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Chinese Philosophy and Metaphysics
—Independent contributor from the Internet
1. From Han philosophy to Wei-Jin metaphysics
During the Wei-Jin period, society began to revere Laozi and Zhuangzi, calling this “pure conversation.” The Laozi, Zhuangzi, and Zhouyi were regarded as the Three Mysteries. Their contents were all remote and profound, hence the name metaphysics.
First, we need to examine why metaphysics emerged. This requires beginning with the characteristics of Han philosophy.
1. The limitless expansion of what ought to be, leading to a crisis of the undesirable
The mainstream of the Han dynasty was the theory of the resonance between Heaven and humanity under New Text Confucianism. Yet this theory contained a grave contradiction: it failed to recognize that the limitless expansion of what ought to be produced a personal force standing above imperial authority. The Han dynasty assigned moral and ethical values to Heaven without limit, originally intending to consolidate imperial power. However, at the end of the Eastern Han, because the period entered a solar-spot minimum lasting one thousand eight hundred years before and after, nearly one hundred and fifty extraordinary disasters occurred during the one hundred and twelve years from 107 CE to 219 CE.At this point, the resonance between Heaven and humanity became a contradictory existence. On the one hand, the emperor could not deny it, because it was then a symbol of the regime’s legitimacy. On the other hand, he could not acknowledge it, because frequent natural disasters foretold the regime’s collapse. This shows that the theory had reached its endpoint.
2. Classical learning became cumbersome
The greatest characteristic of New Text Confucianism is the profound meaning contained in concise words,
A single classic was explained in more than one million words
A single character might be interpreted by a Confucian scholar as carrying far more meaning than its original sense, making scholarship cumbersome and leaving scholars to exhaust the classics until their hair turned white.
3. Daoist thought was in a period of underground circulation, but Han philosophy developed only Laozi’s cosmogonic thought and did not touch upon ontology.
4. Social turmoil in the Wei-Jin period led Confucian scholars to distance themselves from the secular world by exploring metaphysics
The traces of Confucianism and Mohism were despised, and Daoist teachings consequently flourished
5. Metaphysics also arose because, at the transition from Han to Wei, thought had collapsed and a wholly new ideology was needed as the basis of rule
If we examine Wei-Jin metaphysics, we find that it was the first major turning point in the history of Chinese thought. Chinese history has seen two major cultural turns—turns toward their opposites: one was Wei-Jin metaphysics, and the other extends from modern history to the present.
However, Wei-Jin metaphysics differed from today in that it did not dismantle the family—the social foundation of Confucian thought. Although after the Wei-Jin period northerners migrated south, non-Han peoples began integrating into the Han Chinese, and the Han Chinese even became a “minority,” the basic social form of the Han Chinese was not dismantled. Thus Confucian thought later remained the mainstream.
Therefore, Wei-Jin metaphysics embodied a dual situation: on the one hand, it sought to preserve the family’s basic ethics and morality—that is, the institutions of names and teachings; on the other hand, it had a certain need for Daoist non-action to dissolve Confucianism, forming a state of cultivating both ritual propriety and metaphysics.
2. The intellectual themes and philosophical reasoning of metaphysics
Metaphysics bore the fundamental characteristics of its era,
1. On the one hand, it eliminated the theory of resonance between Heaven and humanity, establishing the relationship between Heaven and humanity on the basis of nature. Yet unlike the Han theory of the generation of things from primordial qi, it established an ontological system through speculative reasoning.
2. Its themes remained the ethical relationships inherited from the pre-Qin period, most prominently expressed in the debate between institutions of names and naturalness. It dissolved hypocritical institutions of names and teachings, hoping instead to construct a genuine system of such institutions arising from nature.
Its basic characteristic was to place Dao at the center and incorporate Confucianism into Daoism. Yet this was only a surface phenomenon. In reality, because the Confucian family foundation had not been dissolved, it essentially still sought to establish an ontological foundation for Confucian thought. But since Daoism alone among Chinese philosophies explored ontological relations, a Daoist backlash emerged.
Metaphysics used categories such as being and nonbeing, substance and function, root and branch to investigate Heaven, Earth, and the myriad things, then applied this to questions such as human nature and the value of human existence.
3. The logical development of metaphysical thought
How should metaphysics ultimately be demarcated? There are multiple methods: some demarcate it by period, others by intellectual characteristics. We can divide it into three stages.
1. Foundational period: represented by the “noble nonbeing” doctrine of the Zhengshi metaphysical movement, with He Yan and Wang Bi as its representative figures. Both admired Laozi’s learning and Confucianism, so their basic approach was to interpret Confucianism through Laozi. Their central idea was that the myriad things take nonbeing as their root. Regarding the relationship between institutions of names and naturalness, they held that institutions of names are rooted in nature and opposed hypocritical institutions of names. When this line of thought was carried to an extreme, Ruan Ji and Ji Kang eliminated them, advocating the complete removal of institutions of names and proposing “surpassing institutions of names and letting nature take its course.”This later formed the unrestrained style of the Wei-Jin period.
2. Mature period: centered on Guo Xiang’s exaltation of being and spontaneous individuation during the Yuan Kang and Yong Jia periods of the Western Jin.
Guo Xiang favored Zhuangzi and held that the myriad beings should take their own existence as their ontology, with each being settling into its own nature and allotment to attain a natural state. At the same time, Pei Wei also proposed the exaltation of being, but he was not a metaphysician; he refuted the noble-nonbeing doctrine from a Confucian standpoint.
3. Declining period: After the Yongjia upheaval, northerners migrated south. At this time, most advocated cultivating both ritual propriety and metaphysics. With the rise of Buddhism, the scholar-officials developed a Buddhist and Daoist ethos, and the center of thought gradually shifted toward Buddhist prajñā.
1. From Han philosophy to Wei-Jin metaphysics
During the Wei-Jin period, society began to revere Laozi and Zhuangzi, calling this “pure conversation.” The Laozi, Zhuangzi, and Zhouyi were regarded as the Three Mysteries. Their contents were all remote and profound, hence the name metaphysics.
First, we need to examine why metaphysics emerged. This requires beginning with the characteristics of Han philosophy.
1. The limitless expansion of what ought to be, leading to a crisis of the undesirable
The mainstream of the Han dynasty was the theory of the resonance between Heaven and humanity under New Text Confucianism. Yet this theory contained a grave contradiction: it failed to recognize that the limitless expansion of what ought to be produced a personal force standing above imperial authority. The Han dynasty assigned moral and ethical values to Heaven without limit, originally intending to consolidate imperial power. However, at the end of the Eastern Han, because the period entered a solar-spot minimum lasting one thousand eight hundred years before and after, nearly one hundred and fifty extraordinary disasters occurred during the one hundred and twelve years from 107 CE to 219 CE.At this point, the resonance between Heaven and humanity became a contradictory existence. On the one hand, the emperor could not deny it, because it was then a symbol of the regime’s legitimacy. On the other hand, he could not acknowledge it, because frequent natural disasters foretold the regime’s collapse. This shows that the theory had reached its endpoint.
2. Classical learning became cumbersome
The greatest characteristic of New Text Confucianism is the profound meaning contained in concise words,
A single classic was explained in more than one million words
A single character might be interpreted by a Confucian scholar as carrying far more meaning than its original sense, making scholarship cumbersome and leaving scholars to exhaust the classics until their hair turned white.
3. Daoist thought was in a period of underground circulation, but Han philosophy developed only Laozi’s cosmogonic thought and did not touch upon ontology.
4. Social turmoil in the Wei-Jin period led Confucian scholars to distance themselves from the secular world by exploring metaphysics
The traces of Confucianism and Mohism were despised, and Daoist teachings consequently flourished
5. Metaphysics also arose because, at the transition from Han to Wei, thought had collapsed and a wholly new ideology was needed as the basis of rule
If we examine Wei-Jin metaphysics, we find that it was the first major turning point in the history of Chinese thought. Chinese history has seen two major cultural turns—turns toward their opposites: one was Wei-Jin metaphysics, and the other extends from modern history to the present.
However, Wei-Jin metaphysics differed from today in that it did not dismantle the family—the social foundation of Confucian thought. Although after the Wei-Jin period northerners migrated south, non-Han peoples began integrating into the Han Chinese, and the Han Chinese even became a “minority,” the basic social form of the Han Chinese was not dismantled. Thus Confucian thought later remained the mainstream.
Therefore, Wei-Jin metaphysics embodied a dual situation: on the one hand, it sought to preserve the family’s basic ethics and morality—that is, the institutions of names and teachings; on the other hand, it had a certain need for Daoist non-action to dissolve Confucianism, forming a state of cultivating both ritual propriety and metaphysics.
2. The intellectual themes and philosophical reasoning of metaphysics
Metaphysics bore the fundamental characteristics of its era,
1. On the one hand, it eliminated the theory of resonance between Heaven and humanity, establishing the relationship between Heaven and humanity on the basis of nature. Yet unlike the Han theory of the generation of things from primordial qi, it established an ontological system through speculative reasoning.
2. Its themes remained the ethical relationships inherited from the pre-Qin period, most prominently expressed in the debate between institutions of names and naturalness. It dissolved hypocritical institutions of names and teachings, hoping instead to construct a genuine system of such institutions arising from nature.
Its basic characteristic was to place Dao at the center and incorporate Confucianism into Daoism. Yet this was only a surface phenomenon. In reality, because the Confucian family foundation had not been dissolved, it essentially still sought to establish an ontological foundation for Confucian thought. But since Daoism alone among Chinese philosophies explored ontological relations, a Daoist backlash emerged.
Metaphysics used categories such as being and nonbeing, substance and function, root and branch to investigate Heaven, Earth, and the myriad things, then applied this to questions such as human nature and the value of human existence.
3. The logical development of metaphysical thought
How should metaphysics ultimately be demarcated? There are multiple methods: some demarcate it by period, others by intellectual characteristics. We can divide it into three stages.
1. Foundational period: represented by the “noble nonbeing” doctrine of the Zhengshi metaphysical movement, with He Yan and Wang Bi as its representative figures. Both admired Laozi’s learning and Confucianism, so their basic approach was to interpret Confucianism through Laozi. Their central idea was that the myriad things take nonbeing as their root. Regarding the relationship between institutions of names and naturalness, they held that institutions of names are rooted in nature and opposed hypocritical institutions of names. When this line of thought was carried to an extreme, Ruan Ji and Ji Kang eliminated them, advocating the complete removal of institutions of names and proposing “surpassing institutions of names and letting nature take its course.”This later formed the unrestrained style of the Wei-Jin period.
2. Mature period: centered on Guo Xiang’s exaltation of being and spontaneous individuation during the Yuan Kang and Yong Jia periods of the Western Jin.
Guo Xiang favored Zhuangzi and held that the myriad beings should take their own existence as their ontology, with each being settling into its own nature and allotment to attain a natural state. At the same time, Pei Wei also proposed the exaltation of being, but he was not a metaphysician; he refuted the noble-nonbeing doctrine from a Confucian standpoint.
3. Declining period: After the Yongjia upheaval, northerners migrated south. At this time, most advocated cultivating both ritual propriety and metaphysics. With the rise of Buddhism, the scholar-officials developed a Buddhist and Daoist ethos, and the center of thought gradually shifted toward Buddhist prajñā.