A Short History of Chinese Philosophy (47 page)

The difference between Ch eng Hao and Mencius is that the former gives to jen a much more metaphysical interpretation than does the latter. "Appendix III" of the Book of Changes contains the statement: "The supreme virtue of Heaven and Earth is sheng." The word sheng here may mean simply production or to produce; it may also mean life or to give birth to life. In chapter fifteen I translated sheng as to produce, because that seems to be the meaning that besl harmonizes with the ideas of the Appendices. But according to Ch eng Hao and other Neo —Confucianists, sheng really means life or to give birth to life. According to them there is a tendency toward life in all things, and this tendency constitutes the yen of Heaven

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and Earth.

It so happens that the expression "nol-jen" is a technical term for paralysis in Chinese medicine. Ch eng Hao says: The doctor describes the paralysis of a man s arms or legs as not—yen; this is a very good description [of the disease]. The man of jen takes Heaven and Earth as being one with himself. To him there is nothing that is not himself. Having recognized them as himself, what cannot he do for them? If there is no such relationship with the self, it follows that there is no connection between the self and others. If the hand or foot are nol-jen, it means that the ch'i [ vital force] is not circulating freely and the parts L of the body J are not connected with each oth— er."(Ibid., chilan 2a.) Thus, according to Ch'eng Hao, metaphysically there is an inner connection between all things. What Mencius called the feeling of commiseration or the "unbearing mind" is simply an expression nf this connection between ourselves and other things. It often happens, however, that our "unbearing mind" is obscured by selfishness, or, to use the Neo-Confucian term, by selfish desires or simply desires. Hence the original unity is lost. What is necessary is simply to remember that originally there is a oneness between oneself and all things, and to act accordingly with sincerity and attentiveness. In this way the original unity will be restored in due course. Such is the general idea of the philosophy of Ch'eng Hao, which Lu Chiu-yiian and Wang Shou-jen later developed in detail.

Origin of the Ch' eng-Chu Idea of Li

In chapter eight we have seen that already in early times Kung—sun Lung made clear the distinction between universals and things. He insisted that whiteness is whiteness even though nothing is in itself white in the world. It would seem that he had some idea of the Platonic distinction of the two worlds, the eternal and the temporal, the intelligible and the visible. This idea was not developed by later philosophers, however, and the philosophy of the School of Names did not become a main current in Chinese thought. On the contrary, this thought moved in another direction, and it took more than one thousand years for Chinese philosophers to turn their attention once more to the problem of eternal ideas.

The two main thinkers to do so are Ch'eng Yi and Chu Hsi.

The philosophy of Ch eng Yi and Chu Hsi, however, is not a continuation of the School of Names.

They paid no attention to Kung-sun Lung or to the ming-li (principles based on the analysis of names) discussed by the NeoTaoists whom we have treated in chapter nineteen. They developed their idea of Li (abstract Principles or Laws) directly from the "Appendices" of the Book of Changes. I have pointed out in chapter fifteen that a distinction exists betweenthe Too of Taoism and the too of the Appendices. The Too of Taoism is the unitary first "that" from which all things in the universe come 466 NEO~CONFUCIANISM:THE BEGINNING OF THE TWO SCHOOLS

to be. The too of the "Appendices," on the contrary, are multiple, and are the principles which govern each separate category of things in the universe. It is from this concept that Ch' eng Yi and Chu Hsi derived the idea of Li.

The immediate stimulus for Ch'eng Yi and Chu Hsi, however, seems to be the thought of Chang Tsai and Shao Yung. In the last chapter we have seen that Chang Tsai explained the appearance and disappearance of concrete particulars in terms of the condensation and dispersion of the Ch'i. The condensation of the Ch i results in the formation and appearance of things. But this theory fails to explain the reason for the different categories of things. Granted that a flower and a leaf are both condensations of the Ch' i, we are still at a loss as to why a flower is a flower and a leaf a leaf. It is here that Ch eng Yi s and Chu Hsi s idea of Li comes in. According to them, the universe as we see it is a result not only of the Ch i but also of the Li. Different categories of things exist, because the condensation of the Ch' i takes place in different ways in accordance with different Li. A flower is a flower, because it is the condensation of the Ch' i taking place in accordance with the Li of the flower; and a leaf is a leaf, because it is the condensation of the Ch i taking place in accordance with the Li of the leaf.

Shao Yung s diagrams also helped to suggest the idea of Li. According to Shao, what the diagrams represent is the law that governs the transfonnations of individual things. This law is antecedent not only to the diagrams, but also to the existence of individual things. Shao maintained that before the tri— grams were first drawn by their discoverer, the Book of Changes already ideally existed. One of the Ch eng Masters says: Lin one of his poemsJ, Yao-fu [i.e., Shao Yung] writes: 'Before the drawing [of the trigrams by Fu Hsi, a traditional sage supposed to have lived in the twenty-ninth century B.C.], there was already the Book of Changes.'.... This idea has never been said before. (Literary Remains of the Two Ch engs, chiian 2.a.)This theory is the same as that of the new realists, who maintain that there is a Mathematics before there is mathematics.

Ch eng Yi s Concept of Li

The combination of the philosophy of Chang Tsai and Shao Yung suggests the distinction between what the Greek philosophers called the form and the matter of things. This distinction Ch eng Yi and Chu Hsi made very clear. For them, just as for Plato and Aristotle, all things in the world, if they are to exist at all, must be the embodiment of some principle in some material. If a certain thing exists, there must be for it a certain principle. If there be a certain principle, however, there may or may not exist a corresponding thing. The principle is what they call Li, and the material is what they call Ch i. The latter, for Chu Hsi, is much more abstract than is the Ch i in Chang Tsai' s system.

Ch'eng Yi also distinguishes between what is "within shapes and what is 468 NEO-CONFUCIANISM:THE BECINNING OF THE TWO SCHOOT.S

' above shapes. The origin of these two terms is traceable to "Appendix III" of the Book of

Changes: "What is above shapes is called the Too; what is within shapes is called the implements." In the system of Ch'eng Yi and Chu Hsi, this distinction corresponds to that between the abstract and concrete in Western philosophy. The Li are the Too which is "above shapes," or, as we would say, abstract; while the implements, by which Ch eng Yi and Chu Hsi mean particular things, are within shapes, or, as we would say, concrete.

According to Ch eng Yi, the Li are eternal, and can neither be added to nor reduced. As he says: Existence or non-existence, addition or reduction, cannot be postulated about Li.

All Li are complete in themselves; in them there can never be deficiency. (Literary Remains of the Two Ch engs, chiian 2a.) Again he says: All the Li are pervasively present.

We cannot say that the too of kingship was more when Yao [a traditional sage-king]

exemplified it as a king, nor can we say that the too of sonship was more when Shun L the successor of Yao, known for his filial piety J exemplified it as a son. These [the Li] remain what they are." (Ibid.) Ch'eng Yi also describes the world "above shapes" as "void, with nothing in it, yet filled with all. (Ibid.) It is void because in it there are no concrete things; yet it is filled with all the Li. All the Li are there eternally, no matter whether or not instances of them occur in the actual world, nor docs it matter whether we human beings know of them or not.

Ch eng Yi s method of spiritual cultivation is expressed in his famous statement: "In cultivation one needs attentiveness; in the advancement of learning, one needs the extension of knowledge." (Literary Remains of the Two Ch engs, chiian 18.) The word attentiveness is a translation of the Chinese word ching, which may also be translated as seriousness or earnestness. We have seen that Ch'eng Hao also said that the "learner" must first understand that all things are originally one, and then cultivate this understanding with sincerity and attentiveness. Attentiveness is the key word used by Neo-Confucianists after this time lo describe iheir method of spiritual cultivation. It replaces the word used by Chou Tun-Yi for this process, which was a different word also pronounced ching but meaning quiescence. The replacement of "quiescence by "attentiveness" in the methodology of spiritual cultivation marks further the departure of Neo—Confucianism from Ch anism.

As pointed out in chapter twenty-two, effort is needed for the proc ess of cultivation.

Even if one's ultimate aim is to be effortless, it requires an initial effort to attain the effortless state. This, however,the Ch anists do not state, nor is it expressed by Chou Tun-yi s quies cence. Use of the word attentiveness, however, brings this idea of effort into the foreground.

In cultivation one must be attentive, but attentive to what? This is a controversial question between the two schools of Neo—Confucianism, which I will return to in the next two chapters.

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Method of Dealing with the Emotions

In chapter twenty I said that Wang Pi maintained the theory that the sage has emotions but is without ensnarement. It is also said in the Chuang— tzu: "The mind of the perfect man is like a mirror. Tt does not move with things, nor does it anticipate them. It responds to things, but does not retain them.

Therefore the perfect man is able to deal successfully with things but is not affected by them. (Ch. 7.) Wang Pi s theory of the emotions seems Lo be an extension of this statement of Chuang Tzu.

The Nco-Confucian method of dealing with the emotions follows the same line as Wang Pi s. Its essential is the disconnecting of the emotions from the self. Cheng Hao says: "The normality of Heaven and Earth is that their mind is in all things, yet of themselves they have no mind. The normality of the sage is that his emotion follows the nature of things, yet of himself he has no emotion. Therefore, for the superior man nothing is better than being impersonal and impartial, and responding to things spontaneously as they come. The general trouble with man is that he is selfish and rationalistic. Being selfish, he cannot take action as a spontaneous response. Being rationalistic, he cannot take intuition as his natural guide. When the sage is pleased, it is because the thing is there which is rightly the object of pleasure. When the sage is angry, it is because the thing is there which is rightly the object of anger.

Therefore the pleasure and anger of the sage are not connected with his mind, but with things."

(Ming-tan Wen-chi or Collected Writings ofCh'eng Hao.chilan 2..) This is a part of Ch'eng Hao s 'Letter on the Calmness of the Nature," which was written to Chang Tsai. The impersonalness, impartiality, and action with spontaneity and without self—rationalization, of which Ch eng Hao speaks, arc the same as the vacuity and straightforwardness spoken of by Chou Tun-yi. The same illustration from Mencius that was used in connection with Chou Tun-yi can be applied here.

According to Ch eng Hao s view, it is natural that even the sage should sometimes experience pleasure or anger. But since his mind has an impersonal, objective, and impartial attitude, when these feelings come, they are simply objective phenomena in the universe, and are not especially connected with his self. When he is pleased or angry, it is simply the external things, deserving of either pleasure or anger, that produce corresponding feelings in his mind. His mind is like a mirror on which anything may be reflected. As a result of this attitude, when the object has gone, the emotion it produced goes with it. In this way the sage, though he has emotions, is without ensnarement. Let us return to the illustration mentioned earlier. Suppose a man sees a child about to fall into a well. If he follows his natural impulse, he will immediately rush forward to save the child. His success will certainly give him pleasure and his failure will equally certainly cause him sorrow.

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But since his action is impersonal and impartial, once the affair is finished, his emotion is also gone. Thus he has emotions, but is without ensnarement.

Another illustration commonly used by the Neo -Confucianists is that of Yen Hui, the favorite disciple of Confucius, of whom the latter said: "Hui did not transfer his anger. (Analects, VI, 2..)When a man is angry, he often abuses other people and destroys things that apparently have nothing to do with his emotion at all. This is called "transferring anger." He transfers his anger from something that is the object of his anger to something that is not. The Neo—Confucianists took this statement of Confucius very seriously, and considered this quality of Yen Hui as the most significant in the great Confucian disciple, whom they considered next to Confucius himself in spiritual perfection. Thus Ch eng Yi comments: We must understand why it is that Yen Hui did not transfer his anger.In a bright mirror, a beautiful object produces a beautiful reflection, while an ugly object produces an ugly one. But the mirror itself has no likes or dislikes. There are some people who, being offended in their home, discharge their anger in the street.