Early China: A Social and Cultural History

by Li Feng

  * * *

  Box 10.1 The Great One Gives Birth to Water (Taiyi Shengshui)

  This is one of the texts written on bamboo strips, discovered in Guodian in 1993.

  The Great One produced water. The water, in return, assisted the Great One, thus forming the sky. The sky, returning, assisted the Great One, thus forming the earth. The sky and earth again assisted one another, thus forming the numinous and the luminous. The numinous and the luminous again assisted one another, thus forming yin and yang. Yin and yang again assisted one another, thus forming the four seasons. The four seasons again assisted one another, thus forming cold and heat. Cold and heat again assisted one another, thus forming moisture and aridity. Moisture and aridity again assisted one another, formed a year and that was all.

  Therefore, a year is that which moisture and aridity produced. Moisture and aridity are that which cold and heat produced. Cold and heat are that which the four seasons produced. The four seasons are that which yin and yang produced. Yin and yang are that which the numinous and the luminous produced. The numinous and the luminous are that which the sky and earth produced. Sky and earth are that which the Great One produced.

  For this reason, the Great One hides in water and moves with the seasons. Circling and [beginning again, it takes itself as] the mother of the myriad living things. Waning and waxing, it takes itself as the guideline of the myriad living things. It is what the sky cannot exterminate, what the earth cannot bury, that which yin and yang cannot form. The gentleman who knows this is called [a sage].

  (Translation by Sarah Allan)

  * * *

  “The Great One Gives Birth to Water,” representing probably an even earlier stage of development of Daoism, offers what most scholars consider the first complete cosmogony in China that describes Heaven, Earth, Spirit, Yin and Yang (two opposing forces), the Four Seasons, and so forth . . . each giving birth to the next and ultimately the Great One giving birth to Heaven. While some scholars think that this new text was originally a part of or an appendix to one of the compilations of the Classic of Way and Virtue from Guodian, others think that this cosmogony was much earlier and was only later modified and incorporated into the received text of the Classic of Way and Virtue.22 But none debates the close relationship of this new text with the Daoist tradition, and as such the critical point offered by it is: a cosmogonical model had already been developed by/before the time of Guodian, and the concept of “Way” (Dao) which most scholars identify with the “Great One” must be understood within the dimensions of this cosmological paradigm.

  It is true that scholars of early Chinese philosophy will continue to debate over the proper relationship between these newly excavated texts, either as individual works or as groups of works, and the philosophical traditions as they were understood in the Han period, and about the validity of “school” divisions determined by Han historians based on the transmitted texts,23 which has been the starting point of modern studies of early Chinese philosophy. There is, after all, the question about whether a general philosophical or perhaps religious tendency or “belief” embraced by the tomb’s occupant (some believe he was teacher to the crown prince of Chu) might have provided a common ground for the inclusion of the various texts in a single tomb.24 Despite these uncertainties, any informed analysis of early Chinese philosophy can no longer stand without considerations of the texts from Guodian as well as the newer manuscript corpora that have surfaced after Guodian.25

  The Legalist Measures

  The Legalists were the helpers of the rulers and builders of the new “Territorial States” that had become the norm of political organization during the Warring States period. There was a long line of Legalist thinkers including Shang Yang (390–338 BC), Shen Dao (390–315 BC), Shen Buhai (385–337 BC), and Han Fei (281–233 BC). The first helped Duke Xiao of Qin to carry out the most thorough reform of the Warring States period (see Chapter 11), and the second and third were ministers of the state of Hann. The last, Han Fei, identified with the long text called Hanfeizi that bears his name, is traditionally considered the best synthesizer of the entire Legalist tradition. Han Fei was a member of the royal lineage of Hann, but on a diplomatic mission to Qin, he was hosted by the king of Qin, the future First Emperor of China, who much admired his talent. But the king eventually did not use him; instead, on the advice of his minister Li Si, he executed the philosopher to prevent his talent from being used by another state.

  Both Han Fei and Li Si were known as students of Xunzi, the best-known philosopher of the Confucian tradition after Mencius. In fact, Xunzi’s famous doctrine that human nature is fundamentally evil provided a starting point from which Han Fei developed a theory radically different from his teacher’s. According to Han Fei, in a year of good harvest people offer food to casual visitors on the road, but in a year of famine people do not even feed their own children – this is not because human nature is alternately good and bad, but because it depends entirely on the economic foundation of their lives. Therefore, there is no point for a ruler to try to make men good; he only needs to restrain them from doing evil. Nor should he try “to win the hearts of the people,” because by nature everyone is selfish and concerned only with his immediate gains. For Han Fei, what the government should do is to provide sufficient economic foundation for the people, and to set up strict laws to keep them from doing wrong. Only this is the way to achieve superior social order.

  On the issue of the source of legitimacy of political power, Han Fei’s answer was typically positivistic, that is to accept it as it is. “Authority” (Shi) is the power that a ruler naturally has with him. Whatever a ruler’s moral quality is and however he rules, the possession of “Authority” carries the undeniable rights to exact obedience. “Subject serving ruler, son serving father, and wife serving husband,” this is not something that they can choose to do or not for a ruler; people simply have no choice. The ruler, on the other hand, exercises his “Authority” through “Law” (Fa), which once set up should be observed closely. Han Fei says that “the intelligent ruler makes the law to select men and makes no arbitrary appointment himself; he makes the law measure merits and makes no arbitrary judgment himself.” He saw this as the foundation of the state and government. While adopting a positivist approach to “Law,” Han Fei also gives examples to show the need to apply heavy punishment on small offenses. Cruel as it is, Han Fei argues that this is likely to eliminate fire before it spreads out. If you can prevent small crimes, people will not be in danger of committing worse crimes and being subject to capital punishment. So, in a sense, they would benefit from heavy punishment for small offenses.

  Despite a ruler having the “Authority” to rule, he is in danger of losing it. Rulers of the Warring States period frequently found themselves victims of usurpation not by the lowly subjects they ruled, but by the ministers who helped them to rule in a political system that encouraged competition. Han Fei’s answer to the problem is “Statecraft” (Shu), a concept that had been much stressed by Shen Buhai before him. According to Han Fei, after assigning an official duties the ruler should strictly demand the performance required by his office. If the official does less than required, he should be punished; if he does more by overstepping his power, he should also be punished. The punishment is not due to his excessive accomplishment, but due to that fact that he overstepped his power. Most importantly, as a ruler, he should never show laxity in taking personal responsibility of rewarding officials for their merits, and punishing them for their failures – the “Two Handles” by which the ruler exercises full control over his bureaucracy.

  Han Fei’s view of history is also distinctive from the Confucian idea about a past “Golden Age.” Han Fei did not openly oppose the idea of a “Golden Age.” But, for him, the matter is simply that each dynasty had its special circumstances, and it would be foolish to cling to the outmoded ways of the past kings. Therefore, political institutions must adapt to the special social condition of particular times, an
d must account for the prevailing patterns of human behavior, determined not by their internal moral standards, but by external conditions.

  Further Reflections

  Discussed above are three philosophical traditions that not only had a relatively long history through the Warring States period, but also exercised enduring influence on Chinese civilization thereafter. In the time context of their early history, they represented three main approaches to the social and political crisis that overtook China as the result of the collapse of the Western Zhou state and the ideology upheld by it. However, this does not mean that their positions were all strong in all times. In fact, Mencius once remarked that in his time the most popular philosophical schools were that of Yang Zhu, an early form of Daoism, and that of Mohism, seemingly suggesting a period of decline of the Confucian tradition after the death of Confucius’ first-generation students.

  The Mohist tradition was centered on a charismatic leader named Mozi who lived sometime after Confucius and probably died shortly before Mencius was born, although the exact years cannot be determined. He was likely the head of a band of some 100 warriors that played an active role in helping the attacked weaker states in their defenses. The text that bears his name, Mozi, is rich in information about military engineering, and is likely to have been written by someone who was actually engaged in such affairs. Taking Confucianism as his intellectual enemy, Mozi challenged it mainly on two counts. First, Mozi criticizes Confucians for their practice of luxurious ritual to entertain the dream of going back to the Western Zhou Dynasty. Instead, Mozi judged political and social institutions by their utilitarian value and by whether they would be beneficial to the people. Second, Mozi accused Confucianism of biased love, Ren or “Benevolence,” based only on family relations in an existing social hierarchy. On the contrary, Mozi advocated “Universal Love.” For Mozi, if everyone can love other people’s families as he does his own, and other states as he does his home state, there will be no war. But this is reflected in Mencius’ eyes as quite ridiculous because for one who cannot love his own kindred, there is no way for him to love all others beyond his family.

  Another minor intellectual stream was that of the Sophists or Logicians whose main interests lay in the relationship between language and reality. Most of these people lived in the middle to late Warring States period, and two were most famous: Hui Shi (350–260 BC) and Gongsun Long (325–250 BC), both appearing in Zhuangzi. Zhuangzi took the former as a serious intellectual opponent and debated with him over the issue of the “Happiness of the Fish,” but the latter is harshly ridiculed in Zhuangzi. In a sense, the Sophists are a group of philosophers who were least concerned with the ongoing social problems in China, and perhaps the ones who had given up hope of finding an orderly world. Perhaps they saw disorder as the order of the world, and on this basis they challenged the rationality of the ordinary mind. By the late Warring States period, another philosophical tradition, Naturalism, began to take roots in the intellectual soil of China. Embracing both the Dualist view of the world divided between Yin and Yang and a system of cosmological classification marked by the “Five Elements” (soil, wood, metal, fire, and water) which replaced each other in a circle, the Naturalist tradition reached its maturity in the philosophy of Zou Yan (305–240? BC). Zou Yan further developed the cosmological circle into a political theory and explained the fortune of each preceding dynasty with the virtue of one of the “Five Elements.”26

  As in the political–military arena of the Warring States that was marked by the rise and fall of the dominant states, in the cultural arena of the period it was just as natural to see the rise and demise of intellectual currents. Such a state of affairs has been termed the “Hundred Schools of Philosophy” which speaks well of a unique period of extremely vibrant intellectual activity in Chinese history. However, history has proven that the Legalist way was more effective in bringing forth a unitary social order in the face of the political division of Warring States China. In the intellectual realm, Naturalism became the most dominant philosophy in the early days of the Empire which came about by conquering the “Territorial States.”

  Selected Reading

  Feng, Yu-lan, A Short History of Chinese Philosophy, ed. Derk Bodde (New York: The Free Press, 1966).

  Graham, A. C., Disputers of the Tao: Philosophical Argument in Ancient China (La Salle: Open Court, 1989).

  Nivison, David Shepherd, “The Classical Philosophical Writing,” in Michael Loewe and Edward L. Shaughnessy (eds.), The Cambridge History of Ancient China: From the Origins of Civilization to 221 BC (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 745–812.

  Harper, Donald, “Warring States Natural Philosophy and Occult Thought,” in The Cambridge History of Ancient China: From the Origins of Civilization to 221 BC, pp. 813–884.

  Allan, Sarah, and Crispin Williams (eds.), The Guodian Laozi: Proceedings of the International Conference, Dartmouth College, May 1998 (Berkeley: Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, Berkeley, 2000).

  1 A widely read introduction to early Chinese philosophy for sinologists is Feng Yu-lan, A History of Chinese Philosophy, translated by Derk Bodde (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1952–3); abridged edition: A Short History of Chinese Philosophy, edited by Derk Bodde (New York: The Free Press, 1966). But beginners are advised to read a new introduction by A. C. Graham; see Disputers of the Tao: Philosophical Argument in Ancient China (La Salle: Open Court, 1989).

  2 On the concept of “Virtue” (De) in the Western Zhou context, with a paleographic root probably in Shang, see David Shepherd Nivison, “Virtue in Bone and Bronze,” in Bryan W. Van Norden (ed.), The Ways of Confucianism: Investigations in Chinese Philosophy (Chicago: Open Court, 1996), pp. 17–30.

  3 See Robert Eno, The Confucian Creation of Heaven: Philosophy and the Defense of Ritual Mastery (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990), p. 27.

  4 See Donald Harper, “Warring States Natural Philosophy and Occult Thought,” in Michael Loewe and Edward L. Shaughnessy (eds.), The Cambridge History of Ancient China: From the Origins of Civilization to 221 BC (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 818, 865.

  5 Karl Jaspers, The Origin and Goal of History, translated by Michael Bullock (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1955), p. 18.

  6 See Robert Eno, “The Background of the Kong Family of Lu and the Origins of Ruism,” Early China 28 (2003), 1–11. The traditional records trace Confucius’ ancestry to the state of Song in eastern Henan which was founded by descendants of the Shang people.

  7 See Annping Chin, The Authentic Confucius: A Life of Thought and Politics (New York: Scribner, 2007), pp. 26–32.

  8 This is the text called Confucius’ Discussion of the Poetry among the manuscripts in the Shanghai Museum. See below, n. 25.

  9 See David Shepherd Nivison, “The Classical Philosophical Writings,” in Cambridge History of Ancient China: From the Origins of Civilization to 221 BC, p. 753.

  10 See Michael Loewe (ed.), Early Chinese Texts: A Bibliographical Guide (Berkeley: Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, 1993), pp. 313–323.

  11 The Jixia Academy was a state-sponsored academy of learning located near the Jixia Gate of the capital of the state of Qi. The academy attracted hundreds of philosophers and scholars to its faculty and students who openly debated their philosophical theses under a proto-form of “intellectual freedom” guaranteed by the state. The academy was founded by King Wei of Qi close to the middle of the fourth century BC and was prosperous until the middle of the third century BC.

  12 See Feng Yu-lan, A Short History of Chinese Philosophy, pp. 65–67.

  13 Graham, Disputers of the Tao, p. 59.

  14 See Feng Yu-lan, A Short History of Chinese Philosophy, pp. 93–94. Reasons for this are given in his earlier work where he suggested that the Laozi cannot be earlier than Analects and Mencius. See Feng Yu-lan, A History of Chinese Philosophy, translated by Derk Bodde, 2 vols. (Princeton: Princeton Uni
versity Press, 1952), p. 170.

  15 See Feng Yu-Lan, A Short History of Chinese Philosophy, pp. 106–107.

  16 Graham, Disputers of the Tao, p. 176.

  17 For a discussion of authorship of early Chinese philosophical texts, see Nivison, “The Classical Philosophical Writing,” pp. 745–746.

  18 For a systematic account on this early finding, see Edward L. Shaughnessy, Rewriting Early Chinese Texts (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2006), pp. 131–184.

  19 See Sarah Allan and Crispin Williams (eds.), The Guodian Laozi: Proceedings of the International Conference, Dartmouth College, May 1998 (Berkeley: Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, 2000) pp. 31, 107, 118–20.

  20 This group includes the “Silk Garment” (Ziyi; traditionally attributed to Zi Si), “Five Conducts” (Wuxing), Cheng zhi wen zhi, “Revering Virtue and Propriety” (Zun deyi), “Nature Derives from Mandate” (Xin zi ming chu), and “The Six Virtues” (Liude), all written on bamboo strips of the same size and shape with the same method of binding. See Allan and Williams (eds.), The Guodian Laozi, pp. 109, 180.