<h1 class= "pgc-h-center-line" > Wang Chong: Destroying the Ancestors of Chiyo, on the Temple of Shock and Confucianism</h1>
There is no shortage of thinkers in China, especially in the Spring and Autumn Warring States Period, when "a hundred schools of thought contended," which was really called a hundred flowers blooming; but since Emperor Wu exalted Confucianism alone, the thinking of the literati of the entire Han Dynasty seemed to have been imprisoned, and the "Heavenly Induction" and "Three Principles and Five Constants" filled the brains of people at all levels to the brim.
My knowledge is very shallow, as far as my awareness is concerned, Dong Zhongshu is of course a generation of people, if you want to say who else can afford to be a thinker of the Han Dynasty, it must be Wang Chong.
In the era when I received knowledge, this Wang Chong was a great name, and when I went to the countryside, except for Mao Xuan, there were almost no books to read in academic works, but there were two books that could be read, one was Fan Wenlan's "General History of China" and the other was Yang Rongguo's "History of Ancient Chinese Thought." It can be said that these two books were the enlightenment textbooks for my Chinese history and philosophy.
In this "History of Ancient Chinese Thought", Wang Chong is the person who is specially written by the great book, because he is known as a materialist thinker, an atheist fighter who is completely different from the many idealists, and the key is that he has many sarcastic remarks about the ancient sages, so he is extremely impressed.
Wang Chong (王充; Pinyin: 王充;
Wang Chong's ancestors were the ancestors of The Great Household in Hebei, and later moved to Zhejiang, he was born in Shangyu, at the age of 18, he "undertook the Jingshi", traveled to Luoyang to study, and once entered the country's highest school "Taixue" to study.
At that time, the Eastern Han Dynasty prevailed in the "theory of tuyi", that is, the words of prophecies or omens that can be fulfilled in the future, supplemented by pictures, making it more intuitive, so tuzhi is also called "tuhuan", and some people call it "books", which people can use to predict the auspicious and bad fortunes in future life, which is actually a superstition.
However, because The Han Guangwu Emperor Liu Xiu was convinced of this, firmly believed in it, and regarded Ji as the criterion for behaving in human affairs, this doctrine became popular; even before his death, Liu Xiu declared that "Tu Wei is in the world", that is, he used administrative means to promote Tu Wei to the whole country, so that Tan Wei theology occupied a dominant position in the ideological field of the entire Eastern Han Dynasty.
Now of course we know that this is superstition, but in that era when science was not developed, many things could not be explained, and this "tuzhi theory" had a very long academic foundation, and it was derived from Dong Zhongshu's "heavenly induction" theory, to put it bluntly, that is, the occurrence of natural disasters was a condemnation and warning given by heaven.
Dong Zhongshu said in his "Spring and Autumn Prosperity, Bi Ren and Zhi": "The loss of the country is the beginning of the bud, and the disasters in the sky are retribution. To tell them without knowing how to change is to be horrified by the strangeness. ”
This statement is very basic, even today there is a market, and together with the Buddhist "theory of retribution," it is deeply rooted in the hearts of many people.
Wang Chong, as a simple materialist thinker, did not think so, saying: "Fu Tiandao is natural and natural, and does not do anything; if he accuses people, he is promising, not natural." This fundamentally negates the teachings of "heaven and man induction.".
Philosophical problems for ordinary people feel very high and difficult, I am the same, as soon as I encounter these, I feel big, when I was a young man, there was really no book to read, so I took this philosophy book as a hypnotic book to read, and sometimes when I really can't sleep, I can only read it repeatedly under the dim lamp, and I don't know how many pounds of kerosene was wasted, and my heart aches!
It is impossible to explain Wang Chong's thoughts clearly, but his central ideas can still be roughly summarized, and to sum up, there are mainly the following points.
Heaven is a product of nature, "heaven and earth are aikido, and all things are self-generating", and any natural phenomenon has no dime relationship with the so-called "providence".
Heaven cannot give birth to man: heaven is nature, and man is even more natural, "man, thing, thing, thing also", which fundamentally cuts the relationship between heaven and man, and the saying "heaven and man induction" is only the result of people comparing heaven with their own ideas.
Godless and ghostless: Man is born and dies, man dies like a fire, and where there is light when the fire is extinguished, thus negating the "retribution of good and evil".
The above three points are actually the central ideas that support Wang Chong's "atheism", which is praised by mainstream society, but in addition, he also has a view that fits the situation at that time, that is, "the present is better than the ancient", which was the most enthusiastically welcomed argument at that time.
People of our time all experienced the "Batch Forest And Batch Hole" movement, a hundred families are garbage, only the Fa is good, the people who change the law are all Fa, they are against the mud ancient Shoucheng, so Wang Chong opposed "Fengtian Fagu" and opposed the idea that "the heavens do not change the Tao and the Tao does not change", which is of course a very lofty position.
Wang Chong's main expositions are in his book "On Balance", which can be said to be an encyclopedia of ancient times, he made observations of many natural phenomena, introduced into the book, in order to the decadence and bad customs of society, many views were whipped into it, at that time it was considered a strange book, was the most influential thinker at that time.
There are many earth-shattering chapters in the book, the spearhead is directed at the major sages, such as "Asking The Hole" and "Thorn Meng", etc., openly challenging the Confucian classics, which has caused people from all walks of life to criticize, and the Qianlong Emperor of the Qing Dynasty has criticized: Wang Chong "stabbed Meng and asked Kong", "There is already a non-holy curse!" ”
There is a very interesting question, what kind of faction and branch is this Wang Chong? It seems that no one can say clearly, there are Hundreds of years of Han, only Confucianism is dominant, Wang Chong studied in Taixue, the education he received was set as a Confucian classic, and his teacher Ban Biao was a famous Confucian, but Wang Chong's works have never been included in the Confucian academic category in history, but have always been listed as "miscellaneous families", it seems that all generations have regarded him as a "family word" without a teacher and no sect.
However, some people have included it in the Mo family, such as the modern classics master Liu Shipei, who said that Wang Chong was "a branch of the southern inkers", and in my previous impression, the official had always regarded Wang Chong as an anti-Confucian doctrine, so it should definitely not be Confucianism.
In fact, I think that because he has objections to the ancestors, Wang Chong cannot be classified as another kind, in the final analysis, he is still a Confucian disciple, but his articles, or the titles are too poignant, and the pile of words "ask Kong, Thorn Meng, non-Confucianism" is really difficult to regard as a Confucian.
It is very normal to say that there is an objection to the Confucian masters, since Mencius has improved the teachings of Confucius, although the world is called Confucius and Meng, but the thinking and consciousness of the two are actually very different, Dong Zhongshu's "heaven and man and man" thought is far from being an improvement of Confucius and Mencius, but a major transformation of Confucianism, but who says that he is not a Confucian?
By analogy, Wang Chong is naturally also a Confucian, and he only openly raises doubts about his ancestors, rather than avoiding talking about them like Lao Dong, so it is certain that he is also a Confucian, a erudite Confucian who dares to set new ground and take a different path.
However, it is an indisputable fact that Wang Chong's "On Balance" was not welcomed by all dynasties and dynasties except in a specific period after the founding of the People's Republic of China, especially in the Qing Dynasty, when classics were prevalent and scholars were proofreading and sorting out various important classics, and none of them was a revision of "On Balance", which cannot but be said to be a very strange phenomenon.
The reason for this is still to return to the "On Balance" itself, because from this book, we can see the clues, and the reason is that Wang Chong is suspected of "great filial piety".
The Wang family, as the family of Hebei Daimyo, used to have some roots, but when wang chong arrived, several times they moved, and they had long lost the momentum of the Wang clan, the main reason for this was that his father and grandfather had many bad deeds, and all of this was shaken clean by Wang Chong in the book "On Balance".
He describes it in the book: "Shizu was brave and arrogant, and he did not take care of people. Years of murder, crosswalk wounds, many grudges. The world will be disturbed, afraid of being captured by resentment, grandfather Pan family burden, on the security of the guild, leave money in Tang County, to Jia trafficking as a matter. Two children, long and long, and less chanted. Recitation is fatherhood. Ancestral ren qi, to the Most Mongolian, chanting is even more, so Mongolian, chanting in Qiantang, brave and domineering. The last fu formed a grudge with the Hao family Ding Bo and others, so the whole family moved to Shangyu. ”
That is to say, his ancestors ran rampant in the townships, and there were many enemies, and in order to avoid disasters, they ran to the membership and engaged in the most despicable "merchant" things; they also formed grudges with others, dragged their families and ran to Shangyu to settle down.
Judging from This account of Wang Chong, his ancestors were not only clumsy children and losers, but also strong local tycoons and inferior gentry, or just shameless murderers and outlaws.
Wang Chong, with a "fearless revolutionary spirit", sought truth from facts and made public all kinds of bad deeds of his ancestors, but this was not only at that time, but even today, it will be looked at by people, in China's feudal society, "subjects are the king, the son is the father" is a matter of course, Wang Chong's behavior is contrary to the traditional Chinese concept.
Since Wang Chong "described his father and ancestor as unworthy, he was despised by Zhou Lu... The husband narrates his family lineage, and he should be mainly famous and prominent, and he has no one to do with him. China is a country with the word "filial piety" in the forefront, and it is understandable that his "filial piety" behavior is not accepted by mainstream society.
In addition to this "slander of the ancestors", in Wang Chong's writings, all kinds of strange remarks also abound, in his thinking seems to have no concept of "filial piety", in his view, parents do not need filial piety, childbearing is completely a by-product of sexual desire, the so-called "husband and wife aiki, not at that time to have children, lust and harmony, together to give birth to children." ”
Such an idea is not to say that it is completely unreasonable, but after all, there is a suspicion of "disobedience" and it is impossible to be accepted by the public, but there are still some people who agree with this statement, such as Kong Rong, who "let pears at the age of three", who holds this view, and among the crimes he was killed by Cao Cao, this one is one of the major sins.
At the same time as "destroying the ancestors," he was full of praise for himself, but this practice of "destroying the ancestors and honoring oneself" caused even more criticism from later generations, so Qian Daxin, a famous scholar of the Qing Dynasty, said that he was "a sinner who has no deeds and is a famous religion"; while the modern scholar Wang Xinfu directly said that he was "self-honored and destroyed before him, non-human beings".
Wang Chong was founded as an anti-Confucius and anti-saint, so although he was condemned for a long period of history and his writings were almost unpopular, during the May Fourth Movement, due to the fortune of "overthrowing Confucius", many scholars began to study the book "On Balance".
In 1923, when Liang Qichao gave a lecture on "The Academic History of China in the Past Three Hundred Years" at Tsinghua University, he praised: "Wang Chong's "On Balance" is the first strange book of han dynasty criticism of philosophy"; and Huang Kan, a scholar I admire most, also said in his article "On the Metaphysics of the Han and Tang Dynasties":
"Eastern Han Dynasty author, interrupting Wang Chong." The work of "On Balance" takes ghosts and gods, yin and yang, and all false words and proverbs, and destroys them. Descending from Xijing, and doing this at this time, just like the thorns that have been walking for a long time, suddenly getting Kang Qu, rejoicing and ning have a measure. ”
Since the founding of the People's Republic of China, thinkers in Chinese history have been very lonely, because we have followed a principle of "using the past for the present", everything is affected by the needs of reality, and if we want to rebel, we will get the "three programs and five constants" out to criticize; if we want to oppose idealism, we will put forward the "On Balance" representing materialism and praise it for a while.
Therefore, Wang Chong has been highly praised by the authorities for a certain period of time, which is also an opportunity for Wang Chong, but now, when advocating the study of Chinese culture and advocating the core values of traditional Chinese culture, few people can think of him.
However, Wang Chong believed in fate, and I think that under the Nine Springs, he should also laugh at such a situation, and he would not take it too seriously.