Readings in Classical Chinese Philosophy

428 Pages·2016·2.92 MB·English

by  Philip J., Van Norden, Bryan W., Ivanhoe

READINGS IN CLASSICAL CHINESE

PHILOSOPHY

READINGS IN CLASSICAL CHINESE

PHILOSOPHY

Second Edition

Edited by

Philip J. Ivanhoe

City University of Hong Kong

and

Bryan W. Van Norden

Vassar College

Hackett Publishing Company, Inc.

Indianapolis/Cambridge

Copyright © 2001

Reprinted in 2003 by Hackett Publishing Company, Inc.
Second edition copyright © 2005 by Hackett Publishing Company, Inc.

All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America

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Hackett Publishing Company, Inc.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Readings in classical Chinese philosophy/edited by Philip J. Ivanhoe and

Bryan W. Van Norden.—2nd ed.

p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 0-87220-781-1 (cloth)—ISBN 0-87220-780-3 (pbk.)
1. Philosophy, Chinese—To 221 B.C. I. Ivanhoe, P. J. II. Van Norden, Bryan

W. (Bryan William)

B126.R43 2005
181’.11—dc22 2005050463

ISBN-13: 978-0-87220-781-3 (cloth)
ISBN-13: 978-0-87220-780-6 (pbk.)
epub ISBN: 978-1-60384-520-5

CONTENTS

Preface

Comparative Romanization Table
Map of China during the Spring and Autumn Period
Introduction
Selective Bibliography

CHAPTER ONE

Kongzi (Confucius) “The Analects”
Introduction and Translation by Edward Gilman Slingerland

CHAPTER TWO

Mozi
Introduction and Translation by Philip J. Ivanhoe

CHAPTER THREE

Mengzi (Mencius)
Introduction and Translation by Bryan W. Van Norden

CHAPTER FOUR

Laozi (“The Daodejing”)
Introduction and Translation by Philip J. Ivanhoe

CHAPTER FIVE

Zhuangzi
Introduction and Translation by Paul Kjellberg

CHAPTER SIX

Xunzi
Introduction and Translation by Eric L. Hutton

CHAPTER SEVEN

Han Feizi
Introduction and Translation by Joel Sahleen

SUPPLEMENTAL TEXTS

Gongsun Longzi “On the White Horse”
Introduction and Translation by Bryan W. Van Norden
Yangism “Robber Zhi”
Introduction and Translation by Paul Kjellberg

APPENDICES

Important Figures
Important Periods
Important Texts
Important Terms

PREFACE

This newly revised edition of Readings in Classical Chinese Philosophy

introduces the seven most familiar, widely read, and important thinkers of the
“classical period” (roughly the sixth to the end of the third century B.C.E.) of
Chinese philosophy, as well as two critically important but often neglected
philosophers of this period: Gongsun Longzi and Yang Zhu. Each of the seven
chapters and two Supplemental Text sections of the volume begins with a brief
introduction to the work and thinker it concerns and concludes with a short and
lightly annotated selective bibliography. The volume is intended to serve as an
introduction to and source book for these texts and not as a philosophical primer
for the thought of these authors. Introductory and interpretive material is kept to
a minimum, but the volume includes four appendices—Important Figures,
Important Periods, Important Texts, and Important Terms—that describe
mythical and historical figures, periods of time, classical texts, and specialized
terms that regularly appear in the texts translated here. There is also a Map of
China during the Spring and Autumn Period, which shows the approximate
locations of the major states and rivers. Readers are encouraged to turn to these
reference materials whenever they encounter terms or names in the text that are
not explained in footnotes. Explanatory notes are provided at the bottom of each
page in cases of a single occurrence of an obscure term or name or when more
explanation appeared to be warranted. Those who wish to pursue additional
secondary literature in English concerning the texts and thinkers included in this
reader are encouraged to consult the Title Web Site link that is maintained in
support of this volume at www.hackettpublishing.com.

Knowledge of the Chinese language is not in any way required for making full

and thorough use of this volume. However, Chinese characters are provided for
important references and terms of philosophical art in order to help the
beginning student of Chinese and for the common edification of all. We do not
provide characters for textual emendations or other textual notes, as these issues
require advanced facility in the classical Chinese language and other basic
research languages of sinology. Readers interested in pursuing textual issues are
encouraged to consult the appropriate sections of the web page mentioned above.

We have used the Pinyin romanization system throughout this volume,

although we have chosen to romanize the common formal names of Chinese
thinkers—their surnames and the honorific title zi
(literally “Master”)—as one

word rather than two. So, for example, Zhuang Zi (literally “Master Zhuang”) is

written as Zhuangzi and Han Fei Zi (“Master Han Fei”) appears as Han Feizi.
All romanizations in the bibliographies and notes remain in their original form in
order to facilitate locating these sources. We have provided a complete table
comparing the Pinyin and older Wade-Giles systems of romanization following
this Preface.

We, the editors, have tried to balance a desire for consistency in the use of

specialized terms with the variety of senses many of these terms have within the
range of texts presented here, as well as with the different sensibilities and styles
of the individual translators. In cases where a certain important term of art is
rendered in different ways, we have provided notes alerting readers and directing
their attention to the other occurrences and translations.

We would like to thank the contributors to this volume for their work and their

patience with us throughout the editorial process. Edward G. “Ted” Slingerland
III, a member of the Department of Asian Studies at the University of British
Columbia, translated The Analects of Kongzi (“Confucius”); Paul Kjellberg,
Chair of the Philosophy Department at Whittier College, contributed the
selections from the Zhuangzi and on the thought of Yang Zhu; Eric L. Hutton, a
member of the Philosophy Department of University of Utah, translated parts of
the Xunzi; and Joel Sahleen, from the Department of Asian Languages at
Stanford University, contributed selections from the Han Feizi. We, the editors,
contributed the remaining translations of the Mozi, Mengzi (Mencius), and Laozi
(The Daodejing), as well as the selections representing the thought of Gongsun
Longzi.

We would like to thank Robert B. Rama and Jeremy R. Robinson for their

help in preparing the manuscript for this volume. Denin Lee provided invaluable
assistance in locating and helping to reproduce the illustrations of individual
philosophers that appear at the beginning of each chapter. Mark
Csikszentmihalyi, Shari Ruei-hua Epstein, Eirik Harris, T. C. “Jack” Kline III,
Pauline Chen Lee, Shuen-fu Lin, and Eric Schwitzgebel offered very helpful
corrections and comments on various parts of earlier drafts of the manuscript.

COMPARATIVE

ROMANIZATION TABLE

The following conversion table is provided in order to allow the reader to

keep track of and convert between the Pinyin and Wade-Giles systems of
romanization.

INTRODUCTION

Chinese history and thought extend much farther back in time than the period

covered in this volume, though it is fair to say that philosophy—in the sense of
self-conscious reflection upon, modification, and defense of one’s views—
begins with the debate between Kongzi and Mozi. Nevertheless, a general sense
of the trajectory of Chinese thought prior to this period and some understanding
of the shape of the intellectual landscape on the eve of the age represented here
will help the reader to appreciate more deeply the views of the thinkers
presented.

The earliest substantial written documents we have from China are carved

onto bone and shell or etched onto ritual vessels of bronze. These incised
inscriptions, together with other modern archeological discoveries, have allowed
scholars to reconstruct speculative yet intriguing pictures of very early Chinese
society and culture.1 Most of the so-called “oracle bone inscriptions” date from
around the twelfth to mid-eleventh century B.C.E., the closing years of the Shang
dynasty.2 They record the queries of royal diviners—often the king himself—
who sought the advice and assistance of various ancestral and Nature spirits.
Ritual vessel inscriptions, which date from the Shang and continue, in their high
form, on down through the eighth century B.C.E., in the period known as the
Western Zhou dynasty, also provide a wealth of information concerning very
early Chinese elite culture, particularly many of its religious views.3

These sources describe a precarious world, saturated with unruly and

unpredictable spiritual powers. Above there was Shang Di
, “The Lord on

High,” a powerful and only vaguely understood spirit who controlled the forces
of nature and largely determined the fate of human beings. Unlike ancestral
spirits and even the spirits of Nature, Shang Diw as so remote from human
concerns and so far from human understanding that he could not be approached
directly. Other spirits and particularly ancestral spirits, though, could appeal to
Shang Di on behalf of their living descendants and solicit his support for their
all-too-human endeavors.

The majority of oracular and bronze vessel inscriptions record attempts by the

ruling members of Shang and Zhou society to influence the spirits through ritual
supplication and sacrifice. Those appeals that are directed specifically at
ancestral spirits are among the clearest early expressions of “ancestor worship,”
and, given our concern with the development of philosophy, it is interesting that
even at this early stage we find an explicit concern with the inner life of the

worshipper. For these inscriptions make clear that sacrifice was not simply an
external behavior; in order for one’s sacrifice to be accepted by the appropriate
spirit, one had to offer it with the proper inner attitudes and feelings of respect
and reverence. Moreover, it was thought that with enough effort of the right sort,
one could cultivate the appropriate attitudes and feelings.

In early Chinese religious thought, ancestral spirits bridge what in other

traditions often looms as an abyss between the spiritual and human worlds.
There is no fundamental metaphysical rupture in the cosmos; at the very least,
living human beings have concerned representatives in the spiritual world who
can temper and appeal to more remote and recalcitrant forces. This gives early
and even later Chinese religious thought a distinctively “this-worldly”
orientation, and it had a profound influence on the shape and style of later
philosophical reflection.

Another fascinating and productive aspect of this complex of beliefs, attitudes,

and practices is the attention early diviners paid to keeping track of their past
interactions with the spiritual world. Shang diviners kept extensive records of
their oracular activities; these included notes concerning the consequences that
resulted from following the advice derived through divination. K. C. Chang
argues that these records were kept in the belief that by studying these past
records thoughtful individuals could discern the most reliable patterns of
productive human-spirit interaction.4 He further suggests that such practices
deeply influenced later Chinese conceptions of and attitudes toward history and
in particular the value and role of historical precedent.

Together, these beliefs about the role of ancestral spirits and the wisdom of

history laid the foundation for beliefs and attitudes that shaped and endured
throughout the Chinese tradition, particularly in the tradition of the “Erudites” or
“Confucians.” They in particular preserved and elaborated on the idea that by
keeping the lessons of the past in one’s mind and the ancestors in one’s heart,
one could find a way through a dangerous and unpredictable world. These ideas
find various expressions in the later philosophical literature. Different thinkers
defend tradition on a variety of grounds, extending from a fundamental faith in a
past golden age preserved in traditional cultural forms, to more subtle defenses
of the accumulated authoritative force of efficacious precedents. As Benjamin
Schwartz has pointed out, the unique part the ancestors played as mediators
between the human and spiritual world lends itself to a form of life in which
finding and fulfilling one’s designated familial and social roles—whatever these
might be in a particular case—allows one to take one’s proper place in a
harmonious universal scheme that worked for the benefit of all.5 The fact that

such family-based roles also appear to be “natural” further reinforces this
general conceptual scheme and opens up a way—that was taken by some of the
thinkers we present here—to provide a more naturalized account of this early
conception of the good human life.

When the Shang were overthrown and their conquerors founded the Zhou

dynasty, we find the beginning of a tendency to “naturalize” and in a certain
sense domesticate aspects of earlier Shang belief.6 By “naturalize” we mean a
preference for accounts of actions and events in terms of systematic, natural
phenomena rather than spiritual power. For example, while the early Zhou rulers
appear to have promoted the idea that their supreme deity Tian
(literally

“Heaven” or “sky”) was identical to the earlier Shang Di, with the passage of
time Tian came to be thought of as the structure or disposition of the universe
itself, as opposed to an entity or being with consciousness and intention. This
transition is clear in texts like the Analects, where one finds both conceptions of
Heaven as an active agent and conceptions of Heaven as the natural order of
things. Another idea that manifests what we are calling the trend toward
naturalized accounts is the notion of Tianming
, “Heaven’s Mandate,” which

the Zhou invoked to justify their conquest of the Shang. The idea was that
Heaven confers its “mandate” to rule on those who best represent its interests
and concerns for humankind. The Zhou portrayed the last Shang kings as
drunken, self-serving despots who had forsaken their role-specific obligations
and indulged their passions, thus bringing chaos to the world. As a consequence
of this ethically reprehensible behavior, they were stripped of the mandate to
rule.7 This “naturalizes” the earlier scheme in the sense that now an individual’s
intentional actions and chosen way of life directly define their relationship with
the spirit world and determine who secures and maintains Heaven’s favor. The
shift to a new conception of Heaven and the appeal to Heaven’s Mandate also
domesticate earlier Shang beliefs in the sense that they open up the workings of
the world to broader human understanding and control. In Shang times, the spirit
world was largely beyond direct human understanding; oracular inquiries were
like scouting parties, sent out into potentially hostile territory in search of
strategically useful information. And even such indirect knowledge and partial
control of the spiritual world was limited to royal diviners. In the emerging Zhou
worldview, anyone was potentially capable of understanding and harnessing the
ethical power of Heaven.8

Later thinkers offer very different and at times conflicting accounts of the

Western Zhou and its exemplary individuals, but there is broad agreement that
this period was one of remarkable internal stability, peace, and prosperity. And

there is as yet no evidence available that would cause one to doubt such a claim.
But given the newly developed views discussed above—which claim that an
ethically superior ruler is necessary for sustained and successful government—
such an age was destined to come to an end, for there is always the threat of
moral rot. According to traditional accounts, the fall of the Western Zhou was
the result of its last king’s lack of virtue. It seems that King You was deeply
enamored of his concubine Bao Si and indulged himself by amusing her. Bao Si
in turn was terribly fond of having the king light the series of beacon fires that
were supposed to be used to summon his vassals from surrounding territories in
times of attack. And so, even though there was no danger of attack, he would
have the fires lit for her amusement. His vassals would gather their forces and
rush to the capital, only to find that it was a false alarm. After a number of such
false alarms, they stopped coming and hence were not there when the real attack
came, toppled his regime, and forced the remnants of the Zhou court to flee and
found a new capital far to the east.9 From this we are to see how self-indulgence
weakens the power of a ruler, and that eventually such conduct will result in the
loss of Heaven’s Mandate to rule. Political failure follows closely upon the heals
of moral decay, and both are regarded as being largely within an individual’s
control.10 These distinctive characteristics of Zhou religious, ethical, and
political thought became central features of much of later Chinese philosophy.

From the perspective of the present work, the Eastern Zhou marks the dawn of

the “classical period” of Chinese philosophy. It begins with Kongzi
(“Confucius”), in a period when China consisted of a number of increasingly
independent states, and culminates with Han Feizi, with the unification of central
China under a new dynasty known as the Qin.11 Of the nine thinkers covered,
three—Kongzi, Mengzi, and Xunzi—are from what came to be called the Ru
(“Erudite” or “Confucian”) tradition and two—Laozi and Zhuangzi—are from
the more loosely affiliated group of thinkers later called the Daojia (“Daoist
School”).12 In addition, there are selections from Mozi, founder and leader of the
fascinating, powerful, and highly organized movement known as the Mojia
(“Mohist School”), from Gongsun Longzi, a member of the Mingjia (“School of
Names” or “Sophists”), from a “Yangist” text (one influenced by the thought of
Yang Zhu), and from Han Feizi, an incisive, eloquent, and influential
representative of the Fajia (“Legalist School”).

As will be clear from the notes and appendices included in this volume, this

selection of writings by no means exhausts or even fully represents the range of
thinkers who lived, thought, argued, and wrote during this period.13 There was a
remarkably wide variety of thinkers active during this time in early China, a fact

reflected in another name for this age: the baijia
, “hundred schools,” period.

Even among the thinkers we present here, one finds a broad range of
philosophical views. There are reflective defenders of tradition, ethical
sensibility theorists, nature mystics, consequentialists, and egoists as well as
those who present a purely political theory of state organization and control. One
finds a variety of visions of the good life, ranging from those who insist that only
the right kind of society presents human beings with a way to live complete and
satisfying lives, to those who argue that any self-conscious attempt to produce a
good life will inevitably be contaminated and undermined by such effort. For
proponents of this latter view, the only solution is to stop trying to find a solution
and allow oneself to fall back into the preexisting harmony of Nature. Many of
these different views rest on explicit or implied views about the character of
human nature, and here again we see remarkable variety. This is true even in the
case of the founder and first two most eminent defenders of Confucianism—
Kongzi, Mengzi, and Xunzi—who shared a significant number of commitments
and looked to a common historical and textual heritage.

The thinkers of the hundred schools period disagreed not only in theory but

also with each other. That is to say, not only were their views in conflict, but they
themselves often argued with one another. Such exchanges led to greater
philosophical sophistication, with thinkers responding to and often adapting each
other’s views in order to enhance their own positions. The careful reader will be
able to see numerous examples of such disagreement and mutual borrowing in
the selections presented here, and understanding this aspect of philosophical life
during this period is important for a full appreciation of the lively and creative
spirit of the time.

The intellectual variety seen among the early philosophers represented here

did not stop with this first “classical period.” Throughout subsequent history
Chinese thinkers continued to produce philosophical views of stunning
originality and power. While certain early schools of thought died out, their
influence remained and is clearly reflected in the thought of their more long-
lived competitors.14 Over time, other, non-Chinese traditions of thought came
and profoundly influenced indigenous traditions. For example, Buddhism, which
arrived in China sometime around the first century C.E., generated a fundamental
and enduring transformation of every active philosophical school.

The most important lesson to take away from this rich and complex history is

that “Chinese philosophy” is not a single theory, thinker, or tradition but rather a
diverse and lively conversation that has been going on for more than twenty-five
hundred years and that is still active and evolving in our own time. And so
Readings in Classical Chinese Philosophy might more accurately be entitled