“Although it is better known that “one who is righteous does not seek his own advantage, and one who is wise in his ways does not count his merits”, that is mainly from the point of view of the benevolent person who governs, while “the nourishment of one’s body is more important than righteousness” is a general theory of human nature connected with ontology. Wealth and power are not a sufficient and necessary condition for the elderly and the young, and for pleasing the near and the distant, but there is no doubt that security and affluence are necessary conditions.
The process of transition from the method of the Three Kings to the way of Confucius to the meaning of the Spring and Autumn Annals, as well as its gains and losses, is too long to be exhaustive, so I will not repeat them here. I will only point out two key changes in theoretical thinking from the perspective of the history of Confucianism and the development of Chinese civilization.
The first is the transformation of the center or focus of the discourse from “man” to “heaven”. Heaven is undoubtedly the key word in the Spring and Autumn Fanlu, just like in the Yi Chuan. In the early Confucianism, “the emperor has no family but virtue to rely on”, the image of heaven is rather vague, and the will and activity of heaven are relatively weak. In the early Confucian era, the image of heaven was rather vague in the relationship between heaven and man, and the image of willfulness and activity was weak. As Yin, a great power with a destiny in heaven, was defeated by Zhou, a small state, the Duke of Zhou put forward this proposition to resolve the embarrassment of the divine right of kings, and “respect for virtue” was always associated with “protecting the people”. “What the people want, heaven will follow”.
In the Analects of Confucianism, the phrases “Heaven’s calendar is in E Bow” and “Only Heaven is great, only Yao is great” refer to the source of political power, the aims and principles of the ruler’s administration, and imply the connotation of Confucian heavenly politics and the possibilities and requirements of its development. It was on this axis that Dong Zhongshu deepened and expanded: the theory of “three unification and three correctness” attributed the basis of human power to heaven; then he pointed out that “the way of Spring and Autumn is to serve heaven and law” (Spring and Autumn Fanlu – King Zhuang of Chu), and ” The method of Spring and Autumn is to take the people though the ruler and follow the sky with the ruler. …… The great meaning of the Spring and Autumn Annals is that “the people are subjugated to the ruler, and the ruler to the heavens” (“Spring and Autumn Fanlu – The Jade Cup”). It can be clearly seen that in Confucius, the “calendar of heaven in the bow of Er” is more likely to appear or rely on the individual personality. In Dong Zhongshu’s case, the unity of the sage and the king was no longer so certain, as the monarchy was “immediately granted” and no longer chosen by sages like Yao and Shun, and therefore the will of heaven as the basis of inner unity (the abstraction of the calendar was fleshed out as the “three unifications”). He relies on the basic spirit of Yi Chuan, “The great virtue of heaven and earth is said to be life” and the theory of life in the universe symbolized by the four virtues of “Yuan Hengzhen”. He relies on the basic spirit of Yi Chuan, “The great virtue of heaven and earth is life”, and the theory of life in the universe symbolized by the four virtues of “Yuan, Henry and Ching”, and emphasizes that “Greatness is Qian Yuan”. “The king shall follow the heavens to Feng Yuan and raise all things” (“Chunqiu Fanlu – Exegesis”). To implement this as administration is to “use the depth of yuan to correct the end of heaven, the end of heaven to correct the government of the king, the government of the king to correct the accession of the vassals, and the accession of the vassals to correct the governance of the territory. The five are both correct and transformed into a great line” (“Spring and Autumn Fanlu – Two Ends”). The purpose of politics was not only the stability of order and the settlement of people’s livelihood, but also the spiritual and ethical responsibility of “turning people into nature”. It is said in “Spring and Autumn Fanlu – Shencha Name” that “the people are born with good qualities but fail to be good, so they set up a king for them to be good.
“The people are the foundation of the state” is a simple administrative experience and sentiment, while “Following Heaven to serve the Yuan” is a profound thinking concept, making the benevolent government of “allowing virtue to prevail over punishment” a requirement of Heaven. “In the early years of Confucianism, the Confucian scholars were very impressed by the theological quality of the propositions, such as “Establishing the God of Origin,” “The Way of Kings,” and “Deeply Checking the Name of the King. In fact, Confucianism has always been like this, but after the change of time and the steady establishment of hegemony, the implementation of the Way of Heaven needed an alternative approach.
Secondly, in terms of practicality, the emphasis on the importance of locality and bloodline in the previous Confucian political discourse was weakened, and the adherence to the administrative systems in the context of feudalism was abandoned. After all these reforms and adjustments, the Spring and Autumn period saw the emergence of a new Confucian political philosophy system centered on Fengtian Jingde, which embodied such conceptual propositions as “unification,” “unification of the three unifications,” and “the five beginnings of the Five Beginnings,” and which was organically integrated with the hegemonic political structure by chance. According to the Ramses, Confucius wrote the Spring and Autumn Annals to legislate for the Han dynasty, but the political environment or problem of the Han dynasty was that “the Han inherited the Qin system” and there was politics but no education. Since the political system was already “hegemonic” and had an irreplaceable status and function, what Dong Zhongshu and other Han Confucians could and needed to do most was to seek progress through reflection and cooperation through compromise. Confucian spiritual values and belief systems were thus preserved and inherited, and returned to society as a whole through institutional channels.
The rivers and mountains conquered by military force, once regarded by Liu Bang as his private property, have now finally acquired a spiritual and ethical quality. When the monarch and his power became the chosen by the will of God, the state became an unfolding of the will of God, an integral part of the cosmic order, and the empire became a civilization (Spring and Autumn, Fanlu: Three Generations of Reformed Text). If Christianity introduced the state into a higher moral plane by making it subservient to God and abolishing its self-sufficiency, Confucianism introduced kingship by incorporating it into the Divine Will and treating it as a celestial intermediary, making it assume the role of an agent of Heaven.
According to Wang Guowei’s Treatise on the Institutions of the Yin and Zhou Dynasties, “The most dramatic political and cultural change in China came at the time of the Yin and Zhou Dynasties. The purpose of …… was to bring together heaven, lords, ministers, doctors, scholars, and plebeians to form a moral community.” Confucianism also says that it must be called three generations, according to which the lack of realpolitik is critically adjusted, and the Chengzhou period is thus narrated as the golden age of politics. However, spiritually speaking, the meaningful connotation of heaven still lacks depth, richness and clarity. From a political point of view, the system of feudalism and patriarchy could only be described as an alliance of dynasties or kingdoms, or an “association of city-states. The patriarchal system was based on blood ties and emotions, and the natural tendency of blood ties was to become weaker and weaker, with the so-called “five generations of the gentleman’s son being cut off; the feudal system was based on the strategic interests of the local great powers (the so-called eight hundred vassals) in the face of a common enemy. The independent kingdoms that were “under the rule of the rulers” were inevitably heading towards the Warring States period, when they fell apart. The famous cultural anthropologist, Elman Seves, sees the Shang and Zhou dynasties as merely “the classical period of the development of early Chinese civilization”.
The political system of China as a civilization was a centralized system of counties and prefectures established by the emperor Qin Shi Huang. The Zhou and Qin dynasties were no less important than the Yin and Zhou dynasties, but their meanings have been understood and assessed at opposite poles. Chunqiu ramology attempts to reconcile the two. I think that unification was the theory that Dong Zhongshu found to unify the Three Dynasties with the Qin and Han dynasties, the system of feudalism and the system of counties and counties. He said, “The unification of the Spring and Autumn Annals is the common thread of heaven and earth, and the general friendship of the ancient and modern world.” The “ancient and modern” in this case would be the Three Dynasties and the Qin and Han Dynasties.
The goal of both the patriarchal and feudal systems was unification. “It is sufficient to say that the purpose of feudalism itself was to maintain the military achievements of the Duke of Zhou in the Eastern Expedition and to consolidate the three major regions since the Xia and the Shang into a complete Zhou Dynasty. In the Spring and Autumn period, the unification of “Wang Zhengyue” means the unification of heaven and mankind, but the unity of heaven undoubtedly implies the requirement of the unity of the world. According to the commentators, the political essence of unification was “to unite the many into one”, which was reflected in the fact that the vassals were not given exclusive feudal titles, lands, and territories, and the king of Zhou was respected instead. This was in line with the idea of the Analects of Confucius: “If there is a way for the world to go on, then rituals and music should come from the Son of Heaven”, which opposed the usurpation of power. In reality, however, it is not uncommon for rituals and music to come from the vassals, because under the system of separation and feudalism, “under the whole heaven, there is no other land than that of a king”, as expected in the Book of Poetry. Under the feudal system, “there is no one other than a king under heaven, and there is no one other than a king’s minister on the shore of the land” as expected by the Book of Songs. The “six contractual winds, nine states together” (Han Shu – Biography of Wang Ji) can only be truly achieved under the county system. This should be the reason why “the political law of Qin was practiced for a hundred generations”.
On the other hand, the reformed Confucian ideals and beliefs internal to politics and society may have been instrumental arts in the eyes of Emperor Xuan and others, but in the eyes of Dong Zhongshu and Gong Yang, they were purposeful Taoism, and “Taoism remains unchanged in Heaven. Although there is a tension between Taoism and political unity in the structure of “tyrannical and mixed Taoism”, the different understanding and positioning of “you love your sheep and I love my rites” does not prevent the two from interacting and cooperating to produce win-win results. From a practical point of view, it is the Han dynasty that is “tyrannical and mixed”, while in the long run, it is Confucianism that tames power and forges civilization. One family and one name are, after all, short-lived, and the spirituality of the Tao of Heaven itself can permeate every aspect of the public and private spheres, with new virtues every day.
“Create a civilization to return to the system, and know that the draping arch changes the flood.” Half of the ideal of the Sovereign King comes from the distant memory of the unity of the witch-king and the other half from the construction of reality. In any case, this kind of politics, which rests on the ideal of the individual personality, even if it once appeared or existed, and nurtured the seeds and soil of civilization, is in the end a type of politics. But in the final analysis, it is a type of politics that belongs to the village and society, rather than to the city-state and the state, and lacks an effective institutional mechanism to sustain its unifying political goals. Therefore, just as the city-state will eventually replace the countryside as the center of human life, the Three Dynasties and their philosophy will be implemented and functioned in the combination of the hegemonic political structure and the spiritual beliefs of the king, which is not only the inevitable development of civilization, but also the real beginning of its blossoming from seed. Perhaps it can be said that another meaning of Confucius’ “legislating for future generations” is that Confucianism can only “open up peace for all ages” on a relatively stable political basis.
Confucianism, with its “dismissal of all schools of thought and reverence for Confucianism alone,” and its “hegemonic and miscellaneous” structure, undoubtedly had the greatest cultural weight in the public sphere. The modern habit of describing Confucianism and its status and influence in terms of official ideology is inaccurate, since Confucianism did not emerge from the construction of the legitimacy of real power, but rather from an ancient cultural tradition that reflected the values and needs of society and transformed the entire political system itself, from people to institutions, in the service of political governance. The process of defining this structural relationship, as seen in the collaboration between Dong Zhongshu and Emperor Wu of Han, was a playful equilibrium of society and government, culture and politics. In recent years, some have reinterpreted the positioning using concepts such as state religion and civil religion, each with its own pros and cons. Here I think the use of the term “Taoism and unity” may be more appropriate for the theory of civilization, as it can reveal the connotations of Confucianism and reflect the position of Confucianism in the social or civilizational system, as well as its relationship with other cultural systems in civilization.
III. Consolidation and Adjustment of the Status of Confucianism and Daoism
Confucianism is generally considered to have two phases or climaxes, represented or marked by Confucius and Zhu Zi respectively. Confucius refined the philosophy of Confucianism based on the method of the Three Kings, and Dong Zhongshu implemented this philosophy into the political system of the Qin and Han dynasties, thus establishing the basic structure of Chinese civilization as “tyranny, kingship, and daoism”. Although the relationship between government and Taoism within this structure was complex, Confucianism’s position as a Taoist system was basically recognized and relatively stable. To a certain extent, the theoretical work of Confucianism since then has basically revolved around the maintenance of this relationship and the consolidation of its status. It was when Confucianism or Confucianism, as a form of Taoism, was challenged by Buddhism and Taoism that Zhu Zi rose to defend Taoism and established a so-called New Confucian system centered on the “Four Books”, which could not be compared with Dong Zhongshu in the paradigm of civilization theory. From this perspective, Confucianism is divided into three phases: Confucius, Dong Zhongshu, Zhu, and now Kang Youwei, the fourth phase. (b) To contribute to the regaining of the status of Daoist unification.
The “Tao” of Daoist unification refers to the Confucian values and their narratives; the fact that Daoism has become “unification” means that it is a genealogy of inheritance, a value system that continues to have “cultural leadership”. This can be deduced from its inheritance-bearer status, with Yao, Shun, Yu, Tang, Wen, Wu and the Duke of Zhou as the rulers and Confucius as the “legislator”.
The meaning of Daoism was first revealed in Han Yu’s “Yuan Dao”. This is the first time that the meaning of Daoist unification was revealed by Han Yu’s “Yuan Dao”, in which “the laws of the barbarians and the dilettantes” were opposed to “the teachings of the saints”, and it was believed that if Daoist unification was not preserved, China would be “forced into barbarism”. . This is clearly a paradigm of civilizational thinking. Han Yu considered the “teachings of the saints” to be benevolent and value-biased, revealing the nature of the “clash of civilizations”; Zhu Zi considered it to be the “sixteen-character method of mind,” responding more to the challenge of Buddhist doctrine. Targeted because Buddhism and especially Zen Buddhism deconstructs the reality of the world precisely by treating everything as an illusion of the mind and denying social life and its value.
Zhu Tzu’s Taoist consciousness or thought and exposition can be divided into two stages: the Elohim and the Middle Mean Preface. From the fact that he began to compile the sources of Elohim after the founding of the “New Theory of Neutrality and Harmony”, which was based on his concern for the Buddha’s “poor life and bad discipline”, we can see that Zhu Zi The concept of Taoism at this time was essentially the same as that of Han Yu, which was to maintain the position or “cultural dominance” of the teachings of the saints in Chinese society. If “Yiluo Yuan Yuan Luo” is the “elementary version” of Zhu Zi’s theory of Taoism, then the theory of Taoism in “The Preface to the Mean” is its “ultimate version”. After his famous “Debate on Kings and Hegemons, Righteousness and Profit” with Chen Liang, Zhu Zi realized the need to expand his theory of moral mind to the field of history and philosophy, and to expand the question of the world’s emptiness and reality to the question of the world’s public and private governance. This would not only enhance the persuasiveness of his arguments, but also the universality and authority of his conclusions. His new interpretation of the nature of the two emperors and the three kings is the path or result of making the “human heart but dangerous, the Taoist heart but subtle, the essence but one, and the permission to uphold the conviction of the center” into a spiritual law, and then unifying the “sixteen-character spiritual law” of Taoism.
Since May Fourth, when the relationship between Taoism and political unification was mentioned, the scholars always emphasized the opposition between the two. The reason is to separate it from politics, for the so-called feudal autocracy in the past was responsible for the backwardness and beatings of modern times, so it should be denied; while Confucianism, which still has value to be passed down, is separated from politics and affirmed as an independent Taoism against feudal politics. In fact, although the connotations of Taoism and political system are different, and the practice is not without tension and conflict, Taoism and political system on the whole are still interpenetrating and cooperating within the framework of the civilizational structure of “hegemonism, kingship, and taoism”. From Dong Zhongshu to Han Yu and Zhu Xi, this was the case. Dong Zhongshu contributed to this structure, Han Yu recognized the challenge that Buddhism posed to Confucianism’s place within it, and Zhu Xi responded to this challenge by establishing a theory of mindfulness. Wang Fuzhi, in his Reading of the Tongjian Theory, also distinguishes between the two and pursues the goal of their integration. Zhu Xi’s Historical World criticizes Mou Zongsan’s study of Zhu’s philosophical and Confucian history from the perspective of political and intellectual history as being limited by the narrow and closed consciousness of Confucianism. From a civilizational paradigm.
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