Zhu Xi's Reading of the Analects: Canon, Commentary, and the Classical Tradition (review)

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Zhu Xi's Reading of the Analects: Canon, Commentary, and the Classical Tradition (review) Suck Choi China Review International, Volume 11, Number 1, Spring 2004, pp.

1 Zhu Xi's Reading of the Analects: Canon, Commentary, and the Classical Tradition (review) Suck Choi China Review International, Volume 11, Number 1, Spring 2004, pp (Review) Published by University of Hawai'i Press DOI: For additional information about this article Access provided by Kathmandu Model College (5 Feb :17 GMT)

Reviews 87 tion gives this text a special place in the literature and suggests that extreme care should be taken in drawing broad generalizations about the forces driving internal migration and the

Thus, this text is counterposed to the vast majority of those dealing with internal migration as a process comprised of relatively homogeneous social agents operating in a rational-choice environment.

2 Reviews 87 tion gives this text a special place in the literature and suggests that extreme care should be taken in drawing broad generalizations about the forces driving internal migration and the impact of such migration on social change. Thus, this text is counterposed to the vast majority of those dealing with internal migration as a process comprised of relatively homogeneous social agents operating in a rational-choice environment. By demonstrating that identity and context are both endogenous in social systems and that gender is always an important and complex factor (interacting with other factors that are similarly fluid in geographic space and in time) in the life choices of men and women, these authors have made an important contribution to the literatures on transition, China, migration, and gender. It behooves social scientists in all fields, from anthropology to economics, to pay heed to their message. Satyananda J. Gabriel Satyananda Gabriel is an associate professor of economics at Mount Holyoke College specializing in economic development and transition in China. Daniel K. Gardner. Zhu Xi s Reading of the Analects: Canon, Commentary, and the Classical Tradition. New York: Columbia University Press, pp. Paperback $19.50, isbn This book is Daniel K. Gardner s third excellent contribution to the contemporary scholarship of East Asian intellectual history. He aims at a thorough understanding of Zhu Xi s reconstruction of the Confucian tradition and an effective demonstration of how Zhu s readings of the canons were different from those of He Yan, whose commentaries on the Analects were considered to be the standard for reading the text. To achieve these goals Gardner selected some passages of the Analects and arranged them according to five topics: learning, true goodness, rituals, ruling, and the gentleman and the Way, all of which were definitely central issues throughout the whole Confucian tradition and which provide the locus for an effective examination of the differences among interpretations made by different commentators. He Yan s and Zhu Xi s commentaries on each selected passage of the Analects are compared with Gardner s own comments and analyses so that the differences between them can be properly explored. Gardner s writing aims at another goal, which he implicitly but importantly emphasizes, namely to reevaluate the historical and philosophical significance of

3 88 China Review International: Vol. 11, No. 1, Spring 2004 the interlinear commentary. Since Confucius mentioned himself as one who simply transmits (genuine tradition), not creates (!) (Analects 7:1), this has for a long time been a motto in the Confucian intellectual tradition. Many scholars have presented their understandings of the classics through their commentaries rather than through independent works. Gardner evaluates the interlinear commentary as a significant genre for understanding Chinese intellectual history: As a sort of reflection on the words and ideas of a text, interlinear commentary conveys the commentator s understanding of the meaning of the text while it shapes and conditions future readings and understanding of that text by others, both contemporaries and later generations. (p. 3) Although it is true that their commentaries, as Gardner notes, are subject to a historical logic (p. 6), this also implies that without reading these commentaries one cannot fully understand the history of the interactions among Confucian scholars and their central issues. Gardner correctly comments on the historical significance of the commentaries: Reading the various commentaries on a canonical text allows us not only to observe that the Confucian interpretive community was, in fact, an ever changing one but also to chart in detail how ideas, beliefs, and values important to that community underwent historical changes at the hands of different interpreters over the centuries. Thus, as a genre that illuminates the Confucian past and that documents especially well the vibrancy and changing nature of that past, commentary is indispensable to the studies of Chinese intellectual history. (p. 6) However, just as Confucius was considered not simply a transmitter of his ancestors ideas, these commentaries should be approached not simply as a review but as the original ideas of Confucian scholars. The latter aspect of the commentaries is one of the reasons why Gardner selected Zhu Xi s commentaries to the Analects, because Zhu s work of commentary on the classics shows not only its historical value but also his original ideas on diverse contemporary topics. As is well known, Zhu Xi was a synthesizer of traditional Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism. Only after he established his own philosophical system did he start his commentary on the traditional classics, and this work continued until the end of his life. Zhu Xi aimed at the reestablishment of the Confucian tradition, and his works, which transmitted the Confucian orthodoxy through proper commentaries on the classics, were urgently in demand. Gardner indicates the general intellectual climate of Zhu Xi s time, compared with that of He Yan s: Whereas pluralism and relative intellectual openness characterized the atmosphere of the second and third centuries, a tendency toward defining a correct body of thought, an intellectual orthodoxy that would save the Chinese tradition and protect it from foreign influences, gained momentum in the Northern and Southern Song. (p. 18)

4 Reviews 89 The first thing about this book that attracted me was that it gives us very clear and intelligible translations of the selected passages from the Analects as well as He Yan s and Zhu Xi s commentaries on them. Although Gardner s excellent works of translation were already evidenced by his two earlier books, Chu Hsi and Ta-hsueh: Neo-Confucian Reflections on the Confucian Canon (1986), and Learning to Be a Sage (1990), in this book he even shows some subtle differences between He Yan s and Zhu Xi s readings of some passages in the Analects, which were a result of their different interpretations. Many insightful points in Gardner s analysis exhibit his deep understanding of both the role of commentary and of Zhu Xi s philosophy. Let me give a few examples. In chapter 1, just as Zhu Xi attempted to discover, through his own systematic philosophy, the coherent messages that went through whole passages of the Analects, Gardner s insight shows fully the difference between He s and Zhu s commentaries and Zhu s intertextual and intratextual reading in the commentaries that have been selected, and Gardner emphasizes the significance of Zhu s commentaries as a unique genre. In chapter 2, he examines Zhu Xi s commentaries on passages of the Analects such as 7:30 and 17:2 concerning the notion of true goodness (which is Gardner s translation of ren ) and human nature in order to indicate the philosophical significance of Zhu s works. They offered the metaphysical foundations on which true goodness could be understood, as well as the orthodoxy of Mencius thesis of human nature. In this sense Gardner finds two characteristics in Zhu s commentarial approach: (1) it introduces his ontological beliefs, which, for him, make Confucius thought fully intelligible, and (2) the commentary understands the particular analect in relation to the background of the larger Confucian tradition (p. 62). The complex effect of the two functions is evaluated as follows: [S]uch a reconciliation of canonical passages gives deeper resonance and a more coherent meaning to this analect. But at the same time, read in this way, the analect strengthens the legitimacy and meaning of the Mencian position. In turn, the tradition reads more persuasively as a whole, and the Mencian view of our original nature now seems to arise quite naturally, out of the teachings of Confucius himself. (pp ) I would like to add one more point supporting this proper evaluation by Gardner. Zhu Xi s commentaries show obviously how Zhu dealt with the traditional Confucian classics for his own metaphysics, which resulted from his synthesis of the preceding Neo-Confucian worldviews. Zhu Xi read and examined thoroughly the Confucian canons in order to make his own philosophical system, but his attempts also were to find canonical evidence and to confirm orthodox authority for his newly systematized way of thinking. The commentaries of Zhu Xi that Gardner has selected do not stop here in presenting their own roles. Through Zhu Xi s style of commentary we can realize

5 90 China Review International: Vol. 11, No. 1, Spring 2004 one of the reasons for considering his philosophy to be more systematic than prior Confucian thought. Gardner contrasts He Yan s and Zhu Xi s commentary on the passages regarding the relation between filial piety and fraternal respect on the one hand and true goodness on the other (Analects 1:2), and then notes that the two different readings are based on their different sets of assumptions: The philological interest displayed in Zhu s commentarial remarks... relates to at least two of his concerns: to make an ancient text in which the meaning of its words and phrases is not always clear, accessible, and meaningful to his contemporaries and, through lexical and grammatical analysis, to demonstrate to his readers the rightness of his particular reading of the text, especially when that reading has been, or might be, contested. (p. 74) As Gardner goes on to comment correctly (p. 74), this work by Zhu Xi may be regarded as a sort of philosophical argumentation that is consistent throughout his writings. In chapter 3, Gardner finds such a philosophical role for Zhu Xi s commentaries in the passages in which the relations of rituals and true goodness are discussed. By contrasting He s and Zhu s understandings of ke ji fu li!, Gardner evaluates Zhu s commentaries as his attempts to clarify the ambiguity in the relationship between true goodness and rituals, which are still discussed by contemporary commentators (pp ). As is well known, Confucian tradition emphasizes the moral virtues of rulers as well as those of each individual. In chapter 4, Zhu Xi s commentaries demonstrate that Zhu did not deny the role of law and punishments, but focused on what is the true meaning of good government or ruling people. Gardner interprets Zhu s commentaries on 2:3 of the Analects to mean that government by virtue and ritual and government by law and punishment are entirely mutual (p. 111). In addition, Gardner examines some of Zhu s most basic philosophical assumptions in his commentary on 2:1 of the Analects (p. 121), and Zhu s attempt to offer an ontological basis for the question of how exemplary persons and exemplary ritual activities effectively promote social morality in his commentaries on 15:5 and 12:19 of the Analects (pp ). In chapter 5, Gardner finds another difference between He Yan and Zhu Xi in their commentaries on 7:22, 1:8, 12:4, and 4:4 of the Analects. In the passages of Confucius, Zhu Xi confirmed the role of self-examination toward self-realization and provided his views on the human mind. This commentary was made possible only after Zhu completed his philosophical system concerning diverse issues such as li, xing, xin, and qing. Zhu interpreted, as Gardner correctly understands, that Confucius saw the superior man not as a person with highly professionalized knowledge or technical expertise but as a person fully moral, fully compassionate and caring, and fully capable of extending himself to others (p. 142). This state of self-perfection must and can be made through the continuously

6 Reviews 91 painstaking process of self-examination. This view is closely related, through their commentaries on 8:9 of the Analects, to the question of understanding the Way. From the difference between He s and Zhu s interpretations of min, Zhu Xi developed his own view on teaching and understanding the Way. Zhu assumed, as Gardner finds, that Confucius did not mean to say that people are not capable of understanding the Way. Zhu thought that Confucius was trying to emphasize that understanding the Way rests with people who do so depending on how much they will it how dedicated they are and how hard they make the effort (p. 156). Overall, the contrast between the commentaries of He and Zhu that Gardner has selected works successfully for demonstrating that Zhu s work should be considered to be beyond simple interpretations of given words and phrases. Zhu Xi dealt with each passage of the classics to develop a larger vision of the Confucian tradition, which he thought was the path toward truth. In addition, it should be noted that, just as Zhu Xi presented his ideas consistently through all of his commentaries on the Analects, Gardner demonstrates his deep understanding of Zhu Xi s philosophical system through all of the commentaries that he has selected. One point I would like to add is that Gardner himself limited his historical interest to tracing the changes in the readings and understandings of canonical texts, to trying to explain these changes, and to finding the larger influence that such changes might have had (p. 168); thus, he does not suggest his own philosophical perspectives on the text. In this respect Gardner s work has both the merits and demerits of a historian s perspective. However, this does not do any damage to the fact that the two aims that he suggests in the introduction are fully realized throughout this book. I do not hesitate to say that Gardner s work in this volume is one of the most significant commentaries on the Confucian classics in our time and a contemporary exemplar of the Confucian heritage. I believe that just as Zhu Xi s great works once shed light on the Confucian canons, so this book provides a strong motivation to reread the philosophies of both Confucius and Zhu Xi. Suck Choi Suck Choi is a visiting professor of philosophy at Grand Valley State University specializing East Asian philosophy, ethics, and aesthetics.

On Interpretation and Translation

Appendix Six On Interpretation and Translation The purpose of this appendix is to briefly discuss the hermeneutical assumptions that inform the approach to the Analects adopted in this translation the