Introduction: Huang Zongxi, character Taichong, number Nanlei, known as Mr. Lizhou, Ming Shenzong Wanli thirty-eight years (1610) was born in Yuyao, Zhejiang, his life was magnificent, once rebuked Wei Zhongxian castrated the party, and denounced traitors, after the death of the Ming, insisted on organizing volunteer soldiers, carrying out anti-Qing activities, after the failure of the anti-Qing in his later years, he lived in seclusion, wrote books in anger, representative works include "Ming Yi to be visited", "Ming Confucianism Case", etc., Qing Kangxi thirty-four years (1695), Huang Zongxi died, his life was extremely rich in ideas, This article attempts to analyze his ideas from the perspective of political thought.
1. The background of the formation of Huang Zongxi's political thought
Huang Zongxi was born into a family of ordinary readers, and his father Huang Zunsu was admitted to the Jinshi in the 45th year of the Wanli Calendar (1617) and was appointed as the governor of Ningguo Prefecture the following year. In the last years of the Ming Dynasty, politics was relatively corrupt, and intellectuals headed by Gu Xiancheng and Gao Panlong gave lectures at donglin academy in Wuxi, Jiangsu Province, gradually forming the Donglin Party, which criticized the government and politics, discussed the current situation, and became a political opposition. Huang Zunsu has always been an upright person, and under the influence of the Donglin Party, he also joined the Donglin Party. Since Huang Zunsu came to the capital in the third year of the Apocalypse (1623), he and his friends in the Donglin Party often gathered together to express their views on the current situation, they opposed the rulers' closed speech, and they fished for the common people, demanding reform of maladministration and reduction of taxes to alleviate social contradictions.
Huang Zongxi
During the Apocalypse, the eunuchs led by Wei Zhongxian seized the power of the government and formed the castration party clique, Huang Zunsu, as one of the leaders of the Donglin Party, repeatedly wrote to the emperor to expose the ugly deeds of the Wei Zhongxian clique, so he was persecuted by the castration party, and in the fifth year of the Apocalypse (1625), Huang Zunsu was stripped of his post and returned to his hometown. In March of the following year, Wei Zhongxian again convicted Huang Zunsu, who was immediately arrested and sent to Beijing, and in June of that year, Huang Zunsu died in prison. The Donglin Party in which his father participated gave Huang Zongxi a deep influence, so that he had a sense of worrying about the country and the people from an early age, and had a strong sense of social responsibility and justice, and some of his political ideas were also deeply influenced by the Donglin Party.
Wei Zhongxian
Huang Zongxi grew up reading books at home, but did not like to read the Eight Strands of Literature, but read books on astronomy, calendar, six classics, music, mathematics, Buddhism, etc. His father did not interfere with this, and encouraged him to dabble in more kinds of books, which laid a solid foundation for his rich knowledge. In addition, he specially went to Shanyin (present-day Shaoxing, Zhejiang) to study with the famous scholar Liu Zongzhou, and under the teachings of his teacher, Huang Zongxi grew rapidly, and his thinking was also deeply influenced by his teacher Liu Zongzhou. During his studies, witnessing the corruption of the situation at the end of the Ming Dynasty, he, like his father, chose to join the literati organization Fushe in the third year of Yu Chongzhen (1630), where Huang Zongxi met many like-minded intellectuals and gained a deeper understanding of the political situation at that time. During his participation in the Restoration Society, he participated in the struggle against Nguyen Da Cheng.
Donglin College
In the seventeenth year of Chongzhen (1644), Li Zicheng led a large army to attack the city of Beijing, and the Ming Dynasty fell. The Manchu Qing army, which was standing outside the pass, immediately entered the pass, defeated Li Zicheng's army, and quickly moved south, beginning to establish its rule over the whole country. Huang Zongxi faced the Entry of the Qing Dynasty, organized a rebel army to resist the Qing army in his hometown of eastern Zhejiang, and participated in the Lu Wang regime, shunzhi three years (1646), the Lu Wang regime was wiped out by the Qing army, Huang Zongxi, with the help of friends, luckily escaped the Pursuit of the Qing Army. After witnessing the tragic demise of the Ming Dynasty, he painfully thought about it and began to form his own unique political ideas.
Lee Zi-cheng
2. Huang Zongxi's ideological propositions on politics
He advocated that "the world is the mainstay, and the king is the guest", which is directly derived from Mencius's people-oriented thinking of "the people are precious, the society is secondary, and the king is light", which believes that if a political regime wants to last a long time, it must be people-oriented and win the hearts of the people. Huang Zongxi believes that the relationship between the monarch and the people and the relationship between the monarch and the subject should be redefined, as a monarch, you cannot influence the interests of the world with your own interests, the monarch mainly serves as a public servant of the people under the world, with the people as the mainstay, and cannot make the world subordinate to the monarch. As ministers, like the monarch, they serve the world and the people, not the monarch, which negates the relationship between the monarch and the subordinate.
Mencius
Huang Zongxi also believes that the chaos in the world does not lie in the rise and fall of a surname, but in the "sorrow and happiness of all peoples." As ministers, they should assist the monarch and jointly promote the interests and harms of the world, so as to achieve the purpose of the happiness of all peoples. For the unscrupulous monarchs, the ministers should not be foolish, but should fight them bravely. However, in the case of a high degree of absolute monarchy, the relationship between monarchs and subjects was reversed, becoming "the one who is set up as a monarch." The king divides me into the world and then rules it, and the king gives me the people and then shepherds it, and regards the people of the world as the private things in the pockets of the king. "In order to realize the happiness of all peoples, we must proceed from private interests and the survival of the people under the world, and practice benevolent and moral government." With the heart of an intolerant man, practice the government of the intolerant man", loose punishment.
"Ming Yi To Be Visited"
Huang Zongxi made a severe criticism of the emperor in his writings, arguing that the current monarch has reversed the relationship between the subject and the guest, regarded the world as his own property, "took my great selfishness as the great duke of the world", in order to satisfy his own selfish interests, "slaughtered the liver and brain of the world, scattered the children of the world, and bo my own property", "stripped the marrow of the world, separated the children of the world, in order to serve the sexual pleasures of one person", he pointedly pointed out that the law under the autocratic monarchy system is "the law of one family, not the law of the world", so it is an illegal law. In the end, Huang Zongxi believed that "for the great harm of the world, it is only enough." He also expressed strong dissatisfaction with Ming Taizu's harsh punishment and indiscriminate killing of heroes, and believed that Zhu Yuanzhang's abolition of the prime minister system was a major mistake.
3. The extension of people-oriented thinking on people's livelihood
Huang Zongxi believes that the people's livelihood issue is related to the life and death of the society, and the demise of the Ming Dynasty has a major relationship with the people's livelihood. On the issue of improving people's livelihood, he believes that the first thing is to reform the tax and fee system. Citing the experience of previous dynasties, Huang Zongxi believes that the emergence of the prosperous era is related to the light and thin endowment, and these tax reforms have effectively reduced the burden on the peasants. Since the end of the Ming Dynasty, the imperial court has continuously increased the tax burden of the peasants, levying various harsh taxes and miscellaneous taxes, such as adding "three salaries", resulting in the people being unable to bear heavy taxes, so they have taken risks one after another and embarked on the road of confrontation with the imperial court.
Rehabilitation
Huang Zongxi pointed out the problems existing in the land and taxation system of successive dynasties, which were summarized as "three harms," namely, "the harm of accumulation and no return," "the harm of taxes not being produced," and "the harm of no grade in the field." In order to solve the "three harms," he put forward Huang Zongxi's law, that is, "the system of opposing accumulation before"; levying different tax rates on "the land granted to the superior" and the "land owned"; "paying tribute to the soldiers", that is, collecting the physical goods according to the local production, and instead levying silver on the field; and "the lower is the rule", taking the yield of the worst field as the criterion and criterion for determining the land endowment.
The Case of Ming Confucianism
On the other hand, Huang Zongxi criticized the concept of "agriculture as the foundation, industry and commerce as the end" and the policy of emphasizing agriculture and suppressing business, he believed that industry and commerce are all fundamental, the status of industry and commerce is equally important as the status of agriculture, and put forward a series of suggestions conducive to the development of industry and commerce.
4. Says
Huang Zongxi tried to find strength from the people-oriented thinking of the Spring and Autumn Warring States to oppose the absolute monarchy, but on the whole, he did not jump out of the framework of Confucian people-oriented thinking, did not develop modern democratic ideas, did not limit the monarchy from the system, and still had great limitations. After the establishment of the Qing Dynasty, in order to co-opt Han intellectuals and control China, vigorously propagate the Confucian idea of loyalty to the king, and vigorously engage in literary prison, resulting in Huang Zongxi's thought being buried for two hundred years, until the end of the Qing Dynasty, the revolutionaries rediscovered the democratic thought in Huang Zongxi's thought, thus turning it into an ideological weapon against the rule of the Qing Dynasty.
Images from the Internet, infringing deletion.
bibliography:
1. (Ming) Huang Zongxi: "Ming Yi to be visited"
2. Xie Guozhen: "Huanglizhou Genealogy"
3. Wang Zhengyao: "Huang Zongxi"
4. Zhang Shiwei: "The Limit of the People's Foundation- A New Theory of Huang Zongxi's Political Thought"
5. Le Chengyao: Huang Zongxi's Thought on the People's Essence and Its Enlightenment
6. Yun Chunxi: "The Theoretical Origin of Huang Zongxi's Thought"
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