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From Taoism to Einstein Ki FROM TAOISM TO EINSTEIN KI (ãC)and RI (óù) in Chinese and Japanese Thought. A Survey Olof G. Lidin (/Special page/ To Arild, Bjørk, Elvira and Zelda) CONTENTS Acknowledgements and Thanks 1 Prologue 2-7 Contents I. Survey of the Neo-Confucian Orthodoxy INTRODUCTION 8-11 1. The Neo-Confucian Doctrine 11-13 2. Investigation of and Knowledge of ri 14-25 3. The Origin and Development of the ri Thought 25-33 4. The Original ki thought 33-45 5. How do ri and ki relate to each other? 45-50 5.1 Yi T’oe-gye and the Four versus the Seven 50-52 6. Confucius and Mencius 52-55 7. The Development of Neo- Confucian Thought in China 55-57 7. 1 The Five Great Masters 57-58 7. 2 Shao Yung 58-59 7. 3 Chang Tsai 59-63 7. 4 Chou Tun-i 63-67 7. 5 Ch’eng Hao and Ch’eng I 67-69 8. Chu Hsi 69-74 9. Wang Yang-ming 74-77 10. Heaven and the Way 77-82 11. Goodness or Benevolence (jen) 82-85 12. Human Nature and kokoro 85-90 13. Taoism and Buddhism 90-92 14. Learning and Quiet Sitting 92-96 15. Neo-Confucian Thought in Statecraft 96-99 16. Neo-Confucian Historical (ki) Realism 99-101 17. Later Chinese and Japanese ri-ki Thought 101-105 II. Survey of Confucian Intellectuals in Tokugawa Japan INTRODUCTION 105-111 1. Fujiwara Seika 111-114 2. Matsunaga Sekigo 114-115 3. Hayashi Razan 115-122 3.1 Fabian Fukan 122-124 4. Nakae Tôju 124-127 5. Kumazawa Banzan 127-132 6. Yamazaki Ansai 132-136 6.1 Satô Naokata 136-138 6.2 Asami Keisai, Miyake Shôsai and Wakabayashi Kyôkai 138-139 6.3 Tamaki Isai and Takeuchi Shikibu 139-140 7. The Historians 140-144 8. Kaibara Ekken 144-147 9. The Ancient School Thinkers 153-154 9.1 Yamaga sokô 153-157 9.2 Itô Jinsai 157-163 9.3 Itô Tôgai 163-164 9.4 Ogyû Sorai 164-170 9.5 Dazai Shundai 170-172 10. Arai Hakuseki 172-175 11. Muro Kyûsô 175-176 12. Practical Studies 176-177 13. Setchû-ha and Eighteenth-century Confucianism 177-179 14. The Kaitokudô Scholars 179-181 14:1 Tominaga Nakamoto 181-182 14:2 Goi Ranju 182-184 14:3 Nakai Chikuzan and Nakai Riken 184-186 14:4 Ogata Kôan and the Tekijuku School 186-187 15. Kokugaku (Nativism) and Confucian Thought 187-189 16. The Mito Thought 189-190 17. Rational Thought 190-192 17.1 Andô Shôeki 192-193 17:2 Yamagata Daini 193-194 17:3 Miura Baien 195-201 18. The Rangaku Scholars 201-204 19. Confucian Scholars in the late Tokugawa era 204-207 19:1 Matsudaira Sadanobu 207-208 19:2 Satô Issai 209-210 19:3 Bitô Jishû 210-210 19:4 Ôhashi Junzô 211-214 20. Yamagata Bantô 214-220 21. Political and Economic Thought in late Tokugawa 220-221 21:1 Kaiho Seiryô 221-222 21:2 Honda Toshiaki 222 21:3 Kusama Naokata 223-224 21:4 Satô Nobuhiro 224 21:5 Hirose Tansô 224-225 21.6 Hoashi Banri 225 22. “Open Country Compromisers”, Late Tokugawa Reformists 226-227 23. The Meiji Era and the Twentieh Century 227-230 24. Okada Takehiko 231 III CONCLUSIONS I, II, III, IV and V 231-246 Acknowledgements and thanks When one works one a subject for decades rather than years one has received assistance from many quarters except books and libraries. I have received inspiration from dozens of scholars and colleagues on at least three continents. I will therefore not try to mention many names but rather institutions and locations which have of extended support during my work. After I Ieft Stockholm University and B. Karlgren it was first University of Califonia, Berkeley, where D. Shively opened the doors for me; next it was University of Copenhagen, where S. Egerod invited me to begin a Japanese programme. After retirement from there it has been University of Tübingen and Humboldt Universität zu Berlin and K. Kracht that has offered offices and libraries. This progress has crystallized in the present work. In Japan I have further been received by University of Tokyo, Tokai University in Tokyo and Nichibunken in Kyoto among others. My special gratitude goes to the PS Company and T. Hirayama in Tokyo who have always offered office facilities during my stays in Japan. Special thanks goes also to my assistants, N. Futami in Tokyo and K. Yonezawa in Berlin and others, and very last heartfelt thanks to my wife who have followed my progress with unstinting patience. Prologue Ki came first and it is the thread that runs through the millennia of Chinese philosophy. Ri was added later in Sung times and, together, ki and ri became the mainstay and core of Chinese beliefs in Sung (960-1279), Ming (1279-1644) and Ch’ing (1644-1911) times. The ki thought can profitably be compared with European philosophy. In China it begins with an original “primal ki” (genki) which is the source of all things and affairs. The search is for the whole. In Greece and later Europe the thinking goes in the opposite direction: It searches for the exact truth in the independent units of cosmos, the atoms. The truth is found in the part. Thus, both eastern and western traditions embrace an early ism, “genki-ism” in the East and “atom-ism” in the West. The approach to these isms has differed. The overall philosophical categories are different. The ism in the East can be called “organism” and the ism in the West “materialism”. Since categories are the axioms of philosophy, this explains the underlying difference in East-West philosophy through millennia. They may also explain the different modernizing processes, West and East. It has been the development of a philosophy of organism in the East versus the progression toward materialism in the West, the stress being on the complete whole versus on the single part. The eastern philosophers emphasized the cosmic All, while the western thinkers looked deeper and deeper into the Part, ending up in the infinitesimal particles of today’s research. While the Chinese demonstrated scant tendency toward atomistic ideas, the Europeans, gradually, lost interest in the wider perspective of Heaven and Earth. The I Ching, Jpn. Ekikyô, “The Book of Changes”, often simply called the “Changes”, is the first Chinese classic from about 1000 B.C. This is where the ki philosophy was originally presented, and the work that philosophers have turned to in all ages. The ki thought of change in the I Ching runs parallel with the Taoist philosophy in the Tao Te Ching, Jpn. Dôtokukyô, “The Book of the Way and the Virtue”, the early Taoist work. The I Ching is unsystematic and fragmentary while the Tao Te Ching presents a rather sublime ki philosophy. It is therefore natural that Buddhism, too, played an important role in the establishment of the Neo-Confucian thinking in spite of its being a foreign importation. Ki is the original stuff and comprises all reality. It has its roots in nature religion and in ancestor and spirit worship. There is a ki tone resounding throughout the long Confucian continuity from its I Ching and Tao Te Ching beginnings. Nationalism required, proudly, consciously or unconsciously, that the beginning was in ancient China. The proponents of Neo-Confucianism had, however, not only a native but also, most notably, a Buddhist background and they had all of them, Chu Hsi (1130-1200), the foremost among them all, been in Buddhist and Taoist studies and practices before becoming the creators and synthetizers of the Neo-Confucian gospel. Buddhism remained its own tradition as one of the “three teachings” (san-chiao, Jpn. sankyô) alongside Confucianism and Taoism. Taoist vocabulary was used when Buddhist scriptures were translated into Chinese. It became in most respects a Chinese religion. The Chinese cosmology was finally formulated during the Han era (206 B.C.--A.D. 220). Its axis mundi was a continuing evolution, under the name of the ten thousand changes, and the ki, the “energy-matter”, was the source of the cosmic macrocosm and the natural microcosm, forming a complex of order and harmony. This ki was both material, living and spiritual, the animated mass of life, which in endless transformations gave form to things in the process of going and coming. It was a naturally self-generating hylozoism with no mention of a creator. If there is another concept, running through Chinese philosophy, it is the Way, the tao (Jpn. dô). It is not only the key term of Taoism but also of all Confucianism and later Legalist and other Chinese philosophy. It is only in present-day thought, imported from Europe, that the tao is mostly forgotten. There has, in other words, been a “Way” piloting all ki cosmic formations from the beginning, mentioned in all scriptures through the centuries. These formations took shape in the virtues, first of all rites and ritual (li óÁ, Jpn. rei), which came to be regarded as a kind of “natural law”, reflecting the tao of Heaven. The ri in Sung cosmology expressed the tao in each thing and therefore the two terms were often expressed together as tao-liÅ@(Jpn. dôri), “the Way-Principle”. Above them both was always Heaven (t’ien, Jpn. ten), the origin of tao and ri. One could therefore speak about a ten-dô-ri metaphysics, competing with the Buddhist Heavens in being conducive to wisdom and sagehood.
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