Tracing the Origins of Humanist Philosophy in Early China

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Chapter 6 Tracing the Origins of Humanist Philosophy in Early China

Humanist thought flourished within the larger framework of Pre-Qin culture and the philosophers Laozi, Confucius, Mozi, Mencius, Zhuangzi, Xunzi, and Hanfeizi stand out as its most prominent representatives. All of these philosophers were groundbreaking thinkers who shaped human ideals. Much like Nietzsche’s description of the Pre-Socratic philosophers in his Philosophy in the Tragic Age of Greece, these philosophers now appear to us as a sculpture of an impressive group of savants chiseled into stone. Scholarly thought can often lend itself to the formation of one-sided opin- ions on cultural and philosophical matters. Because of this tendency, the no- tion of “humanism” is sometimes reserved only for the Confucian project and not applied to any of the other schools of thought or thinkers in ancient China. A reason for this prejudice may be that some scholars during Wei-Jin times (220–589 CE) unconsciously adopted the distinction between “naturalism” and “culturalism” (mingjiao 名教). Such a distinction may have led to the mis- conception that humanist teachings were exclusively a Confucian affair and that Daoism was only concerned with the natural domain. It is clear, however, that during Pre-Qin times nature and cultivation, or the Dao of heaven and the Dao of human affairs, were always understood as being mutually inclusive and were never been viewed as strictly opposed to one another. This understanding is quite dissimilar to the way they came to be viewed during the Eastern Han (206 BCE–220 CE) and Wei-Jin periods. For instance, Laozi often explained social issues in relation to the course of nature. While he certainly was the first to develop a metaphysical conception of the Dao, his ultimate aim was to apply it to the human world. The ideal of nature cherished by the Daoists was unquestionably not just of a material nature (set in opposition to humans) but a humanist nature as well. Accordingly, Daoists do not dismiss cultivation; Laozi and Zhuangzi advocated a “wordless teaching” (Laozi, Chapter 2) as a subtle mode of instruction that has the power to affect human transformation

* This chapter is based on the Fagu Lecture in Humanities at National Cheng Kung University in Taiwan May 2006. The text was revised and published in Daoist Culture Studies (Daojia Wenhua Yanjiu 道家文化研究), Vol. 22 (Beijing: Sanlian, October 2007).

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2018 | doi 10.1163/9789004361980_008 Tracing the Origins of Humanist Philosophy in Early China 139 at a deeper level. The intellectual horizon of Daoism in ancient China includ- ed a rich humanist content. Daoism, Confucianism, Mohism, Legalism, and the School of Names each contributed to each other’s learning during the time from the School of Laozi in the Spring and Autumn era to the School of Zhuangzi in the middle and later periods of the Warring States era down to the Huang-Lao-Daoists. In the process, they were able to integrate their multiple teachings with each other. This chapter will take a more comparative turn and focuses on three main and key issues. First, it is argued that Western thought is essentially based on the concept of a God as the source of all values. Although traditional Western philosophy displayed great rational powers, its systems of thought were always based on the concept of a creator as its theoretical foundation. From Plato to Spinoza and Kant, no one was able to avoid the “illness of idolatry” until Nietzsche, who dared to pronounce the “death of God” in the nineteenth cen- tury. According to Nietzsche, all Western philosophy has “theological blood in its veins.”1 In contrast, the Chinese cultural tradition and its philosophical spirit are characterized by a multifarious humanism.2 Beginning with Laozi and Zhuangzi, Chinese philosophy has excluded the idea of a heavenly deity or a highest God from its metaphysical theories of the Dao, and the debates among the various philosophical schools have been characterized by a primary concern with the human. Second, the emergence of humanist thought in ancient China is a unique phenomenon in the cultural history of the world. In the Western world, anti-supernatural humanism only arose in modernity, whereas the Chinese

1 See Friedrich Nietzsche, The Antichrist, section 8. 2 When speaking of humanist thought, the expressions “humanist spirit” and “humanism” are often used interchangeably. The two constituents of the expression “humanist spirit” first oc- curred in Warring States texts. The term “spirit” (jingshen 精神) was created by Zhuangzi and appears several times in the Zhuangzi. The term “humanist” (renwen 人文), which literally means “human culture,” appears in the Duan Zhuan commentaries in the Book of Changes that were influenced by Laozi’s and Zhuangzi’s views on the natural. The term “humanism” is of Western origin. In contemporary European usage the term indicates a worldview based on human agency in opposition to an age-old obscurantism based on a belief in the divine. Humanism thus demands the liberation of the individual and affirms a this-worldly life and the pursuit of human happiness. Accordingly, it argues against religious doctrines of the origin of the world, puritanism, and the conception of humans as born sinners. As such, humanism also advocates equality among humans, the freedom of the will, and the attribution of social rank in accordance with merit. The humanist thought and spirit of ancient China and contemporary Western humanism share similar viewpoints, but they have vastly dissimilar cultural traditions.