Section 1 Why Do You Still Read Mencius Today
Before reading Mencius, I would like to answer a question: Why do we still have to read Mencius now? As we all know, Mencius lived in the early Warring States period and was a member of the small princely state of Zou. From the time of Mencius to today, there are nearly 2400 years, why should we read a book from 2400 years ago?
In the natural sciences, there are many classic works, even if you want to be a great physicist, you do not have to read, although reading may delay a little time, there is no harm. For example, not having read Newton's Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy does not prevent you from becoming a great physicist. Why, then, do we read these classics in philosophy?
It should be noted that Mencius is read differently, and I read it as a philosophical work. This means that the problem it faces is the so-called philosophical problem. What is a philosophical question? As far as I understand it, philosophical problems are problems that different regions, times, and groups of people have to face, but they are not easy to solve, that is, whether they are Greeks or Chinese, ancient people or modern people have to face some fundamental problems.
For example, the problem of life and death, which human beings have faced since ancient times. Everyone may have their own way of facing life and death, but it is difficult to have a solution that everyone can accept and solve the problem of life and death once and for all. In contrast, the problem of "how to make a train move" can be solved by everyone.
Another example is the conflict between public and private, between home and state. This problem was faced by the ancient Greek thinker Plato, and at about the same time as him, Mencius in China was also facing it, as was the British thinker Mill and the Chinese thinker Liang Qichao two thousand years later. Today's corruption problem is actually to hurt the interests of the public for the interests of individuals, families, and families, and it is also a manifestation of public-private contradictions.
In short, the reason why philosophical problems are philosophical problems is that they are universal and fundamental problems of mankind, which have always plagued mankind and have not made obvious progress in their treatment. If so, then we cannot say, because a thinker was born 2400 years before us, and his thinking is backward and outdated. What we need to see is whether the thinker's thinking is profound.
Especially compared with the modern natural science, philosophy has a very special place, that is, it is very important to read the classics in philosophy, but not so important in the natural science, and one of the reasons behind this is that modern science (that is, the science after Descartes and Newton) is modern science, and the key point is that most of the time, the so-called normal science stage, there is a universal paradigm or system within science Within this system, scientific progress is clearly defined, and we only need to grasp the latest theoretical progress. But philosophy (or pre-modern science) did not have such progressiveness. And, in philosophy, there is even a situation that is almost the opposite, that is, the more ancient the classics, the more profound they may be, and the more worthy of reading. This is because these classics are the result of competition and elimination after a long period of time. In contrast, books that have been popular in recent decades have only been tested for decades. Therefore, attaching importance to the classics and being aware of the authority of the classics is not blind worship, but precisely the result of common sense and rational judgment.
If what I said above is correct, then we can understand why Mencius is still reading. Mencius records the words and deeds of Mencius, and Mencius was one of the important representatives of pre-Qin Confucianism. More precisely, he was one of the three representatives of Confucianism (Confucius, Mencius, and Xunzi) of the pre-Qin Dynasty. In the eyes of the Song Ming theorists more than a thousand years later, Mencius was regarded as a saint, second only to Confucius. The classic Mencius has been read in traditional China and has undergone a long test. At the same time, many Confucian ideas in later generations were also based on the annotation, interpretation, and elaboration of Mencius. Understanding Mencius is also the basis for understanding the development of Confucianism in later generations, especially one of the most important developments of Confucianism, the Song Ming Theory. So, from these aspects, it is still very meaningful for us to read Mencius.
Is Confucianism the "dregs of feudal despotism" in the second section?
Those who think that reading Mencius has little meaning will say that while time-tested philosophical classics may be meaningful, Confucianism, including Mencius, is meaningless, because Confucian thought and the Chinese tradition as a whole are nothing more than "the dregs of feudal despotism." To say that they are "dross" means that they are useless garbage at best, if not harmful garbage. Even the word "feudal" has now become an almost swear word, a derogatory word, such as a person is "old feudal" and saying something is "feudal superstition". "Authoritarian" is more obviously not a positive word. Therefore, leaving aside the "dross", Confucianism is both "feudal" and "autocratic", and it seems that there is no need to read Confucian classics at all. Even if a few people still insist that reading Mencius is meaningful, the mainstream among them is to regard Mencius as something to cultivate the body and mind. For if it is regarded as political, and its political significance is nothing more than to advocate feudal despotism, then it is meaningless. If Mencius is meaningful, it can only be about our personal cultivation.
Therefore, if we want to read Mencius in its entirety, especially its political dimension, we must explain why its things are not the dross of feudal despotism. The first thing to point out here is that the term "feudal despotism" is in fact contradictory. Feudalism is not precisely an authoritarian system. What is "feudal"? Everyone hopes that Wen Shengyi understands it as "sealing the land and establishing the country". The saying in the "Left Biography" is "feudal relatives, to the fan ping zhou". What does that mean? The State of Zhou was originally a small state of the Shang Empire, but the State of Zhou defeated the army of the Shang Empire at the Battle of Makino, and the Shang Empire collapsed, and the Zhou State thus inherited the Shang Empire. However, the Zhou State was actually able to control only some of the areas and populations near its original and Shang capitals. At that time, there were also the Shang royal family and their sphere of influence, many small countries loyal to the Shang, and some small countries that did not want to be governed by the Zhou state. Therefore, when the Zhou Dynasty was first established, it was in a state of surrounded by enemies. In this case, Zhou's ancestors, King Wu and Duke zhou, invented or adopted a set of genius systems, that is, the feudal system of "feudal relatives, to the feudal screen Zhou". That is, to divide their reliable relatives and allied ethnic leaders, give them some people and money, let them go to places beyond the control of the Zhou Kingdom, build a city (that is, a stronghold protected by the city wall), and slowly control and even encroach on the surrounding land and population under the premise of protecting themselves, so as to achieve the purpose of defending the Zhou Kingdom. To put it more bluntly, feudalism was actually a set of colonial systems for military expansion.
Professor Li Feng, who teaches at Columbia University, did a good study of the western Zhou system in "The Political System of the Western Zhou" and "The Demise of the Western Zhou". He pointed out that the establishment of these princely states in the Western Zhou Dynasty was strategically considered, they were all built in strategically very important places, and often several were built at a time, so that they could help each other and take care of each other.
So the invention of the feudal system was actually to take over a set of military colonization systems of a large empire. Zhou's system was very successful. The State of Zhou quickly took over the Shang Empire and slowly expanded the original Shang Empire's sphere of influence. Geographically, it was an ever-expanding system; politically speaking, the King of Zhou had land under direct administration, in addition to that, most of the land in the Zhou Empire was actually entrusted to the princes, and the King of Zhou did not directly manage it. And these princely states, at the beginning, may be just a city, a fortress. However, after slow expansion, one city became several cities, and the princes copied the feudal system of Zhou and divided their relatives and friends. When these people expand again, they continue to divide. Therefore, the feudal system of the Zhou Empire was like a pyramid, and the top was the King of Zhou. In addition to directly managing a part of the land himself, the King of Zhou had a group of princes below, with doctors under the princes, and family subjects under the doctors, one level down, until the lowest level of nobles managed the limited agricultural population.
Inside this pyramid, the King of Zhou probably had less than a hundred princes. The history books are called eight hundred princes, but there should not be so many. The number of doctors under a prince is even more limited. One of the most important things about this pyramid structure is that it divides a large country into small communities. Moreover, in this pyramid structure, there are very few things that cross the level of management. The internal affairs of the princely states were managed by the princes, and the king of Zhou did not care. Only when there was a problem with the succession of princes, for example, did the King of Zhou have a legitimate right to interfere. In other words, these princely states were relatively autonomous political entities. We can imagine that under the conditions of transportation and communication at that time, it was really difficult for the King of Zhou to manage all the affairs of the empire. Therefore, it is natural to form such a system of sub-feudal autonomy. Because of the autonomy of the division of feudalism, the king of Zhou will not extend his power to the princely states, these princes are the same for their doctors, the affairs of the doctor's own family are their internal affairs, and the princes only manage to the level of the doctor, so all levels are a system of sub-feudal autonomy.
In fact, if we think about it, today, the development of family businesses is also the adoption of the Western Zhou-style feudal system. If my business is doing well in Shanghai and wants to expand, I will let a more capable relative invest a certain amount of money and take some people to Beijing to open a branch. When his branch in Beijing is done, then he can open another branch under the branch in The Dongcheng District of Beijing, one in the Xicheng District, and one in Tongzhou District. In this way, the affairs of the Beijing branch are managed by the relatives themselves, and I do not care, but if my company competes with other companies, the branch will come to help. This is actually the feudal system in the enterprise.
If we understand the feudal system in this way, we will understand that the feudal system is not precisely a set of autocratic systems, but a system of sub-feudal autonomy. Of course, some people will say that in the Book of Poetry, it is not said, "Under the whole world, can it be the king's land; the coast of the land, can it be the king's subject"? The entire land of the Zhou Empire and the people above it were subordinate to the King of Zhou. But we see that the system of the Western Zhou Dynasty was not like this. But why does the poem say that? I suggest you read this complete poem. After reading it, everyone will find that this poem is actually a minister saying, Why did the King of Zhou come to me if you have something to do? You come to me for everything, my own home, my own old mother, and I don't have time to take care of it. "Under the whole world, there can be no royal land; the coast of the land, can not be the king's subject." That is, there are so many ministers, why don't you go to them? Therefore, this is a poem by a minister complaining about the King of Zhou, not describing the system of the Zhou Dynasty.
Therefore, the feudal system of the Western Zhou Dynasty was by no means autocratic. Conceptually speaking, "feudal" and "autocratic" are actually two words that contradict each other, and "feudal despotism" is a nonsensical statement. Not only is it conceptually unreasonable, but it is also a big problem in history. After the collapse of the Western Zhou feudal system, after the transition of the Spring and Autumn Warring States, a new system emerged, that is, the centralized system, which became the institutional basis of the Qin Empire and later the dynasties of the Central Plains. The centralized system may have something to do with the authoritarian system, but it is not exactly the same. Even if we leave aside the distinction between "centralization" and "despotism," we know that this "feudal" and "centralized" systems are actually systems in two different historical periods. From the perspective of historical periods, the term "feudal autocracy" is like the Guan Gong War Qin Qiong. If history and concept make no sense, then we cannot help but ask, why is there such a thing as "feudal despotism"?
To answer this question, we need to go back to more than a hundred years ago in China, where China was defeated by the British in the Opium War. Most of the Chinese at the time were probably less sensitive to this matter, and they could not be blamed for this, or blamed China for "closing the country". Because in history, the Central Plains Dynasty was defeated by many border ethnic minorities, but even if they defeated the Central Plains Dynasty, they finally had to adopt a set of political systems and cultures of the Central Plains Dynasty. So this time it was defeated by the British, and most people thought, as before, just a new wave of barbarians. And the place called "Hong Kong" occupied by the British is something that many people have not heard of. Only a very small number of visionaries at that time knew that this threat was different, so they slowly launched the so-called Western affairs movement, that is, the movement to learn from the West at the level of scientific and technological artifacts. As a result, after more than forty years of the foreign affairs movement, China not only did not become strong, but was defeated by Japan in the Sino-Japanese War, which had a great psychological impact on the Chinese. Because Chinese know more about Japan, and Japan has always been regarded as a Chinese student. The teacher was defeated by the student, which was a very strong psychological blow to China. Therefore, many scholars and politicians realize that perhaps in the previous western affairs movement, it was not enough to learn from the West at the level of science and technology and artifacts, but we also had to learn from the West in the political system. Thus, the so-called pentagram method appeared. Although the Penghu Reform was unsuccessful, the Qing Dynasty always tried to make political changes. However, this change did not succeed in the end, and the Qing Dynasty was overthrown. By the time of the Republic of China, political change was still less successful, which led to the rise of the New Culture Movement and the May Fourth Movement. The "New Culture Movement", as the name suggests, is a revolution that transforms culture. The reason for this is based on the judgment that China is not only unable to do so in terms of utensils and institutions, but also in the deeper culture. If China does not get rid of the old culture, including Confucianism, and carries out a new cultural change, China will not be able to embrace the advanced things of the West. Later, the May Fourth Movement proposed to embrace Mr. De and Mr. Sai, that is, democracy and science in English, that is, "democracy" and "science". However, a consensus had been formed during the Western Affairs Movement and the Penghu Reform Law. Therefore, the real novelty of the May Fourth Movement was to "overthrow the Confucius Family Shop", that is, to eliminate the old culture represented by Confucianism, in order to embrace our new teachers: Mr. De and Mr. Sai.
But in the era of the New Culture and the May Fourth Movement, there were still some so-called cultural conservatives, and after that there were also Neo-Confucians and later overseas Neo-Confucians, who defended the tradition. But the vast majority of them are only culturally defending tradition. In terms of their understanding of traditional politics, they are not much different from the radicals in the New Culture and the May Fourth Movement, and they also have a negative attitude towards traditional Chinese politics. A basic manifestation is that they also believe that China was defeated because China was in pre-modern times, and the West has entered modern society. The modern society in the West is represented by capitalism, and before entering the modern society, the West was in the feudal era. Since we have been defeated by a modern West, we are in pre-modernity, and the pre-modern era of the West is the feudal era, so we are the feudal era. Another sign of modernity in the West is the move toward democracy, which many people think is the opposite of autocracy. Therefore, since the West is moving toward modernity and democracy, pre-modern China is naturally autocratic. When we look at China from the West, we come to the conclusion that the politics of China before the West was feudal despotism. In this sense, to say that traditional Chinese politics is feudal autocracy is "nonsense" in the double sense: it is the nonsense of reconstructing Chinese history from the perspective of Westerners ("Hu people").
However, even those who accept this nonsense have to admit that there were changes in the zhou and qin dynasties in traditional Chinese history, that is, political changes from the Western Zhou to the Qin dynasty. So, if the traditional China after the Qin Dynasty was feudal, then what was Zhou? According to the historical evolution of the West, or according to the so-called "five-stage theory", feudalism preceded slavery. In this way, the western Zhou system became a slave system, and the "Kong Lao'er" and the Confucians he opened became "representatives of the declining slave-owning aristocratic class." But if we look a little at Chinese history, we will understand that this argument cannot be established. Unfortunately, this utterly erroneous statement is still the mainstream view in today's Chinese world.
Under the shadow of this erroneous statement, China's traditional thinking has been "sauce tanked" and become a mess. If Confucianism is an authoritarian ideology, or an accomplice to it, then it is certainly not worth seeing. Even now that the tradition has been revived, more and more people are talking positively about Confucianism, just like the mainstream of cultural conservatism since May Fourth, and its focus is still on the confucian mentality and morality. But if this does not hold, we have a reason to look at Confucianism more comprehensively, especially its political and ideological dimensions.
Excerpted from Bai Tongdong's "Tianxia: The Five Lectures of Mencius", Guangxi Normal University Press, November 2021