ABSTRACT
Prior to the so-called da-yi-tong (大一統 the great unity) in the political system of the Qin (秦) and Han (漢) dynasties, the Warring States period (戰國時代) was in chaos not only in terms of the political situation and social order, but also in terms of the intellectual climate and ideology. The breakdown of political and social norms in terms of ‘rites and music’ in the later Zhou (周) dynasty gave rise to a consciousness of crisis. In dealing with the crisis and in searching for a solution, some thinkers and scholars wanted to revive or reconstruct the old tradition of the Zhou norms. This was the effort made by the ancient Confucians (Ru-jia 儒家), including Confucius (孔 子), Mencius (孟子), and Xun Zi (荀子), who adopted a moral approach and believed that morality was the real power for changing the world. Some others were extremely disappointed with the function of the old tradition or any other normative idea for changing the reality of the situation from chaos to orderliness. Instead of changing the world, they wished to escape from the prevailing socio-political predicament and tried to achieve a kind of personal spiritual freedom as their ideal of life. This was the ultimate concern of the Daoists (Dao-jia 道家), including Lao Zi (老子) and Zhuang Zi (莊子), who adopted an onto-cosmological or aesthetic-cum-mystical approach and rejected the Confucian project of revisionism. For the Daoists, entertaining personal spiritual freedom is much more significant than constructing a social and political order. Confucianism and Daoism were the two main trends of humanistic thought in ancient China. Through their humanistic thinking, adherents of the former wished to change the actual world from chaos to orderliness while those of the latter desired to elevate themselves from the actual world of political darkness to an ideal world of spiritual brightness. However, the Confucians were unable to realize their project of reconstruction, while the Daoists did not, and would not wish to, have any positive project for the transformation of gloomy reality. In reality, the idea of social control and political monopoly promoted by the Legalists (Fa-jia 法 家) and other purveyors of social and political engineering, such as those of the school of Vertical and Horizontal Alliances (Cong-heng-jia 縱橫家), was welcomed
by most political leaders and increasingly became the dominant ideology prior to the Qin and the Han dynasties. However, when the Han rulers began to control China in a state of ‘great unity’, it was important or even necessary for them to find a new ideology of the empire. The Daoists did not provide any ideology for the construction of an empire. The Confucians seemed to have an ideology for social order but did not provide any good justification of political dictatorship and social control, whereas the Legalists were able to provide techniques and mechanisms of political monopoly and social control but without a legitimizing rationale for the empire’s political power. So, the new situation of ‘great unity’ presented the challenge of political reconstruction – hence the effort of Han elites in searching for a new ideology of the empire. As indicated by some modern Chinese scholars in the field of pre-Qin history, the term di (帝) or tian-di (天帝 the emperor of Heaven) was used during the Shang (商) dynasty as a symbol for the origin of political power on Earth. It means that the legitimacy of an emperor’s political power on Earth comes from the religious power of the emperor of Heaven. Some members of the Shang ruling class even identified tian-di as their ancestor-god who was supposed to have absolute power over their prosperity and the success of their political enterprise in the human world. The founding members of the Zhou dynasty, wishing to diminish the effect of this kind of legitimacy, used the terms tian (天) and tian-dao (天道) to replace di and tian-di, respectively, and claimed that ‘there is no relative of the tian on Earth; only humans’ virtuous performance can evoke Heaven’s assistance’.1 They declared that the reason why the Zhou dynasty were able to replace the Shang dynasty was that the Zhou rulers were virtuous and loved their people while the Shang leaders were tyrants, and therefore had been deprived of power by the tian. Confucius still accepted the melody of this virtueoriented reasoning as justifying a political power but minimized the role played by the tian as a kind of supernatural power. In this regard, the emergence of the idea of ren (仁 benevolence) in Confucius’ thought reflected this wish to distinguish the political function from the idea of tian; and he used the concept of ren as a moral ground to establish and justify his ideal of social and political order. As argued by Xu Fuguan (徐復觀) and Mou Zongsan (牟宗三),2 to appeal to the tian as a religious ground to legitimize a political power was ineffectual in the later period of the Zhou dynasty – the Spring and Autumn period (春秋時代) and the Warring States period – because the foundation of the feudalism established in the early Zhou period had by then been broken and people no longer recognized the ethico-religious symbolism of the traditional political culture as a valid tool of legitimization. In comparison to the religious heteronomy of the tian’s function in political culture, to appeal to ethical practice and moral autonomy seems to be a feasible alternative for Confucius to reconstruct an ideal of social and political order. Confucius’ main concern, as reported in some classical texts, was to rectify and reconstruct the social and political order of the Zhou dynasty. His social and political theses were not based on the traditional religious culture of China, but grounded in his ideas of moral psychology, action theory and virtue ethics. In this sense, we can say that Confucius was a ‘moral humanist’. Confucius and Mencius did not succeed in persuading the political leaders of their time to adopt their moral-political project. They failed because their project could not
help the political leaders extend their political power and establish a united empire. So, the Qin rulers of the Warring States period adopted the legalistic project and eventually succeeded in unifying China into the first empire in Chinese history. However, the empire lasted only about fifteen years and quickly collapsed. By sheer force of arms, coupled with the ruthless ideology of the Legalists, the Qin rulers succeeded in conquering all their rivals, but they did not have the ideas and policies with which to maintain their sovereignty. This may be the reason why Lu Jia (陸賈 ?–170 BCE), based on the historical experience of the collapse of Qin, recommended: ‘An empire can be conquered from the horseback [by military force], but not ruled from the horseback [by military force]’; it may also explain why his recommendation was attractive and welcome to the Han leaders. They realized that not only the legalistic idea of li (力 force) but also the Confucian idea of de (德 virtue) could not be the foundation for a way of ruling an empire effectively. It implies that the humanistic thinking of the pre-Qin period was also considered unworkable in the new situation. In this regard, the thinkers and advisors of the Han leaders were required to search for a new ideology of the empire. However, the Han thinkers did not start their project from scratch: they borrowed some earlier ideas from the pre-Qin thinkers. In constructing their ideology, some borrowed the Confucian idea of tian-ming (天命 mandate of Heaven) and others adopted the Daoist idea of wu-wei (無為 non-doing, non-action, or non-activity). In one sense, their ideology was not an innovation; but, when these ideas were put together and embedded within a formal structure of yin-yang (陰陽) and wu-xing (五行 five elements, phases, or agents), as we will see later, the old ideas were assigned with new meanings within the framework. So, there happened a kind of chemical change or, in a loose sense, a paradigm shift. As mentioned above, the foundation of the feudalism established in the early Zhou dynasty had been broken in the later period and people in that period did not recognize the ethico-religious symbolism of the traditional political culture as a valid tool of legitimization. But in the Han thinkers’ minds, the tian-ming has been transformed from a deified power to a naturalistic force. Their concept of wu-wei has been enriched with much more political import than the original idea of Zhuang Zi. This is one of the reasons why I say that the old ideas had a new life in the later era. Gu Jiegang (顧頡剛) has demonstrated this change by saying:
Yin-yang and wu-xing is the framework of the Han people’s thought. Whether in religion, politics or academics, there was no thought which did not use this way of thinking. To investigate the origin of this thinking, [I think] it was coming from the need of classification for all the things in the universe . . . The consequence was that there was the thesis of yin-yang which could be used to unify all the natural phenomena, such as Heaven and Earth, day and night, male and female, and the abstract ideas, such as superior and inferior, motion and stillness, hardness and softness. There was also the thesis of wu-xing which could be used to unify seasons, directions, spirits, rhythms, colors of clothes, foods, smells, virtues and even the systems of emperors and the institutions of nations in accord with the five materials of wood, fire, earth, metal and water and their functions.3
