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The Social and Political Thought of Yen Fu Qiang Li A Thesis Submitted for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy University College London Abstract This thesis is intended to provide a new interpretation of the social and political thought of Yen Fu (1854-1921). Yen Fu was the first person to introduce Western social and political ideas systematically into China, and consequently played a major role in furthering intellectual change in modem China. The received interpretation of Yen Fu’s thought emphasizes the influence of social Darwinism on his preoccupation with state power and with China’s ability to survive an international struggle for existence. This established interpretation considers that Yen Fu deformed Western liberalism as a means to achieve state power. This thesis argues that Yen Fu did not adopt social Darwinism to justify ruthless struggles within society or between different societies. Rather he drew from Darwinist thought the idea of a universal law of social evolution and concluded that China must change its traditional culture and system by following the model of the modem West. This thesis presents Yen Fu as the pioneer of modem Chinese liberalism. It argues that Yen Fu’s ideas on liberty and democracy were influenced by both British liberalism and the Confucian tradition. At the core of his liberalism were proposals to define a sphere in which the individual can act freely without interference from the state or society, to establish the mle of law in order to prevent the tyrannical power of the state, and to limit state power both in the sphere of moral education and in the sphere of economic activities. He also appreciated democracy as a means of fulfilling the Confucian ideal of social harmony. However, his gradualist approach towards China’s democratic transition led to his criticism of democracy in his later years. The arguments of this thesis are based on the extensive use of previously unexplored wiitings of Yen Fu. TABLE OF CONTENTS Title Page p. 1 Abstract p. 2 Table of Contents p. 3 Introduction p. 4 Chapter I: The Man and His Work p. 18 Part One: Tradition and Change p. 41 Chapter II: In Search of Laws of Social Evolution p. 47 Chapter III: Social Darwinism, Nationalism and Universalism p. 96 Chapter IV: The Principle of Utihty and the Principle of Righteousness p. 139 Part Two: Towards a Liberal and Democratic Society p. 180 Chapter V: Liberty, Virtue and Law p. 185 Chapter VI: Dilemma of Democracy p. 233 Chapter VII: Pragmatism in Democratic Transition p. 280 Conclusion p. 304 Bibliography p. 314 INTRODUCTION In the late nineteenth century, the mainstream of Chinese thought experienced profound change unparalleled in the history of China since the time of Confucius. The only other period of intellectual change remotely comparable to the intellectual change of modem China was the introduction of Buddhism from India which catalyzed the emergence of Neo-Confucianism.* Yet the scale of intellectual change inspired by the introduction of Buddhism was less comprehensive than that of modem intellectual change. While the introduction of Buddhism greatly reshaped Chinese philosophy and religion, the change in modem China represented a comprehensive reexamination of every aspect of traditional ways of life - cultural, philosophical, social, and political alike. As Chang Hao stated, modem Chinese intellectuals did something they had not done since the axial age of the late Chou, namely, to reexamine the institutional foundation of the Chinese political order.'^ Behind the profound intellectual change in modem China stood one dominant *0n the introduction of Buddhism into China, see E. Zurcher, The Buddhist Conquest o f China: the Spread and Adaptation o f Buddhism in Early Medieval China, Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1972; Kenneth Ch'en, Buddhism in China: A Historical Survey, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1964; on Buddhism as a stimulus to the emergence of Neo-Confucianism, see Carsun Chang, The Development o f Neo- Confucian Thought, New York: Bookman Associates, 1957, especially pp. 113-35. ^Chang Hao, Chinese Intellectuals in Crisis: Search for Order and Meaning (1890- 1911), Berkeley: University of Califomia Press, 1987, p. 6. The notion 'Axial Age' was first used by the German Philosopher, Karl Jaspers, to refer to the first millennium B. C. when a revolution took place in the realm of ideas within several major civilizations. The most significant aspect of these revolutions was the emergence, conceptualization, and institutionalization of a basic tension between the transcendental and mundane orders. This notion has recently gained great popularity in the study of Ancient Chinese culture. See Benjamin Schwartz, Transcendence in Ancient China', Daedalus, Spring 1975, pp. 57-63; Benjamin Schwartz, The World o f Thought in Ancient China, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1985; S.N. Eisenstadt ed.. The Origins and Diversity o f Axial Civilization, New York: State University of New York, 1986; Chang Hao, Some Reflections on the Problems of the Axial-Age Breakthrough in Relation to Classical Confucianism', in Ideas Across Cultures: Essays on Chinese Thought in Honour o f Benjamin 1. Schwartz, ed. Paul A. Cohen & Merle Goldman, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1990, pp. 17-31. fact: 'the intrusion of Western civilization'/ Both the cultural challenge and the military threat posed by the Western intrusion undermined the stability and coherence of traditional culture', and thus brought about an intellectual crisis, or, as Lin Yu-sheng called it, the crisis of Chinese consciousness' in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century China/ As early as the 1840s, in the wake of the Opium War (1840-2), Chinese intellectuals became aware of a certain inadequacy of traditional Confucian orthodoxy in responding effectively to the challenges imposed by the Western intrusion, and this awareness was intensified following the second Opium War (1857-60). However, it was not until China's disastrous defeat in the Sino-Japanese war in 1894 that Chinese intellectuals began to doubt the fundamentals of Confucianism and started to seek what Kuhn called a new paradigm' from Western thought.^ The generation of intellectuals that reached its intellectual maturity in the last decade of the nineteenth century and the first decade of twentieth century', as Benjamin Schwartz has noted, were the 'real transformers of values and bearers of new ideas from the West.'^ ^Lin Yu-sheng, The Crisis o f Chinese Consciousness: Radical Anti-traditionalism in the May Fourth Era^ Madison: the University of Wisconsin Press, 1979, p. 10. '’ibid. The notion that the Western challenge to China since the 1840s represented not only a military threat' but also a cultural challenge' is discussed in Tu Wei-ming, Iconoclasm, Holistic Vision, and Patient Watchfulness: a Personal Reflection on the Modem Chinese Intellectual Quest', Daedalus^ Spring, 1987, pp. 77-8. ^Thomas S. Kuhn has argued that scientific inquiry does not proceed by the random accumulation of data but rather is organized in accordance with a paradigmatic theory that the scientific community takes for granted at any one time in formulating problems and selecting the means to resolve them. 'Scientific revolution' is a process in which the crisis' in scientific thought created by repeated challenges to the accepted paradigm is resolved by the emergence and acceptance of a new paradigm. (Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure o f Scientific Revolutions y second edition, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1970, Chapter vii & viii.) For an example of applying Kuhn's conception in study of modem Chinese intellectual change, see Arif Dirlik, Revolution and History: the Origins o f Marxist Historiography in China, 1919-1937y Berkeley: University of Califomia Press, 1978, pp. 5-13. ^Benjamin Schwartz, Introduction', in Reflections on the May Fourth Movement: A Symposium, ed. Schwartz, Cambridge, Mass.: East Asian Research Centre, Harvard University, 1972, pp. 2,4. In this generation, Yen Fu (1854-1921) was a very important figure. Although he was not as politically influential as some of his contemporaries such as K'ang Yu- wei and Liang Ch'i-ch’ao, his influence on the intellectual development of modem China was no less significant than theirs. He was the first person who systematically introduced Western social and political ideas into China and thus he represented the beginning of continuous efforts by Chinese intellectuals to adopt foreign social and political theories as alternative paradigms to Confucianism. The particular questions he raised, and the specific methods he adopted to analyze those questions and answer them have had a profound and enduring influence on the direction and of the responses of modem Chinese intellectuals to China's crises. Numerous studies have been published on Yen Fu’s ideas and their influence on modem Chinese thought.^ Among these works, Benjamin Schwartz's In Search o f Wealth and Power: Yen Fu and the West has been by far the most influential work both in the study of Yen Fu and in studies of modem Chinese intellectual history as a whole. It has been for a long time regarded as a 'classic work' in studies of modem Chinese intellectual history.® In his work, Schwartz makes several important arguments conceming modem Chinese intellectual changes based on his analysis of Yen Fu. First he argues that modem Chinese intellectual discourse represents a radical discontinuity with traditional Chinese thought. Largely following Max Weber's analysis of Chinese religions, Schwartz believes that traditional Chinese culture lacks dynamism and the capacity to transform its society.’ Transformative thinking in modem Chinese ^Some Chinese studies include: Chou Chen-fu, Yen Fu ssu-hsiang shu-p'ing (A critical interpretation of Yen Fu's thought), Shanghai, Chung-hua, 1940; Wang Shih, Yen Fu chuan (Biography of Yen Fu), Shanghai, Jen-min, 1962; Commercial Press, ed. Lun Yen Fu and Yen yi ming-chu (On Yen Fu and his translations), Peking: Commercial Press, 1982; Westem studies include: Benjamin 1.