In the first year of the Middle Yuan Dynasty, Huan Tan was punished by the Guangwu Emperor Liu Xiu because his performance was not in accordance with the holy will, and he was demoted from the capital and appointed as the county magistrate of Lu'an County. Huan Tan was more than seventy years old this year, the old man was depressed all the way, and before he reached Lu'an, he died of illness on the way.
Huan Tan's life, the academic reputation is famous all over the world, is respected as the most outstanding academic figure in the early years of the Eastern Han Dynasty, he entered the dynasty as an official at the age of 16, and formed a friendship with the famous artists yang xiong, Liu Xin and others at that time, to jointly discuss the study of ancient literature and astronomy, Yang Xiong's "Hun Tian theory" came from Huan Tan's inspiration.
Contrary to the achievements of the academic giants, Huan Tan's career was very unsmooth, and he went through the Western Han Dynasty, the New Dynasty, the Gengshi Regime and the Eastern Han Dynasty, and he was always at the middle and low levels of waiting for edicts and lang officials. In particular, the Guangwu Emperor Liu Xiu, who had followed him for more than thirty years, had hardly looked at Huan Tan in the right eye, and Huan Tan's performance was either stone sinking into the sea or provoking Liu Xiu to be unhappy.
The thing that caused Huan Tan to be deposed was actually because of a sentence that "subjects do not read the curse", which caused Long Yan to be angry, and he was almost cut off by Liu Xiu.
Since the end of the Western Han Dynasty, the confucian scholar class has become more and more important in society, and they have not only monopolized the court, but also formed a cult of academics from top to bottom. If you open the table of the hundred officials and secretaries of state at the end of the Western Han Dynasty, you will find that the level of official positions is roughly proportional to the academic level of officials.
A master like Huan Tan, logically speaking, the position of the Three Dukes is none other than him. Why has Huan Tan become an exception? Because he is an exceptional "non-mainstream" Confucian!
Huan Tan's "non-mainstream" characteristics are manifested in three aspects: in terms of being a human being, he despises and loses his dignity and despises common Confucianism; in academic terms, he does not believe in weiwei and does not worship ghosts and gods; in terms of political views, he respects the overlord and the political spring and autumn.
Like many young geniuses, Huan Tan has a pretentious temperament. On the one hand, he behaved frivolously and arrogantly, without trimming, and lacked prestige. Huan Tan has a high musical accomplishment, but he prefers pop music (Zheng Yin), which is not very stylish. Huan Tan, on the other hand, particularly likes to denigrate and criticize confucianism:
"(Huan Tan) sexually advocating pleasure, simple and not practicing prestige, but like not to destroy the vulgar Confucianism, by the common sight of the line."
The word "vulgar Confucianism" was put forward by Emperor Xuan of Han, referring to some superficial and pedantic Confucians, such people are often shallow in knowledge, like to hang books and admit death, and take the big truth of zombie death to give others a big hat, without any practical ability. In the last years of the Western Han Dynasty, as Confucianism became the mainstream, the group of confucians also became large, powerful enough to dominate social values.
Huan Tan's contempt is not rude, leaving himself nowhere to stay. He despises the vulgar, and I am afraid that the non-vulgar crowd also looks down on him. Confucians have always emphasized "repairing Qi Zhiping", a frivolous and arrogant person, not cultivating prestige, and having a vulgar style, who cannot escape the label of being labeled as "moral deficiency and lack of weight".
Therefore, Huan Tan's life is that on the one hand, he rejects others, and on the other hand, he is rejected by others, and he has already exhausted the light of the academic master without being mixed into the "cave man on the top of the mountain".
Of course, these personalities of Huan Tan are enough to become an idol school today, but the environment at that time did not allow it, and the faces of Confucius disciples were standard, and non-mainstream private customization was not allowed.
Confucianism and Fangshu were the "epidemics" of that time, and there were a large number of Confucian people who specialized in studying the theory of Weiwei, and at that time, if they did not understand Weiwei at all, it was like people today had never heard of stocks. Huan Tan was extremely disgusted by this absurd doctrine of cloud mountains and fog, which was not marginal, and he once said to Liu Xiu:
"According to the account of the king, Xian is based on the righteous path of benevolence and righteousness, and there is no strange and false thing. Cover the life of the heavenly path, and the saints are difficult to say. From zigong below, it is not to be heard, and the future generations are shallow and Confucian, and can understand it! Nowadays, those who are clever and wise and small talents, gain books, correct the name of the book, deceive the greedy, and mislead the Lord, but they can not suppress the far away! ”
Huan Tan, a rare scholar in China's thousands of years of history who has struggled against superstitious ideas, has vigorously advocated "the small song of the screen group and the justice of the Five Classics".
In order to criticize the idea of immortal alchemy, Huan Tan created the "theory of form theology" and refuted the false theory of immortality. He compares the human body (form) and life (God) with candles and candle fires:
"The spirit dwells in the form, the candle of the fire, the candle is nothing, and the fire cannot walk alone in the void."
Life is attached to the body, just as a candle fire is placed on a candle, and when the candle burns out, the candle is extinguished, and it is impossible to exist independently of the candle. That is to say, after the death of the human body, the spiritual world ends, and it cannot exist independently of the body, just like the relationship between candles and candles.
Huan Tan's materialist view is the mainstream today, and at that time it was nothing less than heresy! Especially when academic and political interests are tied, academia is no longer academic, but the door to the advancement of the career, a famous "non-mainstream" scholar, destined to applaud, few responders.
Huan Tan's political views are clearly stated in his "New Treatise":
"Reward the good and curse the evil, and the princes will do things, and they will be called kings; the people will be raised, and the covenants will be vowed, and the world will be corrected by faith and righteousness, and they will be called hegemons... The rule of the king's way, first remove the harm of people, but enough food and clothing, and then teach etiquette, and the power of punishment, so that the knowledge of good and evil will go, is therefore the great harmony, the world is happy, this king's skill. The great one who is hegemonic, the one who respects the king and the lowly subjects, the power is unified by one, the government is not two doors, the reward and punishment must be believed, the decree is clear, the hundred officials are repaired, the order must be carried out, and the art of this hegemon must be carried out. ”
Huan Tan's political propositions are actually the four ways of governing the country that are constantly debated in the academic circles: the imperial way, the imperial way, the royal way, and the hegemony. Huan Tan advocated that state governance should be a combination of hegemony and royal morality, specifically, to use the royal way to control the people, to emphasize the people's livelihood and etiquette, to control the subjects with hegemony, to emphasize power and decrees.
Obviously, Huan Tan's political views are out of date and outdated. With the birth of the Qin Empire, the original political environment no longer exists, and returning to the royal and hegemonic period is actually a retroist trend that ignores reality. History tells us that retro can never succeed.
The discussion of the Four Paths of Thought during the Qin and Han dynasties was meaningful, and by the middle and late Western Han Dynasty, Dong Zhongshu's neo-Confucian thought had created a new political concept for the Han Empire. Under this new concept, Confucianism has become the only political force in the empire, and Huan Tan's way of overlordship is essentially in conflict with Confucianism and cannot be supported by social forces.
Therefore, from the perspective of political philosophy, Huan Tan is also a "non-mainstream" politician.
A non-mainstream Confucian, non-mainstream scholar, and non-mainstream politician, Huan Tan's loneliness and encountering walls everywhere is an inevitable result. But Huan Tan does not think so, and his positioning of himself is very mainstream - governing the country and the world!
When Confucius pointed out a bright road of "reading and becoming an official" to the readers of the world, for more than two thousand years, countless readers have been lost on this bright road, and Huan Tan is one of them.
Huan Tan was in the center of the empire as a teenager, often accepting the emperor's inquiries and participating in the discussion and decision-making of the country's major policies, as an elite member of Confucianism, he had no reason not to take the rule of the country and the world as the goal of life, and he had no reason not to believe that he was a "national soldier".
Therefore, Huan Tan disregarded his current situation and constantly gave advice, and when Liu Xiu ignored his recital, he expressed great indignation and said unceremoniously to Liu Xiu:
"The courtiers gave their words, did not receive the edict, were indignant, and risked death to repeat the truth!"
I do my best to give you advice, why do you sink the sea! Huan Tan was right and brave, loyal and courageous, but Liu Xiu probably didn't think so, he never regarded Huan Tan as a national soldier, or even as a courtier. In Liu Xiu's mind, Huan Tan was at most the second Oriental Shuo, or to put it bluntly, Liu Xiu regarded Huan Tan as a courtier!
Rigoku, vulgarly speaking, is to accompany the emperor to have fun, amusing the clown, you are not qualified to participate in major national events!
Liu Xiu's need for Huan Tan is basically two kinds, one is Huan Tan's academic papers, good articles can be easy; the other is Huan Tan's "Zheng Sheng", the beauty of popular music can entertain.
The difference in the role positioning of two people is the origin of the contradiction. When Liu Xiu was criticized by Song Hong for listening to the sound of silence, he did not hesitate to demote Huan Tan to show his reform, just like a king with great ambitions killing a beautiful ji without blinking an eyebrow. And when Huan Tan saw that his sonata was not taken seriously, he righteously accused Liu Xiu of not being, a loyal and righteous person possessed by Bi Gan.
If it is simply a difference in the understanding of role positioning, Huan Tan may not be disgusted by Liu Xiu, and his pursuit of his ideals has touched the interests of imperial power, which is the node where the contradiction breaks out.
Let's go back to Huan Tan's three "non-mainstream" and see how Huan Tan touched the interests of imperial power.
Huan Tan did not like vulgar Confucianism, the circle of communication was very narrow, except for true scholars such as Yang Xiong, he had to accept the invitation of the elite and become their whitewash. During the reign of the Han Dynasty, he successively accepted the overtures of his foreign relative Fu Yan and the male favorite Dong Xian, and advised them. Although Huan Tan's dealings with them are sunny and persuade them to avoid trouble with the right way, based on the bad reputations of Fu and Dong, Huan Tan's interactions with them are somewhat suspected of self-defilement.
Later, in the new dynasty and the new regime, Huan Tan was called a vassal. Contacts do not distinguish between the object, loyalty does not look at the monarch, in Liu Xiu's mind, this "non-mainstream" is probably given a different meaning, right?
Liu Xiu was a very superstitious emperor, and in addition to personal belief factors, he was originally the beneficiary of Tan Wei. I think that at the beginning, a rumor of "Liu Xiu is the son of heaven", without exaggeration, snatched half a dragon chair for him. Wouldn't it be unwise for Huan Tan to ignore the relationship between imperial power and the interests of Wei Wei and to launch a fierce criticism from a purely academic point of view.
In his later years, Liu Xiu believed in fangshu, which was actually a curse that most emperors could not escape: the desire for eternal life! This is no longer an academic problem, but a pathological psychology, I am afraid that Liu Xiu himself knows that it is futile, just the instinctive action of the person who fell into the water. For this kind of thing, as long as it does not hurt the country, in fact, it is not appropriate to interfere excessively, Huan Tanban's face when the university asks and pulls, it is purely self-inflicted trouble.
Huan Tan proposed the "Way of the Overlord", showing that a reader's pedanticness is out of place, he did not understand Liu Xiu's mind at all, or deliberately contradicted Liu Xiu. Huan Tan once wrote to Liu Xiu about the importance of assisting the ministers:
"The abolition of the country lies in political affairs, and the gains and losses of political affairs are assisted by assistance." If the auxiliary sage is enlightened, then the handsome man is full of dynasties, and the ceremony is in line with the world's affairs; if the auxiliary is unknown, it is timeless and more than done. The kings of the kingdom want to prosper and build good, but those who do not pay attention to the political path are called sages. ”
It is not difficult to understand why Huan Tan emphasized the importance of the auxiliary minister, because in his way of overlordship, the auxiliary minister is the arm of the king. Unfortunately, he did not understand, Liu Xiu did not need arms at all, and the political structure designed by others was not the hierarchical type in Huan Tan's ideal, but the "unitary system" centered on imperial power.
In Liu Xiu's structure, there were no assistant ministers around the emperor, only executors, and all decisions came from him alone, Shang Shutai was his secretarial body, and through Shang Shutai, his orders directly corresponded to functional departments and local governments. The three dukes in the traditional sense, in Liu Xiu's regime, were a tribute, noble and useless.
Huan Tan did not know whether he was pedantic or nostalgic for the glory of his subjects, and talked about "auxiliary support" in vain, was it not contrary to Liu Xiu's imperial dictatorship?
Looking at Huan Tan from our perspective today, in fact, this is a great scholar worthy of respect, he has his own ideals and beliefs, he is not moved by the imperial power, he adheres to innocence, he is not worldly, and he lives out his true self. However, man cannot be separated from the actual environment, and under the specific conditions of the early years of the Eastern Han Dynasty, he is a "non-mainstream" who is not allowed to be subordinate to his colleagues and to the imperial power.
Regrettably, Huan Tan did not understand Yang Xiong's spiritual world, mistakenly regarded himself as a national soldier, blindly pursued the ideal of peace, and took a road that should not be taken, which is really a major loss in the history of Chinese thought and culture.