学儒序: Learning from Scholars Preface

This will be the first entry in what might become a series (if I feel like it, and I'm not too lazy), in which I look for a grain of personal truth and importance in Confucian philosophy - primarily the last millennium of Confucian scholarship that is generally termed "Neo-Confucianism." I come to this topic as at best "half a bottle of vinegar" (banping cu 半 瓶醋): I am not a philosopher, nor an intellectual historian, nor - until recently - particularly interested in this realm of thought. "Until recently" because three separate epiphanies/habits of mind have since drawn me to think on and write on this topic:

1. Lots of things that are generally seen as ridiculous or malicious must have some substance of value. Most "bad" things that persist in human society must have been considered "good" at some time or in some place. Probing the history of how they came to be seen as "bad" is interesting, but I am more concerned with first establishing the core of value that was once seen in them.
2.  People will pay more attention to your (my) writing if you (I) write about things that are useful to them. I've realized that my writing has veered into the abstract, the meandering, and (too frequently) the uniformed. Better I write about something I know and that might be useful to people.
3. But if I wait until I am an expert in something to write about it, I will never write anything.

There are lots of things that have attracted my attention because of the first reason. Everything from sins (which I have written on, if poorly) to eating meat (which I am still attempting to write on) to feudalism, superstition and venality (which I hope to write on) have come to be seen as generally "bad."Confucian scholarship in general, and Neo-Confucian orthodoxy more generally, also fall in this category; they have been blamed for everything from oppression of women to the failure of China to develop "science." Yet for much of the past 2500 years of history, this system of thought and belief was at the core of the most consistently successful civilization on earth.

Thinkers from Confucius and Mencius to Han Yu and Liu Zongyuan to Cheng Yi and Zhu Xi to Wang Yangming were among the smartest, most driven intellectuals of their times. Their importance to Chinese thought and civilization rivals that of philosophers like Plato and Aristotle, Jesus, St. Aquinas, Descartes and Kant to the West. Reading the decline of the China in the 19th and early 20th centuries as an outgrowth of their thought strikes me as ridiculous. If the fall of the Qing Dynasty is Zhu Xi's fault, then Jesus is equally to blame for the European Dark Ages. It seems to me that if eight centuries of (mostly) men in the biggest civilization in the world (not to speak of the influence in Korea, Japan, etc.) saw something of value in Zhu Xi's writing, we probably should try to figure out what.

This brings me to the second point, which is that there may be some utility in my writing about this. Much of what has been written on Confucianism focuses on the early developments, particularly the Analects of Confucius, the Mencius and the Book of Changes. This makes some sense - as with the Bible or Plato, much later writing focuses on interpreting or responding to the classics. Nonetheless, Confucianism as it comes to be known to us today is largely the product of the 11th and 12th century renaissance and reinterpretation, particularly as transmitted through the work of Zhu Xi. While there is some substantial scholarship on this movement, much of the specialized work is highly uneven. More importantly, this development of "Neo-Confucianism" is handled reductively if at all in books for the wider audience. Therefore, I think there is some utility in explaining and addressing these ideas in plain language and in terms of more specific questions.

Finally, as mentioned above I am far from an expert on this topic. Nevertheless, I have read relatively widely and spent some time trying to understand these ideas. In some ways, it is probably better that I am not an expert: I will avoid highly technical discussions of nuance in large part because I don't really understand with that much nuance. In another respect, I think my experience of learning Neo-Confucian thought is somewhat similar to many historical scholars. For most students in imperial China, Confucian and Neo-Confucian texts were part of the orthodoxy that they needed to learn to pass the examinations that would lead to government service. Similarly, I was first driven to study these texts for pragmatic reasons: because I need to know about them to pass the general examinations for my PhD. At the same time, many former scholars became interested in the Confucian cannon for personal and philosophical reasons - they saw the classics as a set of tools to help them interpret and respond to the world. Somewhat despite myself, I too have become interested in the perspective offered by these texts: I recently cited the Doctrine of the Mean to a family friend interested in psychology, and I quoted the Great Learning to my grandparents in expressing my thanks for all they have done to provide opportunities for our family. In both cases I, like my Chinese predecessors, was using the language of these books to give structure to my thinking.　More to the point, generals are coming up and it seems as good as any way to study.





In any case, before proceeding on this exploration I think it worthwhile to lay out some general terminology and details. This project, which I have called xue ru 學儒 ("Learning from Scholars") will focus on the school of philosophy known as ruxue 儒 學 - generally translated as "Confucianism," but better thought of as "Scholarly Learning" because it is not limited to the study of Confucius. As a student from outside of the tradition, and as a historian, I am studying the people as much as I am studying the texts, hence I have flipped the characters around to create the title. This first post may be repetitive for many people, but I write it here to have all the information in one place so that I (and others?) might reference it in the future。

"Scholarly Learning" or Confucianism is seen by later commentators as starting with Confucius (kongzi 孔子) himself in the "Spring and Autumn Period" around the 7th century BC. Confucius is not the first sage recognized by the tradition, which generally traces back to legendary emperors Yao and Shun, but he is the most important because he was the first sage who was not also a ruler. Because the later scholars of the tradition were mostly from the shi 士 (a shifting class variously translated as "gentlemen," “literati," "gentry," "aristocracy" etc.), they identified with Confucius in his role as adviser to rulers and scholar of texts. Within the tradition, Confucius is generally attributed as the compiler of the Classics. This body of scriptures included various numbers of texts at various times; the Neo-Confucians (addressed below) fixed it at five, known as the Five Classics (wujing 五經):

1. The Classic of Poetry (shijing 詩經) containing both popular and state poems and songs.
2. The Classic of History （shujing 書經) containing records and speeches of the early Zhou Dynasty - a state in decline during Confucius's life time.
3. The Classic of Rites (lijing 禮經, also called the Rites/Institutionss of Zhou [zhouli 周禮]) containing records of the rituals and institutions of the Zhou Dynasty.
4. The Classic of Changes (yijing 易經, also called the I Ching) containing diagrams used for divination.
5. The Spring and Autumn Annals (chunqiu 春秋) containing the records of the feudal state of Lu, home to Confucius. This text in particular was said to have been written by Confucius, and showed his approval and disapproval for historical actions.

Aside from being credited with these compilations, Confucius's sayings were collected by his followers in the Analects (lunyu 論 語). Some of these too may have been by other thinkers and only attributed to him. There is little coherence to these sayings, aside from the general value given to scholarship and the propriety. Coherence in Confucian thought came with later writers, especially stemming from the thought of Mencius.

Mencius (mengzi 孟子), along with Xunzi (xunzi 荀 子), was the most significant Confucian thinker in the pre-imperial period. They lived in the fourth and third centuries BC during the so-called "Warring States" when the Zhou Dynasty was in further decline and some states in outright rebellion. Mencius and Xunzi reacted to this state of affairs differently. Mencius generally argued that human nature was fundamentally good (benxing liang 本性良) and advocated for a state that intervened minimally in social affairs. Xunzi, on the other hand, argued that human nature was fundamentally evil (benxing e 本性惡) and advocated for formal schooling and a strong government as correctives. There is more coherence in Xunzi's thought, but it was Mencian optimism about human nature that would prove more influential to the thinkers that are my main concern.

I will now skip over about a thousand years of history, not because it is unimportant, but because that is what later Confucians did. Imperial Confucianism under the Han and Tang Dynasties was vibrant, and combined moral philosophy with ideas about the nature of the cosmos more generally attributed to Daoism (daojiao 道教，Taoism). To later Confucians, however, this period was seen as a dark age - in part due to the rise of Daoism, as well as the arrival of Buddhism. Neo-Confucians, most notably Cheng Yi 程颐 and Zhu Xi 朱熹, would trace the Transmission of the Way (daotong 道統) through the sage emperors to Confucius and Mencius, whereupon it was seen as lost for a thousand years before being found by the 11th century thinker Cheng Hao 程珦, and transmitted to his brother Cheng Yi, and to Zhu Xi.

This idea was not totally original to the Cheng brothers; it appears to have come from another great thinker and writer - Han Yu 韓愈. During the decline of the Tang Dynasty in the 8th and 9th centuries, Han saw Buddhism and Daoism as at fault, and attempted to restore ”Ancient Style" (guwen 古文). The literary style and ethical concerns promoted by him and contemporaries like Liu Zongyuan 柳宗元 would come to dominate the discourse in later Imperial China. Some scholars have called this the beginning of "Neo-Confucianism." I tend to follow Peter Bol (among others) in reserving this term for the more specific movement starting in the 11th century (detailed below). I follow Javier Cha in calling this movement "Neo-Classicism" because I feel this term better captures the tenor of the movement and its similarities with aspects the European Renaissance without the particular baggage of using the word "renaissance" itself.

The 11th century Song Dynasty featured a number of polymathic Neo-Classicists whose writing and philosophy would remain influential long after their deaths. These included historians like Ouyang Xiu 歐陽修 and Sima Guang 司馬光, statesmen like Wang Anshi 王安石 and poets like Su Shi 蘇軾, although all four men were poets, statesmen and scholars. More importantly for later traditions, it produced the Cheng brothers - Cheng Yi and Cheng Hao - who would claim to receive the transmission of the way and begin to produce moral phlosphy that would eventually become the orthodocy of the Chinese state. This is what is usually called "Learning of the Way" (daoxue 道學) in Chinese, and what I will term "Neo-Confucianism."

In the late 12th century, after the Song had been forced to the South, one of the greatest system-builders in Chinese history got his hands on the writings of the Chengs and their mentors, added his own commentary, defended his position forcefully against all comers, and effectively produced the central doctrine for the next seven-hundred years. In addition to fixing the five classics, to which he or his students added commentaries, Zhu Xi added major interpretations to the Four Books (sishu 四書), four texts that were central to the moral philosophy of the Chengs, and in Zhu’s mind formed the foundation for understanding the Classics and the world. The four books included:

1. The Analects of Confucius
2. The Mencius
3. The Great Learning (daxue 大學), derived from an obscure chapter of the Classic of Rites, with commentaries by Zengzi 曾子, a student of Confucius.

The Doctrine of the Mean (zhongyong 中庸) another formerly obscure chapter of the Rites attributed to Confucius’s grandson Zisi 子嗣.

This body of texts and commentaries shifted the focus of Confucianism away from the monarch to the individual. It implied that anyone could become a sage through proper scholarship, and laid the intellectual foundation for major shifts in the last several hundred years of imperial history.

Gradually, first in the late Song, then in the Mongol Yuan, and especially in the early Ming Dynasty, the corpus of texts and commentary complied by Zhu Xi became state orthodoxy. By the early 15th century, it was the main required reading for passing the state examinations. This gradually made Neo-Confucianism a less vibrant philosophy. In this atmosphere of lost vitality emerged the last great Neo-Confucian philosopher, Wang Yangming 王陽明. Where Zhu Xi had taken imperial philosophy and made it local, Wang took local philosophy and made it personal. There were key precursors to his thought - men like Chen Xianzhang 陳獻章 - but just as Zhu Xi made the Chengs' philosophy into a coherent doctrine, Wang Yangming made the "Learning of the Mind" (xinxue 心學) branch of Neo-Confucian thought into a social movement. In an extreme form of Mencian philosophy, Wang argued that thought and action are the same thing, and that studying the classics was less important than reflection and action.

Wang's position, and the even more extreme demagogic school of his student Li Zhi 李贄, proved highly destabilizing to the social order in the 16th century. After a crackdown and the fall of the dynasty soon thereafter, Zhu Xi's Neo-Confucian orthodoxy was more fully fixed as state orthodoxy and more vibrant social thinkers turned elsewhere.

With this outline in place, I will next turn to specific questions and examples in an attempt to better understand and better explain Neo-Confucianism, and to see how well this oft-denigrated philosophical school applies to my life.