In Wang’s treatise, he seeks to show how different Chinese dynasties adopted the precepts of Confucius’ philosophy to their own times and made his thoughts their own, through interpretation and selection of emphasis. Wang begins by discussing the School of Principle, during the Song Dynasty, reinterpreted Confucius from the older tradition, “Confucian learning starts off centered on morality, with an epistemology linking government, economy, culture, and nature in one basic framework of rites and music, a moral-political narrative centered on renewing the connection between Heaven and humanity…. In the categories of Confucianism, morality had strong and specific relationships with systems of ritual, institutions, and customs…. Among Confucian ideological stances, the School of Principle especially emphasized the internal aspect of the evaluative process…. The Ru learning of Confucius took ritual, “the rites and music” (liyue) as its core…. But the Song and Ming School of Principle takes Heavenly Principle, Mind, and Nature as its core…. To the School of Principle, moral evaluations are produced within an order that is universal and yet internal. This order is called “internal” because it cannot be equated to the existing rituals, institutions, or laws, but rather emerges only in subjective cognition and embodied awareness…. The School of Principle turns the central issue away from rites/music and institutions and toward methods to attain knowledge.”
Wang next discusses how the Confucian disciple, Mencius, viewed humaneness as compared to his mentor. “In contrast to how Confucius interpreted humaneness between ritual and humaneness, Mencius connects humaneness directly to Heaven…. Mencius’s system of thought, humaneness, righteousness, ritual propriety, and wisdom all accrue to the “nature of the superior man,” or else are “rooted in the mind.”” Mencius elaborated, “To preserve one’s mind, and cultivate one’s nature, is the way to serve Heaven.” Mencius continued, “Humaneness, righteousness, ritual propriety, and wisdom are not infused into us from without. We are certainly furnished with them.” Wang explains, “Ascribing the inner strength of humanity directly to ontology or the Way of Heaven and not to institutions of rites and music also meant rejecting Confucius’s ideas about adhering to Western Zhou ritual forms.”
As earlier stated, the Song Dynasty scholars interpreted Confucius in a new manner. They viewed morality, ethics, and humaneness in a more subjective light. “From Han-dynasty cosmology to the establishment of the Northern Song Way of Heaven was a transition, with the center of focus no longer on the correspondence of Heaven and human, but rather on the internal moral qualities of humans, and their conduct…. Cosmology took an inward turn, and moral and political practice went from following the mastery or commands of Heaven to following internal nature…. For the Song and Ming Confucians, however, principle took on a distinctly secular orientation…. Heavenly Principle and the Heavenly Way were absolute truths that transcended and yet were also internal to the myriad things of the universe. The function of understanding and the internal turn of moral judgment were products of the historical judgment that institutions had separated from morality…. In the eyes of Confucians, the so-called connection between institutions and ritual reflected the historical evolution from enfeoffment to the system of centralized administration. Their theory of institutions took the imperial power-centered system of centralized administration as legitimate, while School of the Way scholars took ritual views of the patriarchal clan system and enfeoffments as the basis for moral-political judgment. Here, the propensity of the times had become an element internal to Heavenly Principle…. Oppositions between “is” and “ought,” and “fact” and “value,” in Song and later Confucian theory were products of historically evolving moral-political judgment, namely the separation of institutions from ritual.”
Confucius was interpreted yet differently in the times of the Qing Dynasty. Wang contrasts Qing Confucian thought with that of the Song, “Critiques of Song Confucianism were mainly focused on methods of pursuing learning, and were definitely not directed at such universally recognized concepts and presuppositions of Qing Confucianism (including Zhu Xi learning) as the unity of governance and the Way, the unity of principle and ritual, and the unity of ritual and ceremonial implements…. From the standpoint of this “unity,” both equally rejected the Cheng-Zhu dualisms of li and qi, of governance and the Way, and of principle and ritual, and through arguments about the connections between ritual and principle, governance and the Way, and the Way and its vessels, they rejected Lu-Wang explanations of principle as grounded in the heart…. Song Confucianism used Heavenly Principle to stand in opposition to the actual order of things, and thereby manifested a world in which ritual and music and institutions, status identity, and moral condition were separated from each other; for them, the opposition between Heavenly Principle and the actual world was precisely the source of criticism.”
The crux of the Qing Dynasty was that, for many ethnically Han scholars, it was viewed as foreign. “For a Han literatus during the Qing dynasty, it was impossible to ignore the fact that the Qing was a foreign regime: without the Will of Heaven…. Force alone could not legitimize the “new king.” By starting with terms “Receiving the Mandate of Heaven” and “Emperor,” the Rectification clearly implies that imperial power is the highest authority. “Royal affairs” are simply a substitute for Heaven. If the ruler were to violate the Will of Heaven and thus anger All-under-Heaven, he would have lost his legitimacy…. The Qing was widely regarded as a conquest dynasty…. The Qing empire’s erasure of the inner-outer divide, and its treatment of Manchu and Han as one, could not fit with the principle of patriarchal inheritance, as the privileges of the Manchu nobility were based precisely on blood lineage.” Wang continues, “After the first Opium War, the Sino-British Treaty of Nanjing, and a series of subsequent wars and treaties, the “internal-external” categories as they had been understood in late-Qing society underwent fundamental change. No longer did they refer to internal and external relationships with the empire or in the tributary system, but rather to those between nation-states…. Late-Qing scholar-officials saw clearly that if Confucian thought could only establish a Doctrine for All (wanshi fa) within China, then China’s only option in an era of competition among states would be to close off its borders and, even then, eventually lose the doctrinal and practical basis for gaining a foothold in this competition.”
Finally, Wang exposits on the only recourse available to late Qing-Confucian scholars, universal Confucianism. “If one views the rites-centric Confucian knowledge system as a kind of universal knowledge, then one must establish universal connections between rites and the world, thereby also subverting the intrinsic or historical connection between the Confucian rites and China…. Venerating the rites does not mean adhering to the old ways. This therefore relaxed the relationship between the universal nature of the rites and specific code of rites.” Kang Youwei stated, “Rites are established by the ruler and serve as a model for all.” Wang explains, “The universal nature of knowledge or rites did not originate from authoritative practice but from an a priori and abstract essence.” Kang Youwei recounts, “Confucius said: “For setting the rulers at peace and making the people orderly, nothing compares to the rites.” Rites are the natural human way and a necessity in the laws of nature…. Although ancient times are different from the present, China and the external tribes are different, and the rites cultivate good and eliminate evil. Their principles are the same.”
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