From May 12 to June 6, the International Center for the Study of Ancient Texts and Cultures (ICSAT) held the third of our four 2021 Spring Lecture Series On Early Chinese Classics by overseas sinologists online: “Warring States Philosophical Texts” by Prof. Paul R. Goldin from the University of Pennsylvania. The lecture series has attracted the attention and participants from scholars and students from famous universities across the world, including the Peking University, the Renmin University of China, the Nanjing University, the Yale University, the University of Pennsylvania, the Stanford University and the University of Chicago, etc..

Based on his latest monograph, The Art of Chinese Philosophy: Eight Classical Texts and How to Read Them, Professor Goldin's lecture series provides an in-depth analysis of the Analects, Mozi, Mencius, Laozi, Zhuangzi, Sunzi, Xunzi, and Han Feizi. In the first lecture, Introduction: “What Are We Reading?” and Non-deductive Argumentation, Prof. Goldin proposes that some Western scholars often deny ancient Chinese thought as "philosophy" because of its non-deductive argumentation. However, as we can see from the Confucian teaching, non-deductive argumentation uses paradoxes, analogies, examples and other techniques, which can be an important argument for pre-Qin thought to be considered as philosophy. Then, Professor Goldin points out the common concerns of philosophical writings in the Warring States period: morality, ideal government, daily life, and how people lived in the uselessness of ghosts and gods, and how to build a new order in a chaotic society. In particular, Prof. Goldin mentions that when dealing with the philosophical texts of the pre-Qin period, it is important to consider the nature of the texts, including the textual formation, authorship, and the reliability of the transmitted texts. Prof. Goldin reminds the audience that in reading the text, one must put aside the traditional division of “Jia (school)”, and focus more on the close reading of the text itself.

Professor Goldin's new work divides the eight philosophical works into three categories – the Analects, Mozi, and Mencius, which pay much attention to the Heaven; Laozi, Zhuangzi, and Sunzi, which focus on the Way; Xunzi and Han Feizi, which epitomize the Warring States philosophy. Professor Goldin believes that all three works in the "Theory of Heaven" are concerned with the concept of "heaven", but each has its own characteristics: The Analects of Confucius observes and emulates "heaven" without talking about ghosts and gods; Mozi believes in the existence of ghosts and gods and the existence of "heaven". The Mozi believes in the existence of ghosts and gods and in "the desire of heaven for righteousness and the evil of injustice," with overtones of natural theology; the Mencius, on the other hand, builds on the Analects and proposes a view of destiny assigned by the heaven. In the discussion of these texts, Professor Goldin presents the important concepts and basic characteristics of each school of thought that he has observed, for example, "ritual" is a flexible moral practice that varies according to individual situations, which is similar to Confucius' teaching according to nature of students as in the teaching of "forgiveness" in the Analects, and very different from the utilitarianism of Mozi.

"The three texts concerning the Way vary a lot in the discussion of the Way. Even though Laozi and Zhuangzi are cited together as Taoists, there are significant differences between them in terms of "governance" and "application": Laozi's non-action (Wu wei) is a method of state governance, while Zhuangzi's is about personal life choices." In Laozi, to "know sufficiency"(Zhi zu) is part of the policy of fooling the people, while in Zhuangzi, it means to accept individual life situations, so as to obtain inner peace and go wandering freely. The nature of Laozi as a political theory is often overlooked. Its policy of fooling the people and using military force is quite similar to that of Sunzi. If we discuss these texts according to the distinction between "Taoism" and "Military Stagists", it is easy to overlook the connection and difference between these texts. Professor Goldin points out that this once again proves the necessity of analyzing the pre-Qin philosophy s as "texts" rather than as "schools".

According to Prof. Goldin, Xunzi and Han feizi fully reflect a feature of the interconnectedness of the texts of the pre-Qin thoughts - the philosophers would use the same Chinese characters used by their predecessors, but would give new definitions and in this way oppose or develop their predecessors' views. For example, Mencius used the term "Xing" to refer to the ideal state that one can expect to achieve under the right nurturing conditions, so that everyone can attain "goodness," while Xunzi used a more traditional definition, "What is so by birth is called xing". In Xunzi, xing is the natural state of being born and therefore "evil", which is not contradictory to Mencius' "goodness of nature". Han Feizi introduced the concept of "law" and thus established a mature ideological and theoretical system adapted to the politics of the late Warring States, i.e., a ruler-centered system of "punishment and virtue" and "form and name" as the means of rule. The system of rule is centered on the ruler, with "punishment and virtue" and "form and name" as the means. In comparison, Xunzi has some important features that distinguish it from other texts: because Xunzi was still a prominent study at the time of Liu Xiang's compilation, with a large number of biographical texts and commentaries, a significant portion of the Xunzi that has been passed down should have preserved Xun Kuang's original work, although the subchapters and sequence, etc., came from later hands; second, Xunzi consciously incorporates natural philosophy (or the discussion of the universe and nature, such as the study of cosmology) with moral philosophy, which is an unprecedented breakthrough. And Han Feizi uses subtle persuasive language to portray the sharp contradictory opposition between rulers and their subjects, and its political theory is extremely distinctive. Although the Historical Records considers that Han Feizi "liked the science of punishment, name, law and form, but its origin is Huang Lao," Professor Goldin argues that although Han Feizi uses language similar to that of Xunzi and Laozi and other previous texts, it essentially only caters to the ruler's interest in these texts, often discussing the issue of form and name after a brief mention, such as " Emptiness, stillness, non-action—these are the characteristics of the Way. By checking and comparing how it accords with reality, [one ascertains] the “performance” of an enterprise. "

Professor Goldin concluded with a brief summary of the eight sessions and nine pre-Qin philosophical texts, and re-emphasized that his course ended in the era of Han Feizi because this vibrant period of philosophical awakening moved toward the imperial era at this point, after which the concerns were very different from those of the previous generation. According to Professor Goldin, the philosophy of the Warring States left a contradictory impression of intellectual prosperity and violent disorder, but the paradoxical coexistence of the two inspired the political wisdom of philosophers and created a brilliant wealth of ideas. The fact that people today can still appreciate and benefit from the early texts is an indication of the vitality of the classics. Professor Goldin hopes that people, whether researchers or laypeople, native Chinese speakers or Westerners, can learn from the ancient wisdom and make their lives better by reading the early Chinese classics.

Prof. Goldin' lectures are part of our Spring 2021 lecture series on the textual culture of early China.

To find out more about other lectures, please click here.

For questions, please write to: ruc_icsat@163.com