I. China in the Song Dynasty
The Song Dynasty (960-1279), after the Han Dynasty (202 BC-220 AD) and the Tang Dynasty (618-906), was one of the greatest dynasties in Chinese history that saw great cultural flourishing. It was also one of the dynasties that saw foreign invasions both before and during (as well as after) the dynasty. In 1126, the dynasty had to move its capital from Kaifeng in northern China to Hangzhou in southern China because the Chinese north fell to the Tartar invaders, some of them ancestors to the latter day Manchus, who eventually established their rule in China and the last Chinese imperial dynasty, the Manchu Dynasty (1644-1911). Between the fall of the Tang Dynasty and the founding of the Song Dynasty, there were years of disunity in China. Border uprisings not only led to the end of the Tang Dynasty, but again plunged China into many warring states, before they were reunified under the founding emperor of the Song Dynasty. Eventually, the Song Dynasty would fall to the invading Mongols, who, under Kublai Khan, would found the Yuan Dynasty in China. Viewed against this context, the Song scholars' struggles against the Buddhists and Daoists to rescue Confucian learning from metaphysics could be seen as an attempt to preserve Chinese "cultural integrity" in the face of foreign invaders. It was during this dynasty that Confucian learning underwent canonization for a second time, and new Confucian texts were selected as standard texts for scholars preparing for the imperial examinations.
1. Confucian learning and the scholar-gentry class.
In contrast to the times of Confucius and Mencius, when the ru/ju (or Confucian), were just in the process of forming into a social/intellectual group, by the Song Dynasty, they had already formed into a social class called the scholar/gentry class, made possible by the imperial examinations based on the five Confucian classics. Starting from the 6th century, state wide imperial examinations were started to select government officials. By the mid-Tang Dynasty, the majority of the hereditary aristocracy were threatened their political positions, and by late Tang/early Song, the scholar/gentry had firmly established his social/political/intellectual control of China. Since the majority within the government since the Tang Dynasty were Confucian scholars who had been selected via the imperial examinations, these scholars became officials who served at the capital or at the provinces; those who passed the lower levels of examinations would serve at lower levels, e.g. the prefectural level. But even if without a government position, scholars who passed the lowest levels of imperial examinations were respected at the local regions, who were often hired as private tutors to villagers in China where there were very few formal schools. On the other hand, scholars who did become senior government officials would ultimately retire to their hometown and purchase large tracts of land with the money they made while serving as government officials. The retired officials, now called gentry, assumed leadership in the local regions: they served as the go-between between the higher levels of government: prefectural, provincial, and central, and their local regions. The respect they enjoyed in the local regions also led them to take local leadership. Often, their descendents would pass imperial examinations and become government officials, further consolidating the prestige of the clan in the local region. The scholar/gentry class, although not hereditary, since no Confucian could determine his son would pass the imperial examinations, became a firmly established phenomenon in Chinese society; it was a socially mobile class. On the whole, one can say though that the Confucians constituted the upper class in China. The Confucians, in this context, also identified with Chinese culture in their attempt to preserve Chinese "cultural integrity."
2. Zhu Xi and Confucian learning.
The greatest scholar in this second wave of canonization of Confucian learning was Zhu Xi (1130-1200). He lived in the Southern Song Dynasty, when the Chinese capital moved south to give up the northern territories to the new state established by the Tartars in the north. Instead of the Five Classics of Confucian learning standardized in the Han Dynasty, Zhu Xi proposed the adoption of the Four Books as standard Confucian texts to be used in the imperial examinations: the Analects, and the Mencius, plus Doctrine of the Mean (zhongyong), and Great Learning (Daxue), the latter two both selections from the Book of Documents, one of the five classics canonized in the Han Dynasty. These four books focused more on the Confucian and Mencian emphasis on inner cultivation than the general orientation of the five classics. Two characteristics stand out about Zhu Xi's selection: the "relative autonomy of the scholar, who is called upon to exercise his own conscience and perceptiveness in his classical studies...to find the Way in oneself," (John K. Fairbank, China: A New History (Harvard, 1998), p.99) which sounds so very Mencian: echoing the Mencian argument that when one properly undergoes moral cultivation, one can constitute a moral universe on his own. The second characteristic is the emphasis on "rational, moral learning," with a focus on the Five Relationships expounded by Confucius (minister/king, son/father, wife/husband, younger/older siblings, and friends.).
3. The influence of Buddhism
As mentioned earlier, Confucian scholars were concerned about the "contamination" of Confucian learning by Buddhism, foremost by Buddhism's denial of this world's worth, by its confusion of the Confucian concept of filial piety, and by the denial of ethical human nature, depriving humans of their role as moral agents in Confucian learning. Despite their denunciation of Buddhism, Confucian scholars like Zhu Xi still absorbed Buddhism to different degrees, primarily a Buddhist influenced transcendental level of knowledge. For Zhu Xi, the Confucian concept of li or the Way, which had primarily represented rituals to Confucius, became more or less transcendental principles that worked together with the qi, an especially Mencian concept that brought the heavenly way closer to the human being and gave it more concrete manifestation. But in the li/qi relationship, li came to assume a predominant position. To some Confucians who came after Zhu Xi, this was a dangerous move to lead to abstract arguments about what was the li, instead of realizing it foremost in individual (moral) behavior.
II. Neo-Confucian learning in the Song Dynasty (960-1279)
One result of the political instability of the Northern Song Dynasty (960-1126) because of reasons described above: the encroachment on China by nomadic dynasties north of it, was attempts at political and economic reform. Since by the Song Dynasty, a sizable percentage of government officials were selected from the Confucian scholars via the imperial examination system, the suggestions of reform were proposed by Confucian scholar/officials. Song Dynasty Confucian scholars called for an integration between Confucian teachings and present reality. More than earlier scholars, they emphasized, instead of a rigid, word for word adherence to Confucian teachings, an intuitive interpretation of the latter to adapt it to current reality. Therefore in the writings of the Neo-Confucian scholars of the Song Dynasty, a large number revolves around such social issues as land distribution and army formation. This should be understood in light of their often double capacity as scholars and officials. As Confucian scholars, their suggestions often came from the models of the Golden Ages, e.g. the Zhou Dynasty, and the legendary kings of Yao and Shun that Confucius wanted to be emulated. The interesting thing about their modeling after Confucian teachings is that this was often not a rigid adherence, as in the case of Wang An-shi and a few others, they even combined Confucian learning with Legalism. The Song Neo-Confucians created a precedent for a relatively free exercise of Confucian principles to achieve certain practical results.
1. Song Dynasty Neo-Confucians' attention to practical problems.
Song Confucian scholar/officials constantly called for social reforms. From Fan Zhongyan (989-1052), prime minister to Emperor Renzong of the Song Dynasty, who tried to implement reform to cut nepotism in appointments and bribery, to create local militia and to cut labor service (de Bary, 596-597); to Wang Anshi (1021-1086), prime minister to Emperor Shenzong, who called for reform in tax grain transportation, establishing crop loans and local militias, and equalization of land tax for all (de Bary, 610-611). Even those who disagreed with them did not object to the need to pay attention to practical problems, but on how to deal with these practical problems.
2. Adherence to and innovations in Confucian learning
In calling for social reforms, these Confucian scholar/officials all evoked Confucian teachings. 1. Equity of land ownership and the example of the (Zhou Dynasty) well-field system.
One of the biggest concerns was the issue of land distribution. Many Confucian scholar/officials, from Chen Hao (603), Zhang Zai (605), Su Xun (607), to Wang Anshi (611), all looked to the ancient well-field system: a system of land distribution that resembles the game board of tick-tack-toe: with the center square being a well and the adjacent eight squares being tilled by farmers, with each family tilling one piece of them, and the countryside being multiplicities of this well-field unit. It was a system practiced in the Zhou Dynasty, a dynasty that Confucius glorified. Although not all of them agreed the well-field system was practicable in modern day China, they all agreed with a more equitable distribution of land that resembled the spirit of the well-field system in ancient times.
2. Precedents in the classics.
In defending his reforms, Wang An-shi evoked the classics: he argued that all his reforms were based on traditions Confucius emulated, and that according to the Commentary (of Zuo on the Spring and Autumn Annals, one of the classics), "Things not modeled after the ancient system have never been known to last for a generation." He traced his policy on a tax that paid for special groups of people for local services so as to release farmers from non-agricultural duties to the Rites of Zhou, one of the classics. Similarly, he found a precedent in the Three Dynasties (Xia, Shang, and Zhou) for his local militia. And he found a precedent for his proposal that the state purchase and sell grain to stabilize the grain market in the Zhou Dynasty. (de Bary, 620-621)
On the other hand, these reforms were not a rigid adherence to Confucian principles. If anything, they were just the opposite.
1. Remonstrance against memorization in examinations.
In Fan Zhongyen's memorial to the crown, he called for a reform of the imperial examination system to shift the test from poetry composition to problems of history and politics, as well as interpretations of the classics. (597-598) Earlier imperial examinations had focused on poetry and prose compositions that reflected the Confucian principles contained primarily in the Five Classics, and memorization of passages of the classics. Fan criticized this practice, calling for greater attention to the practical affairs of the state. Similar to Fan, Wang Anshi, as prime minister, emphasized interpretation of Confucian texts over memorization, and implemented a test on the "general meaning" of the classics in the imperial examinations. (611) Wang memorialized Emperor Renzong that officials selected through examinations on memorization of Confucian texts would not lead to any good results. (615-616)
2. Adhering to the spirit rather than the words of the well-field system.
In discussing how practicable the well-field system was in the China of the Song Dynasty, although some, like Zhang Zai, agreed with it outright, many others did not think it was feasible. Su Xun, for instance, mentioned the practical impossibility of reverting the whole country to that system and confined his reform proposal to just limitation of individual landownership. (608) In Wang An-shi's proposal, Wang followed the spirit of the well-field system without any redistribution of land or property. All he did was to build a more graduated tax with the value of the land. (611)
3. Centralization of state power and innovations in policies that resembled Legalism.
One of the oppositions to Wang An-shi's reform was he placed excessive laws (including new taxes) on the people. Su Shi, a famous poet and official who criticized Wang, for instance, criticized the state marketing system as a place for individual officials' private profiteering, the crop loan as unfeasible because it would often be defaulted by the poor peasants and the burden would be shifted to the other villagers who had collective responsibility for the loan, and labor service as another tax burden on the farmers while the laborers hired to perform local services were not dependable. (621-624) Although he did not cut directly to the point, his contemporary Zhang Zai pointed out that the core of the problem was the central government was thus given too much power. Zhang Zai proposed to divide up China into equal shares of land and establish a new feudal system where the emperor would parcel out the land to individuals, in order to decrease the power of the central government. (605) Their spokesman in the government, Sima Guang, who succeeded Wang Anshi as the prime minister, also criticized Wang's reform measures as benefiting the private ambitions of government officials. (625-626) Wang Anshi's reform measures, as Zhu Xi pointed out, were too much focused on innovations (although he quoted from the classics to support his reforms), which was why they were opposed by Confucian scholars. (628) Wang's program to give the central government more power, to govern the country through more laws, and to implement new policies, resembled the Legalists in Chinese history, although Wang was a famous Confucian scholar.
3. The Influence of Daoism and the Yin-Yang School: Zhou Dunyi/Chou Tunyi and Shao Yung
The first neo-Confucian, arguably, was Zhou Dunyi/Chou Tunyi (1017-73), who introduced a strong element of Daoism (including concepts such as the ultimateless, and the supreme ultimate) and the School of Yin and Yang. The Ultimateless resembled the concept of wu (nothingness), or the world in its primeval form before it manifested in various specific things. The Supreme Ultimate meant the ultimate rules governing the movements of everything in the universe. Zhou illustrated the movement of the myriad things from Ultimateless to the Supreme Ultimate with the taiji tu (graph of the supreme ultimate): through movement, the supreme ultimate engendered yang, and when it stopped, it begot yin. The yin and yang forces then begot everything else in the universe. Zhou treated the five elements in the universe as the breath of the universe (qi). Both qi and the Supreme Ultimate were important concepts in Daoism that were first raised by Zhou and eventually taken up by the greatest neo-Confucian of all, Zhu Xi in the southern Song Dynasty. Shao Yung (1011-1077): another neo-Confucian scholar of the northern Song Dynasty who, more than Zhou Dunyi, developed a systematic program of understanding changes in the universe over time through the idea of yin and yang and hexagrams representing the stages of change as a result of the waxing and waning of the yin and yang forces.
4. Conclusion.
In general, as we will see in the following chapters, the Song Neo-Confucians, on the whole, were characterized by a flexible interpretation of Confucian teachings rather than strict word by word adherence to Confucian principles. This was not just true of Wang Anshi, but also his opponents. Ultimately, their goal was to come up with specific solutions to practical problems without deviating from Confucian teachings.