Sixth Century BCE to Seventeenth Century
Page 68
) for “vitality.” Misreading occurring at this level is indeed incongruous with
the high- fl own language of the book.
My last example concerns the logic of the author’s argument. The author
points out that Jiao Hong’s concept of learning places emphasis on scholarship
and culture as values (238). This is, of course, the generally accepted view.
However, since this emphasis “would seem to make Jiao Hong a champion of
‘comprehensive knowledge’ ( boxue
) in the tradition of the Song school”
(239), and therefore contradicts the author’s interpretation of Jiao Hong’s
thought as a radical “revolt against Cheng- Zhu Orthodoxy,” he fi nds it neces-
sary to explain it away. Thus, he writes: “On the other hand, Jiao Hong’s ‘exten-
sive study of culture and intellectual inquiry’ were meant to be carried in a
conceptual framework of learning or cultivation which is markedly diff er ent from
Zhu Xi” (239). I must hasten to call the reader’s attention to the fact that the
author almost stealthily slips in the word “cultivation” toward the end of the
sentence, thereby suddenly shifting his ground from the “intellectual” to the
“moral” aspect. He then goes on to speak of Jiao Hong’s idea of “cultivation” as
“deconditioning” and “as the self- functioning of the substance of the Mind.”
Jiao Hong’s “identifi cation of cultivation with the self- functioning of the sub-
stance of the Mind,” the author concludes, “is part of the context for his thesis
that cultivation requires no eff ort” (240). It may be recalled that only a few pages
back (231), the author explic itly states that Jiao Hong’s cultivation “requires con-
stant eff ort ( gongfu).” Which version are we going to follow? However, a far more
serious prob lem here is: How can “extensive study” and “intellectual inquiry”
possibly be carried out in a “conceptual framework of cultivation” that is “decon-
ditioning” and “requires no eff ort”? Does this mean that Jiao Hong’s “evidential
research” resulted from “the self- functioning of the substance of the Mind” and
that his “extensive study” in philology, phonetics, history, etc., required “no eff ort”
on his part at all? I must confess that the author’s line of reasoning eludes my
understanding completely.
Such being the case, I am wholly unconvinced that the author has a case
about Jiao Hong’s “synthesis.” As far as we can determine on the basis of Jiao
Hong’s writings, he neither intended nor accomplished anything that can be
t h e in t e l le c t ua l wor l d of j i ao hong r e v isi t ed 345
called a “synthesis.” The most we can say is prob ably that the Chinese mind
was at the crossroads in the late Ming and the intellectual tendencies of this
period are more clearly shown in Jiao Hong’s works than elsewhere. As was
well put by George Herbert Palmer long ago: “the tendencies of an age appear
more distinctly in its writers of inferior rank than in those of commanding
genius. The latter tell of past and future, as well as of the age in which they live.
They are for all time. But on the sensitive responsive souls, of less creative power,
current ideals rec ord themselves with clearness.”75 Jiao Hong seems to have been
exactly such a “sensitive responsive soul.”
The author does not seem to have a clear view of the intellectual world in
which Jiao Hong lived and worked. Neo- Confucianism was only one of the sev-
eral intellectual trends in the late Ming. The sixteenth century, in par tic u lar,
witnessed the emergence of “evidential research” in the persons of Yang Shen
(1488–1559), Chen Yaowen
, Mei Zhuo
, Zheng Xiao
(1499–1566), Chen Di
(1541–1617), and, of course, Jiao Hong. In his study
of philology, etymology, and phonology, Jiao Hong was very much in Yang
Shen’s debt. This is clearly shown in the inclusion of Yang Shen’s biblio graphies
on these subjects in the Bicheng.76 Jiao Hong was also one of the compilers of
Yang Shen’s Sheng-an waiji
in 100 juan. As the author himself re-
ports, this compilation “incorporates thirty- eight works by Yang Shen on Clas-
sics, history, philology, phonology, geography, calligraphy, painting, foods and
utensils, etc” (286). It was apparently through Yang Shen that Jiao Hong traced
philological and phonological studies all the way back to some of the Song pre-
de ces sors. “Evidential research” as an intellectual undertaking in the late Ming
not only had a life all its own but also was continuous with the Song- Yüan tradi-
tion. Take, for example, the so-
called “ancient script text” of the Guwen
Shangshu
(Book of History). There was a long line of scholars from
Song to Ming who doubted the authenticity of this text, from Wu Yu
(d. 1154),
Zhu Xi, and Wu Cheng
(1247–1331) to Mei Zhuo. Jiao Hong’s interest in
this cause célèbre of “evidential research” was obviously aroused by his reading
of Mei Zu’s work, of which he apparently possessed a manuscript copy.77 With
this deep impression in mind, he made notes of what ever discussions he en-
countered on the matter in the writings of his contemporaries or earlier schol-
ars. Thus, in the Bicheng, we fi nd not only an essay by Gui Youguang
78
but also a postscript by Zhao Mengfu
(1254–1322), copied from the lat-
ter’s calligraphy.79 This is a concrete illustration showing clearly how Jiao Hong,
as a scholar, got himself involved in an ongoing controversy in “evidential re-
search.” There is absolutely no evidence that his involvement in this case was
philosophically oriented. Thus, Jiao Hong as a Neo- Confucian thinker, as an
“evidential” scholar, and, also, as a man of letters, can best be understood in
terms of the three parallel intellectual trends— philosophy, philology, and lit er-
a ture—in the Ming. Each of the three fi elds can be easily shown to have been
autonomous, though not unrelated. Whether these three intellectual trends
346 t h e in t e l le c t ua l wor l d of j i ao hong r e v isi t ed
can be linked to the Zeitgeist of Ming- Qing China is too grand a synthesis to be
built on a single case of Jiao Hong. There can be no question, however, that a
variety of intellectual trends of Jiao Hong’s day did, as Palmer says, “rec ord
themselves with clearness” on his “sensitive responsive soul.”
S T R U C T U R A L I S T R E D U C T I O N
This study of Jiao Hong ends with a structuralist reduction. The author, follow-
ing some modern scholars, believes that a fundamental restructuring took
place during the late Ming and the early Qing. As a result, “monism of qi ” of
the Lu- Wang school prevailed over “dualism of li
and qi
” of the Cheng-
Zhu school. In the author’s words, “In terms of the situation since the mid-
Ming, the signifi cance of the restructured Neo- Confucianism as monism of qi
lies not only in the reconceptualization of li as the li of qi but, even more impor-
tantly, in the identifi cation of mind with
Nature or li and the concomitant denial
of li as an existence in de pen dent of mind” (270). The author’s own thesis, how-
ever, lies elsewhere. He argues that the “evidential research” or Han Learning of
the Qing Period must be understood as having directly developed out of this
restructuring. As he announces early in the book, “This restructured Neo-
Confucianism has signifi cant implications for a number of developments that
continued to pertain to the early Qing. Most notably, it constituted the context in
which the Qing ‘evidential research’ operated” (30). Since this monistic restruc-
turing, according to him, was a unique contribution of the Lu- Wang school,
Qing “evidential” scholars must therefore be viewed as intellectual heirs of late
Ming Lu- Wang Neo- Confucians, including, of course, Jiao Hong. Thus, in con-
clusion, he argues for his structuralist reduction on the basis of the three se-
lected cases of Jiao Hong, Dai Zhen, and Zhang Xuecheng
, as follows:
Nevertheless, diff er ent as they were as individuals, they all participated in
a monistic discursive practice, the regularities of which as a Lu- Wang
heritage informed their shared outlook as monists and actually governed
their diff erences as the rules of their diff erentiation. For this reason, I
have argued in this book for the placing in the Lu- Wang tradition of the
obvious Jiao Hong, and not so obvious Dai Zhen and Zhang Xuecheng.
To use the chess game as a meta phor, the tension between Jiao Hong as a
“wild Chanist” and Dai Zhen as a spokesman for “evidential research”
and between Dai Zhen as a reputed philological “fox” and Zhang Xuech-
eng as a philosophical “hedgehog” is like the rivalry in a chess game in
which the two contenders play against one another, but nonetheless play
the same game. (277–278)
At fi rst it would seem very startling to learn that Dai Zhen was actually in the
Lu- Wang tradition and played the same philosophical game with Jiao Hong, for
t h e in t e l le c t ua l wor l d of j i ao hong r e v isi t ed 347
such an interpretation runs counter to Dai Zhen’s self- analy sis. In his “Letter to
Peng Shaosheng
(1740–1796),” a lay Buddhist with strong Lu- Wang in-
clinations, Dai Zhen said that since Peng advocated the Dao of the Lu- Wang
school, “between the two of them, the philosophical diff erences are total and
there is not even a similarity as slight as ‘a single hair.’ ” 80 But evidence of this
sort, I am afraid, may not be able to deter the author from holding fast to his
own theory, for he could well argue that he has discovered some structural
“regularity” in the “discursive formation” of Jiao Hong, Dai Zhen, and Zhang
Xuecheng, what ever it may mean. On this ground, he could therefore claim
that he actually knows Dai Zhen better than the spokesman for “evidential re-
search” himself. He would say that when Dai Zhen insisted that there was ab-
solutely nothing in common between the Lu- Wang school and himself, he was
only talking about the diff erences with re spect to the substance of thought. For
the author’s part, his “dialogical” approach provides him with a new focus on
“structural regularity,” something that Dai Zhen himself was never aware of.
The kind of “dialogical” approach as exemplifi ed in this book clearly suggests
that in the study of intellectual history, the only methodological rule is that any-
thing goes. As long as a common ele ment, structural or other wise, real or imagi-
nary, is detected in two or more thinkers, it is always pos si ble to assert that they
“play the same game” or belong to the same “discursive” tradition, even though
they are fundamentally diff er ent in every other aspect. Thus, according to the
same logic, we may argue, perhaps more convincingly, that on account of their
common concerns with prob lems of “knowledge and action,” “investigation of
things,” etc., Wang Yangming must be placed in the Zhu Xi tradition. We may
also argue equally well that on account of their common concern with “the over-
coming of metaphysics,” Heidegger and Carnap played the same game.
Now, let us return to the author’s thesis that Qing “evidential research” oper-
ated in the context of the restructured Neo- Confucianism of the Lu- Wang
school. The author never clearly defi nes the relationship between the Lu-
Wang school of Neo- Confucianism in the Ming and “evidential research” in the
Qing as any reasonable reader would expect of him (242–223). Nor does he show
us exactly how the latter “operated in the context of” the former. At one point, he
does argue that Jiao Hong’s philosophical concern for “textuality” was account-
able for his “evidential research.” Unfortunately, as has been shown above, this
“concern” was not Jiao Hong’s own. Now in the last chapter, the author further
suggests that some kind of inner logic also existed between the monistic restruc-
turing of the Lu- Wang school on the one hand, and the rise of “evidential re-
search” as a learned movement on the other. We must try to determine what the
author means by this suggestion.
Strictly speaking, it is more appropriate to speak of a “monistic restructur-
ing” of the Cheng- Zhu school in the Ming than of the Lu- Wang school. As we
all know, the latter was monistic all along and needed no “restructuring” at all.
It was rather the former that had been dualistic in structure until Luo Qinshun
(1465–1547) appeared on the scene, and then restructured the li- qi
348 t h e in t e l le c t ua l wor l d of j i ao hong r e v isi t ed
duality into a monism of qi. This is exactly why Zhang Binglin
(1868–
1936) insisted that Dai Zhen owed his li- qi theory to Luo Qinshun.81 At any rate,
it was an undeniable fact that monism of qi as a mode of thought in the Ming-
Qing times cut across all doxographical lines. If “evidential research” must be
interpreted as somehow related to “monistic restructuring,” which is wholly
without ground, is it not more logical to place it in the Cheng- Zhu rather than
in the Lu- Wang school? After all, it has been well established that Zhu Xi was
one of the true found ers of “evidential research” in the Neo- Confucian tradi-
tion.82 Moreover, as I have pointed out long ago, it was Luo Qinshun who in-
sisted that philosophical controversies must be settled by resorting ultimately
to textual evidence in the Confucian classics.83
However, the author is determined to place “evidential research” in the Lu-
Wang tradition at any cost. To accomplish this, he fi nds it necessary fi rst to
dismiss Luo Qinshun’s “monistic restructuring” as inconsequential on the
ground that Luo still retained the dualistic distinction between Mind and Na-
ture (270–273). Next, he cites Dai Zhen’s case as his main argument because
Dai was the spokesman for the entire “evidential research” school. Fi nally,
since he cannot possibly establish any historical link between Dai Zhen and the
Lu- Wang school in general, and Jiao Hong in par tic u lar, he has to build his
case entirely on philosophical arguments. Acco
rding to him, it was actually the
Lu- Wang type of monism of qi that “prevailed not only in Jiao Hong in the late
Ming, but also in Dai Zhen and Zhang Xuecheng in the Qing” (273). By this he
means “a form of monism of qi which entailed the view of both li as li of qi and
Nature as the Nature of mind” (272).
At this point, fi nally, the author’s “dialogue with the past” turns to historical
reconstruction, which gives us something tangible to work with. Now, we must
determine whether all the three thinkers— Jiao Hong, Dai Zhen, and Zhang
Xuecheng— were monists of qi answering precisely to the author’s description.
Of the three, Dai Zhen may indeed be characterized in such terms even though
he defi ned li, qi, Mind, and Nature all diff erently from the Lu- Wang Neo-
Confucian philosophy. How about Jiao Hong and Zhang Xuecheng? By the
author’s own admission, Zhang Xuecheng “did not engage in a sustained dis-
course on metaphysics of li and qi or the ontology of Nature and Mind” (273). In
fact, Zhang Xuecheng never discussed the relationships between li and qi or
Nature and Mind. No matter how hard the author tries to argue circuitously, as
well as analogously, he nevertheless falls short of naming Zhang Xuecheng a
“monist of qi.”
Jiao Hong did not engage in a sustained discourse on li and qi either. The
only reference to qi of any signifi cance cited by the author is Jiao Hong’s com-
ment on the “nurturing of qi” in the Mencius (223). This is the famous “fl ood-
like qi” ( haoran zhi qi
), which Zhu Xi also characterized as “not the
ordinary kind of qi.” 84 But Jiao did not, as the author says, identify it with either
Mind or Nature. On the contrary, he specifi cally distinguished Mind from qi in
t h e in t e l le c t ua l wor l d of j i ao hong r e v isi t ed 349
the following way: “Mind may be right or wrong, but qi makes no distinctions
what ever.” 85 Since this is an isolated remark on a technical term in the Men-
cius without even mentioning the concept of li, it is quite impossible to deter-
mine whether there is anything monistic in it. We are also not very sure about
Jiao Hong’s “identifi cation of Mind with Nature.” In one discussion, he ex-
pressed the view that the two imply each other like water and waves. However,