Chinese Thought

Chinese Thought
By Hu Shih
The history of Chinese thought can be conveniently divided into three main periods. The ancient period covers the first millennium B. C. The medieval period is the age of the great medieval religions of Buddhism and Taoism and runs through the first millennium A. D. The modern period is the age of Chinese intellectual renaissance which dates back to the large-scale book printing in the tenth century and the rise of Neo-Confucianist schools in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and which extends to our own times. Each period occupies approximately one thousand years.
The ancient period of Chinese thought was the classical age, from which have come down the pre-Confucian Classics – the “Old Testament” of Sinitic literature – of poetry, history, codes of conduct and rites of religious worship, as well as the works of the philosophers – from Lao Tze and Confucius (551-479 B. C.) and Mo Ti, down to Mencius (372-289 B. C.), Chuang Tze and Han Fei (d. 233 B. C.) It was this classical age which not only set the main pattern of Chinese though of all subsequent ages, but also furnished the inspiration and the intellectual tools with which Chinese thinkers of the medieval and modern periods have labored for the philosophical and cultural renaissance.
Briefly, the intellectual heritage of classical China is threefold: its humanism, its rationalism and its spirit of freedom.
It is humanistic in that it consistently and distinctively concerns itself with human life, human conduct, and human society. When Confucius, for example, was asked how to serve the gods, he said, “We have not yet learned to serve men, how can we serve the gods?” He was then asked about death. He said, “We have not yet learned about life, how do we know death?” This preoccupation with man and his life is a characteristic which differentiates ancient Chinese thought from that of India, Persia and even Israel. The Chinese thinkers of the classical age were essentially moral, education, social and political philosophers. It is a unique historical fact that ancient China, which had built up a great civilization and produced fully developed theories of human nature, moral conduct, law and political organization, knew neither Heaven in the sense of Paradise, nor Hell as a place of Last Day Judgment, nor did it ever indulge in speculating about life after death.
Classical Chinese thought, secondly, is rational and intellectualistic in its emphasis in knowledge, learning and thinking. “Learning without thinking,” said Confucius, “is confusing; but thinking without learning is perilous.” The various schools of Chinese thought ranged from the distinctively intellectualistic approach of Confucius (who confessed to having devoted whole days without food and whole nights without sleep to thinking and who finally decided that learning and studying were more profitable) to the more pronouncedly rationalistic and almost anti-intellectualistic attitude of Lao Tze who sang:
“I do not go out of my door,
And I know the world.
I do not peep out of my window.
And I know the ways of nature.”
Between these two extremes are found all the other great schools of Chinese thought, differing in the emphasis on the more laborious process of learning and studying or on the more “perilous” reliance on intuitive reason. Such differences are the natural differences between what William James called the soft-minded and the tough-minded temperaments. But Chinese thought, taken as a whole, is consistently rational in the sense that it makes no appeal to the supernatural or the occult as basis of thinking and reasoning. And it is preeminently intellectualistic in that all its orthodox schools set a high value on knowledge and investigation.
It is this combination of humanistic interest with rational and intellectualistic methodology that gives ancient Chinese though the spirit of freedom. Truth-seeking has made Chinese thought free. “A gentleman,” said Confucius, “worries not, nor fears. He searches himself and is not ashamed: why should he worry, and what should he fear?” Speaking of himself, Confucius said, “Eating coarse food, drinking water and bending an arm as pillow for my head, therein I find my happiness. Riches and honors acquired through unrighteousness are to me no more than the fleeting clouds.” Mencius, whose moral and intellectual influence in China is second only to Confucius, has expressed this spirit of freedom even more powerfully: “The great man is he who cannot be tempted by wealth and honor, who cannot be budged by poverty and lowliness; and who cannot be subjugated by authority and power: such a man is called the great man.”
This spirit of humanity, reasonableness and freedom is the greatest heritage that the classical age has handed down to the intellectual life of the later ages. It is this spirit which makes most of the ethical, social and political writings of that age read today as modern as any of our contemporary works.
Here is Confucius talking to the ruler of his own State:
“Is it true that one saying may build up a state?” asked the Prince.
Confucius replied, “Words cannot come so near as that. There is, however, this saying: ‘To be a ruler is difficult; to be a minister is not easy.’ If one really learns that it is difficult to be a ruler, might that come pretty near to being a saying that might build up a State?”
The Prince again asked, “Is it true that one saying may ruin a State?”
Confucius replied, “Again words cannot come so near as that. Yet some one has said, ‘I find no pleasure in being a ruler except that no one disobeys my word.’ Now, if the word that none dared to disobey happened to be a wise word, it would be fine. But suppose it were an evil word which no one would dare to disobey, might not that come pretty near being a saying which might ruin a State?”
In these replies, so human, so reasonable, so courteous and yet so firm and free in spirit, one can best understand the hold which Confucius has had on the Chinese people for these twenty-five centuries.
Here is Mencius talking to the King of Liang (Wei):
“To kill a man with a club or with a sword, - does that makes any difference?” asked Mencius.
“There is no difference,” said the King of Liang.
“Is there a difference between killing people with a sword and killing them through government?”
“There is no difference,” said the King.
“Now, there is fat meat in the Royal kitchens and there are fat horses in the Royal stables. But the faces of the people show color of hunger, and there are human bodies dying of starvation all over the country. That is tantamount to permitting animals devour human beings. Men dislike to see animals devouring one another. Now the ruler of men – the ‘fathers and mothers’ to the people – do no better than permitting animals to devour men: how can they consider themselves ‘the fathers and mothers’ to the people!”
Here is again Mencius talking to the King of the powerful State of Tsi:
“When the ruler regards his subjects as his own hands and feet, then the subjects will regard him as their own body and heart. When he treats them like a dog or a horse, then they will regard him as a stranger. When the ruler treats his subjects like dirt and grass, then they will regard him as a bandit and an enemy.”
In such discussions, one cannot help feeling the spirit of humanism, of reasonableness and of free political criticism, which has made Mencius the earliest and probably the greatest of philosopher of political democracy in human history.
This threefold heritage of the classical age has been the bedrock of Chinese culture of intellectual life throughout all the subsequent ages. It has finished the seeds from which future growth and development have sprung. It has served as the fertile soil wherein many kinds of thoughts and beliefs have been planted and have grown to flowering and fruition. It has given China the intellectual criteria with which to judge and evaluate all imported ideas and institutions. It has given us the antitoxin with which to neutralize the poisonous effects of introduced cultural elements. Whenever Chinese thought became too superstitious, or too stagnant, or too unhuman, it was always this indigenous intellectual heritage which came to its rescue.
A thousand years of mass conversion to Buddhism never succeeded in uprooting this heritage. For a time, it looked as if Chinese rationality and humanism were submerged in the deluge of medievalism brought about by the domination of the Indian and Indianized thought and belief. Hundreds and thousands of men and women were fleeing their families to become monks and nuns. A wave of religious fanaticism was sweeping over China. A pious monk would willingly burn a finger, a whole arm or even his whole body as a supreme form of offering to a Buddhist deity. Thousands of pious people, and sometimes even members of the Imperial Court, would flock to a mountainside to witness and wail the self-destruction of a great monk by slow burning.
It was such otherworldliness and inhuman fanaticism which shocked China back to her senses, to her reason and humanity. Behind the several historic persecutions of Buddhism by governmental action, there was always the protest of Chinese civilization against this “barbarization” of China. The imperial edict of the persecution of 845, for example, said: “The Government cannot abandon the human beings of the Middle Empire to the following of the life-denying [u using] religion of a foreign country.” It was Chinese humanism revolting against the Indianization of Chinese thought and civilization.
The great representative and most articulate leader of this Chinese revolt against Buddhism was Han Yu (d. 824), who pointed out that the idea of Chinese thought was that all moral and intellectual cultivation of the individual must have a social objective, and that the objective was the ordering of the family, society, the state and the world. All individual cultivation which aims at personal salvation by denying life and fleeing the world is anti-social, and therefore un-Chinese.
Han Yu’s famous battle cry for this revolt was: “man their men!” That is, Restore the monks and nuns to their humanity and human life! His severe criticism of Buddhism, and especially his attack on the Imperial Court’s patronage of the Buddhistic religion, brought about his exile in 819. But he was the spiritual founder of the new philosophical movement in the eleventh and twelfth centuries which resulted in the revival and establishment of Rational Philosophy (li hsueh).
This revival of a secular and indigenous philosophical movement opened up the third or modern period of Chinese thought. It was the age of Chinese philosophical renaissance. In the nine hundred years of modern Chinese philosophical development, there has been a new flowering of the humanism, rationalism and the spirit of freedom of the classical age.
At the earlier stages of Rational Philosophy, there was still much monastic moral austerity and much sterile scholastic speculation which had been taken over from the age of the medieval religion. But, on the whole, the spirit of intellectual freedom has brought about the rise of rival schools of thought, some of which succeeded in breaking away more completely from medieval influence. Speculation became more methodical and scientific; and moral teaching became more humane and reasonable.
In the twelfth century, the school of Chu Hsi (d. 1200) laid special emphasis on the intellectualistic approach to knowledge. The slogan of this school was: “Go to the things, and investigate into the reasons thereof.” “From your own body to the reason of being of heaven and earth, everything is an object of investigation.” “Every grass and every shrub must be studied.” “Investigate one thing at a time. Understand one thing today; another tomorrow. When you accumulate sufficient knowledge, you will some day understand the whole.”
This strictly intellectualistic spirit and methodology gradually brought about a new rationalism in Chinese thought. Without the tradition and technique of experimentation with, and of handling, real objects of nature, however, this scientific ideal did not produce a natural science. But its spirit came gradually to be felt in the historical and philological studies. It has in the past three hundred years produced a scientific methodology in the study of classical and historical literature. It has developed textual criticism, “higher” criticism and a philological approach to ancient texts. The scholars who sought to overthrow traditional commentaries now perfected an effective tool in the form of a new methodology by which they were in a position to sweep aside all subjective interpretation and traditional authority on the strength of philological evidence and inductive reasoning. The old rationalism has become scientific and the spirit of intellectual freedom has found a powerful weapon.
I shall conclude this brief summary of Chinese thought by telling two anecdotes. Mr. Wu Ching-heng, the oldest philosopher of present-day China, told me this story. As a young man in his teens he was presented to the Master of the famous Nan Tsing Academy at Kiangyin. When he entered the room he saw a scroll on the wall with eight characters written in large and bold writing of the Master himself. The inscription in translation reads: “Seek the truth and do not compromise.”
Some years ago, in looking over my father’s unpublished writings, I found volumes of notes kept by him when he was a student at the Lung Meng Academy (Shanghai) about seventy years ago. These notes were written on regulation note books printed by the Academy for the use of its students. On the top of every page was printed in red a motto which reads in part: “The students must first learn to approach the subject in a spirit of doubt…The philosopher Chang Tsai (1020-1077 A. D.) used to say, ‘If you can doubt at point where other people feel no impulse to doubt, then you are making progress. …’ “
Approach every subject in the spirit of doubt: seek the truth; do not compromise. That has been the spirit of Chinese thinkers who have kept the torch of intellectual freedom burning throughout the ages. That is the spirit which has made every Chinese thinker feel at home in this new world and new age.
- Asia magazine. Vol. 42. No. 10. October 1942. p.582-584.
                
                
                
                
Hu Shih (1891-1962), Chinese philosopher, educator, and diplomat, was born in Shanghai. He received a Ph.D in philosophy from Columbia University in 1917. Influenced by John Dewey's pragmatism, he came to exhibit the skepticism and experimentalist approach that marked his later intellectual activities.
Returning to China in 1917, he joined the Peking University faculty and took part in the "literary renaissance" and new culture movement then in progress. Over the next 20 years, as an educator and editor, he was noted for his vernacular style, moderate political views, and original scholarship. He was ambassador to the United States in 1938-1942 and chancellor of Peking University in 1946-1949. Thereafter he lived in semiretirement in the United States until 1958, when he became president of The Academia Sinica in Taiwan. He died in Taipei on Feb. 24, 1962.
- From Encyclopedia Americana, international edition of 1991: page 518, volume 14, by Harry J. Lamley, University of Hawaii.