The "Hundred Schools of Thought" and Confucian Learning.
China was perhaps one of the first civilizations to develop a perspective on life and history based on tangible, perceptible forces in this world with a preoccupation with human activities. From the preoccupation with communicating with ancestors and heaven in the Xia and Shang Dynasties, China developed many schools of thought centered on the human world in the second half of the Zhou Dynasty. 475-221 BC, officially the last stage of the Zhou Dynasty (1027-221 BC), was also called the Warring States Era in Chinese history, when China was divided into many different states, with seven major ones. One of the seven, the Kingdom of Qin (Ch'in), eventually conquered the others and unified China, establishing the Qin (Ch'in) Dynasty. The social and political turbulence led to many schools of thought offering their rationalizations of the situation. They were generally called "A Hundred School of Thought contending." Many people believe these were the first intellectual debates in Chinese history. And in them were the foundations of modern Chinese intellectual thought.
1. Ssu-ma Chien's classification of the schools of thought
In his chapter 3, Fung Yulan introduces two Chinese historians' classifications of these schools. Ssu-ma Chien (Sima Qian) (145-86 BC) and Liu Hsin (Xin) (46 BC- 23 AD) from the Han Dynasty (206 BC- 220 AD) (As with most Chinese names mentioned here, last name comes first. Note that Ssu-ma (or Sima) Chien had a two character last name, something not very common in China as most Chinese have one character last names).
Sima Chien's The Record of History (shiji) set up a style of history writing for later generations of historians in China. Sima not only created new historical styles (various types of biographies beyond chronicles, for instance), but also narrated a much wider range of history than before, not only the history of kings, but also of insignificant people, and not only history of heroes but also rebels; those who succeeded in becoming kings and those who failed. Sima's classification of the schools of thought in the Warring States Era was taken as one of the authoritative versions of classifying Chinese schools of learning. Sima named six schools of thought:
The Yin-yang School (yin and yang as two interacting forces): believed the world was formed primarily by two opposite forces, yin and yang, whose combinations formed the myriads of the universe. Yin was a negative, feminine force often identified also with the moon, and Yang was a positive and masculine force identified also with the sun.
Both Yin and Yang, to the Chinese, were material forces, in effect not dissimilar to the wind or warm breeze but encompassing these specific natural phenomena. The Chinese were more interested in how the world changed rather than a discussion of the nature of the origin of the world. By the Zhou Dynasty, a preoccupation with ancestors and Heaven in the previous dynasty (Shang), though not gone, was gradually being replaced by a greater concern for this world.
Interest in a yin-yang explanation of the world was an example of the shift of interest from the world beyond to phenomena in this world.
The Scholars' School (Ju/Ru chia/jia): identified in the West with the school of Confucian learning. Followers were mostly teachers of ancient classics.
The Mohist School(Mo chia/Muo jia; Mozi, 470-390 BC): famous for its emphasis on universal love (as an alternative to interstate warfare), and frugality.
The School of Names (Ming chia/jia): This was the school mostly closely resembling the Western philosophical schools. It went into greater metaphysical discussions of the distinctions between names and actualities than any other Chinese schools of thought.
The Legalist School(Fa chia/jia) Those who believed in the use of law rather than moral exhortations as the major approach to government administration.
School of the Way (Tao-te chia/Daode jia, or Daojia, Taoism/Daoism): emphasizes the amorphous and endless universe (non-being) in contrast to the limited power of each individual. Believes the best ruler is the one who does not exercise any rule.
2. Liu Hsin's explanation of the historical origins of the schools
In traditional Chinese scholarship, it was common for an author to enumerate all the different approaches on the same subject. Fung follows this tradition, and lists the classification of another historian, Liu Hsin/Xin of the Han Dynasty, himself, like Ssu-ma Chien, also from a family of historians (historians in early China were often hereditary positions). Liu's contribution was his explanations of the historical origins of these schools of thought. By this theory, the different schools of thought were formed by former officers of the Chou/Zhou Dynasty when the ruling house lost its power. The officers lost their positions and turned to teaching. Hence the School of Scholars came from officers of the Ministry of Education, the Taoists/Daoists were official historians, the yin-yang school from astronomers, the Legalist school from the Ministry of Justice, and the Mohist school were guardians of the temple of the Three Elders and Five Experienced Men. The other schools of thought Liu added to Ssu-ma Chien's list, he also attributed to other ministerial officials.
3. Fung Yulan's explanation of the historical origins of the schools
Fung based his own interpretation of the origins of Chinese schools of thought on a historical analysis of late Chou Dynasty society: seizing on the word chia/jia (school of thought), which means family in Chinese, he argues that the originators of these schools of thought were private transmitters who worked on documents scattered in society. He believes they came from a wider range of people and social backgrounds than Liu Hsin indicated, although many of them did come from state bureaucracy.
4. The School of Scholars and Confucian learning
Of all the schools of thought developed during the Warring States Era, Confucian learning, associated with the School of Scholars and later identified with the latter, gradually developed into a dominant school in China, and it was this school of thought, as well as its developments and transformations into the orthodox learning in China that formed the focus of Fung's history, although Fung, especially in the early chapters, did give a careful introduction to the other schools of thought formed in the Warring States Era.
The School of Scholars was developed by scholars who, according to Sinologist Benjamin Schwartz, often served as local bureaucrats. Unlike in Europe, where a difference existed between feudalism and bureaucracy; in China, there seemed to be a coexistence of feudalism and bureaucracy, with the bureaucrats, or shi, in a position to mediate between local and central affairs, based on a well-field society, where the people were allotted field to farm centered around a well. (Benjamin Schwartz, The World of Thought in Ancient China (Harvard, 1989), pp.54-55.)
Although Confucius was born prior to the Warring States Era, it was during a time of upheaval in China when the small states already formed and wrestled with the king of Chou/Zhou dynasty. Confucius's family descended from the Shang Dynasty that was ended by the Zhou (Chou) Dynasty. He was the first private teacher in Chinese history and his major goal was to restore the order of the early years of the Chou/Zhou Dynasty when the Chou dynasty kings commanded authority from their subordinates.
a) Confucius and the Six Classics:
Confucius sought to restore the past through transmission of certain classics. He was famous for saying: "I do not write. I just transmit." Fung argues that at the time of Confucius, no one wrote in a private capacity. History and other writings were done by officially appointed bureaucrats. The writings that Confucius selected as true preservations of the spirit of the past were called the six classics, which were actually six books on different subjects. They were:
Book of Changes (yi, book of divination, later used as a guide to provide a metaphysical explanation of the origin of and changes in the world)
Book of Odes (or songs, shijing)
Book of History (shangshu)
Rites (li)
Music (yue)
Spring and Autumn Annals (chronicle history of the state of Lu, chunqiu)
Like Socrates, Confucius did not leave any writing behind him. His students compiled his collection of sayings and named it The Analects.
b) Transmitter or innovator
Fung argues that unlike most previous views on Confucius that treated him as a conservative transmitter of past culture, he was actually innovative in many of his interpretations of the six classics. One important feature was Confucius did not treat the classics as dogma, but documents that reflected common sense or taught proper patterns of human interactions. On the custom of three years' mourning for one's parents' deaths, Confucius comments on the years of the infant's dependency on its parents (3 years), hence three years' mourning as repayment.
c) Confucian concepts:
Traditionally, Confucian scholars usually discussed Confucian teachings as a whole. They would summarize Confucius by, say, quoting directly from the Analects. Fung Yulan, following a Western logical tradition, discusses Confucius's thought through what he considered as central Confucian concepts.
The rectification of names: Although Confucian teachings are highly experiential (its understanding being largely through intuition rather than intellectualizing), this is an exception: Confucius believes that proper uses of titles for people from the king to those in various levels of society was important for enforcing proper behavior. Many problems of his time came from irreverence to the king of Chou and improper ways to address him.
Jen/ren (human-hearted, humaneness): this is the core to every human behavior: proper, loving, behavior to every one in society.
Yi (righteousness): the way to realize jen/ren: good behavior is not to please or receive awards, but to realize righteousness. Without this goal, without jen/ren constituting the core of one's behavior, even seemingly good behavior is fake and condemned as "pursuit of profit," one of the worst verdicts one could receive from Confucius. A good comparison would be from the New Testament, in the missionary Paul's first letter to the Corinthians: "
Chung/zhong and shu (conscientiousness to others and altruism/forgiving):
This is often translated into "Do not do to others what you would not want others to do to you," a phrase often used in the West as well. It is, like so many Confucian teachings, asking individuals to measure the propriety of their behavior by their own experiences, with oneself imagining how one would like (or not like) to be treated in different positions and treated accordingly.
Knowing ming (to follow one's own fate):
This is another area where Confucius displayed moral heroism. Like with righteousness that was to be carried out without consideration for one's own benefit, one needs to carry out his mission in life (e.g. helping restore social order in a specific way) without considering success or failure, because it is his fate (ming) to do so.
d) Confucius the idealist:
Fung bypassed Confucius's many detailed rules and regulations (e.g. "food that was not meticulously prepared should not be eaten,"), and emphasized his moral heroism, arguing that his goals were no longer this-worldly, and confined to detailed rituals, but broader, transcendental (supermoral) goals.
Fung's interpretation of Confucius was not a distortion of the latter, but rather an emphasis on one aspect of him. We get a more rounded and detailed look at Confucius in the de Bary reading.