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History of non-Christian Religions — Topic 9

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History of non-Christian Religions — Topic 9

9.1 A Brief Historical Survey.

Chinese civilization arose independently. Its earliest writing has not survived to our day, and what has survived has not been deciphered. In China it was said that history begins with three rulers, who were widely venerated as gods:

Taihao, surnamed Feng and given the title Fu Xi. The legendary leader of the early eastern tribes inhabiting the territory of China. According to tradition, he laid the foundations of the Book of Changes (Yijing).

Yan Di, surnamed Jiang and given the title Shennong, “the Divine Farmer.” He was the legendary leader of the tribes who lived along the Jiang River.

Huang Di, surnamed Ji, who received the title Xuanyuan. He is venerated as the “Father of human culture,” for he is credited with inventing writing and music, introducing the wheel and the cart, and devising arithmetic and medicine. He is also known as the “Yellow Emperor” or “Yellow Forefather”; this is the literal rendering of the name Huang (“yellow”) Di (“emperor,” “forefather,” “lord”).

After the three great rulers, tradition enumerates five emperors. The list of the Five Emperors varies depending on the source. According to Sima Qian’s version, the first of the five was the Yellow Emperor. On the memorial tablets in the Temple of Ancient Emperors, however, the legendary emperors are named as Shao-hao, Zhuanxu, Ku, Yao, and Shun.

Archaeologists have uncovered a capital at Anyang, a city in Henan province, north of the middle reaches of the Yellow River basin. A great number of objects belonging to the Shang dynasty (1562–1027 BC) have been found there. The site is held to be the capital of that kingdom, the city of Yin. Oracle- bone inscriptions have also been discovered there. In China, divination was practiced using tortoise shells and other bones: a question was inscribed on the bone, which was then burned, and the priest read the answer from the resulting cracks and recorded it on the same bone. This is the oldest legible Chinese writing.

The most ancient tombs of rulers have also been preserved. They are subterranean, pyramid-like pit tombs; alongside treasures and various utensils, they contain large numbers of human sacrifices: hundreds of decapitated and dismembered bodies. For the most part these were prisoners of war, with chieftains being especially prized. Women were used as slaves. In the tomb of Emperor Wuding, 1,178 human sacrificial victims were found. People were probably offered in sacrifice so that they would assist the ruler in the next world by lending him their energy. Eventually, however, human sacrifice ceased. Already in Shang China, models of human figures are sometimes found in the graves in place of actual people, having taken their place.

The Shang kingdom was succeeded by the Zhou dynasty. The Zhou granted relative independence to villages, counties, and so on, and private property appeared. The unity then disintegrated into roughly twelve principalities (722–481). After this came the era in which these kingdoms fought one another—the “Warring States period” (481–221). It was a bloody time of countless killings. By various estimates, the population fell by a factor of three to nine. It was precisely during this period that Daoism and Confucianism took shape.

In 221 BC the emperor Qin Shi Huang Di seized power and restored China’s unity. During his reign books were destroyed (213 BC). His guiding principle was the harshest possible law. He died in 210 BC, and shortly thereafter the Qin dynasty collapsed (in 206 BC), giving rise to the Han dynasty. Under the Han, a cultural flowering began with the Confucian system at its foundation, and a system of state examinations was instituted, allowing anyone who passed the tests to enter government service.

9.2 The Ancient Chinese Pentateuch Wu Jing.

The Wujing (Five Classics) is the collective name for five foundational Confucian texts, much of whose content predates Confucius himself:

1. Yijing (I Ching, “Classic of Changes”)

2. Shijing (“Classic of Poetry” or “Book of Odes”)

3. Shujing (“Book of Documents”)

4. Liji (“Book of Rites”)

5. Chunqiu (“Spring and Autumn Annals”)

The “Wu Jing” is the oldest Chinese literary monument and contains important information on early religion and history. The main body of the texts was probably composed in the 6th–5th centuries BC and subsequently restored by Han-dynasty scholars after the burning of the books by Qin Shi Huangdi.

The Yijing, “The Book of Changes,” is the most important text for Chinese religiosity. It contains a distinctive divinatory system. The book is built upon eight trigrams, composed of solid and broken lines arranged one above the other in three rows; the invention of these trigrams is attributed to the mythical emperor Fu Xi (ca. 3000 BC). In a trigram the unbroken line represents yang—the positive, active principle—while the broken line represents yin—the negative, passive principle or force of nature; the various figures symbolize the interaction of these two forces. We shall speak in greater detail of ancient Chinese divinatory practice and its aims, as well as of the categories of yin and yang, below. For the present, let us note that the Yijing was not destroyed in the burning of the books by Qin Shi Huangdi (ca. 220 BC).

The Shijing was traditionally said to have been reduced by Confucius from 3,000 poems to a canon of 305 (with six additional titles lacking text). The Shujing contains documents pertaining to earliest history, including references to the Great Flood under Emperor Yao.

The Shujing, “The Book of Documents,” is a foundational work setting forth the legends of the formation of the Chinese people and its history. It contains documents pertaining to the earliest history of China (from 2357 to 627 BC); its compilation is ascribed to Confucius, who put in order the documents that had come down to him. The Shujing contains a reference to a worldwide flood that occurred under the emperor Yao (2293 BC).

The Liji, “The Book of Rites,” regulates social relations, religious ceremonies, and so on. It was compiled after Confucius’s death on the basis of the ritual book of the Zhou dynasty and other lesser writings on ritual.

The Chunqiu, “Spring and Autumn,” is a chronicle of the principality of Lu from 722 to 481 BC, traditionally said to have been written by Confucius himself. The Chunqiu offers not so much an exposition of events as an extremely terse assessment of them from the standpoint of Confucian political morality.

9.3 Shangdi and Tian (Heaven) in the Yin-Zhou Period

“In the firmament of the many greater and lesser spirits of China, beginning in the Yin era, a bright new star of the first magnitude appeared — a deity of the highest rank: Shangdi. The evidence of numerous Yin divinatory inscriptions testifies that it was Shangdi who was the chief and final authority in the world of supernatural forces, and that upon his favor and his decision the conduct of all other spirits ultimately depended. The spirits of wind and rain, of clouds and thunder, all obeyed Shangdi. Whether he commanded rain to fall in due season or, on the contrary, halted the torrents pouring from the sky, averted the storm, or spared the field from hail—on this, according to the conceptions of the Yin people, depended their fate. Victory over the enemy, the successful struggle with misfortune and illness, a prosperous hunt, and even the safe delivery of the wang’s consort—all these too lay within Shangdi’s competence. In a word, Shangdi was regarded as the supreme deity, to whom all other spirits in heaven had to submit just as unconditionally as all people on earth submitted to the will of the Yin ruler, the wang” [Vasilyev, L.S. Cults, Religions, Traditions in China. 2nd ed. Moscow: Vostochnaya Literatura Publishers of the Russian Academy of Sciences, 2001].

Another name synonymous with Shangdi was Tian (Heaven). Accordingly, the concept of tianxia (“All-under-Heaven”) denotes the known world, subject to the will of Heaven. The character Di (帝) originally denoted a “Supreme Ancestor or Forefather” (and more «Supreme Deity», «Lord on High» or «Sovereign») so that Shang Di means “Highest Ancestor/Lord”. Tian Di, “Heavenly Ancestor/Lord” denotes the great and the one. Heaven is associated with a human figure; the character for Heaven probably originated in the depiction of a human being. The symbolic sign of Heaven is the circle — the only proper representation of Heaven in China, which otherwise was not depicted at all.

In the early songs of the Shi Jing and in the Shujing, Shangdi is spoken of often and at length. From them we learn that Shangdi sees and hears all, feels and understands all, knows and rules over all; that Shangdi can approve and can grow wrathful. All of this attests that the supreme deity Shangdi was still popular and omnipotent at the beginning of the Zhou period. Heaven and Shangdi long coexisted and substituted for one another in Zhou thought. The same functions were ascribed to them, and they were equally regarded as the supreme divine power. This parallelism of Heaven and Shangdi in the Zhou period (which did not exist in the Yin) long gave rise to debate. Various proposals have been advanced—for example, that Heaven simply is Shangdi, or that Heaven is the “abode” of Shangdi.

On the cult of Di, or Shang Di, Mircea Eliade writes: “The divinatory inscriptions on bones and shells reveal a religious conception absent—or imperceptible?—in Neolithic materials: the supremacy of the supreme heavenly deity Di (the Sovereign) or Shang Di (the Supreme Sovereign). Di governs the cosmic rhythms and the phenomena of nature (rain, wind, drought, and so on), grants victory to the king and bestows a rich harvest, or, conversely, condemns him to defeat and sends sickness and death. Two kinds of sacrifices are offered to him: in the sanctuary of the ancestors and in the open field. But, as is the case with other heavenly gods of the archaic pantheon (see our ‘Treatise on the History of Religions,’ §14 ff.), his cult also points to a certain weakening of religious primacy. Di proves more remote and less effective than the deceased ancestors of the royal lineages, and fewer sacrifices are offered to him” [Eliade, M. A History of Religious Ideas. Vol. 2. Moscow, 2002, p. 11].

9.4 The Conception of the Human Being in Ancient China.

From the testimony of the Zuozhuan, it is known that already by the middle of the first millennium BC every person was considered the bearer of two souls: the material po, which appears at the moment of conception, and the spiritual hun, which arises with a person’s birth and enters him with his first breath.

The material soul po descended into the earth at the person’s death and in a number of cases was apparently perceived as the gui spirit. It was to this soul, in the form of the gui, that numerous offerings were made at the graves and within the tombs. So long as such offerings were sufficient and the relatives and descendants of the deceased regularly provided new ones, the soul of the deceased, as the gui spirit, remained at peace. If not, the gui might grow malevolent and inflict considerable harm not only on the descendants but on ordinary people as well. This may account for the concern of every Chinese for his male posterity, a concern that has characterized this region throughout the millennia.

The spiritual soul hun, unlike the po, departs from a person at the moment of death and ascends to heaven, where it is transformed into the shen spirit. In this, according to the Liji , the difference between the bodily and the spiritual substance of the human being was manifested [Vasilyev, L.S. Cults, Religions, Traditions in China. 2nd ed. Moscow: Vostochnaya Literatura, RAN, 2001]. The hun ascends to heaven (unless on the way it is carried off by the heavenly wolf); its distinctive image was the spirit tablet bearing the name in the household shrine. Later the gui and shen came to be regarded in the Chinese tradition as evil and good spirits respectively, a notion preserved in folk belief to this day. Special attention to the shen spirit is attested already in antiquity; it was held that this soul, on entering heaven into the palace of the Heavenly Sovereign, becomes a mediator between human beings and supernatural powers.

E. Erkes emphasized that the earth was at first perceived as the “goddess of death,” and the po soul was regarded as the equivalent of the term gui (“to return”), with the meaning “to die,” “to return to the earth.” Human sacrifices were offered to the earth in antiquity, a practice that later ceased—for instance, those who had fallen in battle. Those condemned to execution were also sacrificed to her, at the altar of the earth, as is stated in the “Gan shi” chapter of the Shujing. On the whole, the cult of the earth is well attested in Ancient China.

9.5 The Cult of Ancestors and Supreme Power.

If the cult of Heaven in many ways defined the principles of political structure and state organization, then a decisive influence on the entire character of Chinese culture was exerted by another, equally important cult: the cult of the ancestors.

The supremacy of Tian Di is preserved and has not faded. All other gods, as well as the royal ancestors, occupy a position subordinate to him. Only the king’s (wang’s) ancestors can intercede for anyone before Di; conversely, only the king is endowed with the ability to commune with his ancestors.

The wang’s authority is reinforced through his ancestors, and faith in their power legitimized the rule of the Shang dynasty. The ancestors, in turn, depended on the offerings made to them—grain, as well as the blood and flesh of sacrificial animals. “It would be a mistake to suppose, with some scholars, that the cult of ancestors passed into the lower social strata from the ruling aristocracy, for whom it meant so much. On the contrary, this cult was deeply rooted and widely popular already in the Neolithic period” [Eliade, M. A History of Religious Ideas. Vol. 2. Moscow, 2002, p. 11]. Among the earliest farmers, it formed part of the religious system. From this too derives the supremacy of the king, whose forefather was held to descend in a direct line from Heaven, a belief that gave this ancient cult a political function.

In the same vein, the king himself must be mentioned. Long before Confucius he was regarded as the Son of Heaven, the supreme priest, and in a certain sense a mediator between Heaven and humankind. It was precisely upon the king that the duty rested of representing the people before Heaven, and this was legitimized by the fact that the ruler’s ancestor was directly related to Heaven and his spirit dwelt in the palace of the Heavenly Sovereign.

Heaven remains the unfailing patron of the Zhou dynasty. The king is the “Son of Heaven” and “He who rules by the mandate of Shangdi.” Only the king, therefore, can offer sacrifices to Heaven itself. He likewise bears responsibility for the proper functioning of the cosmic rhythms; in the event of failure—drought, ominous portents, floods, and other disasters—the king is required to perform rites of repentance.

The king offered two kinds of sacrifices: sacrifices to the ancestors and sacrifices to Heaven and the other gods. At times we find indications of the duration of the sacrifices; the ritual service could be conceived as extending over 300 or 360 days. Thus the year itself became a sacrifice, and the entire course of time became ritual. “The word ‘sacrifice’ denotes the ‘year,’ since the annual cycle is conceived as a completed liturgy. This confirms the religious significance of the calendar, which guarantees the normal succession of the seasons,” writes Eliade [Eliade, M. A History of Religious Ideas. Vol. 2. Moscow, 2002, p. 12].

In the first centuries of the Zhou, as a number of inscriptions show, a separate temple was erected for each of the deceased rulers, in which sacrifices were performed in his honor. Later a precise sequence was established: according to the rules set down in the Liji, the wang’s (sovereigns’s) clan maintained seven ancestral temples (one dedicated to the founder and all the most distant ancestors, and the remaining six to the wang’s nearest predecessors—three to his even-numbered ancestors, the zhao, and three to the odd-numbered, the mu). This entire arrangement, designated zhao-mu, was quite elaborate [Vasilyev, L.S. Cults, Religions, Traditions in China. 2nd ed. Moscow: Vostochnaya Literatura, RAN, 2001].

The cult of ancestors continued to preserve the structures established in the Shang era. Elaborate ceremonies were performed four times a year: offerings of meat, grain, and drink, with the spirit of the deceased invoked to receive the sacrifice. The spirit was personified in one of the family members, usually a grandson, who shared the sacrificial meal with his ancestor. “Analogous ceremonies are widespread in Asia; the ritual associated with the appearance of a representative of the deceased ancestor was very probably known in Shang times, and possibly even in prehistory,” Eliade observes.

Let us quote at length L.S. Vasilyev’s description of how the sacrifice to the ancestors was conducted: “The system of seven temples among the wangs (sovereigns), five among the representatives of the hereditary landed nobility, and three or one ancestral temples among the offspring of noble clans (depending on the degree of their nobility) testifies to the great importance attached to the veneration of deceased ancestors in the Zhou aristocratic milieu. To all these ancestors sacrifices were regularly offered, and solemn rites were performed in their honor, for which numerous kinsmen would gather. The Shi Jing vividly describes such celebrations, when relatives gather at the house of the head of the senior branch of the cult. The sacrificial rites are performed in a solemn atmosphere, accompanied by songs, dances, and pantomime. Then all assembled sit down to table; abundant dishes are served; wine flows like a river; after the feast, games and contests are held. During the sacrificial rite, the eldest member of the clan personally performs the principal rites and personally thanks the ancestors for their blessings, asking them not to forget the descendants in the future. The central role in the solemn rite of sacrifice was reserved for the deceased ancestor himself—or, more precisely, for a boy who stood in for him, usually the eldest grandson of the deceased. It was held that the spirit of the deceased took up residence in his grandson for the duration of the sacrifice. On the day of sacrifice, therefore, the eldest of the clan—usually the boy’s father—with a bow and a show of reverence presented to the substitute for the ancestor all the sacrificial dishes due to the ancestors. The boy tasted them and pronounced prosperity and long life upon all the descendants. The day after the solemn sacrifice to the ancestors, the boy who had played the role of the ancestor’s substitute was specially honored in one of the antechambers of the temple. Surrounded by joyful and respectful kinsmen and with the satisfaction of duty well discharged, he partook with pleasure of the abundant feast” [Vasilyev, L.S. Cults, Religions, Traditions in China. 2nd ed. Moscow: Vostochnaya Literatura, RAN, 2001].

9.6 The Category of Dao.

Dao is an ancient Chinese religious-philosophical category found long before Confucius and Laozi. Both philosophers speak of Dao as of something already known, openly declaring that their teaching about Dao is not new but, on the contrary, a return to the “ancient piety.” “If in the morning one has come to know Dao, in the evening one can die in peace,” says Confucius. “What others have taught, I too teach,” says the Daodejing.

The word Dao is traditionally rendered as “way” or “road.” Although the Chinese tradition repeatedly insists on the ultimate unknowability of Dao and the impossibility of speaking of it in words (“The Dao that can be spoken is not the true Dao,” says the Daodejing), let us nevertheless attempt, in order to simplify the understanding of this category, to set forth the principal senses in which the term occurs:

Dao as the beginning and end of all things—as the primordial essence from which everything arises. The process of arising from Dao is not a single event; it is not an act of creation, not a one-time making of the world, but a constant arising of all things at every moment. Thus Dao may be regarded as the first cause of all that exists, including Tian Di (the Heavenly Sovereign), who is himself an embodiment of Dao. “I do not know whose child it [Dao] is, but it seems to precede the Heavenly Sovereign,” says the Daodejing.

Dao as the law of the arising, existence, and passing away of things in nature. In other words, Dao as the immanent course of things, a path that is inevitable and ruled by no one.

Dao as applied to the human person: Dao as a personal path. Unlike the previous sense, Dao in its personal aspect is the ideal development, pattern, or calling of the human being, to which one ought to conform but in practice does not. In this sense, Dao undergirds the moral and ethical dimension of life. The central concern of all Chinese religious-philosophical thought consists in the recognition of Dao, in following one’s own Dao, in conforming to it.

9.7 Yin, Yang, and the World as an Imprint of Dao.

The genesis of the ancient Chinese dualistic conception of the forces yin and yang remains, for the present, insufficiently clear. The available evidence allows us to trace this conception only to materials from the middle of the first millennium BC, although there are grounds for supposing that the seeds of dualistic thought existed earlier. From its first appearance, this conception—elaborated in detail in the writings of the 4th–3rd-century BC philosopher Zou Yan (whose works survive only as fragments embedded in other texts)—proceeded from the premise that the opposing forces yin and yang must not stand in conflict but harmoniously merge and interact, and that the attainment of harmony and union promotes the flourishing of all that exists [Vasilyev, L.S. Cults, Religions, Traditions in China. 2nd ed. Moscow: Vostochnaya Literatura, RAN, 2001].

In accordance with this, Chinese symbolism and later mythology came in time to personify the forces yin and yang as paired figures, representing the feminine and masculine principles respectively.

The formation of the yin-yang dualistic conception found expression in the ritual symbolism associated with the iconographic depictions of Heaven and Earth, which in China at least from the Zhou period were regarded as the personifications of the masculine and feminine principles respectively.

At the risk of oversimplifying the essence of these ancient Chinese religious- philosophical categories, let us briefly characterize their meaning:

Yin is feminine, dark, earthly, mortal, soft.

Yang is masculine, light, heavenly, immortal, hard.

It is fundamentally mistaken to equate yang with “good” and yin with “evil.” Rather, the harmonious interpenetration of yin and yang is the basis of the world’s right existence. If one force grows excessively, harmony is disrupted. The world is regarded as the imprint or trace of Dao, with yin and yang acting as the inhalation and exhalation of the cosmos.

It is more meaningful to speak of the harmonious interpenetration of yin and yang as the basis of the world’s right existence. In their interaction, yin and yang embody the movement and development of the world and its renewal. But should one of the two grow excessively, harmonious existence is disrupted, with dangerous consequences. As without the sun there can be no life, so too a sun too strong scorches and kills.

The categories of yin and yang appeared as a natural extension of the organic Chinese worldview, in which the world is regarded as the imprint or trace of Dao. “As water rolls upon the shore and leaves a trace, so too is this Dao.” Understood in this way, yin and yang are two aspects of the process by which the world arises and exists—two legs needed for walking, the inhalation and exhalation needed for breathing.

9.8 The Will of Heaven, Ethics, and Divinatory Practices in Ancient China.

Ethical and practical activity in Ancient China is directly connected with the third sense of Dao distinguished above. The recognition of Dao and the following of Dao constitute the chief ethical and practical aspect of Chinese religiosity. They are sometimes formulated as the recognition of the will of Heaven and conformity to it. Heaven follows Dao, and the will of Heaven corresponds to Dao.

Human conduct either accords with Heaven or does not. A striking feature of the worldview shared by many Chinese religious thinkers is that nature responds to human deeds, and the human will affects nature, which can be destroyed or sustained depending on human action. Thus in Confucian China, when natural catastrophes and disasters struck, a special Confucian college would announce to the emperor that he was failing to follow the will of Heaven and was ceasing, by virtue of his actions, to be the Son of Heaven.

The established order, harmony, is a projection of heaven onto the earth, and it corresponds to Dao. All has been ordered completely, and any willful act is a destruction of order. One must therefore not transgress natural law; the human being is part of universal harmony, like an element of a landscape, yet retains the will and the capacity to destroy that landscape.

From this also follows the divinatory practice of Ancient China, which differs sharply from the divinatory practices of other regions. As noted above, thousands of divinatory tablets have come down to us from the earliest periods, and the most important book in all the Chinese religious heritage is the Yijing (The Book of Changes). The Yijing belongs to the canon of the oldest Chinese literature.

The Yijing is the earliest of the Chinese philosophical texts. Its oldest layer, traditionally dated to ca. 700 BC and intended for divination, consists of 64 hexagrams. In the 2nd century BC it was accepted by the Confucian tradition as one of the canonical works of the Confucian Pentateuch.

The fundamental difference between Chinese divination and, say, European divinatory practice, is that in China one divines not about what will be, but about what conduct will accord with Dao. The aim of Chinese divination is not knowledge of the future, not of things “fated and arranged,” but knowledge of what is taking place at the present moment and what conduct will be appropriate to it and therefore to the will of Heaven. In other words, it is divination concerning the will of Heaven.

The Liji , which belongs to the same Pentateuch, contains detailed descriptions of ceremonies and rituals for various occasions of life, and on the whole embodies the idea of conformity to the will of Heaven and to Dao.

9.9 General Remarks on the Character of Ancient Chinese Philosophy.

The political crisis of the 7th–3rd centuries BC—the disintegration of the unified Zhou state and the rise of independent kingdoms—gave birth to the Zhanguo (Warring States) era and found its reflection in various philosophical-political and ethical schools. The Zhanguo period in the history of Ancient China is often called the “golden age of Chinese philosophy.” It was at this time that there arose the concepts and categories destined to become standard for all subsequent Chinese philosophy, down to modern times.

To Daoism and Confucianism we shall devote separate lessons; here let us give a brief overview of the less influential philosophical schools of Ancient China.

A general feature of Chinese philosophy is its inseparability from religious ideas. Ancient Chinese philosophy does not set itself in opposition to religious tradition, and its problematic is, in essence, religious. The school of fa-jia is, in many respects, an exception. Within the various philosophical schools of the Zhanguo era, with some qualification, a common motif may be identified: the All-under-Heaven fell apart and plunged into war because people no longer follow Dao. The will of Heaven must be restored, and to that end its content must be determined. This thesis was formulated in different ways, was sometimes left unstated, and yet it runs, as it were, as the leitmotif of ancient Chinese philosophy.

To the ancient period of Chinese philosophy, six schools are most commonly assigned. Let us characterize them briefly:

Daojia (Daoism). Focused on inner practice and alchemy, on the search for Dao, on restoring the inner following of the will of Heaven. Principal representatives: Laozi, Liezi, Zhuangzi; later, Ge Hong, Wang Xuanlang, Li Quan, Zhang Boduan.

Rujia (Confucianism). Proclaims the ideal of the noble man (junzi), who follows Dao in social relations. The ruler and his officials must govern with justice, honesty, and love. Principal representatives: Confucius, Zengzi, Zisi, Mencius, Xunzi.

Mojia (Mohism). The substance of the teaching consisted in the idea of universal love (jian ai)—see below. Principal representatives: Mozi, Qin Huali, Meng Sheng, Fu Dun.

Fajia (in European usage, Legalism). They adhered to a theory of punishments; see further below. Principal representatives: Shen Buhai, Li Kui, Wu Qi, Shang Yang, Han Feizi.

Mingjia (School of Names). Its principal concern was the relation of “names and things.” Its members have been compared to the sophists and the nominalists. Principal representatives: Deng Xi, Hui Shi, Gongsun Long; Mao- gong.

Yinyang jia (School of Yin and Yang). “The followers [of the school] of the Dark and the Light principles have instructions and prescriptions for every occasion—for the four seasons of the year, for the eight directions of the compass corresponding to the [positions of the eight] trigrams, for the twelve signs of the zodiac, for the twenty-four periods of the year,” says Sima Qian in his reflections on the six schools. Little is known about this school; nevertheless, its members insisted on the precise following of Dao in nature and on the necessity of correct knowledge of nature. Principal representatives: Ziwei, Zou Yan, Zhang Cang.

In most of these schools, practical philosophy predominated, concerned with questions of everyday wisdom, morality, and governance. The theoretical foundation was most fully developed in Daoism. At the close of the classical period of ancient Chinese philosophy, which occupies an important place in its development (the end of the 3rd century BC), the burning of books and manuscripts took place.

9.10 The Mohists and the “Mozi”

The Mozi is a treatise belonging to the celebrated ancient Chinese philosophical school of the Mohists, composed in approximately the 3rd century BC. In all likelihood, part of the treatise belongs to the founder of the school, Mo Di (the exact dates of his life are unknown, approximately the 5th century BC). He was an official in the state of Song, led an ascetic life, and preached his teaching.

Like many Chinese philosophers of his time, Mo Di sought to answer the question of why the All-under-Heaven was suffering, torn apart by strife and war. Like many before him, he sought the answer in history, in the ideal rulers of the past, under whom all had been well. And, like many others, he concluded that the will of Heaven was not being fulfilled. But in what does the will of Heaven consist, and how is it to be fulfilled?

He took a critical view of the Confucian answer to these questions. As the Huainanzi says, “Mozi studied the affairs of officials and the six arts of the Confucians, but considered their teaching—and especially their doctrine of ritual—pompous and superfluous; he departed from the principles of the Zhou dynasty and began to venerate the principles of Xia.” The Mozi says of the Confucians: “A whole lifetime is not enough to master their teaching; a whole year is not enough to perform their ceremonies; and even the rich cannot afford to indulge in their music.” Mo Di offers his own answers. The foundation of his system is the principle of “universal love and mutual benefit,” set against the principle of “humaneness” (ren) of Confucius. Of the will of Heaven, Mozi says the following: “But what does Heaven desire and what does it not desire? Heaven necessarily desires that people love one another mutually and bring benefit to one another, and it displeases Heaven when people do evil to one another and deceive one another. How do we know that Heaven desires that people love one another mutually and bring benefit to one another, but does not desire that people do evil to one another and deceive one another? This is evident from the fact that Heaven adheres to universal love and brings benefit to all… Heaven does not distinguish between small and great, noble and base; all people are the servants of Heaven, and there is no one for whom Heaven does not rear buffaloes and goats, does not fatten pigs and wild boars, does not give wine, does not give grain in abundance… Is this not the expression of the universality that Heaven possesses?”

This passage from the Chinese philosopher’s teaching is partly reminiscent of the Gospel of Matthew: “that ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust” (Mt 5:45). Similar words belong to Seneca: “If you would imitate the gods, render benefactions even to the ungrateful, for upon the wicked too the sun rises, and the seas are open even to pirates.”

Mozi may indeed be one of the most “evangelical” representatives of ancient Chinese philosophy. Love is supreme. He opposes “universal love” to “particular love.” “Particular love” was essentially defined by the Mohists as akin to egoism—a false form of love, since “particular love” is “particular benefit.” This brings great evil in its train. The absence of genuine love in the All-under-Heaven violates the will of Heaven and leads to catastrophe: “If we consider where disorders begin, we find that disorders arise because people do not love one another. The subject and the son are disrespectful to the sovereign and the father. What is disorder? It is this: the son loves himself but does not love his father, and so, for the sake of his own benefit, he harms his father; the younger brother loves only himself and does not love his elder brother, and so harms his brother to secure his own benefit…” And though Mohist philosophy was not exhausted by the teaching of universal love, this is undoubtedly its most important component…

9.11 Fajia—Legalism. “Shang Jun Shu”

The Shang Jun Shu (“The Book of Lord Shang”) is a philosophical-political treatise of the fa-jia school, the Legalists. The treatise was composed in the 4th–3rd centuries BC by the followers of the famous theoretician of Legalism Gongsun Yang (390–338 BC), known in history as Shang Yang—Lord of the region of Shang. The Shang Jun Shu is primarily a political treatise, setting forth the principles for building a strong state.

In Ancient China, however, the political and the philosophical are always closely interwoven, and the book contains several important philosophical- anthropological presuppositions of the “Legalist state.” Such a state is to be built upon new laws and severe punishments, upon the abolition of unconstrained education and upon stern upbringing. Gongsun Yang declares: “The wise creates laws, and the foolish is constrained by them; the gifted reforms ritual, and the worthless is bound by ritual. With a man bound by ritual it is not worth speaking of affairs; with a man constrained by [old] laws it is not worth speaking of reform.”

Thus Legalism is one of the few Chinese philosophical schools to break with historical continuity: “Past generations [of rulers] instructed [the people] differently; which antiquity, then, were they imitating? The emperors and kings did not repeat one another; to which [ancient] rituals did they adhere?… To bring benefit to the state, it is not necessary to imitate antiquity.” Thus the experience of preceding rulers should be assimilated, while at the same time “to bring benefit to the state, it is not necessary to imitate antiquity”—a position directly contrary to the teaching of Confucius.

The Legalists did not hesitate to attack the basic Confucian virtues of the noble man: “Eloquence and sharp wit lead to disorder; ritual and music lead to debauchery; kindness and humaneness are the mother of misdeeds; the appointment and promotion of [virtuous people] to office is the source of vice.”

The treatise repeatedly insists on the necessity of severe punishment even for minor offenses. The people must be kept in fear: “Where [the people are treated] as virtuous, misdeeds are concealed; where, however, [the people are treated] as vicious, crimes are cruelly punished… Penalties [must be] severe and the ranks of nobility honorable; rewards slight and punishments terrifying.” This distinctive model of the organization of power rests firmly on one Legalist philosophical thesis: although people aspire to order, they are by nature evil and vicious, and in the absence of a strict system of punishments vice will flourish. Love only corrupts the people. “If one governs the people as if they were virtuous, disorder is inevitable and the country will perish; if one governs the people as if they were vicious, then exemplary order is always established and the country attains might.” The love so exclusively prized by the Mohists and the filial piety proclaimed by Confucius are the sources of turmoil and unhappiness in the world: “Such is my [method] of returning to virtue through the death penalty and of reconciling justice with violence.”

The fa-jia proclaimed the equality of all before the Law and the Son of Heaven, and as a consequence the idea that titles should be conferred not by birth but by genuine merit, so that any commoner had the right to rise to the rank of prime minister. Shang Yang recommended advancing first of all those who had proved their devotion to the sovereign through military service, and he made only one demand of officials: to obey the sovereign blindly.

On the relation between the authorities and the people Shang Yang says: “When the people are stronger than their rulers, the state is weak; when the rulers are stronger than their people, the army is mighty.” In a good state the power of the ruler rests upon force and is not bound by law. The slightest offense is to be punished by death. Another feature of Legalism was the policy directed at the eradication of dissent and the dulling of the people; it was precisely for this reason that the emperor Qin Shi Huangdi destroyed books and executed scholars.

9.12 Yang Zhu. “Yang Zhu”

Yang Zhu is an ancient Chinese philosopher. Although his name is reasonably well known in Chinese philosophy, not a single treatise of his has survived. The only more or less integral text setting forth the ideas of Yang Zhu is the seventh chapter of the Daoist treatise Liezi. This text provides the principal material for reconstructing his thought. The other testimonies are fragmentary and are found in the Mengzi, the Zhuangzi, the Han Feizi, the Lüshi Chunqiu, and the Huainanzi.

Some scholars hold that Yang Zhu was an independent, original philosopher; others count him among the founders of Daoism. There are, however, scarcely sufficient grounds for identifying the philosophy of Yang Zhu with Daoism. Although the “Yang Zhu” text is contained within a Daoist treatise, it is in many respects opposed to it, especially in its hedonistic ideas, which other chapters of the Liezi condemn.

Within the whole text, the dialogue between Yang Zhu and the follower of Mo Di, Qin Guli, is of the greatest interest and is probably the most reliable witness to Yang Zhu’s authentic teaching. “This teaching appears as an artless preaching of hedonism, almost chaste in its bellicosity,” Malyavin observes.

“Duanmu Shu inherited an immense fortune amounting to a full ten thousand pieces of gold. He therefore took no thought for worldly affairs but gave free rein to his desires and enjoyed life. He did whatever any person could wish to do—everything that delights the human soul… Whatever desire arose in him, whatever his ears longed to hear, whatever his eyes longed to see, whatever his lips longed to taste, he sent for at once, as though the thing required lay just beyond a wall, even if it had to be brought from far-off lands or could not be found at all within the borders of China. When he traveled, he went wherever he pleased, walking among sheer cliffs and swift rivers, treading along narrow, slippery paths as easily as others walk in their own gardens. Every day hundreds of guests thronged his house; in his kitchen the fire under the hearth never went out, and in the reception halls the sound of music was never silent. The food left over from his feasts he gave to his kinsmen; what remained after the kinsmen he gave to the neighbors; and what they too did not eat, he distributed throughout the kingdom.”

Yet it should be noted that hedonism is not simply a feast in time of plague, nor a mere extolling of pleasure. The Greek philosopher Epicurus, who was also often accused of hedonism, wrote: “When we say that the good is enjoyment, this does not refer to gluttons and idlers, the frivolous and the parasitical, who either ignore our teaching or fail to understand it.” In the same way, Yang Zhu’s hedonism is not so simple as it appears, and is closely bound up with detachment. The philosopher’s legendary silence to the question whether he would consent to sacrifice a single hair for the salvation of the world has the following explanation: “Bocheng Zigao did not help anyone even with a single hair. He renounced the throne and went to till the soil in the wilderness. The Great Yu did not seek benefit for himself alone; he labored so hard at quelling the flood that his body half withered away. People of antiquity would not have agreed to give up even a single hair to bring benefit to the All-under-Heaven . And had the whole All-under-Heaven been offered to them, they would not have accepted it. If no one will sacrifice a hair, if no one will seek to bring benefit to the All-under-Heaven , then peace will reign in the All-under-Heaven ”…

Bibliography :

Bo Mou (Editor), History of Chinese Philosophy, Routledge, 2009.

Creel Herrlee Glessner, Chinese Thought, from Confucius to Mao Zedong, 1971.

Graham A. C., Disputers of the Tao; Philosophical Argument in Ancient China, 1989.

Philip J. Ivanhoe and Bryan W. Van Norden (Editors), Readings in Classical Chinese Philosophy, 2nd edition, Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 2005.

Rošker Jana S., Searching for the Way: Theory of Knowledge in Pre-modern and Modern Chinese Philosophy Hong Kong Chinese University Press, 2008.

Sterckx Roel, Ways of Heaven. An Introduction to Chinese Thought. New York: Basic Books, 2019.

Bryan W. Van Norden, Introduction to Classical Chinese Philosophy, Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 2011.

Waley Arthur, Three Ways of Thought in Ancient China, 1983.

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  • 9.10-9.12

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