A Short History of Chinese Philosophy (53 page)

The Ming dynasty (1368-1643), under which Wang Shou-jen lived and had his influence, was a native Chinese dynasty which replaced the Yuan or Mongol dynasty (1280-1368). In due course it in turn was overthrown as a result of internal revolts coupled with invasion from the outside, and was replaced by the Ch'ing dynasty (1644-1911), under which, for the second time in Chinese history, all of China was ruled by an alien group, this time the Manchus. The Manchus, however, were far more sympathetic to Chinese culture than the Mongols had been, and the first two-thirds of their dynasty was, on the whole, a period of internal peace and prosperity for China, during which, in certain respects, Chinese culture made important advances, though in other respects it was a period of growing cultural and social conservatism. Officially, the Ch eng —Chu school was even more firmly entrenched than before.

Unofficially, however, the Ch'ing dynasty witnessed an important reaction against both this school and the Lu-Wang school. The leaders of this reaction accused both schools of having, under the influence of Ch' anism and Taoism, misinterpreted the ideas of Confucius, and of thus having lost the practical aspect of original Confucianism. One of the attackers said: "Chu Hsi was a Taoist monk, and Lu Chiu-yiian was a Buddhist monk." This accusation, in a sense, is not entirely unjustified, as we have seen in the last two chapters.

From the point of view of philosophy, however, it is entirely irrelevant. As was pointed out in chapter twenty—three, Neo—Confucianism is a synthesis of Confucianism, Buddhism, philosophical Taoism (through Ch'anism), and religious Taoism. From the point of view of the history of Chinese philosophy, such a synthesis represents a development, and therefore is a virtue rather than a vice.

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In the Ch ing dynasty, however, when the orthodox position of Confucianism was stronger than ever before, to assert that Neo-Confucianism was not the same as pure Confucianism was equal to asserting that Neo—Confucianism was false and wrong. According to its opponents, indeed, the harmful effects of Neo—Confucianism were even greater than those of Buddhism and Taoism, because its seeming agreement with original Confucianism could more easdy deceive people and so lead them astray.

For this reason the scholars of the Ch ing dynasty started a back—to— the-Han ' movement, meaning by this a return to the commentaries that the scholars of the Han dynasty had written on the early Classics. They believed that because these Han scholars lived nearer in time to Confucius and before the introduction of Buddhism into China, their interpretations of the Classics must therefore be purer and closer to the genuine ideas of Confucius. Consequently, they studied numerous writings of the Han scholars which the Neo-Confucianists had discarded, and termed this study the Hah hsileh or learning of the Han dynasty, ft was so called in contrast to that of the Neo—Con— fucianists, which they termed the Sung hsiieh or learning of the Sung dynasty, because the major schools of Neo—Confucianism had flourished in this dynasty. Through the eighteenth century until the beginning of the present century, the controversy between the Ch'ing adherents of the Hah hsileh and Sung hsiieh has been one of the greatest in the history of Chinese thought. From our present point of view, it was really one as between the philosophical and scholarly interpretation of the ancient texts. The scholarly interpretation emphasized what it believed was their actual meaning; the philosophical interpretation emphasized what it believed they ought to have meant.

Because of the emphasis of the Han hsiieh scholars on the scholarly interpretation of ancient texts, they made marked developments in such fields as textual criticism, higher criticism, and philology.

Indeed, their historical, philological, and other studies became the greatest single cultural achievement of the Ch' ing dynasty.

Philosophically, the contribution of the Han hsileh scholars was less important, but culturally, they did much to open the minds of their time to the wider reaches of Chinese literary achievement. During the Ming dynasty, most educated people, under the influence of Neo—Confucianism, a knowledge of which was required for success in the state examinations, devoted their whole attention to the "Four Books ' (the Confucian A nalects, Mencius, Great Learning, and Doctrine of the Mean). As a result, they knew but little about other literature. Once the Ch'ing scholars became interested in 'the scholarly reevaluation of the ancient texts, however, they could not confine themselves simply to the Confucian Classics. These, to be sure, engaged their first attention, but when the work in this field had been done, they began to study all the other ancient texts of the schools other than orthodox 528 THE INTRODUCTION OF WESTERN PHILOSOPHY

Confucianism, including such writings as the Mo-tzu, Hsiin-tzu and Han-fei-tzu, which had

long been neglected. They worked to correct the many corruptions that had crept into the texts, and to explain the ancient usage of words and phrases. It is owing to their labors that
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these texts are today so much more readable than they were, for example, in the Ming dynasty. Their work did much to help the revival of interest in the philosophical study of these philosophers that has taken place in recent decades under the stimulus of the introduction of Western philosophy. This is a topic to which we shall now turn.

Movement for a Confucian Religion

It is not necessary to examine here precisely the manner in which the Chinese first came in contact with Western culture. Suffice it to say that already toward the end of the Ming dynasty, i.e., in the latter part of the sixteenth century and early part of the seventeenth, many Chinese scholars became impressed by the mathematics and astronomy that were introduced to China at that time by Jesuit missionary scholars. If Europeans call China and surrounding areas the Far East, the Chinese in the period of early Sino—European contacts referred to Europe as the Far West or T cd Hsi. In earlier centuries they had spoken of India as "the West"; hence they could only refer to countries to the west of India as the Far West.

This term has now been discarded, but it was in common usage as late as the end of the last century.

In chapter sixteen I said that the distinction which the Chinese have traditionally made between themselves and foreigners or barbarians has been more cultural than racial. Their sense of nationalism has been more developed in regard to culture than to politics. Being the inheritors of an ancient civilization, and one geographically far removed from any other of comparable importance, it has been difficult for them to conceive how any other people could be cultured and yet live in a manner different from themselves. Hence whenever they have come into contact with an alien culture, they have been inclined to despise and resist it—not so much as something alien, but simply because they have thought it to be inferior or wrong. As we have seen in chapter eighteen, the introduction of Buddhism stimulated the foundation of religious Taoism, which came as a sort of nationalistic reaction to the alien faith. In the same way, the introduction of Western culture, in which Christian missionaries played a leading part, created a very similar reaction.

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, as just noted, the missionary scholars impressed the Chinese not so much by their religion as by their attainments in mathematics and astronomy. But later, especially during the nineteenth century, with the growing military,industrial, and commercial

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dominance of Europe, and the coincident decline of China s political strength under the Manchus, the impetus of Christianity became increasingly felt by the Chinese.After several major controversies had broken out in the nineteenth century between missionaries and Chinese, a movement for a native Confucian religion to counteract the growing impact of the West started at the very end of that century by the famous statesman and reformer, K'ang Yu-wei (1858-192.7). This event was no mere accident—even from the point of view of the inner development of Chinese thought—because the scholars of the Hah hsileh had already paved the way.

In chapters seventeen and eighteen, we saw that the Han dynasty was dominated by two schools of Confucianism: one the Old Text and the other the New Text school. With the revival during the Ch'ing dynasty of the study of the works of the Han scholars, the old controversy between these two schools was also revived. We have also seen that the New Text school, headed by Tung Chung—shu, believed Confucius to have been the founder of an ideal new dynasty, and later even went so lar as to consider him as a supernatural being having a mission to perform on this earth, a veritable god among men. K'

ang Yu-wei was a leader of the Ch' ing adherents of the New Text school in the Hah hsileh, and found in this school plenty of material for establishing Confucianism as an organized religion in the proper sense of the word.

In studying Tung Chung—shu, we have already read Tung s fantastic theory about Confucius. The theory of K'ang Yu-wei is even more so. As we have seen, in the Ch'un Ch'iu or Spring and Autumn Annals, or rather in the theory of its Han commentators, as well as in the Li Chi or Book of Rites, there is the concept that the world passes through three ages or stages of progress. K ang Yu— wei now revived this theory, interpreting it to mean that the age of Confucius had been the first age of decay and disorder. In our own times, he maintained, the growing communications between East and West, and the political and social reforms in Europe and America, show that men are progressing from the stage of disorder to the second higher stage, that of approaching peace. And this in turn will be followed by the unity of the whole world, which will be the realization of the last stage of human progress, that of great peace. Writing in 1902, he said: "Confucius knew all these things beforehand." (Lun -yu Chu or Commentary to the Analects, chiian 1.)

K'ang Yu-wei was the leader of the notable political reforms of 1898, which, however, lasted only a few months, and were followed by his own flight abroad, the execution of several of his followers, and renewed political reaction on the part of the Manchu government. In his opinion, what he was advocating was not the adoption of the new civilization of the West, but rather the realization of the ancient and genuine teachings of Confucius. He

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wrote many commentaries on the Confucian Classics and read his new ideas into them. Besides these, he also in 1884 wrote a book titled the Ta T'ung Shu or Booh of the Great Unity, in which he gave a concrete picture of the Utopia that will be realized in the third stage of human progress, according to the Confucian scheme. Although this book is so bold and revolutionary that it will startle even most Utopian writers, K'ang Yu-wei himself was far from being a Utopian. He insisted that his program could not be put into practice except in the highest and last stage of human civilization. For his immediate practical political program he insisted on merely instituting a constitutional monarchy. Thus throughout his life he was hated first by the conservatives because he was too radical, and later by the radicals because he was too conservative.

But the twentieth century is not one of religion, and together with, or in addition to, the introduction of Christianity into China, there also came modern science, which is the opposite of religion. Thus the influence of Christianity per se has been limited in China, and the movement for a Confucian religion suffered an early death. Nevertheless, with the overthrow of the Ch'ing dynasty and its replacement by the Republic in ICff^i there was a demand by K'ang Yu-wei s followers, when the first Constitution of the Republic was drafted in 1915, that it state that the Republic adopt Confucianism as the state religion. A vigorous controversy developed over this point, until a compromise was reached, the Constitution asserting that the Chinese Republic would adopt Confucianism, not as a state religion, but as the fundamental principle for ethical discipline. This Constitution was never put into practice, and no more has since been heard about Confucianism as a religion in the sense intended by K ang Yu-wei.

It is to be noted that up to 1898, K'ang Yu-wei and his comrades knew very little, if anything, about Western philosophy. His friend T'an Ssu-t'ung (1865-1898), who died a martyr s death when the political reform movement failed, was a much more subtle thinker than K'ang himself. He wrote a book titled Jen Hsiieh or Science of Jen (humanheartedness), which introduces into Neo -Confucianism some ideas taken from modern chemistry and physics. In the beginning of his work, he lists certain books to be read before one studies his Science of Jen. In that list, among books on Western thought, he mentions only the New Testament and some treatises on mathematics, physics, chemistry, and sociology.

It is plain that men of his time knew very little about Western philosophy, and that their knowledge of Western culture, in addition to machines and warships, was confined primarily to science and Christianity.

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Introduction of Western Thought.

The greatest authority on Western thought at the beginning of the present century was Yen Fu (1853-1920). In his early years he was sent to England by the government to study
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naval science, and while there read some of the works on the humanities current ul the time. After returning to China, he translated into Chinese the following works: Thomas Huxley, Evolution and Ethics; Adam Smith, An Enquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations; Herbert Spencer, The Study of Sociology; John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, and half of his A System of Logic; E.Jenks, A History of Politics; Montesquieu, Esprit des Lois; and an adapted translation of Jevons, Lessons in Logic:. Yen Fu began to translate these works after the first Sino-Japanese war of l894~95-After that he became very famous and his translations were widely road.