Confucian Discourse and Chu Hsi's Ascendancy by Hoyt Cleveland Tillman

by Hoyt Cleveland Tillman

A major transformation in thought took place during the Southern Sung (1127-1279). A new version of Confucian teaching, Tao-hsueh Confucianism (what modern scholars sometimes refer to as Neo-Confucianism), became state orthodoxy, a privileged status which it retained until the twentieth century.Existing studies of the new Confucianism generally depict a single line of development to and from Chu Hsi (1130-1200), the greatest theoretician of the tradition. In this study of unprecedented scope, however, Hoyt Cleveland Tillman offers an integrated intellectual history of the development of Tao-hsueh Confucianism which for the first time places Chu Hsi within the context of his contemporaries. Tillman's methodological strategy allows a rich, complex picture of the Tao-hsueh movement to emerge - one that is sure to transform the field of Sung Confucianism.To reconstruct the evolution of the Tao-hsueh group, Tillman studies a number of Confucians from four distinct periods, reflecting the basic diversity that existed among them. His discussion is deeply grounded in political and philosophical history and in research on the social networks that joined the members of the Tao-hsueh group. Within this framework, he provides a vivid account of the changing scope of the movement, tracing its development into a "fellowship" and at times a political faction and demonstrating its movement from diversity to gradually increasing exclusiveness, particularly under the influence of Chu Hsi. Close attention is given to confrontational writings and debates within the group, which covered such issues as humaneness, the function of the mind, uses of the Book of Changes, social welfare programs, teaching methods, expediency, and the grounds for knowledge and authority.A superbly erudite work, Confucian Discourse and Chu Hsi's Ascendancy is an invaluable contribution to the study of the history of Confucian thought in China.

Hardcover

First published October 1, 1992

Reviews

[Jesse Field · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tillman expands here on his chapter in the The Cambridge History of China, Volume 5: The Five Dynasties and Sung China, 960-1279 AD, Part 2, on the Daoxue “fellowship,” the diverse circle of like-minded Confucian scholars who, sidelined at the time, would much later find their writings institutionalized as orthodox thought. Zhu Xi very deliberately built up the seniority to claim leadership of the school, but he was preceded by a set of figures including Zhang Jiucheng, Hu Hong, and Zhang Shi. Zhu Xi’s accomplishment as a system builder shines in comparison to these earlier figures, but also we can get a sense of the platform that Zhu Xi builds on, yet sometimes elides, in his own version of the history of Chinese thought. Profiles of his contemporaries, including his best friend, Lü Zuqian, and two major critics of his thinking, Chen Liang and Lu Jiuyuan, add even more depth to what was happening intellectually in the second half of the 12th century, as the Southern Song scrambled to respond to Jurchen defeats and the evolving political and social constitution of the reduced Song empire. Tillman demonstrates enviable fluency in the primary sources here, especially the great numbers of letters exchanged between the men, as well as speeches, eulogies, exam essays, and of course scholarly essays and commentaries on the classics. This group of thinkers forms an avenue to approach, or re-approach, ethics and politics and cosmology, via classics, but especially the Mencius, the Book of Changes, and Chinese historiography.

One challenge Tillman faces is to relate biographical data, including the social and political context, for the group. There isn’t quite a dramatic approach to the writing the Southern Song as setting here, but we can synthesize setting from various peeks  throughout the chapters, and fellowship members are all definitely characters. Tillman quotes James Liu finding that as early as the 11th century, these curious new Daoxue Confucians all wore a kind of "tall hat with a pointed top" and "they sat squarely with their back erect, walked in measured steps looking straight ahead." One of the older thinkers, Zhang Jiucheng, became close friends with Dahui Zonggao, a Chan monk of the Linji (Renzai school), but later on, their little circle grew more exclusive, with "Buddhist" thrown about as an insult among them. Another great thinker, Lü Zuqian, is part of the story of a proud family of scholars, people who brought a huge library down from the North when their state was defeated by the Jurchens, and who hung tenaciously on to the sense of national government and "this Dao of ours" through education and philosophy, history and literature, with a long-term plan to take the country back. Part of the reason Zhu Xi seems to have become undisputed founder of the school, while Lü Zuqian was largely forgotten, is that the more aristocratic, historical, and erudite thinker was also less punchy, irascible, and uncompromising, so he wasn't as good at creating the sense of a closed and exclusive community of orthodox thinking.

As bemusing as these biographies are on their own, the core interest here is what the fellowship was arguing over and writing about for decades on end: how to get “this Dao of ours” back into focus, and put the Chinese people on a political-moral-cosmological track to greatness and prosperity.  Reading Tillman or any of the primary sources calls on us to imagine a lost social class: the Confucian scholar, or shi. It’s easy to make fun of these people as pedants and reactionaries, usually falling on a range somewhere between rabid authoritarians and obscurantist mystics. Confucian thought aimed toward stabilizing society and improving political institutions, but always attempted to do so with reference to abstract and metaphysical terms and principles, like the Dao, and mind, and inner nature, and Heaven and the cosmos. Not a single practical philosopher emerges but he undertakes a commentary and interpretation of the Book of Changes, and not even the most humanistic of the bunch could get away from the vague sense that humanity was the center of a concerned and correspondent universe. And this tied up their philosophy in knots, obscuring the distinction between fact and opinion, and between norm and observation. Chen Liang, another historical mind, perceived that Chinese historiography is severely limited by Confucius' original bowdlerization and idealization of the Three Dynasties of Antiquity; with no factual basis for the Three Dynasties, then all later histories are seen as failed attempts to reconstruct utopias. Sad!

This is a rigorous, yet readable account of an extremely complex and at times dry chapter of the intellectual history of the world. As Tillman says, we do need to extend our feelers further into the entangled web, refining our sense of the Zhu Xi's and their heritage, and picking out the Lü Zuqians and understanding how and why they were left behind. Mad respect to these men of ancient times who did a lot to generate durable ethical frameworks and implemented them in real social and political institutions. Before we move to dismiss them, we should probably compare their achievements with what gaps remain in human thought today.