Chapter 27 Chapter Twenty Seven

Every philosophical system can be misunderstood and abused, and so are the two schools of Neo-Confucianism.According to Zhu Xi, in order to understand the eternal principle, one must start from investigating things in principle, but Zhu Xi himself did not strictly implement this principle.In his quotations, we see that he did make some observations on natural and social phenomena, but he devoted most of his time to classic research and annotation.He not only believed in eternal truths, but also believed that the words of ancient sages were these eternal truths.So there are elements of authoritarianism and conservatism in his system, which became more and more prominent as the Cheng-Zhu school tradition continued to develop.After the Cheng-Zhu School became the official doctrine of the country, it greatly encouraged this tendency.

The Lu Wang School was a revolution against this kind of conservatism, and this revolutionary movement reached its climax during the period of Wang Shouren.The Lu Wang school uses a simple method to appeal to everyone's intuitive knowledge, that is, conscience, which is the inner light of each person's "original heart".Although the Luwang School has never been officially recognized by the state like the Cheng-Zhu School, it is as influential as the Cheng-Zhu School. But Wang Shouren's philosophy has also been misunderstood and abused.According to Wang Shouren, what conscience knows directly is the ethical aspect of our will or thought.It can only tell us what to do, but not how to do it.To know how to do what we should do under certain circumstances, Wang Shouren said that we must study the actual method according to the actual situation.But later his disciples developed to seem to believe that conscience itself can tell us everything, including how to do it.This is of course absurd, and the people of Lu Wang School have indeed suffered from this fallacy.

At the end of the previous chapter, we have seen that Wang Shouren criticized Buddhism with the method of Zen debate.Such a method of debate is precisely the easiest to be abused.There is an ironic story about a scholar who visited a Buddhist temple and was treated coldly by the deacon monks.A high-ranking official also came to visit, but he was respected the most.After the senior officials left, the scholar asked the monks why they were treated differently.The monk said: "Respect is disrespect, and disrespect is respect." The scholar slapped the monk hard on the face.The monk protested angrily: "Why did you beat me?" The scholar said: "If you beat me, you will beat me. If you don't beat me, you will beat me." After Wang Shouren's era.When this story spread, it was undoubtedly a criticism of Wang Xue and Zen Buddhism.

Wang Shouren lived during the Ming Dynasty (1368-1643), a Han dynasty that replaced the Mongol dynasty of the Yuan Dynasty (1280-1367).The Ming Dynasty was overthrown by domestic revolution and external aggression and replaced by the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911). In Chinese history, this was the second time that non-Han people ruled the country, this time being Manchus.But for Chinese culture, the Manchus are a hundred times more sympathetic than the Mongols.The first two hundred years of the Qing Dynasty, on the whole, were a period of peace and prosperity within China.During this period, in some respects, Chinese culture made major advances; but in other respects, this period fostered cultural and social conservatism.Officially, the status of the Cheng-Zhu School is even stronger than that of the previous dynasties.On the unofficial side, there was a major reaction against both the Cheng-Zhu School and the Lu-Wang School in the Qing Dynasty.Leaders who opposed King Cheng Weilu accused them of misinterpreting Confucius' thought under the influence of Zen and Taoism, and thus having lost the inherent practical aspect of Confucianism.Some people attack and say: "Zhu Zidao, Lu Zichan." In a sense, this condemnation is not completely unjust, as can be seen from the first two chapters.

From a philosophical point of view, however, this condemnation is entirely irrelevant.As pointed out in Chapter 24, New Confucianism is a synthesis of Confucianism, Buddhism, Taoism (through Zen), and Taoism.From the perspective of the history of Chinese philosophy, such a synthesis represents development, so it is a good thing, not a bad thing. But in the Qing Dynasty, the orthodox position of Confucianism was unprecedentedly strengthened. Anyone who says that New Confucianism is not pure Confucianism is tantamount to saying that New Confucianism is fake and wrong.Indeed, in the eyes of opponents of New Confucianism, New Confucianism is more harmful than Buddhism and Taoism, because it conforms to the original Confucianism on the surface, and it is easier to deceive people and lead them astray.

For this reason, scholars in the Qing Dynasty launched the movement of "returning to the Han Dynasty", which means returning to the annotations made by Han scholars for the pre-Qin classics.They believe that scholars in the Han Dynasty lived not far from Confucius and before Buddhism was introduced into China, so Han Confucian interpretations of the classics must be relatively pure and close to the original meaning of Confucius.Therefore, they studied the vast number of Han Confucian commentaries, which were all rejected by the New Confucianism. They called this kind of research "Sinology".This name is in opposition to Neo-Confucianism, which they call "Song Learning" because the main school of Neo-Confucianism flourished in the Song Dynasty.From the eighteenth century to the beginning of this century, the debate between Sinology and Song Studies in Qing Confucianism was one of the biggest debates in the history of Chinese thought.From our current point of view, it is actually a debate between philosophical interpretation and literal interpretation of ancient documents.The interpretation of words focuses on the original meaning of the documents it believes in; the interpretation of philosophy focuses on the supposed meaning of the documents it believes in.

Because sinologists focused on the textual interpretation of ancient documents, they made amazing achievements in collation, textual research, philology and other fields.Their history, philology, and other studies are indeed the greatest and unique achievements of Qing culture. Philosophically, the contributions of Sinologists are negligible; but culturally, they did greatly open people's horizons and saw the vast achievements of ancient Chinese literature.In the Ming Dynasty, under the influence of New Confucianism, the vast majority of scholars only needed to cope with the knowledge of the imperial examinations and devoted all their energy to the "Four Books".As a result, they knew almost nothing about the other literature.By the time Qing Confucians devoted themselves to the collation of ancient documents, it was impossible for them to be limited to Confucian classics.Of course, they first worked on Confucian classics, but after finishing this work, they began to study ancient documents from schools other than orthodox Confucianism, such as "Mozi", "Xunzi", and "Hanfeizi".These are books that have long been neglected.Their job was to correct the many corruptions that had been incorporated into the original text and to explain the ancient usage of words.It is precisely because of their labor that these documents are much easier to read than before, such as the Ming Dynasty.Their work has indeed gone a long way toward reviving interest in the philosophical study of these philosophers.This kind of philosophical research has been carried out under the influence of Western philosophy in recent decades.We shall now turn to this subject.

It is not necessary here to examine in detail the attitudes adopted by the Chinese when they first came into contact with Western culture.It is only mentioned here that by the end of the Ming Dynasty, that is, from the end of the 16th century to the beginning of the 17th century, many Chinese scholars had been deeply impressed by the mathematics and astronomy introduced by Christian missionaries at that time.If Europeans called China and its surrounding areas the "Far East", then the Chinese called Europe the Far West, or "Taixi" in the early stages of contact with Europeans.Before that, the Chinese had called India "Western Paradise"; of course, only the countries west of India were called "Taixi".This term is no longer used today, but it was still commonly used until the end of the last century.

As I said in Chapter 16, traditionally, the difference between Chinese people and outsiders, that is, "Yi Di", has a meaning that focuses on culture, not race.The development of Chinese nationalist consciousness has always focused on culture, not politics.As the inheritors of an ancient civilization, the Chinese are geographically far away from any other equally ancient civilization. It is difficult for them to understand how a person whose way of life is different from their own can be a literate person.therefore.Whenever they come into contact with a different culture, they tend to despise it and reject it.They don't see them as different things, but simply as inferior, wrong things.As we saw in Chapter 18, the introduction of Buddhism stimulated the establishment of Daoism, which arose as a nationalist response in faith.Likewise, the descendants of Western culture, in which the Christian Church played a major role, provoked a similar reaction.

As mentioned earlier, in the 16th and 17th centuries, the impressions given by the missionaries to the Chinese were far inferior to their mathematics and astronomy in terms of religion.But later, especially in the nineteenth century, as Europe's military, industrial, and commercial advantages grew and China's political power declined correspondingly under the Manchu Qing rule, the Chinese increasingly felt the dynamics of Christianity.After several serious conflicts between the church and the Chinese broke out in the nineteenth century, in order to counter the growing impact of the West, at the end of the nineteenth century, the famous statesman and reformer Kang Youwei (1858-1927) launched the National Confucian movement.This event was by no means accidental—even from the point of view of the internal development of Chinese thought—for there were already sinologists who paved the way.

As mentioned in Chapters 17 and 18, there were two schools of Confucianism that dominated the Han Dynasty: the School of Ancient Literature and the School of Modern Literature.With the revival of the study of Han Confucian writings in the Qing Dynasty, the old disputes between the ancient and modern literary schools were revived.We already know that the Jinwen School headed by Dong Zhongshu believed that Confucius had established an ideal new dynasty; later, they went further and believed that Confucius was a god-man who came to the world to complete his mission, and that he was the real god among human beings.Kang Youwei was the leader of the Jinwen School of Sinology in the Qing Dynasty. He found sufficient materials in the Jinwen School to build Confucianism into an organized religion that conforms to the original meaning of religion. When we were studying Dong Zhongshu, we had already read his strange talks about Confucius.Kang Youwei's statement is even more exaggerated than Dong Zhongshu's.We have already seen that in the "Spring and Autumn Annals", even in the annotations of Han Confucianism, and in the "Book of Rites", there is the so-called "Three Generations Theory", that is, the progress of the world has passed through three periods or stages.Kang Youwei revived this theory.He explained: "Confucius was born in a chaotic world. Today, the land is connected, and Europe and America have undergone great changes, and it has entered the world of peace. In the future, the land will be the same size, the land will be exhausted, the types will be different, and the weather will be the same. It is as one and peaceful. Confucius has foreseen it." These words were written by him in Volume 2 of "The Analects of Confucius" in 1902. Kang Youwei was the leader of the famous Reform Movement of 1898.The reform lasted only a hundred days, and as a result, he himself fled overseas, several of his colleagues were killed, and the political reaction of the Manchu government intensified.In his opinion, what he advocates is not the adoption of new Western culture, but the implementation of the true teachings of Confucius in ancient China.He wrote commentaries on many Confucian classics, injecting his own new ideas.In addition to these, he also wrote a "Book of Great Harmony" in 1884, in which he described a concrete utopia which, according to Confucian designs, would be realized in the third stage of human progress.Although this book is bold and revolutionary enough to make even the most utopian writers dumbfounded, Kang Youwei himself was far from being a utopian.He asserted that his program could never be put into practice until the highest and final stage of human civilization.As for the current political program, he insisted that it can only be a constitutional monarchy.So throughout his life, he was hated first by conservatives because he was too radical, and then by radicals because he was too conservative. But the twentieth century was not a century of religion. With the introduction of Christianity into China, modern science was introduced together or incidentally, and it was opposed to religion.As a result, the influence of Christianity itself was limited in China, and the Confucian movement died young.However, after the overthrow of the Qing Dynasty and the establishment of the Republic of China, when the first constitution of the Republic of China was drafted in 1915, a follower of Kang Youwei requested that the Constitution stipulate that the Republic of China should take Confucianism as the state religion.There was a heated debate on this point, and finally a compromise was reached, stipulating in the constitution that the Republic of China adopted Confucianism, not as a national religion, but as a basic principle of moral training.This constitution was never implemented, and since then I have never heard of Confucianism as a religion according to Kang Youwei's intention. It is worth noting that until 1898, the year of 1898, Kang Youwei and his comrades knew very little, if not nothing, about Western philosophy.Tan Sitong (1865-1898) was martyred in the reform movement. As a thinker, he was much more profound than Kang Youwei himself.He wrote "Ren Xue", which introduced some concepts of modern chemistry and physics into Neo-Confucianism.At the beginning of this book, he listed some books, explaining that he must read these books before reading "Ren Xue".In this bibliography, he only mentioned the "New Testament" "and books on mathematics, Gezhi, and sociology" about books about Western thought.The fact is obvious that people at that time did not know Western philosophy at all, and all their knowledge of Western culture, except for machines and battleships, was basically limited to natural science and Christianity. At the beginning of this century, the greatest authority on Western thought was Yan Fu (1853-1920).In his early years, he was sent by the Manchu Qing government to England to study the navy, where he also read some books on the humanities that were popular at the time.After returning to China, he translated the following works: Huxley's "Evolution of Heaven", Adam Smith's "Original Wealth", Spencer's "Studies of the Group", John Muller's "Theory of the Power of the Group", " "The Study of Names" (the first half), Jenks' "Common Interpretation of Society", Montesshon's "Fayi", and Yelfons' "A Brief Introduction to the Study of Names" (compiled).Yan Fu began to translate these works after the Sino-Japanese Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895.Since then he has become very famous, and his translations are widely read. There are three reasons why Yan Fu's translated books are popular all over the country.The first was China’s defeat by Japan in the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895, and the successive invasions by the West; the loss of power and humiliation of the country. These events shattered the Chinese people’s belief in the superiority of their ancient civilization and made them desire to understand Western thought.Prior to this, the Chinese imagined that Westerners were only a little better at natural sciences, machines, guns, and warships, and could not produce any spiritual things.The second reason is that Yan Fu wrote many notes in his translation, comparing some concepts in the original text with those in Chinese philosophy, so that readers can understand them better.This approach is very similar to "Geyi", that is, explanation by analogy, which we mentioned in Chapter 20.The third reason is that in Yan Fu's translations, the modern English of Spencer, Muller and others has become the most elegant ancient prose, which is like reading "Mozi" and "Xunzi".Chinese people have a tradition of respecting good articles. People in Yan Fu’s time even had such a superstition that any thought, as long as it can be expressed in ancient Chinese, is as valuable as the fact itself as the Chinese classics themselves. However, Yan Fu's bibliography shows that Yan Fu introduced very little Western philosophy.Among them, the only ones that are really related to philosophy are Yefusi's "Study on Mingxue" and Muller's "Mingxue". The former is only a summary of the original work, and the latter has not yet been translated.Yan Fu praised Spencer's "General Theory of the Association of Heaven and Man", saying: "There has been no such work in Europe since there were living people" (Introduction 1 to "Tian Yan Lun", note) It can be seen that his knowledge of Western philosophy is very limited. At the same time as Yan Fu, there was another scholar who had a more thorough understanding of philosophy and deeper insights, but he became famous all over the world after he gave up philosophical research.He was Wang Guowei (1877-1927).He is one of the greatest historians, archaeologists and authors of our time.Before he was thirty, he had studied Schopenhauer and Kant.In this respect he differs from Yan Fu, who studies almost exclusively British thinkers.But at the age of thirty, Wang Guowei gave up philosophical research, the reason for which can be seen in his "Preface".In this article he says: "I have been tired of philosophy for a long time. Most of the philosophical theories are lovable but not credible, and credible are not lovable. I know the truth, but I also love its fallacies. Great metaphysics, strict ethics and pure aesthetics. We are fond of it. However, those who seek its credibility should prefer the positivism in epistemology, the theory of pleasure in ethics, and the empiricism in aesthetics. Knowing that it is credible can’t love it, but can’t believe it because it’s cute. This is the biggest boredom in the past two or three years, and the recent hobbies have gradually shifted from philosophy to literature, and those who want to seek direct comfort in it." ("Jing'an Anthology Continuation Preface II") He also said that like Spencer in England and Wundt in Germany, these people are nothing but second-rate philosophers, and their philosophies are nothing but the product of harmonizing science or the systems of predecessors.The other philosophers he knew at the time were no more than historians of philosophy.He said that if he continued to study.Possibly a very successful historian of philosophy.He said: "However, as a philosopher, I can't, and as a historian of philosophy [home], I don't like it. This is also one of the reasons why I am tired of philosophy." Ibid.) I quote Wang Guowei at length, because judging from these quotations, I think he has profound insights into Western philosophy.To use a Chinese idiom, he knows the joys and sorrows.But generally speaking, at the beginning of this century, there were very few people who really understood Western philosophy.When I was studying at the Chinese Public School in Shanghai, I had an elementary logic course. At that time, no one in Shanghai could teach this course.At last a teacher was found who asked us to each buy an original copy of Jerphon's Logic Reader and use it as a textbook.He used the method of English teachers to teach students to read English textbooks.Teach us to read this book.A lesson on judging.He asked me to spell the word "judgment" in order to test whether I inserted an e between g and m! Not long after, another teacher came to teach us, and he made a conscious effort to make the class a real logic class.There are many exercises in the back of Jerphon's book, and the teacher does not ask us to do them, but I am still doing them automatically.When I encountered an exercise that I didn't understand, I asked the teacher to explain it after class.He discussed with me for half an hour, still can't solve it, he finally said: "Let me think again, next time I come to tell you." he. Peking University was the only national university in China at that time, and planned to set up three philosophy departments: Chinese philosophy, Western philosophy, and Indian philosophy.The door is equivalent to the later department.But there was only one philosophy gate actually established at that time, that is, the gate of Chinese philosophy.In 1915, it announced the establishment of the Department of Western Philosophy, and hired a professor who studied philosophy in Germany. Of course, it can teach courses in this area.So I went to Beijing this year and got admitted to this department, but to my dismay, the professor passed away just as he was about to teach us.So I can only study Chinese philosophy. There are many professors of Chinese philosophy, some of these scholars are from the ancient literature school, some are from the modern literature school, some believe in Cheng Zhu, and some believe in Lu Wang.One of them, who believed in King Lu, taught us the history of Chinese philosophy. It was a two-year course, four hours a week.He started from Yao and Shun, and by the end of the first semester, he only talked about the Duke of Zhou, that is to say, five hundred years away from Confucius.We asked him, according to this schedule, when will the course be finished.He replied: "Well, it doesn't matter if you study philosophy. If you want it to be finished, I can finish it in one sentence; if you don't want it to be finished, it will never be finished." Invited John Dewey and Bertrand in 1919.Russell came to Peking University and other places to give lectures.They were the first group of Western philosophers to come to China, and the Chinese first heard reliable explanations of Western philosophy from their lectures.But what they said was mostly their own philosophy.This gives the audience the impression that the traditional philosophical system has been completely abandoned.Due to too little knowledge of the history of Western philosophy, most of the audience failed to understand the significance of their teachings.To understand a philosophy, one must first understand the various traditions it supports and opposes, otherwise it is impossible to understand it.Therefore, although these two philosophers have many recipients, few understand them.However, their visit to China, after all, opened up new horizons of knowledge for most of the students at that time.In this respect, their stay is indeed of great cultural and educational value. In Chapter 21, I said that there is a difference between Chinese Buddhism and Buddhism in China; I also said that the contribution of Buddhism to Chinese philosophy is the concept of the heart of the universe.The introduction of Western philosophy also has a similar situation.For example, following the visits of Dewey and Russell, there have been many other philosophical systems that have prevailed in China at one time or another.So far, however, almost all of them are nothing more than Western philosophy in China.None has yet become an integral part of China's spiritual development, like Zen. As far as I can see, the permanent contribution of Western philosophy to Chinese philosophy is the method of logical analysis.In Chapter 21 I said that both Buddhism and Taoism use negative methods.The logical analysis method is the opposite of this negative method, so it can be called a positive method.The negative method tries to eliminate the distinction, telling us what its object is not; the positive method tries to make a distinction, telling us what its object is.For the Chinese, it doesn't matter what negative method is introduced into Buddhism, because Taoism already has a negative method, and of course Buddhism has indeed strengthened it.However, the introduction of the righteous method is truly an extremely important event.It gave the Chinese a new way of thinking and changed their whole thinking.But as we'll see in the next chapter, it doesn't replace the negative method, it just complements it. What is important is that this method is not a ready-made conclusion of Western philosophy.There is a story in China that a man met a fairy who asked him what he needed.He said he needed gold.The fairy touched a few stones with his fingers, and the stones immediately turned into gold.The god told him to take it, but he didn't take it.The god asked: "What do you want?" He replied: "I want your finger." Logical analysis is the finger of Western philosophers, and what the Chinese want is the finger. It is precisely for this reason that although there are so many different categories of philosophical research in the West, the first thing that attracts the attention of the Chinese is logic.Even before Yan Fu translated Muller's "Ming Xue", Li Zhizao (died 1630) in the Ming Dynasty had already translated a medieval textbook on Aristotelian logic with a Christian priest.The book he translated is called "Detective of Ming Li".As mentioned in Chapter Nineteen, "Mingli" is the analysis of the name.Yan Fu translated logic as "mingxue".As mentioned in the eighth chapter, the essence of the philosophy of famous scholars, represented by Gongsun Long, is precisely the analysis of names.But in Chapter 8 I have already pointed out that the philosophy of famous scholars is not exactly the same as logic.But there are similarities, so as soon as the Chinese heard about Western logic, they immediately noticed this similarity and connected it with China's own masters. So far, the most fruitful achievement after the introduction of Western philosophy is the revival of the study of Chinese philosophy, including Buddhism.There is nothing contradictory about this statement.When a person encounters a new and unfamiliar idea, he must turn to the familiar idea for illustration, comparison and mutual confirmation. This is the most natural.When he turns to familiar ideas, it is most natural that he must analyze them, armed with the methods of logical analysis.As mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, Qing Dynasty Sinologists have already paved the way for the study of ancient schools other than Confucianism.Sinologists' interpretation of ancient documents is mainly based on textual research and philology, not philosophy.But this is indeed very necessary. With this step, we can apply logical analysis methods to analyze the philosophical concepts of various schools of thought in ancient China. Since logic is the first aspect of Western philosophy that attracted the attention of the Chinese, it is natural that, among the various ancient Chinese schools, the masters were also the first to be studied in detail in recent years.Dr. Hu Shi's "History of Pre-Qin Famous Studies" has been published since the first edition in 1922.has been one of the important contributions of this research.Other scholars, such as Liang Qichao (1873-1930), also made many contributions to the study of famous and other scholars. The use of logical analysis to explain and analyze ancient ideas formed the characteristics of the spirit of the times until the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War in 1937.Even the Christian Church has not been immune to this spiritual influence.This is probably the reason why many churches in China translate original works of Chinese philosophy and books on Chinese philosophy into Western languages, but seldom translate original works of Western philosophy and books on Western philosophy into Chinese.So in the field of philosophy they seem to be doing what might be called a kind of inversion of missionary work.Reversed missionary work is possible.Just as reverse lease swaps are possible.