by Ying-shih Yü
risking exercise. Allow me to give the following “kill two birds with one stone”
example to support my observations. When Li Shilu
(?–1383), a leading
Zhu Xi scholar, was recommended to the court, Emperor Taizu appeared to be
extremely pleased, and said to him: “I have been looking for you for a long time.
I only regret that we haven’t met sooner.” However, a few years later, true to his
Cheng- Zhu tradition, Li repeatedly memorialized the throne against the exces-
sive imperial patronage of Buddhism. Needless to say, his words fell on deaf
ears. Frustrated and angry, he abruptly submitted his resignation in an audi-
ence with the emperor in protest. In a great rage, the emperor immediately or-
dered the guards to have him beaten to death on the steps of the palace hall. In
the case of Li Shilu, I believe, Ming Taizu’s attitudes toward both the Cheng-
Zhu orthodoxy and the shi are fully revealed.10
How did the shi respond to this harsh po liti cal real ity in which they found
themselves? A memorial presented to Taizu in 1376 by Ye Boju
, a prefec-
tural school instructor, gives us a fi rsthand account. The following is a passage
relevant to our discussion here:
In ancient times the shi considered government ser vice an honor and dis-
missal from offi
ce a humiliation. But today they take complete obscurity
278 r e or i e n tat ion of c on f uc i a n so c i a l t hou gh t
as a blessing and failure to be recruited on account of questionable repu-
tation as good luck. For once in government ser vice they can surely count
on hard labor as inevitable punishment and fl ogging and beating as all-
too- common humiliation. In the beginning the imperial court tried very
hard to bring all the shi in the empire into government ser vice with not
even a single one being left out. However, by the time they were to be
rushed to take the journey to the capital they were treated by the authori-
ties in charge of the operations as if they were the most- wanted criminals
being arrested. When they arrived in the capital they were more often
than not appointed to offi
ces according to their physical appearances with
the result that their expertise and assigned work did not exactly match.
Fi nally, during their tenure of offi
ce a slight mistake on their part would
lead to, if not execution, then surely the punishment of hard labor.11
The truthfulness of this general picture is beyond reasonable doubt, for many
of its factual details such as “executions,” “fl ogging and beating,” “hard labor,”
etc., can be easily confi rmed in the historical rec ord. The memorial infuriated
Emperor Taizu so much that he had Ye thrown into the imperial prison, where
he later died, presumably from torture. The very fact that our memorialist paid
his life for telling the truth further enhances the truth- value of his statements.
He was not exaggerating at all when he said that during the early years of the
Ming, the shi in general chose to remain obscure or unpopular to avoid being
called to government ser vice.
With executions, torture, and humiliations as the common lot of shi- turned-
offi
cials, some individual shi even took very extreme mea sures to prevent them-
selves from being recruited by the imperial court. For example, a Confucian
scholar named Xia Boqi
from Guixi
(in Jiangxi) and his nephew
both cut off their fi n gers, thereby declining the call to serve on grounds of
physical disability. There were also other shi such as Yao Run
and Wang
Mo
of Suzhou (in Jiangsu) who bluntly turned down the founding
emperor’s summons to the court without even caring to give any reason.
Such noncooperation or defi ance on the part of the shi, however, was not to
be tolerated by Ming Taizu. As a countermea sure, he created a completely new
category of “crimes” in the penal code known as “the refusal of shi to serve the
emperor,” a “crime” punishable by death and enslavement of the whole family.
It was in the name of this new “crime” that Yao Run, Wang Mo, Xia Boqi, and
his nephew were all executed.12 Fi nally, I must add that this unique “law” did
not end with the reign of Taizu; it remained, as far as our evidence indicates,
very much in eff ect as late as 1509.13
The po liti cal atmosphere after Taizu as a whole also remained unchanged. It
turned out that just as both Li Shilu and Ye Boju had rightly predicted, every
word said, and every action taken by the founding emperor were destined to
become exemplary for his successors.14 As a matter of fact, only four years after
r e or i e n tat ion of c on f uc i a n so c i a l t hou gh t 279
his death in 1402, his fourth son, Zhu Di (1360–1424), took the throne by force
from the young emperor Jianwen, Taizu’s eldest grand son and legitimate suc-
cessor, and proclaimed himself Emperor Yongle. To consolidate his imperial
power, the usurper killed hundreds of offi
cials loyal to Emperor Jianwen to-
gether with members of their families closely following the example of his
father’s great purges of 1380. In the infamous case of the leading Confucian
scholar Fang Xiaoru
(1357–1402), who openly denounced Zhu Di’s usur-
pation, all his kin, all his associates, all his students, all his friends, and even
many of his neighbors were executed, totaling almost 1,000 lives.15
The continuation and, indeed, intensifi cation of despotism during the reign
of Yongle (r. 1402–1424) had a further adverse eff ect on the relationships be-
tween the throne on the one hand and the shi on the other. True, the Yongle em-
peror did try very hard to create more loyal offi
cials from among the shi through
civil examinations. At the same time, he also made serious eff orts to establish
the Cheng- Zhu orthodoxy in the examination system as a means of legitimiz-
ing his rule. Like his father, however, he had no intention to take shi as po liti cal
partners on a more or less equal footing as in the Song times, nor did his pro-
motion of the Cheng- Zhu orthodoxy as state ideology win the support of true
intellectual heirs to the Cheng- Zhu tradition of his day.
According to Huang Zongxi’s
(1610–1695) account in Mingru xue- an
(Scholarly Cases of Ming Classical Scholars), Wu Yubi
(1391–
1469) was the most infl uential Cheng- Zhu phi los o pher of the early Ming
Period. As early as 1410, he had already made the most impor tant decision in
his life not to serve the imperial court by abandoning examination studies alto-
gether. Later he turned down every request of the provincial or prefectural au-
thorities to recommend his name to the court for appointment. Even when he
was fi nally forced to report to the court in 1457 following an imperial summons,
he still managed to return home a free man. He gave a simple and straight-
forward but very revealing answer to the question as to why he had been so resis-
tant to government ser vice all along: “I want to preserve my own life.” Growing
up during the Yongle Period, the large- scale executions of offi
cials in connec-
tion with Zhu Di’s usurpation, especially the most tragic fate of Fang Xiaoru,
must have produced an enduring negative eff ect on his youthful po liti cal orien-
tation.16 Under his infl uence, his leading disciples such as Chen Xianzhang
(1428–1500), Hu Juren
(1434–1484), and Xie Fu
(1441–1505)
all stopped taking examinations and none showed enthusiasm in pursuing a
po liti cal career.17
The alienation of leading Confucian scholars of the early Ming from the des-
potic imperial system developed by Taizu and Yongle is also clearly refl ected in
the realm of thought. It has been observed that the Cheng- Zhu school of the early
Ming placed its emphasis almost exclusively on moral cultivation of the individ-
ual self.18 While this observation is undoubtedly true, there is nevertheless more
to it than meets the eye. Unlike Song Confucians in general and the two Cheng
280 r e or i e n tat ion of c on f uc i a n so c i a l t hou gh t
brothers and Zhu Xi in par tic u lar (who were fi rmly committed to the proj ect of
dejun xingdao), their early Ming followers, under the severe restraints of despo-
tism, had all but to abandon it altogether. The Song princi ple of po liti cal part-
nership between the throne on the one hand and the shi on the other was no
longer valid because “bringing Dao to the world” was the responsibility that the
emperor now took to be his and his alone. In the eyes of the throne, scholars-
turned- offi
cials by way of examinations were not po liti cal partners but “instru-
ments” at his personal disposal. Thus, with the road to establishing a public order
in accordance with Dao closed, it was inevitable that early Ming Cheng- Zhu Con-
fucians carried their quest for Dao to the personal domain, with self- edifi cation
as the main focus.
Allow me to give a few examples as illustration. As clearly shown in his dia-
ries, Wu Yubi constantly expressed his contentedness with simple and plain
living but never touched any po liti cal topic. Throughout his life, he was out-
wardly occupied with virtuous conduct and inwardly sought to achieve serenity
of mind.19 Among his disciples, Chen Xianzhang was famous for his emphasis
on the importance of acquiring spiritual enlightenment for oneself ( zide
),
whereas Hu Juren took the practice of reverence ( jing
) to one’s inner self to
be the quintessence of the Confucian way of life.20 Last but not least, the case of
Xue Xuan
(1389–1464), a leading Cheng- Zhu phi los o pher in the north
(from Shanxi) is also revealing. He passed the jinshi examinations in 1421 and
led a relatively successful career in the court. However, in 1443, he was sen-
tenced to death for having off ended the power ful eunuch Wang Zhen
and
his life was spared only hours before execution. Fi nally, he resigned from the
high offi
ce of Grand Secretary in 1457 when the whimsical and irrational Ying-
zong emperor retook the throne in a palace coup. Toward the very end of his
life, he composed the following two famous lines: “In the seventy- six years of my
life, not a thing leaves a single trace. In the end, only the mind of mine senses
the oneness with Nature ( xing ) and Heaven ( tian ).”21 The fi rst line suggests
how disillusioned he must have been that a life devoted to imperial ser vice even-
tually amounted to nothing. The second line shows that like Wu Yubi who re-
fused in princi ple to serve the state, he also came to the realization that his
quest for Dao as a Cheng- Zhu Confucian was strictly confi ned to the private
realm of spiritual enlightenment.
W A N G YA N G M I N G ’ S R E V I S I O N O F T H E
C O N F U C I A N P R O J E C T
Against this early Ming historical background, as adumbrated above, I shall
proceed to examine the re orientation of Confucian po liti cal and social think-
ing in the age of Wang Yangming, beginning with the phi los o pher of genius
himself.
r e or i e n tat ion of c on f uc i a n so c i a l t hou gh t 281
Unlike early Ming Confucians, Wang Yangming showed an unusually
strong interest in reactivating the Confucian proj ect of “bringing Dao to the
world with the support of the throne” ( dejun xingdao) in the early years of his
bureaucratic career up to 1506. Immediately after his success in jinshi examina-
tion in 1499, he presented an eight- point long memorial on frontier defense to
Emperor Xiaozong (r. 1487–1505), for which he was much acclaimed.22 As he
recalled it in old age, his memorial carried “too many airs of arrogance and
sharpness” to be practicable even though the action itself had grown out of his
deep Confucian sense of responsibility toward the public order of the empire.23
Clearly, he shared the comprehensive conception of Dao of Song Confucians,
including Zhu Xi, and thereby refused to follow the examples of his early Ming
pre de ces sors who deliberately limited their quest for Dao to the private realm of
self- cultivation. In 1504, he served as the chief provincial examiner of Shandong.
One of the examination questions he gave reads: “The so- called great ministers
in the imperial court are those who serve their monarch with Dao. Other wise,
they ought to stop serving.” In a model essay he provided for the candidates, he
emphatically stressed the point that the main task of the “ great ministers” in
the court is to guide the monarch into Dao ( yinjun yudao
).24 I take this
to be strong evidence for his commitment to the Confucian proj ect of dejun
xingdao in the early stage of his life.
At this juncture, however, one cannot help but won der why Wang Yangming
thought it pos si ble to resuscitate the Confucian proj ect that had been suspended
since the beginning of the Ming dynasty. An impor tant part of the answer lies
in the reign of Emperor Xiaozong, for during this period, Wang Yangming
grew from a teenager with a highly sensitive and inquisitive mind to a man of
full intellectual and po liti cal maturity. It happened that Xiaozong had received
a very good Confucian education in his early years, and apparently embraced
many of the Confucian ethical values. He was also a man of modest nature who
seldom showed his temper during court gatherings. Even when off ended by an
offi
cial, he neither humiliated him by “court beating” ( tingzhang
) nor sub-
jected him to any inhuman, cruel punishment. As a result, his reign came to
be characterized, generally, as harmonious and uneventful.25 Wang Yangming
developed an active interest in the Confucian proj ect of dejun xingdao because
he was prob ably under the illusion that the temporary dormancy of the Ming
despotic system during Xiaozong’s reign would become the normal state of af-
fairs. It was this illusion that brought about the greatest crisis in his life, lead-
ing to his most famous “sudden enlightenment” in 1508, which turned out to
be the beginning of a major intellectual breakthrough in late imperial China.
In the second month of the beginning year (1506) of the zhengde reign (
,
1505–1521), Wang Yangming presented a memorial to the new emperor, Wuzong
, in support of several censorial offi
cials attacking eunuch power in the
court.26 In this connection, it may be relevant to mention his special reading
of the “beginning year” in Confucius’s Chunqiu
(Spring and Autumn
282 r e or i e n tat ion of c on f uc i a n so c i a l t hou gh t
Annals). According to him, the “beginning year” marks the beginning of the
new king’s “rectifi cation of mind,” leading, eventually, to the renewal of every-
thing in the human world. Therefore, we can safely assume that he intended to
use his memorial to start his proj ect of guiding the new emperor into Dao.27
Unfortunately, the new emperor, unlike his father, was a most irresponsible
and capricious ruler who had no sooner been enthroned than he set the des-
potic machine in motion by allowing a notoriously sycophantic eunuch named
Liu Jin
to run the imperial court for him. As a result, in the four years
when Liu Jin was in power (1506–1510), he had every court offi
cial who had of-
fended him severely punished. Wang Yangming thus fell victim to the very eu-
nuch power he was trying to persuade the new emperor to get rid of. Immedi-
ately after the pre sen ta tion of his memorial, Wang Yangming was thrown into
imperial prison and received a humiliating “court beating.” Fi nally, in 1508, he
was banished to a mountainous town called Longchang
in the border prov-
ince of Guizhou.
The trilogy of imprisonment, “court beating,” and banishment jointly pro-
duced a traumatic eff ect on Wang Yangming’s life and thought, culminating in
his “sudden enlightenment” during a sleepless night at Longchang. As an
impor tant event in his life history, this “enlightenment” has been repeatedly
examined by scholars, past and pres ent, but mainly in terms of its philosophi-
cal or religious implications, which lie outside the scope of this chapter. In my
recent study of Ming Confucianism and po liti cal culture, however, I have come
to a diff er ent understanding of the “enlightenment.” Due to space, my detailed
arguments are too complicated even to be sketched here. In what follows, I can
