The Pinyin & Wade-Giles Transliteration Systems
Before
we start in on the schools and sages of the Chinese tradition, first we
must cover the shift in transliteration of Chinese into
Phoenician/Roman alphabetic characters. Today, we use the Pinyin
system, adopted by the People’s Republic of China in 1958, adopted by
other countries by the 1980s. It still has problems, but is vastly
superior to the Wade-Giles system invented in Britain in the 1800s.
When you read books from the 60s and 70s, you find the word Dao spelled
‘Tao’. This is because the Wade-Giles ‘t’ became ‘d’, and so the
Daoist classic the ‘Tao Te Ching’ became today the ‘Dao De Jing’. What
was once the capital city ‘Peiking’ is now ‘Beijing’. Important for
Chinese Philosophy, while the Latinized names ‘Confucius’ and ‘Mencius’
remained the same, all other names changed, particularly the suffix for
‘master’, which was ‘Tzu’ but is today ‘Zi’ (pronounced something like
‘tzih’ with a soft ‘t’ in front). My favorite Chinese philosopher used
to be ‘Chuang Tzu’, but is today ‘Zhuangzi’, or Master Zhuang.
Similarly ‘Lao Tzu’ is today Laozi, Master Lao, and ‘Mo Tzu’ is Mozi,
Master Mo. None of these names unfortunately appear in spell check
either way. Luckily, Wikipedia is a good tool for dealing with this
annoying situation, for if you search for a name either way, it sends
you to the right page with the modern Pinyin name. I use this all the
time, even though I have studied these guys for years.
The Origins of Chinese Philosophy
One
would like to think that times of peace and prosperity are good for
systems of thought, but times of civil war and disintegration of empires
seems best for thinkers and systems of thought. This was true in
ancient Egypt, India, Greece, and true in the golden age of ancient
Chinese thought as well. Human beings only rethink problems when they
are faced with them, and they are only able to teach new and
counter-cultural solutions when the orthodoxy is weak and failing. In
Confucius’ China there were great problems in the Warring States period
(500 – 220 BCE) as many kings came and went, each calling themselves
‘mandated by heaven’. Interestingly, this same period is known as the
golden age of Chinese thought, the Period of the Hundred Philosophies,
also called the Period of the Hundred Schools or Period of the Hundred
Sages.
In
the frame of ancient cosmology, the worldview of ancient Egypt and
Persia that influenced all three of the axial age powers (ancient India,
Greece and China), the world was thought to be built like a person and
order was thought to be spoken downward from the heavens to the earth.
In ancient China, it was said that if a king was good he would be
supported and affirmed by the voice of heaven, which in speaking for a
king gave the king the ‘mandate of heaven’ and allow him and the empire
to prosper. Likewise, the king would speak for and support local rulers
and ministers. This is very similar to most other polytheistic and
monotheistic cultures of the ancient world. If the king does not follow
the way of heaven, the gods or god stops speaking for the king, and
someone else comes along and takes the king’s place. Each new king
claims that the old king was ‘no longer spoken for’, so the populations
of ancient Greece, India, as well as China, find themselves wondering:
who or what kind of king exactly does heaven (the heavens) speak for,
and why? Philosophy of the ancient world was both about how to rule the
self and how to rule a people, and the questions were often
intertwined.
China
was settled as early as 5000 BCE. The next two and a half thousand
years, when the origins of Chinese culture were laid down, is called the
Period of Jade, when the legendary Red Emperor, Shenlung, and Yellow
Emperor, Xianyuan, were said to have invented the basics of culture,
including rites and rituals (li) hunting, fishing, and agriculture
(though today, we know these to have been developed earlier in Africa
before 5000 BCE by our common human ancestors). In one passage of the
Zhuangzi, the second central work of Daoism, we read:
Chuchuehzi
said to Changwuzi, “I have heard Confucius say that the sage does not
work at anything, does not pursue profit, does not dodge harm, does not
enjoy being sought after, does not follow the Way, says nothing yet says
something, says something yet says nothing, and wanders beyond the dust
and grime. Confucius himself regarded these as wild and flippant
words, though I believe they describe the working of the mysterious Way.
What do you think of them?” Changwuzi said, “Even the Yellow Emperor
would be confused if he heard such words, so how could you expect
Confucius to understand them?
The
word ‘li’, which is used in Chinese thought to mean not only devotional
ritual but also tradition and culture, is related to the word for jade,
as jade and items in jade vessels were given as offerings to the
ancestors, gods and spirits. The word ‘jing’ means reverence, which is
proper not only for the gods, rulers and parents but for the ideal self,
the community, and the cosmos. Following the Period of Jade was the
Lungshan period (2600 - 2100 BCE), the time of the revered sage-kings
Yao and Shun. In one passage of the Analects of Confucius, he says,
“Anyone can become a Yao or a Shun”, arguing that making oneself in
harmony with the common people is the essence of being both a sage and a
king.
Confucius,
the Daoists and others speak of the ‘Mandate of Heaven’ (Tianming) and
the ‘Way’ (Dao) of heaven (Tiandao) but not much about the Lord of
Heaven. In India, Greece, China, and many other places, we can see that
first many tribes and their gods were drawn into polytheistic (many
gods) systems, and then after this these were increasingly drawn into
monotheistic (one god over many lesser deities and saints) systems. We
can see that many gods with human like desires become one ruling god
with human like desires, and then this one god becomes more and more
abstract as the great One, also known as philosophical monism.
We
see the same pattern in China, where polytheism grew into a
monotheistic and then abstract monist ‘Way’ or ‘Mandate’. The Zhou and
earlier empires spoke of the Lord of Heaven, and it when the Zhou
overthrew the Shang in 1029 BCE that they supported the idea, found in
much of ancient Chinese thought including Confucianism and Daoism, that
the heavens and the way of things only speaks for a king, giving him the
Mandate of Heaven, when he is virtuous (‘de’, as in the Dao De Jing),
and when he is not he is overthrown (obviously to legitimize their own
seizure of power). Confucius and the Daoists in the Warring States
period, however, do not speak much of the Lord of Heaven, but speak much
of the Mandate and Way, showing us that, like the golden age of thought
in ancient India and Greece, the revered thinkers were challenging the
old tradition with philosophical monism that questioned the very shape
of cosmology itself while extending it.
Additionally,
just as we see in India, what is at first only true for the royalty and
ruling class gradually becomes popular and common. In ancient Egypt,
at first only the Pharaoh could escape rounds of reincarnation and
ascend into the heavens as a star, but by the later periods common
people who were virtuous could obtain heavenly rest. In ancient India,
only the brahmins and then with Theravada Buddhism only the monks could
escape rounds of reincarnation and obtain nirvana. In China, similarly,
the Way and Mandate of Heaven was first used to justify the position of
the king, but by the time of the golden age of Chinese thought, common
people could gain not merely position but wisdom such as that of the
legendary sage kings by being in accord with the Dao, the way and nature
of things.
Yin & Yang
One
early cosmological and philosophical idea that is central to Chinese
thought that can be found in the early dynasties is the Zhou Yi system
of the complementary opposites of Yin and Yang, the two sides of energy
(‘chi’). Yin is the dark, female, and earthly force, and Yang is the
bright, male, and heavenly force. Many early societies from the time of
Shamanism saw the cosmos as a sexual procreation of male and female
forces. The mind understands and reasons in terms of opposites, and the
creation and recreation of life by nature was associated with the
procreation of offspring by female and male. In the Chinese conception,
Yin was associated with the acceptance of the passive, the darkness of
space, the support of the earth, the absence of non-being, and the
mystery of the unknown. Yang was associated with the transformation of
the active, the brightness of the sun, the motions of the sky, the
presence of being, and the power of the known.
The
idea is that everything consists of and is in relationship with other
things in terms of oppositions. The ancient Greeks and later German
philosophers used the terms ‘dialectic’ and ‘dialectical’ to describe
the oppositional components and motions of things, including the human
mind, truth, and dialogue. Hegel, one of my favorite German
philosophers, wrote in his Logic:
That
true and positive meaning of the antinomies is this: that every actual
thing involves a coexistence of opposed elements. Consequently to know,
or, in other words, to comprehend an object is equivalent to being
conscious of it as a concrete unity of opposed determinations. The old
metaphysic, as we have already seen, when it studied the objects of
which it sought a metaphysical knowledge, went to work by applying
categories abstractly and to the exclusion of their opposites.
However reluctant Understanding may be to admit the action of
Dialectic, we must not suppose that the recognition of its existence is
peculiarly confined to the philosopher. It would be truer to say that
Dialectic gives expression to a law which is felt in all other grades of
consciousness, and in general experience. Everything that surrounds us
may be viewed as an instance of Dialectic.
The
Yin and Yang became a central idea behind the Yi Jing divination system
and later Daoism. Many are familiar with Yin and Yang through the
Daoist symbol which is thought to be a solar calendar showing roughly
the length of daylight through the year as it increases in the summer
and then diminishes in the winter. The Daoists got this image from one
of the many schools in the Hundred Schools Period that did not survive
with patronage called the Yin Yang school.
The Yi Jing Divination System
The
Yi Jing is the famous oracle system of ancient China. Originally, the
Chinese diviners used turtle shells and bones to answer questions of
kings, nobles and common people ‘yes’ or ‘no’ depending on how they
would crack over a fire. Turtles were thought to be symbolic of the
cosmos, as their shells resembled heaven, round on the top, and earth,
flat on the bottom. Unfortunately, being sacred did not help the
Chinese turtle, as their numbers depleted from all the divination to the
point that turtles were imported from Vietnam and other southern lands
and cattle bones began to be used as substitutes.
The
Yi Jing replaced this earlier system about 1000 BCE with the rise of
the Zhou dynasty. Many systems of thought were influenced by the Yi
Jing in the Warring States period, including Confucianism and Daoism.
Confucians and Daoists wrote commentaries on the books. Confucius
considered the Yi Jing to be one of the six great classics of the
tradition of the sage emperors, and made it central to his educational
system that became the entrance exams for the Chinese bureaucracy.
The
original system is attributed to Fu Xi, a mythical king who is said to
have discovered the symbols of the Yi Jing hexagrams in the stars. It
was then said to have been re-systematized by King Wen, one of the
founders of the Zhou dynasty. It is impossible today to know whether
these kings were the sages behind the system, or if the system was
finalized as a book by Confucius himself around 500 BCE.
The
system is built out of eight trigrams which in pairs of upper and lower
trigram form sixty four hexagrams. Each trigram is build out of solid
and/or broken lines, solid signifying yang and broken signifying yin.
In ancient times, a question was asked and sticks were tossed to
determine each line, starting from the top down. The counter-culture of
the fifties, sixties, seventies and eighties, including surfers (who
were introduced to Daoism in Hawaii), beatniks, hippies, and new age
spiritual seekers, would toss coins, often quarters, heads being yang,
and tails being yin. Six tosses equals six lines, giving two trigrams,
one heaven and one earth.
The trigrams are:
☰ Heaven (Creative)
☱ Lake (Reflecting/Excess)
☲ Fire (Bright/Conscious/Clinging)
☳ Thunder (Exciting)
☴ Wind/Wood (Penetrating/Growth)
☵ Water (Dark/Danger/Profound)
☶ Mountain (Steady/Still)
☷ Earth (Receptive)
Notice
that Creation is the beginning of the end Reception (heaven and earth),
Bright is the beginning of the end Darkness (fire and water),
Excitement is the beginning of the end Growth (thunder and wind),
Stillness is the beginning of the end Excess (mountain and lake). When
we invert a hexagram, changing its solid lines to broken and broken
lines to solid, the opposite has an opposite role in process and change.
There
are eight hexagrams that are composed of a trigram and its reverse or
mirror image:Creation (heaven on heaven), Insight (wind on lake),
synergy (fire on fire), Nourishing (Mountain on Thunder), Critical Mass
(lake on wind), Danger (water on water), Mindfulness (thunder on
mountain) and reception (earth on earth). Four of these eight hexagrams
are composed of the same trigram twice, the trigrams that are
symmetrical. The inversions are interesting as Insight is the beginning
of the end Mindfulness, and Nourishing is the beginning of the end
Critical Mass. This is very similar to the inversions we saw amongst
the trigrams.
There
are 8 hexagrams that are composed of a trigram and its inverse, the
diagonal from top right to bottom left of the Fu Xi order: Prosper
(earth on heaven), Decline (mountain on lake), After Ends (water on
fire), Benefit (wind on thunder), Continuing (thunder on wind), Before
Ends (fire on water), Attraction (lake on mountain), and Stagnation
(heaven on earth).
Notice
that Prosper/Stagnation and After Ends/Before Ends are both inverses
and reverses, and also that Prosperity and Stagnation are positive and
negative beginnings, and After Ends and Before Ends are positive and
negative endings. Prosperity is a beginning that is beginning,
Stagnation is a beginning that is not beginning, After Ends is an end
that has ended, Before Ends is an end that has not ended. We have a
beginning that is and isn’t and an end that has been or isn’t yet.
When
we compare the original Fu Xi order with the later King Wen order, it
becomes clear that the Fu Xi order is composed of inversions and
alternates while the King Wen order is based in reversals. The Fu Xi
order is composed of sets of inversions and alternates. The King Wen
order is not composed of inversions or alternates but is essentially a
list of hexagrams and their reversals from start to finish. This is why
Creation and Reception are hexagram one and hexagram two for King Wen
but they are the first and last hexagram of the Fu Xi. King Wen took
the hexagrams and focused on matching each with its reversal without
regard for the essential inversions and alternates of Fu Xi.
The Period of the Hundred Schools
The
Period of the Hundred Philosophers or Hundred Schools, as it is called,
came with the Warring States Period after the Spring and Autumn period
(770 - 476 BCE), the period when the Zhou dynasty (1029 - 476 BCE)
crumbled. One of the six Confucian classics that became the texts for
the Chinese Confucian educational system and bureaucracy was The Spring
and Summer Annals (or Spring and Autumn Record). This was the period
when Confucius and Laozi lived. Mencius and Xunzi (the two great
Confucians after Confucius) and Zhuangzi (the great Daoist after Laozi)
lived in the Hundred Schools or Warring States Period, at the time when
Confucianism and Daoism were forming along with and competing with other
schools who followed other sages. The Hundred Schools period ended
with the brief Chin (221 - 206 BCE) and then the Han dynasty (206 BCE -
220 CE) who took over the China that the Chin had unified. While there
may not have been a hundred separate schools, there were many schools of
thought in this time but many and their teachings did not survive. The
four most popular and famous philosophies were Confucianism, Daoism,
Moism, and Legalism. We will be discussing the first three in greater
detail in the coming weeks.
The
word ‘China’ comes from the Chin, who were the first to unify much of
the land. The Chin were patrons of Legalism, and Emperor Chin
pronounced Confucius a subversive danger to the state. Confucian books,
including the Analects, the Mencius and the Xunzi were burned, and
anyone found reciting them or hiding them was executed. The legend
developed that Confucianism and the texts survived hidden in a well.
Legalism
was started by Shang Yang (390 - 338 BCE) and then in Chin times
championed by Han Fei (280 - 233 BCE). Central to Legalism was the idea
that law (fa) should be strict and in the interests of the state and
the ruler who ensures the protection and continuation of the state (a
position much like Hobbes, the later British political philosopher,
takes in his book Leviathan). The ruler uses rewards and punishments to
regulate agriculture, trade, and warfare. Shang Yang argued that
people are self-interested, and only respond if there are great threats
as well as great rewards (the stick and the carrot). The Legalists
rejected allegiance to family and the aristocracy in favor of utility,
similar to Mill’s utilitarianism but with a strong emphasis on
punishment as the effective tool of the ruler. They believed in the
evolution of society beyond the ways of the past and toward a new
disciplined future, much like the Soviet Union but without the communal
property of the Moists, who the Legalists despised.
While
some Han rulers employed Legalism to rule and patronized Legalist
scholars, the Han did not like the authoritarianism of the Legalists
(likely because the Han were trying to win over the people at a
prosperous time with much new wealth and many other options of
philosophy). They equally did not like the communalism of the Moists
who believed that war should be abolished and, like in Plato’s ideal
republic, all property and family shared in common (likely because the
Han were trying to hold down a prosperous and diverse empire). We will
study Moism in the weeks to come, as well as the School of Names, also
called the Logicians or the Sophists (both ancient Greek terms for
debaters). We will spend more time with Confucianism and Daoism,
however, as they along with Buddhism became the primary three systems of
thought in Chinese culture.
The
Han chose, in supporting education, scholarship and the arts, to
patronize Confucianism and Daoism. Confucianism included Confucius (550
– 480 BCE), and the two central and early Confucians, Mencius (Menzi,
370 – 290 BCE) and Xunzi (312-230 BCE). Daoism included Laozi (600 –
500? BCE), supposed author of the Dao De Jing, and Zhuangzi (370 – 300
BCE), though these two figures would not have known themselves to be
‘Daoists’ any more than Confucius would have known his followers would
go on to found the central system of Chinese thought and politics.
Confucius
and the Daoists proposed different solutions to the problem of self and
society. The Daoists believed that going off into nature, forgetting
embedded understandings and rejecting typical human ways was best for
cultivating the individual, while Confucius believed that the city,
morality and study were best for cultivating human virtues. Thus, while
Confucius and the Daoists were both questioners of individual desires
and judgment, Confucius believed we should turn to civilization and
cultivation to realize our true nature and the Daoists believed we
should turn away from civilization and back to simplicity and the
natural to realize our true nature.
