Chen Yingnian 丨 The Historical Ups and Downs of Xunzi's Fate and the Modern Consciousness of Chinese Philosophy: Commenting on Mou Zongsan's Xunzi Research

The historical ups and downs of Xunzi's fate and the modern consciousness of Chinese philosophy

——Commenting on Mou Zongsan's Xunzi research

About the Author丨Chen Yingnian, Doctor of Philosophy, Professor of the Institute of Philosophy and Culture of East China University of Science and Technology.

The original article is published in 丨 Journal of East China University of Science and Technology. Social Science Edition, No. 03, 2008.

summary

The historical fate of Xunzi can be described as difficult, and its influence is always inferior to that of Mencius, and it is difficult to be liked. Since the late Qing Dynasty, the trend of modernization thought has surged forward, and under the banner of science and democracy, Xunzi has been split into two factions: "Zun Xun" and "Pai Xun". Mou Zongsan combined this division into one, using Xunzi as an intermediary of the "Inner Saint and Outer King", honoring Xun in the sense of objective knowledge and ranking Xun in the sense that Chinese culture was superior to Western culture. The split Xunzi marks the entanglement of intellectual, moral, and material interests in real life, the impatience of the concepts of science and democracy, and the bumpy and long road to the modernization of Chinese philosophy.

History always sees its dynamics. Here we pay attention to the rise and fall of Xunzi's body value, but we pay more attention to the causes of fluctuations, and we want to analyze the relationship between thought and actual life. For this relationship, there can generally be a positive and negative understanding. Croce of Italy emphasized that all history is contemporary history, and Collingwood of England also believed that all history is the history of ideas, which is a positive understanding, emphasizing that history and philosophy have the same nature and significance: all human behavior and activities in the past can only enter the field of history after rational reflection of thought, and history is the self-knowledge of the living mind. On the contrary, there is another understanding: ordinary thought is only a reflection of human practicality or utilitarianism, thought always follows actual life, and history is a very obedient girl who will only dress herself according to the smear of life.

If we understand practicality or utilitarianism as a real and immediate interest, then we will find that the above two understandings are actually two poles, and opposites. For the immediate interest is not only material, it may also be intellectual, both intellectual and moral. At the source level, it is really difficult for us to determine the high and low of various interests, but although the choice of means can create some difference, it is therefore arguing whether the right and wrong of the two understandings of actual life follow the thought or the thought follows the actual life is not of great significance, the question is only how to cut into this cycle. In this sense, Kant emphasizes that "while one can accuse one another of stupidity and irrationality, one can never accuse one another of being mean and vicious: for each of them, in his own way, is, after all, rushing toward a goal that is happy for everyone."

Of course, Kant was not a historical relativist, and our task was not to bury Xunzi into nothingness. A basic judgment here is that there are many faces in history, and they are full of contradictions with each other. But this is not a "bad" thing, and it is precisely through these contradictory statements that we can clean up the facts of history. Philosophy must first confront this historical fact before it can enter into life and build life; conversely, without or disregarding this historical dimension, philosophy may be clever and cheerful, but it is difficult to avoid the fate of self-talk. Therefore, the second basic judgment here is that not every modern philosopher has a modern consciousness, and the road to modernization of Chinese philosophy is still bumpy and long. This question is particularly important to modern Chinese philosophers. Limited by space, this article focuses on the historical fate of Xunzi after the late Qing Dynasty, and links it to Mou Zongsan's Xunzi research, throwing bricks and jade to attract people.

One

The date of Xunzi's birth and death is now uncertain, but the book "Xunzi" was compiled for disciples, or there may be elements mixed by posterity. However, Sima Qian's writing of the Biography of Mencius Xunqing in the Records of History has already established the historical status of Xunzi and Mencius as the great sect of Confucianism. At that time, Xun Xueshi had a great influence on the study of the Two Han Classics, according to the "General Theory of Xunzi" in the Qing Dynasty, "Xun Qing also relied on the transmission of the six arts" incessantly." However, the influence of Xunzi was smaller than that of Mencius, and there was a downward trend, and the Eastern Han Dynasty was no longer as good as the Western Han Dynasty. By the Tang Dynasty, Han Yu's "Original Tao" established a certain "Dao system", and Xunzi was judged to be "choosing Yan but not refining, and speaking vaguely but not detailed", although there were Liu Zongyuan, Liu Yuxi, and other inventions of heaven and man, as well as Yang Liang's annotation "Xunzi", but Xunzi's increasingly degraded fate has become unchanged. People gradually got used to the saying of "the way of Confucius and Mencius", and to the Yuan, "Yasheng" Mencius "with food xuansheng", can be described as a natural success.

The purpose of Han Yu's "Original Tao" is to "plug" and promote "flow" and "stop" to reach "action", so the purpose of "people and their people, fire their books, and luqi residences" can only be "widows, widows, lonely and sick people have nourishment". However, through the Song Ming Dynasty to the Qing Dynasty, the Taoist unity was inherited, but the state of "widows, widows, lonely and sick people with nourishment" still failed to appear, and after the late Qing Dynasty, the people were thrown into the abyss of life under the attack of internal and external troubles. As a result, the so-called Taoism has become suspicious, and people have reflected on the advantages and disadvantages of Chinese culture from use to body, and there are two schools of "Zun Xun" and "Pai Xun".

The "Pai Xun" people, the first to promote Tan Si tong is famous. His Renxue declares that confucius's learning is derived into two branches: one is the Simeng school, which "publicizes the principle of democracy to realize Kong's aspirations"; the other is passed from Zixia to Zhuangzi, "slandering the monarch". Unfortunately, these two branches have been lost, "Xun Nai took advantage of the name of The Hole to defeat the way of the Hole", so Xun Zi should bear full cultural responsibility for China's autocratic politics: "The government of the past two thousand years, the Qin government, are all great thieves; the two thousand years of learning, Xun Xue, are all hometown wishes." But the great thief takes advantage of the wish of the village, and only the wish of the town will flatter the great thief, and the two are mutually resourced, and they do not trust Kong" (Renxue 29).

Tan Sitong's Renxue is seen by Liang Qichao as the result of the "Pai Xun Movement" of "a kind of vitality-filled scene". The so-called "Pai Xun Movement" refers to Liang Qichao, Xia Zengyou and Tan Si singing poems and wine with three friends, and slandering Xunzi: "The Sinology done by Qing Confucianism calls itself 'Xun Xue'. If we want to overthrow sinology, which was monopolizing the academic circles at that time, we will use the means of the 'king of birds and thieves' to beat up their ancestors, Xunzi." Here Liang Qichao understands the "Pai Xun" movement as a kind of "revolution" of "Qianjia Examination", and thus finds the pleasure of "spiritual liberation" in it. This shows the influence of Kang Youwei. Kang Youwei sentenced that "for two thousand years all Xunzi and Xinxue" (Mencius Wei), with his most hated charlatan and forger Liu Xin and Xunzi, said that he "made the two-thousand-year-old China be content with a well-off life, and not be blessed with the same thing" ("Preface to the Fortune of Etiquette").

Like the "Pai Xun" people, the "Zun Xun" people also look for the reasons for China's backwardness in culture, but this time it is not "Xun Xun Shen Meng", but "Suppress Meng Yang Xun", whose representative should be Push Zhang Taiyan. Zhang Taiyan said: "Stealing is the study of Mencius, although it is against the king's way, but in fact, the talent of the county is also ... It can be selected as a circular official. That is, Mencius had the right to take advantage of the time, but it was not as good as Huang Bagong Sui'er, not as large as the scale of Xunzi", and even the exaggerated saying that "Sun Qing died and Confucianism was extinct". Zhang Taiyan's discussion, on the one hand, is a response and reaction to the "Pai Xun" theorists, but the more important reason is that its methods and methods of governance are different from those of Kang Liang and others. As a disciple of the late Qing Dynasty master Yu Fan, Zhang Taiyan inherited the legacy of Qianjia's study and did not specialize in the study of the scriptures, but Yu Zishi was particularly concerned about seeking truth from facts, so he was bound to oppose Kang Youwei and other modern classics that took the scriptures out of context and interpreted the scriptures at will. Zhang Taiyan described his feelings to himself: "When he was in Shanghai, Liang Zhuoru and others proposed Confucianism, but Yu was even more different. Or Yan Kang has a long character, claiming to be longer than Su Wang, and his disciples may be called Chao Hui, Yi Zhi, crazy and rebellious... The Confucianism practiced by Shi Yu was based on Sun Qing, and he did not like those who held empty arguments and shortcuts." At that time, Liang Qichao also described his feelings for Pai Xun: "Sui Qing and I were both people with considerable qualities in the study of Xiaozhi Qianjia, and when we were together, we were extremely reactionary to the students we had before, and we not only hated him, but also hated him.", the two contrasts were the same as water and fire.

The above analysis of the differences between the orientations of "Pai Xun" and "Zun Xun" in the late Qing Dynasty is mostly in terms of "the interests of knowledge". And because through this "knowledge" of modern or ancient scripture, people's purpose is to explain the world and change the world, so this "interest in knowledge" is at the same time a "moral interest." Whether it is "Pai Xun" or "Honor Xun", the commentators all think that only they have truly found the correct way to make a living for the world, and it is moral, so they criticize the other party as immoral with the moral scale they have mastered. Is there a requirement for implicit material benefit in the correctness of this knowledge and the nobility of morality? This question seems to have an essentialist tendency and is too dark, but it is not impossible, such as Liang Qichao's "fickleness", which of course cannot completely exclude the consideration of "the interests of material interests".

Two

The above discussion is actually a debate about whether Xunzi is "authentic" or "heretical", but it has not directly touched the modernization trend of the late Qing Dynasty. Generally speaking, it was not until after May Fourth that the concepts of "science" and "democracy" were widely used in China, but in the late Qing Dynasty, the internal and external disasters of society and the change of people's minds have been particularly admired. Here we must mention Yan Fu's "Theory of Heavenly Speech", which introduces "Western studies" to China and allows science and democracy to go hand in hand in the hearts of Chinese scholars: science is first and foremost a weapon of mankind, which is bound to help people realize their good wishes to create their own bright future, and thus become a symbol of truth and justice. But this is only a trend of thought and a hazy feeling, in specific research, science and democracy have not yet been deeply understood, nor have they been well integrated, and even the two sides are still in a state of division. At this time, if it is said that "Pai Xun" is because Xun Zi has created the image of a king who is "hidden by people, who dare not look at it, who lives like a great god, and moves like a heavenly emperor" ("Xun zi zheng theory"), then "zun Xun" must be because Xun Zi has "the theory of knowledge", "sociology", and so on.

This kind of division is conscious in Tan Sitong. It is said that "after Xun Qing gave birth to Mencius, he advocated the king and respected the monarchy, and opposed Mencius's democratic theory, and he tasted and denounced it as a township wish." However, when Xun Qing was investigating the heavenly people, there were many problems that had not been issued before, and the upper could make up for the lack of Mencius, and the lower ones were derived into Wang Zhongren's faction, which was not a matter of ", obviously separating democracy from science, and using scientific knowledge to distinguish between xunzi's heavenly people. Not only that, Tan Sitong also admired Xunzi's "Nengqun" thought, with the motto "Dazha learned to care!" The so-called "praise language that does not change the name of the law and has the reality of the change of the law" determines that it contains social organization and can stimulate the creativity of the whole society. Liang Qichao also has this kind of self-awareness. On the one hand, he did not forget the "Xun Xun Shen Meng", on the other hand, he praised "Xun Zi was created by the Influence of the Mo Family as a Confucian theory of knowledge", which is China's "sociological giant".

Zhang Taiyan stressed even more that if we do not expose the true features of those "shrews" who only know the skin of Western learning, the criticism of the old "pedantic Confucianism" will not go deeper. To this end, in his articles such as "Confucianism", "Theory of Seeing Heaven" and "The Theory of Fungi", he especially drew on Western natural science knowledge and sociological theories to explain Xunzi's theory of the separation of heaven and man, the theory of group division, and the theory of sexual evil. In the article "The Sayings of Bacteria" alone, Zhang Taiyan invented Xunzi's "Treatise on Heaven" and said, "Yes, heaven is not enough to praise, and the national destiny can be controlled by itself. He who knows the heavens is only nature; he who knows destiny is only encountered. From the word of desire, it is known as the Mandate of Heaven, and the husband is destined to be ordered by the cangs to be subordinated"; and quoting Xunzi's "Chapter on the King's System" and exclaiming, "If you are in harmony with the masses, you will be able to resist the insults of other tribes; if you are willing to leave the morality, you will be handsome and the road will be handsome." In addition, Zhang Taiyan also tried to combine Xunzi mingxue, Buddhist enlightenment, and Western logic in his "Brief Theory of Zhuzi Studies" and "Original Names".

At this point, if both "Pai Xun" and "Zun Xun" take Western theory as the yardstick, then one step further ahead, people can't help but ask: Why don't we directly study the West, but instead scratch the itch so much, and explain the tradition with such effort and no favor? Thus, there is Hu Shi's "total Westernization" theory. It should be noted that the theory of total Westernization will inevitably lead to at least the following two sets of actions: First, on the one hand, total Westernization must overthrow its own traditions, on the other hand, it must necessarily need to respond to its own traditions, so it is necessary to open up the difference between the "authentic" tradition and the "heretical" tradition, pay attention to and emphasize the importance of those "heretical" ideas; second, the comprehensive Westernization is related to the problem of the country and the species, which hurts the "national self-esteem" and will inevitably cause a backlash, so that the "heretical" tradition will be re-established as a sign of "Westernization". In the Chinese and Western judgments, they were again examined by the source. If the former set of actions can be said to be a simple continuation, a straight line of opposition, then the latter must have some kind of loop, after all, the concepts of science and democracy have penetrated into the hearts of the Chinese people through the baptism of May Fourth.

Since the fall of the Republic of China, the person who has expressed this kind of looping feelings the most at the philosophical level is Mou Zongsan, the "contemporary great Confucian".

Three

In Mou Zongsan's process of learning and thinking, there is a stage of "Mengxun and Construction", but his "learning and thinking" is ultimately settled in the "Way of Confucius and Meng" as the "study of mental nature". In the former stage, Xunzi also had a positive significance, acting as a guide to Western thought; in the latter stage, "Western civilization" has been declared bankrupt, and Xunzi has become the object of transcendence, reduced to a scapegoat. But the two have a common judgment, that is, Xunzi is "Western-style".

In the 1950s, Mou Zongsan had the "Three Books of the Outer King", "Philosophy of History", "Moral Idealism", and "Political Tao and Governance", in order to "solve the problem of the Outer King" and "prescribe" science and democracy at the intellectual level. Here is Mou Zongsan's reflection on the "inadequacy of the form of moral indoctrination." In his view, in the Confucian tradition, only Xunzi had an "objective spirit" and could actually establish "political unity" (democratic politics) and "academic unity" (independent science) in succession with the West. However, unfortunately, no one passed it on since then, resulting in "Chinese scholars lecturing in the past, and they are particularly happy to teach." At every turn, the heavens and the earth weather of the saints, the realm of the circle, and the xuan talk. With one of his intuitions, he was directly obsessed with it and did not give up, and the so-called person who played with the situation was also." What's more, such as Wang Longxi's generation, "with his rash heart, galloping here is regarded as a matter of breaking the heavenly opportunity." Emperor Zhang was wanton and could not be immortal. People are also moved by it. I don't know that there are hardships and hardships between heaven and earth." Therefore, there has been no science of independent significance in Chinese history, and although Confucianism has always been the main and the people, in political life, there is no problem of the legal transmission of the monarch by good law. "There is no other way to cover the king except for self-discipline, except for the responsibility of the king", "because the people of the king above cannot objectify it." Mou Zongsan said that he "felt the endless sorrow of this, so he vowed to think deeply and ask for his reason." We will dissolve the reef in this, and our nation will be able to stand on its own two feet and be spared the misfortune of this history." The path he gives is to learn the characteristics of Western culture, "from the moral form to the state form, from the pure subjectivity of universal reason to the objective spirit." Therefore, at this time, Mou Zongsan especially relied on the "objective spirit" possessed by Xunzi and emphasized the spirit of Xunzi's construction, which was really magnificent, enough to heal the poor and weak generation later, regard national politics as a common thing, regard etiquette and righteousness as a mess, and retreat from the mountains and forests to sing the style and elegance, claiming to be in contact with the spirit of heaven and earth, but not knowing that they were dying." Mr. Yangtian sighed: "The study of Xunzi has never been taught, and its spirit has never been understood." This great misfortune of Chinese history"!

If the above argument has the influence of Hegel and Kant's philosophy and the element of learning from the West, it is a fact. But it was by no means Mou Zongsan's original intention. It is just a tactic and a trick adopted by Mou Zongsan in the face of the western strength. Why?

Originally, in Mou Zongsan's mind, China is not unable to modernize, but it has already surpassed modernity, and the reason why it was impossible but necessary for today's modern Neo-Confucians to "prescribe" science and democracy is only that "cannot" is particularly special here, "it is beyond what cannot be exceeded, not what cannot be unattainable", waiting for the harmony of causes and conditions, that is, natural opening. Here, Mou Zongsan has at least the following three steps to leap forward: First, he determines that Xunzi shares the same "objective spirit" as the West. But Xunzi's objective spirit is not the real objective spirit, just a false appearance. The true objective spirit can only be spoken of from the "ontology" of Confucius's "infinite intellectual mind"; therefore, the strength of Western culture, that is, the ability to establish knowledge in scholarship and the establishment of a state political system in real historical society, is popular today, but unfortunately it is ultimately limited to the "phenomenal world", which is not true or true, and must not last long; in the end, Western culture must be integrated and promoted by Chinese culture, and its great roots can be ensured and not lost.

It should be emphasized that Mou Zongsan has a clear sense of "judgment" and a deep-rooted feeling of self-intoxication. He frankly said that the purpose of the work of "meeting the pass" between the West and the West is only to "digest" and "surpass" the West. Mou Zongsan stressed that whether Chinese culture can be maintained and sufficient to have a future is rooted in "false" issues such as democracy and science, but in the "judgment" issue "for Christianity" issues. Since it is the highest issue of judgment in relation to Western culture, and it is related to the caste of the national body, Mou Zongsan's task is to "refine the infinite intellectual tradition to replace the religious status of other countries." At that time, the "Way of Confucius and Mencius" was accused of being perfect, higher than the religion of any other country, while Xunzi became the scapegoat of the lower level of Western civilization, sentenced to "other sons", and became the object of humiliation to satisfy self-esteem. It should be said that Mou Zongsan consciously regarded the vast Chinese culture and the elimination of the ills of Western modernization as his vocation, and his theoretical constructions such as the three-phase theory of Confucianism, the three unification theory, the two-layer theory of existence, the dilemma of conscience, and the transformation of knowledge into wisdom were finally in mind. In the end, mr. Wang changed from Mengxun and Jian to Kong and Meng, Pingzhang Sanjiao, and both Chinese and Western, and proved in the re-determination of the Kant phenomenon and the object itself that the Confucian Yuanjiao Yuanshan "flattened the earth and the mound" could be realized, of course, there is no need to mention Xunzi again.

Four

In the Introduction to Qing Dynasty Scholarship, Liang Qichao believes that the qing dynasty trend of thought is characterized by "retro as liberation" and as "a major reaction" to Song Ming's theory, which can be called China's Renaissance era. The task of covering this era, that is, through the comparison of Chinese and Western cultures, constitutes a new school of "neither The Middle nor the West, that is, the Middle is the West". However, the call of the times was not well answered, and Liang Qichao only became "the end of the ideological history of the Qing Dynasty". The reason for this lies not only in the fact that "the old ideas inherent in them are deeply rooted, while the new ideas from outside are shallow in origin and easy to exhaust", and also in "the old concept of the Chinese people's so-called 'virtue is up, art is down'". In other words, because it is related to the comparison of Chinese and Western cultures and the "self-esteem" of their respective nationalities, the Chinese's sense of superiority in knowledge, morality and other aspects has been stimulated and become the biggest obstacle to innovation. There is a phenomenon that can be questioned: although the Chinese Renaissance advocated science and liberation, pure science and democracy never took root in Chinese academic circles.

What is even more distressing is that this situation has continued until the era of Mou Zongsan, and there has not been much improvement. If there is a change, it is only from innovation and integration to retreat, that is, Mou Zongsan understands the essence of Chinese culture as the intuition of wisdom, and with his enthusiasm for this "purely elusive thing in Shao Shao lingling", believes that he has become the highest presenter of Chinese culture (the so-called "transformation of Wang Longxi"), and can face Western culture with ease and retreat. Therefore, I think that although some people think that "Mr. Mou's philosophical achievements represent a new level of modern development of traditional Chinese philosophy and have worldwide influence", compared with Liang Qichao's "Ou Youxin Video" and Liang Shuming's "East-West Culture and Its Philosophy", it is not difficult to find that Mou Zongsan's philosophy is only a pre-modern thing, a kind of fanatical poetry of existence, in which any definite knowledge will lose its once dazzling brilliance.

In this way, there is the fate that Xunzi will not be able to be valued positively. We long for modernization, for democracy and science, but in the end we place science and democracy above a special feeling in our own hearts. The objective spirit has gone bankrupt, science and democracy have been elevated, the self-destruction of the West has been saved, Confucianism has created its own third phase, man has become a god, and the world has become one, but this is only the imagination and illusion in the minds of "philosophical heroes", not only can not relate to people's real life, but has become an obstacle to the ideological world. This is exactly what Mou Zongsan himself called "the disaster of ideas, the disaster of ideas."

In this regard, the modern transformation of Chinese philosophy is far from complete. If today's Chinese philosophy does not demand modernization, if it must be truly modernized, then it should at least pay attention to the following perspective:

First of all, be calm, seek truth from facts, give up the eager spirit of victory, and never seek the unity of world thought in "me". Without freedom of thought, without the collision of ideas, there is no scholarship at all. If scientific democracy is demanded on the one hand, and if the world's ideas are unified with Confucianism on the other, it will fall into hypocrisy and contradiction, and Chinese philosophy will lose its creativity and die quickly.

Secondly, pay attention to the life state of Chinese, carefully sort out the current way of life Chinese, study society, and speak on the issues of the times. China's main task at present can only be to seek modernization, and some of the so-called postmodern pain problems are actually just the consequences of failing to fully promote modernization.

Third, in an objective spirit, we should divide them into categories and analyze each other, and strive to ensure academic independence. To define the mission of today's Confucianism as the opening up of a new foreign king by the inner saints, and to interpret the foreign kings with science and democracy, is precisely to escape the academic independence of reality, and in the end, Chinese philosophy can only be realized through generality, superficiality and messiness, so as to achieve the so-called purity, transcendence and nobility, not only to destroy the study, the government, but also to destroy the Tao.