3. Edward L. Shaughnessy, “Western Zhou History,” in Michael Loewe and Edward L. Shaughnessy, The Cambridge History ofAncient China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 292-351.
4. Mark Edward Lewis, Sanctioned Violence in Early China (Albany: SUNY Press, 1990).
5. Ibid., 17.
6. Ibid., 17. Translation is Lewis’s. Compare James Legge, The Chun Ts’ew with the To Chuen, vol. 5 of The Chinese Classics (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1960 [1895]), 382. Burton Watson has translated a volume of selections from the Zuo that is much easier to use than Legge and gives the flavor of the text, but is only a small portion of the whole. See his The Tso Chuan: Selections from China’s Oldest Narrative History (New York: Columbia University Press, 1989).
7. Lothar von Falkenhausen, Chinese Society in the Age of Confucius (1000-250 BC): The Archaeological Evidence (Los Angeles: Cotsen Institute of Archaeology, UCLA, 2006), 156.
8. Ibid., 12.
9. Lewis, Sanctioned Violence, 22.
10. Ibid., 25.
11. Ibid., 38.
12. As Falkenhausen puts it, “In China the notion of a centrally administered hounded territory was an Eastern Zhou innovation. In the early Bronze Age, and still for much of the time documented by the Zuo zhuan [that is, the Spring and Autumn period], political authority radiated outward from a polity’s capital (guo), petering out fairly quickly as distance from the capital increased … By Warring States times, by contrast, the principal meaning of guo had become `state’ rather than `capital,’ and the exact delimitation of each state’s territory became a matter of major importance.” Chinese Society, 406.
13. Yuri Pines, Foundations of Confucian Thought: Intellectual Life in the Chunquiu Period, 722-453 BCE (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2002), 89.
14. Falkenhausen, Chinese Society, 326-399.
15. Ibid., 370.
16. Ibid., 366.
17. Ibid., 365.
18. Ibid., 28.
19. Ibid., 32.
20. For a discussion of the historical reliability of the Zuo, see Pines, Foundations of Confucian Thought, 26-39. Mark Lewis, in Sanctioned Violence (1990), relies heavily on the Zuo for his portrait of Chunqiu society, but in Writing and Authority in Early China (Albany: SUNY Press, 1999), he expresses doubts as to its reliability. Falkenhausen lends considerable support to the reliability of the Zuo by finding numerous archaeological confirmations: Falkenhausen, Chinese Society, under Zuo zhuan in index.
21. On the changing meaning of junzi, see Pines, Foundations of Confucian Thought, 165-171. A third terminological shift paralleled those of sbi and junzi: during Western Zhou, baixing (one hundred clans/surnames) referred to the ranked aristocracy, but by late Chunqiu times it came to mean “the people” (min) when “increasing numbers of commoners acquired surnames (xing).” Ibid., 44.
22. Lewis, Sanctioned Violence, 48, and footnotes citing passages in the Zuo.
23. See Analects 7:1, where Confucius speaks of himself as “transmitting but not creating.”
24. Pines, Foundations of Confucian Thought, 205-206.
25. Benjamin Schwartz, The World of Thought in Ancient China (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1983), 60. Italics in the original.
26. See Brooks and Brooks, The Original Analects, Appendix 1, The Accretion Theory of the Analects, 201-248.
27. Michael Nylan, The Five “Confucian” Classics (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001), 20.
28. Arthur Waley, The Analects of Confucius (London: Allen and Unwin, 1938).
29. Translation from Brooks and Brooks, The Original Analects, 14. I have replaced the Brookses’ idiosyncratic Romanization with pinyin.
30. Translation from Roger T. Ames and Henry Rosemont Jr., The Analects of Confucius: A Philosophical Translation (New York: Ballantine Books, 1998), 119. I have dropped Ames’s translation of ren as “authoritative person,” as I wish for the moment to leave open the issue of translating the term.
31. Translation from Waley, Analects of Confucius, 129. In Waley’s numbering this is 7:29. I have replaced Waley’s translation of ren as “goodness” for the reason stated in the previous note.
32. A. C. Graham, Disputers of the Tao: Philosophical Argument in Ancient China (La Salle: Open Court, 1989), 112-113.
33. Ames and Rosemont, TbeAnalects of Confucius, 49.
34. Heiner Roetz, Confucian Ethics of the Axial Age (Albany: SUNY Press, 1993 [1992]), 123, quoting the Liishi chunqiu: “Confucius regards ren the highest.”
35. Here I part company with Ames, who believes that because ren is indelibly relational, it must also be particularistic. See Ames and Rosemont, The Analects of Confucius, 20ff. And I agree with Roetz as to the universalism of ren. See Roetz, Confucian Ethics, 119ff.
36. Herbert Fingarette, Confucius: The Secular as Sacred (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1972), 77.
37. Graham, Disputers of the Tao, 13.
38. Dao here, however much its usual Confucian use is social and political, would seem to carry a transmundane meaning. Or could we say that Confucius’s ideal society, the Way of the ancients, is itself something sacred?
39. Fingarette, Confucius, 19-20.
40. In other translations, this is often included in 10:12.
41. Simon Leys, TheAnalects of Confucius (New York: Norton, 1997), 192.
42. Graham, Disputers of the Tao, 15.
43. Fingarette, Confucius, 65, 67-68.
44. Ibid., 68-69. He goes on to say: “The vision of emerging unity among men was thus not merely a political vision-though even as such this Confucian vision was one of the most grandiose-and successful-of any political vision in recorded history. But it was a philosophical vision, even a religious one. It revealed humanity, sacred and marvelous, as residing in community, community as rooted in the inherited forms of life” (69).
45. See William McNeill, Mythistory and Other Essays (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1986). A. C. Graham comments as follows on the central role of Confucianism in the transmission of the historical tradition: “The strength of the Confucians was that as preservers of the Zhou tradition they were the guardians of Chinese civilization as such. It was never quite possible to treat them as just another of the competing schools unless, like the First Emperor beginning history with himself, or Mao Zedong during the Cultural Revolution, you could contemplate razing it to the foundations to make a wholly new start. One may add that since Confucianism roots all its general ideas in the minute study of existing custom, arts and historical precedent, it alone held the promise of the full integration of the individual into his culture, community, and cosmos which must be part of the secret of China’s social immortality.” Disputers of the Tao, 33.
46. Roetz, Confucian Ethics, 122. I have substituted the original terms for Roetz’s translations and slightly revised the passage in light of other translations. It is worth noting that Yan Yuan, often referred to as Yan Hui, in earlier passages of the Analects seems to understand ren better than anyone, perhaps better than Confucius himself, so here it is a bit odd that he seems unclear about it. It is also worth noting that, probably because of his closeness to ren, Yan Yuan is treated by Confucius in these earlier passages as “the beloved disciple,” the most promising of his disciples, though he died young.
47. Again I have substituted the original Chinese terms for Waley’s translation of them.
48. Kwong-Loi Shun has an interesting article in which he discusses both of these passages, together with various efforts to prove that one of them takes precedence over the other, and comes up with a way of reconciling them. See his “Ren and Li in the Analects,” in Confucius and the Analects: New Essays, ed. Bryan W. Van Norden (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 53-72.
49. Fingarette, Confucius, 53-54. Fingarette leaves the key terms untranslated.
50. For Roetz’s version of the Kohlberg scheme, see his Confucian Ethics, 26-27. Roetz may well have been influenced by Jurgen Habermas, who has used the Kohlberg schem
e in a number of publications.
51. Ibid., 111-118. Shun also pairs yi with ren in contrast to li. See Shun, “Ren and Li,” 68-69. Brooks and Brooks, as in the passages quoted above, translate yi as “right.” Shun translates it as “rightness.” Leys, like Roetz, translates it as “justice.”
52. Translation from Ames and Rosemont, TheAnalects of Confucius, omitting the translation of ren.
53. Roetz, Confucian Ethics, 133.
54. Ibid., 142, transcribed exactly.
55. Ibid., 135.
56. See Wilfred Cantwell Smith, The Meaning and End of Religion (New York: Macmillan, 1962).
57. Graham, Disputers of the Tao, 17.
58. Ibid., 17. The best treatment of the idea of Heaven in the Analects that I know of is in Schwartz, World of Thought, 122-127.
59. SeeAnalects 5:13.
60. Graham, Disputers of the Tao, 18.
61. Robert Eno, The Confucian Creation of Heaven: Philosophy and the Defense of Ritual Mastery (Albany: SUNY Press, 1990), 41.
62. See Philip J. Ivanhoe, Confucian Moral Self Cultivation, 2nd ed. (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2000). The first chapter, on Kongzi (Confucius), gives a much richer account of the subject than I can give here.
63. Joseph Needham, Science and Civilization in China, vol. 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1954), and many subsequent volumes.
64. See the discussion of “The Concept of Man” in Roetz, Confucian Ethics, 123-126. Confucian philosophical anthropology, he argues, is not particularistic but “denies any natural distinction between men” (125).
65. Schwartz, World of Thought, 83.
66. Ibid., 117. The Fingarette quote is from Confucius, 69.
67. Lewis, Sanctioned Violence, 53-54.
68. Ibid., Goff.
69. For these developments, besides his Sanctioned Violence, see also Mark Edward Lewis, “Warring States Political History,” in Loewe and Shaughnessy, Ancient China, 587-650
70. W. Allyn Rickert, Guanzi: Political, Economic, and Philosophical Essays from Early China, vols. 1 and 2 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985, 1998).
71. John Knoblock and Jeffrey Riegel, The Annals of Lu Buwei, a translation and commentary (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000.
72. Lewis, “Warring States,” 641.
73. Brooks and Brooks, The OriginalAnalects, 4-5, 201ff The Brookses make the case for accretion, especially with respect to the Daodejing and the Mencius. A. C. Graham has made the case relative to the Zhuangzi. See his Chuang Tzu: The Seven Inner Chapters and Other Writings from the Chuang Tzu (London: Allen and Unwin, 1981).
74. A. C. Graham, Later Mohist Logic, Ethics and Science (Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 1978).
75. Michael Puett, The Ambivalence of Creation: Debates concerning Innovation and Artifice in Early China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001), 51. In a footnote Puett warns against using the metaphors and analogies in a text to prove the social origin of the authors. Socrates frequently uses examples from the crafts, but then he was a stonemason.
76. Graham, Disputers of the Tao, 34.
77. Translation from Puett, TbeAmbivalence of Creation, 47. It should be noted that in the Analects, Yao was the first of the “ancient kings.”
78. Ibid., 43.
79. Burton Watson, Mo Tzu: Basic Writings (New York: Columbia University Press, 1963), 88.
80. Ibid., 34.
81. Ibid., 35.
82. Ibid., 83.
83. Ibid., 37.
84. Graham considers the phrase “universal love” to be misleading because “it is both too vague (l’ian implies `for each’ rather than `for all’) and too warm (the Mohist ai is an unemotional will to benefit people and dislike of harming them). The Mohists were rather dour people whose ears were open to the demands of justice rather than to the appeal of love.” Disputers of the Tao, 41.
85. David S. Nivison, “The Classical Philosophical Writings,” in Loewe and Shaughnessy, Ancient China, 763.
86. Watson, Mo Tzu, 40.
87. Graham, Disputers of the Tao, 42-43.
88. Ibid., 43.
89. Watson, Mo Tzu, 82.
90. Ibid., 84.
91. Roetz, Confucian Ethics, 27, 243. It should be clear that Mozi’s utilitarianism was theoretical; indeed, he seemed to believe it was the only completely convincing theoretical basis for his moral concerns. But he and most of his followers were not utilitarian in the sense of making one’s own self-interest primary. They were “selfless” in their activism, largely in defense of the weak. The same point could perhaps be made with respect to philosophical utilitarianism in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Britain.
92. Of Mozi’s “theism” Benjamin Schwartz writes, “the subtle mysterious dialectic of the interplay between divine plan and human action which we find in the Hebrew Bible cannot be found here.” World of Thought, 162.
93. Graham, Disputers of the Tao, 49. Mozi affirms the existence of “gods and ghosts” along with Heaven and gives them the same function.
94. Ibid., 50.
95. Watson, Mo Tzu, “Against Fatalism,” 117-123.
96. Ibid., “Moderation in Funerals,” 65-77; “Against Music,” 110-116.
97. Ibid., “Moderation in Expenditure,” 62-64.
98. A. C. Graham, Chuang Tzu, 276-277.
99. Eno, Confucian Creation, 50-52.
100. Translation from Schwartz, World of 7bought, 259, and Graham, Disputers of the Tao, 54.
101. Translation from Graham, Disputers of the Tao, 54; D. C. Lau, trans., Mencius (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1970), 188.
102. Nivison, “The Classical Philosophical Writings,” 768.
103. Graham, Disputers of the Tao, 55, attributes chaps. 28-31 of the Zhuangzi and chaps. 1:2, 1:3, 2:2, 2:3, and 21:4 of the Liishi chunqiu to the Yangist tradition.
104. Graham, Chuang Tzu, 264-265.
105. Graham points out that in the Warring States period, many came to “prefer the comforts of private life to the burdens and perils of the increasingly murderous struggle for power and possessions.” Disputers of the Tao, 53.
106. Ibid., 56.
107. Ibid., 59-64.
108. The Book ofLieh-tzu, trans. A. C. Graham (London: John Murray, 1960), 148f.
109. Liishi chunqiu 2/2.2, “Valuing Life” chapter. Translation from Graham, Disputers of the Tao, 58.
110. Liisbi cbungiu 1/2.1, translation from Knoblock and Riegel, Annals ofLu Buwei, 64.
111. Harold D. Roth, Original Tao: Inward Training (Nei-yeh) and the Foundations of Taoist Mysticism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999).
112. “Therefore if the gentleman is left with no choice but to preside over the world, his best policy is Doing Nothing.” Zhuangzi, 11, translation from Graham, Chuang Tzu, 12.
113. Graham, Disputers of the Tao, 66-67.
114. Ibid., 72-74.
115. Eno, Confucian Creation, 191-192. Eno goes on to say that there is no convincing etymology of the term “ru” (192-197).
116. It was the Song dynasty philosopher Zhu Xi (1130-1200) who “elevated the Four Books over the Five Classics.” Nylan, The Five “Confucian” Classics, 56.
117. Cited in Michael J. Puett, To Become a God: Cosmology, Sacrifice, and Self-Divinization in Early China (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2002), 253.
118. Roth, Original Tao, 180.
119. Edward Slingerland argues that the Laozi is older than the Neiye (Inner Training, or as Roth translates, Inward Training), whereas Roth holds that the Neiye is the oldest Daoist text. See Slingerland’s Effortless Action: Wu-wei as Conceptual Metaphor and Spiritual Ideal in Early China (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 280-282.
120. Roth, Original Tao, 7-8; see also 195ff.
121. Ibid., 25, 213, citing Brooks and Brooks, The OriginalAnalects, 156.
122. Roth, Original Tao, 107. In the same place, Roth considers whether the use of sben, originally “spirit,” as in “ancestral spirit,” could involve a gener
alization of the earlier shamanistic practice of invoking the sben at the ancestral sacrifices. Michael Puett strongly opposes that idea, also put forth by A. C. Graham, Disputers of the Tao, 100ff., and argues that the Neiye represents a rejection of traditional ritual practice and a claim for individual selfdivinization, an idea not entirely convincing to me. See Puett, To Become a God, 109ff.
123. Roth, Original Tao, 109-115.
124. Graham, Disputers of the Tao, 494.
125. Roth, Original Tao, 46.
126. Ibid., 42.
127. Ibid., 72.
128. Ibid., 153-161, cites numerous passages on inner cultivation in the Zhuangzi that closely parallel the Neiye.
129. Eske Mollgaard translates this passage as a moral imperative: “Do for others in not doing for others.” He finds a resonance with Kant’s categorical imperative that overcomes the limitations of the golden rule. His argument is interesting, if not entirely convincing. See his “Zhuangzi’s Religious Ethics,” Journal of the American Academy ofReligion 71, no. 2 (2003).
130. Graham, The Chuang Tzu, 89.
131. Ibid., 123-124.
132. Here there is perhaps a resonance with the Farmers’ School.
133. Burton Watson, The Complete Works of Chuang Tzu (New York: Columbia University Press, 1968), 105.
134. On wuwei in the Analects, see Slingerland, Effortless Action, 43-76. Slingerland’s book is concerned with wuwei in early Chinese thought, with the exception of Legalism, where he finds the use of the term to be “completely divorced” from its use in other strands of thought (288).
135. Hans-Georg Moeller, Daoism Explained: From the Dream of the Butterfly to the FishnetAllegory (Chicago: Open Court, 2004), 35. Italics in original.
136. Graham, Chuang Tzu, 98.
137. Moeller, Daoism Explained, 35. Italics in original.
138. Roth cites the parallels between the Neiye and the Daodejing in Original Tao, 144-153.
139. Han-Georg Moeller, The Philosophy of the Daodejing (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006), chap. 1, “How to Read the Daodejing,” 1-20. Moeller’s example of the “hypertext” of a website as a parallel for reading the Daodejing is suggestive in that, like the Daodejing, the hypertext is recursive rather than linear, assumes a lot of background knowledge that it doesn’t make explicit, suggests many connections with what has gone before, and is more a “recipe” for action than an argument (5-7). There is, however, one fundamental difference: the Web hypertext is eminently disposable; the Daodejing is to be internalized.
Religion in Human Evolution: From the Paleolithic to the Axial Age Page 95