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Review of Bol's Neo-Confucianism in History, May 16, 2009
This review is from: Neo-Confucianism in History (Harvard East Asian Monographs) (Hardcover)
For a long time students of Neo-Confucianism are yearning for a thorough examination on and fruition of research in recent decades in English world on Neo-Confucianism transcending the traditional narrative. Bol's lucubration tentatively quenched their thirst. Neo-Confucianism in History, based on 500-odd materials (in which roughly one fifth are original materials), vivified via a distinct perspective the Neo-Confucianism trend as an active engagement of intellects in history in making the ongoing history.
This book can be read in a way dividing the intact volume into 2 parts. First part consists of chapter 1-3, which lays the foundation for further discussion and is by their own right an overview of Neo-Confucianism's historical setting or an "external" history of it. The second part that consists of the remaining 4 chapters is delineated by the closing section of chapter 3, where "approach and questions" and the curiosity-arousing "appendix" appear. Chapter 3 overarches the whole narrative and discussion of the book. "Approach" vested 3 functions in Neo-Confucianism, i.e. as position to take, as identity to assume and as social movement to be engaged in, these are independent functions, but not mutually exclusive.
Bol has a vision. His book is not only a survey of Neo-Confucianism in history, but also a declaration of war on the traditionalists in writing Neo-Confucianism in the past decades. Although his arsenal is stored with ammunitions supplied by precedent historians, but the commander is nobody than Bol himself. What the brave new world Bol is going to envision after fighting the battle? - I think the clauses prescribed in his introduction describe it clearly. By negating previously and even today prevailing ideas that Neo-Confucianism is merely ideological justification of imperial rules, Bol stood out from the crowed of philosophically minded and the historically minded friends and foes. (One of his foes is Yu Yingshi, whose understanding of Neo-Confucianism is rebutted in p. 114 in a rather rhetorically sarcastic tone. How author view the Neo-Confucianism, if he goes against traditional view that it's merely an ideological justification to which author had shown his dissent? His view is that Neo-Confucianism has something to offer to the literati who are with great ambitions and poor prospects, i.e. education, connection, self-justification, opportunities for local leadership, and ways of acting morally.) The emphasis given to Neo-Confucianism on both historical side and philosophical side made him either/neither an historian or/nor a philosopher. In the contrary, this soldier, armored with philosophy panoply, thrusting his history spare, defending the Neo-Confucianism he construed.
This book is well structured. The Contents is a cogent outline of the whole volume. It starts with a comparison between the world of 750 and 1050 (the era framing the period of the collapse of Tang and consolidation of Song power), in the eye of an imagined shi in 1050, from 4 perspectives, namely: foreign relations (with "the rest of the world", mainly the dynasties in north and northwest), differences in development in north and south, commerce and urbanization and social change. This laid down the ground on which Neo-Confucianism developed from a minor opposing force to the main stream.
The great upheaval and turmoil during this transition era left agony in people's memory, which in turn changed people's perspective in reading state and themselves. Those people in our consideration are the literati, perceived by today as poets, statesmen, literary figures and so on. But at their own time, their identities are not constrained in these categories; rather they are the thumbs of intelligences. Different perspectives these people advocated to great extent determined the fundamental ideas of intellectual schools emanated from them, they are Wang Anshi's New Policy, Sima Guang's historical philosophy, Su's literary and creative spontaneity and Chengs' Dao xue (Neo-Confucianism). Would these eminent figures fight for their dominance in intellectual world or corporate with each other in state building?
Hence the book goes to chapter 2: on "Searching for New Foundation". The chapter starts with this question: What the goals for the times (c.a. 1050) should be and how they could be attained? To facilitate readers to understand the significance of this question, as an historian, Bol briefed reader with the shifting context by emphasizing on some trends and developments conceived of at that time:
1. Politicization of learning: national debate on what Song should achieve (Wang's New Policy and a national education system's implementation)
2. Undermining of ideological foundation of empire: imperial rhetoric fell into destitute
3. Imposition of an ideological program on government: e.g. Wang Anshi's Neo Policies.
Bol noticed a changing attitude toward learning that learning meant cultivating the grounds of independent judgment in oneself created greater intellectual uncertainty amongst literati. At the time when a number of leading figures advocating their own understanding of the country and heaven-and-earth, a Song literatus thus realized and believed that it's, rather than returning to antiquity, realizing in oneself the process by which the sages were able to create things of enduring values mattered (p. 69). As this belief gained popularity, literati started to align themselves with men who were believed had the answers. In the title Bol used an -ing form, i.e. "searching for", to depict the continuous and tenacious endeavor of Song people in searching for a foundation for the heaven-and-earth and themselves on the ruin of great Tang tradition. Either Wang's New Policy or Chengs' Neo-Confucianism was a part in this continuum. And it is New Policy which occupied the central stage, in contrast to Neo-Confucianism which outside the pale of New Policy's domain developed. New Policy's feasibility in changing the world is negated retrospectively by Cheng Yi in his eulogy to his brother that "even thought good government did not exist, literati could still understand the Way of it by studying about it indirectly through others, and they could transmit that to later times." And Neo-Confucianism's capability in doing so is reinforced, since "once there were no more true Confucians, everyone was lost, they did not know where to turn", it reads: if there are true Confucians, everyone knows where to turn. (p. 84)
By asking "How they (Neo-Confucians) saw their relationship to political power and the state system", the first part concludes and the second part of this book unfolds. This general question later is further refined into some questions in particular, the are: 1. How Neo-Confucians understood their relation to the imperial state and politics, 2. Their concept of learning as self-justification and practice, 3. The beliefs that were necessary for their learning to be effective, and 4. Their works among the literati and in local society. - The following 4 chapters, as we may make the guess, are answers to there questions.
In this second part there are four chapters, i.e. politics, learning, belief and social movement. The first "Politics" chapter discussed the questions that how Neo-Confucianism provides literati a new form of ruler-ruled relationship when old Han-Tang style relationship lost its attractiveness by subjecting both side into the ongoing procedure of learning, in which the ruler may acquire assistance from the ruled literati, who are in the exact sense the Neo-Confucians, for they know the way, which in turn empowered them with morality and therefore, authority. - The stage of this development on which the story unfolded is the greatly altered social context during Tang-Song transition, where old ideas supporting autocracy lost its credit, and it's needed to have some refreshing ideas to justify the ruler-ruled relationship. At Song time, as the new paradigm of ruler-ruled relationship was accepted, the literati now had such a conviction that power is the product of morality, which is the product of self-cultivating universal quality endowed in human beings. The process of the self-cultivation is learning, which is the topic of Chapter 5, the second part of part 2.
Bol introduces theory of learning by analyzing the historical development of Zhang Zai and Cheng/Zhu's theories on qi and li, and concludes that despite contentions between these two schools, both agreed on it that li (coherence) exists in the myriad things under heaven, and heaven-and-earth is a larger coherent whole (p. 168). A transformation from uninitiated mental state to being aware of li and thereon responding to the world spontaneously is the necessary condition for anyone pursuing sagehood as proofed by the unfolding of the history of antiquity and achievements of sages/sage-kings. Learning is the process by which this transformation takes place. (pp. 168-72)
Learning as a series of activities contains 2 steps. The first is to grasp the li coherence of external world by observing it. By doing so the observer realizes the coherence inside himself in his mind, - this is to be achieved at the second step, which also leads to the state of being aware of and maintaining the coherence in his mind. (pp. 172-3) Therefore the mind was made central to learning at Song; although it's not until Wang Yangming's time, "mind" is deemed as li. For Song Neo-Confucians, mind is the agency, "nature" is li.
Their incapability of providing logically concrete arguments for the thesis of Zhu Xi and for the antithesis of Wang Yangming (this is argued at the closing of this chapter) gives Bol the hint that the Neo-Confucianism is based on belief. (pp. 193-5). This is the topic of the third chapter (Chapter 6, Belief) of part 2...
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