A Short History of Chinese Philosophy (5 page)

It is not articulate, because it does not represent concepts in any deductive reasoning. The philosopher only tells us what he sees. And because of this, what he tells is rich in content, though terse in words. This is the reason why his words are suggestive rather than precise.

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THE BACKGROUND OF HINESE PHILOSOPHY

Maritime Countries and Continental Countries

The Greeks lived in a maritime country and maintained their prosperity through commerce. They were primarily merchants. And what merchants have to deal with first are the abstract numbers used in their commercial accounts, and only then with concrete things that may be immediately apprehended through these numbers. Such numbers are what Northrop called concepts by postulation. Hence Greek philosophers likewise took the concept by postulation as their starting point. They developed mathematics and mathematical reasoning. That is why they had epistemological problems and why their language was so articulate.

But merchants are also townsmen. Their activities demand thai they live together in towns. Hence they have a form of social organization not based on the common interest of the family so much as on that of the town. This is the reason why the Greeks organized their society around the
city
state, in contrast with the Chinese social system, which may be called that of the
family
state, because under it the state is conceived of in terms of the family. In a city state the social organization is not autocratic, because among the same class of townsmen, there is no moral reason why one should be more important than, or superior to, another. But in a family state the social organization is autocratic and hierarchic, because in a family the authority of the father is naturally superior to that of the son.

The fact that the Chinese were farmers also explains why China failed to have an industrial revolution, which is instrumental for the introduction of the modern world. In the
Lieh—tzu
there is a story which says that the Prince of the State of Sung once asked a clever artisan to carve a piece of jade into the leaf of a tree. After three years the artisan completed it, and when the artificial leaf was put upon the tree, it was made so wonderfully that no one could distinguish it from the real leaves.

Thereupon the Prince was much pleased. But when Lieh Tzu heard it, he said: "if nature took three years to produce one leaf, there would be few trees with leaves on them!
(Lieh—tzu,
ch. 8.) This is the view of one who admires the natural and condemns the artificial. The way of life of the farmers is to follow nature. They admire nature and condemn the artificial, and in their primitivity and innocence, they are easily made contcnt.They desire no change, nor can they conceive of any change. In China there have been not a few notable inventions or discoveries, but we often find that these were discouraged rather than encouraged.

With the merchants of a maritime country conditions are otherwise. They have greater opportunity to see different people with different customs and different languages; they are accustomed to change and are not afraid of novelty. Nay, in order to have a good sale for their goods, they have to

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THE BACKGROUND OF HINESE PHILOSOPHY

encourage novelty in the manufacture of what they are going to sell. It is no accident that in the West, the industrial revolution was first started in England, which is also a maritime country maintaining her prosperity through commerce.

What was quoted earlier in this chapter from the
Lu—shih Ch un—ch iu
about merchants can also be said of the people of marilime countries, provided that, instead of saying that they are corrupt and treacherous, we say that they are refined and intelligent. We can also paraphrase Confucius by saying that the people of maritime countries are the wise, while those of continental countries are the good.

And so we repeat what Confucius said: The wise delighl in water; the good delight in mountains. The wise move; the good stay still. The wise are happy; the good endure. "

It is beyond the scope of this chapter to enumerate evidences to prove the relationship between the geographic and economic conditions of Greece and England on the one hand, and the development of Western scientific thought and democratic institutions on the other. But the fact that the geographic and economic conditions of Greece and England are quite different from those of China suffices to constitute a negative proof for my thesis in regard to Chinese history as mentioned in this chapter.

The Permanent and the Changeable in Chinese Philosophy

The advancement of science hus conquered geography, and China is no longer isolated within the four seas. She is having her industrialization too, and though much later than the Western world, it is better late than never. It is not correct to say that the East has been invaded by the West. Rather it is a case in which the medieval has been invaded by the modern. In order to live in a modern world, China has to be modern.

One question remains to be asked: If Chinese philosophy has been so linked with the economic conditions of the Chinese people, does what has been expressed in Chinese philosophy possess validity only for people living under those conditions?

The answer is yes and no. In the philosophy of any people or any time, there is always a part that possesses value only in relation to the economic conditions of that people or of that time, but there is always another part that is more than this. That which is not relative has lasting value. 1 hesitate to say that it is absolute truth, because to determine what is absolute truth is too great a task for any human being, and is reserved for God alone, if there be one.

Let us take an instance in Greek philosophy. The rational justification of the slave system by Aristotle must be considered as a theory that is relative to the economic conditions of Greek life. But to say this is not to say that there is nothing that is not relative in the social philosophy of Aristotle. The O44 THE BACKGROUND OF HINESE PHILOSOPHY

same holds true for Chinese thought. When China is industrialized, the old family syslem must go, and with it will go its Confucianistic rational justification. But to say this is not to say that there is nothing that is not relative in the social philosophy of Confucianism.

The reason for this is that the society of ancient Greece and ancient China, though different, both belong to the general category which we call society. Theories which are the theoretical expression of Greek or Chinese society, are thus also in part expressions of society in general. Though there is in them something that pertains only to Greek or Chinese societies
per se,
there must also be something more universal that pertains to society in general. It is this latter something that is not relative and possesses lasting value.

The same is true of Taoism. The Taoist theory is certainly wrong which says that the Utopia of mankind is the primitivity of a bygone age. With the idea of progress, we moderns think that the ideal state of human existence is something to be created in the future, not something that was lost in the past.

But what some moderns think of as the ideal slate of human existence, such as anarchism, is not wholly dissimilar from that thought of by the Taoists.

Philosophy also gives us an ideal of life. A part of that ideal, as given by the philosophy of a certain people or a certain time, must pertain only to the kind of life resulting from the social conditions of that people or that time. But there must also be a part that pertains to life in general, and so is not relative but has lasting value. This seems to be illustrated in the case of the Confucianist theory of an ideal life.

According to this theory, the ideal life is one which, though having a very high understanding of the universe, yet remains within the bounds of the five basic human relationships. The nature of these human relationships may change according to circumstances. But the ideal itself does not change. One is wrong, then, when one insists that since some of the five human relationships have to go, therefore the Confucianist ideal of life must go as well. And one is also wrong when one insists that since this ideal of life is desirable, therefore all the five human relationships must likewise be retained. One must make a logical analysis in order to distinguish between what is permanent and what is changeable in the history of philosophy. Every philosophy has that which is permanent, and all philosophies have something in common. This is why philosophies, though different, can yet be compared with one another and translated one in terms of the other.

Will the methodology of Chinese philosophy change? That is to say, will the new Chinese philosophy cease to confine itself to concept by intuition? Certainly it will, and there is no reason why it should not. In fact, it is already changing. In regard to this change, I shall have more to say in the last chapter of this book.

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THE BACKGROUND OF IIINESE PHILOSOPHY

CHAPTER 3

THE ORIGIN OF THE SCHOOLS

IN the last chapter I said that Confucianism and Taoism are the two main streams of Chinese thought.

They became so only after a long evolution, however, and from the fifth through the third centuries B.C.

they were only two among many other rival schools of thought. During that period the number of schools was so great that the Chinese referred to them as the "hundred schools.

Ssu-ma T'an and the Six Schools

Later historians have attempted to make a classification of these"hundred schools." The first to do so was Ssu-ma T'an (died HO B.C.), father of Ssu-ma Ch'ien (I45~ca. 86 B.C.), and the author with him of China's first great dynastic history, the
Shih Chi
or
Historical Records.
In the last chapter of this work Ssu-ma Ch'ien quotes an essay by his father, titled "On the Essential Ideas of the Six Schools." In this essay Ssu-ma T'an classifies the philosophers of the preceding several centuries into six major schools, as follows:

The first is the
Yin-Yang chia
or
Yin-Yang
school, which is one of cos-mologists. It derives its name from the
Yin
and
Yang
principles, which in Chinese thought are regarded as the two major principles of Chinese cosmology,
Yin
being the female principle, and
Yang
the male principle, the combination and interaction of which is believed by the Chinese to result in all universal phenomena.

The second school is the
Ju chia
or School of Literati. This school is known in Western literature as the Confucianist school, but the word
ju
literally means literatus or scholar. Thus the Western title is somewhat misleading, because it misses the implication that the followers of this school were scholars as well as thinkers; they, above all others, were the teachers of

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THE ORIGIN OK THE SCHOOLS

the ancient classics and thus the inheritors of the ancient cultural legacy. Confucius, to be sure, is the leading figure of this school and may rightly be considered as its founder. Nevertheless the term^u not only denotes Confucian" or "Confucianist, but has a wider implication as well.

The third school is that of the
Mo chia
or Mohist school. This school had a close-knit organization and strict discipline under the leadership of Mo Tzu. Its followers actually called themselves the Mohists. Thus the title of this school is not an invention of Ssu-ma T'an, as were some of the other schools.

The fourth school is the
Ming chia
or School of Names. The followers of this school were interested in the distinction between, and relation of, what they called "names" and "actualities.

The fifth school is the
Fa chia
or Legalist school. The Chinese word
fa
means pattern or law. The school derived from a group of statesmen who maintained that good government must be one based on a fixed code of law instead of on the moral institutions which the literati stressed for government.

The sixth school is the
Tao-Te chia
or School of the Way and its Power. The followers of this school centered their metaphysics and social philosophy around the concept of Non-being, which is the
Too
or Way, and its concentration in the individual as the natural virtue of man, which is
Te,
translated as "virtue but better rendered as the "power" that inheres in any individual thing. This group, called by Ssu-ma
T'an
the
Tao-Te
school, was later known simply as the
Too chia,
and is referred to in Western literature as the Taoist school.As pointed out in the first chapter, it should be kept carefully distinct from the Taoist religion.

Liu Hsin and His Theory of the Beginning of the Schools

The second historian who attempted to classify the hundred schools was Liu Hsin (ca. 46 B.C.-A.D.

2.3). He was one of the greatest scholars of his day, and, with his father Liu Hsiang, made a collation of the books in the Imperial Library. The resulting descriptive catalogue of the Imperial Library, known as the "Seven Summaries," was taken by Pan Ku (A.D.
32.-92-)
as the basis for the chapter,
Yi Wen Chih
or Treatise on Literature, contained in his dynastic history, the
History of the Former Han Dynasty.
In this "Treatise" we see that Liu Hsin classifies the "hundred schools into ten main groups. Out of these, six are the same as those listed by Ssu-ma T'an. The other four are the
Tsung—Heng chia
or School of Diplomatists,
Tsa chia
or School of Eclectics,
Nung chia
or School of Agrarians, and
Hsiao-shuo chia
or School of Story Tellers. In conclusion, Liu Hsin writes: "The various philosophers consist of ten schools, but there are only nine that need be noticed." By this statement he means to say that the School of Story Tellers