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Hearts, desires and behavioural patterns: Debating human nature in ancient China

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 June 2011

Robert H. Gassmann
Robert H. Gassmann*
Affiliation:
University of Zurich
*
rhg@oas.uzh.ch
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Abstract

Thinkers in the Zhànguó period of Chinese history debated intensely whether men were by nature “good” or “bad”. This debate has for many years been an important focus of sinological interest, but usually these properties were not attributed to men, but rather to so-called “human nature” (xìng 性) – thus, in effect, mirroring well-known (and problematic) “European” positions and discussions. The aim of this paper is, on the one hand, to redirect attention to the original Zhànguó positions and to explore the reasons for their variance by offering novel and close historical readings of relevant passages, and on the other, to propose a viable historical reconstruction of the common anthropological assumptions underlying these positions by blending it with the traces of a dominant cognitive image present in the texts. This calls for a systematic rethinking of the role of hearts (in the plural), desires, and behavioural patterns in their interplay and as elements of a concept of the psychological build of human beings current in early China.

Keywords

Human natureXìng 性Heart(s)Cardiac facultiesXīn 心DesiresYù 欲GoodShàn 善Cognitive imageHermeneutical approachPhilologyAnthropology
Type
Articles
Information
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies , Volume 74 , Issue 2 , June 2011 , pp. 237 - 273
Copyright
Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies 2011

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References

1 The conventions for translating titles and rendering names adopted here deliberately depart from the venerable but opaque traditions of sinology. The element “Xuān” in “Xuān-King”, a so-called canonical epithet, is adjectival in character and therefore grammatically treated as such; the element zǐ 子 in the name Mèng zǐ is a title denoting ministerial status, i.e. at least dài-fū (大夫). Its rendering with “squire” is meant to mirror this fact, to detach it from the traditional philosophical and/or pedagogical aura of “master”, and to place the bearer in a socio-political context better justified by the sources. For a deeper analysis of certain name formats, cf. Gassmann, Robert H.: Verwandtschaft und Gesellschaft im alten China. Begriffe, Strukturen und Prozesse (Bern: Lang-Verlag, 2006), 510–11, 525–33Google Scholar.

2 Cf. e.g. the detailed bibliography in Shun, Kwong-loi, Mencius and Early Chinese Thought (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997), 269–80Google Scholar.

3 Chan, Alan K. L., Mencius. Contexts and Interpretations (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2002).Google Scholar

4 In so far as is necessary I shall attempt this in the translation and study of the Mèngzǐ on which I am currently working. Many of the ideas and arguments contained in this paper have resulted from this larger-scale work in progress and have already been presented in various formats and contexts over the last few years, in particular the at the H. G. Creel Memorial Lecture (University of Chicago, May 2009) and the A. C. Graham Memorial Lectures (School of Oriental and African Studies, February 2010). Special thanks go to Bernhard Fuehrer, my London host, and Antonello Palumbo, who kindly suggested publishing these preliminary results in the BSOAS. I am painfully aware of the various shortcomings, of the many gaps and fissures in my arguments, and of my bias for certain texts which, for the moment, are the foundation of my observations.

5 In one case, I have serious reservations as to the soundness of a debate because I believe that it is founded on a demonstrably wrong historical understanding of a term. I am referring to the extensive discussion of “virtue-based ethics” in ancient Chinese thought (esp. P. J. Ivanhoe), which assumes that the term dé 德 is correctly understood as “virtue”. I refute this view and argue for an understanding of “obligation”; see “Coming to terms with dé 德: the deconstruction of ‘virtue’ and a lesson in scientific morality”, in King, Richard and Schilling, Dennis (eds), How Should One Live? Comparing Ethics in Ancient China and Greco-Roman Antiquity (Berlin: de Gruyter, forthcoming March 2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 The way James Legge (The Chinese Classics, with a Translation, Critical and Exegetical Notes, Prolegomena and Copious Indexes. Vol. II: The Works of Mencius. Oxford, 1895. Reprinted Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1960) approaches the social role of Squire Mèng in his “Life of Mencius” is a clear case in point. He writes: “How [Mencius] supported himself in Tsâu [Zōu], we cannot tell. Perhaps he was possessed of some patrimony; but when he first comes forth from his native State, we find him accompanied by his most eminent disciples. He probably imitated Confucius by assuming the office of a teacher – not that of a schoolmaster in our acceptation of the word, but that of a professor of morals and learning, encouraging the resort of inquiring minds, in order to resolve their doubts and inform them on the true principles of virtue and society. Thus disciples would minister to his wants, though we may presume that he sternly maintained his dignity among them, as he afterwards did towards the princes of the time, when he appeared among them as a lecturer in another sense of the term.” By associating the terms “teacher”, though more similar to a “professor” than a “schoolmaster”, with those of “disciple”, “lecturer” and finally “morals”, Legge provides an image of the role of Squire Mèng which an educated reader of his, and quite probably also our, times easily recognized and could readily identify with. He even creates a pseudo-problem by asking how he supported himself. Due to our (pre)dispositions, to mental (pre)conceptions or even to intentional bias, the uncritical acceptance of this “Master-X” format clearly distorts our view of historical reality. My indebtedness to the Cambridge School of political thought (Quentin Skinner, John G. A. Pocock) and to the ensuing discussion of their views is evident.

7 I shall deal extensively with the historical contextualization in the forthcoming translation and study mentioned in note 4 above. In this paper, I hope to demonstrate the fruitfulness of detailed and intensive lexicographic studies, this time of the central terms used by Squire Mèng in the context of the debate on human nature. (See also several other papers I devoted to lexicological questions based on strict philological reconstructions: “Vom ‘Handeln’ im Dao De Jing. Eine syntakto-semantische Analyse des Ausdrucks wu wei”, Oriens Extremus 42, 2000/2001, 19–40Google Scholar; “Preliminary thoughts on the relationship between lexicon and writing in the Guodian texts”, Asiatische Studien LIX, 1, 2005, 233–60Google Scholar; “Die Bezeichnung jun-zi. Ansätze zur Chun-qiu-zeitlichen Kontextualisierung und zur Bedeutungsbestimmung im Lun Yu”, in Hermann, Marc and Schwermann, Christian (eds), Zurück zur Freude. Studien zur chinesischen Literatur und Lebenswelt und ihrer Rezeption in Ost und West. Festschrift für Wolfgang Kubin. Sankt Augustin, Nettetal: Steyler Verlag, 2007, 411–36Google Scholar; “Two types of ancestors. A note on xiào 孝 in Eastern Zhōu times”, in Wang-Riese, Xiaobing and Höllmann, Thomas O. (eds), Time and Ritual in Early China (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2009, 93–113)Google Scholar; “Das Wortfeld des Glücks im Alten China – Eine Näherung”, in Festschrift for Karl-Heinz Pohl (forthcoming); “Per verbum ad sinarum rem: Von ‘natürlichen’ Rekonstruktionen”, in Stoffel, et al. (eds), Sprache und Wirklichkeit (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2011, 11–28)Google Scholar. In a major monograph, I deal with the kinship terminology of ancient China: see Gassmann, Verwandtschaft und Gesellschaft, reviewed in English by Kai Vogelsang in China Review International, 14/2, 2007, 440–42). Cf. also the papers mentioned in notes 5 and 13.

8 Eco, Umberto, Lector in fabula. La cooperazione interpretativa nei testi narrative. Milan: Bompiani, 1979 (expanded English edition 1979, The Role of the Reader: Explorations in the Semiotics of Texts; German edition 1987, Hanser, Munich)Google Scholar.

9 As a pertinent example, the characterization of the contributions of Roger Ames and Irene Bloom in the introduction to Alan K. L. Chan, Mencius. Contexts and Interpretations is quite revealing: “Is nature essentially a ‘biological’ concept, an ‘achievement' concept, or both? Ames and Bloom are equally concerned about challenging the tacit assumption of many scholars and translators that human nature in the Mencius denotes an essential property of human beings. Ames contends that a range of key Chinese philosophical terms, when cleansed of ‘essentialist’ assumptions, would lend themselves to a ‘process’ interpretation.” The agenda of such papers is basically set by current philosophical debates; they seem to be more interested in challenging other (contemporary) opinions than in trying to find out what Squire Mèng really did think – or could have possibly thought given the conditions of his times. It is clear that the existence of vast databases (such as the one being assembled by Google) favours this way of dealing with (fragments of) texts (so-called data-mining), and may be to the future detriment of reading as a slow and laborious process of immerging into and assimilating the universe of a text.

10 The fact that Occidental philosophers or historians of philosophy regard the “philosophical” debates of ancient Chinese thinkers as not very spectacular or not really approaching the level of sophistication that, for example, Greek philosophy offers should be taken seriously as an indication that sinologists have been, and most probably still are, presenting such texts under a misleading (and potentially self-destructive or self-defeating) label. Rather than open-mindedly questioning their initial assumptions, they unfortunately tend to redouble their efforts at rendering the texts acceptable as philosophy by impregnating them with extraneous “modern” views and distorting the terminology in translations dissociated from the relevant historical context.

11 Gassmann, Robert H., “Argumentative Verflechtungen von Form und Inhalt in Mèng Zǐ 1A.07”, in Pohl, Karl-Heinz and Wöhrle, Georg (eds), Form und Gehalt in Texten der griechischen und chinesischen Philosophie (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2011), 33–56Google Scholar.

12 This is the central issue of the political conversations between Squire Mèng and his king. The principality of Qí is not only a powerful player in the competition for hegemony, but due to victories over other major contenders in a good position to achieve this goal, to move from regional kingship to being king of the whole empire.

13 The term mín designates the inhabitants of a principality belonging to clans other than the ruling clan (rén). Cf. Gassmann, Robert H., “Understanding ancient Chinese society: approaches to Rén and Mín”, in Journal of the American Oriental Society, 120/3, 2000, 348–59CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 The word ài designates an emotion or behaviour unduly favouring somebody or something. Here the character stands for a noun, but in English there is no appropriate equivalent (“partisan” would render the core meaning, but it comes with too many unfitting connotations). The lexical meanings “miserly; miser” that are usually proposed for this passage are doubtful, as they seem to be conceived for this context only. The rendering with “partial” also includes the implication of this statement: if the king unduly favours a (big) ox and injures a (small) sheep, then he will probably not hesitate primarily to look after his own interests to the detriment of those of the mín.

15 All translations are mine (in the full sense that can possibly be given to this statement). For comparison and reference the reader may consult D. C. Lau, Mencius, 21984. I regret that for reasons of time and space I cannot in this context generally enter into deeper grammatical discussions nor offer comprehensive lexical analyses of all terms that would certainly merit such a treatment.

16 From passages in other texts and from close reading of the Mèngzǐ it becomes clear that these two properties are not meant to be assigned to xìng 性 (usually translated “nature”), but rather to men or human beings. Cf. the analogous passages shuǐ zhī xìng qīng 水之性清 and rén zhī xìng shòu 人之性壽 in citation 30 from the Lǚ Shì Chūn Qiū, where it can be clearly and grammatically demonstrated that xìng is used adverbially. It would be nonsensical to propose that the nature of water is clear or that the nature of men is long-lived. Cf. The Annals of Lü Buwei. A Complete Translation and Study by Knoblock, John and Riegel, Jeffrey (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000), p. 64 fGoogle Scholar., I/2.2 (Chapter 2: “Making life the foundation”). It is therefore reasonable to assume that in the following citation 6 xìng is also adverbial.

17 For the moment I shall use “natural endowment” as translational equivalent of xìng 性, 6027;. Cf. also note 16.

18 The translation of shàn 善 is still tentative.

19 I am well aware that there is a long-standing and continuing lively debate on these issues in sinological and philosophical circles. To name just a few participants: Donald J. Munro, Roger T. Ames, David Hinton, Shun Kwong-loi, Charles Fu Wei-hsin, Robert E. Allinson, James Behuniak and Irene Bloom. As I adhere to the methods of strict philological reconstruction and, in this paper, take up an aspect which, to my knowledge, has not been the focus of these debates, I shall not attempt to summarize or criticize their positions.

20 In my opinion, a notable recent attempt to do just this may be found in chapter 4 (“The notion of Xin 心”) in Lee, Janghee, Xunzi and Early Chinese Naturalism, Albany: State University of New York Press, 2005Google Scholar. Allinson, Robert E. (Understanding the Chinese Mind: The Philosophical Roots. (Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1989)Google Scholar and Geaney, Jane (On the Epistemology of the Senses in Early Chinese Thought. (Society of Asian and Comparative Philosophy Monographs.) Honolulu University of Hawai'i Press, 2002)Google Scholar are further, albeit less convincing, attempts.

21 Chapter 54 (心度) of the Hánfēizǐ throws further light on this method and its context.

22 This category of size or importance sheds light on an underlying message in citation 1 above: by referring to the exchange of the ox for a sheep, Squire Mèng is indirectly criticizing the Xuān king for setting his sights on hegemony (the smaller or less important) when true kingship (the greater or more important) is obviously within his reach.

23 Cf. the received expression yù hài rén zhī xīn 欲害人之心 “a ‘heart’ that desires to harm others” (Mèng 7B.31), where desires and hearts are simultaneously present and related to each other. For the moment I shall retain “heart” as translational equivalent.

24 These have been dealt with by Jane Geaney in her stimulating study On the Epistemology of the Senses in Early Chinese ThoughtGoogle Scholar.

25 The expression ěr mù zhī guān 耳目之官 is not a possessive (i.e. the sense of the ear), but an appositive genitive (i.e. the ear-sense or auditory sense). Cf. the discussion of āi xīn 哀心 in citation 11 above.

26 For an explanation of qíng 情, see note 31.

27 The expressions ěr zhī 耳之 and mù zhī 目之 are genitives without a head (see note 33), qíng 情 is an adverbial.

28 Cf. the wording in citation 4 above: “Weighing – only when you do so, do you know the weight [of a thing]. Measuring – only when you do so, do you know the size [of a thing]. All things are dealt with in this way, but for ‘hearts’ it is most important”. Cf. for the Hàn period Vankeerberghen, Griet, “Choosing balance: weighing (quan 權) as a metaphor for action in early Chinese texts”, Early China 30, 2005–06, 47–89CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

29 The “weight” of the rituals to be observed depends on many conditions. How elaborate (Confucian) burials could be is set out in the study of such prescriptions by Bernt Hankel Der Weg in den Sarg. Die ersten Tage des Bestattungsrituals in den konfuzianischen Ritenklassikern. Bad Honef: Bock + Herchen, 1994.

30 This interpretation of duān 端 does not tally with the interpretation suggested by its use in citation 8 above and which I currently adopt.

31 For qíng 情, I propose the translation “(current) setting(s) [of the cardiac faculties]”. The usual translation “emotion(s)” or “mood(s)” reduces it to a certain aspect and does not do justice to expressions like ěr mù zhī qíng 耳目之情 “the [initial] settings of ears and eyes” (Mòzǐ 36; cf. also citation 18). At times, qíng and xìng 性 seem to refer to the same configuration; this is possible when talking of the initial configuration, which, of course, is also a current setting, simply at the moment of birth (cf. citation 18). Xìng therefore designates a stabilized setting or configuration, qíng a dynamic setting as a reaction to a certain situation. Cf. also the expression ěr mù zhī yù 耳目之欲 in citation 36 below.

32 Cf. the discussion of this list in section 5.

33 The structure of shuǐ zhī xìng qīng 水之性清 has to be analysed as follows: shuǐ zhī 水之 is the subject (an explicitly marked genitive construction without a head); xìng 性 is an adverbial modifying the predicate; qīng 清 is the predicate. Taking shuǐ zhī xìng 水之性 as subject would force us to interpret the nature of watery objects as being clear, not the water itself. Cf. the discussion of such constructions in Gassmann, Robert H., “Per verbum ad sinarum rem: Von ‘natürlichen’ Rekonstruktionen”, in Stoffel, et al. . (eds), Sprache und Wirklichkeit (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2011. Proceedings of the DVCS-Conference, Munich, 2009)Google Scholar.

34 The gù 故 of the textus receptus cannot be, as assumed in most translations, identified as the conjunction, i.e. “therefore; for this reason”, for this would clearly contradict the implied conditionality of the preceding statement. I therefore take gù 故 as a loan for gù 固 in the sense “become solid; solidify” → “become persistent (in time)”.

35 The Yīnwénzǐ 尹文子 addresses the relationship between names and the act of weighing in a highly interesting manner (I owe this information to Rafael Suter).

36 Cf. 宰我, 子貢善為說辭 “Wǒ from the lineage of the Zǎi and Viscount Gòng excelled in rhetoric” (Mèng 2A.02); 治地莫善於助, 莫不善於貢 “In administering land, no [taxation] is more excellent than zhù-taxation and none less excellent than gòng-taxation” (Mèng 3A.03).

37 Cf. note 31 and as exemplification citation 33.

38 Wèi 偽, judging from translations and studies dealing with the Xúnzǐ, seems to be a difficult term. For the semantics of wèi 偽 parts 1c and 2a of chapter 23 are to be consulted. There, the two terms xìng 性 and wèi 偽 occur not only in strictly parallel sentences, but also very suggestively as a binomial expression consisting of the two nouns xìng wèi 性偽 in a co-ordinated construction, thus clearly signalling that they are to be taken as designations for elements belonging to the same category, i.e. to the category of “configurations [of the cardiac faculties]”. The expressions táo rén zhī wèi 陶人之偽 and shèng rén zhī wèi 聖人之偽 are implicitly to be contrasted with táo rén zhī xìng 陶人之性 and shèng rén zhī xìng 聖人之性, which highlight the meaning of the following passage: gù: táo rén shān zhí ér wéi qì. rán, zé qì shēng yú [táo] rén zhī wèi 故: 陶人埏埴而為器. 然, 則器生於陶人之偽 “Hence a potter shapes clay and produces vessels. Proceeding in this way, vessels are created by the (acquired) anthropogenic configuration [of the cardiac faculties] of a potter”. Here Knoblock, John (Xunzi. A Translation and Study of the Complete Works, 3 vols. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988–94, 3: 153)Google Scholar is intuitively not far off the mark with “acquired nature”, but in other contexts he uses the equivalent “conscious exertion”. This latter translation gives prominence to the process of creation (the obvious notion that comes to our mind – but not necessarily the correct one), instead of the resulting “second nature” Squire Xún is aiming at. Dubs, H. H. (The Works of Hsuntze, London: Probsthain, 1928)Google Scholar with “acquired training” and Watson, B., Basic Writings of Mo Tzu, Hsün Tzu, and Han Fei Tzu (New York: Columbia University Press), 1967Google Scholar, with “conscious activity” also opted in their respective translations for the process point of view.

39 Cf. also the famous allegory of Ox Mountain (Mèng 6A.08) and the comparison with language learning in an incompatible linguistic context (Mèng 3B.06).

40 The expressions kě yù zhī 可欲之, yǒu zhū jǐ zhī 有諸己之 and chōng shí zhī 充實之 are genitive constructions without a head. Cf. note 33.

41 Cf. Chen, Ning, “The Mencian discussion of human nature”, in Chan, Alan K. L., Mencius. Contexts and Interpretations. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2002, 17–41Google Scholar; three important manuscripts are mentioned on p. 18.