Sixth Century BCE to Seventeenth Century
Page 70
(Yan Yuan): From Inner Experience to Lived Concreteness”; and Wing- tsit
Chan, “The Hsing-li Ching- i ( Xingli jingyi) and the Ch’eng- Chu (Cheng- Zhu)
356 in t e l le c t ua l t r a nsi t ion in s e v e n t e e n t h - ce n t ury c h ina School of the Seventeenth Century.” A long introduction by de Bary not only
places the thirteen essays in proper historical perspective but also surveys the
topography of the inner world of Neo- Confucianism.
All the essays are solidly based on original research. In terms of period, sub-
ject matter, and scholarly quality, this book makes an excellent sequel to the
same editor’s Self and Society in Ming Thought (hereafter Self and Society) pub-
lished in 1970. Like Self and Society, Unfolding is also a work of international
scholarly collaboration. The contributions by Araki Kengo and Tang Junyi are
actually distillates of lifetime studies of the two leading scholars in their re-
spective fi elds rather than conference papers in the ordinary sense. The reader
is therefore referred to Araki’s Mindai Shisō kenkyū
(Research on
Ming Dynasty Thought) (Tokyo: Sôbunsha, 1972; especially chap. 9) and Tang’s
Zhongguo zhexue yuanlun, yuan jiao pian
(On The Essen-
tials of Chinese Philosophy— On The Essentials of the Doctrine) (Taipei: Tai-
wan xuesheng shuju [1977] 1975; especially chap. 18) where the same topics are
more fully treated. This book is dedicated to Tang Junyi in “recognition of a life-
time devoted to Neo- Confucian studies and in appreciation of the personal quali-
ties of mind and spirit which he brought to our collaborative work.” In hindsight,
this dedication was timely and fi tting, for Professor Tang passed away in Hong
Kong in early 1978. It is particularly symbolic of a confi rmed Confucianist that
Professor Tang, having suff ered from a long illness, died all of a sudden owing to
his great emotional excitement over the news that Confucius was being restored
to some grace in China through an article published in the historical journal
Lishi yanjiu (Historical Research) (1978, no. 1).
Since the 1953 publication of “A Reappraisal of Neo- Confucianism” in Ar-
thur F. Wright’s Studies in Chinese Thought (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press), Professor de Bary has been a leading scholar in promoting Neo- Confucian
studies in the United States. Dissatisfi ed with the ste reo typed modern character-
ization of Neo- Confucianism as a “rigid orthodoxy and ideological tool of an
authoritarian system,” he has not only written extensively to unfold the Neo-
Confucian interiority but also provided opportunities for others to do the same
by organ izing a number of workshops as well as conferences, including the
Regional Seminar in Neo- Confucian Studies at Columbia University. Without
necessarily denying that the Neo- Confucian rec ord was a mixed one (3), de
Bary nevertheless urges us to see Neo- Confucianism as a spirituality of univer-
sal signifi cance in its own right. According to him, “Neo- Confucian spirituality
aff ords a degree of openness to new experience, and— especially in Ming
thought— develops an enlarged, more expansive view of what it means to be
human” (24). It is precisely this new approach that distinguishes the Unfolding
(and of course the Self and Society as well) from other Neo- Confucian studies in
the West.
As de Bary rightly points out, the seventeenth century represents a turning
point in the development of Neo- Confucianism (4). While the nature of this
in t e l le c t ua l t r a nsi t ion in s e v e n t e e n t h - ce n t ury c h ina 357
turning is still, as it has always been, open to discussion, all the essays in the
Unfolding have helped, each in its own way, to illuminate some of the funda-
mental changes in seventeenth- century Chinese thought. In what follows, I
propose to discuss the vari ous fi ndings in the Unfolding in the historical con-
text of this Ming- Qing intellectual transition, for in the opinion of the pres ent
reviewer, the total contribution of the volume lies precisely in this area.
Although the new developments in seventeenth- century Chinese thought
have been variously interpreted, basically there are only two approaches to the
prob lem. One is the internal interpretation, which sees these developments as
germinating from the inner growth of the Song- Ming Neo- Confucian tradition.
Another is the environmental interpretation, which takes them as responses to
external changes in late Ming and early Qing society. Of the environmental
interpretation, however, two schools may be further distinguished: a po liti cal
school, represented by Liang Qichao and Zhang Binglin, stresses the tremen-
dous impact of and fall of the Ming dynasty and, particularly, the Manchu con-
quest on the Chinese thinking world, and a socioeconomic school, represented
by Hou Wailu, discerns in the Ming- Qing intellectual transition a class con-
sciousness of a budding “civic bourgeoisie” ( shimin
), which Hou character-
izes as the “Enlightenment” in early modern China.
The internal and environmental interpretations are by no means mutually
exclusive, however. On the contrary, any attempt at a balanced view of the tran-
sition must take into full account the vari ous fi ndings of both approaches, for it
is a simple historical truth that there were two aspects to this transition. On
the one hand, it evolved out of the Neo- Confucian tradition and, on the other
hand, it also echoed with the deepening of the late Ming po liti cal and social
crisis. Therefore, in actual practice, historians rarely deal with one aspect of
the transition to the total exclusion of the other. Although the Unfolding as a
whole falls into the category of internal approach, William S. Atwell’s essay on
the Fu She is par excellence a study of intellectual responses to the historical situ-
ation of the time. In his study on Neo- Confucian cultivation, de Bary has made a
most comprehensive analy sis of the Neo- Confucian roots of the seventeenth-
century “Enlightenment.” And yet this internal approach has not in the least
aff ected the author’s sensitivity to the environmental aspect of thought. As so
well put by the author: “with the added shock of dynastic collapse and the dam-
age to Chinese self- confi dence of subjection to alien rule, the intellectual de-
spair of the Confucian at mid- century was such as to generate both a deeper
questioning of tradition and an eff ort to reestablish it on more solid founda-
tions” (190). A most signifi cant and obvious change in seventeenth- century
thought took place in the domain of Neo- Confucian metaphysics. In his paper,
Chung- ying Cheng examined li– qi
(reason– substance, or princi ple–
ether) and li– yu
(reason– desire or princi ple– desire) relationships in Wang
Fuzhi
(1619–1692) and a number of other thinkers such as Huang Zongxi
(1610–1695), Chen Que
(1604–1677), Li Yong
(1627–1705), Fang
358 in t e l le c t ua l t r a nsi t ion in s e v e n t e e n t h - ce n t ury c h ina Yizhi
(1611–1671), Yan Yuan
(1
635–1704), and Li Gong
(1659–
1733). He concludes:
In our analy sis, all these phi los o phers have demonstrated, with degrees
of variation, opposition to Song- Ming Neo- Confucianism in a framework
of anti- dualistic naturalism in both metaphysics and moral philosophy.
The anti- dualistic naturalism in metaphysics consists in upholding the on-
tological primacy of indeterminate substance and the inherence of reason
in the development of indeterminate substance. In morality it consists in
asserting that the fulfi llment of reason is inseparable from the fulfi llment
of desire, and of the intrinsic right and goodness of natu ral desire. (502)
Cheng is certainly right in pointing out a common tendency in seventeenth-
century Neo- Confucianism toward antidualistic naturalism. This general ob-
servation of Cheng’s is further confi rmed in Ian McMorran’s penetrating
analy sis of Wang Fuzhi’s thought. I fully agree with his statement, “It was an
ether- based monistic conception of the universe which provided the foundation
on which Wang Fuzhi constructed his whole philosophical system, and which
gave it its coherent structure” (437). He goes on to show that Wang’s monistic
view is by no means confi ned to li– qi and li– yu relationships, but extends to all
other dualities in the Neo- Confucian tradition. Thus, in the realm of human
nature, Wang takes the so- called universal nature ( tiandi zhi xing
, or
“moral nature” [y ili zhi xing
]) and physical nature ( qizhi zhi xing
) as two aspects of the same thing, with the former being immanent in the
latter. Discussing the origins and evolution of civilization, Wang insists that
the Way ( Dao
) arises from and changes with concrete things (or “imple-
ments,” qi) . In Wang’s philosophy of history, princi ple ( li ) and conditions ( shi ) also form a unity similar to that of li and qi.1
This new trend of thought, however, did not begin in the seventeenth
century. As de Bary has shown convincingly, Luo Qinshun
(1465–1547),
the leading middle Ming phi los o pher of the Cheng- Zhu school, already turned
Zhu Xi’s li– qi dualism into a monism of qi. Moreover, Luo also challenged the
orthodox view that physical desires are evil.2 De Bary is well grounded when he
says: “ there is in fact a considerable development in the Cheng- Zhu school of
the Ming which contributes to the philosophy of qi and reconverges with the
Wang Yangming school’s vitalistic emphasis on qi in the seventeenth century”
(200). By the early seventeenth century, when “ideas circulated freely among
thinkers and schools” (201), both Wang Yangming’s revisionists and critics
such as Liu Zongzhou
(1578–1645) and Gao Panlong
(1562–1626)
further developed the monistic scheme of things, and therefore paved the way
for the generation of Huang Zongxi, Gu Yanwu, and Wang Fuzhi to bring the
intellectual transition to its fi nal stage.
in t e l le c t ua l t r a nsi t ion in s e v e n t e e n t h - ce n t ury c h ina 359
As the fi ndings of Cheng, McMorran, and de Bary have conclusively shown,
the new tendency in Neo- Confucian metaphysics not only originated in the
middle Ming but also cut across the sectarian lines of the Cheng- Zhu and Lu-
Wang schools. Now the prob lem that confronts us is how to explain its rise and
great popularity. According to Cheng, “although there were many cultural and
even po liti cal factors which occasioned this movement among Confucian schol-
ars, the phenomenon can nevertheless be regarded as an internal dialectical
development of Neo- Confucianism.” By this, Cheng means that “the essen-
tially Confucian mentality has arrived at a state of consistency and perfection
and has therefore come to see the weakness of Neo- Confucianism under the
conceptual infl uence of Buddhism” (471–472). There is indeed some truth in
this observation, but as a historical explanation, it still falls short of precision.
I believe it is impor tant to determine, fi rst of all, what this metaphysical cri-
tique of Neo- Confucianism signifi es in the historical context of the Ming- Qing
transition. As far as I can see, it is a sure indication that Neo- Confucianism was
undergoing a fundamental transformation from quietism to activism. Since
the time of Zhu Xi, but especially during the Ming Period, Neo- Confucianists
turned inwardly to spiritual cultivation of the self, owing, it must be noted, to
the unfavorable external conditions for the realization of the Confucian Dao.
Quiet- sitting and metaphysical speculation therefore became particularly char-
acteristic of the life of Ming Neo- Confucianists from Chen Xianzhang
(1428–1500) onward. There can be no doubt that many of them must have reached
a very high spiritual level of self- mastery and self- enjoyment. Nevertheless, it is
also undeniable that Ming Neo- Confucianism on the whole was rather quietisti-
cally and inwardly oriented. The philosophy of Wang Yangming, with its empha-
sis on “the unity of knowledge and action,” did set Neo- Confucianism in mo-
tion in an activistic direction, and it contributed to the growth of new trends in
late Ming thought, including monism of qi and what de Bary calls “vitalism,”
which stressed the actualities of life and human nature (194–196). However,
the immediate followers of Wang Yangming still developed the master’s new
ideas, especially the idea of liangzhi
(innate knowledge), within the old
quietist framework. As Huang Zongxi rightly observed, since Wang Yang-
ming’s emphasis on liangzhi had been more or less placed on its function to
turn the mind inwardly ( shoulian
) , his leading disciples such as Luo Hon-
gxian
(1506–1564), Zou Shouyi
(1491–1562), and Wang Ji
(1498–1583) all tended to develop the idea of liangzhi in terms of “quiescence” or
“stillness.”3
It is highly signifi cant that the Neo- Confucian movement to reformulate its
metaphysical assumptions in the early seventeenth century went hand in hand
with a shift in spiritual cultivation of the self from quietism to activism. For
example, according to de Bary, Gao Panlong and Liu Zongzhou both incorpo-
rated into their philosophical systems “a monism of ether, a dynamic view of
360 in t e l le c t ua l t r a nsi t ion in s e v e n t e e n t h - ce n t ury c h ina man’s moral nature, and the eff ort to re- establish a bridge between subjective
and objective morality.” At the same time, “though both still practiced quiet-
sitting, there was a subtle shift under way toward a more outward and out going
view of the cultivation of one’s nature, and away from the view of princi ple or
nature as an immutable inner essence to be perceived in a quiescent state and
expressed in exemplary conduct” (202). In this connection, perhaps the best
illustration is provided by the case of Yan Yuan
(1635–1704) as analyzed in
Wei- ming Tu’s paper.4 In early Qing intellectual history, Yan Yuan is particu-
larly known as a vehement critic of the Cheng- Zhu school. In metaphysics and
&
nbsp; moral philosophy, he holds that princi ple ( li) is inherent in ether ( qi) and man’s
“moral nature” in “physical nature”; in spiritual cultivation, he rejects quiet-
sitting and replaces it with what he calls “practicing reverential demeanor by
sitting upright” ( duanzuo xigong
). As Tu points out: “In the accounts
of Yan Yuan’s life it seems evident that he had never questioned the promi-
nence of self- cultivation in the Confucian hierarchy of values. Even after he had
become disillusioned with the Cheng- Zhu school, he still followed a rigorous
plan of self- discipline. Ironically, his ritualized life style could have been praised
by the Cheng- Zhu Confucianists as an excellent example of self- control” (523).
At fi rst sight, it is indeed diffi
cult to distinguish Yan’s kind of spiritual cultiva-
tion from that of his Song- Ming pre de ces sors. Even in his own day, his disci-
ples already questioned whether the master’s “sitting upright” was the same as
“quiet- sitting.”5 Now in the light of what de Bary has said about “a subtle shift”
in the self- cultivation of Gao Panlong and Liu Zongzhou, it becomes clear that
Yan’s “sitting upright” can be better understood as activistically oriented. Tu
undoubtedly hit the mark when he says, “activism in the form of moral prac-
tice” was Yan’s “central concern” (519). Yan’s activism is best expressed in his
defi nition of sagehood. He says: “The Five Emperors, Three Kings, Duke of
Zhou, and Confucius are all sages who taught the world how to move forward.
They are all sages who shaped the Way ( Dao) of the world through movement.” 6
Hence, his sages, like Huang Zongxi’s candidates for canonization, were, in de
Bary’s words, “men of action,” “not sitting sages” (203). Unlike Wang Fuzhi, as
Cheng says, Yan is not metaphysically inclined or interested in formulating his
own metaphysics (491). Why, then, was it necessary for him to take a strong meta-
physical position? A reasonable explanation, perhaps, would be that the transfor-
mation from quietism to activism in the metaphysically oriented Neo- Confucian
tradition required a new metaphysical justifi cation to begin with. Without limit-
ing it to the original context of Wang Yangming’s philosophy, we may say that