Sixth Century BCE to Seventeenth Century

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Sixth Century BCE to Seventeenth Century Page 31

by Ying-shih Yü


  This central thesis is well explained as follows by Kung- chuan Hsiao:

  He Yan’s statement, “Heaven, Earth, and all the myriad things have the

  basis of their existence in nonbeing,” is adequate to sum up the cosmology

  of the Wei- Jin Daoist school. That is, wu, or “nonbeing,” is the ontological

  real ity of the cosmos. In the “beginning of things and the completion of

  aff airs,” it is you or “being” that is produced by it. Nonbeing produces

  (generates), and is being; that concept is not necessarily in confl ict with

  that of Dao ( ). . . . Xiahou Xuan

  (209–245) said: “Heaven and

  Earth spontaneously move in their cycles; the Sage spontaneously func-

  tions. By spontaneity is meant the Dao.” To speak in terms of the sponta-

  neous cycles of movement and production of Heaven and Earth and the

  myriad things, Heaven and Earth do not purposely produce the myriad

  things, nor do the myriad things know for what they are produced. Heaven

  and Earth (according to Wang Bi), “take no purposive action with re spect

  to the myriad things, and each of the myriad things adapts to its own

  functioning.” 64

  We can easily see from the views of He Yan, Wang Bi, and Xiahou Xuan quoted

  above that the Wei- Jin Daoists defi ned the relationship of the individual to the

  cosmic order in a totally new way. As we know, cosmology during the Han Period

  had been both teleologically and hierarchically oriented. Under the Han cosmo-

  logical system, Heaven not only produces all things, including man, with pre-

  determined purposes, but also imposes a hierarchical order on them. Thus, on

  the one hand, Dong Zhongshu

  states, “Heaven and Earth produce the

  myriad things for the purpose of nourishing man.” 65 On the other hand, he

  says that Heaven is the “ great- grand father” of the common man— that the com-

  mon man has access to Heaven, only through the intermediary of the emperor,

  that is, the Son of Heaven.66 Now, in Neo- Daoist cosmology, teleology is wholly

  rejected owing, at least partly, to the infl uence of Wang Chong.67 Heaven and

  Earth no longer produce things. On the contrary, like all the myriad things,

  they are also produced by nonbeing, the ontological real ity of the cosmos. Con-

  sequently, the concept of Dao also underwent a fundamental change. It was

  identifi ed, not with what Dong Zhongshu called “the Way of Heaven,” but with

  the ontological creativity of nonbeing, which functions spontaneously. In other

  150 indi v idua l is m a nd t h e ne o - daois t m ov e m e n t

  words, wu, ziran, and Dao all became synonymous. From the point of view of

  the individual, this new conception of the cosmos assures the ego of its inner

  freedom, for in the realm of being, every individual thing comes into being by

  itself, moves in its natu ral course, and “adapts to its own functioning.” Things

  are not produced by a higher creator with a predetermined purpose. As Guo

  Xiang says: “Throughout the realm of things, there is nothing . . . which is not

  ‘self- transformed.’ Hence the creating of things has no Lord; every thing pro-

  duces itself and does not depend on anything else. This is the normal way of

  the universe.” 68 Indeed, this is a remarkable statement concerning the self-

  development and self- suffi

  ciency of the individual made on a cosmic scale.

  Neo- Daoist cosmology also throws light on the prob lem of order. The hierar-

  chical conception of Dao in the Han Period was considerably modifi ed. Since,

  as we have seen, Dao is redefi ned as nonbeing and spontaneity in Neo- Daoist

  thought, neither the Son of Heaven nor the sage is in a position to claim a

  mono poly on it. Every individual thing in the world, high or low, great or small,

  worthy or unworthy, is immediate to Dao because nonbeing is the basis of exis-

  tence for all things. This does not mean, however, that Neo- Daoists completely

  did away with the idea of order in their cosmos. Order does exist, but it exists

  only in the realm of being and is therefore secondary. Moreover, it is pres ent in

  a way that fully accords with the princi ple of naturalness. On this point, again,

  Guo Xiang is our reliable guide: “For the one whom the age takes to be worthy

  becomes the ruler, while those whose talents do not correspond to the demands

  of the age become servitors. It is analogous to the heavens’ being naturally high

  and earth naturally low, the head being naturally on top and the feet occupying

  naturally the inferior position.” 69It must be noted that Guo Xiang’s emphasis

  here is placed unequivocally on the naturalness of order. As a Neo- Daoist thinker,

  however, his ultimate concern was not with order but with the individual. Thus,

  in the very beginning of his commentary to the Zhuangzi, he writes: “Although

  the great is diff er ent from the small . . . if they all indulge themselves in the

  realm of self- fulfi llment, then all things are following their own nature and

  doing according to their own capacity; all are what they ought to be and equally

  happy. There is no room for the distinction . . . [between] superior and infe-

  rior.”70 Clearly, it was this Neo- Daoist vision of the freedom of the individual

  that necessitated the emergence of a new cosmological system in which all be-

  ings must be self- determining as well as self- fulfi lling.

  Of the three paired concepts of opposites, ziran (naturalness) and mingjiao

  (the teaching of names) have been the most extensively discussed in modern

  historical scholarship. There is therefore no need to go into all the ramifi ca-

  tions of this pair in the pres ent essay. This pair shall be examined only insofar

  as it sheds light on the prob lem of the individual vis- à- vis order. In a broad

  sense, the scope of this pair overlaps with that of nonbeing and being on the

  one hand and that of feelings and ritual on the other. In a narrower sense, how-

  indi v idua l is m a nd t h e ne o - daois t m ov e m e n t 151

  ever, it deals primarily with the relationship of the individual to po liti cal order,

  i.e., the state. By and large, modern historians have tended to emphasize the

  po liti cal implications of the controversy over naturalness and the teaching of

  names. For the sake of clarity, I shall use this paired concept in its narrow sense.

  In his commentary on the sentence “When there fi rst were institutions and

  regulations, there were names,” Wang Bi says: “When the uncarved block was

  dispersed . . . there were offi

  cials and rulers. When institutions and regula-

  tions, offi

  cials and rulers, are initiated, it is impossible not to establish names

  and statutes by which to determine superior and inferior; therefore when fi rst

  there are institutions and regulations, there will be names.”71 This is Wang Bi’s

  understanding of the origins of po liti cal order. Here, the “uncarved block”

  ( pu ), a term used in the Laozi, is a symbol of the primordial naturalness. Like

  nonbeing, from which being arises, naturalness provides po liti cal order with its

  existential basis. As Chen Yinke rightly points out, the term “names” in this pas-

  sage is identifi able with that in the teaching of names.72 If the teac
hing of names,

  i.e., po liti cal order, originates in naturalness, it then follows that, ideally, it must

  model itself on the way naturalness operates, which is through “nonaction” ( wu-

  wei). Nonaction, however, does not imply a total absence of po liti cal order.73 As a

  matter of fact, the notion of the necessity of po liti cal order was, on the whole, not

  seriously disputed by leading Neo- Daoist thinkers of the period, with the pos si ble

  exception of Ruan Ji. Even the radical Xi Kang had a very clear idea of what an

  ideal po liti cal order should be. As he described it:

  The Sage comes as though inevitably to rule over the empire without in-

  tending to do so, [and] hence takes the (mind of) all the myriad things as

  his own mind. He leaves all the forms of life to themselves, and guides his

  own person by means of the Dao, being therein the same as all the

  world in gaining his own fulfi llment. Eff ortlessly, he takes the absence

  of involvement in his work; calmly, he looks upon the empire as a

  commonality.74

  Thus, the po liti cal order that grows out of primordial naturalness and works

  through nonaction is a minimal order. In terms of general features, if not of

  concrete conditions, it is quite reminiscent of the minimal state arising from

  the state of nature in the Lockean tradition. Xi Kang’s view may be fruitfully

  compared to Guo Xiang’s formulation of the same thesis:

  If the realm were to lack an enlightened ruler, then nothing would be

  able to reach its fulfi llment. Such fulfi llment as there now is must be ac-

  counted the achievement of enlightened rulers. Yet that achievement lies in

  his nonaction and in turning responsibility back to the world. All the (con-

  stituent parts) of the world having obtained autonomy, the consequence is

  152 indi v idua l is m a nd t h e ne o - daois t m ov e m e n t

  that their (individual fulfi llment) does not appear to be the achievement

  of the enlightened ruler.75

  Both Xi Kang and Guo Xiang are talking about the minimal po liti cal order of

  nonaction. Yet there appears to be a subtle diff erence: the former, apparently

  more concerned with the self- fulfi llment of the individual, sees an invisible

  hand in the order of nonaction; the latter, emphasizing the function of the “en-

  lightened ruler,” attributes the order to the work of a hidden hand.76 Whether

  by an invisible hand or a hidden hand, however, maintaining order is hardly

  ever the central issue in the Neo- Daoist po liti cal philosophy. For Neo- Daoists

  such as Wang Bi, He Yan, Xi Kang, and Guo Xiang, po liti cal order was at best a

  “necessary evil.”77 There can be no doubt that as far as the prob lem of the indi-

  vidual vis- à- vis order was concerned, their emphasis was always on the former,

  not the latter. As Guo Xiang remarked: “The value of a sage- king does not lie in

  his ability to govern. It lies in the fact that through nonaction, he allows each

  individual thing to undertake its own action.”78

  According to this view, then, po liti cal order can be justifi ed on the sole ground

  that it makes pos si ble self- fulfi llment for each and every individual. In other

  words, the state exists for the sake of the individual, but not vice versa. The lan-

  guage of Neo- Daoist philosophy also attests overwhelmingly to its individualis-

  tic mode of thinking. Terms such as self- fulfi llment ( zide

  ), self- containment

  ( zizu

  ), self- transformation ( zihua

  ), self- control ( zizhi

  ), self- action

  ( ziwei

  ), self- completion ( zicheng

  ), self- adjustment ( zishi

  ), self-

  complacency ( zizai

  ), etc., abound in Neo- Daoist texts. If language is a reli-

  able index to thought, then the emergence of these new linguistic expressions

  clearly indicates the direction in which Chinese intellectual history was moving

  after the end of the second century.

  Fi nally, we come to the last pair of our concepts of opposites, feelings versus

  rituals. The bearing of this pair on the prob lem of the individual vis- à- vis order

  is self- evident, and requires no elaboration. The controversy over feelings and

  rituals was most immediately relevant to the social real ity of the time. As our

  earlier discussion of the changing interpersonal relationships clearly shows,

  the free and spontaneous fl ow of personal feelings between husband and wife

  or father and son inevitably led to transgressions of the “rules of etiquette” ( li ) .

  This was the most protracted of all controversies during this period; it began in

  the second century and continued well into the fourth. As a matter of fact, the

  controversy was even more intense in the fourth century than in the third. De-

  bates about mourning rites, for instance, dominated the intellectual discourse

  of the Eastern Jin Period (317–420).79 The truth is that while the prob lem of

  freedom of the individual versus order had been basically resolved in the po liti-

  cal domain with the founding of the Western Jin (265–316) dynasty, a regime of

  “nonaction” very much catered to the interests of the elite. No modus vivendi,

  however, was worked out in the social sphere until more than a century later.

  indi v idua l is m a nd t h e ne o - daois t m ov e m e n t 153

  Chen Yinke’s famous thesis that by the early fourth century Pure Conversation

  had evolved into an intellectual game played by the elite with no reference to ac-

  tualities of life is valid only on the po liti cal level.80 On the social level, especially

  in family and clan relationships, the prob lem of feelings versus rituals was still

  very real.

  The relationship of “feelings” and “rituals” was prob ably fi rst called into

  question in the late second century in connection with Dai Liang’s mourning

  for his mother. Like Ruan Ji a century later, Dai Liang, while observing the

  mourning period, helped himself to meat and wine and wept only when truly

  overcome by grief. Someone asked him whether he was performing the right

  kind of rites, to which he replied: “Yes. Rites are to keep feelings from going to

  excess. If feelings are not excessive, what is the need to talk about rites?” 81 As

  this case clearly shows, in the initial stages of the controversy, a high tension

  between “feelings” and “rituals” already existed. The two were not yet, however,

  diametrically opposed to each other. Unlike Ruan Ji’s radical antiritualism, Dai

  Liang’s rejection of li was only partial and conditional.

  We have reason to believe that, psychologically, the tension between human

  emotions and ritual originated in the sudden release of personal feelings or

  emotions that accompanied the self- discovery of the individual after the late

  second century. The traditional ritual system apparently lacked suffi

  cient fl exi-

  bility to respond to the deluge of new feelings being allowed expression.

  In the realm of ideas, this tension manifested itself essentially in two ways:

  a fresh interest in the function of feelings in man and a new emphasis on the

  importance of the spirit, as opposed to the letter, of rituals. As we know, with

  regard to the idea
of “feelings” in Han thought, Dong Zhongshu’s view that

  human nature is good but human feelings are bad had been accepted as more

  or less orthodox.82 It is therefore highly signifi cant that at the end of the Han,

  Xun Yue

  (148–209) quoted with emphatic approval in his Shenjian

  (Extended Refl ections) the heterodox view of Liu Xiang

  (77–76 b.c.e.) that

  “since human nature corresponds to human emotions, the one cannot be all

  good and the other all bad.” As he further remarked, if one asserted that human

  feelings are all bad, then he would have to say that sages like Yao and Shun

  had no feelings.83

  This leads us directly to Wang Bi’s infl uential theory concerning the emo-

  tions of the sage:

  He maintained that where the sage is vitally superior to other men is in

  his spirit- like intelligence, but where he is like other men is in having the

  fi ve emotions. Being superior in his spirit- like intelligence, he is able to

  identify himself with the harmonious whole, so that he is imbued with

  nonbeing; but being like others in his fi ve emotions, he cannot but react to

  things with emotion. The emotions of the sage are such that though he re-

  acts to things, he is not ensnared by them. It is a great error, consequently,

  154 indi v idua l is m a nd t h e ne o - daois t m ov e m e n t

  to say that because he is not ensnared by things, he therefore has no

  (emotional) reactions to them.84

  Two observations may be made about Wang Bi’s theory. First, it clearly indi-

  cates, in conjunction with Xun Yue’s view, that during the fi rst half of the third

  century, new philosophical attention was being paid to the prob lem of “feel-

  ings,” though we do not know for sure that Wang Bi had access to Xun Yue’s

  work. Second, the theory admirably serves as a justifi cation of the ever- growing

  importance of personal feelings in the social life of the day. Evidence shows

  that by the middle of the fourth century it became one of the most central phil-

  osophical topics in Pure Conversation, a testimony to its great popularity.85

  On the other hand, “rituals” as an idea also received critical reexamination

  in the hands of phi los o phers. In his commentary on the phrase “the meaning

  of rites ( li)” in the Zhuangzi, for example, Guo Xiang had this to say:

 

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