Chapter One Wang Bi

WANG BI: A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 9 hapter ne C O Wang Bi A Biographical Sketch Wang Bi’s Life Martin Heidegger is said to have reacted to a request by students to provide some introduction to Aristotle’s life by starting his next lecture with the words: “Aristotle was born, worked, and died.” He then continued to hold forth on the philosopher’s philosophy. Heidegger’s attitude talks back to a fashion of reducing intellectual to social history and philosophical pursuits to high-register articulations of particular economic, political, or personal interests. This fashion corresponds to some commonly held assumptions about the nature of man, but it still has to prove the particular ways in which social interests might translate into particular philosophical or religious constructs; and it also has to account for the fact that often these constructs survive the demise of the social group whose interests they once seemed to advocate, and exert a profound influence on later generations with a completely different “social interest” and agenda. In some of my previously published studies on Wang Bi I was less disturbed by such reductionism. But in the end the link could neither be verified nor falsified, while the fact remained that Wang Bi remained a valid intellectual force for many 9 CRA1 9 11/3/99, 2:20 PM 10 THE CRAFT OF A CHINESE COMMENTATOR centuries to come, and this under substantially changed circum- stances. Heidegger’s implied argument that in a philosopher only his philosophy counts has a point. It counters an old and widespread tendency to evade the challenge of a philosopher’s thought by reducing it to “school” tenets, political affiliation, or legitimation of the socioeconomic interests of the class or segment to which he is thought to belong. On the other hand it is commonplace that many Chinese phi- losophers—and not only they—have been involved with their thought in political and factional debate in their time. Still, the survival and fame of their work in later times can hardly be attrib- uted to their political stance in this or that battle, and the question remains what their philosophical contribution might have been that makes it worthwhile for a modern reader to study their works. Wang Bi (226–249), then, was born, worked, and died very young.1 At the time of his death he had barely reached the age of twenty-three, and had written Commentary to the Laozi, Commen- tary to the Zhouyi, two tracts analyzing the structure of these two works, a critical supplement to the Collected Commentaries on the Lunyu edited by He Yan (?–249), and a number of other philosophical tracts. The commentaries and the structural analyses have survived the fierce battles for textual patronage to this day, and are unanimously described as being a watershed in the history of Chi- nese philosophy. His Commentary to the Zhouyi became the stand- ard commentary in Kong Yingda’s edition of the Correct Meaning of the Five Classics, and his Commentary to the Laozi dominated the scene with an interruption during the Tang dynasty. The historical and social environment in which Wang Bi lived certainly facilitated the development of his philosophy. Born just after the collapse of the Han dynasty and at the beginning of an extended period of “disunion,” he grew up in a postwar world with states that were only gradually trying to establish new institutions and orthodoxies, and where both thought and social forces were much in flux. It was a world suddenly without stern and authorita- tive teachers since the system of state and private academies so prominent in the second century, with official “doctors of the classics” and private teachers such as Ma Rong or Zheng Xuan, had collapsed. While some now complained that education was at its worst, it certainly was a moment when individual talent supported by a good environment had a rare chance to flourish, and the CRA1 10 11/3/99, 2:20 PM WANG BI: A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 11 number of young geniuses in Wang Bi’s generation became the envy of centuries to come. They would come out with lasting works at an age when their forebears would have barely had the time to memo- rize the first commentary to one of the classics. It was a time when original and even outrageous thought, speech, and behavior brought notoriety and fame, a time when young scholars such as Wang Bi not only produced brilliant contributions to Chinese philosophy, but also self-confidently thought they were doing so, and behaved with appropriate pomp. The members of Wang Bi’s generation were not ill at ease with their originality, but cherished, fostered, and stylized it. Wang Bi certainly had both the talent and the environment. Although born in the Capital Luoyang, he hailed from the Wang clan in Gaoping in the Shanyang District of today’s Shandong.2 The clan belonged to the magnate families of the Later Han who were to form the core of the “aristocracy” dominating much of the upper echelons of the succeeding centuries.3 Fan Ye calls the Gaoping Wangs “magnates,” haozu .4 The clan rose to fame with Wang Gong (d. 140) who became one of the three highest officials, sangong , and established the affiliation with the “Pure Ones,” qing , who were united in their battle against the eunuchs’ influence at court. His son, Wang Chang (d. 169) was in turn promoted by protégés of his father, and continued the latter’s affiliations. He was a member of the “Eight Geniuses” , a group that was in close connection with similar groups such as the Three Gentleman and the Eight Perspicacious Ones , which in- cluded Guo Tai (128–169), the man renowned to be the founder of qingtan, “pure talk,” a type of highly allusive and elliptical char- acterization of a man’s character and quality through which the members of these groups were portraying each other, or, in the opinions of some contemporaries, flattering each other.5 While five of the eight members of Wang Chang’s group were killed during the purges against the “Pure Ones” in 169, he was not touched, perhaps protected by the status of his family. It was Wang Chang who established the intellectual renown of the clan. His most prominent student was Liu Biao (d. 208), also from Gaoping, a member of the imperial clan who later became governor of Jingzhou. During the collapse of the Han dynasty, Liu Biao attracted many of the leading lights to Jingzhou and set up an academy there. The political clout and intellectual renown of the CRA1 11 11/3/99, 2:20 PM 12 THE CRAFT OF A CHINESE COMMENTATOR Wang clan was by now so well established that Wang Chang’s son Qian refused to marry the daughter of his superior He Qin, the commander-in-chief of the army and brother of the empress dowa- ger. He Qin owed his rise to his sister, a concubine of the emperor who had borne him a son; but originally the family had been butch- ers. A Wang from Gaoping would not go for such a mesalliance. Qian’s son Can (177–217) could bank on this ancestry. When in 190 Dong Zhuo transferred the capital to Chang’an, Wang Can, still a small boy, followed the train. Before he was fifteen, he had a memorable and fateful meeting with the famous poet Cai Rong (132–192) who was so excited to meet a scion of the Gaoping Wangs that in his rush to greet the young visitor he put his shoes on the wrong way. When [Emperor] Xiandi was abducted westward, [Wang] Can followed [the Court] to Chang’an. The Leader of Court Gentle- men on the Left Cai Rong met and admired him. At the time the talent and scholarship of [Cai] Rong were famous, he was held in high esteem by the Court, and the street [in front of his] house was constantly clogged by carriages [of visitors] and guests filled the seats [in his house]. When he heard that Wang Can was at the door, he rushed towards him with his sandals on the wrong feet. When Can came in, still young and weak, small and frail of stature, the guests were all quite stunned [by the flattering reception he had been given]. [Cai] Rong said: “This is Mr. Wang [Chang’s] grandson, his talents are excep- tional, and mine are no match to his. The books and docu- ments, letters and essays [held by] my family shall be eventually [after my death] given to him.”6 This library must have contained a very broad spectrum of Han classical learning, and must have reflected the interest of one of Cai’s forebears, Cai Xun (fl. during the first decades CE) in “Huang-Lao” thought as well as the musical and poetic interests of Cai Rong himself.7 When Cai was eventually killed as an accomplice of Dong Zhuo in 192, this priceless collection in about 10,000 scrolls was carried off in “several carriageloads” to Jingzhou by young Wang Can. It is the only library that we positively know survived unscathed the burning of Luoyang in 190 and the civil war marking the end of the Han. It must have been an important asset for Liu CRA1 12 11/3/99, 2:20 PM WANG BI: A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 13 Biao’s Jingzhou Academy in Xiangyang. When Wang Can arrived, his family stature nearly resulted in him being chosen as Liu Biao’s son-in-law, but in view of his unattractive physique and lax behavior, his cousin Wang Kai was honored in this way.

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