Locke's China Lessons

Liu Gang/Wen

Rousseau's Social Contract has two sources of thought that he did not care about.

One source is Epicurus in ancient Greece, while the other is Laozi in China.

Although he did not express it, he was pointed out, and if so, should he repent again like the Confessions? Perhaps he will think that the problem of thought, not as important as the problem of emotion, is not needed.

So what about Locke, is there any influence of "Chinese philosophy" in his "On Government"?

Locke is different from Rousseau, Rousseau is a strong emotionalist thinker, only use the power of logic to promote the catharsis of emotions, as for the consequences, whether to destroy an old world, or at the same time open a new world, he does not care, can return to nature, of course, the best, secondly, small countries and widows can do. But in reality, none of this can be done, so choose a city-state with similar goals, ancient Greece can no longer go back, he can go back, is his hometown Geneva.

Locke, on the other hand, was a scholarly man, doing ancient Greek scholarship, starting with Aristotle's Political Science and continuing through his own Theory of Government, and finally making a sample of the form of a constitutional monarchy. He also did Chinese studies, did Confucianism brought to Europe by Jesuit missionaries, and left a copy of "Chinese Notes" in the "China fever".

What Locke proved with China

From Han Ling's "Locke and China: Locke's "Notes on China", we can see Locke's homework on Chinese learning, which is a manuscript, Han Ling lists the bibliography of manuscripts, there are as many as 37 books, and according to its publication date, it is confirmed that the manuscript was written between 1700 and 1704, written on the opened envelope, and is supported by a postmark.

Judging from the content, the "Chinese Notes" involved some Chinese Confucian issues, touching on the "liturgical controversy" at that time, such as heaven, ancestors, Confucius, God, etc., about 13 issues, which once caused a great discussion in Europe.

This great discussion can be described as a European ideological emancipation movement, which not only wants to emancipate faith from the shackles of religion, but also emancipate the mind from the influence of China, and break the superstition about China from the "Chinese style" of the monarchy.

Locke did his Chinese homework so seriously, it seems, to participate in the discussion, but his notes had not yet been written into a book and were unpublished, so they had little impact at the time. The reason why he pays attention to the Chinese problem is not that he is interested in the Chinese issue itself, but that he uses the existence of China to prove one of his points: the concept of God is not gifted.

At that time, what attracted China to Europe the most, in addition to the material civilization things since the Renaissance, there were also three questions at the ideological level, one was the question of the concept of talent, is God a concept of talent? To answer this question, we must first ask, is Chinese atheism? This was the primary problem facing European intellectual circles at the time.

The other two questions involve the origin of civilization, one is the question of the original language of mankind - is the Chinese script the original language? There is also the question of the chronology of human history - is the record of China's ancient history credible?

The historical status and value of Chinese civilization are supported by these three questions, and thinkers of the Age of Enlightenment used Chinese civilization as a contrast to Christianity to prove that Christian civilization is not unique or universal.

Locke was concerned with the first question, that is, the idea of God, is it gifted? If so, it should be universal, and it should be put in the same stream everywhere, but the actual situation is just the opposite.

Locke liked to read travelogues, and he found that there are still many places in human society without the concept of God, which are widely distributed, vast, populous, and ethnically complex.

Locke used them to prove that "the idea of God is not gifted," but those beings, seemingly barbaric, were not treated as civilization by mainstream European culture. Therefore, Locke mentioned Annan, saying that Annan had become civilized, but his people still did not have the concept of God. Or maybe it is not civilized enough, and its mind does not go to God.

So, what about China? The volume and quality of civilization is finally enough, right? In his opinion, the same situation is true. Guan Wenyun's translation of Locke's "Theory of Human Understanding", Volume I, Chapter 4, Section 8, "The Idea of God Is Not Gifted," says that the missionaries stationed in China, and even the Jesus, on the one hand, praise China very much, and on the other hand say that the ruling class of China, that is, the scholars, are atheists.

In doing so, it proves his point that "the idea of God is not gifted."

From this, an ideological paradox arises, and it is inevitable to ask: Since civilization is so beautiful, is the atheism that arises from this beautiful civilization equally beautiful? What an extra question! For, then, he made it clearer, saying why people at that time were inconsistent in their words and deeds on atheism: if it were not for the blade of the official, the scolding of the neighbor, and the jaw-dropping words, the atheism would have been heard, and if there was no punishment blessing, or if there was shame on themselves, then atheism would have overflowed, as their actions always indicated.

First, he agreed with the missionaries' praise of the degree of civilization in China, and second, although he himself was a Christian, he was not averse to atheism, he did not deny the concept of God, what he denied was only the transcendental nature of the concept of God, and he believed that the concept of God was not formed by nature, but through experience.

In the third chapter of "Locke and China", "The Text and Key Points of the 'Chinese Notes'", we can see that Locke made an in-depth investigation of the Chinese's concept of "God", and from this he came to his conclusion, that is, from ancient times to the present, the Chinese "God" refers to the "material heaven", and it is only in terms of "fate" and "destiny should be so", which is in line with the European view of destiny. Therefore, the Chinese "God" is like fate itself, not the all-knowing, all-powerful, all-good and unique personal God who rules destiny, of course, it can also be said that it is the embodiment of Logos, so he said: Chinese use "God" to refer to the change and development of things, but do not think that "God" understands and knows all this.

He said that the Chinese "God", also known as "reason" or "Tai Chi", is a subtle substance that spreads throughout the universe, blends into all things in heaven and earth, and especially gathers in the creation of the gods and gods, in order to confirm that Chinese does not recognize the pure spirit that is completely independent of matter, and emphasizes that the established and unshakable foundation of Chinese philosophy is "the unity of all things."

"All things are one" is a pre-Socratic philosophical legacy in the West, and in China, it has always been so since Confucius, and has not changed. When Western philosophy shifted from the theory of material nature to the theory of divinity, this transformation did not occur in China, but turned to the combination with the theory of human nature, when Westerners looked at human nature with the eyes of divinity, Chinese found themselves in the theory of human nature - "I am God"! It is a "me" that "communicates with the spirit of heaven and earth", a "me" that "my mind is the universe", a "me" that "everything is prepared for me", but at the same time, it is also a "selfless self" that has been eliminated from individuality.

In the stage of the theory of materiality, Western philosophy appeared with the atomism of individuality, showing its inseparable independent character, and showing a free posture with deflection movement, while China appeared with the theory of holistic qi, I with no self, or "big self", and flow with heaven and earth, but with nature, let the self lie flat in nature and get free.

In the unity of me and the universe, there is no distinction between spirit and matter, which is as Locke said, it is impossible to refer to "God" with Chinese, and he points out two reasons, one is that China does not have a corresponding word for "God", and the other is that China does not have the concept of "God" that can be used to understand it, but he also cannot understand the Chinese heaven.

Chinese concept of God is not based on the "material heaven", but arises from the hereditary patriarchy as the supreme ancestral god, providing blood identity to the divine right of kings as the highest end of the institutional arrangement.

The concept of God is the same as the dynasty, or from the bronze culture, from the West, a sign of the victory of the Tang Revolution is the establishment of the concept of God, "Yin people respect God, lead the people to do God", Yin people call God God.

God to Zhou Gong and Locke

Yin Min's concept of the god of ancestors can be seen from the first part of Locke's "On Government", and he criticized the divine right of kings, patriarchal politics and hereditary throne advocated by Philmer's "Theory of Ancestors".

Locke's critique has added a new perspective to us, allowing us to look at the unity of Yin Min's emperor and ancestor and the unity of gods and kings from a religious perspective outside the clan, which helps us deepen our understanding of his concept of God.

Philmer advocated that man is not born free, so all government must be governed by an absolute monarchy. To this, Locke said: I have to confess, I am very surprised, because, in a book that attempts to set chains for all mankind, all I found is a rope made of grains of sand. It's worse than mud, so it's worth mentioning? Despite his disdainful comments, Locke solemnly mentioned it. He believes that this is a Christian, within the scope indicated by the Bible, and that it is not necessary for atheists to worry about it. He said that Philmai's entire passage is based on the words of the king, but there is no definition of patriarchy, which can be described as unjustified, and it is even more unclear that "the patriarchal right was originally granted to Adam, and then it should be granted to all monarchs".

Therefore, he proceeded from the Bible and refuted the "Patriarchal Treatise" article by article: God created Adam, but did not create a king; God grants human rights, but does not grant paternal authority; Adam and Eve, created by God, should have the same power, have no priority, steal the forbidden fruit, both are complicit, both have original sin; Although Adam was the father of men, he had no patriarchal inheritance, and although he had inheritance and heirs, he had no inheritance hereditary,

So far, no monarch has been able to prove that its power comes from the hereditary inheritance of Adam's patriarchy, and the Theory of the Ancestors cannot answer who is Adam's heir? It cannot be confirmed how Adam's power lasted in the manner of the death of the Father and the Son.

It can be seen from this that the ideas of "Ancestors" are similar to those of the Yin people in China three thousand years ago, who regard God as an ancestral god, God as the Heavenly Father, and the Emperor as the Son of Heaven, using the patriarchal politics of blood identification to maintain the hereditary system of their regime, and using the assumption of divine right of kingship to provide legitimacy and legitimacy for the source of power for the monarchy.

Obviously, Locke did not know that China still had the Yin people's concept of God, nor did he know that the revolution during Yin Zhou not only used the king of Wu to cut down and revolutionize the life of the Shang Dynasty, but also used the Zhou Duke to reform the system and change the life of God.

God is the ancestor god of the Yin people, which is a bit like the God of Judaism, not the God of Christianity, the God of regional and national nature, not the God of the world and humanity, the God of one family and one surname, not the God of the people of the world. Therefore, the Duke of Zhou declared: God is dead! This seems to have been foreshadowed about three thousand years earlier than Nietzsche.

In the place of the Zhou people, it is the destiny of heaven. But what is that destiny? According to the ancient Greeks, the Mandate of Heaven is destiny, also known as the Logos, which should be natural legislation, if it is taken in the modern European view, or it is natural law, it applies to the whole world, so it is trusted by the will of the people.

In this way, it is quite similar to what Locke said about the "Theory of the Ancestors", but Locke did not know about the revolution during Yin Zhou, and he did not know that it was precisely because of the cultural revolution initiated by the Duke of Zhou that God became a "material heaven".

Also opposing the "ancestral theory", Locke and the Duke of Zhou have their own differences. What Locke objected to was the use of the God of all mankind, in the name of patriarchy, by blood identity as the source of the sovereignty of a monarchy. What the Duke of Zhou objected to was that the Yin people regarded their ancestor gods as the gods of all mankind. In this way, the orientation is also different, Locke retained God and abolished patriarchy; The Duke of Zhou, on the contrary, abolished the God of Yin people and retained patriarchy.

Here's a topic: If the god is not the ancestor god of the Yin people, but the human god, will the Zhou Guild ban it? It can also be seen that God in the West, fortunately, Jesus flashed, suddenly appeared as a savior, promoted Judaism to Christianity to transform the god of a race into the god of mankind, through this change, God's love replaced the contract between God and man, and the world was filled with love.

Thus, we see God's love in Locke's natural law rather than in The Theory of the Ancestors, and it is on the basis of God's love that Locke so certainly praises the natural state of man with freedom and equality, rather than viewing the natural state of man as a state of war, as Hobbes did, and shifting the origin of the state from the contract between God and man to the theory of the social contract.

God created natural law, and from natural law grew individual rights, in which it was filled with God's love, and the right to private property derived from this individual right was sacred and inviolable, and the constitutional monarchy was established here.

If we follow the thinking of "The Theory of Ancestors", as Locke refuted, it will lead to absolute monarchy through the patriarchy of the hereditary system, and its fate will also lead to the "unity of emperors and ancestors" and "unity of gods and kings" like Yin people, so that the true, good, and beautiful human god who "fills the world with love" will degenerate into the ancestor god of the head of a country's monarch and family.

Just as Jesus liberated the world from the divine contract of Judaism with the love of God, Locke, with his natural law full of divine love and the social contract formed by free people based on natural law, reversed in one fell swoop the historical atavism that appeared in the course of the modern history of the world, represented by the "Theory of the Ancestors", to turn God into an ancestral god. Unfortunately, such a historical atavism later appeared in China.

Hong Xiuquan took the exam in Guangzhou, fell in the fourth place, returned to his hometown in Hua County, removed the statue of Confucius, and converted to God. Originally, he was a character eliminated by the imperial examination system, but he raised his arms and became a big man in the sky. A four-time fallen talent, grasping a straw in despair, thinking that God could save him, the thrill of relief is by no means described, but a real sense of desperate survival. Historically, we have been accustomed to seeing the despondency of the hero's end, have heard enough of the sighs that Huaicai did not meet, and have become accustomed to appreciating the beauty of this suffering, which has formed part of our view of history, but he did not sigh.

The Taiping Rebellion was inspired by Christianity in the West, but its firm belief was rooted in ancient Chinese history, and he gave the movement its soul with a new interpretation. He believes that at the beginning of civilization, the East and the West shared the same root, the monarchy and the people were one, and both respected God, but later, Western culture carried out the path of God to the end, while the East went astray and lost its way without paying attention, and fled into the ghost road.

He pointed out in the "Teaching of the Original Dao Jue Shi" that since the Qin Emperor was obsessed with immortals, died in disobedience, followed the example of successive dynasties, and changed the title of Emperor God to Emperor Huizong of the Song Dynasty, it has been six or seven hundred years, and people in the world have not known the emperor God.

If we call the culture of worshipping God "deification", then the starting point of "deification" is in the Yin people, Yin people "lead the people to serve God", however, after the revolution at the time of Yin Zhou, "deification" was ended, and the culture of Zhou Gong was transformed, transforming the "deification" culture of "things and gods" into the "sanctification" culture of "honoring saints".

The origin of the word "sacred" may come from this, "deification" appeals to the divinity of man, while "sanctification" tends to human reason. "Deification" for China has not been sustained, limited to the Yin Shang dynasty, since the Duke of Zhou, God shock, "deification" ebbed tide, "sanctification" rose. Being a saint is more important than believing in God, and although Confucius in Spring and Autumn was a Yin person, he said "I follow the Zhou", and also proposed a standard for being a saint - "Zushu Yao Shun, Charter Wen Wu".

Yao Shun and Wenwu, both holy and king, can be described as the unity of holy kings. Yao Shun was the ancestor of "sanctification" in ancient times, which can be called "ancestral saint", so it is known as "ancestral narrative", "Wen Wu" revived Zhou Bang, Zhou public Zhou ceremony, with the mandate of heaven and the people's heart, opened the "Magna Carta of Sanctification" - "Heaven sees itself and the people see, and heaven listens to itself and the people", holding high the revolutionary concept of saints and the people's theory of value.

The constitution of the Zhou public government is based on the mandate of heaven and the will of the people, and its pattern of thinking is also similar to that of Locke.

The concept of Mandate of Heaven is similar to natural law, and the theory of people's hearts is also similar to the theory of social contract, but behind the seemingly similarity, we can also see their cultural differences, that is, the difference between cultural people's nature and cultural individuality.

Behind the natural law, there is God, the individual as the supreme being. Social contract theory also confronts a multitude of individual rights. And behind the destiny of heaven, there is no God, and there is no individual in the hearts of the people. Sanctification is like the wind, dwelling in the terroir, opening the wind and things, and becoming a custom. Therefore, the poems are named "national style", music is played in "national style", etiquette is performed with "national style", and government is performed with "national style".

This is the ritual religion of the Duke of Zhou, in the spring and autumn, the Zhou ritual declined, Confucius revived it with benevolence, that is, "self-denial and revenge for benevolence", not with God's love for salvation, like Jesus, but with "benevolence loves others", so in God, it is "sacrificed as present, sacrifice to God as God", respect and stay away, with "outside the six combinations, the saints exist and do not care", and put God on hold.

Therefore, Hong Xiuquan's "Book of Heavenly Rules" says: At the beginning, China and the Fan Kingdom all took the great road of worshipping the emperor and God, and the Western countries traveled this road to the end, and China was sent into the ghost road in the past one or two thousand years, resulting in being caught by Yan Luo demons. In "Taiping Tianri", he blames the demons on the mistakes of the book of Kongqiu.

Even Jesus was taught by Confucius, and God the Father said to Jesus: The book left by Concius is the book you read in the mortal world, and this book is all wrong, and even if you read it, you are spoiled by such a book. And accused Concho and said: Why do you teach people to be so confused, so that mortals do not know me, do you want to make your reputation greater than mine?

After Confucius, the saints replaced God and dominated culture, retrieving 25 histories. We find that there are 1247 entries about God and 398 volumes, and 2805 entries about Confucius with 880 volumes. The content of Confucius is more than twice that of God, no wonder Hong Xiuquan borrowed the mouth of God to say Confucius: "Er's reputation is greater than that of obscurity? ”

To be able to discover this is also a genius. The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom set up the deletion of books, deleted and revised the Four Books and Five Classics, called Confucius "Kong", and added the word "emperor" before the word "God". Jesus' principle is "God's to God, Caesar's to Caesar", the separation of church and state, each performing its own duties, Hong Xiuquan added the word "emperor", and included Christianity in kingship.

Materialist historians have made a high evaluation of this Chinese-style Christian movement with the peasants as the main body from the perspective of historical dynamics, but after the true Christian experienced it, the evaluation was diametrically opposite. The English missionary Joseph visited Tianjing and found Hong Xiuquan crazy, because Hong forced the missionaries to admit that the Taiping Dynasty was the kingdom of heaven, and Nanjing was the center of Christianity and world empire... And he and his son are the representatives of God and Christ on earth that everyone can see. In "Travels in Tianjing", Fu Lici wrote in a contemptuous tone: The Christianity of the Heavenly King is not a thing, the Heavenly King is the most stubborn and unrighteous heretic, and if the Catholic Pope had the right to rule him, he would have burned him long ago.

However, this heresy came from ancient Chinese history, and its origin is different. There is no material to show that Hong Xiuquan has been exposed to Phil Mai's "Ancestral Theory", but Yin Ren's concept of God is for him, as if he was innate, in his genes, as long as an external factor awakens his genes, he will immediately have a blood identity with God, and trigger his impulse similar to Yin people's emperor-ancestor unity and God-King unity.

Although Locke's "Chinese lessons" lacked the lesson of "Yinren's concept of God", which prevented him from thinking more deeply about China's emperor and heaven, his humanist instinct enabled him not only to identify with Chinese culture, but also to have tolerance for atheism, and his sniping of "On the Ancestors" on the ideological front in the 18th century reminds us of the Duke of Zhou three thousand years ago, and it is precisely because of his sniping that Europe avoids a possible historical atavism His tolerance of atheism also reminds us of Confucius's moderation.

(The author is the author of "The Rivers and Mountains of Culture", vols. 1-7, CITIC Press)