## 1. Qing Philosophy: a Period Concept



To assert and describe the newness of Qing philosophical thinking
about the manifold dimensions of reality in late imperial China is to
highlight a sense of departure from the immediate past, that is, to
trace the transition from the Song-Ming mode of thinking to the Qing
one by pinpointing the disjunction *and* continuity. In other
words, it begs the question of the relationship between late imperial
thought and the preceding intellectual traditions. Inquiries into the
Ming-Qing intellectual transition have tended to adopt two narrative
and analytical strategies: first, the comparative approach that
creates paradigms of adjoining intellectual movements and then points
out their stark contrasts and vast differences; second, the
developmental approach based on the assumption of continuity, governed
by notions of tradition, influence, and evolution. The comparative
approach that stresses rupture was in fact adopted by the some of the
towering late Ming-early Qing intellectual figures, such as Gu Yanwu
(1613-82) and Wang Fuzhi (1619-92), who created an
archetype of Ming thought and Song-Ming Confucianism as abstract,
abstruse, feckless, and feeble, such that they became a monolithic
*type* of thinking represented by finicky metaphysical
speculation and passive moral introspection. By Qing times, such a
mode of intellection became collectively known as "Song
learning" (*Songxue*), with its overt focus on moral
principles (*yili zhi xue*), as opposed to "Han
learning" (*Hanxue*), scholarship anchored on the deep
philological probing of texts and words, and their literal meanings
(*wenzi xungu*). The modern restatement of this position was
made by Liang Qichao (1873-1929), a most influential late Qing
and Republican intellectual figure, who criticized the futility of
Song-Ming thought as "vague", "intangible",
and "abstract". Because of the wide circulation and common
usage of the English translation by Immanuel Hsu of one of
Liang's book on Qing intellectual history (Liang 1921 [1959]),
Liang's view became for a long time the basic interpretive
reference point for the study of late imperial intellectual trends,
creating a dominant historiography that interprets the Ming-Qing
intellectual transition as a cataclysmic event that ushered in a new
spirit of thought. Another giant intellectual figure, a stalwart of
the New Culture (or May-Fourth) movement, Hu Shi (1891-1962),
held similar views, going so far as to advance the influential thesis
of Qing philosophy as scientific and progressive (Hu 1967:
104-131).



Chinese Marxist scholarship in general likewise endorses this
cataclysmic interpretation of the emergence of
"progressive" thought in the late imperial period. Such
thesis of discontinuity also found echoes in older western
scholarship, such as that of the late Joseph Levenson, which contends
that it was only in the seventeenth century that voices began to be
raised against Song-Ming idealism and subjective idealism (1964). In
sum, according to the thesis of rupture between Song-Ming learning and
late imperial thought, seventeenth-century scholars begrudged the
corruption of learning by indulgent moral introspection and arcane
metaphysical speculation. As a result, there emerged the study of
practical statecraft for the ordering of the workaday world of
institutions and administrations, which realized the time-honored
ideal of *jingshi zhiyong* (ordering the world and extending
utility). Moreover, in order to rectify the abuses of the Song-Ming
empty talk (*kongtan*), evidential research (*kaozheng*
or *kaoju*) arose, especially in the area of philology,
otherwise known as Han learning, in contradistinction to Song learning
that pursued speculative introspection.



The developmental approach to the question of the Ming-Qing
intellectual transition based on the notion of continuity appears in
Feng Youlan's (1895-1990) classic survey of Chinese
philosophy (1934 [1952-1953]), ably translated into English by
the late Derk Bodde (1909-2003). Feng regarded Han learning in
the Qing as innovative and creative thinking, but he also insisted
that it was a continuation of Song-Ming Neo-Confucianism because it
produced no new metaphysical categories. More thoroughgoing in arguing
on behalf of the linkage between Qing learning and Song learning was
the eminent Qian Mu (1895-1990). To Qian (1937), the early Qing
savants did actually uphold the Song cultural ideals, but he pointed
out that the dominant scholastic Han learning and evidential
scholarship of the later Qianjia period (the period of the reigns of
the Qianlong and Jiaqing emperors, 1736-1820) strayed from the
true moral way and political commitments of the late Ming and early
Qing. The most sustained effort to interpret the intimate nexus
between Song-Ming Confucianism and Qing thought is found in the
seminal trilogy of volumes (Bary 1970, 1975; Bary & Bloom 1979) on
Ming and Qing thought, edited by the late dean of Neo-Confucian
Studies, Wm. Theodore de Bary (1919-2017), which examine the
roots and nature of the intellectual transformation in the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries in terms of its intimate ties with Song-Ming
antecedents. This thesis of continuity is eloquently restated by Qian
Mu's eminent student Yu Ying-shih, who interprets the
novelty of late imperial Chinese learning with reference to its
organic relation with Song-Ming Confucianism by delineating the inner
logic of Confucian thinking. As Yu claims,
"Intellectualism", or the ideal of "following the
way of inquiry and learning" (*dao wenxue*), took center
stage in late imperial thought, whereas in Song-Ming times,
"anti-intellectualism", or the ideal of "honoring
one's heaven-endowed moral nature" (*zun dexing*)
predominated (Yu 1975: 105-136).



The theme of intellectual continuity was also evident in much of
Japanese scholarship which generally regards Wang Yangming's
idea of *liangzhi* (innately spontaneous moral knowing) as a
major spiritual resource for fundamental change. It credits the left
wing of the Wang Yangming school for further unleashing the potentials
of this liberating precept by espousing individualism and voluntarism
that signified moral autonomy. Furthermore, it argues that the Qing
belief in the possibility of "objective" investigations of
the classics should be examined in the context of the
"subjectivism" that unified the Song, Yuan, and Ming
philosophical views. This scholarship also explores the import of late
imperial Chinese thought in terms of the idea of multiple early
modernities in world history, to the extent that the late Ming and
Qing witnessed the workings of the particular historical dynamics of
"early modern" (*sen kindai*) China, manifested in
the new conceptions of self and society that were reformulations of
some central leitmotifs and polarities in traditional Confucian
thinking (Shimada 1970; Mizoguchi 1980).



Be it the comparative or developmental approach, the contention is
that Chinese thought experienced notable changes in the late imperial
period, roughly from the late Ming through the mid Qing. While
scholars argue over the genesis, content, nature, and significance of
the new developments, most acknowledge and recognize the patterned
fundamental shifts in intellectual trends and directions. Some of the
interrelated traits of the intellectual redirection included the
following: fungibility and syncretism in thinking that tended to
mitigate the authority of received opinions; palpable impulse to
reorder and manage the world, invoking the ideal of ordering the world
through practical statecraft and statesmanship (*jingshi*);
general aversion toward metaphysical speculation and moral
introspection, and the corresponding interest in the pursuit of solid
and practical learning (*puxue* and *shixue*), giving
rise to utilitarian and instrumental notions of scholarship; valuing
personal practical experience, academic, political, social and
otherwise, such that one's actions in the phenomenal and
external worlds loomed large; historicization of the classics
(*jing*) that had hitherto been revered as sources of timeless
authority, rendering them into objects of scholarly scrutiny, thereby
breeding in time the meticulous scholarship of evidential research and
learning, which came to dominate the intellectual world in the
so-called Qianjia period; preference for limpidity, clarity, and
simplicity in writing style and language; and finally, new and
broadening horizons of the meaning of community, as the
literati's place in state and society was redefined and
reconceptualized. To be sure, these interlarded strains of thoughts
were by no means new in the Chinese intellectual universe. Yet, from
the late Ming on, there seemed to be an unmistakable convergence of
the various traits that fostered conceptual commonalities and
intellectual confluences out of a socio-intellectual environ that was
nevertheless characterized by manifold sectarian affiliations and
polemics. Various modes of learning and thinking cohered to forge a
new orientation that seemed to give conscious life in the late
imperial period an identifiable stamp and identity.



Thus, late imperial Chinese philosophy, or Qing philosophy, is a
period concept, that is, a substantive designation of an independent
historico-intellectual epoch with a distinct physiognomy, an internal
coherence, identifiable mental habit, and autonomous scholarly style,
distinguished from the preceding Song-Ming philosophical style and
content, as represented by Neo-Confucianism. The construction of this
period concept is an exercise in intellectual cartography by selecting
and representing the significant ideational landmarks of an
intellectual landscape, thereby providing a perspective and knowledge
of the terrain. The major landmarks are the dominant modes, or
ideal-types, of intellectual articulation, and Qing philosophy sported
four--vitalism, historicism, utilitarianism, and intellectualism.
They functioned as the basic criteria of intelligibility and
importance, offering the fundamental points of view according to which
learning was described, measured, valuated, and adjudicated. In the
process, they dislodged and supplanted the moral metaphysics and
inward ethical introspection of Song-Ming thought, which was premised
on the idea of realizing the totalizing *dao* (the Way),
*li* (principle), and *tian* (heaven) through
self-cultivation of the mind-heart (*xin*). To the extent that
humanity's moral nature (*dexing*) was endowed by heaven,
moral-ethico perfection was the realization of the mandate of heaven
(*tianming*), manifested as the ritual order established by the
ancient sages. In Song-Ming thought, apprehending *dao/li/tian*
was not merely an epistemological process, in that knowledge of
*dao/tian/ti* was a metapraxis in which virtue, reason,
knowing, and action converged.



Qing philosophy, with vitalism, historicism, utilitarianism and
intellectualism as its contextual and thematic patterns of thinking
and articulation, heralded a new phase in Chinese intellectual
history, interrogating antecedent concepts and ushering in new
approaches. I use these "isms" advisedly as terms of art,
not technical ones. Vitalism in this context smacks not of the
Bergsonian metaphysical postulation of an *elan vital*,
and historicism does not appeal to the ancestral nomenclature of
Hegelian dialectics. Utilitarianism appeals not to Bentham's
consequentialist philosophy, and intellectualism elides the Socratic
or Thomistic reference to rationality and ratiocination. Vitalism, in
the context of Qing thought, is a reference to the Neo-Confucian
philosophy of *qi*, commonly rendered into English as material
force or psycho-physical force. It denotes a view of reality that
focuses attention in large part to the evidence provided by life
grasped from within a body, the self, or external thing. This evidence
revealed embodied experience to be composed of concrete tendencies and
occurrences not readily reduced to or dissolved in metaphysical
speculation or conception, such as the ontological notion of principle
(*li*) or heaven (*tian*). Historicism describes the
mental habit and endeavor to find and establish meaning in history as
it was made by human agents, shunning supra-temporal principles and
transcendent norms of universal validity, such as the idea of the
constant Way (*dao*), and savoring instead the contingent and
particular in varying and changing contexts. Utilitarianism takes its
cue from the Confucian activist ideal of "ordering the world by
extending utility and function to the fullest" (*jingshi
zhiyong*), privileging the functional component of *yong* (utility)
over *ti* (the essential substance of things) in the
*ti-yong* polarity that represented the interacting inner and
outer realms of reality. Just as it gave priority to outer efforts of
acting as opposed to the inner quiddity of being, so it presumed an
intimate relation between knowledge and action in the experiential
world. Intellectualism is an abstraction from the Confucian external
cultivational goal of "following the way of inquiry and
learning" (*dao wenxue*), which placed a premium on
discursive knowledge and scholarly pursuit as the means to comprehend
the classics, understood as the textual encasement and manifestations
of the profound principles of the ancient sages. In time, it bred the
critical evidentiary research (*kaozheng*) that sought to
thoroughly reveal the sages' teachings and messages via
philology.



To be sure, these modes of intellectual articulation were not entirely
new, but it was in the Qing that they coalesced, and they were
emphasized and valued at the expense of other approaches. Hence the
emergence of Qing philosophy as a coherent and integrated system of
ideas in terms of which reality and the world were understood.


## 2. Vitalism: Metaphysical Reorientation



Vitalism as an expression of Qing philosophy focused on evidence
provided by the self, the body, and external things. Opposed to the
mysticism of an eternal and transcendent creative power such as
principle (*li*), heaven (*tian*) or the Way
(*dao*) that represented the essence of being, vitalism was in
favor of a view of life grasped from within the actualities of the
individual self and the external world. It stressed the immediate and
ultimate completion of a concrete and dynamic life expressed in terms
of *qi* (material force/psycho-physical force) and *qi*
(concrete implements). It may be conceived as a dynamic monism:
dynamic in the sense that it rejected an immutable *dao* in
favor of a relativized way of contingent and finite truths; and
monistic in that it dissolved the *li-qi* dichotomy, subsuming
*li*, which had been considered to be the prior metaphysical
and spiritual realm, under *qi*, the perceptual and
experiential realm that had been regarded as secondary. Life within
the vitalist framework was dependent on circumstances, particularized,
and individualized by the external signs of the self's
contingency and finitude, including the senses, feelings, desires, and
emotions. Scholars of late imperial Chinese thought, such as Theodore
be Bary, Irene Bloom, and Yamanoi Yu , have pointed to the
growing preponderance of this *qi*-based vitalist philosophy
since the late Ming period, which offered a new sense of coherence in
the thinking about individuals and the world. But it would be
misleading to characterize Qing philosophy as entirely grounded in
some sort of formalized *qi-*oriented metaphysics, to the
extent that philosophical lucubration in terms of the Confucian
categories of *li* and *qi* had ceased to hold the
imagination of the thinkers. While *qi*, representing the
material and experiential domain of life, did become ascendant in
intellectual discourse, the Qing posture was distinctly averse to
metaphysical pondering. Vitalism, with *qi* as its predicate,
was a pervasive attitude that attached foremost importance to concrete
realities and actions, inverting the Neo-Confucian metaphysical
tendency to reduce humanity and things to an attribute, manifestation,
and appearance of *li* and *dao*. *Qi* now
reigned supreme.



In the early Qing, the most systematic articulation of the vitalist
philosophy can be found in the writings of Wang Fuzhi
(1619-1692), who expanded the *qi*-based metaphysics of
the celebrated Song master, Zhang Zai (1020-1077). Wang asserted
that *qi* was what *li* followed. He claimed: 



> 
> 
> In actuality, *li* exists within *qi. Qi* is nothing but
> *li*. When [*qi*] agglomerates and produces humanity and
> things, forms (*xing*) appear. When [*qi*] disperses
> into the supreme void (*taixu*), it is then formless. (Wang
> QSYS: 1:5b) 
> 
> 
> 



While *li* and *qi* were one, it was the latter that
gave reality its form. In fact, *qi* was the basic stuff of the
ultimate supreme void, as Wang averred: 



> 
> 
> To say that humanity is born without the nourishment of *qi*,
> that *li* could be sought outside of *qi*, that forms
> are illusions, and that the nature (*xing*) is real, is to
> degenerate into heterodoxy. (QSYS: 1:6b) 
> 
> 
> 



It is important to note that even though Wang followed Zhang, he
rejected the latter's philosophical anthropology, which
separated humanity's so-called "heaven-nature"
stemming from *li* from its "physical nature"
derived from *qi.* Wang told us:



> 
> 
> When one speaks of the physical nature, it is like saying that the
> nature lies within the matter of *qi* (*qizhi*). This
> matter (*zhi*) is humanity's material form (*qizhi zhi
> xing*), within the confines of which the principle of life
> (*sheng zhi li*) is manifested. Since it [i.e., the principle
> of life] lies within this matter, *qi* permeates it, and just
> as what fills the universe both inside and outside the human body is
> nothing but *qi*, so it is nothing but principle. Principle
> operates within *qi*, where it controls and apportions
> *qi*. Thus the matter [of individual things] envelops
> *qi*, and *qi* envelops principle. It is because this
> matter envelops *qi* that a given individual possesses a
> nature. For this reason, before one's development has taken
> place, there can only be the *li* and *qi* of the
> universe but not the individual person. Once, however, there is the
> matter incorporating *qi*, this *qi* then inevitably
> possesses principle. As far as humanity is concerned..., this
> nature as found in the matter of *qi* [i.e., physical nature]
> is still the original nature. (quoted in McMorran 1975: 443)
> 
> 
> 



In short, Wang contended that our so-called physical nature was the
original nature, by no means secondary to our heaven-nature. He,
unlike Zhang, did not attribute our aggressiveness and aggrandizement
to the inferior *qi* of the physical nature. Wang saw both
principle and human desires (*yu*) as natural (*ziran*).
The tradition of ritual-propriety (*li*) expressed our desires:




> 
> 
> Although ritual propriety is purely the external adornment of the
> principle of heaven, it must reside in human desires for it to be
> seen. That being the case, in the final analysis, there cannot be a
> heaven that is separate from humanity, or principle separate from
> desires.... Hence in sounds, colors, smells, and flavors, one can
> clearly see the communal desires (*gongyu*) of all beings and
> their communal principle (*gongli*). (Wang QSYS: 8:10b-11a)
> 
> 
> 
> 



To Wang, the way of kingship (*wangdao*) was also intimately
related to human sentiments (*renqing*): 



> 
> 
> The way of kingship is based on human sentiments. Human sentiments are
> the same sentiments shared by both the profound person
> (*junzi*) and petty person (*xiaoren*).... Mencius,
> understanding thoroughly the origin of the oneness of heaven's
> principle (*tianli*) and human sentiments, recognized the
> possibility of the way of kingship. After seeing the beginning, it
> could then be extended and expanded.... Heaven's principle
> resides in private desires (*siyu*). (Wang QSYS: 26:2a-3b)
> 
> 
> 



Thus, Wang connected values--ritual-propriety, the way of
kingship, communal principle--with private feelings, as the body
and its affections became a locus of ethical experience,
*li*-principle. In explicating the idea of "fully
realizing our nature" (*jinxing*), he argued that
everything in the world was of the same origin as oneself. Therefore,
the individual was the fulcrum on which the world moved, and this
mandated an active life. Practice, or *xi*, was the key to
exhaustively realizing and fulfilling our nature, which was the
nurturing of our very *qi*: 



> 
> 
> As for changing the bad to the good, it is a matter of nurturing
> one's *qi* well. In time, one's substance
> (*zhi*) is altered accordingly.... This is human ability,
> which is practice precisely. Thus, *qi* changes with practice,
> and nature is realized with practice. Substance is the residence of
> nature, nature is the regulating of *qi*, and *qi* is
> the substantiation of substance. [*Qi*] is what practice can
> control. (Wang QSYS: 7:11a-b) 
> 
> 
> 



In short, Wang not only collapsed the *li-qi* dyad into the
monism of *qi* but he also understood *qi*, the basic
stuff of the universe, in terms of human agency and action.



Gu Yanwu (1613-1682), also saw *qi* as the generative
force in the cosmos: 



> 
> 
> Replete in heaven-and-earth is *qi*. When *qi* prospers,
> it becomes *shen* (spirit). *Shen* is the *qi* of
> heaven-and-earth and the human mind. (Gu RZL: 1:20) 
> 
> 
> 



He continue to say, 



> 
> 
> Coalescing to form a body is called *wu* (things/affairs);
> dispersal in a shapeless manner is called *bian*
> (change).... Coalescing is the coalescing of *qi*;
> dispersal is the dispersing of *qi*. (RZL: 1:20) 
> 
> 
> 



*Qi* was self-sufficient and all-pervasive, identified with
things, objects, events, and affairs, without which "the
*dao* has nowhere to reside" (RZL: 1:20). Similarly,
Huang Zongxi (1610-1695), a polymath who was Gu Yanwu's
and Wang Fuzhi's contemporary, saw the inextricable conflation
of *li* and *qi* as a foremost ontological fact:
"*Li* is the *li* of *qi*. If there is no
*qi*, then there is no *li*" (Huang MRXA: 140).
Their difference rests merely on semantics: 



> 
> 
> The terms *li* and *qi* are made up by people. In
> speaking of the phenomena of floating, submerging, rising, and
> falling, there is *qi*. In speaking of the unmistakable laws of
> floating, submerging, rising, and falling, there is *li*. In
> the end, they are the two names of one entity, not two entities in one
> being. (Huang MRXA: 1064) 
> 
> 
> 



He further explained, 



> 
> 
> Within heaven-and-earth, there is only one *qi*. Its rise and
> fall, and comings and goings, are the *li*. Apprehended by a
> person... [*li*] becomes the mind-heart, which is also
> *qi*. If *qi* is not self-governed, why is it that after
> spring, there inevitably come summer, autumn, and winter? What
> controls the blossoming and withering of plans, the mildness and
> ruggedness of the topography, the good and the bad movements of
> astrological portents, and the birth and growth of humanity and
> things? All are governed by *qi*. Since it is self-governed, it
> is called *li*. (Huang MRXA: 46) 
> 
> 
> 



Huang dissolved the *li-qi* duality by arguing that *li*
by itself did not exist, insofar as it was an abstraction of the
material and the experiential.



In anthropological terms, Huang remarked that 



> 
> 
> what in heaven is *qi* is the mind-heart in humanity. What in
> heaven is *li* is the nature in humanity. Just as *li*
> and *qi* are the same, so too are the mind-heart and nature.
> (Huang MRXA: 1109)
> 
> 
> 



Here, Huang critiqued Zhu Xi's (1130-1200) tendency to
separate the original human nature from the mind-heart, which was the
site of sentiments and feelings of "pleasure, anger, sorrow, and
joy". To Huang, these emotions and affections, in their state of
"equilibrium and harmony", are the nature. Therefore, 



> 
> 
> to seek the nature outside of this cognitively natural and
> self-regulating mind-heart is like abandoning the flexible and
> changing *qi* in order to seek a separate *li*. (Huang
> MRXA: 1109-1110) 
> 
> 
> 



Huang thus invested human feelings with the steadfast solidity of the
ontological substance of *qi*, which was the source of the
cardinal virtues of *ren* (benevolence), *yi*
(rightness), *li* (propriety) and *zhi* (wisdom): 



> 
> 
> Replete in heaven-and-earth is *qi*. Movement of this one
> *qi* in the human mind-heart... naturally separates into
> pleasure, anger, sorrow, and joy. Accordingly, the names of
> benevolence, rightness, propriety, and wisdom arise. Separate from
> *qi*, there is no *li*; separate from the mind-heart,
> there is no nature. (Huang MRXA: 1512) 
> 
> 
> 



The early Qing vitalist philosophy of *qi* found full
expression in the eighteenth century, which witnessed a strong
affirmation of the primacy of materiality. In particular, Dai Zhen
(1723-1777) systematically developed a philosophy based on the
presupposition that the *dao* was constituted by things: 



> 
> 
> *Dao* is the name that refers to actual bodies and actual
> affairs.... Speaking of the *dao* in terms of
> heaven-and-earth, it can readily be seen with reference to its actual
> bodies and actual affairs.... Speaking of the *dao* in
> terms of humanity, it is the concrete affairs of quotidian
> practicality in human relations that pervade the *dao....*
> None that arise from the body are not the *dao....* The
> *dao* is living, drinking, eating, talking, and moving.
> One's self and what surround oneself are all appropriately
> [regarded as the *dao*]. (Dai MZZYSZ: 69-72) 
> 
> 
> 



Dai criticized the Song Neo-Confucians for artificially separating
moral values from everyday social relations and activities, insofar as
they identified the moral virtues of benevolence, rightness,
propriety, and wisdom with the "empty, boundless, and
subtle" principle, which, being prior and primary, was
"above the realm of corporeal forms" (*xing er
shang*), as opposed to diurnal actions and pursuits, which was
seen to be "amidst the realm of corporeal forms" (*xing
er xia*) and therefore, posterior and secondary. As far as Dai was
concerned, such axiology could find no corroboration in the classics:




> 
> 
> [The Song Confucians claimed that] with respect to heaven-and-earth,
> yin-yang cannot be called the *dao*; with respect to humanity,
> the physical endowment (*qibing*) cannot be called the nature
> (*xing*), and affairs and things of daily practicality in human
> relations cannot be called the Way (*dao*). There is nothing in
> the texts of the *Six Classics*, *Confucius*, and
> *Mencius* that agrees with them. (Dai MZZYSZ: 71-72)
> 
> 
> 



To Dai, principle was not abstract and transcendent: "With
regard to heaven-and-earth, humanity and things, and affairs and
actions, I have not heard of a principle that cannot be verbally
articulated" (Dai MZZYSZ: 38). *Li*, as the inner texture
of things (*tiaoli*), did not exist in the mind-heart as a
metaphysical entity and was found in the midst of all things. Indeed,
it could not be severed from human feelings (*qing*) and
desires (*yu*). Dai differentiated between what was naturally
(*ziran*) and what was necessarily so (*biran*): 



> 
> 
> The desires of the nature are the signs of the natural. The virtue of
> the nature is conducive to the attainment of what was necessarily so.
> What is conducive to the attainment of what was necessarily so
> conforms to and perfects what is natural about heaven-and-earth. This
> is called the utmost attainment of that which is naturally so. (quoted
> in Yu Ying-shih 1982: 386) 
> 
> 
> 



What were naturally so were the desires and daily activities of human
beings; that which was necessarily so was the inner texture of the
natural, that is, principle. The natural was the foundation on which
the necessitarian principle rested: 



> 
> 
> The ears, the eyes, and all the other bodily organs desire those
> things on which our physical nature (*qizhi zhi xing*) depends
> for nourishment. The so-called human desires of human nature originate
> from the Way of the formation and transformation of heaven-and-earth
> (*tiandao*). In the case of humanity, they are rooted in human
> nature and expressed in daily affairs. In this sense, they constitute
> the Way of humanity (*rendao*). (Chung-ying Cheng 1971: 76).
> 
> 
> 
> 



Since desires, as integral parts of the physical nature, constituted
both the Way of humanity and the Way of heaven, human nature could not
be, as the Song masters had contended, bifurcated into its
moral-heavenly manifestation and material-earthly disclosure. Dai
asserted that the nature, *xing*, was whole, comprising both
blood and breath (*xueqi*)--the
psycho-physiological--and the mind-heart and wisdom
(*xinzhi*)--the cognitive-spiritual. Both, as a whole,
were derived from "yin-yang and the five agents", and
"originated from the process of the production and
transformation of heaven-and-earth" (*yuan yu tiandi zhi
hua*). He waxed rhetorical, 



> 
> 
> As for the fact that a person is a person, if physical endowment
> (*qibing*) and physical constitution (*qizhi*) are cast
> aside, in what way can a person be described as a person? (Dai MZZYSZ:
> 51)
> 
> 
> 



Dai's arguments struck at the heart of the Neo-Confucian
metaphysical conception of principle, the Way of heaven, and moral
nature as prior and fundamentally substantive. Instead, he construed
*qi* as the basic stuff out of which all things and the nature
were wrought, and in the process, he stressed the materiality and
concreteness of all beings.



In sum, a vitalist sensibility animated the philosophical thoughts of
many a Qing thinker, placing *qi* and its manifestations at the
center of life and the world. But we must bear in mind the caveat that
such thinking amounted to no materialism or naturalism in the western
philosophical sense of the words. Material human desires in themselves
were never considered to be a principle, even though they were
conceived as integral and authentic components of a holistic nature.
Nevertheless, if it was not full-fledged formal philosophy, the
*qi-*based worldview was a fundamental attitude and disposition
that located life's meanings, possibilities, and motives in the
actualities of the corporeal world. As *qi* dislodged the
importance of *li*, knowledge acquired through the
senses' commerce with the workaday world (*wenjian zhi
zhi*), as opposed to moral knowledge attained through intuitive
knowing of the virtuous nature (*dexing zhi zhi*), claimed
priority. In an a-metaphysical age that was the Qing, there was no
triumph of *qi*-oriented thinking qua philosophy, but a
vitalist ontology did furnish a criterion of intelligibility that
undergirded the other modes of intellection--historicism,
utilitarianism, intellectualism.


## 3. Historicism: Contingency and Constancy



Neo-Confucian thought in the Song-Ming times bore a strong dimension
of ontological ultimacy, such that its criteria of intelligibility may
be considered as essentially metaphysical in nature. As the vitalist
sensibility began to take center stage in the late Ming and early
Qing, there was a shift from the ontological (the essential and
transcendent) to the ontic (the contingent and experiential), and the
latter came to be expressed as a historicism--a prevailing
worldview that appreciated changing particulars rather than a
foundational metaphysics of eternal universals. Thus, the term
"historicism", as it is used in the context of Qing
philosophy, is interchangeable with descriptions such as "the
sense of history", "the historical" and
"historical-mindedness". Indeed, a permeating sense of
history seemed to have formed a common thread that ran through the
learning of the intellectual stalwarts who personified the Ming-Qing
intellectual transition, such as the aforementioned Wang Fuzhi, Gu
Yanwu, and Huang Zongxi. They pursued their subject-matters, such as
the classics, institutions, statecraft, and phonology, by coming to
grips with their patterns of development and growth, taking into
account their diversity and particularity. They were inclined to
eschew totalizing metaphysical views that conferred on things and
affairs an underpinning unity. Instead, they embraced a historicist
perspective that shunned supra-historical principles and transcendent
norms, subjecting the investigation of phenomena to a logic of
becoming, not being. Lest we exaggerate the extent and influence of
this time-bound and relativist historicist perspective, a note of
reservation and qualification is needed. While the Qing philosophical
mode of intellection no doubt diverged from the ahistoricist
Neo-Confucianism that saw history as a function of some ultimate truth
such as *li*, *tian*, or*dao*, it was not
entirely freed from the belief in some transhistorical and universal
reality. The historicism in Qing philosophy was fraught with tension,
to the extent that the appreciation for the particularity was tempered
by a transhistorical sense of abiding universal order. 



Our ideal-typical historicism found expression in Huang Zongxi's
and Wang Fuzhi's efforts to reformulate the Neo-Confucian
ontology. Huang's historicist sensibility can be seen in the
very first lines of his masterpiece, the *Mingru xue'an*
(Intellectual Records of Ming Scholars), in which he lay out a
metaphysical predicate: 



> 
> 
> Throughout heaven and earth is the mind-heart (*xin*), whose
> changes are unpredictable. It is inexorably manifested in myriad
> different forms. The mind-heart has no fundamental substance.
> Fundamental substance is that which is achieved by its efficacious
> effort. Therefore, to plumb the principle (*li*) is to probe
> the myriad different forms of this mind-heart, not the myriad
> different forms of the myriad things. (Huang MRXA: preface 9) 
> 
> 
> 



While Huang asserted the mind-heart as the point of departure, he
moved away from the orientations of the so-called learning of the
mind-heart (*xinxue*) in Neo-Confucianism. Instead of focusing
on "fundamental substance", Huang emphasized
"efforts". Rather than moving inward toward the
mind-heart, Huang's position drifted outward into the outer
physical phenomenal world, in which there were the ever-changing
"myriad different forms", differences perceived through
the one mind notwithstanding. In other words, although there was the
overarching universal mind-heart, this mind-heart was no incorporeal
original substance hovering above the concrete variegated world of
particularities and efforts. There was no immutable fundamental
substance as such, as the mind-heart was developmental in nature,
manifested in the external myriad differences.



Huang also had a dynamic view of institutional evolution. Upon
examining the historical origins and evolutions of the various
specific institutions, he concluded that imitation of the institutions
described in the ancient classics was impractical, stating that
"under heaven... there have not been laws and institutions
that could not be overthrown" (quoted in Gu Qingmei 1978: 146).
Huang saw his own time as one bound to a long historical series, as
one segment contiguous with the preceding and succeeding epoch. There
were the ancient Three Dynasties with their magnificent order,
followed by two thousand years of disorder after the death of
Confucius. Now, the time for change had again come. 



Wang Fuzhi reordered the Neo-Confucian ontology through his
historico-philosophical theory of *shi* (conditions)
vis-a-vis *li* (principle). Wang accorded principle
priority as the immanent pattern of all things and affairs, that is,
as that which is "the certain" (*guran*),
"the necessary" (*biran*), "the
self-evident" (*dangran*), "the why and
wherefore" (*suoyiran*) and "the natural"
(*ziran*). But principle was embedded in concrete
psycho-physical force (*qi*) and manifested in actual
conditions: 



> 
> 
> Therefore, originally, there is principle which can be readily seen in
> material force. Accordingly, this obtained principle naturally becomes
> conditions. Thus principle can be seen in these necessary conditions.
> (Wang QSYS: 48:9.5a) 
> 
> 
> 



Principle and conditions should always "be discussed
syncretically as a whole" (Wang QSYS: 48:9.5a-b). This
relational integrity presumed that the primacy of principle was
predicated on the immediacy of differentiation: "Conditions
become different when times are different; principle also becomes
different when conditions are different" (Wang QSYS: 58:15.3b).
*Li-qi* as a totality represented the universe as complex
phenomena of perpetually appearing contingencies, subject to the
workings of human agency: "When one accords with the times, one
complies with that which the time makes inevitable in order to save
oneself, and so escape from disaster" (quoted in McMorran 1975:
457).



As with Huang Zongxi, Wang Fu-chih saw the development of institutions
through a historicist perspective. The institutions of each age were
compositely the *shi*, or conditions *sui generis*. They
were the Way of that age, which human beings with volitions and
transformative leverage followed. Every age had its own appropriate
institutions: 



> 
> 
> The rule of every epoch should be in accordance with its own time,
> establishing [the particular] institutions of an epoch.... Never
> has there been the successful establishment of governance as a result
> of imitating the one merit of just the one thing of the ancients, or
> championing one ancient thing, obtrusively injected into the present.
> (Wang QSYS: 21:5b-6a) 
> 
> 
> 



Even the Classics prescribed no unchanging models: 



> 
> 
> As to setting up schemes or arranging for details, neither the
> *Book of History* nor Confucius said anything about
> them.... Because the ancient institutions were meant to govern
> the ancient world and cannot be followed today, the superior man does
> not base his activities on them, and because what is suitable today
> can govern the world of today but will not necessarily for the future,
> the superior man does not hand it down to posterity as a model.
> (quoted in Chan 1963: 701)
> 
> 
> 



Gu Yanwu, unlike Huang and Wang, eschewed metaphysical pondering
altogether. He advanced the view that dynamic historical change was
the rule of the day with regard to institutional development. The
value of institutions was determined by the contexts of both their
origins and their subsequent functional uses. He, for instance,
hammered home this message in his proposal to reform the
*weisuo* (guard and battalion) military system of the late Ming
dynasty: 



> 
> 
> Without the change of institutions, current problems cannot be
> rectified. If in a circumstance where change is inevitable, one still
> conceals the actuality of [the need for] change and obstinately clings
> to the position of not changing, it will certainly lead to the gravest
> of calamities. (Gu GTLSWJ: 128) 
> 
> 
> 



There must be periodic reforms to forestall calamities: 



> 
> 
> If we understand that the feudal system changed into the prefectural
> system, we also understand that as the prefectural system in turn
> falls into decay, it too must change. Does it mean that there will be
> a return to feudalism? No, this is impossible. But if some sage who
> could invest the prefectural system with the essential meaning of
> feudalism were to appear, then the world would attain order....
> Now, the defects of the prefectural [system] have developed to their
> utmost.... But still, it was followed in all its details. That is
> why the livelihood of people is diminishing daily; that is why China
> is growing weaker daily. (GTLSWJ: 12)
> 
> 
> 



But it is noteworthy that while Huang, Wang, and Gu argued for
expedient change relative to the time and its particular conditions,
they all subscribed to the universal values ensconced in the ancient
Classics. Huang embraced the enduring principles bequeathed by the
ancient Three Dynasties. In his famous *Mingyi daifang lu* (A
Plan for the Prince), he affirmed the constancy of the ancient
principle of governance which was, in brief, unswerving devotion to
promoting the interests and benefits of the people: 



> 
> 
> When the sagely rulers appeared, they did not treat their own profits
> as profits, but would seek to benefit the world. [They did] not regard
> harm to themselves as the only harm, but would seek to release the
> world from harm. They had to work thousands of times harder than other
> people in the world. (Huang MYDFL: 2) 
> 
> 
> 



Wang Fuzhi also posited timeless principle in the historical process
of governance. He balanced the particularities of the dynasties
against the constant principles of the Classics: 



> 
> 
> For the best way of government, there is nothing better than to
> examine the *Classic of Documents* and modify it with the words
> of Confucius. But the central point is whether the ruler's heart
> is serious or dissolute.... The great function of government is
> to make use of worthy men and promote education. In dealing with
> people, it should bestow humanity and love to the highest degree.
> Whether in the government of Yao and Shun, in the Three Dynasties, or
> [in the period] from the Qin and Han down to the present, in no case
> can these principles not be extended and applied. (quoted in Chan
> 1963: 701) 
> 
> 
> 



Wang saw excellence in the ancient sage-rulers' achievements and
thus regarded historical changes as divergence from the Golden Past.
Gu Yanwu also enjoined rulers to uphold the Confucian "four
bonds" (*siwei*) as the overarching principles that
guided history: 



> 
> 
> Propriety (*li*) and righteousness (*i*) are the supreme
> ways in ruling people. Integrity (*lian*) and the sense of
> shame (*chi*) are the great principles in cultivating humanity.
> Without integrity, there is nothing that is not coveted; without the
> sense of shame, there is no [wicked] deed that is not committed. If
> people are like that, catastrophe, failure, disorder, and death will
> come. (Gu RZL: 5:53) 
> 
> 
> 



In his *Records of Daily Knowledge* (*Rizhi lu*), Gu
surveyed the entire course of Chinese history, from the Zhou to his
own time, and concluded that only when ethics and morals were
championed that peace and prosperity could be attained.



Thus, Huang, Wang, and Gu's admiration of the ancient past
imbued their historicism with a sense of ultimacy achieved once upon a
time. While they might not be seeking literal return to the past, they
betrayed their yearning for the constant and the transhistorical.
Their goal of encrusting measures apposite to current needs with
ancient principles suggested that there was more to history than the
contingencies and expediencies of any one time.



The mid-Qing witnessed the predominance of the intellectualist pursuit
of evidential research (*kaozheng*), with particular regard to
the exegetical and philological investigations of the classics, driven
by the fundamentalist goal to retrieve the antique Way enshrined in
the classical texts. Nevertheless, when the classics and antiquity
were subjected to meticulous scrutiny and rigorous examination, the
ancient past came to be interrogated and problematized. Which were the
authentic classics? Which part of antiquity was to be restored? How
should we go about apprehending the past? Therefore, what began as a
classicization of antiquity aimed at cutting through the Neo-Confucian
metaphysical babel ended as a partial historicization of the classics.
The ancient past and the classics became objects *in* time to
be studied, thereby given their historicity. The works and thoughts of
Dai Zhen (1724-77) and Zhang Xuecheng (1738-1801)
exemplified the historicist temper of the time.



Dai Zhen, as we have seen, contended that everything had its
principle, which varied in accordance with the thing itself.
Universality was broken into particularities, such that principle
(*li*) was the "inner texture of things"
(*tiaoli*), the organizational pattern and textural
configuration of the psycho-physical force (*qi*), manifested
as "living, drinking, eating, talking and acting" (Dai
MZZYSZ: 110-113). Dai questioned the notion of an essential
principle invariant through time through his idea of "expedient
weighing of circumstances" (*quan*), associated with the
idea of change (*bian*): 



> 
> 
> With *quan*, the insignificant and important can be
> distinguished.... Constancy refers to the obvious insignificant
> and important [things], observed by all throughout time. As for the
> important becoming insignificant, or insignificant becoming important,
> it is change (*bian*). Change cannot be fully known without the
> correct measure resulting from intelligent exhaustive observations and
> investigations. (MZZYSZ: 125) 
> 
> 
> 



Consequently, right and wrong (*shifei*) should be gauged in
relationship to expediency: 



> 
> 
> Obstinately adhering to the apparently important and insignificant as
> seen by all, [many people] affirm what is right, and criticize what is
> wrong. In fact, [they] do not realize that timely expediency renders
> the important into the insignificant, the insignificant important.
> (MZZYSZ: 128) 
> 
> 
> 



In his masterly essay, "Probing the Original Goodness"
(*Yuanshan*), Dai identified expediency as one of the
characteristics of the pervading common virtue of
"goodness" (*shan*): "Because of its
coherence with changes, it is called the norm of expediency"
(Chung-ying Cheng 1971: 68). This appreciation for change was
transposed epistemologically into Dai's preoccupation with
meticulous examination of the origins and developments of multifarious
things in history: ancient pronunciations of characters, attire and
costumes, changes in place names, implements of the artisans,
nomenclature and categories of fauna and flora, mathematics, musical
instruments, and the like. The principles and meanings of the sages,
and indeed the Way itself, had to be found in the actual
"statutes, laws, institutions and measures" (Dai DZWJ:
145), that is, things in the historical records.



Yet, there was no consistent historicism in Dai's philosophy.
His conception of change was ultimately constrained by his abiding
sense of the ultimacy of "the necessary" (*biran*):




> 
> 
> The *Odes* says, "Where there is a thing, there is a
> rule". "Thing" is the name for an actual body and an
> actual matter. "Rule" is the name for its primary
> fundamental quintessence. All actual bodies and actual matters are
> natural, which ultimately return to the necessary. (Dai MZZYSZ: 60)
> 
> 
> 
> 



The "primary fundamental quintessence" and "the
necessary", in space and time respectively, denoted the totality
of all beings. Individuality was simply a variation or expression of
the totalizing Way, or *common* goodness: 



> 
> 
> [G]oodness is used to mean what is inherent in humanity [and
> things.]... The so-called goodness is nothing other than the
> formation and transformation of heaven-and-earth and the function and
> capacities of nature. (Chung-ying Cheng 1971: 33-34) 
> 
> 
> 



Individual nature was the result of the "allotment"
(*fen*) by the "*dao* of heaven".
One's destiny, as mandated by the Way of heaven, accounted for
one's individual nature: "The limit set by
[Heaven's] allotment is called destiny which, in producing a
kind of constitution, is called nature" (1971: 2) This
foundational perspective of inexorability became in Dai's
classical learning the confirmation of the universality of the
sages' ancient values: 



> 
> 
> If we do not seek to understand the utterances and deeds of the
> ancient sages, there is no way we can investigate their mind [which
> pervades] the ensuing thousands of years. Therefore, it is through
> [the study of] the Classics, mathematics, institutions and categories
> of things that [the meaning of their] language can be comprehended,
> thereby meeting them with one mind. (Dai DZWJ: 177)
> 
> 
> 



Dai Zhen's philosophy was inspired by faith in the eternality of
the ancient Way, concerned with effecting the return of a moral system
already established in antiquity. Yet, this return was enabled only by
the examination of the historical records, which yielded a keen
awareness of differentness, particularity, individuality and
contingency--a historicist sensibility. Dai juxtaposed the
classics (the Way/*dao*) and history
(expediency/*quan*), such that historical pursuits were
complementary with fundamentalist classical studies aimed at restoring
ancient truths.



A testimonial of the synthesis of history and classics was Zhang
Xuecheng's famous statement in his *Wenshi tongyi*
(*General principles of literature and history*): "The
Six Classics are all histories". He further said, "The
ancients never did talk of principles separated from affairs. The Six
Classics are the statutes and records of the government of the ancient
rulers" (Zhang WSTY: 2). These claims formed the foundation of
Zhang's view of history: history referred to the history of the
institutions and laws of antiquity, and principles could only be
discussed with reference to actual events--history. If the
classics were time-bound, that is, within antiquity, then the
*dao* resided therein was temporally circumscribed: 



> 
> 
> The meanings concealed in what had occurred once upon a time [in
> antiquity] can be adequately explained through glossing and
> etymological study of the [classical] texts. As to the development of
> events which occurred thereafter, the classics could not have anything
> to say. (WSTY: 42) 
> 
> 
> 



The classics recorded only the laws and institutions of the ancient
rulers, the material realities of the ancient Way: 



> 
> 
> The learning of the Three Dynasties recognized only history and not
> the classics. [It was because it] was intimately related to human
> affairs.... [O]ne who talks about human nature and heaven's
> mandate must study history. (WSTY: 52) 
> 
> 
> 



In order to know the *dao*-in-history, one had to examine the
entire course of history. Recent history revealed the recent Way, and
ancient history shed light on the ancient one. Consequently, Zhang
promoted the study of current history and the development of an
awareness of "valuing the institutions of the current
ruler". Learning involved investigations of the existing
institutions closely connected to human relations and daily utility.
No matter how advanced scholarship on the ancient past was, without
knowing the present, it would be "inappropriate for practical
application" (WSTY: 53).



But Zhang did not see the past simply as successive parades of
relative spatial forms and temporal segments. Instead of
particularizing the ancient past and the classics once and for all,
Zhang often sought in them the universally normative. The
*dao*-in-history pertained to the pattern of change of the
political, social and institutional polity, things such as
"government, pedagogy, marking out boundaries, delimiting
prefectures, well-field system, feudalism and education" (WSTY:
34). These were changing forms of life relative to their own place and
time, embodying their own Way. But overarching these particular Ways
was the transhistorical *dao* of the ancient sages, enshrined
in the classics, which Zhang called the "the essential
Way" (*daoti*): 



> 
> 
> The essential Way leaves nothing unembodied. It is exhaustively
> explicated in the Six Classics. The various other philosophers were
> able to write at all, maintaining their well-reasoned viewpoints and
> making logical sense, because [they] invariably had attained
> [understanding] of one aspect of the essential *dao*. (WSTY:
> 16-17) 
> 
> 
> 



This transhistorical Way was thus the provenance of all learning and
philosophy. Elsewhere, Zhang regarded this Way as "moral-ritual
teachings" (*mingjiao*): 



> 
> 
> What the ancient sage-rulers showed the world to enlighten the people
> were nothing but [their] moral-ritual teachings. Since ancient times,
> none have achieved peace without moral-ritual teachings. (WSTY: 95)
> 
> 
> 
> 



Moral-ritual teachings were the very stuff and source of governance.
When Zhang urged that post-antiquity history be examined independently
of the Six Classics, he did not aim at demolishing the classics'
sacral authority. He only cautioned against any literal usage of them
in historical endeavors, which could swamp all sense of change after
the Three Dynasties. Zhang enjoined us to "value summing up the
essence of the principles of the Six Classics and narrate events in
time in order to probe the great *dao*" (WSTY: 42).
History, in a sense, was the unfurling of this authoritative
"great Way" (*dadao*), the meanings and messages of
which were expounded in the classics: 



> 
> 
> The great meaning of the Six Classics is brilliant as the sun and
> moon. [The lessons of] losses and gains in the Three Dynasties can be
> projected [as guides for the subsequent] hundred ages. (WSTY: 50) 
> 
> 
> 



Thus, in the "essential *dao*", the "great
*dao*" or the essential and great "moral-ritual
teachings", Zhang's historicism was dissolved.



As the cases of Dai Zhen and Zhang Xuecheng show, Qing thought
involved the rethinking of the individual as a historical being who
verified the validity of institutions and laws through the authority
of history, resisting values and norms that were conceived as the
formulaic good applied to all times and cases. Yet, it dislodged
no *telos* of the ancient Way, as a mainspring of Qing
philosophy was surely the retrieval of the *dao* of the
classics. Historicism as a means of evaluating the past achieved no
hegemony. What occurred was a critical hermeneutical exploration of
the ancient classics and writings. Within the boundaries of the
inherited intellectual tradition, the classicist endeavors bred a
historicist sensibility, problematizing the nature of the Way as the
embodiment of truth-in/above-history. This historicism signified a
discursive tension that placed a strain on an intellectual field, but
one nevertheless circumscribed by age-old Confucian values.


## 4. Utilitarianism: Thought and Action



In traditional China, the Confucian literati did not consider thought
and learning to be separate from action in the public world at large.
They were, in fact, much inspired by a beatific vision of a public
space in which social and political actions yielded a world of peace
and order. In the classic text, *Doctrine of the Mean*
(*Zhongyong*), the profound paradigmatic person
(*junzi*) is described as one who reverently realizes
one's virtuous, heaven-conferred nature, and pursues inquiry and
learning. The *Great Learning* (*Daxue*) further tells
us that these efforts have a three-pronged end: cultivating the self
(*xiuxin*), ordering the state (*zhiguo*), and bringing
peace to the world (*ping tianxia*). Thus, the individuated
internal goal of achieving sagehood (*neisheng*) is
inextricably bound to the outer concerns of implementing the Way of
kingship (*waiwang*). In contradistinction to Plato's or
even Hegel's otherworldly philosophy--Plato saw the
philosopher as one whose body (not mind) inhabited the city of his
fellow human beings, and Hegel viewed philosophy as a world stood on
its head, from the vantage point of commonsense--Confucianism
regarded the world of workaday affairs as coterminous with the world
of ideas in which thinkers dwelled. The abiding ideal of
"ordering the world and extending utility" (*jingshi
zhiyong*) demanded the conjugation of private moral cultivation
and its public realization. In Qing philosophy, there was this
palpable intellectual purport based on the utilitarian ideal of
ordering the world, which bred a moral seriousness about the everyday
realities of society and state. This utilitarianism posited an
intimate relation between thought and action, regarding as
insignificant or irrelevant metaphysical concepts that resisted
translation into some form of effort leading to concrete outcomes. The
corollaries of *xue* (learning) and *zhi* (knowing) were
*yong* (utility) and *xing* (action).



To be sure, this utilitarianism was not devoid of moral and normative
imperatives, to the extent that actions had to be inspired and guided
by values such as moral rulership (*wang*), rightness and
integrity (*yi*), and public-mindedness (*gong*). At the
same time, it embraced an ethical perspective that invested value in
the utility and function of secular, institutional amelioration. From
the late Ming onward, thought did gravitate far more toward
actualities and practicalities, as the ideal and slogan of
*jingshi*, ordering the world, took center stage. Gu Yanwu
loathed what he considered to be the "empty and vacuous
learning" (*kongxu zhi xue*) in the Ming times, which




> 
> 
> disposed of and refrained from talking about the ills and deprivations
> within the four seas, and spoke always about lofty imperceptible
> subtlety and absolute holistic purity. (Gu GTLSWJ: 43) 
> 
> 
> 



Following the examples of the sages who never severed the ties between
learning and socio-political concerns, Gu proclaimed that 



> 
> 
> he would not pursue any learning that does not relate to the central
> principle of the Six Classics and the affairs and responsibilities in
> the current world. 
> 
> 
> 



Just as 



> 
> 
> all the books written by them [the sages] were for the purpose of
> discarding the wrong and returning to the right, and of changing
> customs and practices so as to attain order and harmony, (GTLSWJ: 142)
> 
> 
> 
> 



so "a profound person pursues learning to illuminate the Way and
save the world" (GTLSWJ: 103). Gu wrote his masterwork,
*Records of Daily Knowledge* (*Rizhi lu*), to urge
participation in society, a life-long endeavor that "did not end
until death" (*si er hou yi*). The book formulated
practical views that would be useful for the rulers: 



> 
> 
> I wrote...the *Records of Daily Knowledge*, the first part
> of which is on classical studies, the middle part on the way of
> governance, and the final part on general experience and general
> knowledge, altogether over thirty fascicles. In the event a prince
> appears, he would discern in it actual practices and affairs. With it,
> he could elevate this current age to the prosperity of the ancient age
> of order. (GTLSWJ: 103)
> 
> 
> 



A similar utilitarian thread ran through Huang Zongxi's thought.
He defined the existential mission of a Confucian profound person,
*junzi*, to which everyone should aspire: "To bring peace
to the country and to preserve society are the obligations of a
*junzi*" (Huang MYDFL: 32). His learning was meant to
form "the warp and the woof of heaven-and-earth"
(*jingwei tiandi*), and so he criticized scholars for 



> 
> 
> trying futilely to manage the world by lavish and high-sounding ideas
> of establishing the ultimate in order to regenerate the masses, of
> establishing the mind-heart of the universe, and of following the
> everlasting peace of the thousand ages. 
> 
> 
> 



Arrogantly, they 



> 
> 
> view those who manage finances and taxation as engaging in hoarding
> profit and wealth... and those who carefully supervise
> administration and government as tawdry officials. 
> 
> 
> 



But 



> 
> 
> when the day to serve the country comes, they are bemused and
> befuddled, as though they are sitting within a cloud. Therefore, the
> ways of the world (*shidao*) have become corrupt and rotten.
> (Huang NLWDHJ: vol. 6, p. 549) 
> 
> 
> 



The practical ways of the world could be found in the classics and
histories: "The Six Classics are all books that recorded the
Way..., the actual rulership (*shizhi*)..., the
actual practices (*shixing*)" (Huang NLWDHJ: vol. 6, p.
442-443). "All that was recorded in the Twenty-one
Histories was the enterprise of ordering the world" (Huang NLWY:
vol. 6, p. 351).



Wang Fuzhi also castigated the late Ming literati for embracing empty
intuitionism, "becoming lax about maintaining clear distinctions
in social relations (*minglun*) and investigating
things", such that they no longer cared about "whether or
not names correspond to realities" (quoted in McMorran 1975:
434). Learning, to Wang, must have a practical intellectual purport:




> 
> 
> Every paragraph, every title, every work, and every sentence should
> lead one back to one's body and mind-heart. They should cohere
> with one's grand purpose, 
> 
> 
> 



which is 



> 
> 
> to distinguish its grand meaning in order to establish the basis for
> cultivating oneself and governance. (quoted in Ji Wenfu 1978:
> 1-3) 
> 
> 
> 



Wang privileged the study of history precisely because of its
practical utility: "What is valuable about history is its
account of the past as the teacher of the future". History would
be ill written if "the general framework of ordering the world
(*jingshi*) is not illuminated" (quoted in 1978: 1). In
short, historical learning, in the end, was statecraft.



While it seemed evident that utilitarian thinking that actively
combatted moral intuitionism predominated in the early Qing in the
seventeenth century, its edges might have been dulled in the
eighteenth century. The conventional explanation is that scholars
channeled their energy into the sort of pedantic studies of philology
and classical texts, as represented by the so-called movement of
evidential learning (*kaozheng xue*) that received the
court's approval and encouragement. But it is a very partial
view that fails to convey the whole picture, as utilitarian thinking
was in fact alive and well among the *kaozheng* practitioners
and partisans, many of whom continued to see the classics as guides to
ordering the world. Qian Daxin (1728-1804), a towering figure in
the *kaozheng* movement, touted the practical value of these
ancient texts: 



> 
> 
> [The Five Classics] were employed by the sages to make the warps and
> woofs of the world. The ultimate goal was to render the world good.
> The secondary function was to rule oneself. (Qian QYTWJ: 310) 
> 
> 
> 



Qian referred to the classics specifically in terms of the ideals of
*jingshi* and *zhiyong*--ordering the world and
extending utility: 



> 
> 
> Confucian learning rests with the illumination of the substance in
> order to extend utility. The *Odes*, *Documents*, and
> *Rites* are all writings for the ordering of the world. In the
> *Analects* with twenty fascicles and *Mencius* with
> seven fascicles, more than half are discussions on administration and
> government. What the masters and students discussed and sought at the
> time were the principles of sustaining oneself, of living in the
> world, of refusal, of acceptance, of receiving, and of giving. As for
> [the philosophical questions of] nature and the Way of heaven, even
> those who were eminently upright did not hear of them. In this manner,
> the Confucians worked on practicality and utility, and did not value
> empty talks. (QYTWJ: 373) 
> 
> 
> 



In short, *wen*, literary expressions and writings, must seek
to realize the following practical goals: illuminating the Way
(*mingdao*), ordering the world (*jingshi*), revealing
the subtle (*chanyu*), and rectifying customs
(*zhengsu*).



Zhang Xuecheng's historiographic thinking was anchored on the
goal and ideal of ordering the world. Because the classics
"outlined the ordering of the world by the kings and the
emperors", they were histories indeed. Zhang proclaimed that
"historical learning is for the ordering of the world"
(*shixue suoyi jingshi*): 



> 
> 
> I say, "historical learning is for the ordering of the world. It
> is surely not writings of empty words". For instance, the Six
> Classics all came from Confucius. The early Confucians thought that
> his greatest achievement was the *Spring and Autumn Annals.* It
> was precisely because it was intimately related to the social
> realities of the time. Those of the later ages who spoke about
> writings disregarded social realities, and discussed in an abstract
> manner the nature and heaven. Thus, I know they achieved nothing.
> Scholars who do not know such purport [of learning] are not qualified
> to talk about historical learning. 
> 
> 
> 



Zhang criticized the Han learning scholars for dwelling on the trivial
ceremonial details (*quli*) while neglecting and ignoring the
basic political institutions (*jingli*). Practical learning
meant understanding "the essential substance of the ancients in
order to enlarge the mind-heart", so that one could
"determine what is right for the present" (Zhang WSTY:
53).



The discursive production of Qing philosophy was empowered and powered
by the utilitarian impulse to engender and yield utility, seeking
emancipation from the moral introspection of Song-Ming thought. As
Qing philosophical thought abjured abstract pondering of metaphysical
matters and questions, it turned to advocacy for ameliorative actions
that directly bettered the state and society.


## 5. Intellectualism: External Knowledge and Inquiry



A protuberant ideational strand that made up the Qing philosophical
universe was the affirmative outlook regarding discursive knowledge
and intellectual pursuit of the *dao* as the Way of the
exterior world, supplanting the introspective endeavor and spiritual
contemplation aimed at internal enlightenment and realization. A word
here about the socio-political context of this shift is necessary. The
intellectualist reorientation that characterized the Ming-Qing
transition owed much to the literati's conception of the
palpable political, social, and economic problems of dynastic decline,
which eventuated in the fall of the Ming and the establishment of a
conquest dynasty. As they saw it, the root cause of dynastic
declension and demise was the pervasive moral and spiritual
degeneration brought on by the intellectual bankruptcy of the late
Ming, as learning and thinking fell under the pernicious sway of empty
intuitionism and internal introspection. A moribund culture and a weak
state could only be reinvigorated with the right kind of learning that
was concrete, practical, and substantive. This culture of criticism as
a result placed a premium on the classics, the actual words of the
ancient sages as the substantive source of authority. Antiquity
itself, personified by the efficacious virtuous deeds of the sages,
served as the exemplar of order and amelioration. As particular
attention was lavished on the thorough, literal understanding of these
texts and words, an intellectualist philosophical outlook emerged in
the world of thought and learning. Yu Ying-shih has famously
labeled this outlook "intellectualism", which is an
ideal-type thinking abstracted from the Confucian quest for "the
way of inquiry and learning" (*dao wenxue*), in
contradistinction to the anti-intellectualist enterprise of
"honoring the heaven-endowed moral virtuous nature"
(*zun dexing*). The former sought data and corroborations of
realities in the external realm of myriad phenomena and things,
whereas the latter appealed intuitively to the internal realm of
one's very nature, whose quiddity was morally good, insofar as
it was endowed by heaven. If Song-Ming philosophical thought was
characterized by its identification with inner moral reckoning and
awakening, then the Qing counterpart was marked by its special
focusing on external, objective knowledge, whose basis and point of
departure were the classical texts as objects of cognitive
inquiries.



Yet, the point must be made that embedded in this rupture was
continuity in some important ways. The entire Song-Ming tradition of
thought was no doubt subjected to wholesale reexamination, but to
begin with, the basis of their criticism and construction stemmed from
a well-established preexisting strand of learning. One famous Song
definition of the quintessence of the Confucian tradition by Liu Yi
(1017-1086) identified the three principal components of
*ti* (substance, essence, spirit, principle, core, and soul),
*yong* (function, utility, practicality, application, action,
and effort) and *wen* (literature, writings, philology,
belles-lettres, textual learning, classical studies). Together, they
constituted the goals and contents of Confucian learning. Qing
intellectualism focused on the primacy of *wen* as a central
manifestation of *yong*. Moreover, the scholars, despite their
general discontent with what they perceived to be empty and recondite
Song-Ming learning and their desire to reform it, continued to
delineate their scholarly and philosophical allegiance in terms of
association with the two schools of Neo-Confucianism: the so-called
Cheng-Zhu school and Lu-Wang school. In fact, many of them engaged in
intellectualist enterprises precisely for the purpose of wielding
philology as a weapon to defend their philosophical views while at the
same time seeking to weaken and demolish those of their opponents.




Nevertheless, even though Qing intellectualism was an outgrowth of the
Confucian tradition with a time-worn pedigree, it was also new in the
sense that the *kaozheng* (evidential research) movement and
methodology, the utmost expression of the intellectualist spirit, by
virtue of its intellectual scale and density, wrought an epochal
breakthrough. It came to be inescapably and unmistakably identified
with the special Qing way of construing reality and the world.
*Kaozheng* scholarship opened up hermeneutic issues of
interpretation. As Benjamin Elman has pointed out, the classics as a
whole were unproblematically recognized as assent-eliciting cultural
and textual capital, but once they were subjected to interrogation as
individual separate texts, dissent and disquiet arose. The
authenticity of some texts came to be questioned; their places in the
heterogeneous commentarial came to be debated; their authority came to
be reassessed; and the manner of retrieving the antique messages came
to be argued. In short, the classics were historicized. Moreover, what
began as studies of the classics spilled over into other areas of
inquiry--bronze artifacts, pre-Qin thinkers and texts, history,
geography, cosmology, science, and so on.



Gu Yanwu, in the early Qing, asserted that the study of principle

(*lixue*) was irredeemably contracted to the study of the
classics (*jingxue*). According to him, in ancient times, any
study of principle was perforce an investigation of the classics, in
which the basis and operation of principle could be discerned and
understood. Hence his research of ancient phonology: 



> 
> 
> I think that the study of the Nine Classics should begin with textual
> analysis, and the study of textual analysis should begin with a
> knowledge of phonology. It is the same with the study of all the
> various philosophers and the hundred schools. (Gu GTLSWJ: 76) 
> 
> 
> 



Gu criticized his contemporaries for pursuing what was to him empty
and abstract "Chan Buddhist learning" (*Chanxue*),
since they relied on the "records of dialogues"
(*yulu*) of the Song-Ming scholars and ignored the classics,
which were the *ben* of learning, that is, the root, substance,
and basis. He rejected the totalizing methodology of *yiguan zhi
fa* (the way of connecting everything), which was the
epistemological orientation of Song-Ming learning that eschewed and
swamped concrete particulars. Instead, Gu called for "*duoxue
er shi* (to get to know through multifarious learning)" and
"*duojian er shi* (to get to know through multifarious
observation)", such that one achieved "*boxue yu
wen* (erudition in all writings)" (Gu GTLSWJ: 43-44).
To him, the classics recorded and consisted of nothing but "what
the sages had heard and seen (*shengren suowen suojian*)"
(Gu RZL: 37-38). His intellectualist stance was a classic
expression of "following the way of learning and inquiry"
(*dao wenxue*), involving empirical observations and
painstaking accumulation of broad knowledge.



Huang Zongxi, as a self-touted follower of the Lu-Wang tradition, made
a point to reinterpret Wang Yangming's central idea of
"*zhi liangzhi*" (extending spontaneous moral
knowing to the utmost) in intellectualist terms. While Wang tended to
think that knowledge must be grasped in terms of the ultimate
substance of one's own mind-heart and could not be made clear in
words, thereby casting doubt on the efficacy of words and discursive
practices, Huang spoke on behalf of the Ming master by claiming that
the act of "extending" (*zhi*) innate moral knowing
was practice, that is, the very act of "broad learning,
examining and inquiring, deliberation with utmost care, and
identifying differences clearly are all practices" (Huang MRXA:
v.2, p. 53). Later, Quan Zuwang (1705-1755), an admirer of
Huang's scholarship, would offer this encomium by citing
Huang's words: 



> 
> 
> [Huang] once said, "The profession of [studying] the classics is
> for the ordering of the world (ordering the world)." Therefore,
> he did not pursue the learning of the petty Confucians but commanded
> [himself] to study the classics and history. He also said,
> "Without [such] study, the changes and transformations of
> principle (*i*) cannot be verified". (quoted in Gu
> Qingmei 1978: 118)
> 
> 
> 



Wang Fuzhi also repudiated the Neo-Confucian epistemological
assertions of the possibility of *mingjie* (esoteric
understanding) and *miaowu* (mysterious enlightenment), both
which were anti-intellectualist in conception, in that they referred
to direct intuitive apprehension of the truth without the intervention
of actual study. He insisted that "the principles of the
multitudinous things cannot be known without learning and cannot be
distinguished without erudition". Knowledge, for Wang, came from
our direct engagement with and experience of the "changing
external forms" (*kexing*) in the universe, such as 



> 
> 
> the rising, setting, waning, and waxing of the sun and moon, and the
> succession of the seasons, the birth and death of the myriad things,
> and wind, rain, dew, and thunder. (quoted in Hou Wailu 1958, 108) 
> 
> 
> 



He claimed that 



> 
> 
> when a thing is known, then its name is known. When its name is known,
> then its significance is known. Without contact with things, even if
> the mind-heart is imbued with its innate ability, [it] cannot name the
> names, and things cannot be accomplished. (ibid., 108\*\*\*see
> previous\*) 
> 
> 
> 



Wang thus argued strongly in favor of "investigation of
things" (*gewu*), which employed both the mind-heart, and
our senses of hearing and seeing, that is, empirical observation. He
defined their inexorable interrelation and interaction in the quest
for knowledge: 



> 
> 
> The effort of the investigation of things employs both the faculty of
> the mind-heart, and hearing and seeing. Study and inquiry are the
> mainstay, aided by thinking and distinguishing between
> differences.... Hearing and seeing are the resources for the
> functioning of the mind-heart, setting the direction for it to follow.
> (quoted in Ji Wenfu 1978: 45) 
> 
> 
> 



Wang's theory of knowledge affirmed the irreducibility of
discursive knowledge gained thorough investigating things--study
and inquiry--to morality spontaneously apprehended by the
mind-heart.



In the eighteenth century, when the *kaozheng* (evidential
research) movement held sway, the common consensus was that learning
must be concrete and empirical. The ultimate goal was to retrieve and
restore, via philological explications (*xungu*), the pristine
and unadulterated meanings of the sages' words, so that their
moral meanings (*yili*) could come to the fore, crystal clear.
Qian Daxin said it well: 



> 
> 
> There are first writings and words (*wenzi*) and then there are
> philological explications of the classics. There are first
> philological explications and then there are moral principles.
> Philological explications of the classics are the sources from which
> moral meanings are derived. (Qian QYTWJ: 349) 
> 
> 
> 



He asked, 



> 
> 
> Under heaven, is there any endeavor that abandons study and inquiry
> and specifically pursues the reverent realization of one's moral
> nature? (QYTWJ: 245) 
> 
> 
> 



Here, he explicitly affirmed the importance of following the way of
inquiry and learning, warning against exclusive focus on the
realization of our putatively moral nature. This intellectualist
stance was shared by Dai Zhen, who also waxed rhetorical: 



> 
> 
> But if the pursuit of study and inquiry was abandoned, would it then
> be possible to lead a life for the reverent realization of one's
> moral nature? (Dai DZWJ: 140) 
> 
> 
> 



For Dai, to study and inquire was to "hear the *dao*
(*wendao*)" (DZWJ: 145). Thus, the intellectualist quest
was antecedent to any attempt to apprehend principle and the nature:




> 
> 
> To seek the most appropriate [principles] means that knowledge comes
> first. In no way does sagely learning ever call for eliminating
> selfishness without also seeking to remove befuddlement, or
> emphasizing action without first emphasizing knowledge. (quoted in
> Yu Ying-shih 1982: 389) 
> 
> 
> 



To put it plainly, "moral nature... feeds on learning and
inquiry in order to develop sagely intelligence" (quoted in
1982: 390).



Zhang Xuecheng shared the *kaozheng* scholars' enthusiasm
for concrete and critical study of the classics (which he regarded as
histories) and their aversion toward esoteric moral speculation. He
stated, "The ancients never did talk about principle removed
from things and affairs", and "those who talk about nature
and heaven's mandate must study history" (quoted in
Yu Ying-shih 1976: 46). Like Huang Zongxi, he redefined, in
intellectualist terms, what Wang Yangming's notion of *zhi
liangzhi* (extending spontaneous moral knowing to the utmost)
meant. Wang's *liangzhi* was innate, spontaneous,
ineffable, and intuitive, realizable through internal introspection.
By contrast, Zhang's version referred to "what a learner
considered to be closest to his talents (*cai*) [and]...
affective and emotive predispositions (*xingqing*)", both
of which were natural predispositions "to learn"
(*xue*). On the other hand, Zhang explained the notion of
"extending" *zhi* as "the learner's
effort to search for knowledge" (*xuezhe qiuzhi zhi
gong*) (quoted in Yu Ying-shih 1976: 79-80).



In sum, intellectualism, as a leitmotif in the constellation of Qing
philosophy, expresses itself in two ways. As a methodology, it
referred to the pursuit of inferential and empirical knowledge, most
prominently manifested in textual philological research. As a
philosophical outlook, it reevaluated and revised the central
Neo-Confucian notion of internal self-cultivation aimed at spontaneous
realization of the heaven-endowed moral nature, arguing instead in
favor of the quest for external knowledge mediated by the noetic
senses. Intellectual cognitive faculties would take precedence over
the intuitive power of the mind-heart.