Origins of Moral-Political Philosophy in Early China: Contestation of Humaneness, Justice, and Personal Freedom

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This book rewrites the story of classical Chinese philosophy, which has always been considered the single most creative and vibrant chapter in the history of Chinese philosophy. Works attributed to Confucius, Mozi, Mencius, Laozi, Zhuangzi, Xunzi, Han Feizi and many others represent the very origins of moral and political thinking in China. As testimony to their enduring stature, in recent decades many Chinese intellectuals, and even leading politicians, have turned to those classics, especially Confucian texts, for alternative or complementary sources of moral authority and political legitimacy. Therefore, philosophical inquiries into core normative values embedded in those classical texts are crucial to the ongoing scholarly discussion about China as China turns more culturally inward. It can also contribute to the spirited contemporary debate about the nature of philosophical reasoning, especially in the non-Western traditions.This book offers a new narrative and interpretative framework about the origins of moral-political philosophy that tracks how the three normative values, humaneness, justice, and personal freedom, were formulated, reformulated, and contested by early Chinese philosophers in their effort to negotiate the relationship among three distinct domains, the personal, the familial, and the political. Such efforts took place as those thinkers were reimagining a new moral-political order, debating its guiding norms, and exploring possible sources within the context of an evolving understanding of Heaven and its relationship with the humans. Tao Jiang argues that the competing visions in that debate can be characterized as a contestation between partialist humaneness and impartialist justice as the guiding norm for the newly imagined moral-political order, with the Confucians, the Mohists, the Laoists, and the so-called fajia thinkers being the major participants, constituting the mainstream philosophical project during this period. Thinkers lined up differently along the justice-humaneness spectrum with earlier ones maintaining some continuity between the two normative values (or at least trying to accommodate both to some extent) while later ones leaning more toward their exclusivity in the political/public domain. Zhuangzi and the Zhuangists were the outliers of the mainstream moral-political debate who rejected the very parameter of humaneness versus justice in that discourse. They were a lone voice advocating personal freedom, but the Zhuangist expressions of freedom were self-restricted to the margins of the political world and the interiority of one's heartmind. Such a take can shed new light on how the Zhuangist approach to personal freedom would profoundly impact the development of this idea in pre-modern Chinese political and intellectual history. Cover Origins of Moral-Political Philosophy in Early China Copyright Dedication Contents Acknowledgments Introduction §1. Chinese Philosophy in the Western Academy: Between Sinology and Philosophy §2. Sinological Challenge Concerning Classical Chinese Philosophy 2.1. The Problem of Authorship in Philosophical Interpretations 2.2. A Case Study of Authorship: Contemporary Debate on the Zhuangzi 2.3. Multiple Roles of Authorship 2.4. Sinology and Philosophy on Authorship and Textual Coherence 2.5. Two Sets of Scholarly Objects: Sinological versus Philosophical 2.6. Three Roles of Sinology in Chinese Philosophy: Preparer, Challenger, and Jailbreaker §3. The Politics of Chinese Philosophy in the West: Some Recent Developments 3.1. An Uproar in America 3.2. A Controversy in Europe §4. Origins of Moral-​Political Philosophy in Early China 4.1 Contestation of Humaneness, Justice, and Personal Freedom 4.2. Summary of Chapters Part 1 1. Ritual and Ren in Confucius’s World: Humaneness-​cum-​Justice at the Incipience of Chinese Moral-​Political Philosophy §1. Situating Confucius and the Analects §2. Confucius and the Mandate of Heaven 2.1. The Mandate of Heaven and the Justice Turn in Chinese History 2.2. Confucius’s Subversive Claim Concerning the Heavenly Mandate §3. Ritualizing the World 3.1. Vicissitudes of Ritual in Early Zhou 3.2. Emergence of Ritual as a Distinct Conceptual Category §4. Confucius’s Ethicization of Ritual: Shifting the Ground of Ritual from Heaven to Ren 4.1. Ren: A New and Contested Ground of Ritual 4.2. Ren as Humaneness: Ideal Person, Family, and Polity 4.3. Ren as Justice A. Semantic Argument B. Philosophical Argument: Ren and the Golden Rule in the Analects 4.4. Continuum between Humaneness and Justice in Confucius’s Ren §5. After Confucius: Early Confucianism in the Excavated Bamboo-​Slip Manuscripts 5.1. Scholarly Disputations about the Excavated Texts 5.2. Confucian Discourse in the Guodian Manuscripts A. Tian (Heaven), Ming (Mandate or Fate), and Xing (Human Nature) B. Unity of Virtues and the Imperative of Self-​Cultivation §6. Conclusion: Humaneness-​cum-​Justice in Confucius’s Moral-​Political Project Part II 2. The Great Divergence: Mozi and Mencius on Justice and Humaneness §1. Mozi: The Pioneer of Universal Justice in Chinese History 1.1. Mozi and the Mohist Project 1.2. Heaven, Ghosts, and Spirits in the Mohist Cosmos: Caring Supernatural Agents on Human Affairs A. The Supernatural: Confucius versus Mozi B. Tensions in the Mohist Supernatural World 1.3. The Two Legs of Universal Justice in the Mozi: Impartial Care and Objective Standards A. Impartial Care 1) Universal State Consequentialism 2) Golden Rule in the Mozi 3) Impartial Care, Filial Piety, and Moral Motivation B. Objective Standards 1.4. Concluding Mozi: Justice and Its Challenges §2. Mencius: Humaneness, Impartiality, and the Challenge of Family 2.1. From Confucius to Mencius 2.2. Humaneness, Impartiality, and the Challenge of Family A. Normative Mencius: The Ren-​Based Extensionist 1) The Extensionist Interpretation of Mencius 2) Two Moral Roots: Buren 上忍, Qin 親, and Their Relationships with Ren 仁 B. The Case of Shun C. Radical Mencius: The Yi-​Based Sacrificialist 1) Conflict among Desirable Goods 2) Yi and the Imperative of Sacrifice in Mencius’s Thought D. Mencius: The Extensionist versus the Sacrificialist 2.3. The Ambivalence of the Familial in Mencius’s Political Thought A. Dis-​analogy between the Familial and the Political B. Tension among Virtues 2.4. Concluding Mencius: Humaneness and Its Challenges §3. General Conclusion: The Great Divergence between Justice and Humaneness 3. Justice and Humaneness in a Naturalist Cosmos: Laozi’s Dao and the Realignment of Values §1. Contextualizing Laozi and the Daodejing in Light of the Excavated Texts §2. What Is It about? §3. Laozi’s Dao and the Realignment of Values 3.1. Heaven, Dao, and the Naturalist Turn in the Laozi A. Displacing Heaven and Decentering Humans: Cosmogony in the Excavated Texts B. The Primacy of Dao and the Naturalist Turn in the Laozi 3.2. Traces of Mohist Elements in the Laozi 3.3. Justice and Humaneness in Laozi’s Naturalist Cosmos A. Justice as the Way of the Naturalized Heaven B. Laozi’s Critique of the Confucian Universalization of Humaneness C. Laozi’s Separation of the Familial and the Political Norms §4. Laozi’s Metaethical Critique of the Mainstream Moral-​Political Project 4.1. Wuwei and Youwei 4.2. Laozi’s Genealogical Critique of Youwei Values 4.3. Wuwei vs. Youwei: Metaethical and Normative 4.4. Laozi’s Rejection of Universalist (Youwei) Projects §5. Conclusion: Laozi’s Realignment of Values and Its Consequences 4. Modeling the State after Heaven: Impartiality in Early Fajia Political Philosophy §1. Problems with Fajia and Legalism §2. Shen Buhai: A Pioneer of Impartialist Administrative Techniques §3. Shang Yang: An Impartial Institutionalist 3.1. Situating Shang Yang 3.2. Shang Yang’s Political Project A. The Bureaucratic Turn: Professionalization of the Military and the State B. Shang Yang’s Justification for Political Reform C. Shang Yang’s Political Analysis of Human Nature D. An Institutional Solution to the Political Crisis: A Fa-​Based Bureaucratic System E. Conflict of Interests between the Private and the Public 1) Shang Yang’s Diagnosis 2) Shang Yang’s Solution 3) Virtues and the State §4. Shen Dao: Modeling the State after Heaven 4.1. Heaven: From a Supernatural Agent to a Natural System 4.2. A Political System to Channel Human Dispositions to the Benefit of the State A. A Political Approach to Human Dispositions B. Standards and Regularity: Fa 法 C. Authority and Power: Shi 勢 D. Professional Virtues 1) Specialization 2) Professional Virtues versus Moral Virtues 4.3. Modeling the State after Heaven §5. Conclusion: The Bureaucratic Turn and the Problem of the State Part III 5. Zhuangzi’s Lone Project of Personal Freedom §1. Contextualizing Zhuang Zhou and the Zhuangzi §2. Zhuangist Metaphysics: Relationality and Transformation §3. Defending the Personal: Yang Zhu and the Integrity of the Personal §4. Zhuangzi’s Redemption of the Heartmind as the Faculty of Personal Freedom 4.1. Zhuangzi’s Unease in the Confucianized Lifeworld 4.2. The Confucianized Heartmind and the Problem with Knowledge 4.3. Fasting the Heartmind and Attuning It to the Dao §5. Two Spaces of Personal Freedom in the Zhuangzi 5.1. Freedom as Roaming at the Margin of the Lifeworld 5.2. Freedom as Roaming within the Lifeworld §6. Conclusion: Tension between Personal Freedom and Humaneness/​Justice 6. Xunzi’s Synthesis of Humaneness and Justice: Ritual as the Sages’ Partnership with Heaven and Earth §1. Situating Xunzi and His Project §2. The Changing Conceptions of Heaven: From the Heaven of Care to the Heaven of Order §3. The Changing Conception of Ideal Humans: From the Followers of Heaven and Earth (法天地) to Their Partners (參天地) 3.1. Human Nature in Xunzi’s Philosophy 3.2. Artifice/​Deliberate Effort A. Heartmind B. Differentiation and Integration C. Renyi as the Human Source for Care and Rightness 3.3. The Cult of the Sage-​Kings and the Human Constitution of Cosmic Order A. Sage-​Kings as Partners (san 參) of Heaven and Earth B. Accumulation in the Achievement of Sagehood and Moral Order §4. Ritual as the Institution of Humane Justice: A Grand Synthesis of the Heavenly and the Humanly 4.1. The Chaos of Desires and the Origin of Ritual 4.2. Ritual and the Emergence of Moral Agency 4.3. Ritual as the Institution of Humane Justice §5. Conclusion: Xunzi’s Synthesis of Humaneness and Justice 7. Universal Bureaucratic State as the Sole Agent of Justice in Han Feizi’s Thought §1. Han Feizi: The Thinker and the Text §2. Contextualizing Han Feizi’s Conception of Political Order 2.1. Laoist Cosmology 2.2. Repudiating the Confucian XQZP Moral-​Political Ideal A. Between the Personal and the Political B. Between the Familial and the Political C. Han Feizi’s Elevation of the State as the Sole Source and Arbiter of Values §3. Han Feizi’s Statist Political Order 3.1. Its Characters A. Standardization B. Clarity, Transparency, Impartiality, Uniformity, and Reliability 3.2. Its Instruments A. The Two Handles B. Matching Job Performance and Official Charge C. Political Authority 3.3. The Statist Approach to Justice A. Mohist Elements in Han Feizi’s Thought B. Universal Bureaucratic State as the Sole Agent of Justice 3.4. Unresolved Tension: Monarchy versus Monarch §4. Conclusion: Perfecting the Universal Bureaucratic State as the Sole Agent of Justice Conclusion: The Regime of Self-​Cultivation and the Tragedy of Personal Freedom §1. Negative and Positive Freedoms §2. Regime of Self-​Cultivation and Marginalization of Personal Freedom §3. A Path Not Taken in Chinese History: A Zhuangist-​Fajia Synthesis Bibliography Index