學研究 (Studies on the Guodian strips and ruxue; 2000). Both volumes consist of papers presented at conferences on the Guodian texts organized by the ICA, including studies on the Laozi texts and the texts many scholars identify as rujia texts. In both volumes, pride of place is given to studies of the so-called rujia texts. The involvement of the ICA in holding the conferences and arranging for the publication of the conference papers attests to the significance these texts hold for the contemporary promoters of ruxue. This significance is underscored both by the fact that an essay by Du Weiming was chosen to be the opening essay in the first volume and by his comments in that essay. For Du, the significance of the Guodian texts lies primarily in their being able to provide new resources to study the genealogy ( puxi 譜 系 ) of the early rujia and secondarily in what they might reveal about the relations between the rujia and other schools (xuepai 學派 ). Du is adamant that with the excavation of the Guodian Chu tomb strips, the history of Chinese philosophy and the history of Chinese scholarship need to be completely rewritten. The Guodian Chu strips have provided us with much new knowledge of pre-Qin scholarship. Therefore, we need to reappraise many of the views raised since the May Fourth period—especially by the “doubters of antiquity group”

( 20. Ban Gu, Hanshu, 30.1705. 21. Jiang Guanghui, “Guodian Chujian yu yuandian ruxue,” 263.

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( yigupai 疑古派). Indeed, the whole of China’s traditional culture needs to be reevaluated.22

Du further maintains that together with the Shanghai Museum strips these materials have a significance akin to that of the Dead Sea Scrolls.23 In particular, he holds that the materials will provide us with much new knowledge about the development and content of ruxue from the time of Confucius to that of Mencius, especially the so-called Si-Meng [ZisiMencius] school (Si-Meng xuepai 思孟學派). With Mencius serving as the “spiritual” forebear of the New Confucians and those influenced by New Confucian writings on “the learning of the mind and the nature” (xin xing zhi xue 心性之學), it is understandable why Du and other likeminded scholars should seek to find in the Guodian materials evidence to support the existence of a Si-Meng school and to identify certain texts with that school. Recently, new textbooks designed to be adopted for use in university courses have started to incorporate this reconstructed Si-Meng school into the history of early Chinese philosophy.24 Other scholars regard the texts as providing evidence of even broader historical connections. Guo Yi 郭沂 (Philosophy Institute, CASS), for example, argues that it was only with the advent of Song-Ming Principlecentered Learning that the relationship between xin 心 (mind), xing 性 (the nature), and qing 情 (emotional responses) came to be clearly discussed. With the Guodian texts, we now have evidence that this thinking was a hallmark of rujia thought in the early Warring States period. His implicit inference is that discussion of xin, xing, and qing was a genuinely native discourse and not something first introduced by the alien teachings of Buddhism.25 For Jiang Guanghui 姜廣輝 (head of the Department of Chinese Intellectual History, History Institute, CASS; editor of the series Zhongguo zhexue), the Guodian texts provide evidence for the existence of a historical daotong, but not the one outlined by Zhu Xi featuring a genealogical transmission from Confucius to Zengzi 曾子 to Zisi to Mencius and eventually to Zhu Xi himself. The seminal early figures in Jiang’s alternative daotong genealogy are Confucius, Ziyou 子游, Zisi, and Mencius. Its later history bypasses not only the Han to Tang but also the Song to Ming periods, being transmitted from Mencius to

( 22. Du Weiming, “Guodian Chujian yu XianQin ru dao sixiang de chongxin diwei,” 2, 4. 23. Ibid., 5. 24. See, e.g., Feng Dawen and Guo Qiyong, Xin bian Zhongguo zhexueshi. 25. Guo Yi, Guodian zhujian yu XianQin xueshu sixiang, 40.

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the Qing dynasty figures Chen Que 陳確 (1604–77), Huang Zongxi 黃 宗羲 (1610–95), Yan Yuan 顏元 (1635–1704), Dai Zhen 戴震 (1724–77), Kang Youwei 康有為 (1858–1927), and Song Shu 宋恕 (1862–1910).26 Jiang maintains that several pian in the Liji 禮記 (Record of rites) were transmitted by Ziyou and his later disciples and accepts that most “ruxue” texts in the Guodian corpus were written by Zisi. On this basis he argues that the “way” transmitted by the “main line” of early ruxue (Confucius-ZiyouZisi-Mencius) consisted of three core teachings: the datong 大同 (commonwealth) ideal; the ideal of the ruler yielding the throne to a man of virtue; and an emphasis on the concept of qing (emotions).27

Guodian Texts and Ruxue In what follows, I examine recent attempts to redelineate aspects of the early history of the ru and ruxue based on arguments that draw on the Guodian strips. I begin by outlining assorted views on the significance of the Guodian corpus generally before moving on to consider the basis on which modern scholars in China attribute particular texts to particular historical ru.

As Link Between Confucius and Mencius Writing on the connection between the Guodian strips and Mencius’s views on the mind and the nature, Guo Qiyong starts from the general premise that the views on xin and xing expressed in the texts (principally he cites Xing zi ming chu and Wuxing 五行 [Five forms of conduct]) were the historical antecedents of Mencius’s views on xin and xing. On the strength of this premise, he claims that the Guodian corpus evidences a development of Confucius’s views on human nature and heaven’s command (tianming 天命) and constitutes a bridge linking Confucius with Mencian metaphysics.28 Similar views were first developed by Pang Pu (Beijing University): The Chu strips lie between Confucius’s [doctrine] that “by their natures people are close to one another” and Mencius’s [doctrine] that the nature is good. The Chu strips propose such doctrines as the nature comes from the command; the command descends from heaven; the way starts in the emotional responses;

( 26. Jiang Guanghui, “Guodian Chujian yu daotong you xi,” 13, 32. 27. Ibid., 14–20. 28. Guo Qiyong, “Guodian rujia jian yu Mengzi xinxinglun,” 3, 9.

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the emotional responses are born from the nature; the nature is one, but the minds [of people] vary; and so on. These doctrines provide an ample intellectual foundation for the appearance of the premise articulated in Zhongyong 中庸 (Doctrine of the mean): “That which heaven commands is called the nature; that which conforms to the nature is called the way; and cultivating the way is what is called teaching.” The strips also supply the lost theoretical link between Confucius and Mencius.29

For Pang, the Guodian texts help us to understand the main lineages of development in early ruxue after Confucius. He proposes that the fundamental question of concern to Confucius’s followers was “Why are humans disposed to be humane?” and that two broad responses to this question were developed: one directed internally and one directed externally. Those who pursued the inner path sought to understand the mind and realize the nature—faculties that distinguish humans from birds and beasts. This orientation came to be represented by the thinkers Zisi and Mencius, and it is also evident in the Zhongyong text. Those who pursued the external path examined matters ranging from the fundamental basis of the cosmos to social concerns. This orientation came to be represented by the commentaries to the Yijing 易經 (Book of changes), Daxue 大學 (Great learning), and by the thinker Xunzi. Later, both approaches were combined in the Liji. 30 On the basis of this distinction, Pang concludes that the Guodian texts belong to the internally directed group in which the focus is on xing and tianming rather than on tian.31

As Ru Texts Many mainland scholars assume that the Guodian corpus is, by and large, a group of ru texts. Although a small minority of scholars is cautious about classifying particular Guodian texts as either rujia or daojia,32 even Li Ling—generally a measured scholar—proposes that the Guodian materials should principally be identified with the broader grouping of

( 29. Pang Pu, “Gumu xinzhi,” 8–9. 30. Pang Pu, “Kong Meng zhi jian,” 23. 31. Ibid., 25, 26. 32. Li Xueqin (“XianQin rujia zhuzuo de zhongda faxian,” 14), for example, does not accept that Tang Yu zhi dao 唐虞之道 (The way of Yao and Shun), Zhong xin zhi dao 忠信之道 (The way of loyalty and trust), and the Yucong 語叢 (Collections of sayings) are rujia texts.

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Confucius’s “seventy disciples.”33 Liao Mingchun 廖明春 (Qinghua University) specifically identifies ten of the Guodian texts as rujia texts and provides an author for each. He is even prepared to identify Confucius as the author of three of the texts: Qiong da yi shi 窮達以時 (Failure and success depend on timeliness), Tang Yu zhi dao 唐虞之道 (The way of Yao and Shun), and Zun de yi 尊德義 (Venerating virtue and rightness). The evidence that Liao offers in support of his identifications principally serves to construct a pattern of intellectual orthodoxy in which all the texts can be subsumed under a rujia mantle, stretching from Confucius and his disciples to Zisi and his disciples. Thus he states, “It is beyond question that the [Guodian] strips are orthodox rujia doctrines.” In the case of Qiong da yi shi, for example, Liao argues for identifying Confucius as the author on the basis of three statements in other texts. First, a passage in Mencius describes Confucius as the sage of timeliness (5B.1), and timely action is the central theme of Qiong yi da shi. Second, a passage in the Analects (15.21: “The Master said: ‘The gentleman seeks it within himself ’ ”) and another in Zhongyong (14: “The Master said: ‘. . . The gentleman . . . turns inward and seeks it within his own person’ ”) concern “turning [inward to seek within] oneself ” ( fanji 反己), an exhortation that is also found in Qiong yi da shi. This sort of attribution by coincidence is a feature of Liao’s arguments for dating several other Guodian texts.34 Elsewhere Liao notes a passage in the “You zuo” 宥坐 (Warning Vessel) pian of Xunzi that resembles a passage in Qiong da yi shi and Hanshi waizhuan 韓詩外傳 (Outer commentary to Han [Ying’s] recension of the Book of Odes). Because the passages in Xunzi and Hanshi waizhuan are attributed to Confucius, Liao concludes that the whole of Qiong da yi shi was most probably written by Confucius, even though the passage is not attributed to anyone (much less Confucius) in Qiong da yi shi. Similarly, despite the fact that Confucius is not even mentioned in Tang Yu zhi dao, Liao attributes its authorship to Confucius on the grounds that the “Yao yue” 堯曰 (Yao says) pian of the Analects also takes up the theme of Yao’s yielding the throne to Shun.35 In the same article Liao presents several similar attempts to identify some of Confucius’s disciples as the authors of several other Guodian texts.

( 33. Li Ling, Guodian Chujian jiaodu ji, 4–5. 34. Liao Mingchun, “Jingmen Guodian Chujian yu XianQin ruxue,” 69, 49. 35. Liao Mingchun, “Guodian Chujian rujia zhuzuo kao,” 72, 74–75.

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Authorship Issues Having noted the similarity of certain concepts in Zhongyong and Xing zi ming chu (in particular the idea that human nature is ordained by heaven), Jiang Guanghui proceeds to argue that because the writing in Zhongyong is more pithy, therefore Xing zi ming chu should be dated earlier than Zhongyong. Moreover, he concludes, since Zhongyong was written by Zisi—an unsubstantiated claim—therefore Xing zi ming chu must also have been written by Zisi. Using similar assumptions, Jiang further identifies Zisi as the author of several other Guodian texts: Qiong da yi shi, Wuxing, Tang Yu zhi dao, Lu Mu gong wen Zisi 魯穆公問子思 (Duke Mu of Lu asks Zisi), Liu de 六德 (Six virtues), and part of Cheng zhi wen zhi 成之聞之.36 Chen Lai, in contrast, argues that Xing zhi ming chu is most likely connected with the Ziyou lineage of Confucius’s disciples or with Gongsun Nizi 公孫尼子.37 In support of this first possibility, he presents two arguments. First, he identifies a passage in the “Tangong” 檀弓 (Sandalwood bow) pian of Liji that evidences some formal features found in a passage in Xing zi ming chu. The passage in the “Tangong” pian is part of a speech attributed to Ziyou. Second, he cites a comment quoted in Liji jiejie 禮記集解 (Collected commentaries on the Record of Rites; compiled by Sun Xidan 孫希旦 [1736–84]), and attributed to the Yuan dynasty scholar Chen Hao 陳澔 (1261–1341), which states that Chen Hao suspected that the “Liyun” pian of Liji had been recorded by disciples of Ziyou. Chen Lai concludes, “Therefore, originally a portion of the Liji ’s content was connected with the Ziyou lineage.” Presumably the implication is that because part of the Liji was attributed to the Ziyou lineage, this increases the likelihood that “Tangong” was also associated with this lineage, which, in turn, also strengthens the possibility that the passage in Xing zi ming chu that shares some features with a passage in the “Tangong” pian was also associated with the Ziyou lineage. In the case of a possible connection with Gongsun Nizi, he presents three arguments. First, because a number of passages in Xing zi ming chu discuss music and sound, as well as the relation between various emotions and the temperament (xing qing 性 情 ), they resemble the “Yue ji” 樂記 (Record of music) pian of Liji. Because Shiji zhengyi 史記正義

( 36. Jiang Guanghui, “Guodian Chujian yu Zisizi,” 83–88. 37. Chen Lai, “Guodian Chujian zhi Xing zi ming chu pian chutan,” 58–59.

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(Correct meaning of the Records of the Historian; compiled by Zhang Shoujie 張守節 [eighth century A.D.]) identifies Gongsun as the author of “Yueji,” Chen concludes “Xing zi ming chu should be connected with Gongsun Nizi.” Second, because Lu Deming 陸德明 (556–627) cited the Liu-Song scholar Liu Huan 劉瓛 (434–89) as having identified Gongsun Nizi as the author of the “Ziyi” 緇衣 ( Jet black robes) pian of Liji, and because a version of Ziyi was recovered at Guodian, Chen maintains that this increases the probability that Gongsun was also the author of Xing zi ming chu. Third, the Han scholar Wang Chong 王充 (27–ca. 100) described Gongsun Nizi’s views on human nature as similar to those of Shi Shuo 世碩 (Shizi 世子), who held that there is good and bad in the nature. According to Chen, this is consistent with the position on human nature described in Xing zi ming chu. Chen’s final position is a combination of these two possibilities: Xing zi ming chu is connected with both Ziyou and Gongsun Nizi, and Gongsun Nizi was possibly a disciple of Ziyou. So as not to leave Zisi out the picture, however, he even proposes “it is very likely that Ziyou, Gongsun Nizi, and Zisi are in the same branch (yixi 一系).”38 Significantly, he denies that there is any evidence in Xing zi ming chu for a doctrine of the innate goodness of human nature. Instead he maintains that the views on human nature in Xing zi ming chu represent a development somewhere between the view of Confucius and those later developed by Mencius and Xunzi. There are a number of problems with Chen’s claims. First, he assumes that the attribution to Ziyou of a speech in “Tangong”—a text edited during the Han—is reliable. Second, based on the reported suspicions of a Yuan dynasty scholar, Chen is prepared not only to accept that the “Liyun” pian of Liji was recorded by disciples of Ziyou but also to speculate that the “Tangong” pian was also connected with the Ziyou lineage. Third, Chen accepts a reported account by an eighth-century scholar about the authorship of the “Yueji” pian of Liji to speculate on the authorship of Xing zi ming chu. Fourth, Chen accepts a reported account by a fifth-century scholar about the authorship of the “Ziyi” pian in Liji to speculate on the authorship of Xing zi ming chu. Fifth, the views on human nature in Xing zi ming chu share more in common with Gaozi than with the views attributed to Shi Shuo. Chen Lai applies similarly questionable methodological assumptions to the authorship of the Guodian text Zun de yi. Zun de yi includes one

( 38. Chen Lai, “Guodian Chujian zhi Xing zi ming chu pian chutan,” 59.

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passage that closely parallels a passage in the Analects; another passage has a close parallel with a passage in the “Ziyi” pian of Liji; and a third resembles a passage in Mencius. In all cases, the passages are attributed to Confucius (either “Zi yue” 子曰 or “Kongzi yue” 孔子曰) in those three texts, but are unattributed in Zun de yi. Chen does not entertain the possibility that the reliability of the attribution of these three passages to Confucius might be questioned, instead concluding that “a rational inference” would be that the entire text of Zun de yi “has an intimate connection with Confucius and may even have been written by Confucius himself.”39

Zisi Zisi has been accorded a pivotal role in the various attempts (historical and contemporary) to establish a link in the transmission of teachings from Confucius to Mencius. Many contemporary mainland scholars (including many senior and/or influential scholars) have shown a surprising willingness to connect Zisi with the Guodian and other texts. In this section, I examine the particular arguments mounted by Li Xueqin because they are shared by a large number of scholars who have contributed to various attempts to affirm traditional accounts of early ru intellectual history. The “Fei shi’er zi” 非十二子 (Contra the twelve masters) pian of Xunzi criticizes Zisi and Mencius for promoting a wu xing 五行 doctrine, but it does not specify the content of the wu xing. Moreover, there is no mention of wu xing in Zhongyong (traditionally attributed to Zisi) and Mencius. Following the discovery of the Wuxing text at Mawangdui, scholars have become convinced that wu xing refers to the virtues of ren 仁, yi 義, li 禮, zhi 智, and sheng 聖.40 Li Xueqin, for example, has identified a number of archaeologically recovered texts as being parts of the lost Zisizi. Among these, he includes Wuxing because in the Mawangdui version of the text a figure named Shizi 世子 is cited twice in the commentary section. Li takes Shizi to be the Shi Shuo 世碩 identified in the Hanshu 漢書 “Treatise on Bibliography” as a second-generation disciple of Confucius and thus falling into the right period of time.41 He

( 39. Chen Lai, “Guodian Chujian rujia jishuo xutan,” 83–84. 40. This influential hypothesis was first developed in Pang Pu, Boshu Wuxing pian yanjiu. 41. Li Xueqin, “XianQin rujia zhuzuo de zhongda faxian,” 16.

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speculates that the text ( jingwen 經文) portion of Wuxing (versions of which were recovered at both Mawangdui and Guodian) was written by Zisi and the commentary portion was recorded by students of Shi Shuo.42 Li further attempts to marshal this evidence to press the case for the traditional attribution of the authorship of Daxue to Zengzi, traditionally regarded as Zisi’s teacher. Presumably the authority for this view is a passage in Mencius (“Li Lou xia” 離樓下); however, the passage in question states simply that Zengzi and Zisi “shared the same way (dao).” The notion of a Zengzi-Zisi-Mencius lineage was perhaps first articulated by Han Yu when he claimed that Mencius was a student of Zisi and that Zisi’s learning probably derived from Zengzi.43 Later, the Cheng brothers further developed this idea by declaring that Zengzi alone had transmitted Confucius’s way (dao), which he transmitted to Zisi, who in turn transmitted it to Mencius. 44 Cheng Yi even claimed that he (Cheng) was the first to have taken up the mantle of transmitting the dao—the learning of the sages—having rediscovered its significance after an extended hiatus since the classical period. Elsewhere, he also includes his elder brother as a transmitter. 45 Zhu Xi affirmed this lineage of transmission, refining it with his own modifications and additions, including coining the term daotong to describe it. As Thomas A. Wilson has shown,46 beginning in the Song and continuing into the Qing dynasty, the concept of daotong was employed as a strategy to confirm certain ru as true transmitters of the way and exclude others on the basis

( 42. Li Xueqin, “Cong jianbo yiji Wuxing tandao Daxue.” More recently Ding Sixin (Guodian Chumu zhujian sixiang yanjiu, 160–68) has advanced similar views. Based on the two comments attributed to “Shizi” 世子 in the commentary part of the Mawangdui version of the Wuxing text, Ding argues that the original Wuxing text was transmitted by “the Shizi school,” rather than “the Si-Meng school.” Ding assumes that Shizi is the same Shi Shuo referred to in the “Ben xing” 本性 (Original nature) pian of Wang Chong’s 王充 (27–ca. 100) Lunheng 論 衡 (Discourses weighed in the balance), and the Hanshu “Treatise on Bibliography.” According to the latter source, Shizi was a second-generation student of Confucius. Ding also speculates that Wuxing is a pian from the lost Shizi recorded in the Hanshu “Treatise on Bibliography.” 43. Han Yu, “Song Wang Xun xiucai xu,” 20.10a. 44. Cheng Hao and Cheng Yi, Er Cheng ji 1: 327. 45. See the passages cited and translated in Bol, “Cheng Yi as a Literatus,” 177. 46. Wilson, Genealogy of the Way.

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that they were propagators of heterodox teachings. The concept continues to be employed for that purpose today.47 Returning to Li Xueqin, he first observes that concepts such as shen du 慎獨 (vigilant solitariness), xiu shen 修身 (cultivating one’s person), and xin min 新民 (renewing the people), which occur in Daxue, also occur in some of the Guodian texts. (In fact, only one of these concepts— shen du—appears in Wuxing, the text most relevant to Li’s argument.) He then notes that Daxue and Wuxing share a text-with-commentary structure (conveniently omitting to mention the fact that the Guodian version of Wuxing lacks a commentary). On the strength of this, he feels confident enough to conclude: “From this it can be seen that those scholars from Song times on who held Daxue and Zhongyong in high esteem—maintaining that they embodied the theoretical ideals of Confucius’s ‘gate of learning’ (Kong men 孔門)—were not without foundation.”48 Elsewhere, he uses a similar method of argument to affirm the traditional attribution of the authorship of Zhongyong to Zisi. According to Li, because traces of the wu xing doctrine can be found in Zhongyong and Mencius, therefore “it can be confirmed that Zhongyong is definitely the work of Zisi.”49 Li Xueqin further argues that the Wuxing text (Mawangdui and Guodian) and the Liu de (Guodian) text share a common source: the Zisizi. The evidence he offers in support of this claim is that (1) the “Liu shu” 六術 (Six methods) pian of Jia Yi’s 賈誼 (201–169 B.C.) Xinshu 新書 (New writings) cites a passage that also occurs in the Mawangdui version of Wuxing; and (2) the “Dao de shuo” 道德說 (Interpreting the way and virtue) pian of Xinshu also cites a passage that occurs in the Guodian text Liu de. There are several problems here. First, it is methodologically unsound to make inferences about a whole text on the basis of one of its passages. Second, even if we were to assume that the two pairs of passages in question derive from a common source text, Li draws a long bow in identifying Zisizi as that text, given our incomplete knowledge of the range of texts extant in the early to mid–Warring States period. Third, the passage in “Liu shu” of Xinshu, which is purportedly based on Wuxing, concerns the list of five forms of conduct (humanness, rightness, ritually appropriate action, wisdom, and sageliness). In the “Liu shu,” however, these five forms of conduct are actually presented as part of a

( 47. See Makeham, “The New Daotong,” in idem, ed., New Confucianism. 48. Li Xueqin, “XianQin rujia zhuzuo de zhongda faxian,” 16. 49. Li Xueqin, Shiluo de wenming, 343.

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larger grouping, referred to as the “six forms of conduct,” thus problematizing the connection with Wuxing. Fourth, the passage in the “Dao de shuo” pian of Xinshu, which is purportedly based on the Guodian text Liu de, concerns a list of six qualities. In “Dao de shuo” these are referred to as the “six patterns” (liu li 六理), yet in Liu de they are referred to as the “six virtues” (liu de 六德). Although this is a minor discrepancy in itself, a comparison of the contents of the two lists reveals not a single item in one list that corresponds with an item on the other list. Similar methodological problems are in evidence in Li’s account of other Guodian texts. I will cite three examples. First, he identifies the version of Ziyi recovered at Guodian (another version of which was subsequently identified in the Shanghai strips) to be part of the Zisizi corpus, based on the authority of a bibliographical note by Shen Yue 沈約 (441–513) and a citation in Yilin 意林 (Forest of selected passages) compiled by Ma Zong 馬總 (d. 823).50 This is despite the fact that we do not know the extent to which the content of the Zisizi in 23 pian recorded in the Hanshu “Treatise on Bibliography” matches the content of the version(s) possibly known to Shen and Ma. (The Suishu bibliography records a volume of the same title in 7 juan.) Second, the Guodian text Cheng zhi wen zhi cites several passages from pian that also occur in Shangshu. Because the content of these passages is said also to occur in Ziyi and because the last part of Cheng zhi wen zhi addresses the topic of “six positions” (liu wei 六位) —a topic that is also in evidence in the Guodian Liu de text—Li infers that Cheng zhi wen zhi should also be included as part of the Zisizi corpus.51 Li does not specify which content of the cited Shangshu passages is purportedly in evidence in Ziyi. Even though the concept of “six positions” (ruler, minister, father, son, husband, and wife) is found in both Ziyi and Cheng zhi wen zhi, this does not constitute sufficient evidence to claim that both texts belong to an original Zisizi text. Third, Li also identifies the Xing zi ming chu text to be part of the original Zisizi because of the similarity he sees between the line “the nature comes from the command; the command descends from heaven” (xing zi ming chu, ming you tian jiang 性自命出, 命由天降) and the Zhongyong passage “What heaven ordains is called the nature; following the

( 50. Li Xueqin, “XianQin rujia zhuzuo de zhongda faxian,” 16. 51. Ding Sixin (Guodian Chumu zhujian sixiang yanjiu, 209) maintains that the most likely author of the Guodian text Xing zi ming chu is either Shizi or Zisi but offers no evidence to support his speculation.

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nature is called the way” (tian ming zhi wei xing, shuai xing zhi wei dao 天命 之謂性, 率性之謂道). Even if we accept the superficial similarity of a decontextualized and partial quotation of the Xing zi ming chu passage with the lines from Zhongyong, above we have already pointed out the problems associated with trying to identify Zisi as the author/compiler of Zhongyong.52 Li Xueqin, of course, is by no means the only scholar who has sought to identify particular Guodian texts as being part of the lost Zisizi,53 although his views have been particularly influential and have provided an authoritative voice for those contemporary promoters of ruxue who wish to confirm the historical existence of a Zisi-Mencius school. Thus, Guo Qiyong feels confident to assert that because versions of the Ziyi, Xing zi ming chu, and Wuxing texts were found at Guodian and among the Shanghai strips, this means that “there is now solid evidence for [the existence of] the Zisi-Mencius school.”54 Li Zehou is one of a minority of mainland scholars55 who has been prepared to buck this trend. He questions the school’s existence and finds evidence in the Guodian texts of thinking that is closer to Gaozi and even Xunzi than to Mencius,56 leading him to speculate that the texts represent a period when the divisions between the different ru factions and lineages (that evolved into the Mencius and Xunzi traditions) were not yet clearly formed. He does, however, note that the emphasis Xunzi placed on ritual and music was shared by early ru and is also evident in the Guodian corpus.57 In a related vein, Liang Tao 梁濤 (History Institute, CASS) has expressed implicit criticism of Pang Pu’s “internally directed” thesis (described above) for separating the moral metaphysics and moral psychology from the ritual side of early ruxue thought, in order to promote the

( 52. Li Xueqin, “XianQin rujia zhuzuo de zhongda faxian,” 16. 53. The Guodian text Lu Mu gong wen Zisi contains a passage stating that Zisi was consistently critical of his ruler’s (Duke Mu of Lu) transgressions/faults. Liao Mingchun (“Guodian Chujian rujia zhuzuo kao,” 72) maintains that this is a real historical record, recorded by students of Zisi, yet offers no evidence to support this claim. 54. Guo Qiyong, “Chutu jianbo yu jingdian quanshi de fanshi wenti,” 81. 55. Since the early 1990s Li has been living and teaching in the United States. Nevertheless he returns regularly to China and continues to publish principally in China. 56. For a related argument in English, see Goldin, After Confucius, 36–65. 57. Li Zehou, “Chudu Guodian zhujian yinxiang jiyao,” 8–9.

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idea of an intellectual orthodoxy associated with the Zisi-Mencius lineage of early ruxue.58 Curiously, however, in regard to another important text, the Analects, Liang has been less critically vigilant.

The Analects Liang Tao argues that the citation in the “Fangji” 坊記 section of Liji of a passage from the Analects proves that the Analects existed some time before 402 B.C. His argument is as follows. The “Kongzi shijia” 孔子世 家 (Hereditary house of Confucius) chapter in Shiji 史記 (Records of the historian) records that Zisi wrote Zhongyong; the Suishu 隋書 “Treatise on Music” cites Shen Yue’s statement that “Zhongyong,” “Biaoji” 表 記, “Fangji,” and “Ziyi” were all pian in the Zisizi. Because versions of Ziyi were discovered at Guodian together with the texts Lu Mu gong wen Zisi (which features passages attributed to Zisi) and Wuxing (which many modern scholars identify with the Zisi-Mencius school), Liang concludes: This shows that Ziyi has some sort of connection with the lost Zisizi. Since Zisi referred to “Lunyu” in his writings [i.e., in “Fangji”], then at the very least, during the lifetime of Zisi, the Lunyu (Analects) already existed as a book. According to the verification of modern scholars, Zisi lived circa 483–402 B.C. Therefore, Lunyu existed as a book no later than 402 B.C.59

In responding to Liang’s account, it should first be reiterated that we do not know the extent to which the content of Zisizi in 23 pian recorded in the Hanshu “Treatise on Bibliography” matches the content of the version known to Shen Yue. Yet even if we were to assume that the four pian listed by Shen Yue were once part of Zisizi, this in no way establishes that the extant version of the “Fangji” (i.e., the version that exists as a pian in Liji ) matches the original version. (Witness the discrepancies between the Guodian and Shanghai Museum versions of Ziyi, on one hand, and the Liji version of “Ziyi,” on the other.) We simply do not know what editorial modifications some original pre-Qin Fangji may have undergone before the end of the Han dynasty. The fact that specific reference to the title “Lunyu” is found in only one passage in only one supposedly pre-Han text (the “Fangji”) surely warrants caution. It should also be pointed out that many other passages that quote Con-

( 58. Liang Tao, “Si-Meng xuepai kaoshu,” 34. 59. Liang Tao, “Dingxian zhujian Lunyu yu Lunyu de chengshu wenti.”

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fucius in “Fangji,” as well as other pian in Liji, use formulas such as “zi yun” 子云 or “Kongzi yue” 孔子曰; “Lunyu yue” 論語曰 is used nowhere else.60 Yang Chaoming has also sought to establish an early date for the formation of the Analects as a book, arguing that because Mencius cites passages from the Analects, therefore the Analects must have been in existence before Mencius. (He does not address the question of when the different strata of Mencius were compiled and when Mencius was finally compiled as a book.) It is, of course, reasonable to identify Mencius as a work most likely to cite the Analects should the Analects have already attained the status of a book or a unique collection of records before Mencius was compiled. As I have argued elsewhere, if Lunyu were already a book or unique collection of records when Mencius was compiled, one would expect it to be quoted extensively, yet of the twenty-eight passages in Mencius which begin with “Kong Zi yue” or “Zhongni yue,” a mere eight are found in the received Lunyu. Of these eight only one is identical with the received text; of the other seven, one is slightly different while of the other six, the wording is so different that even if it were granted that they were quotations from a proto-Lunyu corpus that was then in existence, clearly between then and the end of the Western Han the contents of that corpus underwent significant editing. Yet rather than postulating a proto-Lunyu corpus that underwent significant editing, it is more reasonable to attribute all twenty-eight passages to a collection or, more probably, a number of collections of Confucius’ sayings that were already in existence when Mencius was written.61

It might be further noted that nowhere does Mencius refer to a text called “Lunyu.” Yang accepts that Mencius was born in 372 B.C. and that Confucius’s reputedly youngest disciple, Zengzi, died in 428. Because Analects 8.3 describes Zengzi, on his deathbed, instructing his own disciples, Yang insists that the Analects must have been compiled between 428 and 372 B.C. (Yang, of course, assumes that Analects 8.3 must have been an integral part of an “original” Analects.) He further argues that with the discovery

( 60. This supports Takeuchi Yoshio’s 武内義雄 hypothesis (Eki to Chūyō no kenkyū, 127) that the “Fangji” reference to Lunyu is a case of a marginal annotation being copied into the text. Thus even if some original version of “Fangji” did predate the Han, it would remain an open possibility (and quite a strong one given that we have no record of a redaction of the Liji before the close of the first century B.C.) that the marginal annotation was not pre-Han. 61. Makeham, “On the Formation of Lunyu as a Book,” 15–16.

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of the Guodian corpus, the date for the compilation of the Analects can be pushed toward the beginning of this sixty-year period. First, he takes it as an established fact that several of the “rujia” texts in that corpus belong to the now-lost Zisizi. Second, because one of these texts, Fangji, cites the Analects (Lunyu) by name, the Analects must already have been in existence before Zisizi was compiled. Third, in the group of sayings scholars have named Yucong 語叢 3 (Collection of sayings, no. 3), passages have been identified as having matching passages in the Analects. The first (strip 51)62 has been reconstructed as 志於道。據於德。立於 仁。遊於藝.63 Yang concurs with the view that this is Analects 7.6. The second (strip 65A)64 has been reconstructed as 勿意。勿固。勿我。勿 必. Yang concurs with the view that this is Analects 9.4. Based on these three arguments, he concludes that prior to 300 B.C. (the approximate date of the tombs in which the Guodian strips were found) the Analects circulated in the state of Chu; that Zisi cited the Analects in his writings; that because Zisi lived sometime between 491 and 400 B.C., therefore the Analects could not have been compiled later than 400 B.C. nor earlier than 428 B.C. In the second half of the article, Yang adduces a range of questionable arguments to claim that it was, in fact, Zisi who compiled the Analects.65 There are several main problems with Yang’s argument. In regard to the first point, the conviction that the “rujia” texts in the Guodian corpus belong to the now-lost Zisizi seems to be widely accepted only within the Chinese scholarly community. Although there are reasonable grounds for speculating that texts such as Zhongyong and Daxue may once have belonged to a body of writing called Zisizi, the extent to which the received versions of those texts resemble their original versions is unknown. There are no similar reasonable grounds for extending this speculation to the disparate body of writings known as “Yucong 3.” Yang’s second point assumes that the received version of Fangji (transmitted as a pian in Liji, “Fangji”), which does cite the Analects by name, is faithful to some hypothesized fourth-century B.C. text, yet ignores the fact that no version of Fangji was recovered at Guodian.66 No

( 62. Jingmen shi bowuguan, ed., Guodian Chumu zhujian, 211. 63. See, e.g., Li Xueqin’s analysis in his “Yucong yu Lunyu,” 4–6. 64. Jingmen shi bowuguan, ed., Guodian Chumu zhujian, 212. 65. Yang Chaoming, Rujia wenxian yu zaoqi ruxue yanjiu, 34. 66. Li Xueqin (“Yucong yu Lunyu,” 6–7) cites a passage from the Guodian text, “Yucong 1,” which he claims has a close match with a line in the received

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mention is made of the scholarship that argues that Liji (in which it is presumed that the received version of “Fangji” was transmitted in the pre-Qin period) was edited during the Han, and that this may account for the anomalous reference to Lunyu in the “Fangji” pian of Liji. As for the third point, the text of Analects 7.6 reads: 子曰: 志於道。 據於德。立於仁。遊於藝 and Analects 9.4 reads: 子絕四: 勿意､勿必､ 勿固､勿我. In both cases, the Analects version attributes the passages to Confucius (whereas in the Yucong 3 version, they are attributed to no one, much less identified as passages from the Analects). In the case of 9.4, there are several other noticeable textual inconsistencies. Yang ignores these issues and does not contemplate the possibility that the Analects may not have existed prior to 300 B.C.; or that the apparent direction of the textual borrowing is from Yucong 3 to the Analects rather than vice versa; or that both passages ultimately derive from a third source that predated both of them.67 Of course, not all Chinese scholars insist that apparent textual borrowing must be from some fifth- or fourth-century redaction of the Analects. Li Ling cites the instructive example of Analects 13.2 and a passage in Zhonggong 仲弓—one of the Chu texts now in the collection of the Shanghai Museum—to demonstrate the strong possibility that our received version of the Analects, in part or whole, consists of passages extracted or digested from texts that are themselves assorted collections of sayings and records of events and people.68 Li’s openness on this issue, however, is not widely shared. Thus, although many Chinese scholars would concur with Du Weiming that “with the excavation of the Guodian Chu tomb strips, the history of Chinese philosophy and the

( “Fangji.” Even if we ignore the differences between the two passages (the “Yucong” passage is considerably briefer than the “Fangji” passage), the occurrence of this passage in a miscellaneous assortment of passages with no indication of its provenance cannot be used to sustain Li’s assertion that the “Yucong” passage was extracted from “Fangji.” 67. That this particular Analects passage may have been borrowed from a text that was excavated at Guodian or that both passages ultimately derive from a third source that predated both of them applies equally to such cases as the apparent textual parallels between Analects 15.2 and a passage in the Guodian text Qiong da yi shi, and between Analects 15.6 and a passage in Zhong xin zhi dao. Despite this, and with no evidence to support the claim, scholars such as Zhou Fengwu 周鳳五 (“Guodian Chujian Zhong xin zhi dao kaoshi”) insist that the Zhong xin zhi dao passage must have derived from the Analects passage. 68. Li Ling, Jianbo gushu yu xueshu yuanliu, 298–99, 324.

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history of Chinese scholarship need to be completely rewritten,” attempts to date certain texts to a period later than their traditionally accepted dates of composition are not what they have in mind. Consider the views of Guo Yi concerning a number of texts he attributes to Zengzi. In his prize-winning monograph, Guo asserts that because the latest historical event to be referred to in the Analects is Zengzi’s death (Guo dates this to 436 B.C. but does not explain why), “therefore that year can be established as the earliest date that the Analects was compiled.” Guo dates the whole text on the basis of one “section” (zhang 章) in the Analects. He identifies 402 B.C. as the latest year that the text could have been compiled because “Fangji is Zisi’s record of Confucius’s sayings and Zizi died in 402 B.C.”69 Guo accepts that Fangji (together with Zhongyong, Biaoji, and Ziyi ) was compiled by Zisi and that the passages citing Confucius in Fangji (based on the content of the received “Fangji” in Liji ) were recorded by Zisi. (His authority for these claims is a passage in Kong congzi 孔叢子 [The Kong family masters’ anthology], a work quite possibly of late Eastern Han provenance.)70 He insists that Lunyu must have been in existence already during the lifetime of Zisi because “Fangji” cites Lunyu by name. Guo further explains that the general principle Zisi adopted in compiling these works was to provide a record of Confucius’s remarks and sayings that had not been recorded in the Analects.71 As such, these records have a value just as great as the Analects in that they, too, preserve a veritable record of Confucius’s sayings.72

Concluding Remarks In this chapter, I have shown how the “explaining antiquity” attitude adopted by many Chinese scholars has been employed to reaffirm traditional accounts of early ru intellectual history. I have also noted the involvement of the ICA and senior scholars in highlighting the ru dimension of archaeologically recovered texts, as well as efforts to reconstruct the so-called Si-Meng school. This new orthodoxy has clearly been

( 69. Guo Yi, Guodian zhujian yu XianQin xueshu sixiang, 23. 70. For the argument that the book was actually written by Wang Su 王肅 (195–256), see Ariel, K’ung-Ts’ung-Tzu. 71. Guo explains that because Zisi regarded Analects 1.11 to be such an important passage he made an exception to his general rule in this one case. 72. Guo Yi, Guodian zhujian yu XianQin xueshu sixiang, 334, 339.

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stimulated by the ascendancy of ru thought more generally in the academy over the past decade or more. In particular, as noted above, “with Mencius serving as the ‘spiritual’ forebear of the New Confucians and those influenced by New Confucian writings on ‘the learning of the mind and the nature’ (xin xing zhi xue), it is understandable why Du and other likeminded scholars should seek to find in the Guodian materials evidence to support the existence of a Si-Meng school and to identify certain texts with that school.” With senior scholars such as Li Xueqin and Pang Pu also taking the lead in promoting the supposed vindication of traditional accounts of early ru intellectual history and genealogical legitimacy, it is perhaps understandable why more junior colleagues have been willing to acquiesce to their teachers and mentors. Equally significant is cultural nationalism. More than any other scholar, Li Xueqin has played a leading role in promoting the “explaining antiquity” movement since the early 1990s. A strong element of cultural nationalism motivates the central role Li accords ruxue in articulating an “unbroken tradition of 5,000 years of Chinese culture.” From 1996 to 2000 Li served as the director of the controversial Xia-ShangZhou Chronology Project (AKA Sandai Project), funded as a key project under the Ninth Five-Year Plan (1996–2000). The goal of the project was to provide firm historical dates for the succession of these three dynasties. By providing historical dates for the Xia “dynasty” (the historical existence of which has yet to be established), not only were traditional accounts of the existence of the Xia dynasty given a renewed legitimacy, moreover it was implied (and widely believed) that the veracity of traditional accounts concerning even earlier periods and rulers would thereby be bolstered.73 As such, it is quite consistent with Li’s broader “explaining antiquity” agenda to encourage the view that traditional accounts of early ru intellectual history, genealogies, and texts should no longer be dismissed as necessarily unreliable because earlier generations of scholars sought to discredit them. In August 2005, at the launch of the first volumes of

( 73. In this connection it is worth noting the recent interest in the Neolithic Taosi site, now popularly identified as the capital of the (hitherto!) legendary rulers, Yao and Shun. See, e.g., Wang Xiaoyi and Ding Jinlong, “Cong Taosi yizhi de kaogu xin faxian kan Yao Shun shanrang.” I am grateful to Paul Rakita Goldin for this reference.

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Sichuan University’s version of the ru canon (ruzang 儒藏),74 Li made the following comments: Undoubtedly the core of China’s traditional culture is ruxue. If we seek to revive Chinese culture, then ruxue should be the main focus. In my view, since Qing times people have developed a trend that I cannot endorse. The trend has been to divide ruxue into various factions (menhu 門戶) such as Han Learning, Song Learning, the New Han Learning of the Qing dynasty, and the division of Qing dynasty ruxue into New Text school and Old Text school. This emphasis on the development of factions has been at the expense of overlooking the interconnectedness of the unbroken development of China’s traditional culture. This is something worth paying attention to in future academic research. Only by seeing the continuity of traditional culture with ruxue as its core are we able to see the interconnectedness and longevity of 5,000 years of Chinese culture.75

Li’s views are noteworthy both because of his standing in the academic community and because of what they reveal about the role of ruxue in his cultural nationalist vision. Finally, to avoid being charged with excessive stereotyping, it is perhaps appropriate to cite again the views of Li Ling, to remind us that individual scholars can, and do, adopt a variety of positions when it comes to dating and interpreting particular texts.76 Thus Li Ling disagrees with those77 who assert that the Guodian materials confirm that it was the thinkers associated with Song-Ming lixue who discovered the true origins of ruxue. First, he argues, moral concerns (later associated with the “learning of the mind and the nature”) were but one dimension of Confucius’s thought and early ru thought more generally; nor were they the “mainstream” of early ru thought. For Li, another key dimension was due regard for practical achievements. Second, from the Warring States to the Han period, the core concern of ruxue was politics; it was also a key dimension of Confucius’s thought. Third, the daotong

( 74. In a curious example of free market competition, Sichuan University, Renmin University, and Beijing University are currently each compiling their own ru canons. Sichuan University’s project is the most advanced. In 2005 it published the first 50 volumes of a projected set comprising more than 500 volumes. 75. Li Xueqin, “Li Xueqin zai Ruzang shoufashishang de fayan.” 76. For critical Chinese perspectives on the Sandai Project (and Li Xueqin’s role in the project), see “Guanyu Xia-Shang-Zhou gongcheng de taolun.” 77. E.g., Li Xueqin, “Guodian Chujian yu rujia jingji,” 77–78.

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theory of the Song ru concealed the principal dimension of Confucius’s thought, thereby “transforming a side-stream into the mainstream.” Li complains that a situation has now arisen in which people focus exclusively on those aspects of the Guodian texts supporting the view that the original concern of the early rujia was the way of heaven, the mind, and the nature, and issues of “transcendence,” while overlooking the fact that the Guodian corpus represents but a fraction of early rujia writings. He cites the example of the Shanghai Museum Chu tomb strips in support of his claim that “the features of the early rujia were much more complex than this. Moreover, even if we include the Shanghai strips [in our assessment] they, too, are but one part of the overall picture.”78 This, surely, is closer to the ru ideal of balanced adjudication. The next chapter is a study of the how certain senior scholars sought to impose other kinds of ideological constraints—in particular, methodological principles favored by various Marxist intellectual historians— on ruxue studies during the 1990s and the fate of scholars who were judged to identify too closely with rujia values.

( 78. Li Ling, Guodian Chujian jiaodu ji, 5–6.

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11 Marxism and Ruxue

This chapter opens with an overview of changing critical perspectives on ruxue’s role in the so-called sinicization of Marxism in China, beginning in the latter half of the 1980s with some of the more provocative views and moving on to more concerted proposals during the 1990s that explored the pros and cons, as well as the possibility, of a ruxue-Marxist synthesis. The following section introduces methodological principles favored by various Marxist intellectual historians to effect such a synthesis—or at least to deal with the legacy of ruxue: abstract inheritance, selecting the constant way, critical transcendence, critical inheritance, and synthetic creation. The practical consequences of some of the more influential of these methodologies are then highlighted with reference to Fang Keli’s role as project leader of two major research projects on New Confucianism and his criticism of the so-called mainland New Confucians Luo Yijun and Jiang Qing. The final section explores the question of whether the category of mainland New Confucians is equivalent to a fourth generation of New Confucians.

Ruxue “Panmoralism” and the Sinicization of Chinese Marxism Challenging Yu Yingshi’s likening of modern ruxue to a wandering spirit or a disembodied soul, nearly fifty years ago Joseph Levenson observed: “Some compulsion seems to exist in many quarters to see Chinese communism not, indeed, as a foreign creed tamed down to traditional Chinese specifications . . . but as Confucianism with another name and another skin but the same perennial spirit. Canonical texts and canonical texts, bureaucratic intellectual elite and bureaucratic intellectual elite—

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nothing has changed, allegedly—except, possibly everything?”1 In the latter half of the 1980s, Jin Guantao, Bao Zunxin, Gan Yang, and others rekindled the debate on Chinese Marxism’s affinities with ruxue. Bao’s position was the most extreme. He claimed that “treating matters of thought and culture completely as ideological concerns and stressing the function of ideology lead to politico-ethical principles’ limiting all spheres of social activity and politico-ethical value orientations’ becoming the guiding principles for controlling all human activities. These are the fundamental characteristics of ruxue ethico-centrism.” He finds an expression of this thinking in Mao Zedong’s dictum: “It is whether an ideological line and political line are correct that determines everything.”2 Elsewhere Bao elaborated on what he meant by this characterization: The theoretical form of rujia thought underwent several changes after the Han, but its ethico-centric focus on “the three cardinal norms, five constant virtues, and moral teachings” ( gangchang ming jiao) never changed. . . . Rujia ethicocentrism was the main principle integrating traditional Chinese culture. . . . All external affairs and achievement had to be subsumed within the norms of the three cardinal guides and the five constant virtues for their significance to be acknowledged. These included the standards for determining right and wrong and aesthetic appeal. . . . Rujia ethico-centrism constituted the fundamental characteristic of the structure of traditional culture and was the main mechanism for regulating the value system of traditional culture. The normative prescriptions for ordering human relations encoded in the formula of the three cardinal norms and five constant virtues, as well as the norms of ritual propriety and etiquette, became the core of traditional Chinese culture. The rujia classics were the formal embodiment of this core.3

Characterizing ruxue and rujia thought as forms of ethico-centrism (lunli benwei 倫理本位) became quite popular in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Fu Weixun and Wei Zhengtong (often characterized as representatives of “the liberal” camp by New Confucian partisans) criticized ruxue for its dominant “panmoralism” (fandaodezhuyi 泛道德主義).4 This

( 1. Levenson, Confucian China and Its Modern Fate, 162. Much more recently, Thomas A. Metzger (A Cloud Across the Pacific, 348) has opined that in recent years on the mainland it has become “almost a cliché to view Maoism and the Confucian tradition as a single if evolving paradigm.” 2. Bao Zunxin, “Ruxue chuantong yu dangdai Zhongguo,” 28. 3. Bao Zunxin, “Rujia sixiang he xiandaihua,” 9, 10. 4. As it happens, Mou, in his Zhengdao yu zhidao (57–62), had already used the term fanzhengzhizhuyi 泛政治主義 to refer to Chinese liberals (such as Hu Shi)

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term has the sense of privileging “moral knowledge” (dexing zhi zhi 德性 之知; akin to innate moral consciousness [liang zhi 良知] as interpreted by Wang Yangming) over “empirical knowledge” (wen jian zhi zhi 聞見 之知).5 According to Wei Zhengtong: It oversteps and exaggerates the proper status of moral consciousness, letting it invade other cultural domains (such as literature, politics, and economics), taking on the role of master, and forcing the basic nature of these other cultural domains to take on a very secondary status. As its ultimate goal, it seeks to transform different forms of cultural expression into the service of morality to serve as tools for the expression of morality.

Wei identifies five characteristics of traditional ruxue panmoralism: (1) it privileges a priori principles; (2) it emphasizes the transcendent, absolute nature of the mind and the nature (xin xing); (3) it appeals to intuition as the basis for moral judgments; (4) it maintains that moral attainments rely solely on individual enlightenment; and (5) it pays scant attention to the difficulties people encounter in real life. Where the New Confucians differ from traditional rujia—even though they still are inclined to panmoralism—is that they have transformed panmoralism into a moral idealism. New Confucian moral idealism acknowledges that cultural activities such as democracy and science have their own unique domains and unique principles of development. “However, they still insist that moral idealism or moral subjectivity is the root of all cultural creativity and that other cultural activities beyond the domain of morality must take the moral subject as their transcendent basis.”6

( who sought to affirm democracy by advocating merely theoretical arguments while ignoring its roots in moral reasoning. 5. Fu Weixun, “Rujia sixiang de shidai keti ji qi jiejue xiansuo,” 29. 6. Wei Zhengtong, Rujia yu xiandai Zhongguo, 85, 25–31, 189. Fu Weixun (“Shilun rujia sixiang ziwo zhuanzhe yu weilai fazhan,” 44) is similarly critical of ruxue panmoralism on the grounds that it renders ruxue incapable of adjusting to democratic liberalization and pluralism. He singles out Mou Zongsan for an intellectual insularity premised on the belief in the inherent superiority of ruxue and Chineseness (Hua-Xia). “In regard to Western thought (both philosophical and religious), the older generations of representative New Confucians mostly made references to an extremely small number of Western thinkers such as Kant, Bergson, Whitehead, Kierkegaard, and Heidegger. Their purpose was nothing other than to pick fault with and criticize the limited nature of Western thought so as to sing the praises of Chinese ruxue’s ‘superior position’ ( youwei 優位).” Li Minghui (“Lun suowei ‘rujia de daodezhuyi’ ”), after twenty pages (188– 208) of citing examples to counter the claim that traditional ruxue did not

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In support of the claim that “the sinicization of Marxism has led to the legitimation of the ruxue tradition under the name of Marxism and Leninism,” 7 Bao Zunxin further maintains that individual rujia from Confucius and Mencius to Lu Jiuyuan and Wang Yangming consistently placed humans in a net of human relations. When removed from this net of relations, humans had no independent position or value. A person’s individual character was dissolved within the status hierarchies of the norms of ritual propriety: superior and inferior, elder and younger, noble and base. Only by adhering to the status hierarchies of the norms of ritual propriety could individuals affirm their own identity. In terms of the relationship between people and society, it was the social group that was the standard. Similarly, both Mao’s ideas on “ideological revolution” and Liu [Shaoqi’s] “Self-cultivation” [i.e., Liu’s essay “On the Self-cultivation of Communist Party Members” (“Lun gongchandangyuan de xiuyang” 論共產黨員的修養)] gave particular emphasis to collectivism, in which the social group was the standard for determining the relationship between people and society.

Bao then proceeds to describe Marxism in contemporary China as a modern form of classical studies (jingxue).8 Jin Guantao also singled out Liu Shaoqi’s “On the Self-cultivation of Communist Party Members” (hereafter “Self-cultivation”), to support his thesis that in the 1930s Marxism in China underwent a profound change, namely, the “Confucianization” (ruxuehua 儒學化) of Marxism, which enabled it to become the ruling ideology. According to Jin, whereas the “classics” of Marxism-Leninism emphasize the need to transform ( gaizao 改造) the world, Liu’s creative contribution in “Selfcultivation” was to emphasize the role of personal transformation (based on rujia ethical constructs) as the basis for social transformation and to make this the theoretical core of his self-cultivation thesis. The thrust of this theoretical “gravitational realignment” was to focus attention on the moral qualities (ren de pinzhi 人的品質) of Marx and Lenin as individuals rather than on the truths of Marxism-Leninism, so that one could “correct one’s stance” and “purify one’s thought.”9 After June 1989,

( exhibit the character of a strong form of panmoralism, concedes that whether it be in the intellectual, political, or economic spheres “all traditional rujia adopted moral values as their ultimate basis” (209). 7. Bao Zunxin, “Ruxue chuantong yu dangdai Zhongguo,” 27. 8. Ibid., 29. 9. Jin Guantao, “Dangdai Zhongguo Makesizhuyi de rujiahua,” 154, 155, 159, 162. Jin’s essay was written in 1988.

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the expression of these critical views was no longer tolerated on the mainland.10

Ruxue-Marxist Synthesis? During the first half of the 1990s, a more conciliatory mode of discourse developed: scholars formulated various proposals for some sort of ruxueMarxist synthesis but generally aroused little controversy or interest. In 1991, Tang Yijie, for example, wrote that ruxue needed to absorb elements of Marxism so that it might become “enriched,” just as Marxism needed to combine with elements of traditional culture so that it can become a sinicized Marxism.11 Intellectual historian Cai Fangli 蔡方鹿 (Sichuan Academy of Social Sciences) outlined a more detailed proposal, claiming that exploring the points of compatibility between ruxue and Marxism “is to critically inherit traditional culture, enabling it to become a key link in serving modernization and the establishment of socialist psycho-spiritual civilization.”12 To this end, he identified the following points of compatibility between ruxue and Marxism respectively: people-as-the-foundation thought (minben sixiang 民本思想) and the liberation of humanity; the Great Unity (datong 大同) ideal and the ultimate goal of communism; selflessness/impartiality (dagong wusi 大公無私) and the concepts of public ownership and collectivism; the emphasis on the way (dao) and the emphasis on natural and social laws;13 dialectical thought and dialectics; and the unity of knowledge and action and of theory and praxis: In “On Practice,” Mao Zedong adopted all the positive achievements of the ruxue doctrine of the unity of knowledge and action and, moreover, subjected them to modification and sublation. Having criticized the mistakes of various forms of idealism and metaphysics, he combined the doctrine of the unity of knowledge and action with the realities of China’s revolution. Advancing the

( 10. Views sympathetic to both the Marxist content and the ruxue content of Liu Shaoqi’s essay were not affected by the change in political climate. See, e.g., Song Zhongfu et al., Ruxue zai xiandai Zhongguo, 257–62. 11. Tang Yijie, “Ruxue de xiandaihua wenti,” 45–46. 12. Cai Fanglu, “Ruxue yu Makesizhuyi de qihechu ji qi zai dangdai xin wenhuazhong de weizhi,” 6. 13. Ibid., 9: “The tradition of China’s ancient rujia to emphasize the way and Marxism’s emphasis on laws ( guilü 規律) have some similar points. This is one of the reasons advanced Chinese (xianjin de Zhongguoren 先進的中國人) who were living on the cultural soil of China found it easy to accept Marxism.”

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dialectical materialist view of the unity of knowledge and action enabled the doctrine to become a powerful ideological weapon for the people to know and to modify the world. This very fact evidences a point of compatibility between ruxue thinking on the unity of knowledge and action and the principles by which Marxist philosophical theory connects with reality.14

In the mid-1990s, with the debates surrounding National Studies and “ruxue fever,” the relationship between ruxue and Marxism re-emerged as a contentious issue. This development was ideologically charged because of the fear in some quarters that ruxue and National Studies represented a threat to Marxist orthodoxy and to socialism in China. According to Zheng Jiadong: After 1989, although the liberal camp suffered a setback, research on and the promotion of traditional culture were unaffected. On the contrary, due to the encouragement received from the authorities and from the international arena, research on traditional culture prospered and gradually became an influence, ambience, and force. At that point, some people explicitly raised the issue of a “subtle connection” between the “fad of returning to the cultural past” and the “declining interest in Marxism.” They also pointed out that they “did not rule out the possibility that some people were plotting to use the suspect concept of ‘National Studies’ to achieve their goal of renouncing socialism’s new culture as alien to Chinese culture.”15

It was against this broader background that concerned parties started to organize a number of meetings, symposia, and conferences to reexamine the question of the compatibility of ruxue and Marxism. One of the earliest forums to bring Marxist theoreticians and ruxue apologists together was an academic symposium (Makesizhuyi he ruxue xueshu yantaohui 馬 克 思 主 義 和 儒 學 學 術 研 討 會 ) in December 1995, coconvened by the Central Party School (Zhonggong zhongyang dangxiao 中國中央黨校) and the China Confucius Foundation. The three-day symposium was organized around three themes: How could ruxue be critically inherited and passed on under the guidance of Marxism?; What summary lessons could be drawn from critiques of ruxue since the May Fourth period?; and How should the relationship between socialism with Chinese characteristics and traditional Chinese culture be understood? The two opening essays in the published conference volume16

( 14. Ibid., 6–9. 15. Zheng Jiadong, “Dangdai xin ruxue de xin shiming,” 19. 16. Cui Longshui and Ma Zhenfeng, eds., Makesizhuyi yu ruxue.

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were by Zhang Dainian and Zhu Bokun, both stalwarts of the Academy of Chinese Culture and both committed Marxists. Reports to the wider academic community on the proceedings of the symposium tended to be critical. The earliest summary report, by Central Party School comparative philosopher Qiao Qingju 喬清舉, concluded that one of the problems with the symposium was that there was not even the basis for a common understanding of whether ruxue was a feudal ideology or a cultural legacy that should be carried on.17 Zheng Jiadong was critical of the symposium for its lack of meaningful dialogue and for the common portrayal of ruxue as the “traditional ideology of a feudal society.” He noted a tendency in many papers to describe rujia thought as a feudal vestige and to deny that it “contains universal values ( putong jiazhi 普通價值) that transcend specific historical and temporal [contextualization].” He also faulted those at the symposium who represented ruxue for claiming that ruxue and Marxism are able to supplement one another but not showing how this might be achieved.18 This last criticism might also be applied to some of the various proposals for a kind of ruxue-Marxist synthesis that proliferated around the same period. Zhao Zongzheng 趙宗正 and Chen Qizhi 陳啟智 (both at the Shandong Academy of Social Sciences), for example, argued for the possibility of a Marxist New Confucianism on the flimsy premise that ruxue has shown that it can be combined with analytic philosophy, Hegelian philosophy, and Kantian philosophy.19 One of the arguments

( 17. Qiao Qingju, “ ‘Makesizhuyi he ruxue’ xueshu yantaohui shuyao,” 128. 18. Zheng Jiadong, “Jin wushi nian lai dalu ruxue de fazhan ji qi xianzhuang,” 43–44. The following remarks by Central Party School philosopher Liu Hongzhang 劉宏章 (“Guanyu Makesizhuyi yu rujia wenhua zhi jian guanxi de sikao,” 8–10) illustrate Zheng’s point: “Marxism is a product of Western culture. In relation to China, it is a foreign culture. If China’s revolution and reconstruction need to rely on the guidance of Marxism, then the problem arises of how Marxism can combine with the concrete reality of China, that is, of how the sinicization of Marxism will be realized.” Liu identifies two aspects to the process whereby Marxism “combines with the concrete reality of China”: combining Marxist theory with (1) the practical reality of China’s revolution and reconstruction and (2) the practical reality of the “traditional culture of our nation.” Both aspects need to be realized so that Marxism and ruxue can be enriched. He cites the following as examples of areas in which rujia culture can contribute to the enrichment of Marxism: interhuman relations; theories on the unity of heaven and human; and theories on managing the country and society. 19. Zhao Zongzheng and Chen Qizhi, “Ruxue de fazhan fangxiang yu weilai mingyun,” 184–85.

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regularly made by pro-synthesizers was that Marxism needed to be sinicized, a view consistent with Mao Zedong Thought20 and the more recent call for “socialism with Chinese characteristics.” At the height of the National Studies debate in 1995, intellectual historian Qian Xun 錢遜 (Qinghua University) argued that Marxism and traditional culture need one another because “if, in its development in China, Marxism wants to become sinicized, then it must combine with traditional Chinese culture and absorb the excellent parts of that culture.”21 A year later he advocated a combination of Marxism, ruxue, and “China’s splendid traditional culture modeled on Confucius’s dictum of ‘harmony but not conformity’ [Analects 13.23].” “One aspect would be the modernization of ruxue; the other aspect would be the sinicization of Marxism. Each would be enriched, developed, and together with other elements would constitute China’s new culture under the guidance of Marxism.”22 Yet given the continued “guiding” role of Marxism in China, it is difficult not to imagine a degree of conformity being required, a point made more explicit in other proposals. After describing how ruxue was able to change over the course of history to adapt to different social contexts and political needs, literary historian Chen Youbing 陳友冰 (Anhui Academy of Social Sciences) insisted:

( 20. See, e.g., Mao Zedong’s comments in “Zhongguo Gongchandang zai minzu zhanzhengzhong de diwei,” 928: Communist Party members are international Marxists, but Marxism needs to be expressed through a national (minzu) form in order for it to be realized. There is no such thing as abstract Marxism; there is only concrete Marxism. So-called concrete Marxism is Marxism expressed through a national form. It is to apply Marxism to the concrete struggle of the concrete Chinese context; it is not to apply it in an abstract way. As members of this great Chinese nation whose ties to it are bound in flesh and blood, should party members discuss Marxism without reference to the special characteristics of China, then this would merely be an abstract and empty Marxism. Accordingly, the sinification of Marxism enables Marxism in its every expression to embody Chinese characteristics. This is to say, the issue of applying Marxism in accordance with China’s special characteristics has become a pressing problem that requires all party members to understand and solve. 21. These comments were made in an article consisting of a series of responses to the critics of National Studies under the title “Chuantong wenhua wenti bitan,” 12. 22. Qian Xun, “Ruxue de liang chong xing,” 12.

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Today and in the future, if traditional Chinese culture, as represented by ruxue, seeks to survive and develop in China, its place of origin, then it must rely on the institution of socialism, accept the leadership of Marxism, reform traditional ruxue by developing what is positive and discarding what is negative so that it becomes the “characteristic” part of “socialism with Chinese characteristics,” and also supplement the universal truths of Marxism in concrete practice.23

Accentuate the Positive, Eliminate the Negative Chinese Marxist theoreticians of different persuasions have developed and refined a variety of methodologies to assist in the task of “developing what is positive and discarding what is negative.” Perhaps the oldest and most enduring formulation of this paradigm is “remove the dross and select the refined” (qu zao qu jing 去糟取精). This dictum was enunciated by Mao Zedong in 1940, in reference to ancient Chinese culture.24 In 1947, He Lin—who is regarded by some contemporary mainland scholars as a New Confucian—gave a more detailed account of the idea: Identifying with a subjectivity based on the spirit of freedom or rationality, we should absorb and assimilate foreign cultures and past cultures, but at the same time rise above them to develop what is positive and discard what is negative. We must do our utmost to select the finest from all that is available and study and grasp what is essential. We must not only inherit the legacy of Chinese culture but we must also inherit the legacy of Western culture, internalizing it so that it becomes material for our own rationality. . . . I am utterly opposed to passive “Westernization” (xihua 西化), but I approve of actively “transforming the Western” (hua xi 化西). What I mean by “transforming the Western” is actively and consciously absorbing and assimilating the culture that the West already has, yet rising above it to develop what is positive and discard what is negative.25

This basic methodological principle is accepted and promoted by many influential scholars of Chinese philosophy and intellectual history in China today. The following comments by Beijing University Yijing specialist (and one of the original members of the Academy of Chinese Culture) Zhu Bokun are representative of this view:

( 23. Chen Youbing, “ ‘Ruxue re’ de leng sikao,” 6. 24. Mao Zedong, “Xin minzhuzhuyi,” 668. 25. He Lin, Wenhua yu rensheng, 35–36.

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In talking about the modern value of ruxue, it comes down to a question of choice of values. The standard for this choice is what we commonly refer to as the “refined” and “dross.” How should the refined and dross be differentiated? In my opinion there is only one measure: whether something is able to promote the development of socially productive forces and so enable China to join the ranks of the advanced industrialized nations and then move on to overtake the Western industrialized nations and so realize our great aspiration of rejuvenating China (Zhonghua). Accordingly, all those concepts and propositions in ruxue that are beneficial to pursuing this course are the “refined” and those that are not are the “dross.”26

Abstract Inheritance “Abstract inheritance” (chouxiang jicheng 抽象繼承) is another variation of “developing what is positive and discarding what is negative.” It refers to a theory Feng Youlan proposed in 1957 for addressing the issue of inheriting traditional culture, in particular moral values. According to Feng, traditional philosophical propositions can be viewed from two aspects: specific and abstract. If viewed from the specific aspect, many of these propositions can no longer be judged to be sound. In terms of their abstract significance, however, they are worth inheriting.27 For example, a particular text used to educate young children in premodern China may no longer be seen as appropriate in a modern curriculum, but the “abstract” value of texts as an aid to learning is still valid. (Feng still appears not to have exorcised Plato’s ghost.) Among Feng’s many critics of the time, Zhang Dainian asserted that Feng’s notion of abstract inheritance was metaphysical in outlook—a cardinal sin in the eyes of materialist philosophers.28 I will return to Zhang Dainian shortly. Here it needs simply to be noted that during the 1990s a number of scholars still subscribed to “abstract inheritance” in substance if not in name, when defending the “abstract” or “general” validity of a number of concepts traditionally associated with the rujia.29 For example, on the opening page of their volume on Marxism and ruxue, authors Zhang Tengxiao 張騰霄 and Zhang Xianzhong 張憲中 (both at Renmin University) write:

( 26. Zhu Bokun, “Guanyu ruxue de xiandai jiazhi wenti de jidian yijian,” 20–21. 27. Feng Youlan, “Guanyu Zhongguo zhexue yichan de jicheng wenti.” 28. See the discussion in Louie, Inheriting Tradition, 41–61. 29. See, e.g., Xin Guanjie, “Neisheng waiwang zhi dao yu ruxue de fuxing,” 8–9.

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In terms of their respective ideological systems and systems of logic, Marxism and ruxue are different. Moreover, in periods of social change, such as the period of the May Fourth movement, they were even in conflict. When society is back on its proper course, however, not only do Marxism and ruxue not conflict with one another, if society is to function properly and to advance, then they must be correctly combined with one another. In the Yan Yuan chapter of the Analects, Confucius said: “Don’t force onto others that which you yourself do not wish for.” This has now become a moral principle shared by humanity. According to a Marxist specialist in the former Soviet Union, Marx once said, “You should treat others in the same way as you would wish to be treated by them.” Although there is insufficient direct evidence to prove that Marx’s remark was derived from Confucius’s remark, nevertheless it is beyond doubt that the idea Confucius was promoting has a universal significance across time and cultures.30

Selecting the Constant Way Closely related to the method of “abstract inheritance,” the method of “selecting the constant way” (zequ changdao 擇取常道) requires one to distinguish between particular ruxue doctrines that are outmoded and those that have enduring value. Guo Qiyong’s views on the common “core value concepts” of East Asian ruxue is a clear example of “selecting the constant way” (see Chapter 6).

Critical Transcendence This methodology recognizes that, historically, ruxue developed many rational ideas and valuable concepts. Over time these values were sedimented into the deepest layers of the Chinese nation’s cultural tradition. Because of the thoroughgoing changes that have occurred in modern society, however, many of these ideas and values are no longer useful and relevant. As such, they need to be transformed and overcome or transcended. To “critically transcend” requires one to criticize those elements of ruxue that are outmoded and no longer able to make a positive contribution to society while still recognizing ruxue as a cultural and intellectual legacy that provides resources which can be developed to a new level or in a different direction to suit the needs of modern society. It is not simply enough to select the refined and discard the dross—the refined must also be subjected to transformation and adaptation.

( 30. Zhang Tengxiao and Zhang Xianzhong, Makesizhuyi yu ruxue, 1–2.

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The sort of ruxue-Marxist synthesis proposed by Xiao Hongjiang 蕭 鴻江 (Dalian University) in 1998 is a typical application of the “critically transcending” formula (albeit with a stiff dose of Li Zehou added to the mix). His main thesis is that ruxue has both positive and negative elements and that the positive elements need to be identified and nurtured; in contrast, its role as “feudal ideology” must be completely relegated to the past. Because ruxue is sedimented in the Chinese people’s culturalpsychological formation, the feudal character inherent in political, economic, and cultural concepts unconsciously exerts particular negative effects in modern society. Only by reinterpreting and “creatively transforming” ruxue’s core concepts and content can its positive life force be manifest. Xiao describes ruxue as the “core component of traditional Chinese culture,” combining both “national essence” (minzu jinghua 民族 精華) and “feudal dregs.” Because the principle of “ ‘making the past serve the present’ is still the policy [guiding] our modern cultural reconstruction,” ruxue should not be rejected holus-bolus. By the same token, the wholesale revival of ruxue is not acceptable either. “As our longexisting traditional culture, ruxue has permeated the deep layers of [our nation’s] social psychology. It has blended as one with the nation’s modes of living, forms of thought, behavioral norms, moral values, and personality traits to become an all-pervading psycho-spiritual home in which people find themselves from the moment of their birth. People simultaneously absorb its nutrients and its toxins.” Accordingly, he advocates appropriating and adapting the positive elements of ruxue to suit the needs of a “modern culture with Chinese characteristics.” He states that after an appropriate course of transformation, the ruxue goals of self-cultivation, regulating one’s family, bringing order to the state, and effecting stability throughout the world, can be adapted to promote the goals of modern, scientific socialist culture.31

Critical Inheritance and Synthetic Creation Critical inheritance (pipan jicheng 批 判 繼 承 ) and synthetic creation (zonghe chuangxin 綜合創新) are two parts of a dialectical methodology associated with CCP philosopher Zhang Dainian. Although Zhang

( 31. Xiao Hongjiang, “Ruxue chuantong dui xiandai ren de fumian xiaoying,” 34, 38.

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advanced the concept of synthetic creation in the 1930s,32 it was during the “culture fever” of the 1980s that he actively promoted the concept in many of his writings and lectures:33 On one hand, we must conscientiously summarize and reflect upon our nation’s traditional culture and form a clear recognition of its dross and essence; on the other hand, we must make a penetrating study of Western culture, analyze it concretely, and clearly discern its strengths and weaknesses. Then, on the basis of critically inheriting and transmitting traditional Chinese culture and critically drawing on modern ( jindai ) Western culture, we must synthesize the two to create socialism’s new Chinese culture. This culture will be both new and Chinese. I call this point of view “synthetic creation.”34

One of the distinguishing features of synthetic creation is the inclusion of both traditional Chinese culture and “Western culture” within its compass. In this connection, comments made by Tang Yijie in the general preface to the book series Gang-Tai haiwai Zhongguo wenhua congshu are pertinent. Until such time that China’s traditional culture has undergone a rigorous process of criticism and remolding, its negative impact on [the process of ] our nation’s realization of modernization will be greater than its positive impact. . . . The contemporary development of culture must be a combination of “global consciousness” and “national consciousness.” Without “global consciousness,” we will be unable to view cultural development from the elevated perspective of the whole world; nor we will be able to reflect upon the needs of our times. Consequently, we would inevitably have to leave the path of contemporary human cultural development. . . . As we know, the vitality of a national culture lies in maintaining its cultural tradition, in being able to absorb fully various foreign cultures that are suited to the needs of the age, and in moving beyond its traditional culture.35

These views have had some level of official support. In the same year that Tang made these comments, 1989, Gu Mu, in his opening address

( 32. Fang Keli (“Pipan jicheng, zonghe chuangxin,” 493) credits Zhang Dainian’s elder brother Zhang Shenfu 張申府 with being the first to write about the concept of synthetic creation in the 1930s. 33. Zhang Dainian’s most detailed account of synthetic creation is set out in a book coauthored with his student Cheng Yishan 程宜山, Zhongguo wenhua yu wenhua lunzheng; see, in particular, the last chapter. 34. Zhang Dainian, “Guanyu ruxue yanjiu de xin,” 110. 35. I have used the general preface in Feng Zusheng, ed., Dangdai xin rujia, 2– 5 passim.

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at the conference commemorating the 2540th anniversary of the birth of Confucius, stated that in order to create a new socialist culture it was vital to pass on yet transform the Chinese nation’s traditional culture and also to absorb advanced foreign cultures selectively, forming a synthesis of the two. Despite the synthesis, the formula still seems to be little more than a variation of Zhongti xiyong and a reiteration of Yi Xia zhi bie 夷夏之別 (non-sinitic/sinitic distinction), as Gu’s subsequent comments make plain: In dealing with the issue of traditional culture and foreign culture, undoubtedly our national culture should constitute [the national] subject position (zhuti 主體). This is because the development of any nation is tied to its “national conditions” ( guoqing 國情), and the transformation of any nation is tied to its traditional culture. If an attitude of [cultural] nihilism is adopted in regard to one’s own culture, then the foundation upon which to absorb and digest foreign cultures will be lost, making the establishment and development of a new culture impossible.36

Somewhat unexpectedly, Gu’s comments are less critical of traditional culture than are those of Tang, who, as we have noted, distinguishes between “traditional culture” and “cultural tradition,” characterizing the former as static and fixed and the latter as fluid and dynamic. Unlike traditional culture, the nation’s cultural tradition “will still be the nation’s cultural tradition no matter how it is changed.”37 Fang Keli is the leading promoter of Zhang’s critical inheritance and synthetic creation methodology. Fang is of particular interest because of his role in developing and leading two five-year-long research projects on New Confucianism, a role I discuss further below. Even though he argues that ruxue was principally a feudal ideology, he denies that this means that it is nothing other than a “poisonous feudal vestige” or “feudal dross.” He insists that ruxue does have historical value and modern significance. This is because all historical ideologies, especially formerly dominant ideologies, leave vestiges and legacies that neither can easily be nor should be expunged. “Every new ideology is always the sublation and negation of the preceding ideology. At the same time it also carries on and preserves some of the rational elements of that preceding ideology, melding those

( 36. Gu Mu, “Zai Kongzi danchen 2540 zhounian jinian yu xueshu taolunhui kaimu yishi de jianghua,” 2. 37. Tang Yijie, the general preface in Feng Zusheng, ed., Dangdai xin rujia, 3, 5.

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elements into its own organic components.” These elemental vestiges “can provide people of later times with historical accomplishments and intellectual resources from which to select and to pass on.” He refers to these accomplishments and resources as the “essence.” For Hegel, sublation (Aufhebung) is a dynamic, organic process of moving toward a developing whole through a series of contradictions. The process involves the emergence of a higher rational unity (a synthesis) by first sublating (overcoming and at the same time preserving what is rational) a thesis and then sublating its antithesis. The synthesis in turn leads to a new thesis, and so on.38 The rational is preserved in the ongoing process of moving to a higher rational unity of thesis and antithesis while the irrational is discarded; hence the Chinese term yangqi 揚棄. Fang identifies several “traditional virtues” as examples of the “essences” of ruxue that should be passed on and developed: respect for the aged and loving care of the young; honesty and harmony; solidarity and mutual help. He further identifies a range of traditional ruxue values that not only reflect the unique character of “Chinese ways of thinking”— such that “they have become an important part of Chinese national cultural identity”—but moreover hold a universal significance for humanity: attaching importance to real life; not pursuing release into an afterlife; valuing moral cultivation and ethical training to benefit interpersonal relations and social stability; valuing the continuation of historical traditions; affirming the value of experience, reason, and cultural knowledge; and the tradition of primitive dialectical thinking in ruxue. Commenting on these “traditional virtues” and characteristically “Chinese ways of thinking” associated with the ruxue tradition, Fang concludes: “We should highly value these precious legacies and subject them to critical inheritance so that they can serve as important traditional resources for molding a new ideology and psycho-spiritual civilization.” He qualifies this, however, by emphasizing that ruxue can only ever be part of the “vocabulary” of a “future civilization,” not its “grammar,”39 and even asserts that Du Weiming’s attempts to secure for ruxue

( 38. Hegel did not use the terms “thesis,” “antithesis,” and “synthesis”; they derive from Fichte. 39. Fang Keli, “Zhanwang ruxue de weilai qianjing bixu zhengshi de liang ge wenti,” 181–83. This view contrasts sharply with Tu Wei-ming’s (“Towards the ‘Third Epoch’ of Confucian Humanism,” 150) claim that “prior to the impact of the West . . . [t]he language and, indeed, the grammar of action of the East Asian people was distinctively Confucian.” The vocabulary and grammar analogy

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a role whereby it can function as the “grammar” of Chinese culture is, in fact, substantially no different from Jiang Qing’s (see below and also Chapter 12) call for ruxue to replace Marxism-Leninism in China.40 Elsewhere, he describes the four principles of “using the past to serve the present, using the foreign to serve China, critical inheritance, and synthetic creation” as “summarizing the essence of the Marxist cultural view, particularly suited to China’s ‘national condition’ and representative of the correct direction for Chinese cultural development.”41 He defines synthetic creation as “synthesizing the strengths of Chinese and Western cultures to create a new Chinese culture”: Dealing properly with the relationship between the past and the present, and between what is Chinese and what is foreign, requires dealing properly with the relation between carrying on historical tradition and embodying the spirit of the times; the relation between being rooted in one’s own country and facing out toward the world; combining the past and present; combining what is Chinese and what is foreign; absorbing and passing on all of the fine achievements of human civilization, making them become ours and be at our service; and being synthetically creative, creating a highly developed new socialist culture.42

Fang identifies four ways in which the synthetic creation methodology applies to culture: 1. Being receptive to all cultural/civilizational achievements, ancient or modern, Chinese or foreign. On this point, he singles out the ruxue revivalists for criticism, on the grounds that they are willing to accept only what is old, only what belongs to ruxue, and for being “Hua-Xia-centric.” 2. Carrying on traditional Chinese culture while also learning and drawing from the experiences of Western culture. 3. “The method used in learning from, drawing from the experiences of, carrying on, and choosing from ancient Chinese culture and from foreign cultures is the dialectic of critical inheritance and not the metaphysics of abstract inheritance. . . . By mastering Hegel’s concept of sublation, one is able to understand the substance of ‘critical inheritance.’ ” Fang’s reference to “metaphysical” serves two functions. First, it serves to distance synthetic creation from “abstract

( is presumably derived from Joseph Levenson’s (Confucian China and Its Modern Fate, 157) comment that “what the West has probably done to China is to change the latter’s language—what China has done to the West is to enlarge the latter’s vocabulary.” 40. Fang Keli, “Ping dalu xin rujia ‘fuxing ruxue’ de gangling,” 440. 41. Fang Keli, Xiandai xin ruxue yu Zhongguo xiandaihua, preface, 4. 42. Fang Keli, “Pipan jicheng, zonghe chuangxin,” 493.

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inheritance” by recalling Zhang Dainian’s criticism of Feng Youlan in the 1950s. Second, Fang is seeking to highlight the “scientific” merits of Hegelian dialectic, which, in turn, undergird the method of critical inheritance and synthetic creation. 4. “Analysis and synthesis are combined; synthesis and creation are combined.” He employs the example of eating food to illustrate the first point. Through a process of mastication and digestion, after a variety of foodstuffs has been ingested, the foodstuffs become converted into nutrition. This process combines both analysis and synthesis.43

Elsewhere Fang cites a more earthy example, which he attributes to Mao Zedong, to make the point that synthetic creation is so named because it aims to effect a dialectical synthesis resulting in a “new culture of a higher form”: “Regardless of whether you eat beef or dog’s meat, the main thing is that, once eaten, it becomes my flesh; it is certainly not the case that having eaten dog’s meat I, too, become dog’s meat!” For the second point he gives the following example: “After it absorbed the foreign religion of Buddhism and local daojiao and daojia thought, primitive ruxue changed its form, creating the new ruxue of the Song and Ming periods (neo-Confucianism).”44

Fang Keli and the “Mainland New Confucians” Fang Keli played a key role in establishing the parameters by which ruxue studies were undertaken on the mainland from the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s in his capacity as project leader of two major statefunded research projects on New Confucianism funded consecutively under the seventh (1986–90) and eighth (1991–95) five-year plans for philosophy and the social sciences. Even scholars at ideological odds with Fang concede this point. Li Minghui, for example, writes: Fang Keli, the principal coordinator of the Research Project on the Modern New Confucian Intellectual Movement, has consistently identified himself as an orthodox Marxist. Indeed, he agrees with very few of the New Confucian theses. He does, however, emphasize the need for dialogue between the three main

( 43. Fang Keli, “Pipan jicheng, zonghe chuangxin,” 492. 44. Ibid., 494. Tang Yijie used this same example to explain critical inheritance in his general preface to the book series Gang-Tai haiwai Zhongguo wenhua congshu, 2.

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intellectual movements of New Confucianism, Marxism, and liberalism. Objectively speaking, Fang Keli has played an important role in enabling New Confucianism to be widely spread in China.

True to form, Li immediately adds, Nevertheless, the baseline he put in place for research on New Confucianism is very clear: it “must be guided by the Marxist position, perspective, and method.” . . . Fang Keli does not approach research on New Confucianism simply as ordinary academic research but treats it as a part of an ideological struggle.45

In their 1991 general preface to the series Xiandai xin ruxue yanjiu congshu 現代新儒學研究叢書 (New Confucian Studies), series editors Fang Keli and Li Jinquan relate that the research group was guided by two main principles: comprehensive utilization of source materials and an accurate understanding of the original meaning of the works studied; and “the need to utilize a Marxist perspective, point of view, and methodology in the process of carrying out a ‘one divides into two’ (yi fen wei er 一分為二) analysis and evaluation; neither to revere blindly nor to blot out the achievements of New Confucianism and its historical position.”46 In many of his publications, Fang endorses the application of a particular group of principles: “using the past to serve the present; using the foreign to serve China; critical inheritance; and synthetic creation.”47 According to Li Xianghai 李翔海 (Nankai University)—one of Fang’s former doctoral students and also a participant in Fang’s New Confucian projects—although Fang did not formulate these principles, he was the first to propose them as an integrated whole.48 Fang’s firm commitment to these principles in the conduct of research affected not only the direction that New Confucian studies took in the 1990s but, more generally, ruxue studies. In part, however, one of these directions was developed in reaction to the ideological parameters that Fang sought to impose on his project team. By the early 1990s, Fang was beginning

( 45. Li Minghui, “Jiedu dangqian Zhongguo dalu de ruxuere,” 94, 95. 46. Fang Keli and Li Jinquan, general preface to the series Xiandai xin ruxue yanjiu congshu. I have used the version of the preface reproduced in Guo Qiyong, Xiong Shili sixiang yanjiu, 4. 47. Fang Keli, quoted in Shao Hanming, “Xiandai xin ruxue yanjiu shi nian huigu,” 130. 48. Li Xianghai, “Xiandai xin ruxue yanjiu de huixing yu zhanwang,” 14.

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to criticize some members of his research team for sidestepping “ideological issues” and for failing to criticize New Confucian thinkers when those thinkers criticized Marxism. He was particularly concerned when one Taiwanese scholar made the following assessment of the research of a mainland scholar of New Confucianism: “By and large, he has avoided becoming bogged down by Marxist ideology.”49 Fang’s two main targets for criticism were Luo Yijun and Jiang Qing.

Luo Yijun Luo Yijun is a scholar of modern Chinese intellectual history employed in the History Institute, Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences. Together with Jiang Qing, he is best known as one of the first “mainland New Confucians.” Luo was also one of the original group of scholars invited to participate in the large state-funded project on New Confucianism directed by Fang Keli. By 1992, however, Luo was publicly proclaiming his respect for rujia values and his personal identification with the ruxue tradition. (A year earlier he formally became a disciple of Mou Zongsan when he met Mou in Hong Kong.)50 He was even prepared to write, “It is only due to the establishment of this great ru school [i.e., New Confucianism] that the true lifeblood and spirit imbuing the vitality of Chinese culture has remained unsevered and sustained.”51 In December 1992, Luo presented a paper (in absentia) at the Second International Conference on New Confucianism in Taipei, entitled “Jin shiyu nian dangdai xin ruxue de yanjiu yu suowei menhu wenti” 近十餘 年 當 代 新 儒 學 的 研 究 與 所 謂 門 戶 問 題 (The so-called problem of factionalism in New Confucianism over the past ten-plus years). Luo distinguished three factions that had dominated research on New Confucianism during the period 1982–92. The first was the so-called thirdgeneration New Confucians. The second faction—liberals—consisted of Chinese scholars resident in the United States who were critical of New

( 49. Shao Hanming, “Xiandai xin ruxue yanjiu shi nian huigu,” 131. 50. Fang Keli, “Xiandai xin ruxue de yishi xingtai tezheng,” 213. Chen Kejian 陳克艱 (in idem, ed., Lixing yu shengming, foreword, 1) states that Qian Mu had formally accepted Luo as his disciple (in a letter). For an anecdote illustrating Luo’s “worship” of Mou, see Liu Qingfeng, “Topography of Intellectual Culture in 1990s Mainland China,” 50–51. 51. Luo Yijun, “Jin shiyu nian dangdai xin ruxue de yanjiu yu suowei menhu wenti,” 18; I have used the conference version of the paper (1992).

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Confucianism (presumably Fu Weixun and Lin Yusheng, although Luo stated that it was difficult to identify any one individual as representative); the Philosophy Department of National Taiwan University; and Zhongguo luntanshe 中 國 論 壇 社 (China forum society). (Wei Zhengtong was organizer of the symposia run by Zhongguo luntanshe.) The third faction was mainland Chinese Marxists. By “Marxist,” he meant proponents of “traditional” Marxism-Leninism and Mao Zedong Thought (rather than the Marxism of Marcuse, critical theory, and Habermas). In New Confucianism studies, this group was represented by Fang Keli (then at Nankai University) who headed the Research Project on the Modern New Confucian Intellectual Movement project: “Although this group has not become the leading faction in mainland philosophical circles, it has, in fact, already secured the right to speak on behalf of New Confucian studies.” Luo stated that although New Confucianism has become “a prominent area of learning” (xianxue 顯學), this phenomenon is really only relative to its thoroughly ostracized status before the 1980s. He regretted that New Confucianism and ruxue had not achieved sufficient prominence to serve as the “guiding principle for contemporary sociocultural life and for individual lives” and bemoaned the fact that ruxue remained suppressed in China and was not portrayed in an undistorted way in the media. According to Luo, although Fang Keli adopted Marxism-Leninism as the guiding principle for Fang’s research group, each member of the research group had an independent approach to research work and possessed his own independent intellectual character. In fact, there existed clear discrepancies and differences in individual understanding and evaluation of New Confucianism. Moreover . . . right from the outset [Fang] accepted into the project individual scholars who were self-consciously ru in their life orientation and who were committed to the goal of making themselves take responsibility for [promoting] morally normative principles ( yili 義理) on behalf of Chinese culture.

The first open signs of ruction within the project team surfaced in October 1992 at a conference on Mou Zongsan—Mou Zongsan yu dangdai xin rujia 牟宗三與當代新儒家 (Mou Zongsan and the New Confucians)—organized by staff in the Philosophy Department at Shandong University and convened in Mou’s hometown (with funding support from a local ceramics manufacturer). According to Luo, there was heated disagreement between a small group of mainland scholars who sought to defend Mou Zongsan’s philosophical legacy and a group of Marxist critics (represented by Fang Keli) critical of that legacy:

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“Because it proved exceedingly difficult to have the views I expressed at the meeting reported in the media, I note them here to exercise my right of speech.”52 In a note (dated 1997) appended to an unpublished preface that Fang Keli wrote early in 1993 for a volume of reference materials on the New Confucians, he explained that not long after he had completed the draft of the preface, Luo Yijun stated to the New Confucian project team (of which Luo was still a member) that he was not opposed to the perspective of Marxist thought in studying New Confucianism. In the light of this, because Fang’s preface was critical of Luo’s attitude to Marxism, Fang stated in his note that after discussions with the project team a decision was taken not to publish the preface. Fang then related that after this decision was taken, Luo Yijun published his paper “Jin shiyu nian dangdai xin ruxue de yanjiu yu suowei menhu wenti” in Taiwan and in China. Consequently Fang decided to publish the 1993 preface in his 1997 book “so as to reflect a historical reality of a period of intellectual debate in New Confucian studies.” In the preface, Fang Keli referred to the 1992 Shandong conference as a historically significant event because it was the first time that the “mainland New Confucians” had publicly revealed themselves on the mainland; “or in other words, the mainland branch of Hong Kong and Taiwan New Confucianism officially hung up its shingle and opened for business.” Of greater significance is his charge that their existence was “illegal,” on the grounds that the New Confucians “promoted idealism, opposed dialectical materialism, and adopted a negative and critical attitude toward Marxism . . . [and] opposed communism, socialism, and the dictatorship of the proletariat.”53

Mainland New Confucians: The Fourth Generation of New Confucians? In 1996 Fang published a review of Lixing yu shengming, a series of two volumes edited by Luo Yijun and Chen Kejian 陳克艱, in which he objected to “their attempt to use ruxue and New Confucianism to undermine and replace the theoretical direction [advocated by] Marxist

( 52. Luo Yijun, “Jin shiyu nian dangdai xin ruxue de yanjiu yu suowei menhu wenti,” 4, 5–6, 9. As with the first New Confucian conference held in 1990, because of problems with travel permits, mainland scholars were unable to attend in person. 53. Fang Keli, “Xiandai xin ruxue de yishi xingtai tezheng,” 210, 212, 214.

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thought.” Yet nowhere in the article was Fang able to establish that this was, in fact, the agenda of the editors. Indeed, it is difficult to avoid the impression that Fang needed a whipping boy of some kind to highlight the correct political line that he, as project leader and Marxist ideologue, represented and so warn off others from following the lead of Luo and other “mainland New Confucians.”54 Up until about 1994 Fang was reasonably successful in achieving these aims. Increasingly from about 1994, however, interest not only in New Confucianism but also in ruxue more generally had grown to a point that no individual could effectively dictate how research on ruxue should be conducted. The other “mainland New Confucian” to earn Fang’s ire on repeated occasions is Jiang Qing, the subject of the following chapter. Now retired, in recent years Fang has largely remained silent on matters of ideology and academic politics. Recently, however, he re-entered the fray with a speech written for the opening ceremony of the Seventh International Conference on New Confucianism convened in September 2005 at Wuhan University.55 In the speech, he referred to a meeting held in July 2004 at Jiang Qing’s mountain hermitage near Guiyang, which is called Yangming jingshe 陽明精舍, attended by a small group of intellectuals, including Kang Xiaoguang 康曉光, Sheng Hong 盛洪, and Chen Ming (for Chen Ming, see Chapter 9).56 (The event was reported widely in the media and soon became known as the “Chinese cultural conservatism summit.”)57 Fang identified Jiang and the other three figures as the leading representatives of “mainland China’s new generation of rujia” (dalu xinshengdai rujia 大陸新生代儒家) or the “fourth generation of New Confucians,” who are promoting a “mainland New Confucianism,” and warned of the need to “pay attention” to developments within mainland New Confucianism.

( 54. Fang Keli, “Ping dalu xin rujia tuichu de liang ben shu,” 32. 55. I received a copy of the transcript of the speech at the conference. Fang did not attend the conference, due to ill health. Somewhat ironically—given his critical attitude to the New Confucian movement—he was listed as a consultant to the conference planning committee. 56. Kang is an academic at the Chinese Academy of Science in Beijing; Sheng (discussed in the following chapter) is an economist who runs a private economic think tank in Beijing; and Chen is an academic in the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and also editor of the journal Yuandao. 57. See Ji Zhe, “Confucius, les libéraux et le parti,” for an overview of the rise of the “cultural conservatism” movement in China during 2004.

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Fang regards the phenomenon of mainland New Confucianism to be the direct consequence of the efforts made by Hong Kong and Taiwanese New Confucians to “renurture” ( fanbu 反哺) ruxue at its place of origin. In support of this claim, he selectively cites comments made in the editorial postface to the inaugural issue (2003) of Xin yuandao 新原道,58 in which Chen Ming and his coeditors state that it was due to the influence of New Confucianism in Hong Kong and Taiwan that those most closely associated with the journal became committed to tradition. Chen and the others also relate that they have established a cooperative arrangement concerning matters of scholarship with the Taiwan-based journal Ehu yuekan.59 Fang, however, omits another statement in the editorial postface: “The type of mainland New Confucianism Xin yuandao seeks to promote should have its own content and formal characteristics. . . . Articles that are exemplars of so-called mainland New Confucianism are still being formulated.”60 Indeed, if one takes Jiang Qing to be a representative of mainland New Confucianism, then given Jiang’s blunt criticisms of the xinxing ruxue 心性儒學 (learning of the mind and the nature ruxue) —the sort of ruxue exemplified by Mou Zongsan— Fang’s equation of mainland New Confucianism with a so-called fourth generation of New Confucianism is clearly problematic. As we will see in the following chapter, Jiang’s recent call for the establishment of a ru religion (rujiao) makes his connection with the New Confucians even more tenuous.

Concluding Remarks The three chapters in Part II may give the impression that for mainland scholars during the 1990s, personally identifying with and promoting values associated with ruxue and the rujia tradition was a relatively straightforward matter. As this chapter has shown, however, the reality

( 58. Xin yuandao was a continuation of Yuandao. Only two issues were published before the journal reverted to the original name with issue no. 10 (2005). The two issues of Xin yuandao, 1 (2003) and 2 (2004), replaced what would have been issues 8 and 9 of Yuandao. 59. Indeed, in this inaugural issue, erstwhile Ehu editor (and New Confucian stalwart) Yang Zuhan is listed on the editorial committee of Xin yuandao. In the second issue, no Ehu associates are listed on the editorial committee, but Lin Anwu (another Ehu editor) continues to be listed as a member of the journal’s “academic committee.” 60. Chen Ming et al., editorial postface, Xin yuandao, no. 1 (2003): 242.

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during the first half of the decade was otherwise: for most of that period, research on New Confucianism and on the contemporary significance of ruxue was dominated by research teams of scholars working under the direction of Fang Keli. To deviate from the prescriptive methodological principles championed by Fang was to risk academic ostracism or worse. Curiously, however, over the same period it was increasingly accepted that ruxue could not simply be dismissed and castigated as a “pernicious feudal legacy” because of the widely held conviction (see Chapter 5) that ruxue was the mainstay of China’s traditional culture—somehow sedimented in the Chinese nation’s “cultural-psychological formation”—and that if socialism was to endure in China it must acknowledge and accommodate that national cultural legacy. Indeed, so powerful was this conviction that it enabled a modest discursive space to be maintained in which a small number of outspoken ruxue apologists felt confident enough to call for the revitalization of ruxue and rujia values in Chinese society at large. It is to this subject that we turn in the following chapter.

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P A R T IV

Distinguishing Rujiao and Propagating Ruxue

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12 Jiang Qing’s Ruxue Revivalism

Based on representative writings since 1989, this chapter introduces Jiang Qing’s conception of ruxue and rujiao and their function within Chinese culture. Until 2001, Jiang was employed in a teaching position at Shenzhen Administrative College. Since then he has worked as an independent scholar and social activist, moving between Shenzhen and his retreat in Guizhou, the Yangming jingshe. Jiang and other so-called mainland New Confucians problematize simplistic assessments that the promotion of ruxue in contemporary China is orchestrated by the state and its functionaries. (As described in the previous chapter, even Fang Keli’s state-funded research projects approach ruxue from a critical perspective.) Indeed, Jiang’s promotion of ruxue has involved both explicit and implicit criticisms of Marxism-Leninism and the party-state. More significant, however, is that Jiang has consistently sought to promote a vision of ruxue that is socially and politically engaged and very different from the moral metaphysics of the New Confucians. Also of particular note is his invocation of concepts in the Spring and Autumn Annals to champion a type of cultural nationalism in which ruxue is made integral to Chinese national identity.

Marxism-Leninism Versus Ruxue Jiang Qing achieved immediate celebrity/notoriety in the ruxue studies world in 1989 when he published a highly polemical essay, “Zhongguo dalu fuxing ruxue de xianshi yiyi ji qi mianlin de wenti” 中國大陸復興儒 學的現實意義及其面臨的問題 (The practical significance of the revival of ruxue in mainland China and the problems it faces), in the Taiwanbased pro–New Confucian journal Ehu yuekan. Fang Keli later described the essay as “a political manifesto and ideological guideline for the revival of ruxue,” comparable to the 1958 declaration cosigned by Mou 261 John Makeham - 978-1-68417-048-7

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Zongsan, Tang Junyi, Xu Fuguan, and Zhang Junmai.1 If the essay had also been published on the mainland, it would have been described in much more critical terms, because, in addition to an impassioned call for the revival of ruxue in China, it also launched a frontal assault on Marxism-Leninism as China’s ruling ideology: In mainland China today, under the protection of state power, a foreign culture—Marxism-Leninism—has secured unique authority as the “national doctrine.” Yet this foreign culture can neither securely establish the national lifeblood of the Chinese nation, nor is it capable of giving expression to the national spirit of the Chinese nation. . . . The practice of Marxism-Leninism in mainland China over the past thirty years proves not only that it is incapable of solving China’s problems but, on the contrary, has delayed the course of modernization. . . . Despite the fact that those in power in modern China have made strenuous efforts to defend Marxism-Leninism’s monopoly on power, hoping to use power to maintain the unique authority that Marxism-Leninism enjoyed formerly as the “national doctrine,” middle and lower levels of society— especially the youth—no longer trust Marxism-Leninism. . . . As is widely known, Marxism-Leninism is a form of ideology, a conceptual system. It is a conceptual system devised by a few thinkers. This conceptual system merely expresses the intellectual perspectives of individual thinkers and has no connection with true entity (shixiang 實相)2 or genuine existence. . . . Marxism-Leninism is devoid of a spiritual-sagely nature, a universal nature, and an eternal nature. . . . The possibility for the revival of ruxue in mainland China rests on the fact that a “crisis of belief ” has occurred here. This “crisis of belief ” refers to the general phenomenon that the people of mainland China no longer believe in MarxismLeninism. . . . Marxism-Leninism is a destructive doctrine of social criticism, a doctrine of revolution. . . . Marxism-Leninism neither manifests the national lifeblood of the Chinese (Zhonghua) nation nor can it represent the national spirit of the Chinese nation. As such, we are naturally drawn to the following conclusion: ruxue should replace Marxism-Leninism and revive its orthodox historical position, to become the orthodox thought representing the lifeblood of

( 1. Fang Keli, “Ping dalu xin rujia ‘fuxing ruxue’ de gangling,” 424. The declaration was published simultaneously in the two Hong Kong journals, Minzhu pinglun 民主評論 (Democratic tribune) and Zaisheng 再生 (Renaissance) at the beginning of 1958. In its emotionally charged apologetic for traditional Chinese culture and the ethico-religious and spiritual values that the authors identify with that culture, the declaration rejects the positivist paradigm ushered in by modernity and Westernization, and demands a place for Chinese cultural values on the world stage. 2. This is a Buddhist concept employed in Tiantai doctrines. Mou Zongsan also employed it in his philosophy.

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the Chinese (Zhonghua) nation and the national spirit in mainland China today. As for Marxism-Leninism, it would then only be able to be the guiding ideology of one particular political party rather than of the entire Chinese nation.3

For Jiang, whereas Marxism-Leninism is a rationally constructed ideology created by individuals, ruxue is “the personal experience of spiritual beings and the sages (shensheng 神聖) and the expression of the way of heaven.” Because Marxism-Leninism is a destructive doctrine of revolution, it cannot represent the lifeblood (shengming 生命) and spirit of the Chinese nation, and so it is inevitable that ruxue will displace Marxism-Leninism’s position as the “national doctrine” ( guojiao 國教) and revive its historical position as the orthodoxy of mainland China.4 “For the past two thousand years the lifeblood and spirit of the Chinese nation stood secure on the foundation of rujia culture, and the highest expression of rujia culture is ruxue.”5 How then does Jiang understand ruxue? Ruxue is definitely not an ideology. Ruxue is the personal experience and expression of the way of heaven. As we know, ruxue brings together the personal experience of the way of heaven as recognized by generation after generation of ancient Chinese sages and wise men. In the course of suffering the pain experienced in their individual lives and in the life of Chinese culture, these ancient sages and wise men employed their entire physical and psychological being to “push through” and so verify and realize the highest reality of human life and the cosmos: the way of heaven. What they obtained through this personal verification and realization then naturally flowed from their minds to form language and writing. . . . Even though ruxue has made mistakes and some of its views are outmoded, because it is founded on the basic spirit of the way of heaven, it possesses a universal truth-value that will never be overtaken by the path of history. . . . From the perspective of ruxue, the way of heaven is not some abstract postulate of a far-removed metaphysics; it is a concrete reality that exists in all human cultural forms: political institutions, legal institutions, matrimonial institutions, moral institutions, educational institutions, and industrial-commercial institutions.6

On one hand, ruxue is grounded in the normative truths revealed by the way of heaven. On the other hand, the way of heaven is not an abstract

( 3. Jiang Qing, “Zhongguo dalu fuxing ruxue de xianshi yiyi ji qi mianlin de wenti,” pt. 1, 32–35 passim. 4. Ibid., pt. 2, 29. 5. Ibid., pt. 1, 31–32. 6. Ibid., 34, 36.

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philosophical ideal divorced from the mundane world but a concrete reality that can be given expression in human institutions. In addition to the function that ruxue has in personal cultivation it also has a social function: the function to make moral criticisms of actual government. . . . Confucius’s writing the Spring and Autumn Annals; Mencius’s rebukes of the lords of the realm; Dong Zhongshu’s discussions of resonance and response between the realms of heaven and humans; Jia Yi’s writing The Faults of Qin; debates between Song ru on the principles of heaven and human desire, kings and overlords, and rightness and benefit; Huang Zongxi’s writing Waiting for the Dawn; and many of the views expressed by New Text School classical scholars—-all of these are examples of moral criticism of society and government.7

Gongyang Learning and Cultural Nationalism Although Jiang’s 1989 essay does not develop the connection between his own philosophical vision of ruxue and the Gongyang tradition of ruxue, his comments about the role of institutions and the passing references to Confucius’s editorship of the Spring and Autumn Annals and to Qing dynasty New Text School scholarship reveal an affinity for the Gongyang “style” of ruxue. This affinity is explored more explicitly in Jiang’s 1995 book, Gongyangxue yinlun: rujia de zhengzhi zhihui yu lishi xinyang 公羊學引論: 儒家的政治智慧與歷史信仰 (An introduction to Gongyang learning: the historical convictions and political wisdom of the rujia). Jiang distinguishes two traditions of ruxue: political ruxue (zhengzhi ruxue 政治儒學) and “learning of the mind and the nature” ruxue (xinxing ruxue). The political version is represented by Gongyang Learning (Gongyangxue 公羊學); the learning of the mind and nature by the ZengSi (Zengzi 曾子, Zisi 子思) school and Song-Ming ruxue. In the twentieth century, the relative popularity of xinxing ruxue (as represented by the New Confucians) has obscured Gongyang Learning or political ruxue. Jiang insists that only by discerning the differences between these two major traditions can ruxue be properly recognized.8 Gongyang partisans

( 7. Jiang Qing, “Zhongguo dalu fuxing ruxue de xianshi yiyi ji qi mianlin de wenti,” pt. 1, 23; idem, Gongyangxue yinlun. The book was published in 1995, but Jiang’s preface is dated 1992, thus suggesting that the manuscript also dates from that period. 8. Jiang Qing, Gongyangxue yinlun, 1, 9.

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(Gongyangjia 公羊家) maintain that even though the original or raw state of human nature is good, because individual human natures are subject to the influence of their psycho-physical endowments (qizhi 氣質) and other external conditions, their natures (after birth) are no longer good. Because of this, Gongyang Learning also emphasizes the importance of human institutions to enable humans to overcome their shortcomings and perfect their nature. Gongyang Learning is concerned with institutional reform and not with achieving sagehood. Jiang contrasts the Gongyang position with the xinxing ruxue view that human natures are good, which accounts for its emphasis on personal moral cultivation. ( Jiang identifies Mencius as an inheritor and transmitter of both traditions of ruxue). He further argues that modern inheritors of the xinxing tradition have been unable to develop the goals of outer kingliness (such as science and democracy) because these broader social goals lie beyond the proper scope of xinxing learning: cultivating virtue and achieving sagehood through individual moral cultivation.9 Jiang draws a further distinction between political ruxue and politicized (zhengzhihua 政治化) ruxue. Politicized ruxue refers to an alienated and ideologically distorted form of ruxue that has completely lost its ability to provide social critique and to oppose contemporary institutions. It is a tool used to maintain autocratic rulership and an ideology to serve the interests of rulers. He identifies the Old Text School of the Han (represented by the Zuo tradition) as an example of politicized ruxue. In contrast, political ruxue is a form of ruxue that seeks to uphold social justice by critiquing government and institutions. Jiang proposes that because we no longer live in an age in which autocratic rule is the norm, then “subtle words” should be replaced by “clear words” (ming yan 明言).10 (During the Han dynasty, the Gongyang commentarial tradition and a corpus of prognosticatory and apocryphal texts elabora-ted on the role of Confucius as the uncrowned king and the subtle words and profound meanings [weiyan dayi 微言大義] that constitu-ted the esoteric codes of the Spring and Autumn Annals, which Confucius was credited with editing. 11 The late Qing revivers of this

( 9. Ibid., 4–5, 74–78, 31. 10. Ibid., 9–10, 16–21, 27. 11. The terms weiyan 微言 (subtle words) and dayi 大義 (profound meanings) were by no means used exclusively by Gongyang scholars but had a wide currency in writings on classical studies. The meaning of dayi varied considerably depending on the user.

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tradition12 drew, in particular, on these theories as elaborated in Chunqiu fanlu 春秋繁露 [Abundant dew on the Spring and Autumn Annals], traditionally attributed to Dong Zhongshu 董仲舒 [179–104 B.C.], and He Xiu’s 何休 [A.D. 129–82] Gongyang zhuan jiegu 公羊傳解詁 [Explanations and glosses to the Gongyang tradition of interpretation]. Qing dynasty New Text scholars understood weiyan dayi to refer to the esoteric teachings passed on by Confucius’s disciples after his death and transmitted during the Western Han by Gongyang scholars.) Jiang identifies the theme of “distinguishing between non-sinitic and sinitic peoples” (Yi Xia zhi bian 夷夏之辯) 13 as a unique feature of Gongyang thought. The standard used to draw this distinction is that of “civilized versus barbarian” and the hallmark of “civilization” is moral virtue, not ethnicity. He finds evidence of a special sort of Chinese cultural nationalism in many passages in the Spring and Autumn Annals that deal with the theme of distinguishing non-sinitic and sinitic peoples. This nationalism is based on a cultural identity that emphasizes “the irreplaceable nature and primacy of Chinese culture as the standard for gauging cultural difference.” According to Jiang, the nationalism he identifies in the Spring and Autumn Annals is unique because it is based not on ethnicity or polity but on culture: it is a cultural nationalism: Viewed from the perspective of two thousand years of Chinese history, although foreign nations invaded and ruled China many times, they never wiped out Chinese culture—indeed, they were assimilated by Chinese culture. When we examine why, it is because the nationalism founded on Chinese culture in the Spring and Autumn Annals played a decisive role. . . . The basic unit that produced the nationalisms of Western nations was a particular nationality associated with a particular state ( guojia); it was not culture. Hence, in Western nationalism it was not culture that was placed above the nation and the state; rather, it was the nation and the state that were placed above culture. This led to Western nationalisms’ being nothing but political nationalisms, and they were frequently inclined toward racism, imperialism, and chauvinism.

He complains that over the past century Chinese people lost faith in their own culture and turned to a range of foreign “-isms” to transform China while disregarding “the irreplaceable nature and primacy of Chi-

( 12. Elman, Classicism, Politics, and Kinship, is a study of key figures in this group. For his discussion of the Old Text / New Text distinction in Qing times, see xxvi, 10–11, 189–213, passim. 13. Jiang glosses Yi as a generic term referring to “undeveloped nations (minzu)” (i.e., lacking culture) and Xia as referring to China (Zhongguo).

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nese culture as the standard for gauging cultural difference.” 14 A key subtext here is that Marxism-Leninism is a foreign ideology. By drawing on the old formula of Yi Xia zhi bian, Jiang was able to make his point about Marxism-Leninism without the risk of being explicit, which would surely have jeopardized the book’s publication. Ironically, the Guoxue congshu 國學叢書 book series in which this volume is published features a general preface by Zhang Dainian.

Political Ruxue and Institutional Reconstruction The publication of Jiang’s next book, Zhengzhi ruxue: dangdai ruxue de zhuanxiang, tezhi yu fazhan 政治儒學: 當代儒學的轉向, 特質與發展 (Political ruxue: the development, characteristics, and reorientation of contemporary ruxue; 2003), did, in fact, encounter some delays. We know this because a preface for the book by Sheng Hong was published in 1998—five years before the eventual publication of Jiang’s book—in which it was noted that Jiang’s book was soon to be published by Peking University Press.15 Sheng Hong is the director of the Unirule Institute of Economics (Tianze jingji yanjiusuo 天則經濟研究所), a private economic think tank based in Beijing. He achieved some notoriety in the mid-1990s because of his controversial views concerning the dominance of Western cultural values. According to Sheng, Western civilization is the product of different competing forms of religion. Competition between these religions has resulted in a social Darwinist mentality, which, in turn, has brought humankind to the brink of nuclear oblivion. Chinese civilization, however, did not develop from a particular form of religion, and it boasts resources such as rujia notions of harmony and collectivism that can help save the world. 16 Sheng states that he first became attracted to Jing Qing’s ideas when he read Gongyang yinlun, because of Jiang’s focus on the topic of “institutional concerns.”17 Since then, he has regularly referred to Jiang’s ideas in his own writings. Several of his writings also draw on the Gongyang tradition of ruxue in developing his own idiosyncratic notion of a taiping 太平 (great stability)

( 14. Jiang Qing, Gongyangxue yinlun, 221–23, 228–29, 231–32. 15. Sheng Hong, “Zai chuantong de bianjishang chuangxin.” 16. Sheng Hong, “Shenme shi wenming?” 17. Sheng Hong, “Zai chuantong de bianjishang chuangxin,” 128.

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utopia. His understanding of Gongyang thought seems to have been drawn entirely from Jiang Qing’s Gongyang yinlun.18 Jiang’s book was not published until 2003 (by a different publisher and without Sheng’s preface).19 The delay in publication may have been the result of a recent article by Fang Keli highly critical of Jiang’s 1989 essay. In the article Fang presents an overview of a group of “mainland New Confucians during the 1990s, some of whom were predicting that the twenty-first century would belong to ruxue.” Against this background, Fang warned that if calls to “revive ruxue” were realized, then Jiang’s 1989 essay would become an important historical document attracting much attention.20 In Zhengzhi ruxue, Jiang describes the New Confucian pursuit of the goals of science and democracy—the goals of a new outer kingliness—as “covert Westernization,” thus effectively portraying New Confucianism as a “vassal of Western learning.” In contrast, political ruxue is “ ‘the ruxue of outer kingliness,’ ‘institutional ruxue,’ ‘practical ruxue,’ and ‘the ruxue of hope’ unique to the rujia. If China is to have a system of ritual and models (lifa zhidu 禮法制度) with Chinese characteristics, then such a system should be reconstructed via ‘political ruxue’ and not developed via ‘xinxing ruxue.’ ” He maintains that if a form of government changes, this impacts directly on a society’s religious beliefs, values, and the individual’s sense of morality and cultural identity. This is precisely what happened to China in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. “If the Western powers had not used armed force to defeat China, China would already have arisen as a great nation in the world. The West, however, has used its powerful cultural influence to envelop China completely and is striving to make China become a colony of Western culture.” Jiang insists that political ruxue can bring about the reconstruction of “a system of ritual and models (lifa zhidu) with Chinese characteristics,” thereby rescuing Chinese culture.21 China cannot rely on political systems adapted from the West; it must create its own “political system

( 18. See, in particular, Sheng Hong, Wei wan shi kai taiping. For a recent collection of dialogues between Jiang and Sheng, see their coauthored Yi shan zhi shan. 19. Beijing: Sanlian shudian, 2003. The book was also published in the same year in Taipei by Yangzheng Tang wenhua shiye gongsi. The Beijing version appeared in a series subsidized by the Harvard-Yenching Institute. 20. Fang Keli, “Ping dalu xin rujia ‘fuxing ruxue’ de gangling,” 423. 21. Jiang Qing, Zhengzhi ruxue, 1–3 passim.

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with Chinese characteristics.” Jiang proposes that such a system existed in China’s past (referring to the ideas of the Gongyang tradition) and consists of ritual and music; the kingly way; extolling unification (da yitong 大一統); 22 the Three Ages (san shi 三世) theory; and the son of heaven as the first-ranking title (tianzi yi jue 天子一爵). He argues that to pursue the New Confucian goal of developing democracy is to remain captured by the dogmas of the May Fourth period and to fail to use indigenous Chinese resources to develop (or revive) a political system with Chinese characteristics.23 He also insists on the need to re-establish the Gongyang hermeneutic practice of “interpreting classical texts by means of institutions” (yi zhi shuo jing 以制說經), which he says actually means to interpret classical texts in such a way that one is constructing a new ritual institution. It is a hermeneutic method “that has the capacity to change history and establish institutions” because “ritual is the fundamental characteristic of Chinese culture. Hence if you want to establish Chinese culture, you must establish Chinese culture with ritual and music as its characteristics.” The method of “interpreting classical texts by means of institutions” is the foundation for classical studies, which in turn provides the foundation for establishing Chinese culture with Chinese characteristics. According to Jiang, the single largest problem confronting China is the problem of institutional reconstruction. The success of this reconstruction depends on being able to apply the Gongyang method of “interpreting classical text by means of institutions.” If this method is lost, then “ritual and music will be lost; once ritual and music are lost, then the Chinese people’s mode of existence will be lost.” For Jiang it is ritual that distinguishes Chinese culture and ruxue from other cultures and traditions of learning.24 He is strongly opposed to the notion of developing a Western-style democracy based on a combination of ruxue and democratic thought, on the grounds that ruxue would lose its “unique cultural self ” and so cease being ruxue. He maintains that it is desirable to develop a civil society in China because of the opportunities civil society presents for wealth enhancement and to resist authoritarian rule. He does not, however, believe that it is possible to develop a “Western-style” civil society in

( 22. Jiang Qing, Gongyangxue yinlun, 327. Jiang glosses da 大 as “to extol; hold in high esteem” rather than as “great.” 23. Jiang Qing, Zhengzhi ruxue, 126–27. 24. Ibid., 161–62, 200, 201, 292.

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China. In order to establish a “Chinese-style” or “rujia-style” civil society, it is necessary to establish it on “the foundation of the tradition of China’s historical culture.”

Political Legitimacy and “Extolling Unification” Jiang warns that the pluralization of values in society could lead to “the relativization and secularization of values. [Such a] society, in its entirety, would lack a value standard derived from a transcendent (xingshang 形上) sphere; its values would be fragmented, disintegrated, and in acute conflict.” The critical rujia (i.e., Gongyang) notion of “extolling unification” (da yitong) can avoid this problem: The original meaning of the Gongyang notion of yitong refers to the need for a political society, from top to bottom, being dependent upon (belonging to) a transcendent ontological reality, thereby leading to this political society’s securing a transcendent value for its existence. . . . Under the historical conditions of ancient China, the “extolling unification” thought of Gongyang theorists established a legitimate form of political order that was adapted to society of the time. This enabled ancient Chinese government to continue to survive and be passed on in a unique and stable form until the modern ( jindai ) period.

On this rujia model, the ruler derives a sacred (shensheng 神聖) legitimacy from an authority ordained in him by “the primacy of heaven” (tianyuan 天元) and a secular legitimacy derived from the hearts of the people. “The political wisdom of rujia ‘great unification’ can address the two faults of a pluralist society: its lack of a transcendent foundation and its lack of control over the nontranscendent sphere.” Some of the key ruxue elements in Jiang’s alternative vision include provisions for a market economy based on the just pursuit of profit and contractual relations based on the cardinal virtues of doing one’s best for others (zhong 忠), trust, humaneness, and loving concern.25 He also argues for the ongoing need for the government of China to be “legitimized” by being “established on transcendent sacred origins. . . . The problem that ‘extolling unification’ thought seeks to solve is the problem of the transcendent foundation’s underpinning the legitimacy of [a particular] political order.” For Jiang, this is the most pressing political problem facing China today. He rejects other sources of political

( 25. Jiang Qing, Zhengzhi ruxue, 288, 311–18, 328, 332.

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legitimacy (such as “the will of the people”), insisting that political legitimacy in China must be “secured from the authority of the supraexperiential world” and that “extolling unification” thought “can certainly play a major role in confirming the legitimacy of contemporary Chinese political order, and the reconstruction of Chinese political culture.” It is difficult not to miss the unstated but implicit challenge to the Chinese Communist Party’s claim to political legitimacy, a challenge further underscored by the appeal to China’s national character and culture: China’s modernization must be established on the foundation of China’s own cultural tradition. China cannot turn its back on its own cultural tradition and lose its own national characteristic, to follow the Western or Westernized path completely. . . . As we know, rujia culture is the mainstream of Chinese culture; it is the most Chinese characteristic of that which distinguishes Chinese culture from Western culture. For this reason, China’s future modernization must be founded on rujia culture.26

He objects to democratic government on the grounds that it is devoid of a moral dimension due to its treatment of “the people” as an abstract notion rather than as individuals and that it is established on the basis of social contracts that ignore the relationship between people and heaven. The kingly way (wang dao 王道) avoids the pitfalls of democracy. It takes into account not only the people’s wishes and their interests (otherwise the people would not be drawn to the king) but also the need for political life to conform with the way of heaven and so avoid conflict between the human way and the way of heaven. When the kingly way is properly realized, political responsibility is granted to the individual who has an awakened sense of moral consciousness (the king) rather than to the abstract masses (the people). With political subjectivity resting in the hands of a true king, the problem of granting political power to the amoral masses is avoided. Moreover, sovereignty does not rest with a group of humans; instead, political power is placed in the harmonious relationship between humans and the cosmos (with heaven presumably being able to show its displeasure when this relationship falls out of kilter.) 27 On the issue of nationalism, Jiang maintains that it is not possible to establish a Chinese nationalism that is not founded on ruxue, the representative of “the core values of China’s historical culture.” He is critical

( 26. Ibid., 336, 337, 338, 359, 360. 27. Ibid., 385–87.

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of Sun Yat-sen for using nationalism merely as a tool to resist bullying by foreign powers while failing to use rujia culture as the basis for his nationalism. He calls this a “rootless nationalism.” The roots of a proper Chinese nationalism need to be planted in the soil of the rujia tradition because only the rujia tradition “collectively embodies the fundamental spirit of China’s historical cultural tradition.” “Rootless nationalism” is incapable of solving the problem of legitimacy for China’s political order because it cannot provide a proof of legitimacy derived from the sacred and from tradition. “Rujia thought possesses the transcendent characteristic of tiandao (way of heaven) rationality; rujia culture possesses sacred authority derived from historical tradition . . . enabling it to provide the current political order and China’s ruling authorities with proof of legitimacy derived from the sacred and from tradition.” The “kingly way” provides the means for establishing this legitimacy.28

Chinese Rujiao Association Jiang’s most recent utopian vision—set out in a document that resembles a draft manifesto—was submitted as a paper to the Seventh International Conference on New Confucianism convened at Wuhan University in September 2005, “Guanyu chongjian Zhongguo rujiao de gouxiang” 關於重建中國儒教的構想 (A plan to reconstruct Chinese rujiao).29 In the preamble, he distinguishes between rujia, ruxue, and rujiao. Rujia is a school (xuepai 學派) that existed in the period before its normative doctrines became adopted as the principal component of state ideology. In early China, the term was relative to other schools such as Mohists, Legalists, Daoists, and so on. After the establishment of the Republic, the term was used to distinguish adherents of this school from proponents of liberalism, democracy, socialism, and other Western “schools.” Ruxue refers to the system of rujia teachings and draws its values from the ru canon. Unlike rujia, rujiao refers not to a school but to a “civilizational entity” (wenmingti 文明體). Ruxue exists in those periods when the normative doctrines of the rujia are adopted as the principal component of state ideology. Historically, rujiao is a term used in relation to Buddhism, Manichaeanism, and more recently, Christianity. Ruxue is also the sys-

( 28. Jiang Qing, Zhengzhi ruxue, 397, 399, 409, 410–11. 29. Jiang did not attend the conference, but his paper is included in the four volumes of conference papers distributed at the conference.

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tem of rujiao’s doctrinal principles and draws its values from the ru canon. Jiang likens the relationship between rujiao and rujia to that between Christian theology and Christianity. Whereas rujia is a term used when China’s historical culture is at a low ebb, rujiao is a term used when the culture is flourishing. Jiang identifies this period of flourishing as extending from about 140 B.C. to 1911. Thus, while in the twentieth century there were rujia, there was no rujiao. Accordingly, faced with the challenge of Western culture on all fronts, it is necessary to revive rujiao on all fronts. Only by responding to Western culture with rujiao culture can the full revival of Chinese culture be completed. Today, the establishment of a Chinese rujia school, the construction of a ruxue system, and the return of rujia culture, are all in order to revive China’s unique rujiao civilization. . . . In the revival of Chinese culture and the reconstruction of Chinese civilization, our most pressing task is to revive rujiao.

For Jiang, rujiao is both a religion and a set of cultural and ritual norms. Ever since the Three Dynasties, it has also been the “national teaching” ( guojiao), except for those periods—such as the past century— when it was relegated to the politico-institutional periphery to exist as rujia. Jiang’s latest proposal calls for the establishment of an association (shetuan faren 社團法人) called the Zhongguo rujiao xiehui 中國儒教協會 (Chinese rujiao association). Unlike the Chinese Buddhist Association, the Chinese Rujiao Association would have political, financial, cultural, and organizational privileges because “rujiao is the [authentic] subject (zhuti 主體) of Chinese civilization.” It would also hold other special privileges, such as the right to participate in government, to be entitled to receive landholdings and financial support from the state, to design the basic national educational curriculum, to plan major national ceremonies and rituals, and to represent the state in conducting major ceremonies. Jiang also outlines a ten-point blueprint for the ways in which the association would conduct a program of rujiao revival. Some of the more notable measures include a national “Chinese morals revival movement” (clearly inspired by Jiang Jieshi’s Chinese Cultural Renaissance movement, 1967–77, which, in turn, had clear resonances with the New Life movement of the 1930s); recitation of canonical texts to be incorporated into all levels of the curricula, from kindergarten to university; classes explaining the canonical texts to be held for the adult public; the whole population to be encouraged to read canonical texts; a new civil examination system to be established to promulgate patriotic education based on the “psycho-spiritual morals” of rujiao; all property such as historical

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academies, Confucian temples (Kongmiao 孔廟), Temples of Culture (wenmiao 文廟), shrines to former sages and worthies, as well their former dwellings, gravesites, and other places of historical significance to be managed by the association; a national-level rujiao university to be established (presumably modeled on the traditional Guozijian 國 子 監 [School for the sons of the state]); ruxue colleges established at various subnational levels; rujiao newspapers, journals, and publishing houses, television and radio channels, and internet sites to be established, as well as propaganda offices overseas;30 and church-like “lecture halls” to be established at the local, provincial, and national levels. Almost five hundred years ago, the 31-year-old Martin Luther posted his ninety-five theses at Wittenberg Cathedral, setting in train the Protestant Reformation in Germany. Although Jiang’s ten “theses” are unlikely to inspire much more than some heated responses on various internet discussion sites devoted to the contemporary debate about politics, culture, and ruxue, there is a genuinely “Lutheran” quality to Jiang’s reformist agenda. Curiously, one of the most influential political philosophers of the past century, Kang Youwei, was also once described as the Martin Luther of Kongjiao.31 As with Luther, Jiang also shares some important similarities with Kang Youwei. Like Kang, Jiang found in Gongyang Learning an important source for his political philosophy. ( Jiang even identifies Kang as the last in the line of representatives of the Gongyang Learning tradition: Confucius, Gongyang Gao 公羊高 [fifth century B.C.], Xunzi, Dong Zhongshu, He Xiu, Liu Fenglu 劉逢祿 [1776–1829], and Kang Youwei.32 It is possible that in making this identification—indeed by virtue of making it—he is implying that he is heir to that lineage.) Moreover, just as Kang promoted a quasi-religious Kongjiao, so, too, Jiang is promoting a quasi-religious rujiao. In this connection, we might also note that one of the main reasons Kang offered in arguing for the establishment of Kongjiao was to counter the growing threat that Christianity posed to “the national culture” by its potential to become the dominant religion in China. 33 Similarly we find Jiang making a similar recommendation:

( 30. Perhaps we are already witnessing this development with the new Confucius institutes that seem to be popping up like “bamboo shoots after spring rains” around the world. 31. Liang Qichao, Yinbing shi he ji, 67. 32. Jiang Qing, Zhengzhi ruxue, 28. 33. Kang Youwei, Wuxu bianfa qianhou, 233.

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In China today, by relying on the might of powerful Western governments, economies, technical skills, culture, education, media, and churches, Christianity has propagated its teachings among the Chinese people. According to the calculations of informed sources, there are already close to 100 million Christians in China today! If this trend is not arrested and is allowed to develop, then before long China’s Christians will exceed half of the Chinese population and China will become a Christian country, and Christian civilization will then displace Chinese (Zhonghua) civilization and rule in China. By then it will be too late to talk about reviving rujiao and reconstructing Chinese civilization. . . . Accordingly, only by reviving rujiao can the growing dissemination of Christianity in China be resisted; only then can the individual nature of China’s civilization be preserved (baozhu 保住); only then will China be able to embody Chinese civilization’s “rujiao China.”

This could almost be verbatim Kang Youwei if Kongjiao were substituted for rujiao. Even Jiang’s choice of the term baozhu recalls Kang’s call to baojiao (preserve the religion/teaching).

Concluding Remarks It is difficult not to be sympathetic to Li Minghui’s criticism of Jiang’s 2003 book, Zhengzhi ruxue, for advancing a utopian vision that is tantamount to a return to the middle ages (or even earlier!).34 As for Jiang’s more recent ten-point blueprint for a program of rujiao revival, its particular utopian vision is so extreme that one wonders just how literally it should be taken. A more charitable interpretation might be to regard it as a tactic designed to create controversy and hence debate. After all, since Jiang has appealed to a ruxue-inspired model of cultural nationalism, critics (including those associated with party-state institutions) must argue why that model of the nation is inappropriate. After all, there are surely those who would be only too aware that “unlike the competing loyalties of class, party, business, union, or profession, primordial discontent can undermine the nation itself because it involves alternative definitions of what the nation is.”35 Yet, regardless of how naïve Jiang’s utopian visions may seem, over the past few years they have garnered support from a small but growing group of Chinese intellectuals and, more recently, even from a department within the Ministry of Education (see Chapter 13). It is precisely developments such as this

( 34. Li Minghui, “You neisheng xiang waiwang de zhuanzhe,” 349. 35. Clifford Geertz, cited in Hutchinson and Smith, eds., Nationalism, 32.

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that behoove us not to dismiss the possibility that Jiang may come to exert some influence in ruxue revivalist circles over the next decade. We should also bear in mind that in the broader context of ruxue intellectual history, it was stock in trade for Gongyang theorists—from Han times on—to claim to be able to decipher “subtle words and profound meanings” (weiyan dayi ) in writings ascribed to Confucius. Although it is no longer academically au courant for Chinese scholars of ruxue to appeal to the hermeneutic strategies favored by the Gongyang tradition, for much of the nineteenth century and well into the early part of the twentieth century, the esoteric pronouncements of Gongyang scholars commanded influence in Chinese academic circles. As recently as 1953, even Qian Mu subscribed to the notion that certain esoteric teachings had been passed on by Confucius’s disciples after his death and transmitted during the Western Han by Gongyang scholars.36 Although Jiang’s is a pale imitation of late Qing Gongyang scholarship, and his emphasis is on ritual and institutions rather than the more arcane aspects of Gongyang lore, there remains the potential for Gongyang scholarship to once again come into vogue, particularly because of its cultural nationalist appeal.

( 36. See Qian Mu, “Kongzi yu Chunqiu,” 276–82.

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13 Rujiao as Religion

This chapter broadens the examination of contemporary views on the concept of rujiao and the relation of rujiao to ruxue and the rujia tradition. The English term “Confucian” elides distinctions between rujiao, ruxue, and rujia; thus, an examination focusing on how contemporary Chinese scholars view rujiao and its relation to these other concepts constitutes an integral part of the project to identify what sorts of “Confucianisms” have been created in this discourse. The opening sections briefly review some influential twentiethcentury views on the question whether rujiao is a religion (Kang Youwei, Mou Zongsan, Du Weiming, and Ren Jiyu). This is followed by accounts of various views on the origins of rujiao published during the 1990s (He Guanghu, Chen Lai, Li Zehou); the revival of debate on the mainland during the second half of the 1990s and the early part of the current decade on whether ruxue was a religious tradition (focusing on the views of Li Shen and his critics); the discussion about the appropriateness of using Western schemes of knowledge compartmentalization to discuss Chinese religion; contemporary Taiwanese perspectives on rujiao (Huang Jinxing, Huang Junjie, and Li Shiwei); the involvement of overseas-based Chinese scholars of ruxue in interfaith dialogue (Liu Shuxian and Du Weiming); and the activities of Tang Enjia, the officially recognized head of the Rujiao religion in Hong Kong.

Rujiao as a Religion Since the second half of the nineteenth century, the question whether “Confucianism” (often a translation of the term rujiao) was (or, for that matter, is) a religion has been a subject of debate in the Western

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world.1 The term rujiao has a long history in traditional China, where it was used principally to distinguish the teachings of the ru from those of the Buddhists ( fojiao 佛教) or the Daoists (daojiao 道教).2 Yet even in those contexts, rujiao refers to a particular sectarian teaching, not to a religion in the modern sense (in which belief is privileged over practice, is assumed to be present in all cultures, and takes Christianity as its exemplar). Toward the end of the nineteenth century, Kang Youwei began to promote the view that rujiao, or Kongjiao 孔教 as he preferred to call it, should be reformed and made into a proper religion modeled on Western religions (although later he was more careful to distinguish spiritual [shendao 神道] and humanist [rendao 人道] religions). In Kongzi gaizhi kao 孔子改制考 (A study of Confucius’s institutional reforms; 1898), adopting methodologies and ideas refined in nineteenth-century New Text school scholarship, Kang asserted that Confucius wrote all the Six Classics and, in doing so, invested them with “subtle words” (weiyan 微言), which, when correctly decoded, revealed his vision for institutional reform. The institutional vision made Confucius an “uncrowned king” (su wang 素王) and the founder of rujiao.3 In later publications, Kang argued more specifically for Kongjiao to be established as

( 1. For an account of the role that the Jesuit fathers and Protestant missionaries played in presenting Confucius as an agnostic, see Wilson, ed., On Sacred Grounds, introduction, 3–13. In contrast, T. H. Barrett (“Chinese Religion in English Guise,” 526) cites nineteenth-century Protestant missionary views that the “ancient religion inherited by Confucius preserved, ‘though in a clouded form, the ancient faith in one true God.’ ” As Barrett remarks, these views were in turn a distant echo of Matteo Ricci’s views. Lionel Jensen (Manufacturing Confucianism, 94, 122, 123) relates that “throughout Ricci’s (1552–1610) Storia [dell’Introduzione del Christianesimo in Cina; ca. 1608] ‘Confutio’ was exalted in an almost patristic sense as the former prophet of Chinese monotheism whose teachings perished along with the classics in the infamous Qin era Burning of the Books.” Jensen similarly describes the composite Jesuit work Confucius sinarum philosophus (1687) as “the accumulation of one hundred years of translation and exegesis in demonstration of China’s archaic monotheism.” In this work, the authors equated “Confucius’ teaching, ju kiao (rujiao)”—“a distillation of the ancient belief in Xan ti (Shangdi)”—with “the Chinese religion” (Religio Sinensium) and also sought to “demonstrate a compelling cognate philosophical link between Xian ti [shangdi ], Deus, Elohim, and Jehovah.” As Barrett (p. 512) demonstrates, however, Ricci himself used the term jiao to mean teaching rather than religion. 2. For a study of the changing meanings of the term rujiao, see Huang Jinxing, “Zuo wei zongjiao de rujiao.” 3. See in particular Kang Youwei, Kongzi gaizhi kao, 164–93.

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the state religion, and by 1912, together with his disciple Chen Huanzhang, he was promoting his vision of a “Confucian church” (Kongjiaohui 孔教會).4 One of the main arguments Kang offered for the establishment of Kongjiao was to counter the growing threat that Christianity posed to the “national culture.”5 A country without its own religion was, he contended, barbaric.6 The religious dimension that Kang Youwei invested in the traditional term rujiao was undertaken against a background of two significant developments. The first was that the Japanese neologism shūkyō 宗教—coined to translate the English term “religion”—gained acceptance in Japanese academic circles from about 1881,7 after which it was quickly introduced to a Chinese readership.8 The second was the invention of “world religions” in the late nineteenth century.9 Although “Daoism” and “Buddhism” had only recently been classified as world religions, ever since the Six Dynasties period ru, shi, dao had often been clustered as a trio in traditional schemes of doctrinal affiliation. Moreover, Protestant missionaries and sinologists in the nineteenth century had referred to the three jiao as “sects” in the religious sense.10 As such, conditions were favorable for a religious rendering of rujiao in China.

New Confucian Views Debates over the classification of rujiao or Kongjiao as a religion have continued to be discussed in China with varying levels of interest over the past century. Zheng Jiadong maintains that from the May Fourth

( 4. See the informative account in Gan Chunsong, Zhiduhua ruxue ji qi jieti, 335–46. See also Huang Jinxing, Shengxian yu shengtu, 50–58. 5. Kang Youwei, Wuxu bianfa qianhou, 233; idem, “Da Zhu Rongsheng shu,” 233. 6. Kang Youwei, Mengzi wei, 167. 7. Shūkyō was coined in 1869. See Chen Weifen, Jindai Riben Hanxue “guanjianci” yanjiu, 53. 8. The term was included in Huang Zunxian’s 黃遵憲 (1848–1905) Riben guozhi 日本國志 (History of Japan), compiled between 1880 and 1887 and first published between 1890 and 1895. The 1898 reprint includes a preface by Liang Qichao; see Masini, The Formation of Modern Chinese Lexicon, 98–99. 9. On this topic, see Giradot, “ ‘Finding the Way’ ”; idem, “James Legge and the Strange Saga of British Sinology”; idem, “Max Müller’s Sacred Books”; Pfister, Striving for “The Whole Duty of Man,” 2: 241. 10. See Barrett, “Chinese Religion in English Guise,” 520–24.

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period until the 1940s few Chinese scholars, whatever their opinion of ruxue, supported the view that the rujia tradition was a religion. A major shift occurred in 1958 with the “Declaration on Behalf of Chinese Culture Respectfully Announced to the People of the World,” which Tang Junyi, Mou Zongsan, Xu Fuguan, and Zhang Junmai cosigned and published in Hong Kong (see Chapter 7).11 According to Zheng, whereas earlier New Confucians such as Liang Shuming, Xiong Shili, and Feng Youlan had been careful to demarcate “the rujia” from religion (even though they admitted rujia thought could exercise a type of religious function), “the declaration clearly affirmed the religiosity of rujia thought.”12 In their writings, so-called second generation New Confucians such as Mou Zongsan and Tang Junyi maintained that the rujia tradition is a humanist religion (renwen zongjiao 人文宗教)13 or a religion of morality (daode de zongjiao 道德的宗教). Mou’s position is that rujiao is characterized by a high degree of religiosity: Religions can be examined from two aspects: one is called “affairs” (shi 事 ), the other is called “principles” (li 理 ). Looked at from the perspective of affairs, rujiao is not what is commonly called a religion because it lacks the ceremonial of common religions. It transformed religious ceremonial into the rituals and music that formed the course of everyday life. From the perspective of principles, however, rujiao has a high degree of religiosity (zong jiaoxing 宗 教 性 ); moreover, it is a most perfected form of religious spirit.14

Mou’s later followers such as Du Weiming have continued to support the notion of religiosity. In 1970, Du warned that the uncritical adoption of such concepts as “philosophy” and “religion” in reference to rujia xinxing zhi xue 儒家心性之學 risks engaging in a form of “concept matching.” He argued that traditionally in the Islam of Arabic culture, Hinduism of Indian culture, Buddhism of East Asian and Tibetan cultures, and rujia of East Asian cultures, no such distinction was made. It is a feature unique to Christianity of the West. The rujia tradition is neither a philosophy nor a religion yet is both a philosophy and a religion. It is a “religio-philosophy.”15 Fourteen years later he was still com-

( 11. Tang Junyi et al., “Wei Zhongguo wenhua jinggao shijie renshi xuanyan,” 1–52. 12. Zheng Jiadong, “Rujia sixiang de zongjiaoxing wenti,” 206. 13. Tang Junyi, Zhongguo wenhua zhi jingshen jiazhi, 38. 14. Mou Zongsan, Zhongguo zhexue de tezhi, 99. 15. Du Weiming, “Rujia xinxing zhi xue,” 162, 166.

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mitted to this view: “I basically consider Confucianism to be a form of ethics. I think of it not as philosophy, in the sense of abstract philosophical discussion, but as practical ethics, a way of life.” He describes Confucianism as “a form of philosophical anthropology or as a religiophilosophy. In other words the focus is on the idea of being human.”16 Still later he wrote: “In the future, ruxue will definitely not be Christianity and become a religious activity. Earlier, Kang Youwei and others planned to have ruxue instituted as the national religion (guojiao), yet this was fundamentally at odds with the character of ruxue, and was destined not to succeed.”17

Ren Jiyu In 1956, Ren Jiyu wrote to his former teacher Xiong Shili informing him that he now rejected ruxue, having been converted to the “truths of Marxist theory.”18 Between then and the start of the Cultural Revolution a decade later, Ren published the first three volumes of his hugely influential four-volume Zhongguo zhexueshi 中國哲學史 (A history of Chinese philosophy). The fourth volume was published in 1979. Zhongguo zhexueshi was widely adopted as a standard textbook in university courses throughout China from the late 1970s on.19 Ren has been a particularly powerful academic in China, having served as head of the CASS Institute for World Religions, a professor of Chinese philosophy in the Philosophy Department at Beijing University, chair of the Chinese Atheists’ Association, head of the Chinese Association for the Study of Tibetan Buddhism, consultant to the Association for the Study of Chinese Religion, and head of the Association for the Study of the History of Chinese Philosophy. He also served consecutive terms as a delegate

( 16. Tu Wei-ming, Confucian Ethics Today, 91. 17. Du Weiming, “Rujia chuantong de xiandai zhuanhua,” 67. 18. Ren Jiyu 任繼愈, Tian ren zhi ji, 388. Under the influence of Soviet Marxist theoretician Andrei Alexandrovich Zhdanov, during the 1950s and 1960s research in Chinese philosophy, the history of Chinese philosophy, and the history of Chinese thought was forced into the binary interpretive frame of the “struggle between idealism and materialism.” Rigid binary analysis was reinforced through the systematic application of such categories as dialectics vs. metaphysics, atheism vs. theism, progressive vs. conservative, and revolutionary vs. reactionary. 19. The abridged version, Zhongguo zhexueshi jianbian, was still being reprinted in the 1990s.

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to the National People’s Consultative Congress between 1975 and 1988 and for much of the period since 1985 he served as head of the Beijing Library (a position he now holds in an honorary capacity). In the late 1970s, Ren revived the debate on the mainland over whether rujiao was a religion. According to Xing Dongtian 邢 東 田 (CASS), in 1978 Ren Jiyu (then head of the Institute for World Religions, CASS) “overturned the thesis accepted since the May Fourth period [that rujiao is not a religion], maintaining that ‘rujiao is a religion.’ ”20 Ren pursued this thesis in a series of essays published during the 1980s,21 claiming that the centerpiece of the feudal ideology of traditional Chinese society was rujiao. Confucius was transformed into an icon, the rujiao classics became sacred scriptures, and by incorporating elements of Buddhist and Daoist thought, “rujia” was transformed into a theology:22 “Rujiao of the Song and Ming periods differed from the rujia of the pre-Qin period. In fact, it was a religion with the characteristics of medieval scholastic theology. Just like medieval European Thomism, it was both a theology and a philosophy.”23 The process by which the rujia began to take on the form of rujiao started during the reign of Han Wudi 漢武帝 (140–87 B.C.):24 “After the establishment of rujiao [in the Western Han] successive governments used the apparatus of administrative edicts to promulgate its teachings and also the civil examination system to encourage young people to study and recite [the classical scriptures]. As people grew steeped in its practices, the religion became part of the social landscape, and ordinary people were turned into monks (senglü 僧侶).”25 Moreover, the specter ( youling 幽 靈 ) of rujiao is still roaming China today:26

( 20. Xing Dongtian, “1978–2000 nian Zhongguo de rujiao tanjiu,” 248. 21. Many of these essays were collected and republished in Ren Jiyu, ed., Rujiao wenti zhenglunji. 22. Ren Jiyu, “Lun rujiao de xingcheng,” 2. 23. Ren Jiyu, “Rujiao de zai pingjia,” 74. Xing Dongtian, “1978–2000 nian Zhongguo de rujiao tanjiu,” 262–63, similarly contends that although the philosophical aspects of the historical ru can be studied independently of their religious thought, “just as when we are studying Augustine’s or Aquinas’s philosophical thought and political thought we must understand the background of their Christian beliefs, so, too, when we study ruxue and rujia we cannot ignore their internal connection with rujiao.” 24. Ren Jiyu, “Rujia yu rujiao,” 29. 25. Ren Jiyu, “Juyou Zhongguo minzu xingshi de zongjiao,” 175. 26. Ren Jiyu, “Lun rujiao de xingcheng,” 16–17.

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Memories still freshly recall the manner in which free rein was given to the deification of certain individuals during the ten years of the Cultural Revolution and how the myriad masses were stirred into a psychological frenzy. The roots of this were to be found neither in Buddhism nor Daoism but in the specter of Chinese rujiao as it continued to wander across the land, albeit appearing before people in an atheistic guise.27

Origins of Rujiao Interest in tracing the origins of rujiao became more noticeable in the mid-1990s, the same period during which renewed interest was shown in the question of the origins of the ru.28 He Guanghu 何光滬 (Renmin University) portrays the relationship between ruxue and the concept of tiandi 天帝 (a conflation of tian 天 and shangdi 上帝) as analogous to that between a flower and the root of a plant. Maintaining that ruxue needs to return to this root ( fanben 返本), he contends that tiandi is not only a core concept of early rujiao but also “the concentrated expression of ancient Chinese people’s ‘transcendentality’ [i.e., sense of the transcendent]; the most fundamental archetype of the Chinese people’s collective unconsciousness.” For He, rujiao is more than the sum of ruxue and rujia; it refers to a primeval religion that existed in China for three thousand years between the Shang and the Song dynasties. Its core element consisted of the belief in tiandi and embraced the concept of shangdi (lord on high), personal verification of tianming 天命 (heaven’s command), and sacrificial activities and related institutions. It was a religious system in which rusheng 儒生 played a pivotal role and in which relevant aspects of ruxue theory were given expression. He concurs with the view that the term ru originally referred to a group of religious specialists who had their origins in early Chinese shamanism and divination. Later, these origins came to be reflected in such practices as ritual sacrifices and offerings and the descent-line system (zongfa 宗法). According to He, rujiao was the origin from which ruxue developed; rujiao was the root and ruxue the flower; ruxue was concerned with the theoretical dimension of rujiao, and rujiao with the religious dimension

( 27. Ren Jiyu, “Juyou Zhongguo minzu xingshi de zongjiao,” 175. 28. Guo Qiyong, “Zhongguo dalu diqu jin wunian lai (1993–1997) de ruxue yanjiu,” 64. For an informative overview of influential contributions to this topic from ancient times (but principally the twentieth century) until the mid-1990s, see Zuffrey, To the Origins of Confucianism, pt. 1.

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of ruxue. Rujiao existed in the people’s subconsciousness, and ruxue in the consciousness of scholars; rujiao was present in people’s lives, and ruxue in the writings of the literati. Because the essence of rujiao was the concept of tiandi, there was a special connection between ruxue and rujiao views about tiandi. (In fact, he continues, later ruxue doctrines about tianli 天理 and tiandao 天道 are philosophical developments of rujiao views about tiandi.) “The concept of tiandi is the oldest religious concept for which there exists a written record, the highest expression of the ancient Chinese people’s transcendent consciousness. From ‘oracle bone inscriptions’ ( jiaguwen 甲骨文) to the Book of Odes and the Book of Documents, this concept has been expressed by a variety of different terms” such as di 帝, tian 天, shangdi 上帝, haotian 昊天, and huangtian 皇天. The term tian, which came to replace di, expressed such meanings as “ruler” and “creator” when used to represent the concept of tiandi. Even though tian also came to be used to express the concept of the “self so” (ziran 自然), it was the religious sense, “that is, to express ‘tiandi,’ that still played the leading conceptual role.” This sense of tian included such qualities as “unlimited, incomprehensible, wholly other, and superhuman.” In the formative period of Chinese culture, the concept of shangdi or tiandi had already become the “concentrated expression of the Chinese people’s transcendent consciousness,” but later in Chinese culture, particularly in elite culture, this transcendent consciousness became weakened and “distanced from its original religious spirit.” Thus, whereas in early ruxue tian had “transcendent elements,” in later ruxue these elements became attenuated as attention shifted to the “pedantic glossing of old terms” or to “vacuous interpretations of the mind and the nature.” These later developments were equally divorced from the realities of ordinary life and served to advance rather than to question the authority of the human realm (as opposed to respecting the authority of the transcendent realm). Because “learning of the mind and the nature” theories from the time of Lu [ Jiuyuan]–Wang [Yangming] to the New Confucians exaggerated the multidimensional role of the individual, they were inclined to emphasize [teachings such as] “the original mind is self-sufficient,” and “there is no need to rely on the external.” In terms of academic theory, although “heaven is the starting point and end point of the ruxue doctrine of human nature,” under the influence of Chan 禪 this led to the “mind is principle” doctrine of Mind-centered Learning (xinxue 心學), the mainstream of ruxue. As such, it seems that ruxue became further and further removed from its starting point (that “what heaven ordains is called the nature”) because the abstract concept of “principle” lacked

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the quality of the human personality and so abandoned the religious concept of “heaven.” . . . The [form of ] rujiao in the hands of the ruling class or the ruxue that the rulers set store by was often transformed into an authoritarian type of moral and social dogma and was used to dominate the people. The transcendent basis of Song and Ming ru thought was made into the foundation of the human realm; the religious force of the Song and Ming ru was changed into a political force.

He Guanghu insists that in order for ruxue to “return to the root,” SongMing Mind-centered Learning (and, by implication, contemporary New Confucianism) must be bypassed in favor of a return to the view of tiandi that existed in the pre-Qin period; a return to the transcendent basis of a common human nature. As for “opening up to new developments” (kaixin 開新), he proposes that ruxue seek closer engagement with Christian theology because of the similarities he sees between the ancient Chinese view of tiandi and the Christian concept of God. He further asserts that the Cheng-Zhu lineage of ruxue has a greater potential to engage with Christianity than the Mind-centered Learning tradition because Cheng-Zhu subscribes to the view that tianli or tiandao is transcendent.29 As we will see shortly, these views on the central place of concepts such as shangdi and tian in rujiao—which He Guanghu believes were subsumed within the concept of tiandi—were later echoed by Li Shen 李申. Where He differs from Li Shen and others, however, is his conviction that rujiao was not an elite religion but rather a religion that expressed the Chinese people’s transcendent consciousness. Shortly after He’s essay was published, Xie Qian 謝謙 (Sichuan University) argued that rujiao was a native form of religion that predated both Buddhism and Daoism and was concerned primarily with the Suburban Sacrifice ceremonies ( jiao 郊) and state sacrifices and offerings conducted in the Ancestral Temple (zongmiao 宗廟). Xie distinguishes rujia, the “school” established by Confucius, from rujiao, “the traditional religion of the Hua-Xia nation, that is, the state religion of successive dynastic houses. . . . Odes, Documents, Ritual, Music, Changes, and the Spring and Autumn Annals were the bibles of rujiao, and their character was similar to that of the Jewish Old Testament: this is, they were both religious scriptures and histories of the first people of antiquity.” Xie likens the relation between rujia and rujiao to the relation between theology and Christianity:

( 29. He Guanghu, “Zhongguo wenhua de gen yu hua.”

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Although there are differences between the two, they are difficult to separate completely. . . . Rujiao is a large concept, and rujia is a small concept. The former can contain the latter, whereas the latter is but a part of the former. Previously when contemporary scholars addressed the issue of the rujia culture’s being the mainstream of Chinese culture, they attempted to clarify this confusion [between rujia and rujiao] by separating the rujia school from the Hua-Xia cultural tradition, which is also known as rujia culture. In fact, the essence of socalled rujia culture is precisely what we have termed rujiao.30

In other words, the essence of China’s traditional culture is not so much rujia culture as rujiao culture. The most substantial study of the religious dimension of early rujia culture to appear in the mid-1990s was Chen Lai’s Gudai zongjiao yu lunli: rujia sixiang de genyuan 古代宗教與倫理: 儒家思想的根源 (Ancient religion and ethics: the origins of rujia thought). For Chen, Western Zhou culture was the product of a long period of evolution that began in Xia times and proceeded through three cultural phases: shamanic culture, sacrificial culture, and then ritual and musical culture. Each of these cultures also had its own form of religion: primitive religion, natural religion, and ethical religion. It was ethical religion that provided the basis for the birth of the early rujia. The Xia and earlier periods formed the age of shamans, the Shang was the age of sacrificial offerings (made by officials rather than shamans), and the Zhou an age of ritual and music. Accordingly, Chen argues that it is mistaken to trace the origins of the rationalistic rujia directly to mystical shamanic culture. By Shang times, the number of spirits/divinities (shen) worshipped had been reduced, and a supreme deity came to be recognized. A body of rules pertaining to sacrificial offerings was developed, thereby paving the way for the systematization of sacrificial ceremonial. The shamanic tradition continued to exist, but only as part of the “small tradition.” And although a natural religion had developed, it was devoid of moral ideals, ethical values, and “value rationality.”31 By Zhou times, ritual and music had developed into a cultural system that had little connection with shamanism or sacrificial culture. This Western Zhou culture was the seedbed for the birth of the rujia and provided early rujia such as Confucius with their views of life, political philosophy, and ethical character. The “rationalized system of thought” that became known as rujia thought rejected magic (or the “shamanic

( 30. Xie Qian, “Rujiao,” 371–76 passim. 31. Chen Lai, Gudai zong jiao yu lunli, 19, 165, 166.

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arts” [wushu 巫術]), instead emphasizing culture, education, mores, and control of the emotions. More generally, the rationalization of Chinese culture was characterized by the gradual displacement of shamanic practices by religion, and of shamans by sacrificial officers ( jisi 祭司). Sacrifice did not disappear entirely but was incorporated into activities associated with the “national religion” (guojia zongjiao 國家宗教) as well as ancestor worship. Despite this, “it was no longer able to represent the elite culture of the great tradition.” In this system of ritual and music, value rationality became established—another expression of a more general process of rationalization. Rujia culture was the product of this process of rationalization. The standardization of the practices involved in the making of ceremonial offerings in turn led to the development of ritual practice. Even though rujia culture was “humanized” (renwenhua 人文化) and rationalized, this did not mean that it was divested of a sense of spirituality. For the early rujia, spirituality was to be found expressed in civilization, culture, education, and ritual propriety.32 Two years before the publication of Chen’s book, Li Zehou outlined some ideas that are broadly consistent with the thrust of Chen’s views. Like Du Weiming, Li regards ruxue as neither a religion nor a philosophy but a blend of the two. He argues that sheng 聖 (sage) was a term originally connected with religious ceremonies and shamanistic activities. Because shamans could communicate with spirits and ghosts, they became sheng. They also possessed the authority of rulers and so were also kings. In this way, ethics and government merged as one. This was the Chinese form of the unity of government and religion and, from a theoretical perspective, derived from [the concept of] inner sageliness and outer kingliness. . . . Ethics came to be regarded as government, and government came to be regarded as ethics. . . . Although ruxue was not a religion, in fact it transcended religion and attained an absolute realm that was equivalent to religious experience, the so-called unity of heaven and humans.33

In 1999, under the obvious influence of Chen’s book, Li significantly developed these ideas. As had Chen, he constructed a narrative based on the chronological developments of the Xia, Shang, and Zhou dynasties, in an ongoing process of “rationalization.” Ancestor worship—observed principally by clan (shizu 氏 族 ) heads to protect their own clan and tribe—and worship of tian were intimately connected from high

( 32. Ibid., 18–20 passim, 166. 33. Li Zehou, “Zai tan ‘shiyong lixing.’ ”

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antiquity to the Shang and Zhou periods. Shamanic powers were also long associated with early rulers. In fact, early rulers (wang 王, jun 君, tianzi 天 子 ) were also shamans. The fusion of government and religion was equivalent to the fusion of the spiritual realm and the human realm. Over time, the political power of the ruler overtook his spiritual power, but both roles remained embodied in the ruler. This was the case from high antiquity until the early Zhou. The characteristics of early shamanism were movement and activity, extreme emotion, and an innate unity between the human and the spiritual. Li contrasts this with religion, which is still and rational, and in which subject and object are clearly distinguished into two realms. After the West became “disenchanted” with shamanism, it developed science and religion. China, however, developed the tradition of the scribe (shi 史), which, in turn, was further “rationalized” as ritual (humanism) and humaneness (human nature). The scribe continued the shaman’s work of prognostication, but in the service to kings. Scribes had specialist knowledge of regularities (shu 數)—patterns discernible in the natural world—hence the role of shi in activities associated with the calendar and astronomy. Through a continuing process of rationalization, there was no longer a need to prognosticate in order to foretell the future. This new phase was ushered in by the Duke of Zhou and Confucius. By instituting ritual and music, the Duke of Zhou completed the final phase in the rationalization of the shaman-scribe tradition “and thereby consolidated the foundations of the ‘great tradition’ [as distinct from the ‘small tradition’] of Chinese culture.” The hallmarks of this final phase of rationalization are virtue (de 德) and ritual. Whereas in shamanic culture de was associated with magical efficacy, by Zhou times it connoted a ruler’s ethical behavior and personal qualities, and then finally individual morality. The external manifestation of de was ritual. Ritual represented the completion of a process of rationalization in which the ceremonial associated with ancestor worship and communicating with spiritual forces was subjected to institutional transformation so that it could serve as a normative standard for a broad-based social order. Ritual was both “regularity” (shu 數) and “pattern” (li 理), and it also had a sacred character. There was nothing it did not encompass, and it served to facilitate communication between heaven and humans. Having displaced magic and divination, it became the rational basis of judgment for “determining human fortune and misfortune, blessings and calamities.” Ritual provides the solid foundation for the unique tripartite combination of Chinese ethics, government, and religion.

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According to Li, “magic ceremonial” became bifurcated at the beginning of the Zhou dynasty. On one hand, the professional offices of sorcerer (wu 巫), supplicant (zhu 祝), diviner (bu 卜), and scribe (shi 史)— which had originally developed out of the shamanic tradition—gradually spread to ordinary society to form the “small tradition”: In later ages, [these sorcerers, diviners, etc.] combined with daojiao 道教 to form all manner of large and small popular religions, as well as superstitions. On the other hand—and indeed the most important aspect—was that having been subjected to the rationalized system of the Duke of Zhou’s “instituting ritual and creating music,” the fundamental characteristics of shamanism—the unity of heaven and the human, and the unity of government and religion—were preserved and passed on institutionally, to become the core of the “great tradition” of Chinese culture.

By “instituting ritual and creating music,” the Duke of Zhou completed the final stage in the process of rationalizing the ceremonial dimension of “external magic” (waizai wushu 外在巫術).34 By interpreting ritual in terms of humaneness, Confucius completed the final stage in the process of rationalizing the affective dimension of “internal magic”: The rationalization of both the internal and the external dimensions of magic ceremonial meant that the situation in the West whereby science and religion, as well as rational understanding and emotional faith, each developed independently of one another just did not occur in China. The rationalization of magic ceremonial led to the blending of the affective and the rational; faith, emotion, intuition, and rational knowledge were combined into one as pragmatic reason, which is both a mode of thinking and a form of belief.35

Although Chen and Li differ in their views on the relation of ruxue to shamanism, by outlining a process of rationalization, both seek to portray the ruxue of the Zhou dynasty as a rationalized system of thought and practice in which spirituality was expressed in culture, civilization, education, ritual propriety, and mores. Although sharing characteristics with religion and philosophy, ruxue was the product of cultural development. By presenting a case for the rational roots of ruxue, Chen and Li perhaps hoped that this would help deflect criticisms that simplistically dismissed ruxue on the grounds that it was a “mere religion.”

( 34. Following Li in rendering wushu as “magic.” 35. Li Zehou, “Shuo wu shi chuantong,” 35–60 passim.

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Nevertheless, by limiting their respective accounts of ruxue to the Zhou period, they failed to address Ren Jiyu’s contention that ruxue and the rujia began to develop into rujiao during the reign of Han Wudi.

Revival of the Debate in the New Millennium During the second half of the 1990s and the first few years of the twenty-first century, the debate was revived once again. Ren Jiyu’s views remained highly influential. Curiously, much of the discussion continued to focus on aspects of the early period of ruxue, a focus perhaps directed at uncovering the truths about a prepoliticized, pristine ruxue. Most of the topics discussed centered on such issues as whether shangdi and tian were anthropomorphic deities; whether Confucius believed in ghosts and spirits; whether historically Confucius had been regarded as a normal human or as a spiritual being; and whether the ru constituted a profession that was the functional equivalent of a clergy. The comments of Ren Jiyu at a forum organized by the Institute for World Religions in 2001 were particularly noted. Ren stated that although rujiao had disappeared with the demise of the “feudal empire,” its influence was still strong. In addition to examples such as the deification of Mao Zedong in the Cultural Revolution, he also cited the more recent deluge of such “decadent phenomena” as the intimate connection between rujiao and pseudo-scientific beliefs and theism: We must take clear note of this reality and continuously criticize and uproot the influence of feudalism. In Western countries it took several hundred years to criticize feudalism. In China, however, we haven’t even started to do so. In the process of directing criticism at capitalism and revisionism, some feudal things have been concealed and even been praised as examples of cultural excellence.36

It was, however, a publication by one of Ren’s protégés, Li Shen (then a researcher at the Institute for World Religions, CASS), that marked the high point of this period of debate. Li Shen’s two-volume tome, Zhongguo rujiaoshi 中國儒教史 (The history of Chinese rujiao; 1999, 2000),37 was trumpeted as the first comprehensive monograph on

( 36. Jia Runguo, “Rujiao wenti xueshu yantaohui zongshu,” 113. 37. Li Shen, Zhongguo rujiaoshi.

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the history of rujiao to be published on the mainland.38 As is true of his mentor, Li’s central thesis is that rujiao is a religion: According to traditional interpretations, the rujia stressed the importance of human affairs. In this book I seek to explain that the rujia did so in order to carry out a duty to assist shangdi. According to traditional interpretations, the rujia paid attention to ethics and morality. In this book I seek to explain that as far as the ruzhe were concerned, they paid attention to humaneness, rightness, ritual, wisdom, the Three Bonds, and the Five Norms precisely because it was the will of heaven that they do so.39

Indeed, it seems that Li’s thesis may even have persuaded Ren to revise his own views by acknowledging the developments that influenced rujiao before its supposed formal establishment in the reign of Han Wudi. Thus, in his preface to Li’s book, Ren states that before the Qin and Han periods, the core beliefs of rujiao—“China’s traditional religion”—were “awe of heaven and taking the ancestors as models.” From Qin and Han times on, the core beliefs became “loyalty and filial piety, and the Three Bonds.” Moreover, he asserts, the latter beliefs were a direct development and continuation of the earlier beliefs and were characterized by the role they played in the political ideology of a centralized state.40 Many of Li Shen’s main arguments were set out in a 1997 essay in which he contended that, historically, the Chinese state functioned as a religious organization structured around a tripartite system of worship: the spiritual system centered on haotian shangdi 昊天上帝; the spiritual system centered on royal ancestors; and the spiritual system centered on Confucius. “The difference between the rujiao state [of China] and Christian states is that in the former the religious organization and the state organization were one. This is similar to the situation with Islam.” He maintains it is wrong to argue that because ordinary people did not worship shangdi, rujiao was not a religion. This is because it was the imperial prerogative of the emperor alone to worship and make sacrifices to shangdi.41 Only one priest was needed.

( 38. Jia Runguo (Zhongguo rujiao shihua) makes no attempt to argue the thesis that rujiao was/is a religion. The book is really little other than a potted history of what is conventionally called Confucianism in the West. 39. Li Shen, Zhongguo rujiaoshi, vol. 1, preface. 40. Ren Jiyu, Preface to Li Shen, Zhongguo rujiaoshi, vol. 1. 41. Li Shen, “Rujiao, ruxue he ruzhe,” 25–26.

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Like Ren Jiyu, Li traces the formal beginning of rujiao as a religion to the reign of Han Wudi, even though the religion drew on antecedents that had been developing for many centuries: “Rujiao is the product of the combination of ruxue and traditional religious belief. In other words, traditional religious belief took ruxue to serve as its own intellectual basis. When Wudi honored rushu 儒術 (the techniques of the ru) exclusively, this marked the birth of rujiao.” Ruxue teachings were based on the ru canon and formed the principal authority for determining to whom (or to what) sacrifices and offerings should be made. This system developed through commentaries, subcommentaries, and individual writings. “In these commentaries and writings, the ru widely explored various aspects of the natural world and human life and, in the process, developed various philosophical, scientific, political, economic, and literary theories and established the huge system of ruxue. As such, so-called ruxue means the learning associated with explaining the Classics.”42 He cites the following passage from Zhu Xi’s preface to Daxue zhangju 大學章句 (Section and sentence commentaries to Great Learning) to support his argument that Song ruxue was not limited to philosophy but was ultimately an expression of rujiao: [Zhu Xi]: “Since heaven gave birth to our people, it has bestowed upon them a nature of humaneness, rightness, ritual propriety, and wisdom. In some cases the endowment of psycho-physical nature was not able to be the same, and for this reason it is not possible for all people to be aware of that which is contained in their nature and preserve it intact. Should one appear among them who is intelligent and wise and able to exhaust his nature, then heaven would certainly command that this person be lord and teacher of the multitudes and commission him to rule and instruct them so that their natures are restored.” [Li]: “A nature of humaneness, rightness, ritual propriety, and wisdom” is “bestowed” by heaven; rulers and teachers are “commanded” by heaven; rule and instruction are “commissioned” by heaven. Clearly this is not a case of my forcefully wanting to portray the sort of ruxue that Zhu Xi represented as an expression of rujiao!

For Li, it is self-evident that Zhu Xi was a faithful practitioner of rujiao and not just of ru learning (ruxue).43

( 42. Li Shen, “Rujiao, ruxue he ruzhe,” 27. 43. Ibid., 29.

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Li Shen’s Critics Within a year of publication of the second volume of Li’s Zhongguo rujiaoshi, his views were attracting widespread criticism, particularly from his immediate colleagues as well as scholars who advocated a sympathetic understanding of the ru tradition. It is clear why these scholars were uncomfortable with the thesis that ruxue/rujiao should be regarded as a religion. As noted frankly by Yu Dunkang (Institute for World Religions, CASS), the question is an ideological rather than a scholarly one. Portraying ruxue as a religion implies that ruxue is “a bad thing because religion is a bad thing. Religion is the opiate of the masses and serves the interests of autocratic rulers.”44 One of Li’s earliest and most vehement critics was his colleague Chen Yongming 陳詠明 (Institute for World Religions), who wrote a scathing review of Li’s first volume. One of Li’s more contentious claims—but structurally fundamental given his central argument that the rujia stressed the importance of human affairs so that they might assist shangdi—concerns the identity of shangdi and tian in the Zhou period: In the transition from the Shang to the Zhou, tian and shangdi had already become different terms for the same concept. Tian then gradually became the name for the supreme deity and the object of worship in state sacrifices. People believed that all affairs of the state, all major events concerning society and human life, were controlled and determined by tian. In ru classics such as Documents and Odes, we can sense the reverence and respect people showed tian or shangdi. This tradition of tian or shangdi was the precursor of the tian and shangdi in rujiao.45

In response to this passage, Chen cites repeated examples from early texts to challenge Li’s claims that tian and shangdi were reducible to one another. Chen further highlights a range of meanings associated with tian in early China, challenging Li’s reductionist and essentialist treatment of tian as a supreme anthropomorphic deity.46 Wang Jian 王健 (Institute for World Religions) rebuked Li for his attempts to harness a monotheistic account of shangdi to explain a diverse array of social problems across historically disparate periods, as well as

( 44. Yu Dunkang, cited in Wen Li, comp. and ed., “Guanyu ‘rujia’ yu ‘rujiao’ de taolun,” 65. 45. Li Shen, Zhongguo rujiaoshi, 1: 10. 46. Chen Yongming, “Guojiaji de xueshu doufuzha gongcheng.”

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the spiritual character, scholarly characteristics, and humanist concerns of particular historical figures. He also criticized Li for collapsing a range of nuanced concepts into a single meaning, citing Li’s claim that in the hands of Cheng Yi and Zhu Xi, “tian, principle, shangdi, ghosts and spirits, the numinous, and qian 乾 are all different terms for the same concept.”47 Following Du Weiming, 48 Wang proposes that the concepts of “religious” and “religiosity” should be used instead of “religion” because the latter implies a static structure unable to do justice to such “active” phenomena as “cumulative tradition” and “faith.” (Cf. Li Zehou’s contrasting of shamanism and religion.) Adopting such notions as religiosity would provide scholars with an “interpretative space” in which to understand “rujia culture” and better enable intercultural dialogue.49 Ju Xi 鞠曦 (a private scholar) objected to Li Shen’s attempt to use the premise that “rujiao is a religion” to provide a key to understanding the whole of traditional Chinese culture. Just as other contemporary scholars equate rujia thought and ruxue as the mainstay of China’s traditional culture, so, too, Li claims: Rujiao was the interconnecting thread of, and model for, the entirety of early Chinese culture.50 It not only provided an overall interconnection for all facets of early Chinese culture but also infused them with its spirit and constituted the broad background of early Chinese culture. All other cultural accomplishments necessarily grew out of the spirit of rujiao and returned to it as their starting point. Rujiao resembles a large tree trunk from which everything else grew, just like branches, leaves, flowers, and fruit.51

According to Ju, employing Western academic disciplines such as philosophy and religious studies to interpret Chinese culture is unfeasible because Chinese researchers will always have great difficulty in “overtaking” (chaoyue 超越) the theoretical approaches of Western philosophy and scientific thought. ( Ju seems to be arguing that they will always find themselves in a catch-up situation.) “Modern Chinese research into intellectual-cultural history requires that a new intellectual approach be developed.”52

( 47. Li Shen, Zhongguo rujiaoshi, 2: 385. 48. Du Weiming, Shi nian jiyuan dai ruxue, 42. 49. Wang Jian 王 健, “Renwen xueshu yanjiu yingyou de yanjin xueli jichu.” 50. Li adopts an idiosyncratic use of the term gudai, applying it not only to pre-Qin society but to all pre-twentieth-century periods as well. 51. Li Shen, Zhongguo rujiaoshi, vol. 1, preface. 52. Ju Xi, “Zhongguo rujiaoshi fansi.”

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Han Xing 韓星 (Shaanxi Normal University) similarly criticized advocates of the “rujiao is a religion” thesis for adopting a rigid “religious studies” interpretive framework for the study of ruxue, in which all aspects of ruxue (and traditional Chinese culture) are treated as religious phenomena. Chinese ruxue and traditional culture are extensive and profound. They neither had the scientific classifications of the West nor employed the academic divisions [of the West]. (This was not because they were incapable of doing so; rather, it was a matter determined by the essential character of Chinese culture. Moreover, this is also precisely wherein Chinese culture is superior to other cultures. In ancient China, divisions were in fact employed, but those divisions were actually not rigidly marked. That is, when divisions [fen 分] were employed, at the same time so were combinations [he 合]. Thus, if only one aspect is looked at, then mistakes are possible.)53

Knowledge Compartmentalization At the same time these criticisms were being made, a parallel debate about the legitimacy of Chinese philosophy (Zhongguo zhexue de hefaxing 中國哲學的合法性) was also under way (see Chapter 6). In both areas of debate, many scholars were concerned about the mismatch between traditional Chinese and modern Western schemes of knowledge compartmentalization. For some, such as Zheng Jiadong, this mismatch arose from a failure to appreciate the holistic quality of ruxue: Historically, ruxue was an integrated structure in which the religious, the philosophical, the historical, the scientific, matters relating to social propriety, and even the literary and the artistic were united to constitute an organic whole. . . . Rujia is a philosophy but not philosophy in the modern Western sense; it is an ethic, but not in the modern Western sense. The core of ruxue concerns the question of how a perfect human life is possible. In essence this is a religious question.54

For others, the real culprit is the hegemony exercised by Western schemes of knowledge compartmentalization. For Han Xing, the debate about whether ruxue is a religion is important because it concerns the fundamental interpretation of the nature of ruxue: “the mainstream intellectual system of traditional culture.” This interpretation in turn has

( 53. Han Xing, “Dalu rujiaopai de lishi dingwei.” 54. Zheng Jiadong, “Xiandaixing shiyuzhong de ‘rujiao.’ ” The lecture was delivered in 2001.

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direct implications for the evaluation of traditional culture and the future direction of Chinese culture: Is ruxue a religion? Is it a philosophy? Does China have a philosophical tradition? Does it have a scientific tradition? We often see references to the “way” that equate it with Plato’s Forms or Hegel’s Absolute Spirit. [We also see people claiming that] the concepts of yin and yang in our Zhouyi inspired Leibniz to invent the binary numerical system [that later led to the development of ] computer science. . . . In brief, all these are examples of attempting to use Western culture to draw forced analogies with Chinese culture. . . . This amounts to using Western concepts and categories to study and interpret China’s intellectual culture. And is this not precisely what is happening when we ask “Is ruxue a religion?”?55

Other participants used variations of the “Western hegemonic discourse” argument to defend the view that ruxue is a religion. Chen Ming, for example, proposes a solution in which each civilization should be studied as a local intellectual system and examined on its own terms. For too long, the Chinese people have bowed to the might of Western paradigms and applied them uncritically to the study of China’s past, present, and future. “Since all intellectual systems are local in nature, then it is inappropriate to single out the value norms and categories of knowledge of any one and apply them to the categorization and interpretation of the cultural realities and experiences of any other local intellectual system.” For this reason, he concludes that it is inappropriate to apply the categories of Christian monotheism or Buddhist “otherworldliness” to assert that ru was not a religion.56 Other scholars, however, object to what they regard as “special pleading” to present rujiao as a “special/unique” form of religion. Xing Dongtian, for example, argues: If it is “special/unique,” then so is every religion. If “special/unique” refers to its not matching religions in the general sense, then what does “religions in the general sense” mean? . . . We cannot argue that simply because humans occupy a special place in the natural world, therefore other animals are not animals. Nor can we argue that because a particular type of culture is able to take control of a greater proportion of natural resources and develop a more powerful productive force, therefore other cultures are not cultures. Similarly, we cannot argue that because Christianity commands a leading place in the world (in terms of follow-

( 55. Han Xing, “Dui ruxue shifou shi zongjiao zhenglun de jidian kanfa he fansi.” 56. Chen Ming, cited in Wen Li, comp. and ed., “Guanyu ‘rujia’ yu ‘rujiao’ de taolun,” 71.

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ers and influence), therefore the various forms of religion that existed in humankind’s historic past (and some of which continue to exist) are not religions or deny religious status to the new types of religion that continue to surge into existence due to the current popularity of religion.57

Still other scholars are more concerned about the legacy of positivism. Guo Qiyong notes that in the 1920s China’s intellectual elite had come to accept the principles of Western Enlightenment rationality, which championed anthropocentrism and scientism and rejected the value of religion. He describes the hermeneutic of Enlightenment rationality in China as conforming to a framework of linear evolution such as that outlined in Auguste Comte’s (1798–1857) Positive Philosophy (1853), according to which the development of human intelligence and institutions passes through three stages: the theological, the metaphysical, and the scientific or positive. (Guo singles out Hu Shi and historian Fu Sinian 傅斯年 [1896–1950] as champions of this Enlightenment rationality.) In this discourse in which science was transformed into an infallible metaphysics—today people still often talk about “establishing a scientific historiography of philosophy,” reflecting its ongoing legacy—even those scholars who dare to have some positive things to say about ruxue are prepared to say only that it is a “philosophy” and not a “religion,” or say that it contains some “scientific” elements.58

As noted in Chapter 6 in the account of the “legitimacy of Chinese philosophy” debate, the issues raised about the appropriateness of Western schemes of knowledge compartmentalization are likely to continue to occupy the energies and concerns of many Chinese intellectuals. To repeat my earlier comment, this is because they feed into more pervasive and deep-seated concerns about the threat to Chinese cultural identity posed by subjugation to the cultural assumptions built into theories formulated under Western cultural circumstances.

Taiwanese Perspectives on Rujiao By and large, overseas Chinese scholars did not take an active role in the debate on ruxue/rujiao and religion. Here I introduce the views of three Taiwanese scholars who have contributed to related discussions. Huang Jinxing 黃進興 (Academia Sinica) identifies ren (humaneness) and li

( 57. Xing Dongtian, “1978–2000 nian Zhongguo de rujiao tanjiu,” 263. 58. Comments by Guo Qiyong, cited in “ ‘Ruxue shifou zongjiao’ bitan,” 35.

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(ritual propriety) as the two central planks of Confucius’s teachings. He believes that since the twentieth century li has largely been ignored in favor of humaneness because people have tended to regard li as a feudal vestige devoid of significance in the modern world. Huang objects to this view because it ignores the important role that ritual plays in rujia religiosity (zongjiaoxing), such as in sacrifices to Confucius, to heaven, and to the ancestors: Accordingly, to pay attention solely to renxue 仁學 (the learning of humaneness) while overlooking corresponding changes in the ritual system distorts the rujia. How much more so is this the case when the New Confucians—for whom it has become habit to borrow from Western philosophy so as to transform ruxue— have virtually reduced traditional rujiao into a pure speculative philosophy such that the religious significance of rujiao disappears entirely.59

Huang maintains that during Wang Mang’s 王莽 reign (A.D. 9–23) the state started to attach importance to the worship of Confucius in the Confucian temple (Kongmiao 孔廟). The critical moment in the temple’s evolution came with the institution of the temple-school (miaoxue 廟學) system during the Tang dynasty when “Confucian temples [were] established side by side with the official government schools in [locations from] the capital down to the local cities. The system, thus designed, provided the Confucian temple and the doctrines it embodied with the opportunity to become the major guide for education. The performance of worship in the Confucian temple was thereby advanced to the ‘world.’ ” Huang points out, however, that the cult of Confucius was not a public religion “because the ritual system of the Confucian temple was designed to meet the collective needs of the ruling class” and thereby alienated the masses. He also underlines the centralized and political role of the Confucian temple by demonstrating that the central government maintained total control over canonization; that relatively few sages were canonized; and that with one exception, the canonized sages came from the shi 士 (men of education and social standing) stratum of society. He believes that these characteristics help explain why modern Chinese intellectuals, “deeply impressed with the idea of such private religions as Christianity, have found it so hard to conceptualize Confucianism as a religion or even to grasp its specific religious character.”60

( 59. Huang Jinxing, Shengxian yu shengtu, 86. 60. Ibid., 175–78. The chapter is written in English.

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Huang Junjie (National Taiwan University) supports the view that ruxue is not a religion in the conventional Western sense of the term, yet he insists that it is characterized by “strong religiosity” and a “strong sense of religiosity.” One expression of ruxue religiosity in traditional society was the reverence shown for “the tradition of historical culture” and for former sages and worthies. Like Huang Jinxing, he also cites the example of the institution of the temple-school system and points out that from Western Han times on sacrifices and other ceremonies constituted an important part of life in the ru schools. From the Tang to the Qing, the temple-school system was represented not only at the national capital but also at the county (xian 縣) level: In this educational tradition of the rujia “temple-school system,” every student participated in sacrificial ceremonial. They did not, however, pray to the spirits for protection but took Confucius and other sages and worthies as models to raise the level of the realm of their existence. Confronted with Confucius’s personality as their model, their actions in sacrificial ceremonial formed part of a process of self-redemption enabling them all to become sages and worthies. We can say that rujia sacrificial behavior was a type of personal religion, a personally lived religion.61

Although in agreement with Huang Jinxing that the temple-school system best exemplifies the religious dimension of ruxue, Huang Junjie’s emphasis on the “redemptive” and “personally lived” character of ruxue religiosity contrasts with Huang Jinxing’s emphasis on its political and institutional function. Elsewhere, Huang Junjie describes ruxue as “not so much a collection of objects to be investigated . . . [as] an existential value system within which an investigator cultivates his personality and cultural enrichment to meet the challenge of modernity.” 62 He finds evidence of ruxue religiosity expressed in the yearning for a transcendental ontological reality and in the reverential awe with which this reality is held. 63 This difference in emphasis highlights both Huang Junjie’s close affiliation with the New Confucians and Huang Jinxing’s criticism of their philosophical emphases. In the heated cultural and political environment of contemporary Taiwan—central to which is the issue of indigenization (bentuhua

( 61. Huang Junjie, “Shi lun ruxue de zongjiaoxing neihan,” 10. 62. Huang Junjie, “Confucianism in Postwar Taiwan,” 218–19. 63. Huang Junjie, “Shi lun ruxue de zongjiaoxing neihan,” 2, 4–7.

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本土化)64—the question of Taiwan’s difference from China continues to arouse passionate debate. One expression of indigenization in the academy is the continuing development of the nascent field of Taiwan history (Taiwanshi 臺灣史),65 which grew rapidly during the 1990s. A salient characteristic of Taiwanshi is its reassessment of the period of Japanese colonial rule in Taiwan. As Leo T. S. Ching has observed, “The Japanese colonial period remains a powerful subtext in which the questions of ‘Taiwanese consciousness’ and ‘Chinese consciousness’ are imbedded and contested” because “Japanese colonialism was instrumental in delineating and delimiting the relationship between mainland China and colonial Taiwan.”66 Indeed, it is important to recognize that the very notion of “Taiwan consciousness” (Taiwan yishi 臺灣 意識 ) presupposes an identity through a history in which Japanese domination was very much a reality. Whereas earlier generations of historians who studied or taught guoshi 國史 (national [Chinese] history) excoriated this period as one of national shame, scholars working within the new field of Taiwanshi draw attention to the contributions of Japanese colonizers to Taiwan’s modernization and socioeconomic infrastructure. As Jeremy Taylor notes, “Japanese colonialism has come to be the focus of this field precisely because it is believed to represent an experience that differentiates Taiwan from China.”67 Recent interest in the history of Taiwan is, however, not the exclusive preserve of those seeking to promote the indigenization agenda. As might be suspected, the interests of those Taiwanese scholars committed to an all-embracing vision of Chinese history and civilization— “Chinese culture”—the essence of which they characterize as “rujia,” and to the belief that ru values and cultural norms are an integral component of Taiwanese identity lie in portraying the period of Japanese colonialism as one in which the essential “Chinese” identity of the Taiwanese people was enhanced rather than challenged as a false construct. Li Shiwei 李世偉 (Hualian Teachers College) is one such scholar.

( 64. In Taiwan, “indigenization” has functioned as a type of nationalism that champions the legitimacy of a distinct Taiwanese identity, the character and content of which should be determined by the Taiwanese people. 65. For a recent introduction to the background and development of Taiwanshi, see Q. Edward Wang, “Taiwan’s Search for National History.” 66. Ching, Becoming Japanese, 8, 7. 67. Taylor, “Reading History Through the Built Environment in Taiwan,” 166.

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Li Shiwei relates that he unwittingly became involved in the issue of whether “rujia culture” constitutes a religion through his research on rujiao associations and societies during the period of Japanese occupation. He asserts that rujiao was the “cultural characteristic” chosen by the native educated elite (shishen wenren 士紳文人) to confront the Japanese colonizing project of dōka 同 化 (assimilation) implemented in Taiwan from the 1920s until 1937, when it was superseded by kōminka 皇民化 (turning colonized Taiwanese into imperial subjects) policy directives.68 According to Li, this was a natural choice for the Taiwanese because from mid-Qing times the Chinese civil examination system had served as the backbone of Taiwan’s civil administration, and “rujiao” was the main content of the civil examination system. “Rujiao culture was the principal common resource of the traditional educated elite [in Taiwan]. During the period of Japanese occupation, it also led to the proliferation of associations such as poetry societies and literary societies, constituted by the traditional educated elite, so as to strengthen their cultural identity.”69 Li adopts two different senses of the term rujiao for the period he studies. The first sense refers to “rujia culture,” which he defines as “anything that relates to the promotion and dissemination of teachings on the normative principles of the rujia or is concerned with the transformation of society through education.”70 He identifies poetry societies (shishe 詩社), literary societies (wenshe 文社), and “other newly developed rujiao associations” as representative of this more “learned” (xueyixing 學藝性) expression of rujiao. He does not explain why he chose to use the term rujiao to refer to “rujia culture”71 (a formulation also adopted by Xie Qian; see above).

( 68. Much has recently been written on this phase in Taiwan’s history; see, e.g., Ching, Becoming Japanese, chap. 3. 69. Li Shiwei, Riju shidai Taiwan rujiao jieshe yu huodong, 9. I am grateful to Paul R. Katz for bringing Li Shiwei’s writings to my attention. 70. Ibid., 10. 71. In his preface to Li’s book, Wang Jianchuan 王見川 provides a good example of how the distinction between the terms rujiao and ruxue continued to be muddied even after the Japanese occupation. He relates how in the early part of the 1950s, the local (bensheng 本省人) and “mainlander” (waishengren 外省人) members of Tongshanshe 同善社 combined their energies to plan the establishment of a Kongjiaohui 孔教會, but with the imposition of martial law it became illegal to form religious associations and so the decision was made to

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Li also identifies a “religious” dimension to rujiao. During the period of Japanese occupation, he finds expressions of this dimension in spiritwriting halls (luantang 鸞堂) and benevolent societies (shanshe 善社) and emphasizes that despite the “popular religious” dimension of these phenomena, the people who organized them were usually from the educated elite, that is, the same people who participated in poetry and literary societies.72 Li’s use of the term rujiao to characterize both dimensions has clearly been influenced by the Japanese concept of jukyō 儒教,73 a term very broad in compass. Given the historical period he is dealing with, this use of jukyō to characterize a phenomenon he judges to be rujiao may seem warranted. The problem, however, is that Li generalizes from supposed religious elements in the phenomena he has chosen to study to treat the entire tradition of “rujia culture” as a religion. As Paul R. Katz notes: The scope of Li’s research over the years seems to suggest that any social, cultural, or religious organizations founded by members of the elite who had studied the Confucian canon can be identified as Confucian religion. . . . [H]e never systematically addresses the problem of whether one can really treat all these diverse cultural phenomena as representing one coherent religious tradition, and if so, how?74

Indeed, the problem is further complicated by the fact that it is often unclear just which aspects of the spirit-writing halls and benevolent societies Li believes justify treating these phenomena as expressions of a particular religion known as rujiao. Neither the fact that some of the halls promoted traditional virtues such as the “Three Norms and Five Constants” (san’gang wuchang 三綱五常) nor that the spirit writings used phrases taken from the Classics betrays an obvious religious dimension to rujiao. 75 Equally, appealing to the fact that during the occupation

( change the name to Zhongguo Kongxuehui 中國孔學會. See Li Shiwei, Riju shidai Taiwan rujiao jieshe yu huodong, 8. 72. Li Shiwei, “Riju shiqi Taiwan de rujiao yundong,” 156. 73. For recent informative studies on this subject, see the following writings by the Taiwanese scholar Chen Weifen (Academia Sinica), “You ‘Tōyō’ dao ‘Tō’A,’ cong ‘Jukyō’ dao ‘Jugaku,’ ”: 212–19; and Jindai Riben Hanxue “guanjianci” yanjiu, chap. 2. 74. Katz, “New Trends in the Study of Chinese Religion,” 217. 75. Li seeks to portray rujiao as a religious tradition that was given expression in various forms, one such form being spirit-writing halls. This needs to be distinguished from a different phenomenon identified by Philip Clart. In his study

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Japanese authorities and scholars sometimes used the term jukyō to refer to spirit-writing halls hardly constitutes “objective proof” for the religious dimension claim.76 In short, it is inadequate as an argument to claim that in using “rujiao/jukyō” to refer to spirit-writing halls, the Japanese grasped precisely the essential character of the halls. In addition to the fact that most members of the halls were men of education fond of rujiao thought, most of the content of the teachings promoted in the halls and in the spirit-writing books was rujia ethics and morals. These observations highlight the phenomenon of the religious transformation of the rujia in Taiwan from the late Qing period on.77

Li’s response, however, is to claim that rujiao is different from other religions because of its “this-worldly” focus: [Rujiao] takes the standards of rujia moral norms for interpersonal relations as its basis and blends these with stories about karma, retribution and reward. Its humanist and this-worldly character are patently manifest. Indeed, it can be said that rujiao is a religious organization thoroughly imbued with the characteristics of the Chinese nation.78

In effect, the analytic distinction between rujiao and “rujia culture” is ultimately dissolved in that higher-order realm of meaning and identity that is the “Chinese nation.”

Ecumenical Encounters A number of Hong Kong, Taiwan-based, and overseas Chinese scholars have long been participants in the so-called interfaith dialogue and the promotion of global ethics, in which the focus tends to be on the contemporary and future developments of ruxue rather than its past. The most prominent scholar in this regard is New Confucian Liu Shuxian (Academia Sinica). Liu’s “interfaith” dialogue began in the 1960s with his Ph.D. dissertation on Paul Tillich, which was written under the

( of spirit-writing hall liturgy and doctrine, Clart (“Confucius and the Mediums,” 6) shows how “elements perceived as Confucian within popular religion” were appropriated “for the purpose of inventing a tradition for a new religious movement and carving out a distinctive niche in the highly diversified religious marketplace in Taiwan.” 76. Li Shiwei, “Cong Zhongguo dao Taiwan,” 267–68. 77. Li Shiwei, “Riju shiqi Taiwan de rujiao yundong,” 161. 78. Li Shiwei, “Riju shiqi Taiwan luantang de rujia wenhua,” 112.

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supervision of Nelson Wieman (1884–1975), the founder of empirical theology. More recently, he was a participant in the UNESCO Universal Ethics Project between 1997 and 2000.79 Liu endorses the notion that ruxue is a philosophical tradition with religious import.80 Yet even in the ecumenical domain, all is not sweetness and light. Du Weiming has expressed strong disappointment that a rujia representative was not invited to attend the 1993 Parliament of World’s Religions convened in Chicago at which a draft Declaration Toward a Global Ethic (written by the Catholic theologian Hans Küng)81 was announced. (Du points out that when the first parliament convened in Chicago exactly one century before there were rujia representatives from the Qing court.)82 He takes issue with Küng’s draft on the grounds that it starts out as an internal dialogue of Catholicism and only then gradually expands sequentially to consider other Christian traditions, other monotheistic religions, and finally other religions. “Küng has made quite a few contributions to theology but his contributions to the area of dialogue between civilizations are lacking.” Küng was also involved in the UNESCO Universal Ethics Project (1997–2000) led by Yersu Kim 金麗壽. According to Liu Shuxian, in 1997 twelve philosophers from different areas and traditions gathered in Paris in March to discuss the feasibility of drafting a Universal Ethics Declaration to be considered by the UN. I was the only one from the Far East and spoke from a Confucian perspective. Then in December about thirty philosophers from all over the world gathered in Naples to discuss related issues. . . . Everyone agreed that should there be a document on Universal Ethics, a minimalist approach had to be adopted, as no philosophers would agree on a well-developed ethical theory. But just how minimal is the issue in question.83

( 79. Liu Shuxian, “Reflections on Approaches to a Universal Ethics from a Contemporary Neo-Confucian Perspective,” 154–77; idem, Quanqiu lunli yu zong jiao duihua. For a recent example of interfaith dialogue in practice, see Liu Shuhsien et al., Confucianism in Dialogue Today. 80. See Liu Shuxian, “Philosophical Analysis and Hermeneutics,” 140. 81. Küng and Kuschel, eds., A Global Ethic. 82. According to Liu Shuxian (“Philosophical Analysis and Hermeneutics,” 149): “As Confucianism was not an organized religion, there was no Confucian scholar present in the parliament, no Confucian representative put a signature on the document.” Liu further informs the reader: “But a copy of the declaration was sent to me immediately after its publication.” 83. Ibid.

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Du—who was also present at the Naples meeting—reports that doubts were raised about the minimalist strategy and that these doubts intensified in subsequent meetings in Beijing and Barcelona. He characterizes the minimalist approach as “insubstantial, weak, and unpersuasive” and, in the face of challenges such as Samuel P. Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations thesis, too academic and unworkable. Du’s alternative strategy is to bypass religion and focus on the idea of civilization and culture. To this end, he draws on Karl Jaspers’s Axial Age concept to propose a dialogue between civilizations (in which “Confucianism” is recognized as one of the Axial Age civilizations—a sort of civilizational G-7): “Dialogue between civilizations” [or “the dialogue of civilizations” as Du renders the notion in his English-language writings] implies the arrival of the second Axial Age. . . . In the dialogue between civilizations, rujia has played a role of profound import, and its future is considerable. In all dialogues in which rujia is a participant, we have a situation in which neither party can be clearly demarcated. Generally speaking, when there is dialogue between Christianity and Buddhism, or Judaism and Islam, or Hinduism and Sikhism, it is extremely rare for a participant to be committed to both faiths. However, Christian, Islamic, and Buddhist disciples who represent rujia are very common. There are also a great many followers of particular religious faiths who use the term rujia as an adjective to describe their values orientation: rujia-style Christians, rujia-style Moslems, or rujia-style Buddhists. For ease of exposition, let us stipulate that by “rujia-style,” we are referring to three attributes: being politically concerned, participating in society, and attaching importance to culture. Specifically, within the context of cultural China, a rujia-style Christian would be a “cultural Christian”; a rujia-style Moslem would be a participant in social reform; and a rujiastyle Buddhist would believe in a Buddhism of “this world.” These examples would seem to make it clear that rujia is able to facilitate dialogue between civilizations. We might say that it is precisely because exclusiveness is not a strong feature of rujia, and because its particularism does not impede its universalism, therefore it has the potential to function as an intermediary.

This does not, however, imply that the role for rujia should be limited to that of some sort of cultural go-between. As Du insists, the “Confucian problematic”—how is “learning for oneself ” achievable?—“is not merely of reference value; it also has a leadership role.”84 Other commentators have similarly expressed concerns about “religion” being an appropriate framework for discussing ruxue. While

( 84. Du Weiming, “Quanqiu lunli de rujia quanshi.”

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acknowledging that religious interpretations have enriched modern interpretations of ruxue, Joël Thoraval (Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales)—also a contributor to the “legitimacy of Chinese philosophy” debate—is concerned first about the danger of ruxue’s undergoing an insidious kind of “Chrisitianization” imposed on it by an external theological discourse (rather than by a partnership of equals engaged in global dialogue) and second about use of the language of “religion” to discuss the possibility of the ongoing transmission of ruxue in modern Chinese society: What contemporary forms [of expression]—be they individual or collective— are able to possess the artistry of [traditional] ritual and etiquette or to nurture the functions of the “original mind”? Yet the “attainment of sagehood” that people envision depends on these elements for its very possibility. Now that the shidafu 士大夫 of old are no more, the academies no longer in existence, and the Wenmiao have been transformed into museums, by what formal means can the “religious” dimension [of ruxue] find new modes of physical, symbolic, and institutional expression?85

Tang Enjia and the Kongjiao xueyuan In the previous chapter, we saw Jiang Qing’s definite response to this last question. Nor is he alone. As mentioned above, Chen Huanzhang— one of Kang Youwei’s leading disciples—was instrumental in establishing a Kong jiaohui in the early Republican period. At its height, more than 130 branches were established throughout China. Chen also likened China’s many Kongmiao to churches ( jiaotang 教堂).86 In 1930, Chen established the Kongjiao xueyuan 孔教學院 (Confucian academy) in Hong Kong, also modeled along the lines of a church. The academy continues to exist today under the active leadership of its president, Tang Enjia (Tong Yan-kai) 湯恩佳, who is also the officially recognized head of the Rujiao religion in Hong Kong. In contrast to the mainland proper, rujiao is an “official” religion in Hong Kong. The Kong jiao xueyuan runs two secondary and five primary schools there (with an enrollment of approximately 5,000 students). Tang has also been very active on the mainland. Over the past two decades, he has presented many large bronze statues of Confucius (as well as of Yan Yuan and Zhu Xi) to various Confucian temples—of

( 85. Thoraval, “Rujia jingyan yu zhexue huayu,” 15. 86. Huang Jinxing, Shengxian yu shengtu, 50, 52.

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which there are currently about 1,600 in China—cities, and institutions, including the Shanghai Municipal Library and Nankai University in 1997 and, in 2001, even Renmin University, famed as an institution for training Marxist theoreticians (the following year, Renmin University established a Ruxue Studies Institute [Ruxue yanjiuyuan 儒學研究院]). The first statue was erected at Qufu Normal College in 1984 to celebrate the 2535th anniversary of Confucius’s birth. In 1999, Tang submitted a report to the leaders of the central government in China and to the National People’s Congress outlining the role for Kongjiao in realizing a genuine “socialist China with Chinese national (Zhonghua minzu) characteristics.” In the report he emphasized the importance of instilling belief in traditional Chinese culture; further, this attempt should be guided by the thought of Confucius, because it “genuinely represents the spiritual axis and leading culture of the entire Chinese (Zhonghua) nation”; Confucius’s thought must be promulgated at all levels of society; rujiao must be revived in order to effect this promulgation; rujiao teachings must be introduced into all levels of education; and Confucius’s birthday (28 September) must be celebrated as Teachers Day and marked by a national holiday.87 Although Tang’s plans for the future of Kongjiao in China are not as detailed as those of Jiang Qing, like Kang Youwei before them, an attendant political agenda is central to their respective visions, hence the consistent portrayal of Kongjiao as integral to Chinese (Zhonghua) cultural identity. Other contributors to the wider campaign to establish rujiao on the mainland have adopted alternative strategies to promote their cause. At a 2001 forum organized by the CASS Institute for World Religions, one discussant argued that the issue of rujiao was important in terms of both “the international standing of Chinese culture” and its relevance to overseas Chinese: Overseas Chinese do not regard rujiao purely as an academic issue but rather as an issue of how they distinguish themselves from Westerners (yangren 洋人). Rujiao is the common belief of overseas Chinese; it is the spiritual bond that connects Chinese people. In interreligious dialogues, the representatives of each religion want to stress the value of their particular religion. In such a large country as China, it appears somewhat abnormal not to have our own unique religion.88

( 87. Tang Enjia, “Baogao.” See also idem, Tang Enjia zun Kong zhi lü, for his views on rujiao more generally. 88. See “Rujiao wenti xueshu taolunhui zongshu,” 113.

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Whether this suggestion will be co-opted to serve some future united front strategy remains to be seen. Nevertheless, the existence of rujiao as an official religion in Hong Kong does provide a precedent for the mainland authorities.

Concluding Remarks Since about 1900, the term rujiao has been widely used in Chinese publications, and just like ruxue—a term employed with increasing frequency in Chinese academic discourse over the course of the twentieth century— its semantic field remains fluid and contested. A minority of the scholars cited in this chapter identify religion with the “rujia tradition,” rather than invoke the term rujiao. They variously describe this tradition as a humanist religion, a religion of morality, or as both a philosophy and a religion: a “religio-philosophy” that gives expression to the religiosity of rujia thought. Other scholars reserve such terms as “religion,” “religiosity,” and “religio-philosophy” for rujiao, describing it as both a religion and a philosophy, as possessing a high degree of religiosity, a theology and a philosophy, a religion that expressed the Chinese people’s transcendent consciousness, a native form of religion that predated both Buddhism and Daoism, and the religion of the Chinese state. As for the relationship between rujiao and rujia, several alternative accounts have been articulated: rujiao refers to “rujia culture”; when rujia was transformed into a theology, it became rujiao; and rujia is the “school” established by Confucius, whereas rujiao is “the traditional religion of the Hua-Xia nation.” As related in the previous chapter, Jiang Qing proffered yet another variation, describing the relationship between rujiao and rujia as analogous to that between Christian theology and Christianity. Whereas rujia is a term used when China’s historical culture is at a low ebb, rujiao is a term used when the culture is flourishing. Other scholars have proposed differing accounts of the relationship between ruxue and rujiao. Thus we are told: rujiao was the origin of ruxue; rujiao is a system in which relevant aspects of ruxue theory were given expression; rujiao is the product of the combination of ruxue and traditional religious beliefs; rujiao was concerned with the religious dimension of ruxue, whereas ruxue was concerned with the theoretical dimension of rujiao, and rujiao became a religion during the reign of Han Wudi. This situation prompts three observations. First, there is limited consensus in contemporary Chinese academic discourse about how rujiao should be distinguished from ruxue, and from the rujia tradition. This suggests that these terms are “floating signifiers” whose meanings

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are vulnerable to subjective interpretation and hence continue to be open to negotiation. Second, the uncritical and unreflective manner in which many contemporary scholars employ the terms rujia and rujiao as analytical categories often thwarts a reliable purchase on historical realities. Too often these accounts tend to be unconsciously prescriptive rather than descriptive, or speculative rather than being based on what is verifiable. The third observation is that as the process of knowledge compartmentalization and epistemological reordering intensified over the course of the twentieth century in China, correspondingly pressure was brought to distinguish between the “philosophical” and the “religious” when in fact many scholars hold that such a distinction is inappropriate in the case of the “tradition of the rujia.” (This distinction can be traced to the early part of the twentieth century and the debates whether Confucius was a religious specialist [zongjiaojia 宗教家] or a philosopher [zhexuejia 哲學家].)89 Thus, the lack of consensus evident in many of the foregoing accounts concerning whether a religious dimension should be ascribed to rujiao and/or ruxue highlights a tension created, on one hand, by the need for scholars to use these terms in a manner congruent with broader contemporary usage (viz., ruxue = the philosophical, rujiao = the religious), while, on the other hand, many of these scholars harbor profound misgivings about the viability of a sharp philosophical/religious distinction as applied to ruxue / rujiao / the rujia tradition. Chen Lai’s and Li Zehou’s narrative reconstructions of the prehistorical and early historical origins of ruxue / “rujia culture” represent two of the more concerted attempts to bypass this dilemma. The tactic they employ is to acknowledge that although ruxue does share characteristics with religion and philosophy, crucially ruxue was the product of an ongoing cultural development: a rationalized system of thought and practice in which spirituality was expressed in culture, civilization, education, ritual propriety, and mores.

( 89. Kojima Tsuyoshi, “Rujiao yu ruxue hanyi yitong chongtan,” 206–7.

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14 Popularization of Ruxue and Rujia Thought and Values

Previous chapters have focused on academic discourse relating to philosophical, historical, and cultural conceptions of ruxue, rujia, and rujiao. Although there have been calls from within this body of discourse to promote and develop socially engaged forms of ruxue, generally those making these calls have not sought to realize their goals in actual practice. Despite this, practical efforts have been undertaken to popularize and disseminate rujia values in contemporary mainland society by individuals and institutions both inside and outside academia, often in collaboration.1 Collectively, their endeavors have generally been directed at three activities: promotion of “traditional virtues,” the recitation of traditional rujia texts, and the construction of an ideal type: the “ru entrepreneur.” In this chapter, I deal with each of these activities in turn.

( 1. In Taiwan, by contrast, by the early 1990s, as the Chinese Nationalist Party’s commitment to a program of cultural reconstruction modeled on “traditional Chinese cultural values” waned, and as the ruxue content of secondary textbooks ceased to be promulgated by force of government fiat, institutional support for Taiwan’s putative ruxue/rujia identity become increasingly attenuated, contributing to a deepening crisis of relevance for ruxue in modern Taiwanese society. As we saw in Chapter 9, a number of academics remain highly critical of the Chinese Cultural Renaissance movement.

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Traditional Virtues As noted in Chapter 3, in 1993 the State Education Commission issued a policy document outlining the role of patriotism as a guiding principle in education reform, and in 1994 the CCP Central Committee issued the “Guidelines for Implementing Patriotic Education,” which makes several references to traditional virtues but none to rujia values. Thus, although already in 1994 senior party figures such as Li Lanqing and Gu Mu were prepared to support a role for rujia values in moral education, this support was not translated into a specific endorsement of “rujia values” in policy documents. In fact, Li’s and Gu’s pronouncements need to be understood in the broader context of the central government’s real priorities in promoting moral education at that time. In 1993 the CCP Central Committee in conjunction with the State Council distributed a document titled Zhonghua renmin gongheguo jiaoyu gaige he fazhan gangling 中華人民共和國 教育改革和發展綱領 (Outline of educational reforms and developments in the People’s Republic of China) in which “moral education” in schools is described as embracing ideological, political, and moral character (pinde 品德) education. The basic task of this education is described as educating “students using Marxism, Mao Zedong Thought, and the Theory of Constructing Socialism with Chinese Characteristics; and—while resolutely ensuring that foremost priority is given to upholding a correct political orientation—to cultivate a new socialist generation that possesses ideals, morals, culture, and discipline.” The subsequent paragraph reveals that the significance of educating children in “China’s excellent cultural tradition” is to help establish the goal of socialism with Chinese characteristics.2 Ruxue, rujia values, and Confucius are not mentioned. In October 1996, the Sixth Plenary Session of the Fourteenth Party Central Committee passed the Zhonggong zhongyang guanyu jiaqiang shehuizhuyi jingshen wenming jianshe ruogan zhongyao wenti de jueyi 中共 中央關於加强社會主義精神文明建設若干重要問題的決議 (Resolution of the CCP Central Committee concerning some major issues in building a socialist psycho-spiritual civilization). 3 This resolution sets out

( 2. The document is included in People’s Republic of China, Ministry of Education, Department of Policy Regulations, Zhonghua renmin gongheguo xianxing jiaoyu fagui huibian, 33, item 28. 3. The text of the document can be accessed online at http://www.people. com.cn/GB/shizheng/252/5089/5106/20010430/456601.html.

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a series of vaguely formulated slogans designed to promote the ongoing construction of a “socialist psycho-spiritual civilization.” Occasional reference is made to the need to strengthen “ideology and morals” (sixiang daode 思想道德), a notion defined as covering patriotism, collectivism, socialist education, social and public morality, professional morality, and family virtues. 4 Ruxue, rujia values, and Confucius are not mentioned. In 1997, at the Fifteenth National People’s Congress, Jiang Zemin introduced the principle of “ruling the country by law”; three years later, he began to emphasize the need to implement both the rule of law ( fazhi 法 治 ) and rule by virtue (dezhi 德 治 ).5 He first used the two phrases “rule the country by law” and “rule the country with virtue” early in 2001 at a meeting of propaganda department chiefs. At no point, however, did Jiang specify just how “virtue” should be understood. The locus classicus of the phrase “rule the country with virtue” is the Analects, in which Confucius recommends it as a method for rulers. It remains far from clear just how this method of statecraft might relate to “civic virtues.” This, of course, has proven to be no obstacle to those keen to promote ruxue. In 2003, for example, the China Confucius Foundation published a supplement to the 2003 edition of the Zhongguo ruxue nianjian 中國儒學年鑒 (China ruxue almanac), the majority of which is devoted to a collection of more than twenty essays, culled from disparate

( 4. As Li Ping, Zhong Minghua, Lin Bin, and Zhang Hongjuan (all Sun Yatsen University, Guangzhou) point out, ideology is central to deyu 德育, or moral education: This ideological education has two functions. The first of these—the political cultivation of the next generation, or “successors for [sic] the proletariat”—has been critical at least since Mao Zedong’s 1957 statement, “We should educate the people morally, intellectually and physically, so that they become working people possessed of a socialist consciousness and literate minds.” . . . The second ideological function of deyu is to indoctrinate students in the party’s ideology through course content, setting ideals and communicating proper ways of behavior. Such content consistently stresses the principles of Marxist-Leninism, the thoughts [sic] of Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping, and focuses on the “Three Loves” of education—love of the motherland, love of the Communist Party of China, and love of socialism. See Li Ping et al., “Deyu as Moral Education in China,” 453–54. 5. Jiang Zemin, “Zai Zhongyang sixiang zhengzhi gongzuo huiyishang de jianghua.”

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sources, that take up the theme of rule by virtue; the other half of the formula, “rule by law,” is generally ignored.6 Later in 2001, the Party Central Committee printed and distributed the document “Guidelines for Implementing the Enhancement of Civic Morality” (“Gongmin daode jianshe shishe gangyao” 公民道德建設實施 綱要). The opening paragraph declares that in enhancing civic morality, the twin principles of ruling the country by law and ruling the country by virtue must be observed if the goal of realizing a “socialist moral system” compatible with a socialist market economy is to be realized. Generally, the guidelines give greater emphasis to the role of traditional virtues (without ever specifying which ones) in the overall enhancement and development of civic virtues than did the 1996 resolution on building a socialist psycho-spiritual civilization. Again, however, no reference is made to ruxue, rujia values, or Confucius. The 2003 Ministry of Education policy document, Quanrizhi yiwu jiaoyu sixiang pinde kecheng biaozhun (shiyan gao) 全日制義務教育思想品德 課程標準(試驗稿) (Standards to be adopted in ideology and moral character courses in full-time compulsory education [trial version]),7 mentions the term “traditional virtues” once (its role is “to promote the construction of socialist psycho-spiritual civilization and protect national stability and national unity”). No list of traditional virtues, let alone rujia virtues, is provided.8 Finally, in 2004, two proposals were released to reinforce the central government’s call to promote moral education among youth. Neither proposal mentions traditional virtues or ruxue values; the emphasis is purely on the inculcation of ideological correctness.9

The Beijing Oriental Morality Research Institute The longest running series of programs promoting the popularization of rujia values (under the cover of “traditional virtues”) has been organized by the Beijing Oriental Morality Research Institute (Beijing dongfang

( 6. See Zhang Shuhua, Ruxue yanjiu lunwen zhuanji. 7. People’s Republic of China, Ministry of Education, Quanrizhi yiwu jiaoyu sixiang pinde kecheng biaozhun. 8. The “silver rule” of “do not do unto others what you would not have done unto you” (from the Analects) is listed as a virtue of interpersonal relationships but no hint is given as to its rujia origins. 9. “Zhonggong zhongyang guowuyuan guanyu jinyibu jiaqiang he gaijin weichengnianren sixiang daode jianshe de ruogan yijian”; “Guanyu jinyibu jiaqiang he gaijin daxuesheng sixiang zhengzhi jiaoyu de yijian.”

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daode yanjiusuo 北京東方道德研究所), a semiautonomous institution directed until recently by Wang Dianqing 王殿卿.10 The institute was established in 1994 with funding from the Beijing Municipal People’s Government and “relevant departments” within the Ministry of Education.11 The same year, the institute and the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Education collaborated in running a trial program teaching traditional Chinese virtues to 40,000 students in four universities and over a hundred primary and secondary schools. With continuing funding from the Ministry of Education under the ninth (1996–2000) and tenth five-year plans (2001–2005), the program was expanded to 373 schools and universities around the country.12 In 2002, Wang reported that the experimental program involved a cumulative total of more than 350,000 students.13 By the end of 2004, this figure had increased to 600,000.14 (There appears to be no independent source to corroborate these figures.) The institute also conducts teacher-training courses for its programs at New Asia College in Hong Kong. A 1999 report by one of the local research teams based at Zhaoyuan 招遠 city, Shandong province, provides a list of the sort of “traditional virtues” that were being promoted in primary and secondary schools as part of the experimental program: loving kindness (ren’ai 仁 愛 ), filial respect for parents (xiaoqin 孝親), loyalty and reciprocity (zhongshu 忠恕), overcoming selfish desires (keji 克 己 ), respecting parents (zunqin 尊親), benefiting the country (liguo 利國), modesty (qianxun 謙遜), being industrious and clever (qinmin 勤敏), uprightness (gongzheng 公正 ), trustworthiness (shouxin 守信), being helpful to others (zhuren 助人), and frugality ( jianpu 儉樸).15

( 10. In 2004 Zhang Xiaohua 張曉華 became the new director. 11. Gong Dafei, “Zhuanjia xuezhe dou lai guanzhu he canyu puji chuantong meide,” 5. 12. Wang Dianqing, “Zhonghua lunli yu gongmin daode.” Wang gave me a copy of this speech. According to Gong Dafei, “Zhuanjia xuezhe dou lai guanzhu he canyu puji chuantong meide,” 5, the institute’s programs have been used in schools and universities in Beijing, Nanjing, Shandong, Heilongjiang, Chongqing, Sichuan, Shenzhen, Tianjin, Wuhan, and Xian. 13. This information was provided to the author when he interviewed Wang Dianqing in October 2003. 14. This more recent figure is provided in “Guoji ruxue lianhehui gongzuo tongbao” 國際儒學聯合會工作通報 (International Confucius Association work bulletin), no. 13 (Dec. 8, 2004): 2. This is not a published document. 15. Wang Dianqing, ed., Dong fang daode yanjiu, no. 3, 355.

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In the latter half of the 1990s, these activities were supported by a grant Wang received under the Ministry of Education’s ninth five-year plan for a project titled “Experimental Research on Moral Education in Primary, Secondary and Tertiary Schools Using the Excellent Traditional Virtues of the Chinese Nation” (“Da- zhong- xiaoxue Zhonghua minzu youxiu chuantong daode jiaoyu shiyan yanjiu” 大中小學中華民族 優秀傳統道德教育實驗研究). A subproject led to the publication of an eight-volume booklet collection, Dazhong daode 大眾道德 (Morals for the masses).16 Each booklet is devoted to a particular virtue: ritual propriety (li 禮), rightness (yi 義), incorruptibility (lian 廉), sense of shame (chi 恥), loyalty (zhong 忠), filial respect (xiao 孝), sincerity (cheng 誠), and living up to one’s word (xin 信).17 There is significant overlap between this list of virtues and the “four norms and eight virtues” (siwei bade 四維 八德) promoted by Sun Yat-sen; indeed, on several occasions Wang’s general preface to the collection of booklets cites Sun’s comments on the connection between morality and the stability of the nation. Perhaps the best evidence we have for accepting that Wang Dianqing’s commitment to the promotion of rujia values was more than simply pandering to party dictates about the imperatives of creating a socialist psycho-spiritual civilization is to be found in his somewhat subversive views on the purported influence of ruxue on the formation of Marxism. The 2001 report on the “Experimental Research on Moral Education in Primary, Secondary, and Tertiary Schools Using The Excellent Traditional Virtues of the Chinese Nation” project, 18 conducted by the Moral Education Research Center of the China National Institute for Educational Research (Zhongyang jiaoyu kexue yanjiusuo, Dejiao yanjiu zhongxin 中央教育科学研究所德 育 研 究 中 心 ), 19 includes a subsection on Marxism and traditional Chinese culture in which the anonymous author of the report (Wang

( 16. Wang Dianqing, ed., Dazhong daode. 17. Each booklet was written by a different author. Three of the authors had written their Ph.D. dissertations under Fang Keli. See Fang Keli, “Guantong gujin, gu wei jin yong,” 6. 18. The report is available at http://www.chinamoraledu.com/03/0307/files/ 10000374.html; accessed Dec. 3, 2005. 19. The Moral Education Research Center was established in 1991 as a research department within the China National Institute for Educational Research. The institute is a national-level organ under the direct control of the Ministry of Education.

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Dianqing)20 responds to the fears of “some venerable comrades” that this “experiment” in moral education was really an attempt “to replace Marxism with ruxue.” After a perfunctory reiteration of his resolute faith in the “scientific and veridical” nature of Marxism, Wang elaborates on the compatibility of Marxism and traditional Chinese culture. Having noted that “a great wealth of historical data shows that the origins of Marxist thought had already been merged within the genes of traditional Chinese culture,” Wang proceeds to demonstrate that ruxue fundamentally influenced the formation of Marxism. The evidence adduced in support of this intriguing thesis is as follows: Marxism has three origins. The first is classical German philosophy, established by Leibniz. He undertook a great deal of research on Chinese methods of binary arithmetic and also Song-Ming Principle-centered Learning (lixue 理學). The second was English classical economics. One of its founders was Adam Smith, whose teacher [sic], François Quesnay, was one of the leading Physiocrats. As the founder of the Physiocrats, Quesnay was acknowledged to be “Europe’s Confucius.” The third origin was French utopian socialism, which was given birth in the context of a century of “China fever,” the center of which was at the University of Paris. Against this background Engels wrote an essay in which he demonstrated the relationship between utopian socialism and the “Liyun” (Ritual cycles) chapter [of Liji ].

The intention behind these rather remarkable claims is clear enough: not only are ruxue and Marxism fundamentally compatible, there would be no Marxism if it were not for ruxue.

Official Endorsement of Rujia Values? It is a matter of speculation whether those seeking to promote the popularization of rujia values will receive the sort of official endorsement and institutional support crucial to their enterprise. Recent comments by Ye Xuanping 葉選平, formerly vice-chairman of the Ninth Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (1998–2003), might seem to suggest that this support is imminent. Ye’s closing address at the October 2004 conference commemorating the 2555th anniversary of the birth of Confucius—delivered in his capacity as incoming chairman of the International

( 20. The authorship of this section of the report, if not the whole report, is known to be Wang Dianqing, because two years earlier most of this section of the report was published in an essay written by Wang, “Jinxing Zhonghua minzu chuantong daode jiaoyu de dangdai jiazhi ji qi yiju,” 123–25.

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Confucian Association—can certainly be read as confirmation that senior party figures support efforts to popularize ruxue: We must work hard to raise the standard of research on the theoretical aspects of ruxue, but at the same time we must devote full attention to the dissemination and popularization of ruxue. . . . Only by transforming new findings about the theoretical aspects of ruxue into new resources for popularizing ruxue can the power and value of ruxue be revealed. Popularizing ruxue will enable it to become imbued with vigor. For ruxue to secure ongoing vitality and for it to be able to display that vitality require it to enter into the lives of ordinary people (baixing). Only a ruxue that exists within the lives of ordinary people can possess a real and enduring value.21

On reflection, however, this rhetoric differs little from that enunciated by Gu Mu in a speech delivered a decade earlier in his capacity as honorary chair of the China Confucius Foundation at the 1994 conference held in commemoration of the 2545th anniversary of Confucius’s birth. In that speech, Gu drew attention to the importance not only of raising the quality of research on Confucius and rujia thought but also of popularizing and disseminating rujia thought. He emphasized the need for scholars to contribute to the cultivation of the people and to assist in solving social problems, recommending that rujia thought be made accessible in an easily understood format “and broadcast to the masses, especially the great numbers of young people. Moreover, we need to spark their interest in a way that is beneficial to raising the level of the broad masses’ cultural accomplishments and social morality.”22 In the intervening decade, however, there is little evidence of state-led initiatives specifically promoting the popularization of rujia values.23

( 21. International Confucian Association, Secretariat, ed., Guoji ruxue lianhehui di san jie huiyuan dahui wenjian huibian, 7. 22. Gu Mu, “Kongzi danchen 2545 zhounian jinian dahuishang zhici,” 4. 23. Even at the unofficial level, Gu’s statements on popularizing ruxue did not receive much attention until several years later. In 1999, for example, at a seminar convened in Beijing to discuss the topic of the popularization of rujia thought, Kong Fan 孔繁 (CASS) cited the authority of Gu’s speech as a reason for popularizing rujia thought, arguing that “in constructing the new culture and new morality of socialism” China needs to draw on the experience of rujia thought because “having undergone a long period of historical sedimentation, rujia thought has come to constitute the psychological formation and national character [of the Chinese people].” Kong Fan’s comments are cited in Chen Shaofan, “Ruxue de yanjiu, puji yu dazhonghua,” 56–57.

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It might further be noted that in a speech prepared for delegates at the 2004 conference commemorating the 2555th anniversary of the birth of Confucius, the chairman of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, Jia Qinglin 賈慶林, observed that although speeches by senior CCP leaders at the conferences to commemorate the 2540th, 2545th, and 2550th anniversaries of Confucius’s birth evidence the party’s support for ruxue, that support fell within the wider context of support for the “excellent tradition of Chinese culture.” Jia reported that at the closing ceremony of the fourth plenum of the Sixteenth CCP Central Committee in September 2004, it was affirmed that China’s advanced socialist culture needs to be constructed on the basis of 5,000 years of traditional culture. He then reiterated the point that as part of this culture ruxue must be critically inherited so that the dross and the refined are clearly distinguished.24 This might help to explain why Liu Weihua 劉蔚華 (executive vice-president of the China Confucius Foundation) expressed reservations about the popularization of ruxue and asked why ruxue should be privileged over other traditional “schools” of thought. At first blush, this response may seem surprising, given that Liu’s institutional affiliation is the China Confucius Foundation. Yet, on reflection, we need to bear in mind that, as is true of the International Confucius Association, many of the permanent staff members of these organizations are party cadres. Indeed, the principle of “critical inheritance” is written into the 1999 regulations of the academic committee of the foundation.25 On the other hand, there is also evidence to suggest that the officially prescribed distinction between “refined” traditional cultural values and ruxue or rujia values is being actively elided by those in the nonofficial domain. Take, for example, Renmin University’s Confucius Studies Institute (Kongzi yanjiuyuan 孔子研究院), established in 2002. In July 2004, the institute convened an Academic Symposium on “Ruxue’s Striding Toward the Masses” and an Editorial Meeting for the Book Series Recitation Texts to Be Used in Promoting Ruxue to the Masses. At the editorial meeting, Feng Jun 馮俊, deputy head of the Confucius Studies

( 24. International Confucian Association, Secretariat, ed., Guoji ruxue lianhehui di san jie huiyuan dahui wenjian huibian, 2–3. 25. Liu’s comments are cited in Chen Shaofan, “Ruxue de yanjiu, puji yu dazhonghua,” 58–59. The regulations are listed in the booklet China Confucius Foundation, 23, which is presented to visitors to the association’s headquarters in Ji’nan.

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Institute and vice president of Renmin University, drew particular attention to the fact that the institute also had another name, the Research Center for China’s Traditional Culture, and that the mission of this entity was to popularize and disseminate the excellent aspects of China’s traditional culture.26 The title of the meeting, however, leaves no doubt that, for this group, China’s traditional culture is really little other than ruxue. This is consistent with the tactics adopted by the Beijing Oriental Morality Research Institute.

Recitation of Classical Texts Since about 2000, the movement to train children to recite classical texts has served as another principal activity deployed to popularize rujia values in contemporary mainland society. The movement started in Taiwan and is also promoted in Hong Kong. Wang Caigui 王財貴 (Taichung Normal University), a former student of Mou Zongsan, developed the teaching materials and basic pedagogy in Taiwan in the early 1990s before introducing them on the mainland in the late 1990s. Since 2000, a private company, Beijing Sihai Children’s Recitation of the Classics Recitation Guidance Education Center (Beijing sihai ertong dujing daodu jiaoyu zhongxin 北京四海儿童讀經導讀教育中心), has promoted his methodologies in its publishing and teacher-training activities and instructional classes. The center also regularly arranges for Wang to conduct lecture tours around China. When I interviewed the center’s director, Feng Zhe 馮喆, in September 2003, he informed me that a total of 3.5 million students in several tens of cities had participated in recitation of the Classics programs. It was not explained how this figure was established; although it may have been based on sales of the teaching materials (books, tapes, and CD-ROMs) published by the center. If this is the case, the center’s financial situation must be very sound. The center aims to promote the skill of rote memorization via the medium of literary Chinese (wenyanwen 文言文). In a lecture Wang Caigui gave at Beijing Normal University in 2001,27 he claimed that rote

( 26. See “ ‘Zouxiang dazhong de ruxue’ xueshu yantaohui ji ‘Ruxue guomin tuijian duben’ congshu bianwuhui’ zhaokai.” 27. Wang Caigui, “Ertong jingdian songdu de linian” 兒童經典誦讀的理念 (The goal of children’s reciting Classics), http://www.sjxxedu.com/edusoft/Show Soft.asp?SoftID=51, available on CD-ROM and online. It is also available commercially.

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learning at an early age helps to stimulate the development of a range of cognitive skills, and because understanding will develop over time, there is no need for the teacher to explain the content of the texts memorized. The technique of rote learning is also recommended for learning foreign languages and foreign “classics”; hence the inclusion of a series of selections from Western “classics” among the teaching materials published by the center. These include materials as diverse as Plato’s Republic, Shakespeare’s sonnets, Keats’s poems, Jefferson’s “Declaration of Independence,” and Engels’s “Speech at the Graveside of Karl Marx.”28 Neither in the “basic theory” nor in the selection of texts is there an overt promotion of ruxue. The Chinese-language teaching materials produced by the center consist of texts and CD-ROMs based on selections from the following “classics”: Analects, Laozi, Zhuangzi, Mencius, Daxue, Zhongyong, Li weng duiyun 笠翁對韻, Mencius, Yijing, Dizigui 弟子 規, Qianziwen, Xiaojing, Shijing, Huangdi neijing, Shiji, Mozi, Lüshi chunqiu, Quan Tang shi, and Quan Song ci. Wang’s most explicit endorsement of ruxue is to claim that, ideally, students should memorize the Four Books first, starting with the Analects, because “therein lies the lifeline of our national culture.” Wang, however, also relates that his own practice is to begin with a selection from three materials: the Analects, Laozi, and Tang poems.29 It is perhaps this eclectic approach to the selection of teaching materials that has apparently enabled Wang and his mainland colleagues to avoid official hindrance in their promotional activities. Since its inception in 2000, the Recitation Guidance Education Center has collaborated with a number of organizations to promote its activities: Beijing Library, All-China Women’s Federation, Beijing Haidian District Government, China Confucius Association, China Confucius

( 28. A similarly eclectic range of Western “classics” is also included in the materials selected and published by the ICI Hong Kong International Cultural Education Foundation (ICI Xianggang guoji wenjiao jijinhui ICI 香港國際文教 基金會). Under the directorship of Nan Huaijin 南懷僅, the foundation also produces classical readers (predominantly rujia texts) designed for rote memorization. The foundation distributes its teaching materials for sale in China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. Unlike Wang Caigui, Nan Huaijin emphasizes the need for the texts to be explained when they are being memorized. See the foundation’s website, http://www.icikids.org/. See also ICI Hong Kong International Cultural Education Foundation, ed., Ertong yu jingdian daodu. 29. Beijing sihai ertong dujing daodu jiaoyu zhongxin, ed., Ertong jingdian songdu jiaoyu shouce, 23. For an outline of the theory, see ibid., pp. 8–39.

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Foundation, and the International Confucius Association. In 2004, the center’s board of directors included figures such as the head of the Beijing Library, Ren Jiyu, and Tang Yijie.30 More recently and more controversially, Jiang Qing has also become involved in promoting children’s recitation of the Classics. For Jiang, the “eternal truths of Chinese culture” are given expression in the Classics—texts that gradually took shape over the course of China’s historical culture. Without these texts, the “constant principles” and “constant way” that they reveal cannot be understood. Unlike Wang Caigui and the Beijing Sihai Children’s Recitation of the Classics Recitation Guidance Education Center, he maintains that “the Classics” refers exclusively to the Classics of the rujia, and that this understanding of the term has been the case throughout Chinese history. Jiang distinguishes two types of rujia classic. He restricts the primary meaning to the so-called Six Classics, the editing of which, on some traditional accounts, is attributed to Confucius. Jiang accepts without question that Confucius did edit the Six Classics and that these texts are of particular historico-cultural significance because when Confucius edited them, he invested them with his “subtle words and profound meanings.” (As discussed in other chapters, Jiang Qing identifies strongly with the New Text tradition of scholarship and exegesis.) The other type of text that Jiang accords the status of classic are the writings of later “great ru” who elucidated the meaning of the Six Classics. Because of the authoritative role played by the Classics in educating young people throughout Chinese history, Jiang insists that this qualifies them as the most appropriate and authoritative texts to be used in educating young people today. He is critical of the materials prepared by the Recitation Guidance Education Center on the grounds that they lack an overall coherence; the basis for selecting texts is not systematic; a number of the selected texts lack sufficient “orthodoxy” (zhengtongxing 正統性); the selections include unsuitable primers such as the Sanzijing and Dizigui; the selections include works of literature (as distinct from jing); and the selections include foreign texts. Jiang finds evidence of an overall lack of systematic selection in the omission of selections from the Book of Documents or the Spring and Autumn Annals. In regard to the lack of “orthodox” texts, he states:

( 30. Ibid., 82–88.

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In the history of education in China, only rujia culture has the capacity to provide education. Beginning with Confucius, who gave private instruction to his students, right to the end of the Qing dynasty, when the academies and the civil service examination system were abandoned, for over two thousand years it was rujia classics such as the Six Classics (the Five Classics plus the Classic of Filial Piety), the Four Books, Reflections on Things at Hand, and Instructions for Practical Living that served as the standard for selecting teaching materials in both private and public schools.31

In particular, he takes exception to the inclusion of texts such as Laozi, Sunzi bingfa, and Lüshi chunqiu in the materials produced by the center. In 2001, a group of academics and teachers under the leadership of Guo Qijia 郭齊家 (Beijing Normal University academic and brother of Guo Qiyong) was successful in securing funding from the Zhongguo jiaoyu xuehui 中國教育學會 (officially rendered as the Chinese Society of Education)—a department within the Ministry of Education—for a project to prepare and publish a set of texts to be used to train children to recite selected passages from traditional rujia texts, as one of the projects funded under the society’s Tenth Five-Year Plan (2001–2005). Officially, the set of twelve texts was edited by the China Confucius Foundation, but, in fact, Jiang Qing was responsible for the selections. In making his selections he adhered closely to principles outlined above.32 The “reading guide handbook” accompanying the set of texts includes an essay by Jiang Qing explaining the background and purpose of editing the set of texts. Jiang points out that the selection of texts includes writings of figures in Chinese history who lived after Confucius and were genuine sages and worthies: Yan Yuan,33 Zengzi, Zisizi, Mencius, Xunzi, Dong Zhongzhu, Wang Tong, Zhou Dunyi, the Cheng brothers, Zhang Zai, Zhu Xi, Lu Xiangshan, and Wang Yangming. This group is of particular significance because it represents Jiang Qing’s version of the “interconnecting thread of the way (daotong) of

( 31. Jiang Qing, “Dujing yu Zhongguo wenhua de fuxing.” 32. The set consists of the Classic of Filial Piety, Book of Odes, Book of Documents, Book of Rites, Book of Changes, Spring and Autumn Annals, Analects, Mencius, Great Learning, Doctrine of the Mean, Xunzi, Abundant Dew on the Spring and Autumn Annals, Balanced Interpretations (Zhongshuo, also known as Wenzhongzi ), The AllEmbracing Book (Tongshu), Reflections on Things at Hand, Topically Arranged Conversations of Master Zhu, Great Compendium of Zhuzi, Instructions for Practical Living, and the Complete Works of Wang Yangming. 33. Jiang includes Yan Yuan in this group even though “he left no writings.”

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old.”34 By rejecting the New Confucian version of the daotong in which Xiong Shili is privileged as having been the first to recover the daotong after the Ming dynasty (see Chapter 7), Jiang reiterates his disagreements with the New Confucians, thus further problematizing descriptions of him as a “mainland New Confucian.” What is more significant, in the very act of outlining his own unique daotong genealogy—just like Mou Zongsan and Zhu Xi before him—Jiang implies that he is the modern heir to the daotong, since only he has the perspicacity to identify its true historical representatives. The handbook also explains why the selected texts are all ruxue texts: Only a culture that has deep, thick roots can absorb foreign cultures. In the Tang dynasty, although there were several tens more Buddhist sutras than ruxue classics, Chinese culture was not transformed into Indian culture. This is because China had a strong and powerful cultural foundation. In the Song dynasty, there was very little development of Buddhist theory because Buddhism had become assimilated into Chinese culture. Nowadays a necessary prerequisite in our being able to absorb Western culture is to understand China’s own culture properly. This is why we have first selected ruxue classics.35

The publication of the texts in 2004 generated considerable debate between proponents and critics,36 even though the texts were to be used in selected schools only on a trial basis.

Cultural Capital: The “Cash Value” of Rujia Values The third area of activity in which attempts have been made to popularize and disseminate rujia values in contemporary mainland society is directed at the construction of an ideal type: the “ru entrepreneur” (rushang 儒商). Chapter 1 notes that Yu Yingshi, in his influential 1985 essay, “Zhongguo jinshi zongjiao lunli yu shangren jingshen” 中國近世宗 教倫理與商人精神 (Early modern Chinese religious ethics and the mercantile spirit), drew an equivalence between the concept of gudao 賈道, the way of the merchant, and Weber’s concept of the “process of rationalization,” because one of the key aspects of gudao concerns the

( 34. Zhonguo Kongzi jijinhui, ed., Zhonghua wenhua jingdian jichu jiaoyu congshu daodu shouce, 7. 35. Ibid., 20. 36. See, e.g., the materials assembled at http://www.contemphil.net/dujing .htm.

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most effective means of achieving one’s aims in business. In China, the latter half of the 1990s witnessed another process of rationalization, but this time involving the notion of rushang.

Rushang Since 1994 the China Confucius Association has actively promoted the study of the relationship between ruxue and the market economy, organizing a number of international symposia and conferences on related themes. The first of these, the International Symposium on Rujia Thought and the Market Economy, was convened in Beijing in 1995. By 1998 conferences and symposia on the topic of rushang began to be convened annually 37 and were attracting significant private, academic, and government support. Consider, for example, the International Conference Commemorating the 2550th Anniversary of Confucius’s Birth and Rushang in the Twenty-first Century held in Jining City (Shandong) in 1999. The conference was jointly convened by the China Confucius Foundation (based in Shandong), the Shandong Provincial People’s Government, the Jining Municipal People’s Government, the Association of International Ru Businesspeople (Hong Kong), the Ruxue Studies Institute of the Shandong Academy of Social Sciences, and the Shandong Foreign Trade and Economic Council. Officially, it was funded by the Association of International Ru Businesspeople (Hong Kong) and Harvard-Yenching Institute of Harvard University. The publication of the conference volume was subsidized by the Harvard-Yenching Institute.38 Many of the essays in the conference volume are concerned with the question of defining just what constitutes a rushang. One commentator reports that during the conference proceedings, more than ten different definitions of rushang were deliberated.39 In 2000, the China Confucius Foundation, Association of International Ru Businesspeople, Hunan Provincial Social Science Alliance, and Hunan Provincial Confucius Association co-convened a conference in Zhangjiajie entitled The Rushang Spirit and Economic Development in China and Southeast Asia in the Twenty-first Century. Again, a major

( 37. The first of these, The Rushang Phenomenon and the Modern Market Economy, was convened in 1998 at Xiayi in Henan. 38. Chen Qizhi and Zhang Shuhua, eds., Rushang yu ershiyi shiji. 39. Chen Deshu 陳德述, “ ‘Rushang jingshen yu 21 shiji Zhongguo ji DongnanYa jingji fazhan guoji xueshu taolunhui’ zongshu,” 108.

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issue for participants was the question of how to define rushang. Chen Deshu 陳德述 (Sichuan Academy of Social Sciences) summarizes the various proposals into two main categories. In one view, a rushang is a businessperson who possess “the rujia character, sense of values, and moral views, and who uses these qualities to direct business activities.” The other view is even vaguer: “a businessman who possesses Chinese cultural characteristics.” Participants also expressed a variety of opinions on “the spirit of the rushang.”40 Overwhelmingly, interest in such topics as the character, personality, and spirit of the rushang has been driven by an official concern that China’s burgeoning legions of entrepreneurs lack ethical scruples.41 This has led to a small industry of academics producing prescriptive lists of the qualities that exemplify the ideal rushang.42 Sociologist Zhang Desheng 張德勝 (Chinese University of Hong Kong), for example, maintains that the term rushang can have a variety of meanings, ranging from businessmen or entrepreneurs who identify with rujia values to educated businessman. He describes a series of interviews he conducted with entrepreneurs to determine if they were rushang. In preparation for the interviews, together with his colleague Jin Yaoji (Ambrose King), he developed a typology for a “ruren 儒人 ideal type” (presumably ruren is a rendering of the English term “Confucian”). Zhang relates that the term refers to someone committed to rujia intellectual values. The general characteristics of the ruren are based on the characteristics of the traditional notion of junzi. These include (1) the belief that it is possible for anyone to become a sage through moral cultivation; (2) the conviction that the motivation and capacity to achieve sagehood lies exclusively within oneself and not in anything external; (3) a highly developed sense of self-reflection; (4) a highly developed sense of concern for others; and (5) the insistence that rightness (yi ) overrides personal benefit (li ).43

( 40. Ibid. Chen notes that at the conference in Shandong in 1999 more than ten different interpretations of rushang were deliberated. 41. In 2001 the CCP Central Committee launched the Program for Improving Civic Morality, as outlined in the document Gongmin daode jianshe shishi gangyao 公民道德建設實施綱要 (Guidelines for implementing a program of civic morality) (Beijing: Renmin chubanshe, 2001). This is when the concept of citizenship was introduced into political discourse. One of the three categories of morality identified in the policy document is professional ethics. 42. An early, yet typical list is given in Li Jian, “Qian tan ‘rushang ren’ge.’ ” 43. Zhang Desheng, Rushang yu xiandai shehui, 87, 88–89.

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This ideal type would seem to be captured in the first of two different groups of rushang distinguished by Cheng Zhongying (University of Hawaii). The first group consists of “business people or enterprise managers who are deeply committed to, and practice, rujia social and economic ethics.”44 This group is distinguished by its primary commitment to practicing rujia ethical ideals in all activities, whether business or social. Several years earlier, Ma Yunzhi 馬云志 (Department of Marxist Science, Lanzhou University) prescribed a more “politically correct” vision of this ideal type: With the development of the market economy, an increasing number of business people have become protagonists on the social stage. Their thought and actions play a definite role in providing a model for the public. The entrepreneur [who operates] under the conditions of the socialist market economy should not merely talk about profit and seek wealth but should also be a social leader who possesses the demeanor of the gentleman ( junzi ). Only this type of person may be called a modern rushang.45

The second group Cheng distinguishes selectively applies rujia ethical principles mainly in their business activities, in particular in business management. For this group, these principles provide a means rather than function as ends in themselves.46 It is clearly to this second group that pragmatists such as Wang Dianqing hope to appeal as part of their campaign to promote the claim that “rujia ethics” can play a vital role in the development of China’s socialist market economy: Morality is an inner spirit, yet it is capable of being transformed into external material wealth. Morality is not just a type of outlay and contribution; it is also a type of gain. Morality is not “worthless,” since it can be transformed into money. Such virtues and ideals as sincerity, living up to one’s word, rightness, can protect a company’s reputation, attract customers and quality staff, and so generate considerable profits for the company.47

There are unmistakable affinities between the method of critical inheritance favored by Marxist theoreticians, government policies promoting “excellent” traditional virtues, and the widespread practice both within and beyond academia of reducing rujia values (and, in some cases, ruxue itself ) to a handful of homilies and selected traditional values. As such,

( 44. Cheng Zhongying, “Chuangzao ershiyi shiji de renlei mingyun,” 9. 45. Ma Yunzhi, “Rushang chuyi,” passim. 46. Cheng Zhongying, “Chuangzao ershiyi shiji de renlei mingyun,” 9. 47. Wang Dianqing, ed., Dazhong daode, 2–3.

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it comes as no surprise that for Wang, rujia ethics is conceived not in terms of integrated systems of thought, values, and practices but as a modest stock of exemplary virtues that can be drawn on to service the needs of the modern entrepreneur and the market economy. There are, however, historical precedents for this instrumental approach to rujia values. Mainland scholarly interest in the roots of the rushang can be traced to the 1980s when a number of historical studies were published.48 We have already noted Yu Yingshi’s 1985 contribution to this literature. In 1998 he published a sequel, “Shi shang hudong yu ruxue zhuanxiang: Ming-Qing shehuishi yu sixiangshi zhi biaoxian” 士商 互動與儒學轉向: 明清社會史與思想史之表現 (Interaction between literati and men of education and social standing and the reorientation of ruxue: manifestations in Ming-Qing social and intellectual history), relating that in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries there was a pronounced trend for men of education to seek careers as merchants rather than as officials. Yu regards this as part of an evolving trend in which the traditional ru’s disdain of the merchant class was changing. He further argues that after the sixteenth century attitudes to the distinction between what is morally right (yi ) and what is personally beneficial (li ) changed. Traditionally (with some important exceptions) the two concepts were seen to be mutually exclusive, but the new trend sought to accommodate a combination. He also describes a similar accommodationist trend occurring with respect to the concepts of gong 公 (public benefit) and si 私 (private benefit).49 One means developed by merchants in the Qing dynasty to define themselves as a distinct group was by writing merchant manuals. In a study of these manuals, Richard John Lufrano relates that, unlike the advice offered in contemporaneous morality books, which was perceived to work against the merchants’ interests, “the merchant-authors . . . bypassed or de-emphasized aspects of Confucianism valued by philosophers and the orthodox elite but irrelevant to their readers.” Thus, not only do the Qing merchant manuals omit mention of the Three Bonds (san’gang) and Five Relations (wulun)—moral norms that were a feature of Ming guidebooks for merchants—moreover, “mid-level merchant culture . . . emphasized those elements of Confucian teaching most suitable

( 48. Notable studies include Zhang Haipeng et al., eds., Ming-Qing Huishang ziliao xuanbian; Terada Takanobu, Shanxi shangren yanjiu; and Zhang Zhengming et al., eds., Ming-Qing Jinshang ziliao xuanbian. 49. Yu Yingshi, “Shi shang hudong yu ruxue zhuanxiang,” 63, 78, 82–85.

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to the demands of business, adjusted those that directly conflicted with those demands, and de-emphasized or ignored those that they considered irrelevant.” Nor did the manual authors display any sense of “obligation to serve society at large.”50 In contrast, contemporary “rujia management” books and manuals generally carry a strong ideological message emphasizing that rujia values can benefit the nation.51 (This is presumably related to the fact that they are written by academics cashing in on the market opened up by official policy directives rather than by full-time entrepreneurs.) If, however, the past is any guide to the future, the current trend of appropriating a selection of rujia ethical principles as means rather than as ends is likely to intensify rather than diminish.

Concluding Remarks This chapter has identified three areas in contemporary mainland society where individuals and institutions have made practical efforts to popularize and disseminate rujia values: promulgating “traditional virtues,” propagating the recitation of traditional rujia texts, and the construction of an ideal type: the “ru entrepreneur.” The promotion of so-called traditional virtues has been facilitated by the coordination of promotional activities in concert with central government policy directives. The drawback with this approach is that in order for these values to be promoted within the education system—and so far, these activities have always been on a limited, ad hoc, experimental basis— generally they have been presented as generic “traditional virtues” rather than as rujia virtues. Moreover, as we have seen, the central government’s promotion of traditional virtues has been increasingly sporadic in recent years. And despite some sympathetic rhetoric in speeches given by senior party figures every five years or so, there is little evidence of state-led initiatives specifically promoting the popularization of rujia values. The example of the Beijing Oriental Morality Research Institute should dispel the misconception that programs run by nonofficial or semiofficial institutions to promote the revival of ruxue values in the education system simply pander to party dictates to create a socialist

( 50. Lufrano, Honorable Merchants, 7, 53, 55, 56, 130. 51. See, e.g., Sun Juyou, Rujia guanli zhexue xinlun; Liu Lushan and Wang Zhifeng, Wangzhe zhi dao; and Li Honglei, Rujia guanli zhexue.

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psycho-spiritual civilization, as evidenced by Wang Dianqing’s subversive views about the purported influence of ruxue on the formation of Marxism. The tactic of appealing to the “Eastern origins of Western learning” (xixue dongyuan 西學東源) has a long history in China, going back at least to about A.D. 300 when Wang Fu 王浮 compiled his Taishang lingbao Laozi huahu miaojing 太上靈寶老子化胡妙經 (Wondrous scripture on Laozi’s conversion of the barbarians from the Great High Numinous Treasure) (abbreviated Huahu jing 化胡經). The scripture relates the legend of Laozi’s journey to the West (India), in the guise of the Buddha, where he converted the Hu barbarians, thus making the Buddha and Buddhism, ultimately, “Laoist” and Chinese. Following the introduction of Western learning by the Jesuits in late Ming times, this apologist tactic was revived and continued to be employed throughout the Qing period.52 Thus the pedigree for this tactic has it own venerable tradition. It is, however, questionable if Wang’s claims might have served to dispel the fears of the venerable comrades, given the more potent message the claims deliver: the theoretical roots of Marxism are fundamentally indebted to ruxue.53 Of course, underlying this message is the claim that Marxism in China is but one expression of a larger, more enduring entity—Chinese culture—the core of which is ruxue. Several points arise from our account of the movement to train children to recite classical texts. First, the activity was transplanted from Taiwan, and again the Taiwan influence reveals a New Confucian connection (its founder, Wang Caigui, being a former student of Mou Zong and a member of the Ehu Monthly Society). Curiously, however, the Beijing Sihai Children’s Recitation of the Classics Recitation Guidance Education Center does not overtly promote ruxue values in its selection of texts or in the theory informing its teaching methodology. In contrast, Jiang Qing places a ruxue agenda at the fore of his activities in this area. Of particular note is that not only were Jiang’s activities supported by mainstream academics, but also the project Jiang was involved in was

( 52. See, e.g., Wang Yangzong, “ ‘Xixue dongyuan’ shuo zai Ming-Qing zhi ji de youlai ji qi yanbian”; Jiang Xiaoyuan, “Shi lun Qingdai ‘xixue Zhongyuan’ shuo”; Amelung, “Weights and Forces,” 213–15, 219; Elman, “From Pre-modern Chinese Natural Studies 格致學 to Modern Science 科學 in China,” 59–61; and idem, On Their Own Terms, 172–77. 53. For a far more detailed version of the thesis that Chinese thought fundamentally influenced the development of Marxism, see Zhang Yunyi, Zhongguo wenhua yu Makesizhuyi, esp. 158–215.

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funded by a department within the Ministry of Education. This should probably be read less as an indication of a new policy direction in regard to official support for the promotion of ruxue than as an indication of the complex political composition of behemoth institutions such as the Ministry of Education. Finally, analysis of the ongoing efforts to construct a model of the “ru entrepreneur” reveals two aspects to this process of rationalization. One is directed at harnessing rujia values to influence the ethical behavior of Chinese entrepreneurs so that they might become model citizens in a socialist market economy; the other attempts to show that rujia values can enhance profits for the modern entrepreneur.

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In the Introduction, I listed four key themes and arguments of this book. The following summary review reiterates my main findings in relation to each. Since the mid-1980s, the ongoing process of intellectual cross-fertilization and rivalry between scholars in China and overseas Chinese scholars (particularly those based in Taiwan) has served as a key impetus sustaining academic interest in ruxue. In the 1980s, the single most influential figure in this regard was Du Weiming, who made seminal contributions to the spread of ruxuecentered discourse in the United States, Singapore, Taiwan, and China. By the 1990s, however, as the number of academic participants swelled to the hundreds, it became difficult to identify any one individual as dominating this discourse. In Chapters 1 and 2, I drew attention to the rujia capitalism thesis and the provision of discursive space for studying and discussing ruxue on the strength of its perceived role in the cultural tradition of the Chinese nation. Academic publications played a key role in this activity, especially in the rapid and widespread dissemination of debate, dialogue, and new ideas. Already in the mid-1980s Li Zehou’s writings were being published in Taiwan, and by the end of that decade essays and lectures (in journals and in edited volumes) by overseas Chinese academics were regularly being published on the mainland, just as mainland academics were being published in Hong Kong and Taiwan. Over the course of the 1990s this practice was extended to book publications, and today it is not uncommon for titles on ruxue to be released under both a Taiwanese and a mainland imprint. Nor is it unusual to have mainland academics sitting on the editorial boards of Taiwanese academic journals related to ruxue and vice versa. Take, for example, the 331 John Makeham - 978-1-68417-048-7

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subfield of Chinese hermeneutics (in which ruxue is well represented). Cross-strait and international collaboration have been extended not only to supporting new journals in the field, such as Huang Junjie’s involvement in launching the journal Zhongguo quanshixue (Chinese hermeneutics), published by the Hermeneutics Research Center of Shandong University, but also to the task of undertaking editorial roles, such as Cheng Zhongying’s role as editor-in-chief of the journal Benti quanshixue (Onto-hermeneutics) published by Peking University Press. The early part of the 1990s witnessed rapidly increasing contact between Taiwan-based and mainland scholars. Then, as now, conferences provided the principal forum for academics on either side of the strait to meet and interact, and by the mid-1990s it became common for individual universities in Taiwan or Hong Kong and the mainland to coconvene ruxue-related conferences. The oldest and most regularly convened conference series, the International Academic Conference on New Confucianism, convened its inaugural meeting in Taipei in 1990. In recent years, the venue has alternated between Taiwan and the mainland, a pattern likely to continue since there are now more scholars of New Confucianism (not to mention ruxue) active on the mainland than in Taiwan and Hong Kong combined. Since the mid-1980s, New Confucianism, of course, has been the single most important element in sustaining the discursive space for ruxuecentered discourse, by galvanizing dialogue, debate, and competition. Indeed, if it were not for the introduction of New Confucianism onto the agenda of mainland scholars in the 1980s, it is probable that there would have been no ruxue revival movement in the 1990s. Crucial to this revival was the institutional legitimacy and academic network provided by the Research Project on the Modern New Confucian Intellectual Movement led by Fang Keli and Li Jinquan in China in the mid-1980s and early 1990s. Much of the focus and direction of that first five-year project were aimed at shoring up the proprietary claims mainland scholars sought to exercise over the interpretation and definition of New Confucianism by challenging overseas New Confucian accounts of who should be recognized as a New Confucian. At one point, Fang Keli even argued that it was mainland research on New Confucianism that had stimulated the development of, and heightened the academic status of, New Confucianism in Taiwan and Hong Kong. This rivalry quickly escalated. It seems reasonable to speculate that the timing of the first International Academic Conference on New Confucianism, convened in Taipei in 1990, was in response to rapidly

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developing research on New Confucianism on the mainland and the attendant implications this had for proprietary rights over individual New Confucians. A few years later, Liu Shuxian noted that Fang Keli’s project received state support and that if Hong Kong and Taiwan scholars did not embark on something similar they would lose their right to speak on the subject of New Confucianism. We also noted Li Minghui’s frank acknowledgment that the series of three triennial research projects on contemporary ruxue (commenced in 1993) coordinated by scholars at Academia Sinica was formulated directly in response to the research project led by Fang Keli and Li Jinquan. This cross-strait academic ruxue rivalry may even have influenced decisions to involve the collaboration of prominent Japanese scholars Mizoguchi Yūzō and Koyasu Nobukuni in various ruxue-related research and publishing activities. It would, however, be misleading to characterize these projects as having been dominated by cross-strait rivalry. As noted in Chapter 4, by 1998, a significant number of prominent mainland scholars had participated in and contributed to the Academia Sinica project, just as Taiwanese academics have regularly participated in ruxue conferences on the mainland. In regard to how collaboration and cooperation may develop in the future, the example provided by Lin Anwu is illustrative. Lin not only contributes regularly to ruxue conferences and journal publications on the mainland, but also lectures frequently on mainland university campuses. As noted in Chapter 8, the significance of Lin’s overture to Marxism lies in the fact that he has turned to scholars on the mainland to serve as partners in dialogue. This suggests that the rules of engagement for discourse and dialogue on ruxue and Chinese philosophy are increasingly being determined by mainland rather than by overseas Chinese scholars. Cultural nationalism rather than state nationalism better explains the nature of contemporary discourse on ruxue. In Cultural Nationalism in Contemporary China, Yingjie Guo maintains that for Chinese cultural nationalists “what is first and foremost at issue is not territory or even citizenship, but the meaning of Chineseness and the legitimacy of a Party-state that fails to express the will and identity of the imagined community.” 1 Guo sets out to demonstrate these claims by studying four different cohorts of cultural nationalists in

( 1. Yingjie Guo, Cultural Nationalism in Contemporary China, 14.

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contemporary China: “the nationalist historians, New Confucians, advocates of traditional Chinese characters and cultural linguists, and postcolonialists.”2 In the chapter “Reconstructing a Confucian Nation: The Confucian Revival”—the one most relevant to this study—Guo identifies cultural nationalism as the driving force behind the revival of interest in ruxue on the mainland in recent years and portrays the “Confucian cultural nationalists” as being involved in a contest for the nation that “focuses on the constitution of ‘cultural Chineseness.’ ” He argues that this alternative conception of “the nation’s will and its conception of the self ” challenges the CCP’s claim to be “the nation’s sole, legitimate representative.”3 Guo is correct in identifying this as one important dimension of ruxue-centered Chinese cultural nationalism. In Taiwan, also, ruxue-centered cultural nationalists challenged the party-state’s claim to represent the nation. Writing in the early 1990s, Lin Anwu argued that Chinese culture should belong to the realm of the daotong, but it had been appropriated and made subservient to the Chinese Nationalist Party’s zhengtong ideology; rightfully, the daotong should “override” the zhengtong: “In theory, ‘cultural China’ takes precedence over ‘political China’ and ‘economic China.’ . . . This idealized ‘cultural China’ transcends any actual ‘political China.’ ” Like Lin, Huang Junjie also identified the Basic Resources for Chinese Culture (Zhongguo wenhua jiben jiaocai ) as an egregious example of party-state manipulation of the moral content of state-prescribed primary and secondary textbooks, used from the 1970s on, for its own political ends. In particular, Huang is highly critical of the fact that interpretations based on Chen Lifu’s commentaries to the Four Books were included in the Basic Resources in order to portray Sun Yat-sen and Jiang Jieshi as the modern inheritors of the daotong transmission. Taiwanese ruxue revivalists such as Lin and Huang remain committed to an all-embracing vision of Chinese history and civilization—“Chinese culture”—the essence of which they characterize as ruxue. (Ironically, it is precisely because they hold such strong views on the primacy of Chinese culture that they have been unable to escape the unwanted but inevitable lingering associations with former

( 2. Yingjie Guo, Cultural Nationalism in Contemporary China, 49. Guo employs the term “New Confucian” to refer to contemporary “believers in Confucianism” rather than to a particular school associated with thinkers such as Xiong Shili, Mou Zongsan, and their contemporary followers. 3. Ibid., 72.

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GMD policies in which culture was deployed for the purposes of defining a particular sort of political identity.) On the mainland, challenges to the CCP’s claim to be the nation’s legitimate representative are variously expressed; some of these challenges are far more subtle and sophisticated than those issued by Jiang Qing. Take the examples of Chen Lai’s and Li Zehou’s respective narrative reconstructions of the prehistorical and early historical origins of ruxue. Each privileges a process of rationalization in which magic and the worship of spirits/divinities was gradually replaced by rujia humanism and rujia culture; a human way rather than a way of the spirits (shendao). This thesis bears an uncanny resemblance to views expressed by Kang Youwei in 1912. For Kang, Kongjiao was a religion focused on humans in contrast to other religions that focus on spirits/divinities (shen): In the dawn of high antiquity people worshipped ghosts, and so spirit religions (shenjiao) came to be revered. In more recent ages, civilization has come to set great store in humans, and so the human way (rendao) has come to be valued. Hence, although this religion based on the human way [i.e., Kongjiao] is actually derived from the way of spirits/divinities (shendao), it is more advanced than religions based on the way of spirits/divinities.4

In a variation of this cultural/civilizational one-upmanship, Chen Lai contrasts the continuity (lianxuxing 連續性) of China’s ancient culture with the “transcendental breakthrough” of Karl T. Jaspers’s Axial Age civilizations.5 Unlike other civilizations, “the rationalization of religion was already completed at the beginning of the Western Zhou”—hence before the Axial Age—and, in contrast to most other civilizations, this process of rationalization did not entail belief in a supreme deity. Rather, the Chinese experience was characterized by a recognition of the limitations of spirits and divinities. “Rather than a ‘transcendental breakthrough,’ it is more appropriate to speak of a ‘humanist turn.’ ”6 Jaspers coined the term “Axial Age” to refer to the awakening of critical and reflective thinking in China, Greece, India, the Middle East, and Persia between 800 and 200 B.C. He found evidence of this reflective thinking in what he saw as a contrast between the mundane and transcendental worlds and in an aspiration to realize a higher moral order in the writings of thinkers from these civilizations and also

( 4. Kang Youwei, “Kongjiaohui xu er,” 739. 5. Jaspers, The Origin and Goal of History. 6. Chen Lai, Gudai zongjiao yu lunli, 8–11.

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evidenced in the emergence of Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Daoism, Judaism, and Zoroastrianism. Jaspers was clearly inspired by the work of his friend Max Weber (and perhaps also by Oswald Spengler and Arnold Toynbee) 7 , whose comparative sociology of religion focused on the salvation religions that emerged during the first millennium B.C. Unlike Jaspers, however, Weber was essentially critical of Confucianism. In contrasting Confucianism with Protestantism, he stressed that Confucianism did not have a concept of the transcendent and so lacked a sense of tension between the sacred and the secular orders. Accordingly, rather than facilitating social change, Confucianism sought adjustment to the world.8 For Chen (and Li), however, this is beside the point. Whereas other civilizations/cultures only began the process of the rationalization of religion during the Axial Age, the cultural tradition represented by the rujia had already completed this process at the very beginning of the Axial Age. What is most significant, unlike the “breakthroughs” subsequently experienced by the world’s other major civilizations, a major characteristic of the advancement (yanjin 演進) of ancient Chinese civilization is its continuity. This is not to deny that the psycho-spiritual leap experienced during the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods represents a qualitative change when compared to earlier cultural advancements but, as Confucius revealed long ago,9 there were varying degrees of continuity between the thought of the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods and Western Zhou thought, and also with the thought of the Xia, Shang, and Zhou dynasties.

( 7. See Prasenjit Duara’s (Sovereignty and Authenticity, 92–94) discussion of Spengler’s conception of Kultur and Toynbee’s conception of the role of religion in civilization. 8. Weber, The Religion of China, 145: “In Confucianism there prevailed, anyway, an absolutely agnostic and essentially negative mood opposed to all hopes for a beyond. Even where this stand had not permeated or where it was outweighed by Taoist or Buddhist influences the interest in man’s fate in the beyond remained quite subordinate to the possible influence of the spirits on life here and now.” 9. An allusion to Analects 2.23: The Master said, “The Yin succeeded the Xia. What was omitted from and added to its rituals can be known. The Zhou succeeded the Yin. What was omitted from and added to its rituals can be known.” I follow Liu Baonan (1791–1855) and Liu Gongmian (1824–83), Lunyu zhengyi, in punctuating the sentences as follows: Yin yin yu Xia 殷因於夏. Li suo sun yi ke zhi ye 禮所損益可知也. Zhou yin yu Yin 周因於殷. Li suo sun yi ke zhi ye 禮所損益可知也.

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Chen contrasts this continuity with the “breakthrough” of other civilizations: “The notion of ‘breakthrough’ highlights the fact that the relationship between the Axial Age culture and the pre–Axial Age culture was one of opposition, resistance, severance, and sudden change.” 10 Chen’s evolutionary model of historical change is, of course, a thinly cloaked challenge to the revolutionary model central to the doctrine of historical materialism, the party-state’s ideological orthodoxy. In Yingjie Guo’s words, “As [cultural] nationalist history subverts the revolutionary narrative of a revolutionary past, it also challenges the polity upon which that narrative bestows legitimacy.”11 Having argued for an evolutionary model of historical change for the Xia-Shang-Zhou periods, it is only a small step to present rujia thought as the “interconnecting thread” of Chinese civilization vouchsafed by a genealogy whose cultural roots extend from the Xia dynasty and even the dawn of Chinese civilization itself: “Rujia thought is the product of cultural development ever since the early period of Chinese civilization. It embodies the traditions transmitted over the course of the Three Dynasties and the psycho-spiritual character nurtured by those traditions.”12 While clearly recognizing that a number of ruxue-centered cultural nationalists do challenge the party-state’s claim to represent the nation, my study suggests that the “focus on the constitution of ‘cultural Chineseness’ ” is not limited to, or even primarily directed at, challenging the CCP (or the party-state in Taiwan) in a contest for the nation. Another important dimension is the perceived threat that Western culture poses to Chinese culture. “In mainland China today, under the protection of state power, a foreign culture—Marxism-Leninism—has secured unique authority as the ‘national doctrine.’ Yet this foreign culture can neither securely establish the national lifeblood of the Chinese nation, nor is it capable of giving expression to the national spirit of the Chinese nation” ( Jiang Qing). Typically, it is the perceived challenges posed by Western culture that ruxue-centered cultural nationalists respond to. Thus, Huang Junjie characterizes “unofficial ruxue” (= good ruxue) of the postwar period in Taiwan as an “academic-intellectual or cultural movement” that bolstered Chinese cultural identity and resisted modern Western culture. In the 1980s, “rujia capitalism” came to be valued as “a contestatory narrative of

( 10. Chen Lai, Gudai zongjiao yu lunli, 11. 11. Yingjie Guo, Cultural Nationalism in Contemporary China, 7. 12. Chen Lai, Gudai zongjiao yu lunli, 24.

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modernity,” one that would provide an alternative to the Western model of modernity. Jing Haifeng decries the introduction of Western learning in the early part of the twentieth century as having led a fundamental change in how people understood ruxue: “from the original inner identification with ruxue as a matter of personal esteem to a situation in which it has become an object of external, objective description and research.” And for Zheng Jiadong, the institutionalization and professionalization of ruxue over the course of the twentieth century is symptomatic of the epistemic violence that accompanies the interrogation of traditional modes of Chinese thought through the deployment of Western concepts and paradigms. Most fundamentally, however, ruxue-centered Chinese cultural nationalism is a movement directed at promoting the belief that it is ruxue-as-culture that constitutes the uniqueness and value of the Chinese nation. Critics and defenders of ruxue alike are generally united in their conviction that ruxue (or alternatively rujiao) fundamentally permeated traditional Chinese society: “It penetrated every aspect of social life, to the extent that its value concepts and modes of behavior affected popular customs” (Fang Keli); “Over the course of two thousand years, step by step, ruxue entered every aspect of the daily lives of Chinese people, by means of the establishment of political, social, economic, and educational institutions” (Yu Yingshi); “Only by seeing the continuity of traditional culture with ruxue as its core are we able to see the interconnectedness and longevity of 5,000 years of Chinese culture” (Li Xueqin); “For the past two thousand years the lifeblood and spirit of the Chinese nation stood secure on the foundation of rujia culture, and the highest expression of rujia culture is ruxue” ( Jiang Qing); rujia thought played the “leading role” in Chinese culture because it was the product of Chinese cultural development over the period of the Three Dynasties (Chen Lai); “Ruxue thought is a cultural force. . . . Without ruxue there is no way to discuss Chinese culture” (Luo Yijun). Similarly, participants in ruxue-centered discourse positively disposed to ruxue generally concur that even though ruxue culture urgently requires revitalization, it remains a viable, vital force: “So long as the Chinese nation exists, this cultural form [i.e., ruxue] will never completely disappear”;13 “Ruxue is certainly not dead. Since it was broken up and

( 13. Report on the proceedings of the Ruxue and the Modernization of Chinese Culture conference convened at Zhongguo Renmin University in 1996; cited in Chapter 5.

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scattered and became a cultural-psychological tradition, unconsciously it has continued to exist in an invisible mode in the culture and in people’s behavior” (Chen Lai); “As a general socio-ethical consciousness . . . rujia ethics has created our national character and today still influences people’s behavior, attitude, and ideological beliefs” (Liu Zongxian and Cai Degui). Marxist critics of ruxue who subscribe to methodologies such as critical transcendence or critical inheritance similarly accept the ongoing presence of ruxue in Chinese culture. (We have also noted the views of popular disseminators of ruxue, such as those proposed by Wang Dianqing, that Marxism in China is but one expression of a larger, more enduring entity, Chinese culture, and that the essence of Chinese culture is ruxue.) What, then, is ruxue-as-culture? Contemporary discourse has yielded many alternative conceptions of ruxue, yet even though individual participants in this discourse privilege their own conception, different conceptions of ruxue tend not to be met with charges of heresy or heterodoxy. This is because the prevailing discourse since the early 1990s has favored an abstract conception of culture rather than one or more alternative set of specific cultural attributes.14 This abstract conception of culture—something seen as ontologically given—is, in turn, reinforced by its intimate connection with another abstraction: the nation. As we have seen, the most influential formulation of the relationship between ruxue, culture, and the nation has been Li Zehou’s account of ruxue as the “cultural-psychological condition of the Chinese nation.” Another influential view in philosophical circles is Mou Zongsan’s thesis that the daotong is imbued in the entirety of China’s historical culture. This thesis provided the basis for Zheng Jiadong’s essentialized conception of the unique historical cultural tradition of the Chinese nation and his thesis that it is by means of the rujia “learning of the mind and the nature” that participants in, and inheritors of, Chinese culture are able to recognize and affirm the cultural tradition of the Chinese nation. Ruxue-centered Chinese cultural nationalism is a movement based on the ideological conviction that ruxue is a cultural formation fundamental

( 14. As Thomas A. Metzger (A Cloud Across the Pacific, 295) notes, many Chinese scholars perceive “the main units of historical change as huge, empirically unspecific, homogeneous entities, ‘cultures,’ each of which is a ‘system’ or ‘structure’ permeated by a single knowable ‘spirit,’ ‘basic nature,’ or ‘ontologically ultimate nature’ ( pen-t’i ) and a process following a ‘logic of inner development’ and ‘historical laws.’ ”

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to the identity consciousness of the Chinese nation. For ruxue-centered Chinese cultural nationalists, the “nation” (minzu) variously refers to the Han nation, the Hua-Xia nation, and, most commonly, the Zhonghua nation. The term minzu is a complex notion, spreading as it does across the semantic fields of both nation and ethnicity. According to Frank Dikötter, “The conflation of ‘race,’ descent and nation has been expressed throughout the twentieth century by the term minzu, signifying both a descent group and a cultural community. Although the term minzu has been deployed in a diversity of contexts, it is most often used to describe something roughly equivalent to ‘nation-race’ when used to describe ‘Chineseness.’ ”15 In the semantic field covered by the term minzu in contemporary ruxue-centered discourse, however, “race” is generally muted. Even when Yan Di and Huang Di are invoked, it is their function as cultural progenitors rather than as racial forebears that seems to be pertinent. Generally, the sense of race is implicit only when the term “Han” is used, and even then there is evidence of slippage between racial and cultural identity. Thus, in one article, Li Zehou refers to ruxue as “the principal component of the Han nation’s cultural-psychological formation” and then relates that “ruxue was able to become the mainstay, the core, of Hua-Xia culture principally because it was transformed into the cultural-psychological condition of the nation.” For Li, there seems to be no real distinction between the markers Han and Hua-Xia. In discussing the examples of the Mongols of the Yuan period and the Manchus of the Qing period, Liu Zongxian and Cai Deguai maintain that the Mongols and the Manchus were “transformed into Han” (Hanhua) and that “the core of this so-called Hanhua was veneration of ruxue.” Jiang Qing insists that the standard used to draw the distinction between sinitic and non-sinitic peoples in Gongyang thought is that of “civilized versus barbarian” and that the hallmark of “civilization” is moral virtue, not ethnicity. The nationalism he identifies in the Spring and Autumn Annals is unique because it is based not on ethnicity or polity but on culture: it is a cultural nationalism. In the Introduction, I argued that for the cultural nationalist the national culture remains the basis of group/community identity whether some in the nation believe that their culture requires no legitimation beyond itself or whether others recognize the challenges posed by other national cultures. Some commentators, however, at times present ruxue,

( 15. Dikötter, “Culture, ‘Race’ and Nation,” 594.

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or rujia thought, or rujiao as being of “a higher order” than the national culture of any one nation. In 1986, at least, Du Weiming maintained that the historical path taken by the rujia tradition in China’s national culture “should not be deemed to represent fully the historical advance [ jincheng] of the rujia tradition.” Accordingly, Du proceeds to draw attention to the legacy of the rujia tradition in other cultures. Like some Hegelian Absolute Spirit, it is of a different order than any of its objective embodiments in particular cultures.16 Other variations of this view describe ruxue as the psycho-spiritual formation of the Hua-Xia ethnie (zuqun 族群) and the crystallization of the culture of Chinese (Zhongguo) and East Asian societies. It embraces the national character of each of the East Asian nations, their ultimate beliefs, their standards for living, their existential wisdom, and their general plans for social conduct. (Guo Qiyong) Rujia culture is the crystallization of the wisdom of the East Asian nations; it is also the symbol of Oriental psycho-spiritual civilization. It is the intellectual bond that maintains the common psychology and values of each nation in East Asia. It provides values orientation, cultural identity, and national cohesion for each nation in the region. (Li Suping and He Chengxuan)

These views are not inconsistent with ruxue-centered Chinese cultural nationalism. Not all Chinese cultural nationalists, however, are prepared to allow the diminution of Chinese proprietary rights over ruxue. Thus Ma Zhenduo, Xu Yuanhe, and Zheng Jiadong explain that although the title of their jointly authored book is Rujia Civilization, they justify not extending coverage to Korea and Japan on the grounds that China alone is most representative of rujia civilization. In a similar vein, although Liu Zongxian and Cai Deguai describe ruxue as the “shared psycho-spiritual treasure of all the nations” in what they refer to as the “Han cultural circle,” they insist that it is only in China that ruxue genuinely permeated the indigenous culture. For Huang Junjie, “the breadth and profundity of Chinese culture is why it is the common denominator of East Asian culture. What is the most important element therein? China’s Classics. Which of the Classics are key? The Classics of the rujia, the mainstream of Chinese culture.”

( 16. Du Weiming, “Ruxue di san qi fazhan de qianjing wenti,” 262.

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Contrary to conventional wisdom, party-state support on the mainland for programs to promote patriotic education and “traditional virtues” does not underpin the phenomenon of ongoing academic discourse on ruxue. The widely held view that the promotion of ruxue in contemporary China is orchestrated by the partystate and its functionaries is overly simplistic. Consider the examples of Fang Keli and Ren Jiyu, two leading scholars closely aligned to the party-state and staunchly Marxist in their ideological convictions. Although it is true that Fang Keli secured a decade of state funding under the seventh and eighth five-year plans for philosophy and the social sciences to conduct two major projects studying New Confucianism, it would be an absurd proposition to suggest that these projects were designed to whitewash an authoritarian party-state by aligning it with the promotion of ruxue. As noted by Li Minghui: “Fang Keli does not approach research on New Confucianism simply as ordinary academic research but treats it as a part of an ideological struggle.” As the leading promoter of Zhang Dainian’s critical inheritance and synthetic creation methodology, Fang, of course, did not reductively dismiss ruxue as a “poisonous feudal vestige” or “feudal dross.” Nevertheless, he emphasized that ruxue can only ever be part of the “vocabulary” of a “future civilization,” not its “grammar.” Already by the early 1990s, he had begun to single out members of his research team for sidestepping “ideological issues,” and for failing to criticize New Confucian thinkers when those thinkers criticized Marxism. He was also consistently critical of overseas Chinese promoters of ruxue who sought to “re-nurture” ruxue at its place of origin, the mainland (fanbu yu guonei ). Beginning in 1978 and continuing throughout the 1980s, Ren Jiyu argued that rujiao was the centerpiece of the feudal ideology of traditional Chinese society and that it was a religion. Moreover, he argued, the baleful influences of this pernicious feudal legacy continue to be evident in contemporary society. Ren’s views received renewed attention during the second half of the 1990s and the early years of the twenty-first century with the revival of the old debate over whether rujiao/ruxue was a religion. As noted by Yu Dunkang, the real import of Ren’s views was more ideological than scholarly. By portraying ruxue as a religion, the implication was that ruxue is “a bad thing because religion is a bad thing. Religion is the opiate of the masses and serves the interests of autocratic rulers.” If the party-state did seek to promote ruxue in society for the purposes of bolstering its own legitimation, one wonders why an “establishment” intellectual and scholar of Ren’s standing should publicly promote these critical views on rujiao for so long.

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Nor were the critics of ruxue limited to Fang Keli and Ren Jiyu. From the mid- to late 1990s, in particular, many Marxist scholars were critical of National Studies (which, for many, was simply ruxue under another name) and the incompatibility of ruxue with Marxism, on the grounds that ruxue was the “traditional ideology of a feudal society.” These scholars fundamentally rejected the idea that ruxue “contains universal values that transcend specific historical and temporal [contextualization].” On the mainland, the relation between ruxue-centered cultural nationalists and the party-state is complex. (In Taiwan, by contrast, unlike the situation thirty years ago, today there is almost no relationship to speak of.) Some ruxue-centered cultural nationalists seek implicitly or explicitly to challenge the party-state’s claim to represent the nation. Others such as Chen Ming, however, have endorsed “new authoritarianism” in order to secure some sort of political patronage for ruxue. As remarked in Chapter 9, examples such as this demonstrate that some contemporary mainland ruxue revivalists relish the opportunity for ruxue to be deployed in the service of the state, or at least for ruxue to secure a level of institutional legitimacy. Indeed, employing the tactic of accommodation has enabled ruxue-centered cultural nationalists to take advantage of official discourse in various ways. In this connection, we note Hutchinson’s observation that because cultural nationalism is “often unable to extend beyond the educated strata, [it] is forced to adopt state-oriented strategies by which to institutionalize its ideals in the social order.”17 The activities organized by the Beijing Oriental Morality Research Institute to popularize rujia values (under the cover of “traditional virtues”) or Jiang Qing’s involvement in promoting children’s recitation of the Classics provide exemplary illustrations of this mutual accommodation. In both cases, funding to support these activities has been secured from departments within the Ministry of Education. This accommodation works two ways, of course, enabling state nationalism also to further its particular ends. Nevertheless, it should be reiterated that official campaigns launched in the first half of the 1990s to promote patriotic education and traditional virtues eschewed specific reference to ruxue and rujia values. And even though in 1994 senior party figures such as Li Lanqing and Gu Mu were prepared to support a role for rujia values in moral education, this support was not translated

( 17. Hutchinson, The Dynamics of Cultural Nationalism, 17.

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into specific endorsement of “rujia values” in policy documents.18 This practice continued for the following decade. Indeed, we noted in Chapter 14 Jia Qinglin’s observation that although speeches by senior CCP leaders at the conferences to commemorate Confucius’s birth evidence the party’s support for ruxue, this is within the wider context of support for the “excellent tradition of Chinese culture.” The officially prescribed distinction between “refined” traditional cultural values and ruxue or rujia values is, at times, actively elided by those in the nonofficial domain, such as Renmin University’s Confucius Studies Institute. Nor do instances of this elision always pass unnoticed by those critical of ruxue. For example, Chapter 6 related how Guo Qiyong’s views on the principle of moral particularism were attacked by Mu Nanke on the grounds that Guo’s defense of moral particularism is symptomatic of a more general trend in ruxue studies to promote the putative “universal values” of ruxue under the guise of National Studies and Oriental culture. Nevertheless, so long as the conviction is upheld that if socialism is to endure in China it must acknowledge and accommodate China’s national cultural legacy, then breaches of the traditional culture/ruxue distinction will continue, facilitating the continued expansion of the discursive space that plays host to ruxue in contemporary China. Academic discourse on ruxue in China and Taiwan bears little evidence of a sustained or robust philosophical creativity in ruxue philosophy. One reason many Chinese academics and intellectuals continue to defend the notion of “Chinese philosophy” is the widely held view that philosophy is the highest form of cultural expression and that it embodies the intellectual-spiritual caliber of a civilization. The possession of philosophy has been regarded as the hallmark of a mature nation and also the basis for judging the relative merits of one culture against another.19 Some contend that it would be an insult to claim that in traditional China there was no philosophy, since this would imply that, despite the grandeur of China’s ancient civilization, it was incapable of developing a high level of theoretical thought.20 The authority of Mou

( 18. Yu Yingshi (“Confucianism and China’s Encounter with the West in Historical Perspective,” 206) similarly observes: “Up to this day, we have yet to discover a single instance of a positive statement about the Confucian tradition in the official publications of the Party.” 19. Jing Haifeng, Zhongguo zhexue de xiandai quanshi, 240. 20. Zhang Zhiwei, “Zhongguo zhexue haishi Zhongguo sixiang?”

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Zongsan is often cited: “Any cultural system has its own philosophy; otherwise it does not constitute a cultural system. Accordingly, if one acknowledges China’s cultural system, then one naturally acknowledges Chinese philosophy.”21 (There is, of course, some irony in the fact that it is due to the globalization of Western culture that concepts like philosophy should have become values such that few cultures would admit to not having one.)22 For many other contributors to the mainland debate on the legitimacy of Chinese philosophy (a notion that principally embraces ruxue philosophy), a key concern is to deconstruct a purely Western-centric concept of philosophy. Indeed, even before the legitimacy debate was under way, Taiwanese philosopher Lin Anwu provided a lurid analysis of the situation: The current state of affairs with research on Chinese philosophy in Taiwan (and indeed on both sides of the Taiwan Strait) is such that even those scholars who regard Chinese philosophy highly still regard Chinese philosophy as a passive object of their research. Having overlooked the fact that “she” is a living, vital formation, at every opportunity they say that they are researching Chinese philosophy from the perspective of some western philosopher. I call this situation the “prostitute-client mentality.” Some adopt a Thomist perspective, some a Kantian perspective, some an Hegelian perspective, some a Marxist perspective, some an existentialist perspective, some a phenomenological perspective, some a hermeneutic perspective. . . . This way of approaching Chinese philosophy is not a dialogue of equals but an act of violence. It is as if Chinese philosophy was a prostitute and Western philosophy a mob of clients.23

Wei Changbao 魏長寶 (CASS) regards the legitimacy issue as linked to the process of Chinese philosophy’s long march toward “rationalization,” a term he employs as shorthand for the distancing of Chinese philosophy from its vassal-like association with Western philosophy. Begging the question of why traditional Chinese thought should be regarded as philosophy, he insists that the twentieth-century academic discipline of Chinese philosophy functioned as an “interpretive framework and narrative mold” that enabled traditional Chinese thought to be given a new form of expression. Chinese philosophy is now in a

( 21. Mou Zongsan, Zhongguo zhexue de tezhi, 4. 22. On this point, see Thoraval, “The Western Misconception of Chinese Religion,” 59. 23. Lin Anwu, “Dangqian Taiwan zhexuejie geng da de wenti zai sangshi zhutixing de hao wu xingjue,” 237.

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position to challenge its hitherto inferior and dependent relation with Western philosophy. Taking up this challenge will further promote the rationalization of Chinese philosophy and enhance its unique profile. For Wei, highlighting the legitimacy of Chinese philosophy reflects the awareness that Chinese intellectuals now have of how the “hegemonic discourse of Western philosophy” deprived them of a subject position in the meta-narrative of their own national thought. He states: “Reflection on and discussions of the ‘legitimacy’ issue presage a change in the contemporary study of Chinese philosophy as the focus of attention moves from ‘philosophy’ to ‘China’; as the focus of attention moves from ‘Chinese philosophy’ in the sense of the establishment of a discipline to ‘Chinese philosophy’ in the sense of cultural representation.” For Wei, the study and development of Chinese philosophy must be guided not by the paradigms of Western philosophy but by endogenous theoretical discourses. In the past, Western philosophical issues and paradigms were adopted as the standards for constructing Chinese philosophy. Although the Western model contributed greatly to the development of specialization and to the discipline’s modernization, this has been at the cost of appreciating the unique problematics, structure, and character of Chinese philosophy.24 Similar views have led some participants in the recent debate to propose that because China does not possess philosophy in the Western sense of the term, therefore Chinese philosophy should really be referred to as “Chinese learning” (Zhongxue 中學) or “old Chinese learning” (Zhongguo de guxue 中國的古學)25 or even “techniques of the way” (daoshu 道 術 ).26 Most contributors to the debate, however, endorse Zhang Dainian’s distinction between “Philosophy” as a general or universal category and particular instantiations of this general category: Chinese philosophy, Western philosophy, Indian philosophy, and so on.27 As expressed by Chen Lai: “The name ‘philosophy’ should not be equated with the particular meaning it has acquired in the Western

( 24. Wei Changbao, “Zhongguo zhexue de ‘hefaxing’ xushi ji qi chaoyue,” passim. 25. Zhang Xianglong, Cong xianxiangxue dao Kong Fuzi, 190. 26. Zhang Xianglong, “ ‘Zhongguo zhexue,’ ‘daoshu,’ haishi kedaoshuhua de guangyi zhexue?” 27. Zhang Dainian, Zhongguo zhexue dagang, preface, 2.

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tradition but rather should be a richly inclusive and general concept that belongs to the world’s many cultures.”28 Despite these positive endorsements of Chinese philosophy, when compared to the philosophical legacies bequeathed by scholars such as Mou Zongsan or Tang Junyi, academic discourse on ruxue in China and Taiwan over the past two decades bears little evidence of a sustained or robust philosophical creativity in ruxue philosophy.29 One of the factors that Wuhan University philosopher Li Weiwu 李維武 identifies as having constrained the development of ruxue philosophy during the 1990s is the lack of a uniquely Chinese metaphysical system. Although acknowledging the influential contributions to Chinese metaphysics of Tang Junyi’s “nine realms opened up through the mind” (xin tong jiu jing 心通 九境),30 he complains that after the introduction of New Confucianism into China in the 1980s, the metaphysical contributions of Mou Zongsan and Tang have tended to be overlooked in favor of the utilitarian concerns of those more interested in how aspects of ruxue thought might be applied to ethics, environmental protection, peace, and development. Moreover, he found little evidence that scholars in China were attempting to create new systems of ruxue metaphysics. He regards the development of a uniquely Chinese metaphysics and ontology as a

( 28. Chen Lai, “Guanyu ‘Zhongguo zhexue’ de ruogan wenti qianyi.” 29. This, of course, is not to deny that there are many fine works of exegesis and specialist studies of aspects of traditional ruxue (such as Peng Guoxiang’s 彭國翔 recent Liangzhixue de zhankai or the many studies by his teacher Chen Lai) or modern ruxue (such as some of the studies by Li Minghui). However, genuinely innovative, creative and influential works of contemporary ruxue philosophy are surprisingly few. Take the case of Lin Anwu. For all his neologisms and eclectic conceptual gymnastics, his attempts to critique Mou Zongsan are, more often than not, responses to an intellectual agenda formulated by Mou. A prominent defender of Mou’s system of thought, Li Minghui, made the following pertinent remarks in an interview: “Whether there exists a so-called Post– Mou Zongsan philosophy or a ‘critical New Confucianism’ depends upon whether Lin Anwu is able to write a work as substantial as [Mou’s] Xinti yu xingti. If he can write such a work, then there will be a Post–New Confucian philosophy, a so-called critical New Confucianism. If he is unable to do so, then he will just be shouting slogans” (see Wang Yingming, ed., Taiwan zhi zhexue geming, 84–85). 30. Tang’s nine realms are outlined in his Shengming cunzai yu xinling jingjie, 47–52. See, in particular, Metzger, A Cloud Across the Pacific, 239–44. Metzger’s chapter on Tang is one of the best in any language. See also Sin Yee Chan, “Tang Junyi,” 308–11.

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corrective to past practices biased by their instrumentalist focus on epistemology and methodology and blinkered by a narrow idealist/materialist methodology. “The bias towards these two theoretical choices has directly influenced the depth, breadth, and strength of the development of ruxue in mainland China. In particular, in the development of ruxue, this has led to the loss of those elements that seem to be abstract but, in fact, are able to excite people’s minds.”31 As noted in Chapter 3, Chinese University of Hong Kong philosopher Zheng Zongyi similarly complained that the focus of ruxue studies since the early 1980s in China has been on the contemporary cultural significance of ruxue and on how “intellectual ruxue” might be transformed into a practical and socially relevant ruxue, rather than the reinterpretation and reconstruction of traditional ruxue. “The great body of interpretive work and achievements of the various New Confucians in the field of Chinese philosophy have been unable to have much influence on the philosophical research of mainland scholars” because the writings of the first- and second-generation New Confucians have not been treated as interpretations of traditional philosophy but as the personal perspectives of individual New Confucians. According to Peng Yongjie 彭永捷 (Renmin University), on one hand, “people have become accustomed to regarding philosophy as the ‘core of a culture’; they have become accustomed to using philosophy in order to understand the spirit of the totality of a culture. Yet the current state of the history of Chinese philosophy is unable to provide an effective pathway to tradition.” Peng feels that in recent decades Chinese philosophy has suffered anemia and has lost the capacity for selfregeneration.32 Yu Dunkang (CASS) similarly complains that Chinese philosophy has come to find itself in a protracted state of aphasia because Chinese scholars have yet to develop their own hermeneutic systems.33 Others, however, take a very different tack in their criticisms. On one hand, Zheng Jiadong acknowledges that the influence of mainland research on New Confucianism and on ruxue studies has led to the exploration of how ruxue might be modernized and also introduced new discursive systems and hermeneutic models, enabling scholars to break

( 31. Li Weiwu, “Zhongguo dalu ruxue de zouxiang, xianzhi yu chulu,” 174–78. 32. Peng Yongjie, “Lun Zhongguo zhexue xueke cunzai de hefaxing weiji.” 33. Cited in Huang Junjie et al., “Zhongguo quanshixue shi yi zuo qiaoliang,” 249.

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free of the earlier simplistic hermeneutic models and to engage with scholars and scholarship outside China. At a more fundamental level, however, he argues that this has not served the interests of ruxue. As we have seen, a regular refrain in many of Zheng’s writings over the past decade or so is the deleterious consequences of the intellectualization, institutionalization, and professionalization of ruxue and rujia thought, leading to the entrenched development of intellectualized forms of ruxue (New Confucianism, in particular) in which the focus is on ontology rather than cultivation and practice. In a similar vein, Jing Haifeng relates that the two processes of professionalization and institutionalization, which began in the late nineteenth century, have led to ruxue’s being dismembered into various disciplinary specializations. Others even argue that historical distance means that the true nature of ruxue philosophy can never be recaptured. Hu Yong 胡庸 ( Jiangsu Academy of Social Sciences), for example, claims that ruxue has come to an end because the entire body of categories used in classical Chinese philosophy is no longer able to represent the thought of modern-day, Hanyu-speaking philosophers. The central categories of ruxue—humaneness, rightness, ritual propriety, doing one’s best for others, empathy, filial piety—are no longer the conceptual tools of modern philosophizing. . . . This system of philosophy [ruxue], its unique conceptual system, and its styles of thinking and expression have only an historical existence and are inevitably transformed when they are merged into the lives of modern people. . . . The language of traditional philosophy is now merely an object for philosophical reflection and not the means by which this philosophical reflection is undertaken. The relationship between traditional philosophers and modern philosophers is merely a historical relationship.34

When Zheng Jiadong complained that “the flourishing state of Chinese philosophy in the 1990s is still only a flourishing of a kind of ‘history’ and not a flourishing of ‘philosophy’ in the true sense” and that “the development of Chinese philosophy in mainland China is merely at the stage of ‘description’ and is still a long way from truly having entered a period of pluralist creativity,” his real concern was not the sustained development of contemporary forms of ruxue philosophy but the very viability of an exclusively intellectual notion of philosophy—one in which there is no place for practice/praxis—as applied to the Chinese context. For Zheng, the threat to ruxue comes not from some external

( 34. Hu Yong, “Ruxue de zhongjie,” 55, 56.

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source but from the “internal cleavage of knowledge (zhi ) and moral action (xing ). The focus of intellectualized ruxue is ontology not cultivation and practice.” Zheng finds that the privileging of knowledge over practice (moral action), and learning over doctrine is not limited to New Confucian philosophers, citing Yu Yingshi as an example of someone who “emphasizes working from the dimension of ‘learning,’ from the dimension of historical knowledge, to penetrate and apprehend the normative principles of China’s historical culture.” He presents Yu’s historicist perspective as but another attempt to deploy learning (xue) in order to understand the spirit of China’s historical culture. 35 Somewhat ironically, contrary to Yu Yingshi’s views as set out in the Introduction to this book, on this interpretation, Yu is really no different from the New Confucians.

( 35. Yu, of course, is well aware of this New Confucian–inspired conceit. In commenting on the distinction between doctrine ( jiao) and learning (xue), he states (with tongue planted firmly in cheek) that New Confucians promote the view that doctrine is of primary importance, whereas learning is of secondary importance. . . . Doctrine is lodged in the highest truth that embraces everything . . . learning is pluralist, relative, and partial. It often develops into arguments about “this position is partially correct and partially false; that position is partially correct and partially false.” The traditional learning divisions of Classics, histories, masters, and collected writings are like this, and modern specialist disciplines are also like this. If we confuse doctrine with learning and mistakenly regard New Confucianism as one of the countless schools of philosophy, not only would the New Confucians refuse to acknowledge that New Confucianism is a school of philosophy, moreover there would be no way for us to understand the basic particularities of New Confucianism. See his “Qian Mu yu xin rujia,” 210–11.

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John Makeham - 978-1-68417-048-7

Index

Abstract inheritance, 69n, 243–44, 249 Academies, 29n, 42, 49, 72, 140, 274, 306, 322 Analects: and the Four Books, 159, 198, 200; cited, 218, 221, 227–30 passim, 241, 244, 324 Axial Age, 305, 335–37

Chinese Cultural Renaissance movement, 192–98 passim, 206, 273 Chinese Nationalist Party, 173, 193– 207 passim, 310, 334 Christianity, 81, 274, 278, 279, 285, 304; and ruxue/rujia/rujiao, 101, 166, 273, 275, 281, 285, 291, 305, 306 Civil examination system, 100, 105, 111, 112, 117, 140, 273, 282, 301 Classical studies, 5, 61, 67, 109, 110, 237, 269 Comte, August, 297 Confucianism, 4–5, 21–24, 34–37, 39– 40 Confucian temples, 274, 298, 306 Critical inheritance, 57, 65, 206, 245– 51 passim, 318, 342 Cross-strait academic rivalry, 6–7, 60–61, Chapter 4 passim, 133, 331– 33 Cultural China, 10–12, 40, 202 Cultural-psychological formation, 12, 16, 118–21, 257, 340 Cultural Revolution, 193–94, 283, 290

Bao Zunxin, 37, 40, 52, 237 Berger, Peter L., 39, 99n Book of Changes, 123, 159, 163n, 217 Book of Documents, 70n, 112n, 284, 321 Book of Odes, 70n, 211–12, 284, 285, 293 Buddhism, 24, 25, 85, 130, 280, 296, 305, 324, 329; Chan, 31, 32, 33 Chen Huanzhang, 115, 279, 306 Chen Lai, 53, 68, 143, 219, 220–21, 346–47; on ruxue/rujia, 108, 111, 112, 115, 286–87, 309, 335–77 Chen Lifu, 198–202 Chen Ming, 67, 192–97, 203, 205–6, 255, 256, 343 Cheng Zhongying, 53, 82n, 126–27, 326, 332 Chiang Kai-shek, see Jiang Jieshi China Confucius Foundation, 42, 49– 50, 64–65, 69–70, 239, 312, 318 Chinese Communist Party, 116, 237, 241, 271

Daojia, 39, 72, 117n, 185, 210n, 217, 250 Daojiao, 31, 250, 278, 289 Daoti, 152, 155, 163, 167, 174–75, 176, 179, 202 Daotong: Yu Yingshi on, 60, 151–53, 157, 161; and Xiong Shili, 142, 143, 154, 155, 159, 160, 162–66, 324; and

393 John Makeham - 978-1-68417-048-7

394

Index

Zhu Xi, 155n, 159–63 passim, 200, 215, 222, 324; and Mencius, 159, 160, 164, 199, 200, 215–16; Lin Anwu on, 172, 178, 179, 180, 334 Democracy: criticisms of, 25n, 197, 271; and New Confucians, 76, 179, 184, 236, 265, 268, 269; and ruxue, 105, 236n, 269 Dirlik, Arif, 8, 11, 39–40, 45n–46n Doctrine of the Mean: and Four Books, 198, 200, 320; interpretations of, 217, 218, 224–25, 219–21, 223, 226; authorship of, 219, 221, 223, 226 Dong Zhongshu, 69, 100, 105, 114, 124, 274 Du Weiming, 4, 15, 16; and rujia capitalism, 22, 30–31, 34–37 passim; and Singapore’s Confucian Ethics course, 22, 23; influence of, 43, 83, 91, 106, 114, 331; on rujiao, 280–81 Duara, Prasenjit, 12, 13, 36n, 90n East Asian ruxue, 83–84, 88–95 passim, 136 Ehu yuekan, 53, 76, 256n, 261; and Ehu Monthly Society, 75, 171, 183, 329 Fang Dongmei, 47, 52, 101 Fang Keli, 36–37, 57, 61, 74, 78, 106, 107, 247–57 passim, 268; and Marxism, 36–37, 56, 57, 61, 74, 78, 138, 247–57 passim, 268, 342; and Jiang Qing, 78, 107, 255–56 Feng Youlan, 49, 60, 62, 133, 140, 145, 210n, 243 Feudal: society, 16, 57, 69, 100, 106, 107, 135, 140; ideology of, 56, 82, 242, 282, 342 Fichte, Johann G., 186, 189n, 248n Four Books, 89, 91, 159, 198–201 passim, 320, 322; Analects and, 159, 198, 200 Fu Weixun, 51, 235, 235n Gan Chunsong, 69, 105, 206 Gan Yang, 37–38, 40, 235

Goh Keng Swee, 21, 22, 23, 26, 54n Gongyang learning, 127, 264–70 passim, 274, 276 Greater East Asian Co-prosperity Sphere, 89–90 Gu Mu, 50, 55, 63, 65, 246–47, 311, 317, 343 Guo Qiyong: as ruxue revivalist, 87, 113, 117n, 133–38, 217, 322 Guoxue, see National Studies Han dynasty: and ruxue, 101–6 passim, 114, 120, 124, 142, 205 Han nation, 12, 118, 119, 340 Han Wudi: and rujiao, 282, 291, 292, 308 Han Yu, 31, 32, 153, 160, 199, 222 He Lin, 60, 133, 242 Hegel, G. W. F., 104, 155–56, 186, 248, 249–50; and Absolute Spirit, 121, 180–81, 196, 341 Hermeneutics, 67n, 86–89, 94–95, 139, 142, 145, 181, 269, 332 Hu Shi, 110, 128, 210n, 235, 297 Huang Di, see Yellow Emperor Huang Jinxing, 297–99 Huang Junjie, 86–90 passim, 93–94, 100–101, 193–94, 198–201, 204–5, 299 Hua-Xia: nation, 104n, 137, 285, 308, 340, 341; culture, 121, 286, 340 Human nature, 136, 186, 213, 215, 219, 220, 265 Humaneness: virtue of, 103, 135, 136, 173, 189, 271, 293, 297–98, 349; teaching of, 142, 156–61 passim, 166 Indigenization, 44, 85, 299–300 Innate moral consciousness, 141, 174, 176, 184, 186, 236 Institutionalization and professionalization, 110, 115, 157, 140–46 passim, 395, 338, 349 Intellectual intuition, 177, 188, 189, 191

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Index International Academic Conference on New Confucianism, 75–78, 86, 157, 332–33 International Confucian Association, 58, 63, 214 Japan: and rujia/ruxue, 15n, 29n, 45, 74, 83, 85, 90, 92–94; and modernization, 29, 37, 55, 83, 91; and rujiao, 301, 302, 303 Jaspers, Karl, 305, 335–36 Jiang Jieshi, 193, 199–203 passim, 206, 273 Jiang Qing, 53, Chapter 12 passim, 307, 308, 321, 322, 329–30; as mainland New Confucian, 53, 113; and Fang Keli, 78, 107, 255–56 Jiang Zemin, 197, 312 Jin Yaoji, 39, 44, 45, 46, 100, 325 Jing Haifeng, 87, 109–10, 145–46 Kang Youwei, 115, 274, 278–79, 307, 335 Kant, Immanuel, 123n, 124, 236n; and Mou Zongsan, 156, 177, 181, 182, 183, 188–91 King, Ambrose, see Jin Yaoji Kong jiao, 115, 274, 278–79, 307, 335 Kongjiaohui, 279, 301n, 306, 335 Korea, 15, 74, 84, 85, 88, 91n, 92, 93, 94 Koyasu Nobukuni, 83, 92, 93, 94, 333 Küng, Hans, 304 Lee Kwan Yew, 21, 24, 25, 63 Levenson, Joseph, 12, 51, 100, 234–35, 249n Li ( pattern/principle), 32, 177, 181, 224, 280, 288 Li Lanqing, 65, 311, 343 Li Ling, 211, 217–18, 229, 232 Li Minghui, 79–86 passim, 107–8, 118, 154–56, 166, 181, 190, 250–51, 347n Li Shiwei, 300–3 Li Xueqin, 210n, 211, 221–25, 231 Li Zehou: on cultural-psychological formation, 11, 51, 93, 102, 118–20,

395

130, 339, 340; on ruxue as religion, 287–89, 309, 335 Liang Qichao, 115, 138, 144 Liang Shuming, 49, 60, 62, 133, 140, 151, 159, 280 Lin Anwu: criticisms of New Confucianism, 101, 125, Chapter 8 passim; on daotong, 172, 178, 179, 180, 334 Lin Yusheng, 40, 46n, 124n, 253 Liu Shaoqi, 116, 237 Liu Shuxian, 38n, 51, 53, 80–82, 102–3, 122–23, 164, 303–4 Lu Jiuyuan (Xiangshan), 103, 104, 163n, 237, 284, 322. See also LuWang tradition Lu-Wang tradition, 48n, 155n, 177, 181 Luo Yijun, 114, 153–54, 252, 254 Luther, Martin, 91, 128, 274 Mao Zedong: Thought, 64, 241, 253, 311; cited, 235, 238, 241n, 242, 250, 312n Mainland New Confucians, 53, 58, 81, 113, 154, 157, 252–56, 268, 324 Marxism, 29, 47, 48, 55, 66, 185–86, 239, 253, 315–16; and Fang Keli, 36– 37, 56, 57, 61, 74, 78, 138, 247–57 passim, 268, 342; and New Confucianism, 56, 57, 108, 172, 157, 240; and traditional culture, 59, 68, 70, 238, 241; and National Studies, 68– 71, 135, 239, 241, 343; Sinicization of, 234–37, 240n, 241 May Fourth: and ruxue, 2, 102, 106, 141, 239, 244; and New Confucianism, 141, 158, 269 Mencius: and the ru tradition, 100, 102, 104, 122, 204, 225, 237, 265, 322; and New Confucianism, 142, 152, 153, 155n, 215; and daotong, 159, 160, 164, 199, 200, 215–16; and SiMeng school, 213, 215–16, 221, 222, 275, 286 Mencius: cited, 160, 218, 221, 222, 227 Merchants, 31, 32, 33, 327

John Makeham - 978-1-68417-048-7

396

Index

Mind-centered Learning, 137, 183, 204, 284, 285 Ministry of Education, 311–15 passim, 330 Mizoguchi Yūzō, 83, 84, 333 Modernity: and capitalism, 29, 30, 116; and East Asia, 30, 37, 83, 115; Western, 54, 83n, 338 Moral metaphysics, 124, 134, 151, 153, 171, 176–91 passim, 225 Mou Zongsan: criticisms of, 52, 60, 101, 137, 151, 172, 176–80, 188–91, 236n; and Xiong Shili, 60, 123, 152, 155, 160, 334n; and self-negation of innate moral consciousness, 143, 177–78, 190; on Chinese culture, 109, 130–31, 149, 154–57, 339; and Kant, 156, 177, 181, 182, 183, 188–91; and philosophy, 171, 180, 188–91 Nationalism: state, 7, 8, 58–59, 66, 343; cultural, 7, 9–16, 55, 130, 167, 196, 231, 264–67, 333–41 National Studies: and ruxue, 59, 69, 71, 135, 239; and Marxism, 68–71, 135, 239, 241, 343 New Asia College, 77, 129, 150, 314 New Confucian: school, 2n, 48, 76, 79, 80, 133, 163; movement, 56, 57, 80, 81, 126, 149; studies, 58, 80, 81, 86, 138, 143, 154, 251, 253–54 New Life movement, 116, 198, 273 New Text school, 232, 264, 266, 278, 321 Noumena, 177, 183, 188, 189, 191 Pang Pu, 40, 216, 221n, 225, 231 Patriotic education, 7, 59, 66, 273, 311, 343 Peng Guoxiang, 126, 347n Philosophy: and ruxue, 2, 109, 139, 141, 280–81, 287, 289, 333, 344–49 passim; Chinese, 47, 123n, 125, 185, 186, 208, 209, 215, 285–89, 345–47; New Confucian, 62–63, 81, 86, 125, 139, 142n, 143, 151; Western, 123n, 144,

147, 240, 294, 298, 345–46; legitimacy of Chinese, 142n, 144–47, 295–96, 345–47; and Mou Zongsan, 171, 180, 188–91; and rujiao, 280, 282, 308 Post–New Confucianism, 50, 71, 125– 26, Chapter 8 passim, 347n Principle-centered Learning, 43n, 163, 215, 316 Publishing, 28, 49, 51, 58, 61, 76n, 198, 199, 214, 319 Qi , 32, 181–82 Qian Mu: and the New Confucians, 77, 149–51, 162, 214 Rationalization, 29, 32–33, 287, 288, 289, 324–24, 335, 345 Religion: and ruxue/rujia as, 2, 28, 61– 62, 105, 280, 287–89, 293, 295–96, 308; Weber on, 8, 28–29, 175n, 336; and Kong jiao, 115, 274–75, 278, 279, 335; rujiao as, Chapter 13 passim, 121, 256, 273 Ren Jiyu, 281–83, 290, 292, 321, 342 Research on New Confucianism project, 42, 43, 48, 56, 79, 186 Rujia: culture, 1–2, 92, 117, 241n, 263, 271, 286, 301, 322; capitalism, 8, 22, 26n, 30–31, 34–37, 42, 43–44, 50n, 54n, 82–83; ethics, 34, 38–39, 115– 16, 117, 135, 195n, 326–27; values, 52, 104, 130, 311, 313, 317–19, 324–30, 343–44; identity, 92, 105n, Chapter 6 passim, 310. See also Rujia thought Rujia thought: and ruxue, 5, 9; and Chinese culture, 73, 95, 108–9, 112, 113, 114, 140; in history, 108–9, 112, 114, 140, 215, 235. See also Rujia Self-negation of innate moral consciousness, 143, 177–78, 190. See also Mou Zongsan Shamanism, 173, 283, 286–89

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Index Shangdi, 278n, 283, 284, 285, 290–94 passim Sheng Hong, 255, 266, 268 Si-Meng school, 213, 215–16, 221–26 passim, 230–31, 275, 286. See also Mencius; Zisi Sinicization, 43–46, 121, 234–38, 241 Sun Yat-sen, 92n, 115, 193, 199, 200, 272 Synthetic creation, 206, 245–50 passim, 342 Tang Junyi, 77, 137, 161, 204, 280, 347 Tang Yijie, 49, 57, 71, 72, 87, 238, 246 Thoraval, Jöel, 123n, 142n, 306 Traditional culture: and ruxue, 47, 58, 67, 113, 137, 193, 232, 235, 294–96; and critical inheritance, 50, 57, 72; and Marxism, 59, 68, 70, 238, 241 Traditional virtues, 7, 66, 248, 311–15, 326, 328, 343 Tu, Wei-ming, see Du Weiming UNESCO, 50, 304 United front, 11, 63, 197, 308 Wang Caigui, 319, 320, 321, 329 Wang Dianqing, 314–16, 326, 329 Wang Fuzhi, 164, 181, 182, 195, 203 Wang Yangming: disciples of, 31, 32, 33; and ruxue, 100, 103, 104, 142, 163n, 237, 284, 322. See also LuWang tradition Weber, Max: and Protestant Ethic, 8, 28, 30, 34, 43; on religion, 8, 28–29, 175n, 336; and rationalization, 29, 32, 324; on Confucianism, 29, 45n, 336 Wei Zhengtong, 38, 195n, 235, 236, 252–53 Western Zhou, 109, 286, 335–36

397

Xin xing zhi xue, 153, 157, 161–66 passim, 179, 215, 231 Xiong Shili: and New Confucians generally, 52, 123, 138, 140, 141, 151, 152, 180; and Mou Zongsan, 60, 123, 152, 155, 160, 334n; criticized, 60, 133, 162–63; studies of, 61, 132– 33, 137, 138–39, 181; and daotong, 142, 143, 154, 155, 159–66 passim, 324 Xu Fuguan, 60, 103n, 137, 161, 204–5 Xue’an genre, 5 Xunzi, 100, 105, 124, 217, 220, 221, 225, 274 Yang Zuhan, 153, 181, 256n Yellow Emperor, 64, 137, 163, 213, 340 Yu Yingshi, 1–3, 104, 111, 167; and Confucian Ethics project, 22, 24; on daotong, 60, 151–53, 157, 161 Yuandao, 67, 72, 192–93, 256n Zhdanov, Andrei Alexandrovich, 281n Zhang Dainian, 49, 67, 194, 206, 243, 245–46, 346 Zheng Jiadong: on New Confucianism, 3–4, 48, 115, 139–44 passim, 157–67; on ruxue, 47, 61, 92, 106, 114, 115, 139; on the legitimacy of Chinese philosophy, 112n, 144–47, 295, 349–50; on institutionalization and professionalization, 140– 46 passim, 395, 338, 349 Zhongyong, see Doctrine of the Mean Zhu Bokun, 49, 240, 242 Zhu Xi, 61, 76, 102, 104, 292, 294; and daotong, 155n, 159–63 passim, 200, 215, 222, 324 Zisi, 200, 213–30 passim, 264, 322. See also Si-Meng school Zixia, 211–12 Ziyou, 215, 216, 219, 220

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John Makeham - 978-1-68417-048-7

Harvard-Yenching Institute Monograph Series (titles now in print) 11. Han Shi Wai Chuan: Han Ying's Illustrations of the Didactic Application of the Classic of Songs, translated and annotated by James Robert Hightower 21. The Chinese Short Story: Studies in Dating, Authorship, and Composition, by Patrick Hanan 22. Songs of Flying Dragons: A Critical Reading, by Peter H. Lee 24. Population, Disease, and Land in Early Japan, 645–900, by William Wayne Farris 25. Shikitei Sanba and the Comic Tradition in Edo Fiction, by Robert W. Leutner 26. Washing Silk: The Life and Selected Poetry of Wei Chuang (834?–910), by Robin D. S. Yates 27. National Polity and Local Power: The Transformation of Late Imperial China, by Min Tu-ki 28. Tang Transformation Texts: A Study of the Buddhist Contribution to the Rise of Vernacular Fiction and Drama in China, by Victor H. Mair 29. Mongolian Rule in China: Local Administration in the Yuan Dynasty, by Elizabeth Endicott-West 30. Readings in Chinese Literary Thought, by Stephen Owen 31. Rememhering Paradise: Nativism and Nostalgia in Eighteenth-Century Japan, by Peter Nosco 32. Taxing Heaven's Storehouse: Horses, Bureaucrats, and the Destruction of the Sichuan Tea Industry, 1074–1224, by Paul J. Smith 33. Escape from the Wasteland: Romanticism and Realism in the Fiction of Mishima Yukio and Oe Kenzaburo, by Susan Jolliffe Napier 34. Inside a Service Trade: Studies in Contemporary Chinese Prose, by Rudolf G. Wagner 35. The Willow in Autumn: Ryutei Tanehiko, 1783–1842, by Andrew Lawrence Markus

John Makeham - 978-1-68417-048-7

36. The Confucian Transformation of Korea: A Study of Society and Ideology, by Martina Deuchler 37. The Korean Singer of Tales, by Marshall R. Pihl 38. Praying for Power: Buddhism and the Formation of Gentry Society in Late-Ming China, by Timothy Brook 39. Word, Image, and Deed in the Life of Su Shi, by Ronald C. Egan 40. The Chinese Virago: A Literary Theme, by Yenna Wu 41. Studies in the Comic Spirit in Modern Japanese Fiction, by Joel R. Cohn 42. Wind against the Mountain: The Crisis of Politics and Culture in ThirteenthCentury China, by Richard L. Davis 43. Powerful Relations: Kinship, Status, and the State in Sung China (960–1279), by Beverly Bossler 44. Limited Views: Essays on Ideas and Letters, by Qian Zhongshu; selected and translated by Ronald Egan 45. Sugar and Society in China: Peasants, Technology, and the World Market, by Sucheta Mazumdar 46. Chinese History: A Manual, by Endymion Wilkinson 47. Studies in Chinese Poetry, by James R. Hightower and Florence Chia-Ying Yeh 48. Crazy Ji: Chinese Religion and Popular Literature, by Meir Shahar 49. Precious Volumes: An Introduction to Chinese Sectarian Scriptures from the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, by Daniel L. Overmyer 50. Poetry and Painting in Song China: The Subtle Art of Dissent, by Alfreda Murck 51. Evil and/or/as the Good: Omnicentrism, Intersubjectivity, and Value Paradox in Tiantai Buddhist Thought, by Brook Ziporyn 52. Chinese History: A Manual, Revised and Enlarged Edition, by Endymion Wilkinson 53. Articulated Ladies: Gender and the Male Community in Early Chinese Texts, by Paul Rouzer 54. Politics and Prayer: Shrines to Local Former Worthies in Sung China, by Ellen Neskar 55. Allegories of Desire: Esoteric Literary Commentaries of Medieval Japan, by Susan Blakeley Klein 56. Printing for Profit: The Commercial Publishers of Jianyang, Fujian (11th–17th Centuries), by Lucille Chia

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57. To Become a God: Cosmology, Sacrifice, and Self-Divinization in Early China, by Michael J. Puett 58. Writing and Materiality in China: Essays in Honor of Patrick Hanan, edited by Judith T. Zeitlin and Lydia H. Liu 59. Rulin waishi and Cultural Transformation in Late Imperial China, by Shang Wei 60. Words Well Put: Visions of Poetic Competence in the Chinese Tradition, by Graham Sanders 61. Householders: The Reizei Family in Japanese History, by Steven D. Carter 62. The Divine Nature of Power: Chinese Ritual Architecture at the Sacred Site of Jinci, by Tracy Miller 63. Beacon Fire and Shooting Star: The Literary Culture of the Liang (502–557), by Xiaofei Tian 64. Lost Soul: “Confucianism” in Contemporary Chinese Academic Discourse, by John Makeham

John Makeham - 978-1-68417-048-7