Firstly, the question arises as to whether there is a Chinese philosophy at all, and if so, how it relates to our Western philosophy. Philosophy is an occidental term. Literally translated, it means the love of wisdom.

Westerners will certainly recognise a high degree of wisdom in Chinese scholarship, but not the systematic search for truth that is associated with the Western concept of philosophy.

Term

The term "zexue", which is commonly used today for philosophy, means wisdom teaching and is a foreign term that has been imported from Japanese. Zhe, "wisdom", has a flavour of cleverness, calculation, according to its use in ancient writings, and does not necessarily coincide with the concept of Chinese virtues, which includes wisdom. The Book of Songs (Shijing) contains the saying: A wise man can build a state, a wise woman can overthrow a state.

Other terms for philosophy such as sixiang (thinking), daoshu (art of the way), xuanxue (doctrine of the dark), lixue (doctrine of the principle) were at best applied to certain spiritual traditions.

The philosopher

The term zi (son, master, nobleman, baron) was often, but not exclusively, used for philosophers and was Latinised with -zius in Western literature: e.g. Confucius, Mencius. But artists, painters, military strategists and cooks also often have the attribute master, which also makes it clear that philosophy in China represents a mastery or art that is characterised by the purely intellectual field of work.

Philosophers, artists, as well as sleight of hand players, swashbucklers and other sages belonged to the colourful crowd of men who populated the courts of the pre-Christian millennium to give their advice to the powerful.

Philosophy only acquired its lofty pretensions relatively late and only when it approached the Confucian-influenced realm of the classical.

Schools of philosophy

An important aspect of Chinese philosophy is its proximity to politics.

The Chinese historian Sima Qian mentioned the work of the six schools of philosophy (liu jia) in his historical records (Shiji) and explicitly emphasised their common concern:

The Yin-Yang scholars, the Confucians, the Mohists, the Logicians, the Legalists and the Daoists, they all argue for good government (of the world). The only difference is that they follow and teach different paths and are more or less profound.

It is precisely this environment of art on the one hand and politics on the other that characterises Chinese philosophy. As such, it is human-centred according to the understanding of most Chinese philosophers. In contrast, Feng You Lan 1895 - 1990, China's best-known modern historian of philosophy, characterises Western philosophy as remote from human beings: from its interest in the superhuman nature of God, it has turned to the subhuman laws of nature since modern times. This harbours the danger that all higher values, which are linked to religion, will be lost.

Chinese philosophy, on the other hand, opens up direct access to higher values, which does not lead via the diversions of rituals and prayers, as is the case with religion.

3 Thoughts on the geographical and social conditions that determined the world view and thus the philosophical subject matter:

Firstly, China was an almost purely peasant country until well into the 2nd half of the 20th century. A modern philosopher, Wu Zhihui (1864-1954), once disrespectfully referred to Chinese philosophy as the simple-minded talk of peasants who let the low sun warm their backs during the idle winter months and thus mused to themselves.

Certain interests and values have their origins in this background: the attention to the cycle of nature, the tendency towards cyclical ideas in which there is neither a right beginning nor a right end, the appreciation of patience, the ability to wait, as no growth can be accelerated. Mencius tells the story of the foolish farmer's son who wants to help the young grain sprouts grow by pulling them out of the ground.

Secondly, China has had a patriarchal family structure since historically tangible times, which was so well established that it was also perceived as a reflection of a higher order, namely the relationship between heaven and earth (just as in Christian-Jewish thinking, man is the image of God).

Thirdly, water management, which required the coordination of large numbers of people to irrigate fields, correct rivers and contain floods, is said to have had an anti-individualistic effect on people's thinking. Wittvogel made this the basis of his comprehensive theory of the hydraulic society in the 1960s.

Finally, China's emphatically continental location should be mentioned, as a result of which the country is enclosed in all directions by seas or mountains and not least by the Great Wall (schematised as the land within the four seas: si hai zhi nei). In contrast to the ancient orbis terrarum (circle of countries), which lay around the Mediterranean, was isolated in the centre and open to the outside, permeable.

Language and writing:

In addition to its geographical isolation, Chinese culture was shielded from external influences by its language:

This is because the Chinese conceptual script made it difficult to melt in foreign words and concepts throughout the writing-dependent area. Since every Chinese character cannot be read phonetically as a letter, but always serves as a syllable with a basic meaning, foreign terms could only either be translated phonetically in a very awkward way or they had to be translated outright. E.g. "humour", phonetically you-mo (meaning senseless, withdrawn, silent) or "utopia", phonetically/interpretatively: wu tuo bang (translation: lacking, support, country)

This made the integration of foreign words more difficult, as they had to be read according to a different - i.e. purely phonetic - principle. As the Chinese language was an "isolating language" during the emergence of philosophy, i.e. a language consisting exclusively of meaning-bearing words without grammatical functional elements and without word classes, many problems could not be dealt with with the necessary precision, which explains the relatively subordinate importance of epistemology and logic in Chinese philosophy. The collapsing of adjectives, verbs and nouns into one and the same word class makes it difficult to form abstracts. The lack of tenses softens the separation of past, present and future.

Nevertheless, abstract thought processes did not fall completely by the wayside. They were just expressed in a different way.

On the one hand, anecdotes and stories were used to characterise a certain situation, which were recalled when necessary by means of a name or a saying. At the time of the emergence of Chinese philosophy, there was already a large arsenal of such stories, most of which were passed on orally and generally assumed to be known.

On the other hand, numerological and graphical structures were used to explain abstract ideas.

The starting point of Chinese philosophy

The tortoise shell and bone inscriptions from the Shang dynasty (1500-1050) BC give us a vivid picture of the political, cultural and spiritual life of the time. The Shang kings based their decisions to a large extent on the advice they received from the oracles, which were conveyed to them by the oracle priests. These priests thus formed a politically and culturally influential class. They are probably also to thank for the invention of writing. They were called Shi in Chinese. The term also includes the meaning: scribe, envoy, business, event, later also historian.

The combination of politics, ethics and historical criticism, which is so typical of Confucian philosophy in particular, had its origins with the oracle priests.

Another professional group from the past that is important for philosophy were the shamans, who influenced decisions at court by completely different means. We only learn about them thanks to the writings of the oracle priests, who were also regarded as their rivals.

The shamans were basically illiterate people, often women, who were unable to pass on their experiences to posterity. They were called Wu (man with jade, also dance, dancer). Some scholars regard them as the forerunners of the Daoists.

One can assume, with reservations, that the Shi were primarily concerned with communicating with the ancestral spirits, while the Wu were concerned with the nature spirits, which permeated reality in the imagination of the Chinese of the time.

The hierarchical structure of this spirit world is important for understanding the pre-philosophical foundations. However, strands of ancestral and nature spirits could also be interlinked and ancestors of one's own family were generally benevolent.

Most interesting is the top position occupied by Shangdi (translated as supreme god), to whom one could turn for advice and help. He already appears in early writings. Another competing divine being also appears in later texts: Tian, Heaven, initially with cultic significance, later also physically as the place from which rain comes. It is possible that Tian was placed in competition with Shang Di by the Zhou dynasty, which invaded China from the west, and the ancestor cult was transferred to the cult of heaven. This repression did not lead to the deification of heaven, but rather secularised heaven and initiated a trend from the religious to the rational. At this time, the oracle priests were also relieved of their cultic religious function, as the Zhou king placed himself at the head of the greatly simplified sacrificial ritual. The priests were demoted to administrative officials.

Written tradition and classics

This rationalisation process during the transition from the Shang to the Zhou dynasty took place relatively early in China compared to other advanced civilisations. It was noticeable that myths were almost completely absent from the literature produced by the narrow layer of officials. They were probably erased and relegated to the oral tradition. From there, however, they reappeared in a different form or were transformed into rational myths, euhemerised (after the Greek philosopher Euhemeros, who attempted to do something similar with the Greek mythology of the gods in the 3rd/4th century BC). For example, the drivers of the sun chariot (Xihe) appear in classical texts as court astronomers. This phenomenon led modern Chinese scholars to assume that religion had never played a special role in China.

The writings that were elevated to the status of classics in the Han period reflect five areas that were handed down by the scholars and officials of the time. The five classics are, so to speak, the quintessence of this enormous body of literature. They were probably not written or edited by Confucius, as is assumed, but existed long before him and represent the tradition in which Confucius stood. These are the following writings:

1. Chunqiu: The Spring and Autumn Annals (historical writings) (chronicle of the small state of Lu, where Confucius came from)

2. Yili: The Book of Rites

3. shujing: Book of Documents (probably fictitious political speeches)

4. shijing: the book of songs

5. zhouyi: a book of divination (transformations of the zhou) also known as yijing (classic of transformations)

Confucius:

The beginning of Chinese philosophy can be dated to the end of the Zhou dynasty. The dissolution of the feudal ruling structure of the Zhou meant that the most powerful feudal lords acted as protectors of the realm and blocked each other's claims to the crown. The Zhou king only had a

cultic function but no power, while the feudal lords had power without legitimacy. They could only take over the leadership of the country for a short time. The cult became a farce and power became pure tyranny. Smaller principalities dissolved, releasing many nobles who travelled from court to court to advise the remaining princes on how they could gain control of the entire empire. This period of the Warring States (Zhan Guo) resulted in a chaotic but nevertheless incredibly lively intellectual life, which made the period of the 5th to 3rd century BC the era of the philosophers.

Confucius came from a lower noble family of a small state called Lu, which had become insignificant, and thus belonged to this wandering circle of people.

The secret of the success of his teachings lay in the fact that he succeeded in founding a school and gaining a chain of followers who carried on his name and his ideas. He did not see himself as a proclaimer of new ideas, but as a transmitter and renewer of ancient truths. The sayings, which incidentally were only handed down in writing by his disciples, were so generalised despite their conciseness that they allowed for a wide variety of interpretations.

For him, the ideal figure among the rulers was the Duke of Zhou, who had supported the young founding king in his governmental activities. At that time, power and cult practice had not yet fallen apart.

Confucius was one of the most powerful philosophers among those who placed man at the centre by clearly distinguishing him from the spirits of nature and the ancestral spirits. This gave him a natural nobility, but only insofar as he behaved according to the rules of humanity. In countless sayings, he contrasts the nobleman (Junzi) with the "little man" Xiao Ren. In doing so, however, he also sets new standards for the nobles and the ruler. In the past, the ruler was regarded as a charismatic personality and was given the throne at the command of heaven. According to Confucius, the aristocrat and thus also the king must now fulfil special moral qualities in order to receive the mandate of heaven.

The endeavour to revive antiquity also suggested that great importance was attached to ritual and hierarchy. Although the separation of humans from the spirits had emptied ritual of meaning, Confucianism insisted on maintaining it so that the old order would function and interpersonal relationships would run smoothly.

The conviction that all upbringing and education must run from the outside inwards as well as from the inside outwards was held not only by Confucians, but also by other philosophers in China. The ceremonial in word and gesture could take on a life of its own, but remained inextricably linked to an inner attitude.

Mon Tue:

Mo Di was one of the first opponents of Confucianism. (Mo ink, Di tattoo). An interesting hypothesis assumes that this philosopher was a tattooed penal slave.

He took offence at the concept of love in Confucianism, which branches out hierarchically from filial piety to love for one's relatives and finally to the ruler. He called it a perversion of all-encompassing love.

He also took offence at the waste of money caused by the ritual and the injustice of evaluating minor offences in comparison to the evaluation of a victorious war, whose heroes are celebrated, not punished.

Mo Di was only rediscovered in the middle of the 19th century. He was celebrated by Christian missionaries as a proto-Christian and by modern Chinese as a proto-socialist. What was remarkable about Mo Di's school was its tight organisation with cadre training, which also included rhetoric and logic in order to defend the doctrine. However, this was probably the reason for the lack of influence at the time.

The Daoists and their predecessors

Quietists and hedonists

Even balanced Confucianism went too far in its moral demands for certain schools of thought.

The Quietists advocated a kind of hermit ideology. They believed that any influence on society and the world was evil. This was occasionally associated with certain meditation exercises that rendered the body still and rigid (like dry wood or dead ashes).

Another movement were the hedonists. They opposed the social planning of human beings. Only a few key sentences from the hedonist Yang Zhu have survived. For him, it was important to fully utilise life, which was already far too short, and not to sacrifice it for anything or anyone.

Sophists

According to tradition, the Sophists originated from the legal scholar Deng Xizi, who not only wrote the Zhuxing (Bamboo Code) law code, but was so successful as a lawyer that he put his clients through trials at will, even if they were guilty. Because the state was thrown into disarray as a result, he was summarily executed by the authorities. He was succeeded by the sophist Gongsun Long. He famously said "a white horse is not a horse", arguing that horse refers to form and white to colour, and that it was inadmissible to apply the double term to the simple. Legend has it that he wanted to avoid paying the toll for his horse with this dispute.

In his treatises, Gongsun Long deals with meanings and things and the relationship between concepts and reality.

Zhuangzi and the Book of Zhuangzi

Hedonism, quietism, which sought to prevent the shackling of man in ethical terms, and the sophists, who sought to prevent the shackling of man in linguistic and conceptual terms, were involved in the development of Daoism. Another component is the dualistic division of the world into yin and yang, which is accepted in all Chinese world views and is reflected in the Book of Changes, the Yi Jing, has found expression.

Zhuangzi or Zhuangzhou, Master Zhuang, was a historical figure active around 350, of whom nothing worth mentioning is known, and who wrote at least large parts of the work of the same name written between the 4th and 2nd centuries BC. It is difficult to crystallise a clearly defined doctrine from it. The authors were almost more poets than philosophers. This is supported by the text's unique power of language, imagery and ironic versatility.

The central idea in the Zhuangzi is the conviction of an unchanging unity that permeates the constantly changing multiplicity of things, but at the same time causes every form of life and movement. This idea is illustrated, among other things, by the image of a storm that roars across the landscape and elicits a different howling and whistling from every corner and cave depending on its shape, without itself appearing visibly. This force that generates life and movement is the Dao, a core concept of Chinese philosophy, but one that was not used by the Daoists until later. It was already used in Confucianism, but more in the sense of various tasks that the individual is given in his life. The term was also used in the sense of "to lead". It was only in Daoism that it was given a twist, so that it no longer meant a path but a unified guiding and life force that pulsates through all things. The unified action of this elemental force results in equality and - which is just the same thing viewed from a different angle - the relativity of all things. Equality and relativity are depicted in the famous dream of the butterfly.

"Once Dschuang Dschou dreamt that he was a butterfly, a fluttering butterfly that felt comfortable and happy and knew nothing of Dschuang Dschou. Suddenly he woke up: he was really and truly Dschuang Dschou again. Now I don't know whether Dschuang Dschou dreamt that he was a butterfly or whether the butterfly dreamt that he was Dschuang Dschou, although there is certainly a difference between Dschuang Dschou and the butterfly. That's how it is with the transformation of things."

Daoism is also characterised by its devotion to nature and the course of events, which is brought about by the Dao. This is why illness and death are nothing that can shake a Daoist. Through illness and death, existence is only transformed, not dissolved.

Laozi and the Daode Jing

Although the Daode Jing is younger, Chinese tradition places it in an earlier period than the Zhuangzi. At just over 5000 characters and 81 chapters, it is surprisingly short. The first half deals mainly with the Dao and the second half with the De (virtue). Compared to the Zhuangzi, it is a systematic treatise that distributes the 200 core sentences and mottos across the chapters. The alleged author Laozi appears several times in later additions to the Zhuangzi. Of course, the non-binding name - Laozi - could refer to any personality. Laozi means old master and the attribute Lao is intended to claim from the outset to be the forefather of Daoism. Whether there is a historical core behind it is uncertain, but there must have been an author who at least gave the work its relatively standardised form.

It is difficult to sufficiently characterise the two works without citations. Wolfgang Bauer dares to attribute more hedonistic tendencies to the Zhuangzi and more quietistic tendencies to the Daode Jing. In the Daode Jing there is also a stronger influence of the Yin Yang theory and thus a clearer theoretical substructure. The Daode Jing is also quite polemical. For this reason, it is more concerned with working out opposites. It is also where we read the first laboured definition of the Dao. The Zhuangzi, on the other hand, mainly describes equality and relativity and the constant change of things.

In terms of ethics, Laozi's Daoism is of course just as opposed to the Confucians' moral concepts as Zhuangzi's Daoism. While Zhuangzi repeatedly relativises his statements, the Daode Jing contains rules of conduct for people in general and the ruler in particular. This behaviour is described as imitating the Way, or rather letting the Way take effect. A contrast with Confucian teachings can be recognised from the following quote: "Higher virtue does not know about virtue, therefore it has virtue.... If you lose virtue, you have humanity; if you lose humanity, you have righteousness; if you lose righteousness, you have politeness (the ritual). In truth, however, politeness is only the atrophy of reliability and loyalty and the beginning of rebellion. Virtue is naturally valued more highly here than humanity and politeness.

While Confucianism emphasises the ideal of a functioning state with people emancipated from the spirit world with social hierarchy, ritual, politeness and formalism, Daoism relies entirely on natural processes, which are based on a force that is incomprehensible to humans. The genuine (natural) human being (zhen ren) completely renounces artificial rules of behaviour and is guided by what is natural, original and spontaneous in people.

Daoism, with its two roots in the books Zhuangzi and Daode Jing, thus forms the great antithesis to Confucianism, not only in this early period, but also in the entire subsequent period. This gave Chinese philosophy a dualistic basic structure throughout the entire period, namely one orientated towards humanity and society and the other towards nature and anonymity, which were almost complementary rather than mutually exclusive. Other philosophical systems, even those penetrating from outside such as Buddhism, were also caught up in this dialectical field of forces.

Polarisation tendencies in Confucianism

Mengzi and Xunzi

A hundred years after Confucius' death, Confucianism was in an extremely weak position and the criticism by the Daoists that humanity basically meant nothing more than a renunciation of nature did not leave his students unimpressed.

Mengzi (372-289) studied under a biological grandson of Confucius. His basic idea was that humanity was anchored in nature. Compassion served as his starting point. He argued as follows:

All people feel fear and pity when they see a little girl about to fall into a well, without wanting to forge closer relationships with her parents or earn praise from her neighbours. From this he deduces that no human being is without pity, shame, modesty or discernment. Compassion, however, is the seed of humanity, shame of justice, modesty of politeness and discernment of wisdom. He postulated that human beings were inherently good, which of course gave rise to Confucian morality. He thus took an extreme position in Confucianism, which provoked opposition from other quarters.

Xunzi (313-238) was the spokesman for the critics of Mengzi. He was a philosopher from the cultured north of the empire, held high office at times, but spent most of his time in the still somewhat primitive state of Chu, a circumstance that seems to have influenced his basic philosophical attitude. He held the view that man was inherently bad. They are born with greed, which leads to quarrels and disputes, envy and hatred, which cause murder and robbery, lust of the eye and ear and the desire for sensual pleasure, which leads to fornication and disorder. Therefore, the influence of education is needed, the path of ritual and justice, so that compliance and kindness arise and orders are obeyed. Xunzi's emphasis on learning as a means of remodelling the human being drew attention to the theory of knowledge, which was of little interest to Chinese philosophy before and after him.

Mengzi gave Confucianism a religious foundation, while Xunzi gave it a more rational foundation.

The legalists and the end of the era of the philosophers

Legalism

Legalism, the ideology of law, was actually only an accepted ideology throughout China during the infamous Qin Dynasty (226-206), but after its dramatic downfall it became a generally ostracised unphilosophy. The Qin were famous as the founders of the Chinese empire under Emperor Qin Shi Huang Di, notorious for their brutal enforcement of Legalism. He was not interested in how the world could best be governed, but much more specifically and with Machiavellian directness, how the king could achieve and maintain his power alone and unhindered. Fa (law) in ancient China meant penal law and stood in marked contrast to Li, custom, politeness, to which Confucius had attached eminent importance. With the decline of the feudal system at the end of the Zhou dynasty, there was an increasing decline in morals, especially in those parts of the empires that were expanding into barbarian areas. The penal laws developed to compensate for this. According to legend, the king of Qin regularly fell asleep at three previous audiences when he had to listen to the usual moralising advice on the reorganisation of the state, but was so entranced at the fourth audience, when Shang Yang presented his legalistic plans, that he slipped over to him on the mat. This ideology holds the view that the law must exercise absolute rule over the state. Even minor misdemeanours are to be punished with the utmost severity. Only in this way will the people not lose their lives in the fight against robbers and a peaceful time will return.

After its fall, the Qin dynasty left behind a completely changed China and marked the end of the era of the philosophers.

Confucianism as a state ideology:

The victory of Confucianism

During the Qin dynasty, the centralisation of the state was pursued with great brutality. In intellectual terms, too, standardisation was imposed and only Legalism was accepted as an acceptable ideology, which ultimately led to the burning of books. Centralisation and standardisation continued - albeit under different auspices and in a different intellectual climate - in the emerging Han dynasty. The Han dynasty, the fundamental dynasty of China, which had roughly the same status as the Roman Empire, ultimately gave the Chinese their self-designation. (e.g. Chinese language: Han Yu)

One of the reasons why Confucianism prevailed may have been that it was particularly bitterly fought against during the Qin dynasty, which is why it enjoyed particular prestige afterwards. More importantly, however, the concept of the ruler ruling through "humanity" offered the best opportunity to legitimise the Han imperial house, which had no aristocratic background whatsoever.

Against this background, the first Han emperor decreed that shortly after the founding of the dynasty in 196 BC, men of high education and moral integrity were recommended for the civil service throughout the empire. At the moment when scholarship was considered a prerequisite for power, the Confucians were able to triumph, as scholarship was their thing. The Confucian-controlled state examinations gradually developed from this situation. Scholarship was naturally understood to mean knowledge of the five classics and the state cult was modelled on them.

This standardisation and centralisation, which took place under the aegis of Confucianism, led to the disappearance of certain schools of thought, such as Mohism and Legalism, but could not be achieved without the integration of other schools of thought, such as certain currents of Daoism.

In this era, written texts gained eminent importance. On the one hand, texts that had been destroyed during the burning of books were republished, on the other hand, traditions that had previously only been passed down orally were set down in writing and finally, the composition of commentaries, expansions and additions to revered texts also began with vigour.

A tendency towards increased interest in cosmological and ontological questions developed in Han Confucianism. The question of the best government posed in the era of the philosophers seemed to have been solved for the moment. The answers to these new questions led to two fundamentally opposing views, recognising the teachings of Mencius on the one hand and the Confucianism of Xunzi on the other. The former postulated a close interrelationship between man and the cosmos, while the latter held that man and the cosmos obey completely different laws.

A quotation from Dong Zhongshu 's commentary on the Spring and Autumn Annals serves as an example. He writes: "The saint duplicates the movement of heaven in his governance. With kindness he duplicates its warmth and thus corresponds to spring, with benevolence he duplicates its heat and thus corresponds to summer, with punishment he duplicates its coolness and thus corresponds to autumn, with execution he duplicates its cold and thus corresponds to winter."

Commentaries on the Yijing (I Ching) have also survived from this period. In contrast to countless later commentaries under the name Ten Wings, they are an integral part of the book. The influence of Daoist ideas is particularly recognisable here. In it, the Yijing is not merely seen as an oracle book or philosophical work, but directly as an image of the world or a kind of world formula with which one can observe the functioning of existence, which manifests itself in the states of change, at close quarters, so to speak.

It is written there: In the Book of Changes is the highest ultimate (Taiji or Dao). This produces the primordial states (Yi or Yin and Yang), these in turn produce the four images (Sixiang or the four seasons), and these finally the eight trigrams (Ba Gua) or (Kun, Gen, Kan, Sun, Zhen, Li, Dui, Qian) (earth, mountain, water, wind, thunder, fire, sea, sky).

The world model character that was attributed to the Yijing was emphasised by the number symbolism, which was also taken up by the commentaries and from which entire intellectual disciplines developed that attempted to uncover the secrets of the world using numbers, graphic structures and formulas similar to modern science. Most of these tablets and maps are now lost. Two famous tablets related to the Yijing and thus dating from the pre-Han period have survived: the Tablet of the Yellow River (He Tu) and the Script of the River Luo (Luo Shu).

During the transition from the Western to the Eastern Handy dynasty, which incidentally led via the illegal Xin dynasty (8-25 AD) under Wang Mang and his palace librarian Liu Xin, the so-called Old Text School emerged under controversial circumstances, which referred to a sensational discovery of classical texts during the demolition of a wall of Confucius' family seat. This discovery led to the reinterpretation and even manipulation of classical texts, which, in addition to violent measures, supported the seizure of power and the preservation of Wang Mang.

The Old Text School, one of whose scholars was called Yang Xiong, composed texts as counterparts to classical texts. One of these texts was called Taixuan Jing (Classic of the Supreme Dark) and is an imitation of the Yijing. The supreme dark can be interpreted as the Dao in the Daode Jing. In Confucianism, however, the Dao is more of a pluralistic concept: the Dao of Heaven, the Dao of Earth, the Dao of Man. The dark precedes it and gives rise to the aforementioned trinity.

The dark is without form, its substance is emptiness and its form is non-being. It enters into a relationship with the spirit in order to establish models. It unfolds yin and yang in order to bring forth the essences (qi).

What is interesting about this text is the reference to the spirit, with which the dark comes into contact in order to mould creatures. This indicates an abstract level that is detached from the existing, after this separation, which had existed in the Daode Jing, had almost been forgotten. The elaboration of this sphere goes hand in hand with combating the concept of an interrelationship between the human and non-human world. With Wang Chong, another representative of this direction, the distance between heaven and man, which Dong Zhongshu tried to weave into one with his Yin Yang and 5-element speculations, was moved further apart.

The Old Text School became the dominant school of Confucianism in the Eastern (later) Han dynasty. In contrast to the original trend, it tended to be rational in the sense of Xunzi. Scholars who later orientated themselves towards the Confucianism of the Western (earlier) Han dynasty, which did not exclude religious elements and was more influenced by Mengzi, were paradoxically apostrophised as followers of the New Text School. This was intended to emphasise the originality of the texts of the Old Text School.

It is true that the Han period was at least outwardly characterised by Confucianism.

However, this does not fully cover the character of intellectual life at the time. The Huainanzi is the text that can best be described as Daoist and was first written down under Prince Liu An, who was the mentor of these philosophers. The basic tenor of these writings can best be described as cosmological.

The Dark School

The fragmentation following the fall of the Han dynasty, which had ruled for 400 years, combined with the dissolution of the internal order led to a greater degree of differentiation and abstraction in philosophy. Intellectuals who were no longer involved in state service and who no longer felt committed to society in all matters went into internal emigration. A detachment of great personalities developed, which led to a kind of cult of genius with the approval or admiration of wide circles. The liberation of thought from the shackles of purpose released it in the direction of pure truth. The high point of the cult of genius was a group of more or less eccentric scholars from the middle of the 3rd century, of whom many anecdotes have been handed down. However, these "seven sages of the bamboo grove" were regarded more as literati because of their presentation and therefore only as essential components of the spiritual background of this period known as the Wei Jin period.

The school of thought that formed this transition is known in the narrower sense as the Dark School or Mystical School, and in the broader sense as Neo-Daoism.

However, the representatives of the Dark School saw themselves much more as Confucians, or rather considered Confucius to be a greater saint than Laozi or Zhuangzi.

Wang Bi, the first prominent figure of the Dark School, is said to have answered the question as to why Confucius never spoke about wu (non-being): Confucius had identified with non-being and realised that it could not be the subject of instruction. Zhuangzi and Laozi, however, had not yet completely left the sphere of being behind them, which is why they were constantly talking about what they were still missing. Wang Bi, however, dealt almost exclusively with non-being in his philosophical writings. In the style of epigone-like philosophising that had become common after the Han period, he also wrote commentaries on Daoist texts, especially the Daode Jing, initially in order to conquer Daoism for Confucianism, although the result was rather the opposite. He writes:

"All beings regard being as their life. What makes being begin has non-being as its root. So if you want to complete your being, you have to return to non-being."

Wang Bi's interpretation, which certainly does not violate the Dao De Jing, but is somewhat one-sided and narrower, also means that the observation of duality, which pervades the Dao De Jing, generally takes a back seat to non-being.

A generation later, the philosopher Guoxiang wrote a commentary on the Zhuangzi. His criticism centred on the transition from non-being to being, which was completely unexplained. One passage in the Zhuangzi states that entering and emerging from the Gate of Heaven represents dying and being born and that this very Gate of Heaven signifies non-being (Wu You). Guo Xiang writes: "But if you call non-being a gate, it means that it is not a gate. Ultimately, there is no coming out and going in". Guo Xiang's realisation thus deprives Daoism of its actual central value, the Dao.

The penetration of Buddhism

The penetration of Buddhism can be traced back to well into the 1st millennium BC through religious practices such as meditation and yoga, which are very similar to those of India. In the case of philosophical writings, such relationships can only be observed much later, because the medium of language and writing was more difficult to penetrate. In some passages of the Book of Zhuangzi, links can easily be established, unless the text itself was written under Buddhist influence.

However, this bridging function for Buddhism can also be seen for Daoism in general. In contrast to other originally Chinese worldviews, it also had a pessimistic trait with its denying quietist attitude, which gave rise to an entire hermit ideology and which Buddhism could build on.

Of the three basic philosophical questions relating to the human being: "What can I know?", "What should I do?", "What can I hope for?", Chinese philosophy was usually only concerned with the second, which dealt with ethics, ritual, governance or, in the case of Daoism, with its rejection. Buddhism, with its strong epistemological and ontological-metaphysical orientation, had all the prerequisites to fill this gap. This became particularly important after the collapse of the Han Empire and the political turmoil that followed.

Two external factors had a rather inhibiting effect on its spread. One was the fact that all Buddhist texts were in a foreign language. This could only be overcome to some extent through painstaking translation work. The other was the institution of monasticism, which ran strictly counter to both the strongly family-orientated Confucianism and the nature-oriented Daoism (whose hermits were originally by no means celibate). Both factors meant that Buddhism was always perceived as a foreign body within Chinese society. This did not play a role during the fragmentation and flooding with foreign peoples and in the cosmopolitan Tang Dynasty (618-907). However, during the Song Dynasty (960-1080), which ushered in a restoration of the unadulterated Chinese in many areas, Buddhism had a hard time freeing itself from the foreign odour.

The basic Buddhist teachings

The core of Buddhist teaching is the figure of the historical Buddha Gautama himself, who lived in north-east India around 560-480 BC. In philosophical terms, these are the four sacred truths that he is said to have first proclaimed under the Bodhi tree after his enlightenment.

The four key points of this basic teaching are as follows:

1. what is suffering? 2. what is the origin of suffering? 3. what is the cessation of suffering? 4. what is the path leading to the cessation of suffering?

Non-ego and Dharma teachings

The concept of an ego manifesting itself in the soul was rejected by Buddhism in particular, which distanced it from all other Indian systems of thought. However, the difficulty in understanding it, which runs counter to spontaneous feeling, meant that the old Indian idea kept reappearing.

The doctrine of the non-ego or non-soul (anatman) can only be understood against the background of the doctrine that the world consists of a myriad of individual elements or individual impulses (dharma). The analysis of man, his body, sensory organs and emotional movements, which were important in the ancient Indian teachings, were expanded in Buddhism to include an epistemological dimension. In other words, it was no longer the human being per se that was analysed, but a given human being who perceives a given object at a given time. This process was also seen as a chain of moments that are constantly reforming.

This approach caused the ego and the soul to disintegrate and take on a kaleidoscopic nature. It is important, however, that none of the individual parts can break out of this conglomerate and that they come together in a lawful way so that the specific structure is passed on. With this idea, our perceptions become illusions.

Dharma and salvation:

The question of the nature of these individual elements leads into the realm of metaphysics. It was assumed that at the moment of their birth, the dharma were functions of something transcendent, absolute and inaccessible to cognition. They are therefore not hallucinations or products of our consciousness but something real. To put it in Buddhist terms: if I see a snake in the dark, which later turns out to be a rope, then at least the rope was really there.

With regard to the "true reality" behind these individual configurations, however, the opinions of the individual Buddhist schools differed so widely that the concept of reality began to dissolve again and turn into the opposite.

There were essentially three basic schools of thought. According to the first, original school described above, every single element appearing in the moments is the appearance of a truly real carrier, or dharma (dharma in its original meaning means carrier). A second, equally original school postulates that instead of dharma there is an indescribable emptiness (sunyata) or attributelessness that has unfolded in the world in an inexplicable way. However, this emptiness was then also labelled or reinterpreted as dharma. The third, relatively young school held the view that there were no real carriers behind the elements at all. Rather, all elements of appearance were pure imagination, which originated from a troubled "treasury of consciousness" (alaya-vijnana). This came to each (apparently) individual living being, but also summarised all ideas in a common container.

With regard to the always and everywhere primary idea of salvation, however, there was a common conviction that the elements in being or in the imagination had become restless in their figurations, which were experienced by the individuals as suffering. This unrest, however, was inherent in the entire system and not an external "fall from grace". On the other hand, this painful unrest is not insurmountable, but can in fact be eliminated and transformed into a state of absolute calm (nirvana). In relation to a single (apparent) being, it is "suchness" (tathata). Tathagata is derived from this and means "Such a Coming One", the highest title of honour of the Buddha.

The idea of nirvana means that there were countless Buddhas before and after the historical Buddha Gautama. In principle, the term Buddha applies to those people who have reached the state of "suchness". Three gradations should be mentioned. Buddhas in the highest sense, who taught their realisation to others, pratyeka-Buddha (private Buddha), who attained their realisation independently but did not pass it on, and the Arhat, the saints, who received their realisation through the teaching activity of the Buddhas.

As the disappearance of the Buddha was difficult to bear from a religious point of view, a doctrine emerged that spoke of the "three bodies" (trikaya) of the Buddha: the Dharma-kaya reached the sphere of the absolute, gigantic, abstract and was almost identified with Nirvana itself, even with a kind of world soul that had much in common with that of Brahman. The Sambhoga-kaya, the "bliss body", exists in the highest spheres of the phenomenal world, as in the Buddhist heavens, where it communicates with the highest beings. With the nirvana-kaya or "shadow body", Buddha appears in the ordinary world of appearances as a teacher and role model.

Hinayana and Mahayana

The question of the connection between nirvana and the world of appearances gave rise to a schism in Buddhism in India as early as the 3rd century BC. The elitist Hinayana (Buddhism of the small vehicle) placed the figure of the Arhat, the saint who had realised Nirvana for himself alone, in the foreground. The democratic Mahayana (Buddhism of the large vehicle) contrasts him with the Boddhisattva, who renounces the final step, the disappearance into Nirvana, in order to offer help to other living beings. This introduces an element of warmth and love into Buddhism that was not inherent in its basic idea. In addition, the Mahayana also held the principle that all people, not just the monastic community, had the opportunity to enter nirvana.

The Mahayana was also much more successful in Chinese society, where family, group and society play a huge role.

Early Chinese Buddhism

The earliest period of Chinese Buddhism was essentially characterised by the small number of good original translations and the method of translating Buddhist terms into Chinese-Daoist. The Chinese terms, which mostly originated from the Dark School, were thus given an additional terminology. As a result, the term became completely overstretched and meaningless or blurred, so that in individual cases it was no longer possible to determine whether it was a Daoist or Buddhist statement. As a result, parallel words or synonyms with less philosophical connotations had to be used.

The general tendency of philosophy during the Han period towards the concrete, this-worldly, was characterised by Buddhism through an increasing trend towards abstraction. The originally holistic view of the world was polarised as a result, which meant that the cosmos and human society were initially regarded as almost identical, but in the end the question was discussed as to whether words and concepts could be used to capture thoughts (yi) and ideas (li) at all. This is characterised by the emergence of the term li, which has just been rendered as an idea and which replaced the much more comprehensive term DAO on the philosophical level. Li, initially used as ordering structures in a pluralistic sense (originally in gemstones), was given the meaning of an all-encompassing supra-cosmic ordering structure. Under Buddhist influence, the saint was also increasingly elevated, so that Confucius and later Laozi became cosmic figures in religious Daoism, analogous to the Tathagata, the Buddha who came in absolute "suchness".

Earliest Buddhist schools

In a text from the 7th century, 7 Buddhist schools are mentioned:

1. ben wu (original non-being) Master Dao'an

2. ben wu (idem; in the tradition of the monk Fashen)

3. ji se (matter as such) Master Zhi Daolin

4. wu xin (non-being of the sense)

5. shi han (preservation of ideas)

6. huan hua (illusionary formations)

7. yuan hui (causal connections)

Dao'an and Zhi Daolin are particularly emphasised in the text and judged to be in agreement on their essential points (namely emptiness as the actual nature of the phenomenal world). They also played an outstanding role in the organisation of the Buddhist mission. Dao'an was particularly active in familiarising himself with and comparing the most diverse doctrines and collecting sacred texts and translations, thereby paving the way for a more comprehensive education that was free of interdependencies with Chinese ideas.

The Buddhist schools in China

The division of the empire in 317, in which the north was lost to foreign rulers, also resulted in a division of Buddhism into a west-northern and an east-southern part.

The Wei dynasty (386-535) of the Turkish Tuoba people, which was very important for Buddhism, ruled in the north.

The non-Chinese monk Kumarajiva (344-413) was active here. He came to Changan in 402 and organised a large-scale translation project there, which covered the Buddhist literature as completely as possible and in which the terminology was not merely translated using Chinese terms, but left as foreign words (transliterated).

The Japanese Buddhologist Takakusu Junjiro proposes a four-stage development for the evolution of Buddhism in East Asia, namely from realism via nihilism and idealism to negativism, whereby the former can still be regarded as Hinayanist and the latter two as Mahyanist.

The following schools in China can be assigned to these four stages

Jushe school: (school of the collection of the higher dharma)

A real existence of the dharma is postulated, which however only appears in the punctual moment of the present, but recedes in the past and future. The basic idea of the non-ego was not affected by this.

Chengshi school: (school of the fulfilment of truth)

In contrast to the Jushe school, the dharma are regarded as real phenomena in the present, but on a higher level they are all regarded as unreal or empty. It thus builds on the Jushe school and negates it at the same time. This corresponds to the idea of a double truth.

Weishi school: (Imagination-only school)

This school spread in China through the famous Chinese Indian pilgrim Xuanzang (602-664) and his main disciple Kuiji.

According to this school, the existence of the entire external world is based solely on ideas. The latter alone are truly real. In this school, the dharma are not independent, but dependent on the imagination or consciousness (dharma appearances or faxiang). Between the unreal outer world and the real inner world there is a constant to and fro between the forms of consciousness and a cycle of unrest is kept going, comparable to a churning sea, which is also able to cause storms with its waves. Recognising the illusion of the outside world interrupts this disastrous cycle.

Sanlun School (School of the Centre of Opposites)

Sanlun (translated: 3 treatises) was made famous by the aforementioned monk Kumarajiva, who was the first to translate Buddhist texts almost completely into Chinese. His disciple Seng Zhao (374-414) attempted to introduce the ideas of this school to the Chinese intelligentsia.

According to ancient Indian thought, there are four types of answers to all questions: 1. positive, 2. negative, 3. relative, 4. negative, leaving the question level. The Sanlun school now concentrates exclusively on this 4th type of answer. It constantly invented new, seemingly paradoxical, seemingly mutually exclusive double negations, such as the eightfold negation, which was formulated in the Chinese scriptures as: "No arising, no passing away, no annihilation, no duration, no unity, no multiplicity, no coming, no going."

The gradual displacement of thought and imagination from the worldly sphere of opposites through progressive negation was an extraordinarily complex process. The idea of double truth (er di), which we had already encountered in the Chengshe school, was also connected with a certain necessity.

The most famous representative of the school after Seng Zhao, the monk Jizang (549-623), summarised the destruction of ordinary thinking in a fixed formula. According to this, the dialectic of negation takes the following course: At the first stage, the affirmation of being is cancelled by the higher truth of non-being; at the second stage, the affirmation of being and non-being is cancelled by the higher truth of the denial of being and non-being; and at the third and highest stage, the still worldly truth of the second stage is cancelled by an attitude that neither affirms nor denies being or non-being. Only at this last stage does realisation become enlightenment.

The Buddhist schools of Chinese origin

The equality of absoluteness and appearance

The Tiantai School

The school is named after the mountain of the same name in the south-east province of Zhejiang. The main text was "The Lotus of Good Dharma", or "Lotus Sutra" for short, which was translated in full by Kumarajia and has been commented on again and again ever since. The forerunner of this school was Daosheng, but he belonged to a different school that centred on the Nirvana Sutra. Surprisingly, this sutra preaches a more optimistic view of the ultimate goals of Buddhism, so much so that it almost no longer seems to fit into the framework of Buddhism. It says:

Life and death are without self, but Tathagata (Buddha in his redeemed form)

is the self.

This revolutionary idea consists in the fact that the dissolution of the ego, which is a core Buddhist idea, has now suddenly been twisted in such a way that entering nirvana only just means gaining the real self. The text also contains the idea that Buddha nature has always been inherent in every human being. The fact that a dormant Buddha nature and its identification with a kind of "I" lay within every person resulted in the possibility of enlightenment and salvation, which could not be achieved via an infinite number of stages at an infinite distance, as was originally the case.

However, the Tiantai school directly followed on from the Sanlun school just discussed. A third truth was added to the double truth (er di) that characterised the idea there, which encompasses the apparent truth of the world of appearances and the actual "truth of emptiness". According to this, in the momentary flash of each dharma in the world of appearances, its true "empty" nature should also come into play and there should be no difference in true and empirical being, or in technical terms, between nirvana and samsara, the world of appearances. This gave the idea of Daosheng its theoretical foundation.

This idea of identifying the smallest elements with the universe changed the experience of the Buddhist faith to an almost unimaginable extent and was also very influential for the neo-Confucianism that emerged later.

However, the originally pluralistic approach of Buddhism took a turn that led it back to the monistic world order of Brahmanism.

The emerging idea of something like a deepest soul ground in the individual, the Buddha nature, which in turn is identical with an all-encompassing Absolute, is difficult to harmonise with the old Buddhist ideas.

The great synthesis: The Huayan School

Its name comes from the so-called Huayan Sutra (Flower Wreath Sutra). The sutra is said to have been preached by Buddha immediately after his enlightenment, but was not properly understood by anyone. The school is a continuation of the Tian Tai school in almost every respect. Apart from the Chan school, it was the largest and most powerful Buddhist school in China. It was popularised by the monk Fazang (643-712). Central to its doctrine is the idea of an all-encompassing Absolute (fa-jie). This exists in two forms as li (structure) and shi (form) or as idea and appearance. Fazang had great difficulty in explaining to his students the various ways in which the actual and potential forms of the Absolute are interrelated and, moreover, how the individual phenomena are both identical with the Absolute and intertwined with every other individual phenomenon. He is said to have set up 10 mirrors for his students, each in one of eight cardinal directions, as well as one above and one below. He placed a Buddha figure with a candle in the centre. The infinite reflections of this figure, which symbolises the absolute in itself, and at the same time the infinite reflections of emptiness itself, provide an inimitable way of understanding the basic teachings.

The Huayan school has often been apostrophised as totalistic because of its approach. This remark also applies to it in another respect, because it attempted to integrate all other Buddhist schools into itself. The endeavour to bring the many divergent teachings and traditions into a meaningful context began early on in China. However, a regular structuring of Buddhist teaching according to schools with doctrines of lower or higher truth content only seems to have become possible once the idea of a double or multiple truth had also become established in individual doctrines themselves.

A staggering of the Buddhist schools was already outlined in the Buddha's sermons, in that he deliberately taught simpler truths at a lower or propaedeutic level, which were then repeatedly cancelled at a higher level. The Huayan school refined this scheme, which had already been worked out to 5 levels in the Tiantai school, to 10 levels. Each of these levels corresponds to a Buddhist teaching or doctrine. The order of these stages was the same as in our examination of the schools.

Schools of religious Buddhism

Jingtu and Chan (Zen)

A Chinese proverb says that the theory of Chinese Buddhism is contained in the teachings of the Tiantai and Huayan schools, but its practice is contained in those of the Jingtu and Chan schools.

At the centre of the Pure Land school (Jingtu) is the hope of rebirth in the Sukvahati paradise ruled by Buddha Amithaba. He, the Buddha of infinite light, who is not identical with the historical one, is rather an embodiment of pure enlightenment. The Sukhavati paradise was, according to the original belief, only a preliminary stage of nirvana, but one so colourful and enticing that it outshone nirvana itself. Salvation in the conception of this school had to be achieved neither through mental endeavour nor through good deeds, but solely through faith and the invocation of the Buddha Amithaba. This idea naturally released infinite energy in the area of prayer and other practical religious practices. This form spread especially among the people. To this day, the worship of the Buddha Amithaba and thus the Jingtu school occupies a central position in the entire Buddhist cult, which includes not least the entire temple system.

Chan Buddhism, on the other hand, played a leading role in the educated classes. This is surprising, as in principle it does not place a sacred text at the centre of its preaching, i.e. it does not rely on word and scripture, but rather transmits the teachings directly from meaning to meaning. It takes place in the direct relationship between teacher and student.

There are many legends surrounding the introduction of Chan Buddhism in China. At its centre is the master Bodhidarma, son of a South Indian king.

In 520, he met Emperor Wudi of the Liang dynasty, the great protector of Buddhism in China. When asked about his merits in founding monasteries, copying holy scriptures and other endeavours to promote religion, he replied coldly: "None at all". When asked about the highest truth, he answered dryly: "It is empty, it does not exist." When the emperor asked in astonishment who his counterpart was, he replied: "I don't know, Your Majesty". He then travelled northwards and founded his school on Wutai Mountain. Meditation was a prominent feature of all Buddhist schools. Its speciality in Chan is merely that it occupied a very central position there. It was used to existentially experience emptiness, this phenomenon between all and nothing. Its aim was not to calm and concentrate the thoughts and feelings that lead to realisation, but to dissolve all thoughts. It thus created the counterpart to the Sanlun school in the Middle Way, which, with its three-stage, simultaneous cancellation of affirmation and negation, makes the coincidence of samsara and nirvana comprehensible.

In addition to meditation, all kinds of other methods of awakening were used for this purpose. They have made the Chan school particularly famous because of their drastic nature. These could include the master's winking, senseless laughter or outbursts of anger. The breaking of various taboos, which even included insulting and denigrating the Buddha and his teachings, seemed particularly suitable for this purpose.

The Confucian revival

The suppression of Buddhism

The history of Buddhism's ideological dominance in China, which spans almost a thousand years, can be roughly divided into three periods: Early Buddhism from the 1st to 3rd centuries, which infiltrated the indigenous philosophy and eventually conquered it from within, then the Buddhist heyday between the 4th and 7th centuries, in which practically the entire intellectual life was characterised by Buddhism, and finally the period of Late Buddhism, in which Buddhism was increasingly fought against externally and was itself infiltrated internally by Chinese systems of thought.

In the end, this led to a flattening and weakening, but also a reconciliation with Daoism and Confucianism, and the religious component was displaced into the lower classes of the population.

It is striking that the heyday fell between two dynasties, the Han and Tang dynasties, during which the empire was fragmented. The completely pessimistic world view was difficult to justify within the Chinese state structure.

The countermovement against Buddhism initially came from Daoism, but was then supported by Confucianism in order - incidentally - to relate Daoism to Buddhism and fight against it.

This counter-movement was based on the endeavour to come to terms with existence and the ideal of "unity" in all conceivable areas. In practice, the fight against Buddhism was waged very directly, namely through persecution, which was mainly directed against the monasteries and led to the destruction of 4,600 monasteries and 40,000 shrines in 845. 260,000 monks and nuns were forcibly relegated to lay status. On the other hand, the state examination system was also expanded and academies were established, which gradually challenged the monasteries' status as an intellectual centre.

This does not mean that Chinese thinking returned to its pre-Buddhist state, although there was a renewed focus on the real and on what was relevant in politics and society, which led not least to a simplification and standardisation of concepts. However, the lasting influence of Buddhism was now an increased ability to theorise. A new conceptualisation of the interrelationship between the ideal level of principles and a concrete level of realities was also attributable to Buddhism. In spirituality, the conviction of an unconditional identity between the primordial ground of the self and the primordial ground of the universe remained, which is not only recognisable but can also be experienced in meditation.

The old style movement, forerunner of Neo-Confucianism

Towards the end of the Tang dynasty in the middle of the 8th century, a century before the great persecution of the Buddhists, there was a tendency among intellectuals to reject the prevailing elegant style of writing and revert to a simpler one, to the language of the 1st-4th century BC (guwen, old style). This return was immediately accompanied by a return to indigenous Chinese philosophy. The leading figure in this struggle, which ultimately changed Chinese philosophy as a whole, was Han Yu. As a censor, he also had to deal with ideological issues and criticise the highest state representatives, even the emperor.

His memorandum to the emperor, in which he sharply criticised him for attending a procession during the reburial of a relic (a Buddha bone), is famous and almost cost him his head.

In his writings on the "Foundations of the Way" (Yuan dao), he polemicises not only against Buddhism, but also against Daoism, in which he also believed he recognised something foreign to Chinese. In his turns against Buddhism, he attempts to conquer Daoist concepts to a certain extent, while at the same time relativising them and thus giving Confucianism a broader basis.

Han Yu represents more of an idealistic direction of Confucianism, which stands in the tradition of Mencius, but holds a middle position on the question of human nature: he writes that there are good, average and bad people from birth, depending on how the five virtues are developed.

In the discussion of the interrelationship, which ultimately serves as an explanation of the origins of badness, there is repeated mention of the "pollution of the basic virtues" and the corrupting influence of emotions.

A student of Han Yu, Li Ao, studied human nature in more detail and, in the spirit of Mencius, recognised in it an absolutely good basic disposition. However, in conflict with feelings (Qing) or affects characterised by lust and greed (Tan), they spoil the good nature. This negative categorisation of lust sounds very Buddhist. However, it was also advocated by the early Hanseatic philosopher Dong Zhongshu, who could hardly have been under Buddhist influence at the time.

Li Ao writes: 'Nature and feelings are as mutually dependent as river and riverbed. The apparent pollution of the water only occurs when the water flows so turbulently that the sand and mud are stirred up. It is not the destruction of feelings, but their calming that must be sought so that nature is no longer obscured.

Cosmology and the rediscovery of being

The emergence of Neo-Confucianism in the Song dynasty

During the Song dynasty from 960 AD, the Chinese experienced an unprecedented revival of their own culture, which would do well to be called a renaissance. While the Tang period had been fascinated by foreign, distant lands and their curiosities, the Song period was captivated by the magic of its own ancient culture. The return to one's own spiritual tradition was only part of a much more fundamental reorientation, and it is impossible to say where it actually began. The term Neo-Confucianism, which is used in Western Sinology for this complex system of thought, has no synonym in China. Instead, terms such as Songxue (doctrine in the Song period), Daoxue (doctrine of the way), Lixue (doctrine of the principle), Xinxue (doctrine of consciousness) or Xinglixue (doctrine of essence and principle) are used.

Zhou Dunyi and the boundless frontier

When returning to the original Chinese philosophy, the earlier Han period came into focus because the Confucianism of this epoch, in contrast to the Old Text school that emerged after Christ, included a religious component. The religious aspect consisted not only in the fact that Confucius appeared in it as a kind of world saviour of unique dimensions, but above all in the close connection between man and the cosmos.

This system of thought, which is associated with the name Dong Zhongshu (179-104 BC), also contains many Daoist influences, even if it is mainly based on the Book of Changes and the Spring and Autumn Annals.

The first Neo-Confucian with a cosmological interest and Daoist influence was the scholar Zhou Dunyi (1017-1073). Like all Neo-Confucians, he approached man from nature rather than man from nature.

The core of his teaching was not a scripture, but a diagram that he received from a priest in his earlier days when he was still interested in Daoism. The diagram is called Taiji tu (literally tablet of the highest peak). The term Taiji is first found in the commentaries of the Yijing, which were written in the 1st and 2nd centuries. Zhou Dunyi added a commentary to this diagram that begins as follows:

The boundless (Wuji) and yet the highest (Taiji)!

Through movement it creates yang, and when this movement has reached its peak, it is followed by stillness; and through its stillness it creates yin, and when this stillness has reached its peak, it returns to movement. In this way, rest and movement produce each other.

By equating wuji with taiji, a Daoist concept (wuji for the dao) was occupied and its threatening nature taken away, because Daoists and Buddhists have taken very different approaches with their ideas of non-being against the this-worldly thinking of Confucianism.

Shao Yong and the world of numbers

Shao Yong 1011-1077, who was a contemporary of Zhou Duny, was particularly interested in the numerological system in the Yijing. His numerological speculations on the structure of the cosmos were to become just as important for Daoism, especially the Daoist art of divination, as the concept of nature was for the Neo-Confucians. Using Han-temporal commentaries, he attempted to calculate the course of the world ages with the help of 12 selected hexagrams. This was undoubtedly based on Buddhist ideas, although their dimensions were incomparably larger.

Zhang Zai and the ether fabric

Zhang Zai (1020-1077), who was concerned with Daoism, Buddhism and Confucianism, ultimately suffered from his political direction and lost all his offices, some of which were high. This was because the arguments against Buddhism and Daoism were increasingly used against certain accentuations of Neo-Confucianism. According to modern Chinese historians, this uncompromising attitude towards the other philosophical systems subsequently hindered China's dynamic development.

Zhang Zai was held in high esteem in 20th century China because he emerged from the shadow of the pseudo-scientific speculations of his contemporaries with a mature philosophical system, but was close enough to them for it to be categorised as materialist thought. Zhang Zai owes this characterisation to his elaboration of the concept of qi. In his work, it suddenly takes on an all-encompassing connotation (in order to encompass the widest possible range of meanings). He equates this term with all those terms that previously held the highest entities (transcendent and immanent): Taiji, dao, taixu. With this, however, non-being disappears for him. In this context, qi is translated as etheric substance and also includes the qi used in medicine: he writes:

The condensation of the etheric substance from the state of "Supreme Emptiness" and its re-dissolution into it is like the freezing of ice and its melting away into water. As soon as we realise that the "Supreme Void" is nothing other than the visible etheric substance, we will understand that there is no non-being.

Polarisation tendencies in Neo-Confucianism and the synthesis of Zhu Xi

Li, the principle

This concept was developed by the brothers Cheng Yi (1033-1108) and Cheng Hao (1032-1085). They helped it achieve a breakthrough in Neo-Confucianism. It was soon to become the most important term of all. The term, consisting of jade and a phonetic character, originally meant streaks, lines and later also structure in the sense of crystal lattice.

It was already used in earlier phases of philosophy. The term is used by the Cheng both in the plural and in the singular. Thus, every being and every thing has its own principle and at the same time existence as a whole has a single all-encompassing principle.

Human nature and "love"

In Neo-Confucianism, the principle of order was understood not only as cosmological but also as moral. In this usage, it coincided with the Confucian conception of dao (which was clearly more dynamic in its basic meaning) and gradually replaced it. This shift in emphasis is in some respects symptomatic of Confucianism becoming more rigid in general.

The inclusion of moral categories in the principle of order naturally raises the question of the relationship between it and human nature and what man must do to discover and develop the principle within himself. Cheng Hao takes an open position on the age-old problem of whether man is good or evil. For him, he can be both. For him, goodness or evil is related to the etheric substance. He sees feelings as a disturbing element in the interrelationship between the etheric substance and the principle of order.

In this way, Cheng Hao tried to make human nature comprehensible as a function of underlying higher forces, but conversely used the most human of all qualities to designate metaphysical relationships. Cheng Hao boldly labelled this mysterious connection between all beings and the cosmos as humanity. Of course, it no longer makes sense in this original meaning, but it does make sense in the somewhat more specific sense of love in the sense of love of humanity, as opposed to the strict, divisive "justice" (Yi) of Mencius. In order to justify this cosmic expansion of the concept, he uses a play on words in Chinese, namely the word for "paralysis", which literally translates as "non-humanity" (or "non-love", bu ren).

It says:
In medical works, paralysis of the hand or foot is described as "non-love". A person with "love" feels at one with heaven, earth and all beings. If he lacks this realisation, there is also no connection to him and the hand and foot are no longer pulsated by the etheric substance.

This definition of love as a quality that connects all beings also determines the direction of development of ethics. It clearly goes inwards in order to cultivate love or humanity within oneself and to become one with the universe.

Material and mindfulness

With Brother Cheng Yi, the principle of order is largely emancipated from the etheric material. He therefore has no such difficulty in explaining evil.

He writes:

Mencius was right that human nature is good. Everything that is not good falls into the realm of the material. The material, however, is a specification of the etheric substance, in which there are clear and cloudy elements.

As a result, Cheng Yi's concept of education and cultivation took a completely different direction. The constant differentiation between the "principle of order" and "etheric substance" called for outward concentration in the sense of "paying attention", "reverence", "taking seriously".

Cheng Yi was asked whether the exploration of things required the respective exploration of individual things. His answer was: "How can you understand all things at once? ...You have to investigate one thing today and the next tomorrow. Only when you have continued this for a long time do you gain a free and natural knowledge of them all.

New canonical scriptures

During the development of Neo-Confucianism, four books (si shu) were added to the canonical scriptures.

The Great Teaching
The Pausing of the Centre
(both of which were originally only one chapter each in the Ritual Classic)
The Book of Mencius
The Conversations of Confucius (lun yu)

Confucianism as interpreted by Mencius now manifested itself in these new classics. The original five classics were not yet Confucian in the true sense, but at most documented the Confucian preference for the oldest surviving literature.

The Great Teaching and with it the philosophers Han Yu and Cheng Yi, and in part Zhou Dunyi, are attributed more to a rationalist or realist school of Neo-Confucianism.

The Pausing at the Centre and the philosophers Li Ao, Cheng Hao and Zhang Zai tend to represent an idealistic school of Neo-Confucianism influenced by Daoism and Buddhism.

Zhu Xi and the great synthesis

The most important and powerful representative of the realist movement was the scholar and politician Zhu Xi (1130-1200), who wrote detailed commentaries on the content of the scripture "The Pausing of the Centre" and all other canonical writings. He is one of the greatest figures in Chinese intellectual history. Like Confucius himself, he did not contribute many ideas to the body of thought that he created, but rather summarised those that already existed into a unified system.
Before him, Neo-Confucianism still had a rather fluid structure. After him, it took on ever firmer, ultimately really rigid forms.

He completed the final detachment of the principle of order from the etheric substance and its absolutisation.

The principle of order was metaphysical in nature and above the level of design. The associated things, on the other hand, were of a physical nature, namely below the level of organisation. The formation itself takes place through the imprinting of the respective principle of order in the etheric substance, in which rest and movement arise from yin and yang. The visible creation of the world does not contradict the principle of order in any way, but imperfections occur during the imprinting in the etheric substance, which are caused by the materialisation and thus give rise to all evil and bad things. Nevertheless, the nature of things and beings is fundamentally good. Zhu Xi also discovered this relationship between ideal and reality in politics and history. Although since the Qin dynasty, i.e. actually since the founding of the empire, no more holy rulers have reigned, but only tyrannical rulers, he maintains that the principle of order has remained untouched. This fits in perfectly with the general trend towards standardisation that characterised Neo-Confucianism. With Zhu Xi, it also led to a particular philosophy of history and historiography that no longer placed the main emphasis on the ups and downs of dynastic history, but in an annalistic manner on a course that flowed through all times, which seemed to prove that the principle of order had always provided the pattern.

The retreat inwards

Mind consciousness (xin)

Lu Jiuyuan

The first great scholar within the "idealist school" was a contemporary of Zhu Xi, namely Lu Jiyuan (1139-1193) His teachings can be traced back to Cheng Hao. At the centre is a key meditative experience in which someone explained the Chinese term "cosmos" (yuzhou) to him. It is said to have emerged that the first syllable expresses the continuum within the four celestial directions and the second the continuum between past and future (i.e. space-time). Lu Jiyuan saw himself placed in the indicated axial cross and exclaimed: "So everything is directly related to me"

This belief in the synthesis of space and time in the respective tiny heart of the individual, where it gathers with all its strength as if in a burning glass, is Lu Jiuyan's actual message. The participation of the individual in being as a whole no longer took place merely through the essentially very abstract "human nature", which was more or less deformed by being infused into the "etheric substance", but directly through the individually perceptible "heart", in which Zhu Xi had still seen a mixture of "organising principle" and "etheric substance".

This also emphasised the idea of unity. The realist school, represented by Zhu Xi, emphasised more the immutability of the principle of order, thus giving more weight to the temporal-historical aspect, but left plenty of room for the consideration that the real world was ultimately divided into two by the imprinting of the principles in the etheric substance. The idealist school, on the other hand, emphasised much more strongly the actual unity of all things in the universe and thus the spatial-cosmic aspect, which of course also included the temporal-historical aspect and thus had a much more fundamental effect than the realist school.

Wang Shouren

There is a certain irony in the fact that it was precisely during this period, when Zhu Xi emphasised the immutability of the "principle of order" and Lu Jiyuan its all-unifying power, that the Chinese world itself was divided and plunged into the worst turmoil. The northern half lived under the rule of the northern Juche people, while the southern half was weak and fell prey to the Mongols in 1280, who had already conquered the north. When the Mongols were driven out again almost 90 years later and a new Chinese dynasty was founded in 1368, namely the Ming (1368-1644), the intellectual climate had changed considerably compared to the period before this traumatic experience. In terms of foreign policy, the dynasty remained surprisingly weak, while domestically it developed despotic traits from the top of the state, i.e. from the imperial court, that had hardly been seen before. This can certainly be interpreted as a realisation of the ideal of "unity" in political terms.

In practice, however, it led to widespread mistrust of the court's claim to power, with its countless intrigues in which the eunuchs and the families behind them played an increasing role.

There were various ways for intellectuals to react to this. One was to retreat into one's own self, or one could adopt a firm, unbending, almost stoic resistance, which required a high degree of heroism as a consequence. Both could be observed in the ruling and educated classes during the Ming dynasty. However, the first, which reverted to the idealistic form of Neo-Confucianism, gained the upper hand for almost the entire Ming dynasty.

Wang Shouren (1472-1529) is the true representative of this movement. He by no means led an introverted life. His upbringing was influenced by Buddhism and was therefore not insignificantly characterised by meditation exercises. This did not prevent him from holding the highest offices of state and gaining prestige as an army leader. This is less surprising when one realises that there was a relationship between Daoism and the art of war and that Daoism also reached the idealistic direction of Neo-Confucianism via Chan Buddhism.

A key event such as Lu Jiuyuan's led to his decisive realisation, after he had tried unsuccessfully for years to carry out the basic Neo-Confucian exercise of exploring things, such as looking at bamboo, by looking at external things:

One night he shouted at the top of his voice, causing the servants to run together in fright. For the first time, he had realised that it was wrong to look for the "principle" outside of oneself.

Since Cheng Hao, at the latest, the realisation of the identity of the personality ground with the primordial ground of the universe had been anchored in Neo-Confucianism. Wang Shouren adopted this in his broader interpretation of Lu Jiyuan by identifying not only the essence (xing) but also the heart (xin) with the "principle of order". Similarly, he also adopted the concept of "humanity" (ren) in the sense of a "love" that connects all beings and things. Through the unity of "heart", "mind consciousness" and universe, epistemological and ethical aspects are mixed in a very interesting way. According to him, things only gain their real existence through the contemplation of man. When looking at a blossoming tree on a hike with a friend, he explained: "It was only at the moment when we looked at the blossoms that they took on their clear form and bright colours. He calls it "innate knowledge" (liang zhi).

In explaining how evil comes into the world, Wang Shouren did not fall back on the etheric substance like Zhu Xi, but made the corrupting power of desire and will responsible for it, which stirred up the dirt and sand like moving water. If these could be calmed, then the water would also become clear again and stop flowing. At this level, however, the distinction between good and evil is irrelevant.

The splintering of Wang Shouren's school

This particular aspect of Wang Shouren's teaching sparked a debate between two of his disciples in 1527, which became known as the "Heavenly Spring Bridge" debate.

In a nutshell, one disciple, Qian Dehong (1496-1574), was of the opinion that through self-cultivation in accordance with the "Great Teaching" (Da Xue), the state of yin and yang created by polarisation, which also produced good and evil, could be returned to a paradisiacal state.

The other disciple, Wang Ji (surnamed Longxi, 1498-1583), took a much more radical stance by postulating that there could be no evil if the primordial ground of the heart was neither good nor evil, because then the will and desire could not be evil either.

Wang Shouren accepted both views as Solomonic and said that they complemented each other and had to be applied to different people.

In this statement, which Wang Shouren gave to his students, the idea of a double truth, which had been so typical of Buddhism, was revived.

Wang Shouren also linked this statement with the distinction between a sudden and a gradual process of realisation, which is particularly important in Chan Buddhism.

The discussion at the Bridge of Heavenly Springs had already pre-programmed the split in Wang Souren's succession. On the one hand, there was the broad stream of scholars who represented Qian Dehong's opinion. They also maintained contact with the realist wing, which had by no means disappeared in the Ming dynasty. On the other hand, there was also the direction that was strongly inclined towards Chan Buddhism or even blurred, which was represented by Wang Ji. It is associated with the name "Longxi" (Dragon Stream), Wang Ji's nickname.

In his late phase, Wang Ji's thinking moved closer and closer to Buddhism. He made no secret of this, but emphasised that from his point of view, Confucianism, Daoism and Buddhism were actually one and the same, a view that was to prevail on a large scale and in a very flattening way in the following centuries, albeit without reference to Wang Ji.

The third movement also had outwardly Chan Buddhist traits, but was inwardly orientated towards completely different goals. The most famous exponent was Li Zhi (1527-1602), who is attributed to the Taizhou school. Until then, the idealistic direction of Neo-Confucianism had at most shown a certain restraint towards the external tradition of Confucianism, which could, however, increase to the point of disregarding the classics. Lu Jiuyuan remarked that the classics only represented marginalia once the basic truths had been grasped.
Li Zhi, on the other hand, attacked Confucianism head-on: When someone comes into the world, he is self-sufficient and does not necessarily need to learn from Confucius - how else would people have lived before Confucius? Li Zhi preached a rather uninhibited naturalism and egalitarianism and never missed an opportunity to provoke the state and society. At the age of 58, he retired to a small Chan monastery after separating from his wife. His completely unattached lifestyle brought him more and more persecution, his monastery was destroyed and he himself was thrown into prison for misguided beliefs and corrupting the youth, where he committed suicide at the age of 74.

With Li Zhi, neo-Confucianism had begun to fight against itself in its last idealistic foothills, thus acquiring an almost tragic flavour.

The forces responsible for Li Zhi's death were themselves part of Neo-Confucianism, albeit of Zhu Xi's realist school. They initiated a retreat to ever earlier forms of Confucianism, which was to end in the complete dissolution of Confucianism in modern times.

The self-dissolution of Confucianism

The late 16th and early 17th centuries were characterised by the bitter struggle between the central power and the Confucian officialdom. The climax was the conflict between the all-powerful eunuch Wei Zhongxian (1568-1627) and the Donglin (Ostwald) Academy, founded in Wuxi in 1604, which exerted great influence on the Confucian educated class in general through its prominent membership. Many members and supporters had to pay with their lives for their opposition to the clique economy at court, which was naturally interpreted as insubordination by the courtiers themselves.

The founder of the academy, Gu Xiancheng, and its leading members were by no means averse to neo-Confucianism in general, or even to Wang Shouren's idealistic version. However, they opposed the developmental tendencies that started from Wang Ji's position on the "Heavenly Spring Bridge" and had been elaborated by the Taizhou and Longxi schools. The Donglin Academy, on the other hand, favoured Qian Dehong's position, i.e. progressive self-cultivation. It took a critical stance against the dangerous way of interpreting the difference between good and evil. In their eyes, this ingenious interpretation provided the legitimisation for the total collapse of the ethical value system, which ultimately manifested itself in the bloody rule of the court henchmen. However, some of its members went even further and also turned against Zhu Xi, who postulated that the "principle of order" and the "etheric substance" were of different kinds and, more specifically, against the idea that "human nature" should be good and that "habits" should be the cause of evil. They thus referred to the Neo-Confucian Zhang Zai or, even earlier, to the Confucian Dong Zhongshu.

The unity between the inner and outer world, which Wang Shouren had conceived from within, i.e. from the imagination, was now to some extent conceived again from the outside, from the valorisation of "habits" (literally: the "learned" Xi), and action was seen as the actual possibility of cognition. However, this already signalled a reversal in the direction of development of Confucianism.

The recourse to older ideas is a characteristic of Confucianism per se. However, this recourse was not based on an attempt to pursue older ideas, but rather to restore the old conditions. It was not a contradiction, but an almost inevitable consequence of this endeavour that these old ideas no longer fitted in with the times. This dichotomy, the longing for the old way of life and the emerging doubts about a reliable tradition, characterised Confucianism to a great extent from the 17th century onwards.

The conquest of the empire by the Manchus was another moment that characterised its development. Many scholars abhorred the foreign rule, but they also had the agonising impression that they had brought about the catastrophe themselves through the moral decline represented by Li Zhi, for example. Incidentally, the Manchus themselves were called into the country by the Chinese leadership to put down an uprising. Unlike the Mongols, they did not keep their distance from the Chinese world view, but were themselves ardent Confucians of the Zhu Xichen school of thought and saw themselves as innovators of an empire mired in corruption and weakness.

Liu Zongzhou (1578- 1645) is an example of the self-confidence of these politicians and philosophers. He was close to the Donglin Academy and spent half his day in meditation and the other half in government service. After the Manchu victory, he starved himself to death. Liu Zongzhou had previously established a firm code of self-cultivation, which included regular soul-searching and confession. They went back to similar exercises in Wang Shouren's school and thus ultimately to Buddhism, and perhaps in part to Christianity, which had already gained a foothold at the Chinese imperial court (Matteo Ricci, 1552-1610).

Nationalism and racism

However, there were also less passive forms of resistance against the Manchus. Huang Zongxi (1610-1695) was a disciple of Liu Zongzhou. He first tried his hand at guerrilla warfare until he realised the hopelessness of his endeavours. He then focussed on intellectual resistance. This included the history of philosophy, which he researched from the present backwards into the past in order to trace the sources of political and ideological decline. However, his main work is a different one, namely "Mingyi dai fang lu" (Waiting for information after the darkening of the light). Translated differently, it can also mean: "Waiting for an answer after the Ming dynasty was ousted by the barbarians".
The book is an extremely critical appraisal of the outdated state apparatus. The tenor lies in the elaboration of the idea that, throughout Chinese history, there has been a shift in politics from concern for the common good to the realisation of entirely selfish interests at the top of the state, which ultimately led to the barbarians taking power.

With Huang Zongxi, an intellectual tradition was established that formed an intimate connection between social criticism and nationalism. It initially emerged from the Donglin Academy, which postulated the valorisation of practice and action for the gain of knowledge. This also included political action, which was initially directed against foreign rule, later against the monarchy and finally against the entire Confucian system.

This radicalisation could already be seen in a philosopher who was nine years younger than Huang Zongxi, namely Wang Fuzhi (1619-1692). He also tried in vain to fight in a private army against the Manchus.

He could be seen as the first Chinese racist because he defined the "barbarian" not only culturally but also biologically. This seems to be an inevitable consequence of the fact that the Manchus had not only adopted the Confucian tradition, but had even set themselves up as Confucian preceptors of the empire. He writes:

"Although the Chinese are no different from the barbarians in their bone structure, their sensory organs and their sense of social belonging, yet they must be carefully distinguished from them. Why? If humans do not distinguish themselves from inanimate things, they violate the principle of heaven; and if the Chinese do not distinguish themselves from the barbarians, they violate the principle of earth. But since heaven and earth together organise mankind by structuring it in a twofold way, the principle of man would also be violated if he himself did not make distinctions according to his individual social associations."

Wang Fuzhi also rediscovered the value of laws, which had been so frowned upon for 2000 years after the first emperor of the Qin Dynasty under the banner of Legalism. He writes:
If a state is to be governed, there must first of all be a leader who lays down laws and institutions. Even if they are not the best, they are still better than no laws at all.

Wang Fuzhi has been celebrated in modern China, especially after the founding of the People's Republic, as the standard bearer of materialistic and nationalist thinking.

Science and criticism

The first great scholar Gu Yanwu (1613-1682) belonged to another group of scholars who did not directly oppose the Manchus or shake the foundations of Confucianism, but instead quietly set out in search of the real cause of China's apparent weakness and hoped to find it in the ancient sacred scriptures. For him, unlike Zhu Xi, "reaching things" (ge wu) did not mean pious reflection on the classics to a certain extent, but critical enquiry:

He writes:

The way of the saint is based on "comprehensive study in the whole field of education" and on the "sense of shame in personal conduct".

In other words, he tried to redirect interest back to the simplicity of early Confucianism, the thirst for knowledge and the basic ethical attitude. In his work, a new scientific spirit gradually emerged, in contrast to all of the neo-Confucianist movements that preceded him, one that worked inductively, so to speak, and sought to gain new insights by collecting individual facts. This method soon brought a new value to the fore, namely "proof" (kaozheng), which was, however, related to the classics and not to immediate reality. This took nothing away from its explosive effectiveness, on the contrary: it laid hands on the sacred goods of Confucianism.

This sacrilege was committed quite unconsciously, quite innocently, even with the sincere intention of finding one's way back to the original Confucian truth behind the supposed jumble of commentaries produced by Song-era neo-Confucianism.

On this path into the past, after overcoming Song-period Confucianism, one very quickly arrived at that of the Han dynasty, according to which the artificiality of Wei-Jin-period Confucianism (insofar as it had understood itself as Confucian) had already been revealed in the Song period.

Gu Yanwu thus marked the beginning of the "Han School" or the "Han Doctrine Party", which was to engage in an incessant struggle with the Song School, which continued to cling to Zhu Xi, for three centuries. The progressive forces were rather weaker than the conservative forces, but much more interesting, as they brought about the self-dissolution of Confucianism, while the conservative forces were able to slow down this development, but not stop it.

The dismantling of Confucianism, and thus of the entire traditional system of thought and values, took place internally through the disrespectful treatment of the classics and externally through the equally disrespectful attitude towards the institution of the empire. Both happened in the spirit of Confucian fundamentalism. By drilling to the core of Confucianism, the core itself was ultimately destroyed.

The sudden shift from the apparent discovery of primitive Confucianism to anti-Confucianism took place in little more than a decade around the turn of the century before last.

Criticism and practice

In the tradition derived from Huang Zhongxi and Wang Fuzhi, the scholar Yan Yuan (1635-1704) stands out in particular. He, like his well-known disciple Li Gong (1659 - 1746), may not have conceived any fundamentally new ideas, but he gave clear form to the ideas still generally formulated by Huang Zongxi and Wang Fuzhi.

His criticism of the highly contradictory statements of the Neo-Confucians is remarkable. After quoting two scholars (Zhu Xi and Cheng Hao), he writes: "It is to be regretted that these two masters, with all their high intelligence, have unconsciously allowed themselves to be so confused by the Buddhist doctrine of the "Six Thieves" (Buddhist devaluation of the six senses) that they make two contradictory statements in one breath without realising it themselves."

The unity of mind and body in man that he postulated led Yan Yuan to a very practical view of ethics. He interpreted the "attainment of things" (ge wu) not just as an objective examination of things, but as a real approach, as a direct practice.
For this reason, he worked as a doctor, ploughed fields with his students and taught them all kinds of arts, from archery and weightlifting to music and dance. However, this also led him to revitalise emotions, which in the neo-Confucianism of the Song dynasty, not least under Buddhist influence, had always had a negative connotation. Yan Yuan, on the other hand, argued that it was not feelings and desires per se that needed to be rejected, but only certain defects in them, such as egoism in particular.

The same idea was also advocated by the scholar Dai Zhen (1724-1777), who lived almost a hundred years later and is regarded as the most important representative of the tradition going back to Gu Yanwu, in which the new critical scientific spirit was also cultivated. The question of "proof" now took centre stage for Dai Zhen.

The revolt against Zhu Xi's neo-Confucianism only really took shape with Dai Zhen. Its scholars were still a small minority. Dai Zhen's impact lay in his promotion of the exact sciences such as mathematics, astronomy, phonetics and textual criticism, to which he devoted particular attention.

As a collaborator on a huge project, which in theory involved the recording of the imperial palace library and in practice the recording of all Chinese literature and was reflected in the famous "Imperial Catalogue" (Shiku quanshu zongmu) of the Manchu Emperor Qianlong (1736-1796), he had a unique opportunity to critically compare a vast number of texts with one another.

The re-emergence of the "New Text School"

Like the aforementioned Manchu-era representatives of Confucianism, Dai Zhen belonged to the Han school, which demonstrated its progressiveness precisely by regressing to the philosophy of the Han dynasty. However, the Confucianism of the Han dynasty was anything but uniform. Rather, it was divided into the strongly religiously coloured, early Han Confucianism of the New Text school, which had also incorporated non-Confucian components of the five-element doctrine and the Yin Yang school, but also those of Daoism, and the more rational Confucianism of the Old Text school, which sought to fall back on the more original, actual Confucianism of the master himself.
This gave rise to a new opposition within the Han doctrinal party, which was felt all the more keenly as the dispute between the Old Text and New Text schools had centred on the authenticity of sacred texts. Both sides worked with text-critical arguments to consolidate their position, but with different results. The followers of the New Text school moved towards a Confucianism with Confucius as the saviour of humanity and history as a dynamic process moving towards an end. The followers of the Old Text school advocated a sober, this-worldly version of Confucianism that focussed purely on social ethics.

A decisive attack against the Old Text School was launched by the scholar Yan Ruoju (1636-1704), who also stood out as a mathematician and geographer. He argued that the "great teaching" (da xue), which was elevated to one of the "Four Classical Books" in the Song dynasty, could not have been written down by Zengzi, the direct disciple of Confucius, as claimed. He thus dealt a severe blow to the neo-Confucianism of the Zhu Xi school. However, he then went one step further by explaining that some essential parts of the much more original "Five Classics" in the form represented by the Old Text School were forgeries from the time of the illegitimate Xin Dynasty of Emperor Wang Mang.

However, this also valorised the teachings of the New Text School with its dynamic view of history and contrasted them with the teachings of the Neo-Confucians and the Old Text School with their view of the immutability of the principles of order and thus of history. With the rediscovery and reinterpretation of the writings of the New Text School, it was believed that a way could be found out of the pointless running in circles that the Old Text School and even more so Neo-Confucianism were exclusively able to offer.

It was precisely at this breaking point, however, that Western thought was able to penetrate, at first gently, but then like a flash flood, into the Chinese system of thought, which had always been closed off, but was particularly sealed off after the time of Buddhism.

The scholar and politician Kang Youwei (1858-1927), a figure of archaic but also tragic greatness, stood at this strange threshold, where, on the one hand, the Chinese stream of thought, which had been flowing backwards for three centuries and threatened to disappear into nothingness after the Han philosophy had been measured, and, on the other hand, the foreign stream of thought from the West was already beginning to break through the barrier.

Touched by both developments, his interpretation of the New Text School made him both the last of the outstanding scholars to emerge in the 17th century, who sought the truth in the ever earlier past by analysing texts, and the first representative of a completely new intellectual class inspired by Western belief in progress, who sought salvation in a utopian future. Kang Youwei came to prominence above all through his utopia set out in the "Book of Great Unity" and later through his unsuccessful attempt to institutionalise Confucianism as a state religion. However, he failed because he was initially ahead of his time and was then overtaken by it.
He marked the end of traditional Chinese philosophy and the beginning of the new, if it had already found its form.