The Political Philosophy of Zhang Taiyan: The Resistance of Consiousness (Leiden Series in Comparative Historiography)

The Political Philosophy of Zhang Taiyan

Leiden Series in Comparative Historiography Editors

Axel Schneider Susanne Weigelin-Schwiedrzik

VOLUME 4

The Political Philosophy of Zhang Taiyan The Resistance of Consciousness

By

Viren Murthy

LEIDEN • BOSTON 2011

This book is printed on acid-free paper. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Murthy, Viren. The political philosophy of Zhang Taiyan : the resistance of consciousness / by Viren Murthy. p. cm. — (Leiden series in comparative historiography, ISSN 1574-4493 ; v. 4) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-90-04-20387-7 (hardback : alk. paper) 1. Zhang, Taiyan, 1868–1936— Philosophy. 2. Buddhist philosophy. I. Title. II. Series. CT3990.Z425M87 2011 181’.043—dc22

2011000171

ISSN 1574-4493 ISBN 978 90 04 20387 7 Copyright 2011 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Hotei Publishing, IDC Publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers and VSP. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change.

CONTENTS Acknowledgements .....................................................................

vii

Chapter One. Introduction: Zhang Taiyan and Chinese Modernity ...............................................................................

1

Chapter Two. Zhang’s Critique of Kang Youwei: Anti-Manchuism, the National Essence, and Revolution ......

51

Chapter Three. Buddhist Epistemology and Modern Self-Identity: Zhang Taiyan’s “On Establishing Religion” ....

89

Chapter Four. Transfiguring Modern Temporality: Zhang Taiyan’s Critique of Evolutionary History ................

135

Chapter Five. Daoist Equalization Against the Universal Principle: Zhang Taiyan’s Critique of Late Qing Political Theory ......................................................................

169

Conclusion. Zhang Taiyan, Lu Xun, Wang Hui: The Politics of Imagining a Better Future ............................

223

Bibliography ................................................................................

243

Index ...........................................................................................

259

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS As I look over the final version of this manuscript, I am fondly reminded of the many people whose help and support made this book possible. My dissertation advisor, Prasenjit Duara, encouraged me to think about philosophy historically and patiently guided me throughout my period at the University of Chicago. He also gave me sound advice about how to transform my dissertation into a coherent monograph. His combination of criticism and openness spurred me to develop my ideas, and now that my years of formal education are over, I can say that he was the best teacher that I ever had. My other two dissertation committee members, Guy Alitto and William Sewell, also helped me shape my thoughts and each of them stressed, in his own way, the connection between the development of philosophical ideas and historical change. Much of the research for this book was made possible by a Fulbright Hays grant in 2002–2003, which supported study in Beijing, and a grant from the Japanese Ministry of Education (Monbukagakusho) in 2003–2005, which supported research in Tokyo. I then received a dissertation-writing fellowship from the Woodrow Wilson Foundation in 2006–2007. I would like to thank these three organizations without whose support, both material and symbolic, it would have been difficult if not impossible to turn this book from a concept to a reality. I am also grateful to the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange, the Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek, and the Australian Research Council for grants which, in part, have supported this research through the collaborative project I am involved in, “The Indian Roots of Modern Chinese Thought.” In Beijing, I worked with Wang Hui, whose influence is evident throughout this book. The first time I heard the name Zhang Taiyan was in his small apartment at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing in 1995, when he suggested that I read his essay on Zhang, which was published that year in the Social Science Quarterly (Shehui kexue jikan). Seven years later, in 2002, he was delighted to see that I was beginning research on a dissertation on Zhang Taiyan and generously devoted his time to helping me understand Zhang in the context of modernity. In Tokyo, I received similar guidance from Murata Yūjirō,

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who opened me up to a world of Japanese sinology and scholars who thought about Zhang Taiyan in the context of global modernity. Among these perhaps the one who has influenced me the most directly is the late Nishi Junzō, who attempted a Maoist interpretation of Zhang Taiyan. Although Nishi passed away in 1984, his former students Kondō Kuniyasu, Kiyama Hideo and Sakamoto Hiroko shared with me their thoughts about Nishi’s reading of Zhang Taiyan in the context of postwar Japanese sinology. Zhang Taiyan’s prose is notorious and on this front I was fortunate to have the help of my close friend, Qiao Zhihang. While in Japan, I repeatedly asked her to explain difficult passages and allusions and she unwearyingly clarified portions of the text for me or pointed me to works that provided relevant information. I am greatly indebted to the work of Moishe Postone. Although I was not officially a student of his, he was always generous with his time and helped me understand the significance of capitalist modernity for intellectual history. Needless to say, without his help, this would have been a very different book. After graduating from the University of Chicago, I accepted a postdoctoral fellowship at Leiden University, where I studied with Axel Schneider, who furnished both the material and intellectual conditions for the rewriting and publication of this book. He has provided unyielding support for my project and enlightened me about aspects of German sinology and philosophy. Over the years, a number of friends and colleagues have read and commented on chapters or sections of this book. I would like to thank William Egginton, Joshua Fogel, Anup Grewal, Harry Harootunian, Tze-ki Hon, Ted Huters, Joan Judge, Rebecca Karl, Yuhang Li, Lydia Liu, Takahiro Nakajima, Joshua Pilzer, Andrew Sartori, Saul Thomas, Christian Uhl, Sebastian Veg, Ban Wang, Yiching Wu, Xudong Zhang, and Mingyu Zheng. I fear I may have overlooked others who kindly read portions of the book or helped me in various other ways. If so, I apologize for this innocent oversight. As I was finishing up my manuscript, I was lucky to find an excellent editor, Richard Gunde, who tirelessly polished my prose and posed questions that enabled me to improve the quality of this manuscript. I am, of course, solely responsible for the mistakes and oversights that remain. My final and deepest gratitude goes to my parents, Prema and Pavaman Murthy, and my wife, Yuhang Li, who stood by me through all the twists and turns of my years as a graduate student and as an assistant professor. I dedicate this book to them.

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION: ZHANG TAIYAN AND CHINESE MODERNITY For people who study modern China, Zhang Taiyan needs no introduction.1 During the early twentieth century, he was one of the foremost propagandists for the anti-Manchu movement which culminated in the 1911 Revolution and since 1949, high school students in China are asked to write hagiographic essays about this committed revolutionary. On the other hand, Zhang is also revered as scholar of national-learning, with an unmatchable grasp of classical texts and an idiosyncratic writing style that uses archaic characters to express modern ideas. Zhang was also a critic of Western domination. Much of his critique was shaped by his personal experiences at the dawn of the twentieth century. After an extremely high-profile court case, in 1903, he was sent to jail for three years for plotting to overthrow the Qing Empire. By his own account, he suffered greatly during his incarceration—in Shanghai, the epicenter of the Western imperialist incursion into China. After his release from jail in 1906 until the eve of the 1911 Revolution, he wrote several philosophical essays based on a unique blend of classical learning, Yogācāra Buddhism, and revolutionary ideology. His writings during this period, sometimes referred to as his Buddhist phase, in many ways crystallize the various contradictory aspects of his thought, bringing together traditional texts, revolutionary zeal, and a critique of Western categories and institutions. These conflicting aspects of Zhang Taiyan present the modern interpreter with a puzzle, namely how do we understand the seemingly contradictory dimensions of his thought? These contradictory dimensions have made Zhang Taiyan difficult to classify in the late Qing context. One could separate the intellectual factions that emerged after China’s loss in the Sino-Japanese War of 1895 into conservatives, reformers, and revolutionaries. Each of these political groups encompass complex

1 I have included a brief biographical sketch of Zhang Taiyan’s early life towards the end of this chapter.

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ideological and political tendencies. Conservatives brought together an attachment to the Confucian tradition with a resistance to the importation of Western models of political governance. Reformers are famous for their attempt to unite readings of traditional figures such as Confucius with a political project for reform under the Manchu-led Qing dynasty government. Finally, revolutionaries united novel interpretations of figures in Chinese history with the political goal of overthrowing the Qing government and creating a modern republic ruled by the Han. However, during the first decade of the twentieth century, some Chinese revolutionaries imagined a world beyond republics and aimed at achieving socialism or a world constructed according to anarchist ideals. They often read ideals such as socialism and anarchism into traditional texts. Zhang Taiyan perplexes scholars because, although people often place him in the revolutionary camp, especially in its socialist and anarchist versions, his thought brings out the contradictions in revolutionary ideology. Thus one is puzzled by how he combines a love for the classics, a tradition characteristic of conservatives, a desire for revolution, an unflinching anti-Manchu nationalism characteristic of revolutionaries, and a critique of the state characteristic of the anarchists.2 However, in addition to this he went against all of these groups by attacking all modern institutions from a transcendent perspective informed by a mélange of Buddhist theories of consciousness and German idealist thought mediated through Japanese translations. The breath of his works make his thinking significant not only for understanding Zhang Taiyan as a thinker, but also for revealing with an acute intensity the puzzling juxtaposition of old and new, nationalist particularism and transcendent universalism that pervades the experience of modernity in China and around the world. Understanding the complexity of Zhang’s work consequently provides a key to understanding the interplay between tradition, nationalism, transnationalism, transcendence, and global modernity. For the most part, secondary works on Zhang Taiyan deal with the conundrums of his thought by focusing either on his anti-Manchu revolutionary writings or his classical scholarship. Scholars have tried to locate him clearly on one side of the tradition-feudalism and modernitycapitalism divide. In particular, scholars have debated whether, how, and to what extent Zhang’s thought represented the rising bourgeoisie 2

Furth, “The Sage as Rebel.”

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as opposed to feudalism or the small peasants. Thus, Li Zehou chastises Zhang and claims that “on the one hand he held on to poisonous feudal ( fengjian) elements and on the other he was filled with the empty ideas of small producers.”3 Against this, in what is the most thorough book on Zhang Taiyan in English, Wong Young-tsu argues that Zhang was in fact modern and searched for a modern nation-state.4 The works of Li Zehou and Wong have made an immense contribution to our understanding of Zhang Taiyan and to clarifying the meaning of his often obscure writings. However, they take for granted the opposition between modernity and tradition and fail to highlight the extent to which capitalist modernity is a global phenomenon, institutionalized through the world-system of nation-states that reconstitutes and even creates traditions as well produces ideological visions of modernity. My study draws on the legacy of scholars, such as Nishi Junzō and Wang Hui, who focus on Zhang’s Buddhist writings and interpret his philosophy as resistance to modernity. Zhang’s Buddhist writings are philosophically significant. However, we must understand these writings in the context of China’s entry into the global capitalist modernity. I trace Zhang’s intellectual path from anti-Manchu nationalism to Buddhism, which was mediated by his jail experience. Since Zhang was jailed in Shanghai, where the English had extraterritoriality, he daily met with the presence of foreign domination. Jails were constructed to inculcate the subjectivity of moral citizens, and the religious foundations for this conditioning tended to be Western. For example, the only books that were allowed in prison were books on Christian scriptures and books on Christianity. Zhang resisted this ideological conditioning and secretly read the Buddhist sutras. It is this experience that in part explains why his interpretation of Buddhism was antagonistic to capitalist modernity. Capitalist modernity can be understood an abstract level;5 it is at this level that we can contextualize the interpretations of Buddhism and classical thought of Zhang and other intellectuals in the late Qing dynasty (from around 1841 to the fall of the dynasty in 1911). Drawing

3 Li Zehou, “Zhang Taiyan poxi,” 411. For a synthesis of Chinese and Japanese scholarship on Zhang Taiyan’s revolutionary thought, see Fogel, “Race and Class in Chinese Historiography.” 4 Wong Young-tsu, Search for Modern Nationalism. 5 See Lukács, Geschichte und Klassenbewußtsein; idem, History and Class Consciousness; Postone, Time, Labor and Social Domination.

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on Georg Lukács, I outline a non-reductionist framework to analyze the relationship between structures of thought and the epistemological conditions of capitalism. This framework is non-reductionist because it does not derive ideas from economic or class relations, but from the cultural and philosophical dimensions of capitalism at a deeper level. Lukács shows how various German idealists, including Kant and Hegel, express and eternalize the logic of capitalism with their concepts of Spirit and rationality. That is, their philosophy responds to the movements of rationalization and expansion, but they eventually take this historically specific process as transhistorical by invoking universal visions of evolutionary history. Many late Qing intellectuals drew on classical philosophies such as Buddhism in order to construct such a view of history. Zhang, however, represents an anomaly. He used Yogācāra concepts to build a theory of historical change, but unlike Hegel and Zhang’s late Qing counterparts, Zhang did not endorse an evolutionary vision of history; rather, he used Buddhist categories and the theory of nothingness to negate what he perceived as a transhistorical dynamic of “progress.” Zhang’s thought represents a movement against what one might call the optimistic view of history embodied in Hegelian thought. In Europe, we can see a similar pessimistic turn in thinkers such as Nietzsche, whose remarks about the death of God imply a larger death of a purpose to history. These pessimistic thinkers attempted to find a logic behind the purposeless world and at the same time they sought to transcend or overcome it in some way. Buddhism became meaningful to Zhang as part of this intellectual project and he used it to express a Nietzschean or Schopenhauerian type of transcendence of the common-sense world and rationality. Zhang began to seriously read about German philosophy after fleeing to Japan after his release from jail in 1906. He had been to Japan briefly twice earlier and had already developed a reading knowledge of Japanese. However, during the years 1906 to 1910—the focus of this book—Zhang immersed himself in the work of Japanese thinkers and in German philosophy mediated by Japanese discussions and translations. In the early twentieth century, Japan, and Tokyo in particular, was the locus of multidimentional translingual practice.6 Japanese intellectuals translated German texts into Japanese

6 Lydia Liu explores the “theoretical problems that lead up to an investigation of the condition of translation and of discursive practices that ensue between nations

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and this was a major source for contemporary Chinese intellectuals to learn about Western philosophy. At a more figurative level, Japanese intellectuals read Buddhism in relation to German idealism and viceversa and Chinese intellectuals, in turn, absorbed these Japanese productions of meaning in light of their own political concerns. In Japan, Zhang read about both Buddhist philosophy and Germany philosophy in Japanese discussions and translations and formulated his own philosophy of negation inspired by his reading of Chinese translations of the Yogācāra Buddhist classics. He combined these various forms of thought to develop a unique philosophy of negation, which formed a critical framework within which to analyze Western political institutions and ideologies. Of course, since his critique or negation remained at the level of thought, his critical gestures remained abstract and he was never able to translate his insights into political practice. Nonetheless, such a negation is extremely important since it enabled Zhang to be critical of many concepts, such as evolutionary history and statism, that became increasingly hegemonic in the years to come. Prevalent Paradigms: Interrogating Chinese Intellectual History in Relation to Modernity The relationship between traditional thought and modernity has been a major theme in works on Chinese history. Scholars of this subject have debated the continuing influence of classical thought in modern China. At the center of this debate has been Joseph Levenson and his critics. Levenson clearly and provocatively articulated the way in which Chinese intellectuals experienced a crisis of meaning as they faced the modern world of nation-states. He stressed that from the late nineteenth century onwards, Chinese intellectuals fundamentally changed their view of classical thought. In his famous work, Confucian China and Its Modern Fate,7 Levenson claims that, because late Qing intellectuals found Confucian doctrines incompatible with modern institutions and a world in which China was not the center, they transformed Confucianism

and languages. The study of translingual practice examines the process by which new words, meanings, discourses, and modes of representation arise, circulate, and acquire legitimacy within the host language due to, or in spite of, the latter’s contact/collision with the guest language” ( Lydia Liu, Translingual Practice, 26). 7 Levenson, Confucian China and Its Modern Fate.

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from a universal discourse to a particular philosophy that gave identity to the Chinese. In other words, intellectuals re-created Confucianism as a symbol of China’s particularity as a nation. In Levenson’s words, modern Chinese intellectuals eventually “retired Confucius honorably into the silence of the museum.”8 The “silence” of which he speaks is precisely that loss of the Confucian voice in terms of affecting the content of political policy and being reduced to a sign for national self-hood on the world-stage. Since the publication of Levenson’s book, scholars have both enhanced and criticized his model. Laurence Schneider, Levenson’s student, significantly developed the Levensonian model in his book Ku Chieh-kang and China’s New History.9 Like Levenson, Schneider focuses on how Chinese intellectuals rethought their identity in relation to modern institutions such as the nation-state. However, Schneider complicates Levenson’s paradigm by showing that when Chinese intellectuals, and Gu Jiegang (1893–1980) in particular, confronted the modern world, they were shaped by traditions and drew on classical resources in ways that often fundamentally redefined Chinese identity. Schneider explains how Gu Jiegang, who conceived of himself as continuing Zhang Taiyan’s legacy, criticized Confucianism and pushed Confucius to the periphery of the museum of Chinese identity. Much of Gu’s historical work, he argues, can be understood as an attempt to reconstruct Chinese identity in accordance with more modern notions of time, history, and society. Although Schneider does not develop this insight, his work implies that when intellectuals use tradition to construct identity, they often confront more substantial issues than national identity. In particular, Gu chose to reject Confucianism as the primary basis of identity based on values that have a wider scope than nationalism. A number of scholars have developed this line of argument, and have contended that modern Chinese intellectuals’ moral ideals were significantly influenced by deep-rooted philosophies. For example, historians such as Chang Hao contend that late Qing intellectuals retained a sense of traditional values as they entered the modern world.10 Moreover, in contrast to Levenson, Chang argues that many intellectuals in the late Qing sought universal Ibid., vol. 3, 79. For a discussion of this point in Levenson in relation to global modernity, see Dirlik, “Global Modernity,” 278–79. 9 Schneider, Ku Chieh-kang and China’s New History. 10 Chang Hao, Chinese Intellectuals in Crisis. 8

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meanings and did not merely relegate philosophy and Confucianism to a particular national identity. Yu Yingshi goes even further and claims that far from breaking with the past, modern China continued trends from traditional thought. Yu’s argument echoes and anticipates the work of Japanese sinologists from Naitō Konan to Mizoguchi Yūzo, whom I will discuss in a later section of this chapter. But unlike Mizoguchi, Yu does not stress an alternative Chinese modernity. His main point is that the historical roots of Chinese modernity lie in transformations in Confucian thought. In particular, he argues that late Qing scholars such as Kang Youwei (1858–1927) and Zhang Taiyan continued the legacy of Qing dynasty evidentiary scholars’ internal critique of Confucian thought. In Yu’s view, this internal critique laid the foundations for the more famous May Fourth critique of Confucius by Wu Yu (1872–1949), Hu Shi (1891–1962), and others.11 Perhaps more important, Yu emphasizes that in dealing with new crises, such as humiliation in the face of Western powers, both early and late Qing scholars drew on non-canonical traditions such as Daoism and Buddhism.12 Yu’s point about the importance of non-canonical traditions is well taken and his emphasis on indigenous traditions is an important corrective to the Levensonian model. However, the scholars who have responded to Levenson have been unable to understand the significance of modern Chinese thought in a context beyond national boundaries because they have largely overlooked the role of global modernity in the reconstitution of Chinese thought. In other words, modern Chinese intellectuals’ appeal to tradition must be understood as a response to a set of crises associated with China’s entry into a global capitalist world. In order to understand the nature of such crises and the logic associated with how intellectuals drew on traditional modes of thought in novel ways, I develop a theory of global modernity which forms the framework for my analysis of late Qing intellectual history and Zhang Taiyan’s thought in particular.

11 See Yu Yingshi, “Wusi yundong yu Zhongguo chuantong,” 82–91. Wang Fansen has argued that Zhang Taiyan anticipated the May Fourth critique of Confucius. See Wang Fansen, Zhang Taiyan sixiang. I have discussed Zhang’s relationship to Confucianism in “The Politics of Fengjian in Late Qing and Early Republican China.” 12 For a detailed analysis of Buddhism in twentieth-century China, see Goldfuss, Vers un Bouddhisme du XXe siècle.

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Chang Hao touches on the significance of this larger global context when he claims that the internal tensions within Chinese thought were exacerbated when Chinese intellectuals confronted Western imperialism. In making this point, Chang implies that intellectuals conceived of traditional thought differently once they confronted global modernity. More recently, Axel Schneider has argued against theories of continuity by stressing that, unlike evidentiary scholars who still worked with the Confucian notion of the Dao (“the Way”), late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Chinese intellectuals began to conceive of history in a disenchanted world.13 In other words, beginning with the late Qing, intellectuals began to reject the cosmological framework of Confucianism, which had informed previous discussions of history. In its place, beginning in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, they began to conceive of history in relation to the disenchanted world of science. Axel Schneider’s essay opens up the question of how to conceive of Chinese intellectuals’ reinterpretation of classical ideas in relation to modernity. In other words, if categories such as the Dao no longer grounded the legitimacy of the classics, we must examine how classical philosophies, including ideas such as the Dao, were reinterpreted in light of global processes related to capitalist modernity. This requires investigating the relationship between Chinese modernity and global modernity. With respect to this question, I draw critically on the work of Japanese scholars of Zhang Taiyan, especially the work of the famous postwar sinologist and literary critic Takeuchi Yoshimi. Does Zhang Taiyan Criticize Modernity? One of the main differences between the concept of capitalist modernity used in my own study and previous works on late Qing intellectual history is the level of abstraction at which I define this term. I will explain my use of this term in more detail later when I discuss the theories of Georg Lukács and others, but first, I move to an early Japanese debate about Zhang Taiyan, since Japanese sinologists bring the problem of modernity, and Chinese modernity in particular, to the forefront of their analysis.

13

Schneider, “Between Dao and History,” 58.

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Some of the most important work on Zhang Taiyan and modernity emerged in postwar Japan, when scholars were heatedly debating Western, Japanese, and Chinese modernities. The background to this debate lies in the Meiji period, when Fukuzawa Yukichi and others began to narrate history based on a concept of civilization that explicitly took Western nations as a model. This narrative of modernity informed a number of Japanese studies of Chinese modernity, from Meiji scholars, such as Taguchi Ukichi, to Taishō and prewar Showa scholars such as Miyazaki Ichisada and Naitō Konan.14 Postwar scholars differed from their Meiji counterparts by seeing China not as backward but as modernizing early and hence famously claimed that capitalism emerged during the Song dynasty (960–1279). This then could serve as the foundation for socialism. That is, because China had attained capitalism earlier than other countries, it could progress along the path to socialism earlier. During the postwar years, the intellectual historian/political theorist Maruyama Masao turned Naitō Konan’s argument on its head and located Japanese modernity precisely in its ability to break free from Song Confucianism.15 Despite the differences, all these scholars (including sinologists such as Levenson) share a tendency to understand modernity as exclusively Western. Partly due to reflections on the Communist movement in China, Japanese sinologists from the late 1940s to the 1980s, such as Nishi Junzō and his students, rethought modernity by stressing what we might call alternative modernity, which they saw as rooted in China’s anti-imperialist struggle. Perhaps the foremost theorist of this camp is Takeuchi Yoshimi: although he did not write about Zhang Taiyan, he wrote extensively about Zhang’s most famous student, Lu Xun (1881–1936). Takeuchi’s discussion of modernity seems to repeat the conventional idea that modernity emerges with the separation of capitalism from feudalism. However, he focuses on the role that recognition plays in this process. In his renowned essay, “What is Modernity?” published in 1948, Takeuchi makes the following observations:

14 See Miyazaki Ichisada, Ajia shi, Miyazaki Ichisada zenshū, and Naitō Torajirō, Chūgoku kinsei shi. For a sympathetic and in-depth discussion of Naitō’s work, see Fogel, Politics and Sinology. 15 See Maruyama Masao, Studies in the Intellectual History of Tokugawa Japan. For a discussion of Maruyama’s analysis of Confucianism, see Kersten, Democracy in Postwar Japan, chap. 3.

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chapter one Modernity is the self-recognition of Europe as seen within history, the taking as a self that self which separates itself from feudalism (hōken teki mono kara kubetsu sareta jiko wo jiko to shite), which Europe gained in the process of liberating itself from the feudal (a process that involved the emergence of free capital in the realm of production and the formation of personality qua autonomous and equal individuals with respect to human beings). Therefore, it can be said that Europe is first possible only in this history and that history itself is possible only in this Europe.16

This dense passage describes a primal scene in which Europe recognizes itself in history and simultaneously creates history through its self-recognition. Thus Takeuchi claims that the construction of historical continuity conceals a more fundamental struggle: “History is not an empty form of time. It includes unlimited moments in which one struggles against obstacles so that the self may be itself, without which both the self and history would be lost.”17 Since Takeuchi does not consider history as a series of continuous moments, we should understand the unlimited moments not only quantitatively, but qualitatively. Each instant involves a struggle for selfhood, which cannot be quantified without simplifying the nature of this struggle and in particular the relationship between European imperialism and Asian identity. Below we shall examine the relationship between this movement of history, imperialism, and the logic of capitalism, but Takeuchi already makes some gestures in this direction by linking evolutionary visions of history and imperialism to the spread of capitalism: Europe’s invasion of the Orient resulted in the phenomenon of Oriental capitalism, and this signified the equivalence between European selfpreservation and self-expansion. For Europe this was accordingly conceptualized as the progress of world history and the triumph of reason. The form of invasion was first conquest followed by demands for the opening of markets and the transformation to such things as guarantees of human rights and freedom of religious belief, loans, economic assistance, and support for educational and liberation movements. These very transformations symbolized the progress of the spirit of rationalism.18

16 Takeuchi Yoshimi, “What is Modernity? (The Case of Japan and China),” 54; Japanese text in idem, “Nihon no kindai to Chūgoku no kindai: Ro Jin wo tegakari to shite,” 13. 17 Ibid., Eng. 54, J. 13. 18 Ibid., Eng. 55, J. 14.

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Takeuchi’s discussion of European expansion and ideology anticipates the work of recent postcolonial scholars. In addition to arguing that imperialism presents itself as global historical progress or the triumph of reason, Takeuchi underscores that there is a more subtle form of domination, which actually appears as liberation movements. This refers to the epistemological dimensions of European domination and this is one of the things that make resistance so complex. The focus of Takeuchi’s essay is precisely on the possibility of resistance (teikō ). The Orient resisted European domination, but Takeuchi explains that even “resistance could not change the thoroughgoing rationalist conviction that all things can ultimately be objectified and extracted. . . . s the Orient was destined to increasingly Europeanize.”19 Takeuchi links European expansion to transformations in epistemology, a point to which we will return in our discussion of Lukács and reification. Here let us simply note that this dialectic between resistance and re-incorporation makes it almost impossible to make movements of resistance produce something different from dominant European paradigms. However, Takeuchi notes that as Europe invaded Asia it also became the Other and its movement thus opened a space for resistance through the production of heterogeneity. “At the same time that world history was approaching its completion with the comprehension of the Orient, the contradictions of this history surfaced through mediation of the heterogeneity contained in the Orient.”20 The key to transformative resistance is intimately connected to maintaining this heterogeneity, which is constantly concealed through dominant epistemological categories. This type of Asian resistance operates on a different level from the resistance of the United States against Europe, since the former did not fundamentally challenge Europeanization; the United States only succeeded in becoming “pure Europe.”21 Throughout the essay, Takeuchi highlights the difference between Japan, which did not resist, and China, which did, and contends that China’s resistance actually succeeded in producing an alternative to the

Ibid., Eng. 55–56, J. 15. Ibid., Eng. 56, J. 15. Arif Dirlik discusses the problem of resistance to global capitalist modernity in a similar manner in the contemporary context in his Global Modernity, esp. 158–59. 21 Takeuchi Yoshimi, “What is Modernity? (The Case of Japan and China),” Eng. 57, J. 17. 19

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West. Takeuchi explains this difference between Chinese and Japanese modernity and the difficulty of resistance by referring to a parable by Lu Xun concerning a wise man, a slave, and a fool. The wise man tells the slave “your luck will improve soon.” However, the slave toils for his master day and night and complains to the fool. The fool suggests that the slave protest to the master and have him make a window in his room. The slave thinks that making a window would be improper, but the fool insists on helping the slave and starts tearing down the walls. At this point, the slave yells for help and other slaves drive the fool off. When the master returns, the slave explains to him what happened and the master praises the slave. The slave then tells the wise man that his predictions came true since his master praised him.22 Takeuchi uses Lu Xun’s narrative to illustrate how those who are resisting can easily repeat the paradigm of the oppressor. Thus, in Takeuchi’s view, the relationship between the fool and the master/wise man simulates Japan’s confrontation with the West. Japan competes with the West, but does so on the West’s own terms, namely capitalism, and hence is unable to think of an alternative. China, on the other hand, is the slave, who appears to have nothing and to be backward, especially from the point of view of the fool, but it is precisely because slaves have nothing that they are filled with potential. They must awaken to their own nothingness, and to the fact that the above-mentioned heterogeneity cannot be understood within existing categories. In Takeuchi’s view, Lu Xun’s despair is precisely a result of this nothingness. The slave must face this nothingness if he is to think of an alternative at a point when all paths seem to be occupied by the oppressor/ imperialist. Takeuchi describes this existential crisis with characteristic poignancy: The “most painful thing in life,” awakening from a dream, occurs when the slave rejects his status as slave while at the same time rejecting the fantasy of liberation, so that he becomes a slave who realizes that he is a slave. This is the state in which one must follow a path even though there is no path to follow. Such a slave rejects being himself at the same time that he rejects being anything else. This is the meaning of despair (zetsubō ) in Lu Xun and what makes Lu Xun possible. Despair appears as resistance which travels a path when there are no paths. Resistance appears as putting despair into action (zetsubō no kodōka to shite arawareru).23

For Lu Xun’s original parable, see Lu Xun, Yecao qianxi, 153–61. Takeuchi Yoshimi, “What is Modernity? (The Case of Japan and China),” Eng. 71, J. 41 (trans. amended). 22 23

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Unlike Japanese intellectuals, who were trapped in the framework of capitalist competition and historical progress, Lu Xun represented a new form of resistance, like the slave who follows a path when all paths have receded. The existential situation that Takeuchi describes is similar to Heidegger’s discussion of being-toward-death, but he perhaps also draws on Hegel’s formulation of the slave’s experience of death in the Phenomenology of Spirit. Hegel writes that for the slave, death dissolves the internal being (innerlich aufgelöst werden) [of consciousness] and trembles every fiber in its being (durchaus in sich erzittert) and everything fixed in it is shaken. But the pure universal movement, the absolute flowing away (Flüssigwerden) of everything stable is the simple essence of self-consciousness, absolute negativity, pure being-for-self, which is implicit in this consciousness.24

Hegel speaks of the dialectic between the master and slave, but in Takeuchi’s view, the absolute negativity of the slave’s consciousness is the key to resistance. This is precisely because all positivity is always already monopolized by the oppressor/colonizer. Takeuchi clarifies this distinction between a reaction that merely reproduces the oppressor’s positivity and real resistance by again referring to Japan and China. Specifically, he distinguishes between two types of conceptual transformation or conversion: tenkō 転向 and kaishin 回心. Tenkō usually refers to conversion from one political party to another and Takeuchi uses it to describe the Japanese ideological shift to the West and their quick use of Western categories to judge themselves and the rest of the world. “Tenkō is a phenomenon that occurs where there is no resistance.”25 In Takeuchi’s view, such a conversion occurs when people do not grasp onto their selves and so are quick to reach for new and prevalent ideologies. Kaishin, on the other hand, is a more complicated concept and often refers to religious conversion, particularly to accepting the Christian path after acknowledging one’s past mistakes by following pagan beliefs. The characters can also be pronounced eshin, in which case the term refers to the Buddhist concept of repenting one’s sins and turning towards the path of Buddhist salvation. This Buddhist idea is closely related to the character couplet hoshin 発心, the Chinese characters used to

24 Hegel, Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, 117; German text in idem, Phänomenolgie des Geistes, 153 (trans. amended; emphasis in the original ). 25 Takeuchi Yoshimi, “What is Modernity? (The Case of Japan and China),” Eng. 75, J. 47.

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translate the Buddhist term citta-utpāda, which refers to achieving the Buddha-mind.26 Takeuchi’s use of the term also has the religious connotation of awakening but it is specifically associated with the attempt to preserve the self, rather than letting the self be carried away by various new ideologies. Hence kaishin refers to a transformation of the self that occurs through self-affirmation. In Takeuchi’s view, unlike Japan, whose modernization was quickly completed after the Meiji Restoration, China experienced a series of failures until the 1949 revolution, which represented an alternative to the West. Thus, as the characters kaishin suggest, China’s political trajectory in the modern world began with a turn inward, with the Self-Strengthening movement (1861–1895) which attempted to preserve Chinese culture, and thus, Chinese modernity was late. Takeuchi describes the relation of this process to China’s resistance and its turn inward in the following manner: The self changes by holding fast to it. (That which does not change is not a self.) I am “I” and yet not “I.” If I were simply “I,” that would not even be “I.” In order that I be “I,” there must necessarily be a juncture at which I am outside of “I.” This is the juncture at which old things become new and the Antichrist becomes Christian. This moment appears in the individual as conversion, and in history as revolution.27

This paradigm of the Chinese revolution, and Chinese resistance more generally, would have an enormous impact on Japanese postwar sinology and on interpretations of Zhang Taiyan in particular. Takeuchi points to a dialectical resolution of the puzzle mentioned at the opening of the Introduction: in Zhang’s thought, through the transformation of the “I,” conservatism becomes a revolutionary force. Speaking more broadly, in China, the old eventually points to a qualitatively new mode of life, while in Japan, the new is just another variation of the “old” globally predominant capitalism. The Chinese clung to their own legacy and tradition, that which made them a self, as a nation, and through this, their legacy and their self were transformed radically. There is a sense in which Takeuchi anticipates the Levensonian paradigm, but gives it a radical twist. Like Levenson, Takeuchi sees tradition as becoming representative of the Chinese “I,” but he claims that as Chinese take

Ding Fubao, Foxue dacidian, 431. Takeuchi Yoshimi, “What is Modernity? (The Case of Japan and China),” Eng. 75, J. 47–48. 26

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up this “I” and confront the Other, who constantly denudes tradition of its content and prestige, tradition becomes the vestibule of nothingness and pure resistance. For a number of Japanese sinologists, Zhang Taiyan exemplifies this complex relationship between resistance, tradition, and modernity. Yamada Keiji undertook an extremely influential synthesis of Takeuchi’s vision of Chinese modernity and an analysis of Zhang Taiyan’s thought in 1970, entitled “The Chinese Revolution as Possibility”: In his [Zhang Taiyan’s] thought, by reviving the living nucleus of tradition, it becomes a new source of creativity. This is precisely the negation of the rigidified and formalized tradition. However in the process of affirming the superiority of the lived nucleus of one’s tradition, Zhang must appear as a protector of Chinese culture. Zhang Binglin28 stands in the precarious position of being reactionary because he is revolutionary. After Zhang Binglin, revolutionaries usually either negate the tradition from the outside or negate it from the inside.29

Yamada goes on to stress that “tradition can only really be surpassed (koerarete yuku) by internal negation.”30 Zhang was one of the few people who exemplified this strange Hegelian dialectic that produces a new possibility by emphasizing the old. Yamada applies Takeuchi’s thought to Zhang Taiyan and contends that Lu Xun and Mao Zedong each inherited Zhang Taiyan’s legacy. However, he does not explain how the Chinese tradition became a form of resistance. Nishi Junzō offers a narrative of the way Chinese tradition was transformed such that it could become a pure negativity of resistance. In his 1964 essay “Construction from Nothing,” Nishi cites Mao Zedong’s description of the ideological vacuum in China before Marxism: In this movement of resistance, from the Opium War in 1840 until the eve of the May Fourth movement in 1919, in a total of more that seventy years, the Chinese never had an ideological weapon capable of fighting imperialism. The worn out and rigid ideological weapons of feudalism were broken during the war and they declared defeat. With their backs against the wall, during their bourgeois revolutionary period, the Chinese were forced ideological weapons or political policies such as evolution, natural rights and bourgeois republics from the imperialist countries’ weapons arsenal. They created political parties and created revolution,

28 29 30

Japanese scholars often refer to Zhang Taiyan by his given name, Binglin. Yamada Keiji, “Kanosei to shite no Chūgoku no kakumei,” 26. Ibid., 26–27.

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chapter one hoping to defend against foreign powers on the outside and create a republic of China inside with precisely these weapons. However, these were also like the ideological weapons of feudalism—they were extremely weak and these were also defeated . . . (Mao Zedong xuanji, vol. 4, the end of the book).”31

Nishi notes that most scholars would say that the ideological weapon of the Chinese revolution was Marxism-Leninism, but points out that this leaves the ideological foundations of the 1911 Revolution untheorized. After all, in Mao’s view, although Marxism-Leninism had not developed in China at the time, the 1911 Revolution was also an anti-imperialist revolution.32 In Nishi’s view, one must look at the 1911 Revolution to find the crucial moment of indigenous resistance that lived on and helped shape the 1949 revolution. Here Nishi proposes a Takeuchi-style narrative that shows how China’s tradition is stripped to nothing, but the nothing that remains becomes the fulcrum of resistance: “When the West invaded, as China retreated, the Chinese substance discarded its skin, flesh, and even bones. China preserved itself as only marrow.”33 Through this process, by the time of the 1911 Revolution, the Chinese tradition was reduced to pure negativity. Zhang Taiyan used this negativity for the purposes of resistance. It is not surprising that Nishi’s analysis revolves around Zhang’s famous essay in the journal Minbao, “On the Five Negations,” and unlike Takeuchi, Nishi ties Zhang Taiyan’s “nothingness” to the categories of Chinese Marxism. In particular, through a careful, but creative, reading of a number of Zhang’s texts, Nishi concludes that Zhang Taiyan’s “nothingness” refers to the “people” and thus they are the subjects who enact the various negations (of the state, imperialism, capitalism, and eventually themselves). According to Nishi, Zhang’s philosophy was made possible by the various defeats and failures in reform policies in the nineteenth century, which enabled Zhang to invert the basic structure of Chinese cosmology. Nishi describes this cosmology in a uniquely Hegelian manner:

31 Citing from “Weixin lishiguan de pochan” in Mao Zedong xuanji vol. 4, 1402–1403. Cf. Nishi Junzō, “Mu kara no keisei,” 20. 32 Nishi cites Mao (in the same essay, “Guannian de lishi de pochan”) as saying that “the Chinese people revolted against the Qing government because the Qing government was a tool of imperialism.” Nishi then adds that regardless of whether this statement is true, by 1911 China was already experiencing imperialist aggression (ibid., 22). 33 Nishi Junzō, “Kore kara no jukyō oyobi Chūgoku shisō,” 128.

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The thought of the dynastic system of China is a conception of the world according to which, on the level of existence, heaven is nothing = no limits = all-encompassing (無＝無限定＝全有) hence the things under heaven are existing = relative = themselves empty (有＝相対性 ＝自体空無). . . . Zhang twists this around and turns it into a world that goes from being to nothing and buries itself. In other words, the people, who are nothing in front of the Son of Heaven, realize this nothingness and together . . . take revenge.34

Nishi’s narrative follows Takeuchi’s, but he take his cue from Zhang’s famous statement “rely on the self, not on others.”35 In Nishi’s view, Zhang’s idea of relying on the “self ” does not mean that it is purely independent. It emerges only in the face of others and only as a provisional (仮現的) subject.36 Nishi has chosen a term used in Buddhism to express the incarnation of spirit provisionally for a specific task and is related to another term, keshin (化身, nirmāna-kāya), which specifically refers to the “provisional manifestation of the Buddha.” Nishi uses this term to signify the transcendent nature of Zhang’s subject, which implies that because this subject is nothing = limitlessness, after negating all antagonistic others, the provisional self must itself dissolve. As Nishi explains, Zhang’s subject = nothing = the people, resists not only imperialism, but also internal enemies such as landlords, capitalists, and the dynastic system. With this interpretation, Nishi is able to connect Zhang Taiyan to Mao. He claims that the problem with Zhang’s thought is that it is a “pure nihilism” without any positive or active content.37 He believes that Mao continues Zhang’s legacy when he asserts that the people are blank, but uses Marxism-Leninism to give Zhang’s initial resistance positive form, so that it does not just end up negating the world. Nishi’s analysis may seem far-fetched, but he is the first to provide this radical interpretation of Zhang Taiyan as a critic of modernity and we can see many of the concepts he proposes, such as the “provisional subject,” in later writers such as Wang Hui. I will deal with such issues in Chapters Three and Five, but here I want to locate Nishi’s analysis in the Japanese intellectual context and note the controversy that Nishi’s essay spurred. The first well-known response to Nishi’s essay was from

34 35 36 37

Nishi Junzō, “Mu kara no keisei,” 3.26. The phrase is from Zhang Taiyan’s 1908 “Letter to Tie Zheng.” Nishi Junzō, “Chūgoku shisō no naka no jinmin gainen,” 209. Ibid.

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Shimada Kenji, who scathingly criticized Nishi’s interpretation. In his essay on Zhang Taiyan, published in 1970, Shimada devoted a footnote to Japanese scholarship on Zhang Taiyan and singled out Nishi Junzō and his student Kondō Kuniyasu for criticism. The tendency to read extraordinary and deep meaning into this “Buddhist voice” in Zhang’s essays has become pronounced in recent studies of Zhang Binglin in Japan. Thus, the tendency not to take an overall view of Zhang and consider his relationship to the entire history of Chinese thought, to magnify Zhang’s views (virtually without limit, and indeed uncontrollably) in this particular area and to draw some sort of bizarre conclusion from all this has become marked.38

Shimada refers to a number of Nishi’s and Kondō’s ideas, such as that Zhang was a “thinker opposed to ‘modernization’ who, from the position of the people at the very base of the ancient structure, sought to negate modernization together with that structure.”39 Shimada suggests that Nishi and Kondō drew such conclusions because they concentrated on a “limited portion of Zhang’s writings” and piled “deduction on top of deduction.”40 By the time Shimada had written this essay, he had already published his famous book on the emergence of modern subjectivity in the late Ming, The Frustration of Modern Thought in China (Chūgoku ni okeru kindai shii no zassetsu),41 and hence he naturally took issue with Nishi’s description of premodern China. However, more than this, he makes a general remark about the study of intellectual history: “The work of intellectual history, when for example studying a certain thinker, is to follow the twists and turns that the thinker’s ideas genuinely describe.”42 Nishi never responded to Shimada’s critique, but in 1981, when Kondō Kuniyasu gathered a number of his essays on late Qing intellectual history into a book, he added an appendix to respond to Shimada’s critique and specifically addressed the problem of the methodology of intellectual history. Kondō contends that Shimada’s interpretation of Zhang Taiyan completely neglects the problem of historical significance, which cannot be reduced to following the twists and turns of a thinker’s

38 Shimada Kenji, “Zhang Binglin: Traditional Chinese Scholar and Revolutionary,” in idem, Pioneers of the Chinese Revolution, 1–85, 154–55 n. 96. 39 Ibid., 155. 40 Ibid. 41 Shimada Kenji, Chūgoku ni okeru kindai shii no zassetsu (1949 ed.). 42 Pioneers of the Chinese Revolution, 155.

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intellectual development. Rather, the question of historical significance directly involves a more general theory of Chinese modernity in relation to Western modernity and imperialism. When describing Chinese modernity, Kondō follows Nishi and Takeuchi, but also declares his adherence to the Chinese narrative of socialism: I see Chinese modernity as a process of resistance against the invasion of Western modernity and in this process, a resistance to the oppression of old China or a process of “opposition” (han, 反); in the end the people defeated the internal and external enemies and went from being “slaves” to being “humans.” I take modern Chinese thought as a part of this process, as an intellectual perspective that reflects, grasps, and guides it.43

Kondō’s response to Shimada is coherent and persuasive, but with his description of modernity, we see that he retreats from Takeuchi’s more critical conception. While Kondō repeats Takeuchi’s primal scene of Chinese modernity in which China opposes or resists Western modernity, in Takeuchi’s view, the content of Western modernity (for example, the modern world view of evolution) also comes under critique. From Kondō’s perspective, what is being opposed is merely imperialism, since the narrative of modernity, namely the move from slaves to humans, mimics the Western story of modernity. Despite their different periodizations of Chinese history, Kondō Kuniyasu, Shimada Kenji, Yu Yingshi, and Naitō Konan all share a certain conception of modernity based on the Western model, on civil society, and on modern subjectivity; they do not make these forms the object of critique. In this connection, Mizoguchi Yūzō, although not a scholar of Zhang Taiyan, made an important intervention in the debate on Chinese modernity with his 1981 book, The Refraction and Development of Premodern Chinese Thought.44 In summary, he supports Takeuchi’s idea of an alternative Chinese modernity, but rather than locating it in resistance, he finds it in the dialectic of the Chinese tradition. The title of this book shows that Mizoguchi was in dialogue with Shimada’s book on Ming thought since he places his “refraction” (kussetsu, 屈折) against Shimada’s “frustration” (zasetsu, 挫折). Mizoguchi emphasizes the continuity between late Ming thought and early Qing policies and ideas, despite the evident anti-Manchuism of early Qing thinkers. He

43 44

Kondō Kuniyasu, Chūgoku kindai shisōshi kenkyū, 141. Mizoguchi Yūzō, Chūgoku zenkindai shisō no kussetsu to tenkai.

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then argues strongly for the influence of late Ming/early Qing ideas on the formation of modern Chinese thought. However, Mizoguchi’s more provocative thesis is that the intellectual trajectory from Song Confucianism to late Qing textual scholarship did not just lead to a modernity of free subjectivity; Mizoguchi supports Takeuchi’s thesis that Chinese modernity as socialist is qualitatively different from Western capitalist modernity. However, in his 1989 book, China as Method, he explicitly singles out Takeuchi and Nishi for criticism and claims that their view of Chinese modernity as a critique of Western-Japanese modernity does not really grasp China; rather, these scholars construct a fictitious China in order to criticize the modernization project of postwar Japan.45 Against this narrative, Mizoguchi famously claims that numerous late Qing thinkers, such as Tan Sitong (1865–1898) and Kang Youwei, developed their communal vision of modernity by drawing on concepts from Confucian philosophy and visions of community developed from the Song through the Qing. Mizoguchi’s theory is complex and a full discussion of his work goes beyond the scope of this Introduction, but a point to which he constantly returns, and that I would like to stress here, is that the Chinese emphasis on community ( gong) in phrases such as “the empire is common” (tianxia wei gong), influenced Chinese modern thought. Thus he contends that modern thinkers such as Kang Youwei and Sun Zhongshan (Sun Yat-sen) stressed the equality ( pingdeng) and freedom of the group more than individual freedom.46 In short, Mizoguchi points out that although one can speak of renewal (kakushin) in both Japan and China as they entered the worldsystem of nation-states, to understand each of these nation’s particular renewals one must investigate the transformations of their respective premodern histories.47 By emphasizing premodern history, he contends that one can break free from privileging Western modernity and superficially comparing Japan and China in terms of “early” and “late” modernizers. For example, rather than referring to the impact of the West, Mizoguchi links Japan’s obsession with nationalism to various feudal senses of community and connects the Chinese acceptance of the ideal of world communism to traditional theories of the empire (all-under-heaven).

45 46 47

Mizoguchi Yūzō, Hōhō to shite no Chūgoku, 44. Ibid., 20–25. Ibid., 25.

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Towards a Synthesis of Global Dynamics and Indigenous Developments: Wang Hui Despite the range of theoretical positions discussed above, we see an emphasis on Chinese particularity among thinkers such as Takeuchi, Nishi, and Mizoguchi. These scholars all attempt to link the uniqueness of Chinese modernity to the Communist experience and Mao Zedong in particular. In the late 1980s and especially since the 1990s, scholars in Japan have more or less discarded this paradigm as representing a Japanese fantasy about Communist China.48 Moreover, with the prevalence of new theories such as poststructuralism, many sinologists criticize Mizoguchi’s perspective as essentialist.49 However, Mizoguchi’s works have found a more receptive audience in China during the last decade or so in the context of what Arif Dirlik calls a transition to post-socialism.50 During the late 1980s and early 1990s, scholars in China tended to consider Marxism theoretically useless and primarily as an oppressive state ideology. The Communist state itself has been receding from Marxism and Maoism since the June 4th movement and has been increasingly trying to find alternative models of Chinese identity. However, by the mid-1990s, Deng Xiaoping’s plan to proceed with market reforms at full speed pushed problems associated with capitalism, such as inequality, into the heart of China’s modern cities and into the consciousness of Chinese intellectuals.51

48 Thus Kondō Kuniyasu’s sympathetic 2003 book on Mao Zedong came as a surprise to most of the Japanese sinological community. This book was quickly translated into Chinese as Gemingzhe yu Jianshezhe: Mao Zedong (Song Yongzhi and others, trans.; Beijing: Zhongguo qingnian chubanshe, 2004). 49 See for example, Sakamoto Hiroko, Chūgoku minzokushugi no shinwa, jinshū, shintai, jendā, 22. Sakamoto specifically accuses Mizoguchi of cultural essentialism (bunka honshitsu shugi ). 50 Dirlik has written extensively about affects of this transition in for cultural and intellectual trends; see, for example, his “Confucius in the Borderlands.” 51 Mizoguchi’s work was translated into Chinese in 1994 and clearly his superb scholarship made his book required reading for scholars working on late imperial Chinese intellectual history. However, his work also had a clear appeal in the above ideological context. His stress on the particularity of the Chinese experience and his attempt to link the tradition to Chinese communism would to some extent be accepted by Chinese nationalists, new leftists, and even neo-liberals. Chinese nationalists could use his book to stress the particularity of China; new leftists could use it to show why they should follow Chinese tradition in criticizing the inequalities associated with capitalism; and neo-liberals could claim that Mizoguchi shows us precisely the type of Chinese tradition that is incompatible with capitalism and from which Chinese need to distance themselves.

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In this context, Wang Hui, a contemporary “new leftist,” situates Mizoguchi and other Japanese sinologists’ work in a new paradigm, which in many ways influences my own interpretation of Zhang Taiyan. In his recent book, Wang affirms the importance of the transformations of premodern Chinese thought and society in understanding late Qing and early Republican Chinese intellectual history.52 However, he stresses that classical ideas were transformed as China entered the global capitalist system of nation-states. He contends that China entered the modern world when forced to do so by imperialism, but that the effects of this confrontation were intimately shaped by transformations in Confucian thought. This position seems natural and in some sense is implicit in Mizoguchi’s own writings; however, by explicitly making this point, Wang’s work gestures in two different directions. Like Mizoguchi, he hopes to ground China’s resistance to capitalism in transformations in the Confucian tradition and specifically a dialectic initiated by the Song dynasty concept of the heavenly principle. In Wang’s view, Song dynasty tropes, such as the heavenly principle, enabled late Qing intellectuals to grasp and translate concepts of science into their indigenous framework. Wang is also interested in how tropes of community from the Song dynasty serve as a base for resistance to capitalist modernity. However, he is more sensitive to the way that late Qing intellectuals transformed and reconstituted concepts from Song Confucianism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Thus any resistance that these concepts initiated must be understood as part of a more general movement of incorporation into global capitalist modernity.53 Unlike in Mizoguchi’s theory, for Wang, Chinese resistance to modernity does not lie merely in concepts of community; rather, it involves

Wang Hui, Xiandai Zhongguo sixiang de xingqi. Wang’s stress on global modernity makes him much more ambivalent about Maoism than any of the early postwar Japanese sinologists. In fact, a central aim of Wang’s work is to develop a framework that is capable of grasping the Chinese and Western paths to modernity as part of one single process, a process linked to the dynamics of a world of global capitalist nation-states. As part of this project, he opposes the distinction between state and society in capitalist nations and thus questions neo-liberal scholars’ judgment that Communist China, which is supposed to be characterized by an overarching state, was somehow outside the capitalist system. On the contrary, Wang argues, the establishment of state power in China throughout the twentieth century has been intimately connected to attempts to industrialize and compete in the capitalist world system. Wang claims that the rationalization that began in the late Qing and continues today is inextricably connected to China’s transition to capitalism. 52 53

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both the communal and the individual. In fact, although Wang does at times mention late Qing intellectuals’ pursuit of equality as their attempt to defy modernity, his narrative of capitalist modernity is largely characterized by the universality and rationalization associated with the idea of the universal principle ( gongli ).54 In Wang’s view, the universal principle paradoxically represents both capitalist domination and resistance to the process of capital formation in China. On the one hand, late Qing intellectuals developed this principle through transforming the Song Confucian moral/metaphysical concept of the heavenly principle, which Song Confucians wielded to criticize the inequalities of their society. But on the other hand, late Qing thinkers associated the universal principle with modern scientific, legal, and social laws, which are intimately related to capitalism and state formation. Put differently, in the early twentieth century, intellectuals used the universal principle to signify an abstract law that subsumes particularity. From this perspective, late Qing intellectuals were not agents of pure resistance, but an embodiment of the paradox of simultaneous resistance and reproduction. Moreover, Wang suggests that to understand this paradox, we must focus on the legacy of indigenous resources in the tradition, which will illuminate how late Qing intellectuals were “both embracing and opposing historical change [i.e., modernity]” and how “as they pursued the universal principle, they rejected many of the universalisms that were proposed in the name of the universal principle.”55 Towards the conclusion of his book, Wang begins to explain why this is the case. He points out that in the works of Yan Fu (1854–1921), Liang Qichao (1873–1929), and Zhang Taiyan, “the concepts of common ( gong), community/groups (qun) and individual ( geti ) preserve the idea of a ‘natural condition’ (ziran de zhuangtai ), and using this as a base, as they construct a project of modernity, they simultaneously critically reflect on this project.”56 This passage suggests that one of the main elements of the Chinese tradition that enables the critique of actually existing institutions is, echoing Takeuchi and Nishi, a transcendent negativity embodied in the “natural condition.” Simply put, nature becomes the standpoint of critique because it represents the “other” with respect to modern institutions.

54 55 56

See Chapter Five. Wang Hui, Xiandai Zhongguo sixiang de xingqi, vol. 1, 67. Ibid., vol. 4, 1424.

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However, when we compare Wang’s chapter on Zhang Taiyan with his chapters on late Qing reformers such as Liang Qichao, we see that the idea of this natural condition as negative force is not always expressed consistently by various late Qing thinkers. For example, Liang Qichao and Kang Youwei often invoke this natural condition to legitimate groups (qun), but Zhang Taiyan opposes groups and eventually negates even the individual. In his chapters on Liang Qichao, Yan Fu, and Kang Youwei, Wang suggests that the Confucian tradition and the Song conceptions of the heavenly principle enabled a critique of “modernity” in concepts such as groups (qun). However, in his chapter on Zhang Taiyan, he explains, echoing Nishi and Kondō, how the concepts of the universal principle and the idea of groups are intimately linked to the modernization project of the Qing government and the reformers. Moreover, he explains how Zhang’s critique of modernity consists precisely in his attack on the reformers’ ideas of groups, evolution, and the universal principle.57 Wang is left with a problem, namely that his best and most obvious example of a late Qing critic of modernity, Zhang Taiyan, in his Buddhist writings rejects almost all of the reformers’ concepts that draw on Song and late imperial Confucianism. But, if we follow Mizoguchi and Wang, it was precisely this Confucian legacy that was supposed to enable critical reflection on modernity. Part of the problem could be solved by simply more clearly separating different degrees of criticism. For example, as Wang repeatedly notes, most late Qing intellectuals upheld modernity while critically reflecting upon it. However, given that, if one associates critical reflection with the moment of negativity rather than with community, then, more than a difference in degree, there is a qualitative difference between the Buddhist-Daoist inspired resistance of Zhang Taiyan and Lu Xun and the resistance of thinkers inspired by Song-Ming Confucianism, such as Liang Qichao and

57 In the field of Japanese sinology, there was a type of division of labor where those who stress resistance to modernity without emphasizing the Chinese tradition— Takeuchi, Nishi, and others—focused on Zhang Taiyan, while those who underscore the tradition as a fulcrum of resistance pointed to the reformers inheriting the various legacies from the Song to the early Qing. Wang combines both of these approaches and themes, thus bringing to our eyes a tension characteristic of global modernity, namely the antinomy between the perceived legacy of indigenous traditions and an ideological vision of modernity as progress and the opposition between conceiving of modernity from the standpoint of individual liberation and new communal identities.

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Yan Fu.58 More importantly, in order to understand this difference, and to become clearer about what “resistance” to capitalist modernity as opposed to resistance to a particular form of capitalist modernity means, we need to return to Wang’s larger project of developing a theory of modernity that can grasp both capital and nation-state formation at a global level, while accounting for differences in political form. Wang Hui’s work points us to a number of important themes concerning the interface between the social and intellectual history of modern China. He poses the question of the relationship between the social transformations that occurred as China was incorporated into the global system of nation-states and the creation of new philosophical and political discourses. He asks how resistance to global modernity relates on the one hand to indigenous philosophical traditions and on the other, to new sociopolitical formations. While Wang stresses the force of the dialectic of traditional philosophy in making resistance possible, he ultimately provides the building blocks for a new approach when he claims that modernity is global and, pace Mizoguchi, asserts that modern Chinese thinkers “stood on one side of modernity and developed a criticism of modernity” and that this “modernity against modernity is not an expression exclusive to Chinese thought, but an expression of the contradictory structure of modernity itself.”59 In order for this insight to guide us analytically, we will need to map out some of the characteristics of this contradictory structure of modernity and especially of the global capitalist system of nation-states. Rethinking Capitalism and the Nation-State Wang Hui has shown that historians of modern Chinese thought need to understand intellectual change in light of transformations that took place as China entered the global capitalist system of nation-states. Following Wang’s insight requires that we ponder the relationships between social dynamics and intellectual practice. Scholars usually think of capitalism as an economic category or structure and thus when

58 Of course, the post-1911 Yan Fu and Liang Qichao would turn towards Daoism and Buddhism, respectively, and this complicates the issue. Moreover, after the 1911 Revolution, Zhang Taiyan would turn further toward “national learning” ( guoxue). See Chapter Two. 59 Wang Hui, Sihuo chongwen, 12, 14.

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intellectual historians use the concept, they usually do so by linking ideas and people to classes. Thus, for example, several scholars have claimed that Zhang Taiyan represented the bourgeois forces in the Republican Revolution. However, Wang Hui’s analysis of the universal principle suggests the processes of modernity associated with global capitalism penetrated deeper than the level of class; these processes shaped cultural forms, including ideas of space and time. The Civilizing Mission of the Commodity Form Marx contended that capital can only be grasped as a movement and not as a static thing.60 This movement explains and includes many of the phenomena and concepts central to the thought of Nishi, Wang Hui, and especially Takeuchi. Recall that Takeuchi described a Europe that was constantly expanding and consequently transformed the cultural context of Asia. Marx underscores the cultural dimension of capital’s constant transgression of national boundaries by discussing its “civilizing dimensions” (zivilisatorischen Seiten).61 Following Chris Arthur, we can call this “civilizing dimension” capital’s “civilizing mission,” to stress how economic and political changes related to imperialism would be impossible without related transformations in the cultural and philosophical realms.62 In the Grundrisse, Marx discusses a similar phenomenon, but speaks of capital’s “civilizing influence” in away that makes clear its expansive and transformative power across national boundaries: Hence the great civilizing influence of capital; its production of a stage of society in comparison to which all earlier ones appear as a mere local developments of humanity and as nature idolatry. For the first time, nature becomes purely an object for humankind (rein Gegenstand für den Menschen), purely a matter of utility; ceases to be recognized as a power for itself; and the theoretical discovery of its autonomous laws appears merely as a ruse so as to subjugate it under human needs, whether as an object of

Marx, Capital, 253. Marx, Capital, 409. Cited from Arthur, The New Dialectic and Marx’s Capital, 141. 62 Arthur, The New Dialectic and Marx’s Capital, 140. Arthur uses the term “civilizing mission” to translate zivilisatorishen Seiten, which is technically a mistranslation, but critically captures the imperialistic nature of capitalism. Marx describes capitalism as civilizing because it creates advantageous conditions for bringing the development of forces of production (Produktivekräfte) and social relations to a new and higher formation (ein höhere Neubildung). 60 61

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consumption or as a means of production. In accord with this tendency, capital drives beyond national barriers and prejudices (über nationale Schranken und Vorurteile) as much as beyond nature worship, as well as traditional, confined, complacent, encrusted satisfactions of present needs, and reproductions of old ways of life.63

Here Marx combines a point about the global nature of capitalist logic and the epistemological transformations related to that logic.64 The spread of capitalism involves a fundamental transformation of previous modes of life. As György Márkus notes, one of the characteristics of capitalist society is the de-linking of people and things from hierarchical nexuses.65 This de-linking is the condition for a new conception of nature as “pure object” and for an idea of human beings as subjects. This conceptual opposition is closely related to what Lukács calls reification. Reification originally referred to Marx’s discussion of commodity fetishism, whereby in capitalist society “a definite social relation between men assumes . . . the fantastic form of a relationship between things.”66 But Lukács develops the concept to signify more general appearances and conceptual oppositions in capitalist society. The various oppositions that appear in capitalist society are modes of reified thought because they present themselves as existing independently. We must separate Lukács’ theory of reification from criticisms of false consciousness. In Lukács’ view, it is not that people willfully misrepresent relations in order to promote their interests. Rather, it is relations themselves that appear as things and produce various conceptual oppositions. One of the key philosophical transformations that occurs with the rationalization and commodification associated with capitalism is the increasing prevalence of a number of philosophical antinomies such as those between subject and object, abstract and concrete, and so on. This is intimately related to the two sides of the commodity form: 63 Marx, Grundrisse: Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy, 409–10; German text in Grundrisse der Kritik der Politischen Ökonomie, 313 (emphasis in the original ). 64 Marx writes the phrase “Hence the great civilizing influence of capital” in English within the German text, perhaps to stress the transnational dimension of capital and to gesture towards the logic of British imperialism and capitalism. 65 Márkus, “Die Welte menschlicher Objekte.” Márkus explains that “in precapitalist societies there are explicit unmediated social norms that fix how people should use things, within a hierarchy of the social division of labor and social structure, where they [people and objects] occupy different positions” (30). 66 Cited from Lukács, Geschichte und Klassenbewußtsein, 260; idem, History and Class Consciousness, 86.

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exchange-value, which brings heterogeneous things under a common measure; and use-value, which is closely related to lived experience. In Chris Arthur’s words, “the value form of the commodity posits a split between value as the identity of commodities premised on an abstract universal posited through equivalent exchange and their enduring particularity, differentiating them from each other as use-values.”67 The civilizing mission of capitalism is more complex than the civilizing mission of so-called European or Western culture. While scholars often think of rationalization or the spread of liberalism as instances of intellectual colonization, the above analysis suggests that the standpoint of resistance to Westernization, cultural specificity, feeling, or particularity is equally tied to the logic of capital.68 The Nation-State and Global Capitalism The opposition exchange-value and use-value grounds a general opposition between universality and particularity, but to understand the development of intellectual history in countries facing the threat of imperialism, we need to investigate how this opposition is mediated by nationalism, and the complex relationships between the global and the local. National space is difficult to analyze precisely because it paradoxically appears as resistance to global capitalism, but it also completes the globalization of space. In her book, Producing India, Manu Goswami explains the dialectic between what she, following Henri Lefebre, calls capitalist “global space-time” and national space: The making of global space-time was a dialectical, contradictory and doubled process. It was generated by and expressive of the simultaneous “deterritorialization” (the acceleration of what David Harvey has identified as “space-time compression”) and “reterritorialization” (the production of relatively fixed sociospatial organizations from material infrastructures to

Arthur, The New Dialectic and Marx’s Capital, 81. With this two-sided logic of capitalism, one can ground the debate surrounding Levenson’s thesis that has hovered around Chinese intellectual historians since the 1960s. Recall that Levenson’s original thesis, while not explicitly making reference to capitalism, clearly assumed that the modern condition, which turned traditions such as Confucianism into symbols of identity, was global or universal. In response to this thesis, a number of sinologists, such as Yu Yingshi, have tried to show that the Chinese tradition played an active role in constituting Chinese modernity, and scholars such as Mizoguchi have asserted that tradition-infused Chinese modernity was something particular or different from Western or global modernity. 67 68

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state forms that enable the accelerated temporal circulation of capital ) of multiple socioeconomic fields and cultural imaginaries.69

Goswami’s book concerns the transformation of social space in India and describes how the colonial state played an integral role in the emergence of capitalism in that country. Thus she theorizes an opposition between the universality of global capitalism and the particularity of geographical differentiation such as nation-states. David Harvey discusses the relationship between capitalism and spatial transformation. In his Limits to Capital, he writes: Precapitalist prejudices, cultures and institutions are revolutionized only in the sense that they are given new functions and meanings rather than being destroyed. . . . Geographical differentiations then frequently appear to be what they truly are not: mere historical residuals rather than actively reconstituted features within the capitalist mode of production.70

Harvey contends that the inner dynamic of capital, and the search for profits, requires it to seek markets around the globe. The nation-state and globalization are part of the territorial dynamic of capitalism, because, on the one hand, capitalist production must take place in a closed space with laws and regulations, but on the other hand, once internal markets become saturated, capitalists are forced to seek profits around the world. In the first volume of Das Kapital, Marx assumes a closed economic system whose parameters are defined by and set by the nation-state. However, he was also clearly aware of the transnational dimension of capital. As the dynamic of capital spreads, people destroy older forms of community and replace them with institutions that are conducive to the functioning of capitalism. This involves precisely the above dialectic of deterritorialization and reterritorialization. The goal of reterritorialization is the reproduction of capital, but there are a number of processes that may facilitate the expansion of capital. For example, colonialism, semi-colonialism, and nationalism have radically different political aims, but they are all imbricated in the expansion of global capitalism. However, given that all of these political forms are related to capitalism, they are influenced by the logic of the commodity form and by reification.

69 70

Goswami, Producing India, 39. Harvey, Limits to Capital, 416.

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Thus we must understand nationalism and the nation-state in relation to this movement of capitalism and reification. The nation embodies both sides of the opposition of the commodity form. All nations are equal, just like commodities from the standpoint of exchange-value. However, at the same time, each nation attempts to assert its particularity by referring to emotive resources in premodern texts and practices. Harvey’s point about “reconstitution” rather than “residuals” allows us to see that as nationalists draw on the past to constitute their identity, they are already participating in a new epistemological space. In other words, the condition of a nation-state’s particularity is precisely its dialectical opposite, namely being recognized as a unit in the system of equal nation-states. Each nation must be an object of recognition by a disembodied other, namely the whole system of nation-states. Paradoxically, only when a nation becomes the object of a generalized other, can it act as a subject on the world-stage. Theatricality and Nationalism The nation requires people to enact a similar dialectic of recognition on the domestic stage, or what William Egginton calls “theatrical identification.” Egginton grounds modern political identity in epistemological shifts that echo Lukács’ analysis of capitalism. Just as commodities are formally equal, citizens can be represented as formally equal in the state. Karatani Kōjin explicitly makes this analogy with reference to Hobbes: “In order to define the sovereign, Hobbes conceptualized a process by which everyman transfers his Right of Nature to a single man (Leviathan). This is isomorphic to the process by which every commodity establishes a mutual relationship via money qua commodity placed in the position of equivalent form.”71 However, unlike the commodity, people play an active role in identifying with an abstract community of nationals. In Egginton’s view, the relationship between citizens and the modern state, unlike the more direct relationship between lords and vassals in hierarchical political structures, is theatrical. His point is that people identify with political communities just as they identify with actors on a stage. Discussing Hobbes, he notes:

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Karatani Kōjin, Transcritique, 172.

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It is only as characters that the collective wills of the citizenry can be represented in the abstract body of the state; it is only as characters that we can identify ourselves with that abstract body at all. The modern state in its most influential theorization, in the work of Hobbes, is inconceivable outside the framework established by theatricality.72

In other words, just as humans identify with characters on stage and feel their pain, even though they have no physical relation to them, people can identify with states and nations, which will act on their behalf. To some extent, the concept of theatrical identification with the state or nation is analogous to Benedict Anderson’s idea of the nation as an “imagined community,”73 however, theatrical identification deals with the larger issue of the formation of the self in the political sphere. In Egginton’s words, public politics requires people to “identify theatrically with rulers, laws, unknown friends, ideas, their nation, without ever once encountering these entities face to face.”74 That is, theatricality refers more generally to a mode of modern selfhood, which nationalists exploit for a particular purpose. Like reification, theatricality was perhaps present in different degrees in previous societies. That is, in addition to ritually formed identities based on specified interpersonal relations, there were instances of strong ethnicity, for example among the elite of the Ming dynasty (1368–1644). However, during these times, theatricality did not become a general, institutionalized form of mediation. In particular, the emergence of theatricality is intertwined with the split between subject and object, which now divides the self into two irreconcilable moments, the self as subject and the self as object for the Other.75

Egginton, How the World Became a Stage, 147. Anderson, Imagined Communities. 74 Egginton, How the World Became a Stage, 146. 75 Here I am summarizing Egginton’s Lacanian analysis. As Hegel and Sartre point out, one can paradoxically have consciousness of one’s self as an object (Selbstbewusstsein) only through the mediation of the Other. There would be no self-consciousness if there were no Other. But this Other is internalized and it is not a specific other in the world, but a generalized Other that, like Takeuchi’s transcendent point of observation, both makes our experience possible and must necessarily be excluded from our experience. Egginton compares this to the relationship between the audience and a play. To some extent the audience is essential to the play, but if the audience becomes “present” on stage, it will disrupt the fantasy of the play. So the fantasy of the play is for the audience, but the audience must be excluded from the space of the play. (Of course, playwrights and filmmakers from Bertold Brecht to Jean-Luc Godard attempted to subvert the ideological structure of such representation precisely by problematizing the relationship between the space of the audience and the space of the screen/ 72 73

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Meng Yue and Rebecca Karl have each insightfully shown the pivotal role of the late Qing culture of theater in politics.76 Karl focuses on a 1904 play, Guazhong lanyin (The Fall of Poland) by Wang Xiaonong, in which the characters are nation-states and the plot-line maps out a global inter-subjectivity. The generalization of theatricality was inextricably connected to a parallel formation of a world-stage, where nations depend for legitimacy on the recognition of other nations. Consequently, late Qing intellectuals such as Wang Xiaonong noted the shame that China experienced in front of other nations. The work of nationalists is to ensure that people identify with the nation, so that stage.) Similarly, the Other that is constitutive of our being-in-the-world is necessarily disembodied and would disrupt the world if it were made present. This look of the disembodied Other becomes paradoxically the part of oneself that will never be present to oneself, just as one will never fully experience how one is experienced by others—as an object. Following the metaphor of the audience, one could say that the Other is constitutive of our own fantasy of who we want to be, namely the character we want to play. Egginton’s point is that, even in everyday life, we (as images of our selves or ideal egos) identify with this character, our “ego ideal”—how we want to be seen in the eyes of the Other. We do not choose this ego ideal, rather the Other is produced through a number of conceptual and institutional mediations, including national narratives. Of course, various things can disrupt this fantasy including looks or humiliation by present others, which will make us feel a gap between our images of our bodies and the self or character we want to be. Egginton’s point is that it is precisely because our identities are always already involved with identifying with characters that are virtual (i.e., constructed in the space of the Other) that we are able to identify with nations and states. To some extent, the struggle that Takeuchi describes between Europe and Asia is connected to this dialectic. Once Europe invaded China, the Chinese intellectuals’ ego-ideal, their view of themselves in the space of the Other, could not coexist with the humiliation of actual others. Thus we can read the tumultuous years from the Self-Strengthening movement to the Republican Revolution as a process in which elites and intellectuals constantly created narratives to harmonize the image of their body (their sense of self more materially) with new ego-ideal(s). In general, nationalist narratives can been seen as constructing characters, namely citizens, which invoke identification and entail some version of a disembodied Other, which enable the feeling of shame and obligation in relation to the nation. However, because people can never completely overcome the gap between their lived experience and the self to which they aim, like all fantasies of the self, particular nationalist narratives are always in danger of being disrupted. That is, people may come to question the narrative that posits a particular ideal self related to citizenship and sacrifice for the nation. This is related to the fundamental epistemological transformations which Lukács describes, such as the subject-object split, which, as we have seen, is the condition for the splits in subjectivity. The splits in the self both create and can destabilize ideological hegemonies, and will continue as long as global capitalism shapes human practices. Similarly, while various nationalist narratives will vie for hegemony, as long as a global system of nation-states exists, one will periodically be interpolated into some type of national identification, by various institutions. 76 Karl, Staging the World, Meng, Shanghai at the Edge of Empires.

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the nation’s experience is one’s own experience. Late Qing intellectuals lamented that people did not take the nation’s humiliation as their own. Meng Yue builds on this analysis and notes the way in which theater reform and the emergence of Western-style theater, “civilized drama” (wenmingxi ), introduced a number of Western plays intimately connected to different strands of oppositional politics.77 She points out that proponents of theater reform in Shanghai were closely linked to the publication of journals and books on affairs around the world. Of the 134 books listed in the Xinhai geming shuzheng ( Books of the 1911 Revolution), seventy-four were narratives of radical change in other countries in the world and the rest dealt with philosophy, law, political theory, and historiography.78 Although Karl and Meng point to the diversity and complexity of the context and content of late Qing theater and use this to show its alliance to some projects of resistance, they do not analyze the political implications of the form of the new theater. One can get a sense of the political implications related to shifts in form by examining the nature of theater reform in the early twentieth century. At the end of the first decade of the twentieth century, the Xia brothers constructed theaters of a new type, in imitation of the Westernized theaters they saw in Meiji Japan. Unlike earlier “teahouses,” where the divisions between actors and the audience were not so rigid, the new type more clearly demarcated the space of the audience, who sat in the dark and watched actors on an illuminated stage.79 In an analysis that echoes Egginton’s, Goldstein notes that the theater was a “microcosm of the emerging national polity,” where “the leveling of citizenship and the enacting of new forms of sociality were advocated.” Moreover, like other spaces associated with modern nation-building, “the new theaters were as much spaces of liberation as they were technologies to discipline and reorder society to serve new aims.”80 In theaters, we can see, in microcosmic form, the relationship between resistance and reproduction in the modern world of nationstates. That is, while the plays that Karl and Meng discuss express Meng Yue, Shanghai and the Edge of Empires, 113. Ibid., 115. 79 The emergence of the separation between audience and actor split between a dark theater and an illuminated stage in late eighteenth-century France is discussed in Marrinan, Romantic Paris. 80 Goldstein, “From Teahouse to Playhouse,” 754. 77 78

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a desire to resist the global imbalance of power, they reproduce the form of that power by encouraging national subjectivities. Of course, during the late Qing, most political struggles centered on narratives that would channel theatrical identification. From a larger perspective, this points to a paradox to which both Wang Hui and Takeuchi refer, namely that while nationalism might resist imperialism, it reproduces the civilizing mission of the nation and commodity forms. This is why, in Takeuchi’s words, “through resistance, the Orient was destined to increasingly Europeanize.” Late Qing intellectuals perceived this paradox to varying degrees, but Zhang Taiyan arguably grasped the contradiction between resistance and reproduction at a qualitatively different level. In short, if one saw the totality of the global system, including its epistemological forms, as alienating, then one would be split between tendencies toward nationalism and negation. On the one hand, given the threat of imperialism, one would feel the necessity to enter into political life in the late Qing, where struggles centered on how narratives would channel identification with the nation-state, and, on the other, one would contemplate how to undermine the type of subjectivity that supports such a world. In his Buddhist writings, Zhang Taiyan expresses these two contradictory tendencies with respect to the nation-state and its possible overcoming. He is most famous for his revolutionary narrative of theatrical identification with the Han nation, which aimed to overthrow the Manchu Qing dynasty. However, as we will see in Chapter Three, as a result of several factors, including his being sent to jail by the Qing government, Zhang slowly shifted to a theoretical framework based on Yogācāra Buddhism, and this also made him critical of the state. Zhang mobilized Buddhism in complex and contradictory ways. On the one hand, he used Buddhism to enable the theatrical identification and sacrifice required for revolution; on the other hand, he underscored that Buddhism subverts both the subject and object and hence points beyond all political forms. This is the negativity that Nishi Junzō highlights and it is also the basis for Zhang’s critique of Hegel, which could be said to be his critique of capitalism in thought. However, because Zhang’s critique remains at an extremely abstract level, as we noted he never was able to link it to practice and politics. In fact, one could even say that his abstract critique and his disappointment with many of his political allies pushed him further out of the theatrical field of national politics and into the contemplative space of philosophical thinking.

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From Theatricality to Philosophy The move from theatrical identification to philosophy in this book is also a move to the deeper epistemological conditions behind the production of nationalist identification. As we have seen, the dialectic of theatrical identification is part of more fundamental conceptual shifts in the framework of modern society. A key part of Zhang Taiyan’s Buddhist phase involved moving to a philosophical level as he attempted to transcend both theatrical identification and many of the oppositions of modern society. At this point, Zhang rejected the limitations of his contemporary political world and entered the world of philosophy. However, the world of philosophy is also constituted by the dynamics of the commodity form and capital. Among the various antinomies related to the opposition between use-value and exchange-value, modern philosophers since Descartes have focused on the subject-object dichotomy and Kant highlighted the limits of the knowing subject. However, post-Kantian philosophers went further and attempted to overcome the subject-object dichotomy by searching for a deeper process that grounds both. Hegel’s Spirit or Heidegger’s Being are examples of such primordial processes. Hegel and Heidegger do more than transcend the subject-object division conceived merely spatially; each attempts to explain the emergence of specific antinomies with respect to a temporal dynamic or a theory of history. By emphasizing this temporal element, these thinkers express a dimension of capitalism that previous thinkers had not. This is clearest in the case of Hegel and Marx. Linking Marx and Hegel is, of course, not new. Traditionally, Marxists have inverted the Hegelian schema in building their own theory of stages, which are now “material” representing modes of production, slavery, feudalism, capitalism, and socialism. However, following a recent trend in Hegelian Marxism, I take Hegel’s Spirit to be a misrecognition of the dynamic of capital as a transhistorical process. A major proponent of this school of Marxism, Moishe Postone, explains that Marx’s Capital is not just a treatise about economics, but a “metacommentary on philosophical thought in general.” He singles out Hegel to explain his point: For Hegel, the Absolute, the totality of the subjective-objective categories, grounds itself. As the self-moving “substance” that is “Subject,” it is the true causa sui as well as the endpoint of its own development. In

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chapter one Capital, Marx presents the underlying forms of commodity-determined society as constituting the social context for notions such as the difference between essence and appearance, the philosophical concept of substance, the dichotomy of subject and object, the notion of totality, and, on the logical level of the category of capital, the unfolding dialectic of the identical subject-object.81

Hegel and other German idealists saw that the antinomies related to the subject-object dichotomy involved a more fundamental form of mediation. Similarly, at the level of the category of capital, we confront not a static opposition of use-value and exchange-value, but instead a deeper dynamic of history, in which society moves to greater levels of productivity. When Hegel describes the odyssey of Spirit, he misrecognizes this dynamic as a transhistorical evolutionary movement to greater levels of moral and political superiority. Prasenjit Duara, in suggesting the relevance of Hegel for studying early twentieth-century Chinese historiography, notes that Hegel’s History “possesses a philosophical structure that is eerily appropriate for a conquering power poised for world-domination.”82 The above discussion can be read as a footnote to Duara’s statement. Not only does Hegel legitimate world domination by nation-states, but also, at a higher level of abstraction, now shifting to Hegel’s Logic and Phenomenology, Hegel’s Spirit and History represent the conquering power of the civilizing mission of capital. Thus when we explore “cracks and fissures, through which we, like some of the figures we study, might read against the grain of this History,”83 we have to keep in mind these two levels of abstraction: imperialism and capitalism. It may be that cracks that fall out of the range of the nation-state still fall within the logic of capital. In other words, although capitalism is the condition for the possibility of a world-system of nation-states, there are other possible ways of organizing a capitalist world, and, moreover, local resistance to the nation-state does not necessarily imply resistance to capitalism. Given the two-sided nature of the development of capital, a mere emphasis on Chinese particularity to oppose “modernity” will not only reproduce the nation form, but also a different form of capitalism. 81 Postone, Time, Labor, and Social Domination, 156. For a path-breaking study that applies this paradigm to modern Indian thought, see Sartori, “The Categorial Logic of a Colonial Nationalism.” For a more recent development of this position, see Sartori, Bengal in Global Concept History, esp. 51–67. 82 Duara, Rescuing History from the Nation, 19. 83 Ibid., 17.

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Thus, if one follows Mizoguchi in holding up indigenous conceptions of equality as providing a basis for an alternative modernity, one must either radically qualify the extent to which this is an alternative to capitalism, or explain how this conception of equality differs from those based on the abstraction of exchange-value. By grasping the movement of capitalism at an abstract level, we can conceive of radically different forms of capitalism. Moreover, it is precisely because capitalism operates at a high level of abstraction that philosophy can reproduce its structure. According to Lukács: Thus classical philosophy finds itself historically in the paradoxical position that it was concerned to overcome bourgeois society in thought ( gedanklich zu überwinden), and to speculatively awaken (erwecken) a humanity destroyed in that society by it. As a result, however, it did not manage to do more than provide a complete intellectual reproduction and the a priori deduction of bourgeois society.84

Lukács describes how German idealists, such as Kant, Fichte, and Hegel, incessantly attempted to overcome the antinomies of modern thought, such as the rift between subject and object. These “classical” philosophers grasp the contradictory dynamic of capital in thought but as they seek to overcome these antinomies, they end up eternalizing its forms. For example, while early modern thinkers such as Descartes took the duality between subject and object for granted, Hegel developed his theory of Spirit precisely to overcome such dichotomies and, in his own way, to historicize them. But the outcome was to reify the totality of capital in the name of Spirit. This reading of capitalism has consequences that go beyond Lukács’ attempt to affirm the working-class as the subject of history. If we recognize that Hegel’s Spirit represents the movement of capital in alienated form, the goal of the Marxist vision is no longer to realize a transhistorical subject of history, namely labor, but to negate a historically specific subject of history, namely capital and labor in capitalism.85 84 Lukács, Geschichte und Klassenbewußtsein; 331; idem, History and Class Consciousness, 148 (trans. amended). 85 Philosophically this approach is both Hegelian and post-Hegelian/poststructuralist. It sees Hegel’s Spirit as the most accurate image of the dynamic of capital, which constantly seeks to expand and consume its other, which we can call nature. Postmodernists aim to deconstruct totality and disrupt the logic of capital. However, like classical philosophers, poststructuralists deconstruct totality only in thought, and because they do not ground totality historically, they often project specific forms of totality and resistance to the ancient past.

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In this sense, certain tendencies in post-German Idealist philosophy, beginning with Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, express an attempt to negate or break free from the dynamic of capital, but again do so in alienated form, without explicitly confronting the logic of capital. Zhang Taiyan’s philosophy should be understood as part of this counterHegelian trend that began with Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. Late Qing Thought and the Dynamic of Capital There is a long history of scholarship, especially by Chinese and Japanese scholars,86 on the emergence or non-emergence of Chinese capitalism. Whether these studies date the emergence of capitalism to indigenous transformations in the ninth and tenth centuries (the Song dynasty) or to imperialist encroachments in the nineteenth century, most are wedded to teleological assumptions about stages of history and hence often they inquire about whether China was able to make the transition from feudalism to capitalism. For example, Chinese scholars usually think of the 1911 Revolution as a bourgeois revolution, in which revolutionaries such as Zhang Taiyan represented the bourgeoisie. Below I will draw on the work of some of these scholars to contextualize the late Qing in relation to a more inclusive concept of capitalism. Chinese historians generally agree that during the late Qing Chinese capitalists and foreign capital in China rose together. For example, after the Sino-Japanese War in 1895 and the signing of the Treaty of Shimonoseki, foreign investment in China greatly increased, thus engendering a sense of crisis among indigenous Chinese firms. According to a recent study by Zhu Yuhe, Ouyang Junxi, and Shu Wen, both officials and intellectuals believed that China lost the Sino-Japanese War because its economy was insufficiently developed. In 1898, under the influence of reformers, the Qing government implemented a series of policies, known as the Hundred Day Reform, to promote indigenous industries. With the failure of the reform, some of these policies were repealed, but were put into full force again by 1901 during the New

86 To cite two famous examples dealing with different periods: Wu Chengming, “Diguozhuyi zai jiu Zhongguo ziben de kuangzhang,” 32–53, and Tanaka Masatoshi, “Chūgoku rekishikai ni okeru ‘shihonshugi no myōga kenkyū.’ ” For a useful overview of this literature, see Brook, “Capitalism and the Writing of History in Modern China.”

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Government Policies reform. These reforms stimulated a huge increase in investment: from 1895 to 1913, foreign investment more than doubled.87 Also during that period, nationwide 549 indigenous industrial and mining enterprises invested more than 1,000 yuan each, for a total of 120,288,000 yuan.88 The actual amount investment is not as important as the tendency that such investment represented. Economic historians such as Albert Feuerwerker repeatedly stress that such numbers are miniscule in view of the great size of China.89 However, when one looks at the issue from a global perspective, we should keep in mind the constant rise in capital flows into China, which signified increasing incorporation into the global economy.90 Although this investment was concentrated in urban centers such as Shanghai, this is precisely where much intellectual activity also took place.91 Moreover, because capitalism includes cultural and political dimensions, more general reforms in political structures such as rationalization are equally important for contextualizing late Qing thought. Drawing on Weber, Lukács remarks on the homology between bureaucratization and capitalist firms: The modern capitalist concern is based inwardly above all on calculation. It requires for its survival a system of justice and an administration whose workings can be rationally calculated, at least in principle, according to fixed general laws, just as the probable performance of a machine can be calculated. . . . What is specific to modern capitalism as a distinct form of age-old capitalist forms of acquisition is that the strictly rational organization of work on the basis of rational technology did not come into being anywhere within such irrationally constituted political systems nor could

Wu Chengming, “Diguozhuyi zai jiu Zhongguo de kuangzhan,” 40–41. Zhu Yuhe, Ouyang Junxi, and Shu Wen, Xinghai geming shi, 41. 89 See for example, Feuerwerker, China’s Early Industrialization. 90 Marx’s distinction between formal and real subsumption under capitalism is helpful here. Formal subsumption refers to the initial stages of capitalism in which mechanization and a logic of the creation of profits through increasing the speed of production has not yet become uniform. Andrew Sartori analyzes this point in his Bengal in Global Concept History. 91 Shih Shu-mei uses the term “semicolonial” to describe the unevenness of China’s political and economic development in the early twentieth century. She claims that May Fourth intellectuals felt little need to resist Western ideologies, because unlike in other areas in the Third World, China did not face formal colonization. See Shu-mei Shih, The Lure of the Modern. It is true that Zhang Taiyan in some sense did attempt to resist Westernization, but he did not grasp the conditions of his resistance in a new global dynamic of capitalism. 87 88

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chapter one it have done so. . . . They could only come into being in the bureaucratic state with its rational laws where . . . the judge’s behavior is on the whole predictable (kalkulierbar).92

Lukács grounds Weber’s key concept of rationality in the logic of the commodity form and capitalism. Thus capital’s expansion to various regions of the world may find expression in areas other than the free market. He underscores, for example, that in modern bureaucracies, things are subject to formalization, which is the abstraction at the base of the concept of exchange-value and the modern concept of equality. We can see such changes in China during the years 1901–1911, when the Qing government implemented the so-called New Government Policies, which sought to bring the society under greater bureaucratic control. As Prasenjit Duara notes, throughout the early twentieth century: one of most important aspects of state strengthening—the ability to penetrate and absorb the resources of local society—continued more or less uninterrupted throughout the entire period. All regimes, whether central or regional, appeared to respect the administrative extensions of state power in local society, because, whatever their goals, they assumed that these new administrative arrangements were the most convenient means of reaching rural communities.93

This extension of state power was accompanied by bureaucratic reform and qualitative changes including educational reform, the abolition of the imperial examination system, campaigns against superstition and religion, and the development of a public health and sanitation infrastructure. All this does not show that China was capitalist during the late Qing, but it does suggest that the global system had penetrated China so that reification and the commodity form began to affect intellectual life. In short, what is crucial is not so much the amount of capital in China, but the global context that clearly had effects in China. According to Lukács, reification is not something unique to capitalist society; for example, he claims that the ancient Greek philosophers’ ideas of universality were also made possible by reification in their own society. However, they did not experience this “as universal forms

92 Lukács, Geschichte und Klassenbewusstsein, 271; idem, History and Class Consciousness, 96 (emphasis in the original ). 93 Duara, Culture, Power and the State, 3.

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of the whole of existence (universelle Formen des gesamten Seins).”94 Rather they had one foot in a “natural” (naturwüchsig) society.95 From this perspective, the applicability of a Lukacian analysis would seem to lie in whether and to what extent late Qing society experienced reification or rationalization as a universal form of existence. Clearly, if one looks at the whole of society, one would have to conclude that reification in the late Qing was far from universal and there were many other competing or residual forms of life. However, twentieth-century Qing China is different from other hybrid societies, such as ancient Greece or even arguably the Song or late Ming, both of which are often compared to “modernity.” Unlike these previous societies, the late Qing existed in a world dominated by global capitalism and this world constantly attempted to incorporate that which was outside of it. In this way, one must stress the dynamic nature of capital and hence think of reification in early twentieth-century China not as a fact but a movement. Zhang Taiyan’s Life and Times: Late Qing Intellectuals and Global Modernity Examining Zhang’s early life reveals how some of the influences before he came into contact with Western philosophy affected his reception and interpretation of modern concepts. Zhang Binglin was born on January 20, 1869, about eleven years after Kang Youwei and two years after Tan Sitong, at Cangqian, in Yuhang prefecture (present-day Hangzhou) in Zhejiang. In recollections, Zhang noted that some of his earliest influences came from his maternal grandfather, Zhu Youqin, who taught Zhang to read the classics. In his Autobiography, Zhang explains that, at a young age, he learned about the distinction between the Manchus and the Han and that he was moved when reading about Ming scholars in the Hanlin Academy such as Zha Sitong (1644–1727) and Dai Mingshi (1653–1713). Although some scholars question Zhang’s claim that his anti-Manchuism began at such an early age, there is no doubt that he was heavily influenced by Ming loyalists of the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, such as Gu Yanwu (1613–1682) and Huang Zongxi

94 Lukács, Geschichte und Klassenbewußtsein, 287; idem, History and Class Consciousness, 111 (trans. amended). 95 Ibid.

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(1610–1695). In fact, Zhang later took on the name Taiyan in order to honor Huang Zongxi (Taichong) and Gu Yanwu.96 A major aspect of the intellectual context of Zhang’s early life was that Chinese intellectuals were increasingly open to studying Western science. After China’s defeat in the Opium War and the suppression of the Taiping Rebellion (1850–1864), Chinese literati collaborated with English Protestant missionaries to translate and disseminate in China theories related to science. In the eighteenth century, Chinese scholars thought of science as originating in China, but after the Opium War in 1841, “post-industrial revolution science, now called modern science, was initially introduced as compatible, but no longer subordinate to native classical learning.”97 This early movement towards science exerted an enormous influence on Zhang Taiyan and the generation of intellectuals who are the subject of this work. For example, Tan Sitong adopted many of the ideas of the English missionary John Fryer (1839–1928), who founded the Shanghai Polytechnic Institute (Gezhi shuyuan) in 1874. Fryer and the Chinese literati Xu Shou (1818–1882) collaborated at the Jiangnan Arsenal in Shanghai to translate Western scientific literature into classical Chinese, “an enterprise that combined a narrow, textually based vision of science . . . with the Chinese view of the sciences as a domain of classical studies appropriate only for literati.”98 Like Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao, Zhang first immersed himself in classical learning and then combined this with ideas about science. Although Zhang had great success in his early studies of the classics with relatives, he never succeeded in passing the imperial examinations. In 1883, when Zhang was fourteen years old, his father told him to take the local district examinations, but he could not sit for them due to a fit of epilepsy a few minutes before the test. Takada Atsushi suggests that Zhang’s later criticism of the examination system may be related to this early experience.99 In any case, Zhang would never again take the imperial examinations. Hence his study of both the classics and of Western theories of science and philosophy would continue outside of direct imperial control. In the following years, Zhang continued to

96 On Zhang’s early life, see Tang Zhijun, Zhang Taiyan nianpu changbian. See also Laitinen, Chinese Nationalism in the Late Qing Dynasty. 97 Elman, “ ‘Universal Science’ Versus ‘Chinese Science,’” 73. 98 Ibid., 71. 99 Takada Atsushi, Shō Heirin, Shō Shisō, Ro Jin, 9.

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study the classics, but did not practice the famous eight-legged essay, which was required for the examination. In 1890, after the death of his father, Zhang entered the Gujing Academy to study under Yu Yue (1827–1907), a famous master of the Old Text school.100 Ruan Yuan (1764–1849), established the academy in 1800, but it was destroyed during the Taiping Rebellion and Yu Yue was intimately involved in restoring it. The Gujing Academy represented an alternative to the dominant goal of education in the Qing dynasty, namely education in order to become an official. As Wong Young-tsu notes, Yu Yue continued the intellectual tradition initiated by Gu Yanwu and Dai Zhen (1724–1777), which stressed philology and historical research,101 a tradition that Benjamin Elman and others contend was a precursor to modern science. Yu Yue aimed to provide a non-political space in which students would study the classics. What Yu perhaps did not realize was that political autonomy from the Qing state was actually an ideal realm for developing the politics of the nation-state. The environment at the Gujing Academy probably stimulated Zhang’s unique, critical perspective on Kang Youwei and other reformers’ Confucian narrative of the nation. Although Yu Yue praised Kang when he visited the academy to present his famous work on Confucius as a reformer, in general Yu frowned upon Kang’s type of speculative method and stressed a more textual or factual approach. Moreover, unlike Kang Youwei, who stressed the importance of Confucius, Yu emphasized the importance of the “hundred schools of thought” in the pre-Qin period, thus decentering Confucian hegemony. Yu allowed considerable freedom in reading texts, and so, like Tan Sitong and Kang Youwei, Zhang could diverge from traditional readings of texts and creatively link scientific developments to classical writings. For example, “he used Frederich Ratzel’s theory of anthropogeography to suggest that every form of vegetable life has its unique character due to variations of time and place.”102 As Jiang Yihua notes, Zhang also often used scientific texts, such as the works of Euclid, to interpret the “Under Heaven” (Tianxia) chapter of the Zhuang Zi and various chapters of the Huai Nanzi.103 This suggests that even before Zhang 100 101 102 103

The Old Text school and the New Text school are discussed in Chapter Two. Wong Young-tsu, Search for Modern Nationalism, 6. Ibid., 7. Jiang Yihua, Zhang Taiyan pingzhuan, 16.

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entered the political sphere, he began to link ideas associated with Western science to the Chinese classics. This early training may have prepared the way for both his evolutionary theories of race and also his emphasis on particularity. Although we can say that science was introduced to Chinese intellectuals long before the Sino-Japanese War of 1894–1895, China’s defeat in that war is nonetheless a watershed in Chinese intellectual history. The loss de-legitimated much of the earlier scientific project, since many technological developments were based in various arsenals and shipyards and so much of the Self-Strengthening project was linked to the rhetoric of making the country strong. The Sino-Japanese War signified more than just the incorporation of China into the global capitalist system; Elman’s point is precisely that this process he had begun earlier. Rather, when China was defeated by Japan, Chinese intellectuals’ own self-representation and its image in the eyes of others had changed. Before the Sino-Japanese War, not only did the Chinese think of themselves as superior to their neighbors because of their place in the tribute system, but this view was also shared by the rest of the world.104 Thus China’s sense of itself on the world-stage of nation-states and its view of its role in the tribute system were to some extent compatible. If it was no longer the center of the world, it was at least a strong power. The Sino-Japanese War, however, radically changed Chinese intellectuals’ understanding of China and foreigners’ writings about China became much more critical. After the Sino-Japanese War, a number of essays about China’s weakness written by missionaries became required reading. For example, Young J. Allen’s account of the war became part of the curriculum for the Hunan provincial examinations in 1896.105 Allen’s essay promoted some key ideas for reform, which became prevalent later and helped promote the conditions for a more “modern” view of the world. Allen claimed that China was backward because of superstition (mixin), opium, and the examination system. To solve these problems, he asserted that Chinese needed to learn more science. In his view, up to that point Chinese had not really incorporated the

As Elman notes, “Upon the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War on July 24, 1894, the foreign press generally predicted an eventual Chinese victory even after reports of initial Chinese losses.” Elman, “ ‘Universal Science’ Versus ‘Chinese Science,’ ” 84. 105 Ibid., 88. 104

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“study of the principles of things” (wuli zhi xue).106 Following this trend towards understanding the causes of things, a number of reformers such as Yan Fu would advocate further Westernization. Specifically, part of fighting superstition would involve distancing themselves from the Self-Strengtheners’ project of reconciling tradition with science. For example, until that time, the term for science, namely “the investigation of things” ( gezhi zhi xue), was taken from Confucianism.107 After the Sino-Japanese War, people would slowly begin to use the Japanese characters for the translation of science (kexue). As Allen’s comments indicate, science as kexue was clearly juxtaposed to mixin or superstition, and hence late Qing intellectuals tried to disenchant or criticize the world of popular religion. We can understand this as a move towards a disenchanted worldview, which Marx described by stressing that nature becomes an object. But just as intellectuals and officials including Tan Sitong, Zhang Zhidong, Kang Youwei, and Zhang Taiyan would attack religions and participate in movements to transform temples into schools,108 they would each in his own way combine religion with science to create a new type of morality. After 1900, reacting to the various failures of the Qing government, Zhang Taiyan became an anti-Manchu revolutionary and castigated reformers such as Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao. However, both revolutionaries and reformers upheld the basic parameters of scientific learning and drew on religion to develop a morality for the nation-state. Thus we cannot explain the unusual nature of Zhang Taiyan’s Buddhist writings and indeed his rejection of many salient theories of the time, such as evolutionary history and the primacy of the state, with respect to his political position. Rather, we must understand his interest in Buddhism in the context of two factors, his jail experience from 1903 to 1906 and his stay in Japan thereafter from 1906 to 1911. It is well known that the late Qing witnessed a revival of Buddhism, but as I explain in Chapter Three, Zhang’s “conversion” to Buddhism was different from that of Tan Sitong or Liang Qichao. Zhang studied Buddhism when he was in jail and did so largely to overcome the difficult circumstances he faced during his sentence, including starvation and mistreatment by

106 107 108

Ibid., 89. Ibid. Goossaert, “1898,” 312–13.

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the guards. This caused him to relate to Buddhism at a personal and philosophical level, which allowed him a certain distance from which to re-evaluate modern institutions from a Buddhist perspective. He developed this critical perspective when he went to Japan in 1906, where he avidly read books about modern German philosophy in Japanese. He was influenced by a number of scholars in Meiji Japan, who were critical of the rationalizing and scientific side of capitalist modernity and emphasized the individual. In a recent book discussing the effect of Meiji writers on Lu Xun, who studied with Zhang Taiyan during this period, Nakajima Osafumi singles out Saitō Nonohito and Anesaki Masaharu, who, he claims used the individual to resist science as a result of “the development of capitalism, which sacrificed the countryside in order to support the Sino-Japanese War.”109 As Chinese and Japanese intellectuals began to focus on the individual and the rustic as opposed to the urban and national, they venerated German scholars such as Nietzsche and Schopenhauer, who defied Hegelian optimism. This resistance represented a switch to the use-value side of capitalism, which is often expressed as pathos and other concepts opposed to the rationalizing impulses of modernity. Following Meiji thinkers and to some extent going beyond them, Zhang would bring Buddhism in dialogue with Hegel, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche to develop a philosophical critique of modernity. This book analyzes this critique in the context of China’s incorporation into the global capitalist system of nation-states. Chapter Outline Zhang Taiyan entered the discursive world of the late Qing as a nationalist and eventually judged this world as alienating and attempted to negate it. At the heart of Zhang’s thought is the contrast between his anti-Manchu nationalism and his Buddhist self-negation. Scholars of Zhang Taiyan have struggled to bring these two contradictory elements of his thought together. But this book avoids trying to resolve this tension and instead analyzes how the contradictions in Zhang’s thought were conditioned and made possible by global capitalist modernity. To make matters more complicated, both Zhang’s visions of nationalism

109

Nakajima Osafumi, Fukurō no koe, 19.

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and his theory of Buddhist self-negation themselves incorporate insurmountable antinomies. These antinomies are linked respectively to the problematics of nationalism and global capitalism. Chapter Two analyzes Zhang’s anti-Manchu discourse in relation to Kang Youwei’s Confucian narrative of the nation-state that includes both the Han and the Manchus. Zhang eventually turned to revolution, but he fluctuated between progressive and atavistic temporalities, and his conceptions of anti-Manchuism changed in relation to his vision of international politics. Zhang shifted from seeing revolution as progressive, which was the prevalent view, to understanding it as a return to an identity before the Manchu takeover. Similarly, he shifted from narratives of identification that posited the Chinese as civilized like the West to narratives that associated China with Asia and other countries resisting imperialism. While these standpoints are different, they can be understood as various perspectives on the theatrical construction of national identity and the temporal antinomies of nationhood. In other words, the nation usually must both show its modernity in relation to previous forms of community, and simultaneously demonstrate its roots in the past. Chapters Three, Four, and Five each deal with an aspect of Zhang’s Buddhist writings. Chapter Three compares Liang Qichao’s and Zhang Taiyan’s respective uses of Buddhism and shows how Zhang developed a critical use of Yogācāra Buddhism. This critical use stems from elements of Zhang’s earlier thought and specifically his idea of confusion (huo), which he adopted from his early reading of Zhuang Zi and the idea of ontological confusion. Zhang brought together his idea of confusion and his interpretation of Buddhism to develop a unique philosophy of resistance. The catalyst in Zhang’s conversion to Buddhism was his jail experience, which perhaps caused him to question collective institutions. Unlike Liang Qichao, who, during the late Qing, primarily saw Buddhism as a means to produce a kind of group identity, Zhang probed deeper into the system of Yogācāra Buddhism and thus undermined the subject, which is the base of any type of identification, including of course identification with the state. However, when forced to defend his use of religion and Buddhism, Zhang translated Yogācāran concepts back into the framework of theatrical identification and showed how they can be useful in a revolutionary situation by promoting virtues such as self-sacrifice. Chapter Four examines Zhang’s Buddhist theory of history. Zhang drew on Buddhist concepts to both ground and eventually negate the

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concept of evolution. Specifically, he claimed that Hegel’s concept of evolution was not so much wrong as misplaced. That is, Hegel and promoters of progress described one side of the process of evolution—the good getting better—but failed to grasp that the bad gets worse. Moreover, Zhang claimed that proponents of evolution did not understand that the roots of evolution lie in the production of “karmic seeds,” which Yogācāra Buddhists believe produce the fluctuations of consciousness which form the world of appearances. Hence Zhang’s goal was not the realization of evolution and history, but their negation. Thus we can see a structural similarity between Zhang’s negation of history as the product of karmic consciousness and the Hegelian Marxist goal of negating the subject of history as capital. In other words, while Hegel and even Lukács see history as a positive progression of some type of subject, Zhang, informed by Buddhism, conceives of history as the object of negation. Chapter Five examines Zhang’s critique of the concepts of equality and the universal principle ( gongli ). Zhang attacked the universal principle, which emerged from an older neo-Confucian concept, the heavenly principle (tianli ). Both the concept of the universal principle and Zhang’s critique of it must be understood in a larger global space. The universal principle can be applied in both the realms of science and ethics and implies impartiality or equality; a principle that subsumes the particular under universal laws of moral conduct and social movement such as the ethics of citizenship, or a process of development such as social evolution. Zhang draws on elements of imperial Chinese thought to criticize the “universal principle” and “society,” both of which became salient concepts during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. After making this critique, Zhang gestures towards an alternative world of equalization (qi ) as difference, drawing on the Daoist philosopher Zhuang Zi.110 We can think of Zhang’s “equalization” as his attempt to resist a world dominated by abstract principles and forces that were becoming increasingly prevalent in early twentieth-century China.

110 A. C. Graham follows the Historical Records of Sima Qian in dating Zhuang Zi from around 370 to 301 bce. See, Zhuang Zi, Chuang Tzu, 3. Zhuang Zi’s writings were collected in a text called the Zhuang Zi. While most scholars agree that the first seven chapters, including the chapter on equalization, were written by Zhuang Zi, the rest were probably written later.

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Together the various chapters aim to show Zhang’s movement to increasingly abstract and critical thought, while at the same time situating his writings in terms of his debates with reformers such as Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao, and events in his personal life. Zhang always thought of his critique of existence as linked to a critique of politics, but he had difficulty translating between the two realms. Nonetheless, Zhang’s legacy as a critic of evolution and of the hegemony of abstract principles remains relevant today. Moreover, he explicitly poses the question of how and to what extent legacies of the past or transcendental dimensions in philosophies such as Buddhism can be mobilized to resist the homogenizing forms of capitalist modernity and its various ideological expressions including the evolutionary visions of history and the subordination of particularity to abstract and impersonal principles. I will return to these issues in the concluding chapter, which deals with the legacy of Zhang Taiyan’s ideas as expressed through Lu Xun and his interpreters, such as the well-known Chinese critical intellectual Wang Hui.

CHAPTER TWO

ZHANG’S CRITIQUE OF KANG YOUWEI: ANTI-MANCHUISM, THE NATIONAL ESSENCE, AND REVOLUTION In 1896, Zhang Taiyan left the ivory tower of classical studies at the Gujing Academy and entered the world of national politics. Consequently, he became involved in constructing narratives of national identity, enmeshed in larger discursive practices concerning evolution, civilization, race, and revolution. But given that late Qing intellectuals like Zhang Taiyan had a multifaceted classical education, their reception of globally circulating discourses was far from uniform. As China entered the global capitalist system of nation-states, Chinese intellectuals began to transform their indigenous categories to understand, interpret and, at times, resist globally dominant discourses of progressive history, civilization, and national identity. Central to this process was the conflict between anti-Manchuism and late Qing reformism. Soon after leaving the Gujing Academy, Zhang, who was to become one of China’s most famous anti-Manchu propagandists, entered a debate with Kang Youwei, the foremost proponent of reform. While many have studied the conflict between anti-Manchuism and late Qing reformism, few have contextualized this debate in the larger problematic surrounding the conflict between evolutionary civilization and cultural resistance. Kang Youwei drew on indigenous Confucian discourses of civilization to reformulate a narrative of universal progress compatible with re-imagining the Qing empire as a modern nation-state, a place in which Chinese identity was culturally defined to include both Manchus and Han. Hence in Kang’s vision, empire and nation exist in a tense but mutually reinforcing relationship. He wanted a polity that combined the strength of the nation with the looseness and pluralism of empire. Until around 1900, Zhang Taiyan followed the reformers in endorsing their civilizational narrative and, although he questioned the validity of Confucianism, he did not explicitly promote anti-Manchu revolution. After 1900, however, Zhang advocated anti-Manchu revolution as part of an evolutionary narrative of history. Throughout this period,

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Zhang shared with late Qing reformers and revolutionaries a broad framework of narratives of progressive civilization. In 1906, after Zhang was released from prison in Shanghai, where had been incarcerated since 1903 for sedition, he began to question this narrative of evolution and expound a theory of anti-Manchu revolution that stressed the cultural particularity of the nation as opposed to universal progress. Zhang eventually connected anti-Manchuism to a larger project of antiimperialism, a shift simultaneous with his so-called turn to a Buddhist voice during the years 1906–1910. During these years Zhang began to reveal one side of his resistance to dominant narratives of evolutionary history. Zhang took the Chinese national essence as his standpoint of critique and developed a vision of international pluralism. The national essence ( guocui, 国粋), a concept inherited from Japan, was used by a number of anti-Manchu scholars, including Liu Shipei (1884–1919) and Zhang Taiyan, to signify Han culture as opposed to Manchu culture. Their project was to revive the Han national essence by reviving the study of Chinese classics, including texts that were outside of the traditional Confucian canon, such as Daoist classics. Scholars often referred to the study of these texts and the study of Chinese history, politics, and philosophy as “national learning.”1 This cultural perspective of resistance to the Manchus also provided a standpoint for resistance to Western imperialism. Zhang portrayed the evolutionary processes of civilization as an oppressive dynamic encroaching on China and other Asian countries, and he highlighted the Chinese national essence as cultural resistance. The Complexities of Nationalism: Culture, Civilization, and Revolution Modern nation-states have two contradictory tasks: they must express their identity through time as well as their difference from other nations.2 These two aspects invariably involve a racial component. The link between nation and race is complex, but in any case, as Etienne

1 Incidentally, although the concept of “national essence” has fallen out of the Chinese vocabulary, the concept of national learning ( guoxue) has seen a revival since the 1990s. So, for example, Zhang Taiyan may be referred to as a “master of national learning” ( guoxue dashi ). 2 These are the two sides of what Prasenjit Duara describes as “discent” (descenttemporal continuity and dissent-otherness). See Duara, Rescuing History from the Nation.

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Balibar argues, in order to maintain unity, nations must create a fictive ethnicity. Balibar notes that fictive ethnicity should be “understood by analogy with the persona ficta of the juridical tradition in the sense of an institutional effect, a ‘fabrication.’”3 Nationalism uses the persona ficta to enable theatrical identification with a racialized image of the people. As a fictive ethnicity, the nation or the persona ficta implies that the people “can be represented in the past or the future as if they formed a natural community, possessing of itself an identity of origins, culture and interests which transcends individuals and social conditions.”4 National identity can transcend individual identity only because it came to form the very core of self-identity during the modern period. This involves a unique dialectic of universality and individuality: By constituting the people as a fictively ethnic unity against the background of a universalistic representation which attributes to each individual one—and only one—ethnic identity and which thus divides the whole of humanity between different ethnic groups corresponding potentially to so many nations, national ideologies do much more than justify the strategies employed by the state to control populations. It inscribes their demands in advance in a sense of belonging in the double sense of the term—both what it is that make one belong to oneself and also what makes one belong to the other fellow human beings. Which means that one can be interpellated, as an individual, in the name of the collectivity whose name one bears.5

In other words, when one lives in the nation-state, one’s identity is always already mediated by fictive ethnicity, and so belonging to oneself implies belonging to other co-nationals. The nation thus has the complex task of creating a fictive ethnicity and presenting it as natural and universal—a project that often invokes the tropes of culture and race. Race and culture have always mutually constructed one another.6 During the nineteenth century, thinkers such as Matthew Arnold and Ernest Renan developed a concept of race based on culture, but also subject to rigid boundaries and thus capable of serving the nation. Renan, for example, contended that a particular race is expressed in its past and particularly includes “a language, a literature stamped with a particular physiognomy, a religion, a history and a civilization.”7 3 4 5 6 7

Balibar, “The Nation Form,” 96. Ibid. Ibid. Young, Colonial Desire, 54. Ibid., 83.

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Race, culture, and civilization serve to set contexts and determine the agents of politics by defining the boundaries of human and national subjects and encouraging specific forms of identification and interpellation. The idea of fictive ethnicity does not just govern the identity of individuals of one nation, but posits a vision of the whole of humanity in terms of nations. This is one of the reasons why culture and civilization have had to define not only the nation but frame the progress of humanity. This larger vision of human progress locates others and orients one’s own nation. But the nation has a contradictory relationship with the temporality of progress or evolution. On the one hand, the nation appears on the world-stage moving forward; however, its identity depends on its connection with the past. This conflict in temporality is expressed in the tension between civilization and culture. Civilization refers to material progress along an evolutionary timeline while culture refers to spiritual and ethical development, usually rooted in the past. Depending on historical and political circumstances, nationalists could draw on either of these narratives and align national fictive ethnicity with civilization and material development or with cultural resistance to the dominance of evolutionary civilization. We can read Zhang’s early thought as oscillating between these two narratives of the nation. In order to understand this movement, we must underscore how revolution, another global discursive trope articulated in the late Qing, implied a certain civilizational dynamic. But the story is more complex than a mere circulation of revolutionary discourse. In Robert Young’s words, we need to be attentive to how, with the advent of global capitalist modernity, discursive and conceptual practices “were not simply destroyed but rather layered on top of each other, giving rise to struggles that themselves only increased the imbrication of each with the other and their translation into increasingly uncertain patchwork identities.”8 This pastiche-like dimension made China different from the West. In Europe as well the concept of revolution went through several semantic shifts. In the Middle Ages, the Late Latin term revolutio was linked to “revolving” and hence when used in political contexts it meant turning back to an original or older condition.9 This is of course different from the modern conception of revolution, which stresses social or political

8 9

Ibid., 174. Griewank, Der Neuzeitliche Revolutionsbegriff, 2–3.

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transformation, and emphasizes the validity of the new. In a later period, before the French Revolution, the term “revolution” merely referred to “considerable change in the government of a state” and in general scholars thought of it as something to be avoided.10 However, after the French Revolution, the term moved from the political to the social realm and signified a “dynamic transformational process” and an “expression of the historical rhythm of the progress of the human mind.”11 Thus the term moved from signifying return to signifying the very unfolding of progress; in short, it became a part of a progressive discourse of civilization. Late Qing intellectuals would learn the modern concept of revolution through its Japanese translation, kakumei (革命, geming in Chinese). This character compound, which the Japanese had in fact borrowed from classical Chinese, is composed of the term ge (to break) and ming (the mandate, usually of heaven). Hence, unlike the medieval term revolutio, which meant “return,” geming primarily referred to a dynasty losing the mandate and another one gaining it. This transformation did not entail any change in political or social structure. When Zhang Taiyan used the term geming during the late Qing, he had in mind some of its older meaning of dynastic transfer. However, since Zhang’s purpose was driving out the Manchus, he brought back another old term, guangfu or restoration, which is closer to the meaning of revolutio. Zhang’s revolutionary thought is imbricated in a tension between revolution as expressing the telos of civilization and the restoration of national essence, which expresses an indigenous temporality that breaks through universal civilization, which we can associate with “culture.” In both these cases, Zhang draws on existing conceptual resources in order to develop a revolutionary anti-Manchuism and a theory of anti-imperialism. Kang Youwei’s Reinterpretation of New Text Confucianism Although traditional Chinese intellectuals did not develop a linear model of history, Confucians believed in the ability of barbarians to become civilized through practicing rituals, and in this sense their ideas overlapped with the thinking of modern proponents of evolutionary

10 11

Baker, Inventing the French Revolution, 205. Ibid., 212.

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civilization. Kang Youwei built what we could liken to a discourse of civilization out of the materials of the Chinese tradition and New Text Confucian interpretations of the classics.12 Kang Youwei inherited the project of New Text Confucians, who sought to redefine Chinese identity using Confucianism in order to legitimate the Manchu rulers and decentralized control of Tibetans and Mongols. The controversy between New Text and Old Text schools originated in the late Han dynasty (206 bce–220 ce), when scholars debated which classics were genuine.13 After the Qin emperor burned the Confucian classics (beginning around 213 bce), a number of texts were compiled by scholars such as Liu Xin and Old Text scholars doubted the originality of these newly transcribed texts. They suggested that the legitimate texts were those that were found in Confucius’ hometown or in graves from the Warring States period (c. 475–221 bce). During the late Qing, the debate between the New and Old Text schools was infused with new meaning in the context of the politics of race and empire. The New Text advocates proposed that being Chinese was not dependent on racial characteristics or essences; rather it was a matter of practicing Confucian rituals and music. Hence, non-Chinese 12 Kang’s political life is well known. He excelled in the imperial examinations, had extremely close ties to the Qing court, and attempted to refashion Confucianism as a religion to envision the transformation of the Qing empire into a nation-state. In his writings, he attempts to preserve the multiethnic dimension of the Qing empire and to this end, he draws on Han dynasty Confucians, such as Dong Zhongshu (179–104 bce). Finally, Kang re-imagines empire on a global level to project a utopian vision of a world without nation-states and without private ownership. The differences between the New Text and Old Text schools were multifaceted. One of the main points distinguishing the former from the latter turns on the issue of whether the six classics were written by Confucius. New Text school adherents believed the classics were written by Confucius in order to promote reform and to uphold the Confucian belief that barbarians could become Chinese. Hence, during the late Qing, they posited Confucius as a symbol of constitutionalism. Old Text school adherents, on the contrary, extolled the Duke of Zhou over Confucius and claimed that, rather than being a political theorist, Confucius was merely a good historian. In this way, they attempted to diffuse the Confucian narrative that blurs the boundaries between barbarian and Chinese. 13 Here “classics” refer to the thirteen classics, namely, the Songs, the Book of Changes, the Book of Documents, the Zuo Commentary, the Gongyang Commentary, the Guliang Commentary, the Ceremonials and Rites, the Rites of Zhou, the Record of Rites, the Analects, the Mencius, the Classic of Filial Piety, and the Erya. The Spring and Autumn Annals is included in the two commentaries, the Zuo Commentary and the Gongyang Commentary. It does not stand alone as a classic when referring to the thirteen classics. These two commentaries were the locus of a number of disputes between the New Text and Old Text schools—Old Text advocates praise the Zuo Commentary, while New Text proponents adhere to the Gongyang Commentary.

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could become Chinese if they practiced the Chinese rituals and music. Traditional Confucians used the term wenming, which would later be translated as “civilization,” to refer to rituals and music. In a word, it was rituals and music that separated humans from barbarians. Kang creatively drew from various New Text Confucian classics in order to meet the challenges of the global system of nation-states. New Text Confucians of the Qing had an inclusive view of Chinese identity based on the Spring and Autumn Gongyang Commentary (Chunqiu gongyang zhuan).14 Some of the concepts of the Next Text scholars are particularly important for understanding the late Qing discourse on culture and race and the debate between Kang and Zhang. In many ways, both Old and New Text school theorists continued the early Qing tradition of going back to the classics in order to develop political ideals. However, while early Qing scholars such as Gu Yanwu and Huang Zongxi conceived of Chinese rituals and music as representative of Han identity, New Text school intellectuals reinterpreted rituals and music to create a Chinese identity based on culture and not on race. As Wang Hui explains: The statecraft theory of the New Text school took rituals as a basis and placed the political practice of the empire at the center. When they revived the themes of the Confucians of the early Qing, they did not clearly differentiate between Chinese and barbarian nor did they have the tendency to rebel, which lay concealed beneath early Qing orthodoxy. Rather, the New Text school scholars developed their theory based on the presupposition of the legitimacy of the empire and the transformation of history. This change in the emphasis of scholarship undoubtedly reflects the political reality of the Qing minority being rulers of a multi-ethnic empire.15

Unlike the early Qing Confucians, New Text Confucians such as Liu Fenglu (1776–1829) and Zhuang Cunyu (1719–1788) were part of the Qing government and naturally identified with the Qing empire. Moreover, the emphasis on rituals suggests a different type of identity

14 The Spring and Autumn Annals is a record of political events that took place in the state of Lu from 722 bce to 481 bce. There are three commentaries on these Annals: the Zuo Zhuan (Zuo Commentary), the Gongyang Commentary, and the Guliang Commentary. These three are all considered classics and usually serve to reveal the moral teaching of the Annals. The Gongyang Commentary is usually associated with the New Text School and is framed in a question-and-answer format to make the moral point of view expressed clear. 15 Wang Hui, Xiandai Zhongguo sixiang de xingqi, vol. 2, 515.

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than the modern national conception based on citizenship and theatrical identification. The Ming dynasty, although not a nation-state in our modern sense, had aspects of this form of identity, especially at the elite level, and the Qing dynasty New Text scholars aimed to preserve the looser frame of imperial identity. In order to strengthen the legitimacy of the Qing government, they blurred the distinctions between inside and outside.16 Followers of the New Text school famously interpreted the Spring and Autumn Annals in a manner exemplified by the scholar Yang Huan (1234–1299), who adopted such a theory of identity to legitimate the Yuan dynasty (1271–1368): “If the Chinese adopt the way of the barbarian, one should see them as barbarians. When the barbarians learn the ways of China, they become Chinese.”17 The Yuan and Qing dynasties were both ruled by minorities and so it is not surprising to find parallels in their use of Confucianism to dissolve ethnic boundaries. In order to stress the unity of the Qing multiethnic empire, New Text Confucians invoked “the penetrating the three continuities” (tong san tong) and “the unity of the great empire” (da yi tong). Confucians had traditionally used these two concepts to describe cultural continuity in the midst of political change. The term “penetrating the three continuities” refers to a passage in the Analects: The Master said, “The Yin built on the rites of the Xia. What was added and omitted can be known. The Zhou built on the rites of the Yin. What was added and omitted can be known. Should there be a successor to the Zhou, even a hundred generations hence can be known.”18

Each dynasty gains its legitimacy from the mandate of heaven and when it loses the mandate, a new dynasty receives it. In this process, rulers must change the calendar and clothing associated with the empire.19 16 As Wang Hui explains: “In the specific historical context of the Qing dynasty, the affirmation of the movement of history and political systems necessarily had to involve the problem of race. The New Text school scholars’ concern with the flow of history and thoughts about the practice of power (xingquan) concentrated on changing the early Qing scholars’ vision of inside and outside. They used the examples of the Spring and Autumn Gongyang studies to dissolve national consciousness and the distinction between Chinese and barbarians of early textual scholarship and Confucianism” (ibid., 517). 17 Ibid., 528. 18 Confucius, Analects, 66. See also the Chinese edition: Yang Bojun, ed., Lunyu yizhu, 21. 19 Attire and hairstyle were intimately connected with Chinese dynastic rule. Perhaps the most famous example is the queue associated with Manchu rule, which Zhang Taiyan would cut off as a sign of protest.

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However, they also maintained continuity, which they constructed through rituals. During both the Han and the late Qing, New Text scholars used the above passage to express a narrative of dynastic and cultural continuity. However, in the late Qing, New Text Confucians underscored the continuity of the Manchu dynasty with previous dynasties and stressed the persistence of Chinese identity after various reforms undertaken by the Qing state. In addition to the penetrating of the three continuities, New Text scholars also invoked the legacy of three sage kings and their imperial past using the concepts of “the unity of the great empire” (da yi tong). The “unity of the great empire” refers to a harmonious belongingtogether of the various groups in the empire and its temporal continuity since the Qin-Han period (221 bce–220 ce), when China first became an empire. By stressing “the unity of the great empire” mid- and lateQing Confucians created a new image of political space that included all groups and thus had no clear boundary between inside and outside.20 During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the above paradigm of imperial continuity met with crisis. Given China’s numerous defeats at the hands of foreign countries in a series of wars and invasions after the Opium War in 1842, Chinese intellectuals had to recognize their presence in a world in which one by one their various tribute states were becoming independent nation-states or being colonized by Western powers. In Kang Youwei’s words, “now our country is in a period when countries mutually struggle; it is not the time when the empire is closed off. During the period when countries mutually struggle, knowledge about politics, technology, literature and crafts can all be set up side by side and those who are behind will become extinct.”21 In other words, as China entered the global system of nation-states, its traditional practices became relative and subject to a larger narrative of evolutionary civilization. When placed in the inter-state system, China went from being the cosmos to becoming a state ( guojia).22 Wang Hui explains that this plunged New Text Confucianism into crisis, since its proponents aimed to annihilate the distinction between inside and outside:

Wang Hui, Xiandai Zhongguo sixiang de xingqi, vol. 2, 518. Ibid., 741, from Kang Youwei zhenglunji (A Selection of the Political Writings of Kang Youwei) (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1981), vol. 1, 301. 22 Levenson, Confucian China and Its Modern Fate: The Problem of Intellectual Continuity. 20

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chapter two If one says that the theory of the legitimacy of “the great unity of the empire” took Confucian rituals and righteousness as a base, took custom and appropriateness as principles, and gradually had a tendency to dissolve the distinction between inside and outside (namely racial boundaries), then colonialism and capitalism’s market expansion initiated a nationalist wave that took political sovereignty as a base, universal laws as a principle and had a tendency to strictly separate inside and outside. This is a conflict between the identity of a multiethnic empire and the identity of a nation-state. The former takes culture (rituals and righteousness) as the foundation of community, while the latter takes race as the foundation of politics.23

As we have already noted, notions of culture were intimately linked to those of race. Wang Hui here highlights the tension between an international system based on formal equality, fictive ethnicity, and a ritually ordered hierarchical imperial system. Hence, during the late Qing, New Text scholars like Kang Youwei were faced with the contradictory task of drawing on Confucianism to blur the boundaries between the Manchu self and the Han other, while using the same concepts to stress the boundaries between China and the rest of the world. On the one hand, Kang advocated that China become a sovereign state, which entailed stressing national identity. On the other hand, in order to resolve China’s internal tensions with respect to minorities and indeed legitimate a minority ruling group, Kang and others needed to blur the distinction between inside and outside and stress a loose imperial unity. To deal with this new world, Kang Youwei catapulted the New Text paradigm and the Confucian concept of rituals into national space. He explicitly invoked New Text logic to dissolve the boundaries between the Chinese and barbarians and defined being Chinese according to certain universal moral attributes. The distinction between the Chinese and the barbarians begins in the Spring and Autumn Annals. But according to Confucius’ interpretation of the Spring and Autumn Annals, if the Chinese act like barbarians, one takes them as barbarians and if the barbarians perform the rituals and act in accord with righteousness, one takes them as Chinese.24

Although the standard for whether one is Chinese or not is still based on Confucian ideas such as righteousness, these concepts now have a

23 24

Wang Hui, Xiandai Zhongguo sixiang de xingqi, vol. 2, 518. Cited from ibid., 213.

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global significance based on a progressive vision of history. Thus Kang asserts that the difference between civilized and barbarian is based on evolution rather than on race, and unlike Zhang, he believes that any barbarian can become Chinese, i.e., civilized. In fact, he claims that “the ideas that the Western powers used to become strong are all compatible with the teachings of the Six Classics.”25 Mobilizing New Text Confucianism for the nation required expanding the limits of Confucian discourse to envelop a new temporality.26 In this way, Kang had an evolutionary reading of the famous New Text phrase “penetrating the three continuities.” Evolution proceeds gradually and changes have their origins. This is true with all nations. By observing the child, one can know the adult and the old man; by observing the sprout one can know a tree when it grows big and finally reaches the sky. Thus, by observing the modifications and additions of the three successive eras of the Xia, Shang, and Zhou, one can by extension know the changes in a hundred generations to come.27

In Kang’s view, Confucius could “know the changes in a hundred generations” because he had already understood the laws of evolution, which form the basis for penetrating the three continuities.28

25 Kang Youwei, Kang Youwei quanji, vol. 3, 743–44. Cited from Wang Hui, Xiandai Zhongguo sixiang de xingqi, vol. 3, 750. 26 To construct his evolutionary vision of time, Kang creatively used another key concept from New Text Confucianism, the theory of the three worlds (san shilun). This concept goes beyond the scope of this book, but it is said to have originated in the Spring and Autumn Annals. It is probably the New Text Confucians of the Han dynasty who made the theory explicit. For example, during the Eastern Han dynasty, He Xiu separated history into three ages: the age of chaos (luan shi ), the age of rising peace (shenpgping shi ), and the age of heavenly peace (taiping shi ). New Text Confucians of the late Qing, such as Liu Fenglu and Zhuang Cunyu, invoked this narrative of the three ages in order to stress that their present, namely the age of heavenly peace, was one in which the Han and the minorities lived peacefully; however, Kang uses this theory to project a utopian future. 27 Kang Youwei, Kang Youwei quanji, vol. 3, 743–44; Wang Hui, Xiandai Zhongguo sixiang de xingqi, vol. 2, 750. 28 With this evolutionary scheme, Kang displaces the idea of empire in which there is no outside from the present to the future. In other words, the Great Community, which has transcended the world of national divisions, will be the one that realizes the unity of the empire (da yi tong). This utopian view is intimately related to Confucian practices such as rituals, but Kang constantly claims that it transcends any nation-state including China. It is a view of empire in which there is no use for the term Zhongguo (China), because all barbarians will have been civilized. Kang’s example shows that, against Levenson, the particularization of the term for China (Zhongguo) was accompanied by a re-universalization of the term for all-under-heaven (tianxia), which

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However, combining Confucianism with the temporalities of modernity would further involve expanding the key concept of rituals to include the conditions for novel political forms: “Confucius established all-under-heaven and promoted ancestors, but today one purely aims to create citizens. In this case, one must change the rituals and codes. This is what is called time (shi ).”29 Like earlier New Text scholars, Kang invokes rituals and Confucianism to establish continuity, but he extends them beyond the empire to form the foundations of the nation-state. Rituals can change to include citizenship, constitutions, and other institutions associated with the nation-state, not just in China but all over the world. Ritual now becomes part of a narrative screen encouraging people to identify with the Chinese nation as citizens, while at the same time preserving the link with the Chinese past and invoking an evolutionary future. Kang uses both an evolutionary perspective and the New Text theories of blurring the distinction between Han and Manchu to attack the idea of anti-Manchu revolution, which was his immediate political task. In Kang’s “An Essay Analyzing Revolution” (“Bian gemingshu”), which he published in 1902 in Xinmin congbao, an important journal organized by late Qing reformers, he made a number of arguments against revolution. This essay was published after Zhang Taiyan had written his “On Correcting the Hatred of Manchus” (“Zheng Choumanlun”), which was arguably the first famous anti-Manchu tract.30 Kang frames his argument against revolution in the world-stage of interracial and interstate competition. Thus, in his view, preserving the empire becomes a means of protecting the Chinese race in a Social Darwinist world. After several hundred years, there will, of necessity, only be a few big countries. Apart from England, America, France, Russia and Germany, we cannot know which countries will survive. China has many people; its land makes up a third of the world and has as much land as Europe; it produces more than the whole of America; its people’s intelligence is equal to that of the whites. Thus we have the credentials to be a first-

subsequently would refer to the entire world system. See Wang Hui, Xiandai Zhongguo sixiang de xingqi, vol. 2, 762. 29 Cited in Wang Hui, Xiandai Zhongguo sixiang de xingqi, vol. 2, 737. 30 Tang Zhijun, Zhang Taiyan nianpu changbian, 121; Laitinen, Chinese Nationalism in the Late Qing Dynasty, 80.

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rate country in the world, be dominant in the world and protect our race (zhong).31

From the perspective of the survival of the fittest, rituals are not just practices that hold society together; they are connected to universal laws of survival. They are endowed with scientific value and lead to unity. In this way, Kang combines the moral goal of civilization with the material drive to exist. Thus Kang says that “things all have benevolence (ren), righteousness ( yi ), and rituals; it is not just humans who have them.”32 In this sense ritual loses its link to traditional imperial political life and can signify any practice. Kang connects ritual to principle and repeatedly uses the idea of principle to criticize revolution: “With respect to all things, if they unite they are big and if they split up they are small; if they unite they are strong, and if they split up they are weak. This is the principle of things.”33 Later he expresses this point by invoking the “universal principle,” which we will discuss in Chapter Five. “The revolutionaries daily discuss the universal principle ( gongli ), but why do they split up a country that was originally united? Is this not a great contradiction?”34 Based on this principle, Kang concludes that China should not have a revolution since this will cause it to disintegrate and become an easy target for imperialists. “The revolutionaries claim that they save the country, but they want to divide our big country and make it tens of small countries and follow India in becoming extremely weak and [eventually] extinct.”35 Part of avoiding extinction involved progressing gradually along the path of political development. The course of humanity progresses according to a fixed sequence. From the clans come tribes, which in time are transformed into nations. And Kang Youwei, “Bian geming shu,” 211. Wang Hui, Xiandai Zhongguo sixiang de xingqi, vol. 2, 749. 33 Kang Youwei, “Bian geming shu,” 213. 34 Ibid., 215. 35 Ibid. Kang continues by discussing the idea of revolution and delinking it from race. He contends that the concept of revolution stems from Confucius and refers to people executing an unjust king and has nothing to do with race. He notes that, in the West, when the French killed King Louis and the English killed King Charles, it was because they were “public enemies.” In other words, these revolutions were in accord with the Confucian principle that does not distinguish between races; it merely looks at whether rulers served justice. Given this paradigm, Kang argues that although there have been a few autocratic rulers of the Qing, such as the Empress Dowager Cixi, in general the Manchus have promoted equality, evolution, and civilization. 31 32

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chapter two from the nations, the Grand community [Datong] comes about. Similarly, from the individual man the rule of tribal chieftains gradually becomes established, from which the relationship between ruler and subject is gradually defined. Autocracy gradually leads to constitutionalism, constitutionalism gradually leads to republicanism.36

Kang shared the goal of eventual republicanism with many of the revolutionaries; we can even say that he laid the theoretical foundations for Chinese revolutionaries. Of course, Kang tried to synthesize this vision with an imperial Confucianism based on the New Text school and aimed to preserve the Manchu-governed Qing dynasty until it would naturally outgrow itself and metamorphose into a republic. In this way, Kang attempted to preserve the idea of a multiethnic empire within a world of nation-states. Indeed, his notion of the Great Community (Datong) represents a utopian vision that out of the world of nation-states, a world beyond national distinctions would emerge in which private property and even the nuclear family become obsolete. This final part of his vision attempts to reconcile a world of all-underheaven with no outside with a world of nation-states. Although other reformers, such as Yan Fu and Liang Qichao, did not fully adhere to Kang’s utopian ideals, they made similar arguments in a less explicitly Confucian framework. For example, both Yan and Liang echoed Kang in arguing against racial nationalism, and they both feared that civil war would weaken China and invite imperialist aggression. Zhang Taiyan was perhaps this group’s most powerful ideological nemesis and from the years 1900–1903, he launched a vitriolic attack on the reformers’ conceptual framework. Zhang’s Turn to Revolutionary Politics Zhang’s political career began shortly before his working for Kang Youwei’s and Liang Qichao’s newspaper Current Affairs, and from 1895 to 1898, he shifted among a number of reform-oriented journals, due to differences of opinion with several editors. Since Zhang was trained by Yu Yue, one of the masters of the Old Text school, he was naturally averse to much of Kang’s scholarship. In a letter to one of 36 Kang Youwei, “Lunyu zhu,” in Sourcebook of Chinese Philosophy, 2nd edition, Theodore de Bary and Richard Lufrano, eds. ( New York: Columbia University Press, 2000), 268.

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his early teachers at the Gujing Academy (Gujing jingshe) written in 1896, he explained his frustrations with the people in the Kang Youwei clique: “Our scholarly interests are so different that we are like ice and charcoal.”37 Zhang voiced these differences forcefully once he became a revolutionary in 1900, but before this shift, he presented a narrative of the nation that is on the whole compatible with Kang Youwei’s project of uniting the Han and Manchus. More significantly, even after Zhang’s conversion to the revolutionary cause, he continued to operate within a discourse of civilization that is structurally similar to Kang’s. Thus, during Zhang’s early revolutionary period (1900–1903), the main difference between Kang and Zhang lay in their definition of the national subject, the object of national identification. Zhang’s turn to revolutionary politics was gradual and involved both intellectual exposure to new ideas and political setbacks such as the failures of the Hundred Day Reform of 1898 and the Boxer Rebellion of 1900. After the suppression of the Hundred Day Reform, on December 4, 1898, Zhang fled to Taiwan when the empress Dowager Cixi began persecuting reformers. When in Taiwan, Zhang worked for the Taiwan Daily News (Taiwan nichi’nichi shinbun)38 and regularly contributed to Liang Qichao’s journal, the Pure Opinion Paper (Qingyi bao), the official paper of Kang Youwei’s Emperor Protection Party (Baohuang hui), which, after the failure of the Hundred Day Reform, aimed to restore the power of the emperor and promote reform.39 One of Zhang’s most famous essays in the Pure Opinion Paper is “On the Guest Emperor,” published in 1899. This essay supports the Kang-Liang reformist line, but in it there are already hints of anti-Manchu sentiment. The essay argues that to dissolve the tensions between the Manchus and the Han, a Manchu should be a guest emperor, and Confucius should be the symbolic emperor of China. Zhang encouraged Emperor Guangxu (r. 1874–1908) to accept his position as a “guest emperor” (kedi, 客帝) and repeated the reformers’ argument that tensions between the Manchus and the Han could weaken China. However, as Kai-wing Chow notes, by using the term “guest emperor” to refer to the Manchus, Zhang clearly redraws

37 Cited in Wong Young-tsu, Search for Modern Nationalism, 9, and in Zhang Taiyan zhenglun xuanji, 14. 38 This newspaper published both Japanese and Chinese editions; Zhang contributed in Chinese. 39 See Wong Young-tsu, Search for Modern Nationalism, 14–15.

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the boundaries between self and other and implies that the Manchus are outsiders.40 Zhang eventually encountered problems with the editor of the Taiwan Daily News and in the face of censorship, he decided to accept Liang Qichao’s invitation to go to Japan in 1899.41 In Japan, Zhang was exposed to new scholarship and also encountered other political activists. Through Liang, he would meet Sun Zhongshan, but their relationship would come to fruition only after Zhang’s second visit to Tokyo about three years later.42 Zhang returned to China in the autumn of 1899 and continued to support Kang and Liang’s political endeavors, but we can already see signs of a schism between Zhang and the reformers.43 The relationship between Zhang’s theory and practice during this period is extremely complex. He attempted to obtain the help of high officials of the Qing to implement some of his ideas about reform and move towards realizing the plan advocated in “On the Guest Emperor.” In June, 1900, he wrote letters to Liu Kunyi and Li Hongzhang, Qing officials with close ties to the emperor, and asked for their support. He implored them to “clearly break with the superficial imperial edicts, reestablish local government, and develop the human potential of half of the country.”44 At the same time, Sun Zhongshan, who was in Japan, sought indirectly to persuade Li Hongzhang to break away from the rulers of the Qing government. However, neither Liu Kunyi nor Li Hongzhang paid any attention to Zhang’s advice. In 1900, Li Hongzhang accepted a position as governor general of Zhili and eventually became the minister for the Assembly of the Plenary Powers (Quan quan yi). In this capacity, in Chow Kai-wing, “Imagining Boundaries of Blood,” 37–38. Laitinen, Chinese Nationalism in the Late Qing Dynasty, 69–70. Laitinen explains that the editor was probably first concerned with Zhang’s difficult prose and second his consistent support of the reformers, who were being criticized by the Japanese government. Liang was in his most revolutionary phase and Zhang and Liang were closest during 1899. 42 See Takada Atsushi, Shō Heirin, Shō Shisō, Ro Jin, 34. 43 During this time, Zhang prepared the first edition of his famous A Book of Urgency (Qiushu), which he completed in January and published in April 1900. As the title suggests, Zhang rushed this text to publication and hence it is not ideologically unified. While some texts in this book, such as “On the Guest Emperor” and “On Groups,” clearly adopted an anti-revolutionary stance, there are essays that attack the Kang-Liang reformers and some that are even explicitly anti-Manchu (ibid., 18–19). 44 “Geng Zi juanbian yu yue du shu” ( June 1900), cited in Jiang Yihua, Zhang Binglin pingzhuan, 36. 40

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September of 1901, Li signed the Treaty of 1901 (also known as the Boxer Protocols), which made a number of concessions to the victorious foreign powers. Zhang saw Li’s actions as a capitulation to imperialism and this caused him to reflect on the political future of China. There were several other events that also influenced Zhang’s change in political thinking, including, of course, the trauma surrounding the Boxer Rebellion of 1900. By 1900, Zhang was perhaps already on the brink of becoming a revolutionary, but he continued to collaborate with reformers and his experience with them would eventually lead him to take a firmer stance against the Manchus. In February 1900, Zhang participated in the Society of Unyielding Integrity (Zhengqi hui), later renamed the Independence Society, organized by the political activist Tang Caichang (1867–1900).45 Tang’s thinking shifted between revolutionary and reformist perspectives, a vacillation that was perhaps a result of his attempt to get support from two distinct groups. On the one hand, he planned an uprising with the help of his contacts with secret societies in Hunan and Hubei, especially through his friends Ling Gui and Bi Yongnian, who were collaborating with Sun Zhongshan’s revolutionary movement. On the other hand, in terms of resources, Tang mainly relied on funds that Kang and Liang raised from overseas Chinese communities. About a month after the Manchu government declared war on the foreign powers on June 25, 1900, Tang Caichang organized a National Assembly (Guohui) in Shanghai consisting of a total of eighty members including Zhang Taiyan and Yan Fu, who was the vice-president. The aim of this parliament was to resist the policies of the Qing government and to prepare the road for a new political system. The Assembly listed as its goals: “To protect the sovereignty of the whole of China and create a new independent country”; “to decide not to recognize the Manchus as having a right to govern China”; and “to ask the Guangxu emperor to return to power.”46 From this, we can see the ambiguity in the founding principles of the parliament and a contradiction between anti-Manchuism and Qing-centered reformism linked to the Guangxu emperor. Zhang attended the meetings of this group and expressed a keen interest in their activities. However, he was also concerned that the group was ambivalent on the issue of driving out the Manchus. See Jiang Yihua, Zhang Taiyan sixiang yanjiu, 137. 46 Tang Zhijun, Zhang Taiyan nianpu changbian, 109. 45

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Zhang described his confusion surrounding these meetings to his friend Xia Zengyou: Some of us wanted to invite the Guangxu Emperor [down to the south to assume leadership], while the others wanted to expel [all Manchus]. These are, of course, contradictory stances. Those who supported the [deposed] Emperor intended to seek help from Japan and from Western powers. [ Many still put their trust in prominent Qing officials], such as Tang Caichang in Weng Tonghe and Chen Baozhen, Di Baoxian in Li Hongzhang, and Ye Han in Zhang Zhidong. We have no determined men, and disagreements are immense. I can foretell the failure of this conference.47

After only a few days of this conference, on July 29, Zhang presented a memorandum entitled “To Reject Resolutely Membership of Parliament to Manchus and Mongols” (“Qing yanju Manmeng ru guohui zhuang”). The memorandum was rejected and Zhang walked out in protest. Then in a show of ultimate defiance, Zhang cut off his queue, symbolizing his complete break with the Manchus. Zhang wrote a piece explaining why he cut off his queue entitled “An Explanation of Cutting My Queue” (“Jie bian fa”), in which he combines a racial argument with an analysis of China’s place in the world-system of nation-states. In the main part of this explanation, Zhang notes that Chinese originally wore their hair in a different manner and that it was only the barbarians (that is, the Manchus) who made them change their hairstyle. He also notes that the Japanese laugh at the Manchu queue and the Europeans call it a “pig-tail,” which should make Chinese feel shame.48 Much has been written about the symbolic meaning of cutting the queue, but two aspects standout in particular, namely the link between traditional hairstyle and Chinese identity and the connection between cutting one’s queue and evolution or civilization. In the next few years, both revolutionaries and reformers would write essays associating Western clothing and hairstyles with civilization49—Zhang was perhaps a forerunner of this trend. Shortly after Zhang withdrew from the Assembly, Tang’s Independence Society planned a series of uprisings, which were to take place on Cited in Wong Young-tsu, Search for Modern Nationalism, 26. Zhang Taiyan zhenglun xuanji, 148. Moreover, he expresses his anger at the contemporary world in which China is surrounded by hostile foreign powers. In such a situation, Zhang contends that the Han people cannot have their way. He personally takes responsibility and claims that he “cannot cleanse himself of his sin” (ibid., 149). 49 See Yoshizawa Seiichirō, Aikokushugi no sōse, 129. 47 48

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August 9, with the help of secret societies. However, Governor-General Zhang Zhidong somehow found out about this plan and Tang Caichang and twenty other plotters were executed. After this incident, although Zhang Taiyan had withdrawn from Tang’s National Assembly, his name was included among those who were to be arrested. Zhang fled to Japan for three months, read more literature on Western political and scientific theory, and incorporated these new ideas into his antiManchu philosophy. Zou Rong and Articulation of Anti-Manchuism as Revolution In 1903 Zhang claimed that he simply moved from indirect to direct revolution. In his eyes, this move was just accelerating the movement of history such that it reached Enlightenment ideals such as equality more quickly. This common denominator of a narrative of evolutionary civilization explains why at times the discourse of revolutionaries and reformers looks similar. However, late Qing revolutionaries had to synthesize race with a discourse of evolutionary civilization, something attempted by Zou Rong (1895–1905), Zhang’s younger associate and jailmate. In his 1903 pamphlet, The Revolutionary Army, Zou sought to reconcile an evolutionary view of history, which takes Western states as a model for development of Chinese nationalism, with anti-Manchuism. Zhang wrote a preface to Zou’s pamphlet and they both went to jail for writing essays advocating sedition. In The Revolutionary Army Zou shows how, once the revolutionaries rejected the New Text school link between Confucius and universal civilization, their discourse risked displacing the sources of their universal narrative to the West. Hence they constantly resorted to tropes such as race, lineage, and the Yellow emperor in their attempt to be simultaneously revolutionary, civilized, and Chinese. References to Western thinkers pervade Zou’s pamphlet. In his self-written preface, Zou notes that he believes “in the great thinkers, Rousseau, Washington and Walt Whitman.”50 Moreover, it is perhaps strange to find that one of the most famous revolutionary tracts of early Chinese nationalism begins with a sentence that advocates cleansing

50 Tsou Jung (Zou Rong), The Revolutionary Army, 56; Chinese text in Zou Rong, Geming jun, 5.

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“ourselves of 260 years of harsh and unremitting pain, so that . . . the descendents of the Yellow Emperor will all become Washingtons.”51 The references to Washington and Rousseau show that Zou thinks of revolution as a global process and not merely a Chinese phenomenon. Zou’s gloss on the concept of revolution stresses this global dimension: Revolution is the universal principle of evolution. Revolution is a universal principle of the world (shijie zhi gongli ). Revolution is the essence of the struggle for survival or destruction in a time of transition. Revolution follows heaven and responds to human needs. Revolution rejects the corrupt and keeps the good. Revolution is the advance from barbarism to civilization. Revolution turns slaves into masters.52

There could hardly be a clearer statement of revolution as a discourse of evolutionary civilization. Zou mobilizes traditional ideas such as the belief that “revolution follows heaven” (shun tian) into a world of progressive history. In other words, heaven is not governed by cosmic principles, but by the scientific laws of the universal principle ( gongli ). This link between science, civilization, and revolution, of course, echoes the thinkers of eighteenth-century France. For example, D’Alembert wrote that “to escape barbarism, the human race needed one of those revolutions that give the earth a new face.”53 Zou also stressed the globality of the Chinese revolution against the Manchus by linking it the American and French revolutions.54 From this perspective, Zou explains that the main aim of the revolution is to liberate the Chinese from slavery and to correct contemporary injustices. However, concepts such as justice and liberation cannot justify the overthrow of the Manchus unless these universal ideals are supplemented with a theory of the incorrigibility of the Manchus. In addition to pointing out the corruption of the Manchus, Zou proposed a taxonomy of races to separate the Manchus and the Han. He divided the world into two races, yellow and white, and claimed that the Han and the Manchu belong to different sub-divisions of the yellow race. In short, the yellow race is divided into the Chinese and Siberian races.

Ibid., Eng. 58, Chin. 7. Ibid., Eng. 58, Chin. 8. 53 Jean le Rond d’Alembert, “Discours Preliminaire,” cited from Baker, Inventing the French Revolution, 214. 54 (Tsou Jung) Zou Rong, The Revolutionary Army, 59, Chin. 8. 51 52

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The Han, the Japanese, and the Tibetans belong to the Chinese race while the Mongols, Turks, and Manchus belong to the latter. Zou Rong laments that people do not know who they are and hence in the “great stage (wutai ) of competition and evolution”55 Chinese do not identify with the correct character or subject. In Balibar’s terms such people have not learned to “belong to themselves” through the mediation of the nation. Thus Zou explains that if a trespasser barged into someone’s house the inhabitants would be alarmed and drive the intruder away. But Zou complains that his fellow Chinese “put up with things as a country ( guo) that they would not tolerate as individuals” and “tolerate things as a nation-lineage (zu) that they would not tolerate as a family.”56 This explains why the Chinese people succumbed not only to rule by the Manchus, but also to the rule by England in Hong Kong and by Japan in Taiwan. In Zou’s words, this shows that “if one is not clear about racial distinctions, it is no surprise that men become thieves and women become whores and people disgrace and insult their ancestors.”57 Zhang Taiyan, as we have noted, wrote the preface for Zou’s pamphlet and emphatically endorsed it. During Zhang’s career as a revolutionary, he constantly negotiated between the universal discourse of evolutionary civilization and the requirements of anti-Manchu nationalism. This tension becomes clearer as we move further into the first decade of the twentieth century, when foreign terms entered China with a greater frequency. In particular Chinese intellectuals began to use wenhua to refer both to culture and to Confucian rituals and music. Thus in 1907, the reformer Yang Du (1875–1931) claimed that Chinese (hua 华) are defined by “culture” (wenhua, 文化).58 Zhang retorted “even if the term hua referred to culture, how can we say that all people who have culture are Chinese?!”59 In short, if culture, like civilization, refers to a universal evolutionary narrative, then nationalists needed some type of supplement to mark difference. In the rest of this chapter we shall see how Zhang moved from trying to associate the Han race with the Ibid., Eng. 106, Chin. 40 (trans. amended). Ibid., Eng. 109, Chin. 44 (trans. amended). 57 Ibid. 58 Yang Du, “Jintie zhuyi shuo,” originally published in Zhongguo xinbao nos. 1–5, 1907. Cited from Zhang Taiyan’s “Zhonghua minguo jie,” 244. Pär Cassel has translated the article as “Explaining the ‘Republic of China,’” Stockholm Journal of East Asian Studies 8 (1997): 15–40. 59 Zhang Taiyan, Zhonghua minguo jie, 244; Stockholm Journal, 20. 55 56

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Western race in order to show that the Han are more civilized than the Manchus to emphasizing the Chinese national essence against both the Manchus and the discourse of evolutionary civilization. Zhang’s Explicitly Revolutionary Writings and the Ideas of Race and Lineage Zhang’s anti-Manchu essays actually date from before he cut off his queue. He explicitly moved to an evolutionary racialist perspective in the first editions of his A Book of Urgency (Qiushu chukeben) published in 1900. The essay “On the Origin of Human Beings” (“Yuanren”) is particularly important, since it combines a theory of evolution, which Zhang had already begun developing in essays such as “On Bacteria,” published in 1899, with a theory of race/culture. This essay also forms the base of his early theory of anti-Manchu racialism, which he developed more fully in the second edition, completed in 1902. Zhang inscribes differences in something like the human species even after making the point that all humans have the same origins: In the beginning, humans were just like scales of a fish one chi (one-third of a meter) long. Some developed quickly, and some later and so different clans were formed. With respect to their natures, there are differences between civilized (wen) and uncouth ( guang) and thus there is a difference between the Chinese (xia) and the barbarians (rong). With respect to living things (含生之类) without claws who could use language [i.e., humans], in ancient times, one did not compare the barbarians to people, but recently one does not follow this custom.60

By associating culture not just with race but with the nature (xing) of a people, Zhang precludes barbarians’ eventual evolution towards civilization. This is one of his key arguments against Kang Youwei’s narrative of the nation. Although Zhang claims all races have a common origin, he redefines what it means to be human using the idea of civilization, which again, in Zhang’s view, is unitary. Then in order to make a distinction between Han and Manchus, he draws on the ancient concept of hansheng (含生), which refers to living beings in general, and then makes reference to those who can use language to isolate what modern people call human beings. Within this category, Zhang would like to inscribe the notions of civilized and barbarian, which thus makes

60

Zhang Taiyan, Qiushu chukeben, zhongdingben, 22.

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the distinction lie somewhere in between a biological and a historicocultural concept. Zhang explains this point more fully in his 1902 essay “A Letter Refuting Kang Youwei’s Essay on Revolution”: In recent times, the distinction between races takes history, not nature, as a dividing line. If one speaks from the perspective of nature, then one must look at the amoeba as our ancestor and make sacrifices to apes. Among the people of the six regions of the world and the five races, who does not come from the same origin? There is no need for any vociferous discussion about this.61

In this way, Zhang can uphold Enlightenment universalism, which is associated with a Darwinian narrative of the origin of the species, along with arguments about the inequality of the races. By so doing, Zhang combines two distinct strands of Western anthropological research. As Robert Young explains, early Victorian anthropology developed a narrative of decline and used biblical sources to argue that human beings were initially white and then degenerated. The Enlightenment thinkers countered this narrative by invoking a unitary origin of the human race, but simultaneously accepted the notion of evolution and equality. Then in the nineteenth century, given increased contact with visible otherness, scholars such as Johann Gottfried Herder countered the unitary tendency of the Enlightenment by stressing particularity. Wong Young-tsu has recently compared Zhang Taiyan to Herder, precisely because both believed in national particularity.62 A brief discussion of their similarities and differences will shed light on the global problematic in which they were engaged. Though famous for constructing a theory of national particularity, like Zhang, Herder clearly believes in the unity of the species: “Mankind, destined to humanity, were to be from their origin a brotherly race, of one blood, and formed by one guiding tradition; and thus the whole arose, as each individual family now rises, branches from one stem, plants from one primitive nursery.”63 Within this larger framework, Herder underscores the diversity of nations that emerges historically due to climate, place, and local condition. This is of course an expression of Herder’s oft-mentioned nationalist relativism and pluralism,

61 62 63

Zhang Taiyan, Zhang Taiyan shiwen xuanzhu, 247. Wong Young-tsu, Kang-Zhang helun, 54. Cited in Young, Colonial Desire, 38.

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which he wielded to criticize colonialism and legitimate each nations’ particular culture. But Herder also set up the basis for many polygenist “racialist” doctrines that would tie culture to locality.64 Particularly relevant here are Count Gobineau’s theories of the multiple origins of the human race, with different levels of civilization.65 The key element of this nineteenthcentury narrative is that lesser civilizations cannot advance to higher levels. Henry Hotze’s Analytical Introduction to Count Gobineau’s Essay on the Inequality of Human Races, written in 1852, is a striking example of such a paradigm. Commenting on the Chinese, Hotze notes that: The Chinese civilization is as perfect in its own way as our own, nay more so. It is not a mere child, or even adult not yet arrived at maturity; it is rather, a decrepit old man. It too has its degrees; it too has its periods of infancy, of adult age, of maturity. . . . And yet, because Chinese civilization has a different tendency from ours, we call it a semi-civilization.66

There is a structural similarity between the writings of nineteenthcentury polygenists and those of Herder and Zhang; moreover, they all connect climate and land to the development of nationality. Zhang probably also drew on indigenous sources. For example, the Ming dynasty anti-Manchu thinker Wang Fuzhi (1619–1692) grounded cultural differences in climate and environment: “The reason for the distinction between the barbarians and the Chinese is that their land is different and their energy (qi ) is different. Because their energy is different, their customs are different.”67 Zhang was clearly influenced by Wang Fuzhi and he makes similar comments in a number of his essays.68 In his notes to his 1899 essay “On Bacteria,” he even invokes environmental characteristics to suggest the plural development of human beings. He begins his note by introducing the polygenetic theory of Carl Vogt (1817–1895): The Western biologist and anthropologist Carl Vogt created the theory that people arose from many different origins. He claimed that the people of the East evolved from the high-order apes of the East and the people

64 Ibid., 39. Young notes that Herder himself was not above “judging between peoples in terms of their degree of civilization” (40). 65 Ibid., 46–47. 66 Ibid., 48. 67 Wang Chuanshan, Du Tongjianlun, no. 14: 2. Cited from Wang Yuhua, Duoyuan shiye yu chuantong de helihua, 126. 68 See, for example, “Ordering Races and Surnames,” discussed below.

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of the West evolved from the high-order apes in the West. Hence the skin, bones, and bodies of these respective people are different.69

Zhang explains that Darwin created a theory of unitary origins in order to counter Vogt’s theory, but that we should be wary of accepting this critique. If a being lives in a big land with a warm temperature, such as Europe, Asia, Australia and America, which are all places with a warm temperature, why should one say that human beings emerged in one place and other places had to wait for life to spread from this origin? From this we know that we should not obstinately adhere to the theory of a single origin of the human race.70

In other words, like European polygenists, Zhang also shifted between unitary and plural origins in order to defend a theory of evolution that does not make all races equal.71 In particular, Zhang followed polygenists in claiming that barbarians can never become civilized. In “On the Origin of Human Beings,” Zhang compares trying to civilize barbarians to “putting a scholar’s cap on a tiger” or “clothing an ape.”72 He notes that “it is not by form, language, place, rank, or ordinances and commands that one is a human. If racial nature (zhongxing) is not civilized, then the Chinese will not call this creature a human.”73 But at that time what the Chinese called human was a global standard and late Qing intellectuals could not conclude that the people of the rest of the world were barbarians. Zhang notes that the Europeans, Koreans, Japanese, and Chinese are all races/clans of culture, “people of virtue.” But he takes great pains to exclude the Manchus from this group of cultured races. In “On Correcting the Hatred of the Manchus,” which was published anonymously on August 10, 1901, in China’s first revolutionary student magazine, Guominbao, Zhang broached the issue of how to distinguish the Han from the Manchus. The essay makes a bold argument for Zhang Taiyan, “Jun shuo,” 84. Ibid. 71 Robert Young explains that “Gobineau adroitly argues that despite their common origin, human beings were separated permanently into types by a cosmic cataclysm that occurred soon after man’s first appearance—an idea first proposed by Lord Kames in his Sketches of the History of Man (1724) and subsequently developed by anthropologists such as Vogt or Topinard as a way of making evolutionary change compatible with the doctrine of the permanency of racial types” ( Young, Colonial Desire, 103). 72 Zhang Taiyan, Qiushu chukeben, zhongdingben, 23. 73 Ibid. 69 70

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anti-Manchuism. Zhang attacks Liang Qichao’s claim, made in Liang’s “On Tracing the Sources of China’s Cumulative Weakness,” that the Manchus and the Han are the same race and argues that there is a difference between zhong (race) and zu (lineage).74 As our earlier discussion of “On the Origin of Human Beings” suggests, unlike Liang, Zhang contends that culture is rooted in lineage and that the Manchu lineage is different from that of the Han. Zhang added an appendix to his 1901 essay in order to clarify his point: Mr. Liang also says that Japan is a foreign country, but that he is still close to it because its people have the same culture and are of the same race as us. What about Manchuria? With respect to race (zhong), the Manchus and the Japanese are both of the yellow race, but Japan also shares the same lineage (zu) as us, while Manchus are not of the same lineage. This is apparent by looking at history. With respect to citizens, Japan is separated by the sea directly opposite us and hence naturally forms one piece of land. But Manchuria is in Jilin and Mohe and was never under the same government as China. With respect to similarities and differences with respect to writing system and culture, Japan first used Chinese characters and then created an indigenous Japanese writing system [hiragana]; today they mix the two together, but they still mainly use Chinese characters. Manchus have their own writing system and their form is extremely different from Chinese characters. If one compares their customs of sleeping on a felt mat and eating milk products with the Japanese customs of using ko-hemp cloth and eating fish and salt with China, we can easily see who has customs similar to ours and whose customs are extremely different from ours. However, with respect to independence and sovereignty, even if Japan ruled our land we would not want to bow our heads and surrender, so how can we even think of surrendering to the Manchus?75

In Chinese, the term zu, which is part of the compound zhongzu, which translates “race,” originally referred to a clan or a lineage. Hence as in a number of other languages, in Chinese, ideas of lineage and race

74 Frank Dikötter contends that the characters zhong and zu both refer to race, but that zhong refers to a unitary human race, while zu refers to the many different races in the world ( Dikötter, The Discourse of Race in Modern China, 75). There are times when Zhang makes such a distinction, but he used the term zu within the yellow races, and so, I suggest that zu refers to lineage and culture. 75 In Zhang Dan and Wang Renzhi, Xinhai geming qian shinian jian shilun xuanji, 98–99. Jilin (鸡林), also known as Xinluo (新罗), is the name of an old country. The Mohe were an ethnic group living in northeast China in ancient times.

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are inextricably connected.76 Zhang erects hard boundaries surrounding cultures by invoking lineage, which can establish the bloodline of the Han race as being separate from the Manchus. In the second edition of A Book of Urgency, Zhang devoted considerable space to an analysis of surnames to show that the Han and Manchu lineages were different. In “Ordering Races and Surnames,” Zhang attempted to complete the project of the late Ming/early Qing dynasty intellectual Gu Yanwu to write a history of the surnames of the Chinese people to underscore the distinction between the Han and the barbarians. In so doing, Zhang participated in an undertaking shared with many other revolutionaries during the first few years of the twentieth century, namely tracing the Han surnames to the lineage of the Yellow Emperor.77 In addition to his long discourse on surnames in the second part of the essay, Zhang went to great lengths to show that the Han people are really descendents of the Chaldeans of Babylon and thus that the Chinese and Westerners have the same origins. Already in “On the Origin of Human Beings,” to show the commonalities between the Chinese and Western races he highlighted the similarities between the West and China by pointing out that in ancient China people called Rome “the great Qin.”78 In “Ordering Races and Surnames,” Zhang drew on Japanese sinologist Shirakawa Jirō’s discussion of Lacouperie to compare various classical Chinese texts to writings in the Babylonian tradition.79 Kobayashi Takeshi suggests that Zhang’s motive for using Lacouperie was probably to critique Kang Youwei’s narrative of Confucian-Manchu identity.80 In short, both Kang and Zhang gestured to similarities between Western and Chinese culture, but in Zhang’s case, these cultural similarities are suffused with the harder boundaries of race and lineage.

76 Ivan Hannaford notes that the term “race” meant lineage in Portuguese (raça) and in Italian (razza). The term entered European languages from southern Spain. The original term was Arabic (râs), where the term meant origin, beginning, and chief (Hannaford, Race, 5). 77 See Chow Kai-wing, “Imagining Boundaries of Blood.” 78 The Qin, in northwest China, emerged as one of the seven states that dominated China in the third century bce. It went on to defeat its rivals in a series of quick victories, and consolidated its hold over all of China as the Qin dynasty (221–206 bce). 79 Shirakawa Jirō, Shina bunmeishi. 80 Kobayashi Takeshi, “Shō Heirin kyusho to Meiji shichō,” 206.

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Zhang connected evolution to the world-historical process of revolution, as discussed above, but realized that such a concept of revolution, like evolution, involves more than just anti-Manchuism. Perhaps the text where Zhang most clearly endorses this concept of revolution is his preface to Zou Rong’s pamphlet, The Revolutionary Army. When a government is replaced by people of the same lineage (zu), this is called revolution. When one expels an alien lineage (zu), this is called restoration ( guangfu). Because China was destroyed by rebel barbarians (nihu), what it plans is not a revolution but a restoration. So why did Zou Rong use the term revolution? Surely, it was because what this project aims at is not merely overthrowing rulers from a different lineage, but transforming politics, education, learning, customs and abilities (for office). Thus he loudly speaks of “revolution.”81

In this passage, Zhang reveals the distinction between the old concept of revolution, which merely indicated dynastic change, and the post– French Revolution concept, which implied radical social transformation and a critique of despotism. Although he supported Zou Rong’s use of the term “revolution,” he would return to the temporality of restoration as he shifted away from an evolutionary vision of civilization, which emphasized progress according to the Western model. Zhang’s Turn Away from a Western-Centered Discourse While Zhang’s theory of the Western origins of the Chinese race was an important part of the second edition of A Book of Urgency, as Kobayashi Takeshi notes he moved away from Lacouperie’s theory during the time he was editor of the revolutionary journal Minbao (The People’s Journal ) (1906–1908).82 In particular, although Zhang could legitimate the supremacy of the Han race over the Manchus by associating the former with the West, such an approach compromised his anti-imperialist stance, at least from a cultural perspective. Nonetheless, Zhang’s post-jail writings formulated anti-Manchuism as part of a larger anti-imperialist project, one that posed culture against evolutionary civilization. Zhang Taiyan, “Preface to Zou Rong’s The Revolutionary Army,” cited from Tsou Jung, The Revolutionary Army, 52 (trans. amended); Chinese text: Zhang Taiyan, “Gemingjun qianyan,” 154. 82 Kobayashi Takeshi, “Shō Heirin kyusho to Meiji shichō,” 206–7. 81

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Zhang’s experience when he was jailed from 1903 to 1906 probably contributed to his critique of Western domination. In any case, his turn away from the West came in the context of the strong anti-imperialist current in Chinese nationalism during the early 1900s. This reached it highpoint in 1905, when Zhang was still in jail, with the boycott of American goods as a protest against the ill-treatment of Chinese workers in the United States. Moreover, as Meng Yue explains, during the early twentieth century, Chinese began to identify with oppressed people around the world, which explains the popularity of the translation of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which was rendered as Heinu yutian lu (“Black Slaves Appeal to Heaven”). Lin Shu (1852–1924), the famous translator, asserted that the characters in this story could “mirror the actual situation of Chinese laborers (in the United States). It has been evident that the Chinese in Peru and other places have recently been abused. It is hard to anticipate the suffering of the ‘yellow race’ in the future.”83 As Chinese intellectuals began to associate the West with oppression, they shifted their view of China in relation to weak countries. Rather than merely warning the Chinese to avoid the fate of the oppressed, they affirmed China’s status as a weak nation, and moreover sought a narrative of resistance based on Asian unity. Zhang’s experiences after he left jail would also push his ideas in this anti–Euro-American direction. As soon as Zhang was released from jail in 1906, he went to Japan to become the chief editor of Minbao. During his time in Japan, he came into contact with Japanese radicals, such as Kōtoku Shūsui, and this probably contributed to his increasingly critical stance toward the West and his advocacy of an Asian identity. Zhang engaged in a number of activities with other Asian radicals. In particular, he participated in the Society for the Study of Socialism, which we will discuss in Chapter Five, and the Asian Solidarity Society. However, Zhang’s participation in both of these implied a new understanding of nationalism as cultural resistance embodied in national learning and national essence. During Zhang’s Minbao period, he shifted his focus from antiManchuism to anti-imperialism and then rethought anti-Manchuism within this framework. We can see this change in Zhang’s thought by looking into how he redrew the boundaries between the civilized and barbarians and developed a new temporality of revolution.

83

Cited from Meng Yue, Shanghai and the Edges of Empires, 126–27.

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Many of the anti-Manchu revolutionaries who wrote in Minbao also contributed to a journal devoted to national learning, the National Essence Journal (Guocui xuebao), founded in 1905.84 As its title suggests, this journal presented a historical narrative of the Chinese national essence and Han identity to support ideologically both the anti-Manchu revolution and the anti-imperialist struggle. Moreover, a key purpose of the journal was to highlight a different temporality of revolution and to invoke the past to criticize the present. We can see this critique of the present in Zhang’s early writings on the national essence. Zhang first discussed the concept of “national learning” two years before the founding of the National Essence Journal in his “Prison Diary of 1903” (“Guimou yuzhong ziji”):85 Heaven has given me the national essence. Since I was born, I have already passed through thirty-six years. The phoenix and birds do not arrive here. The Yellow River does not bring forth a diagram. I alone must take responsibility. I take Confucius and Zuo Qiuming as models. I not only protect old things that are broken, I will also manage judgments about the national essence and make it shine broadly and vastly. . . . With respect to the vast and beautiful scholarship of China, if its lineage is broken and our natural cultural heritage ( guogu) and the principles of the people stop in my hands, this would be a great sin on my part!86

Zhang uses a number of tropes that overlap with the New Text school, such as “The phoenix and birds do not arrive here. The Yellow River does not bring forth a diagram.”87 Moreover, he even signs his name as “Hunting in the West” (西狩), a reference to Confucius. However, the thrust of Zhang’s use of such terms is to show that “time is out of joint.” Zhang uses a number of metaphors to show that time and history are moving in the wrong direction. The phrase the “Yellow River does not bring forth a diagram” originates in “First Part of the Commentary Section” (“Xici juan shang”) of the Book of Changes, where the full passage reads: “The Yellow River brought forth a diagram and the Luo River brought forth writings, and the sages regarded these things also as ruling principles.”88 84 Hon Tze-ki, “The Present of the Past: Different Uses of the Late-Ming in the 1911 Revolution,” unpublished manuscript, 2. 85 Shimada Kenji, Pioneers of the Chinese Revolution, 72. 86 “Guimou yuzhong ji,” in Zhang Taiyan, Zhang Taiyan quanji, vol. 4, 144. 87 Takada Atsushi, Shō Heirin, Shō Shisō, Ro Jin, 48n5. 88 Wang Bi, The Classic of the Changes, 66; Chinese text in idem, Wang Bi ji jiaoshi, 554.

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The mythical sages Fu Xi and Yu the Great used these diagrams and writings to guide their political practice, but now all such guidance has slipped away. The references to Confucius highlight a similar crisis with respect to history. The “Biography of Exemplary Scholars” section of the Book of History (Shiji ) explains this anecdote: Confucius said: “If someone gives me a chance, I could put the kingdom in order in one year.” On the fourteenth year of Duke Ai Gong, people went hunting in the west (xishou) and caught a [Chinese] unicorn. Confucius found out about this and said: “I have no road left to travel.” Thus he wrote the Spring and Autumn Annals according to the history of the kingdom of Lu.89

The passage has an apocalyptic tone. Confucius exclaims that there is no “road left to travel” or more literally “my way has been exhausted” (wu dao qiong yi ), which again suggests that there is something radically wrong with the historical present. In other words, when a mythical animal, such as the unicorn, a symbol of good fortune, has been captured, it suggests that the world is upside down. In the second half of his “Prison Diary,” Zhang asserts that he is responsible for recovering the Chinese past. Against the evolutionary temporality of revolution, Zhang now laments that the Chinese past is slipping away and it is only by reviving traces of it that Chinese culture can be saved. Zhang does not directly refer to “Chinese culture” but as Wen Yiduo noted, the diagrams of the Yellow River “represent Chinese culture.”90 Moreover, about ten years later, after the founding of the Republic, when Zhang was thrown in jail by Yuan Shikai, he made almost the same statement and exclaimed: “After I die, so will Chinese culture (wenhua).”91 By advocating retrieving traces of the past, Zhang describes a ruptured temporality that goes against both the Qing dynasty and progressive views of history. Gyan Prakash’s analysis of the nation as return in the context of Hindu archaism during the second half of the nineteenth century applies to the Chinese national essence school as well: Unlike the organist notion, which draws an unbroken line between the origin and the present, the idea of the modern nation as a return of the

Sima Qian, Shiji: wenbai duizhao ( Huangshan: Huangshan shushe, 1997), 2877. Wen Yiduo, “Zhi Liang Shiqiu (A Letter to Liang Shiqiu),” in idem, Wen Yiduo quanji, vol. 12, 212. 91 Cited in Takada Atsushi, Shō Heirin, Shō Shisō, Ro Jin, 46. 89 90

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chapter two archaic introduces a sharp break between the past and the present; the past interrupts, it does not evolve, into the present. As the contemporary national self emerges in the differential sign of the “return,” as its time is expressed in the repetition of another time, an alienating otherness becomes the necessary mode of enunciating the fullness of the nation.92

Like the proponents of archaism in nineteenth-century India, from the beginning the anti-Manchu revolutionaries identified with another time and invoked the “differential sign of the return” to celebrate their non-contemporaneity, in a time out of joint. According to Old Text school advocates and proponents of the national essence, the nation ( guo) is outside the present and then returns to haunt it constantly. For example, since they saw the Qing as illegitimate, they often expressed their allegiance to the Ming dynasty, which was overthrown by the Manchus in 1644. This temporal trope was an essential part of antiManchuism from the early 1900s. For example, when Zhang Taiyan was in exile in Tokyo in 1902, he organized a meeting to commemorate the fall of the Ming dynasty. Sun Zhongshan and even Liang Qichao publicized the meeting and hence it created quite a stir.93 The Qing consul Cai Jun heard that many foreign students would attend the meeting and requested that the Japanese government prevent it. Thus on the day before the meeting, April 25, the Japanese police told the organizers the meeting was banned and ordered them to report to the Kagurazaka police station. When Zhang showed up at the police station he drew much attention, wearing “a loose-sleeved Ming-style gown” and carrying “a large feather fan in his hands.”94 But more than his attire, Zhang’s response to the police officer’s questions showed that he inhabited a different time. The police officer asked them which province they came from and Zhang replied: “We are all Chinese (Zhina ren) and not subjects of the Qing dynasty.” The police officer was surprised and asked about their class and rank, and Zhang curtly said: “We are descendants” ( yimin, 遗民).95 The term yimin usually refers to people from a lost country or dynasty. For example the Book of History mentions that “King Cheng sent the descendants ( yimin) of Yin to Luo Yi.”96

Prakash, “The Modern Nation’s Return in the Archaic,” 540. Liang of course asked his name not to be disclosed. See Laitinen, Chinese Nationalism in the Late Qing Dynasty, 83. 94 Ibid. 95 Tang Zhijun, Zhang Taiyan nianpu changbian, 134. 96 Sima Qian, Shiji, 86. 92 93

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Hence we should interpret Zhang as saying that he and his cohorts are descendents of the Ming dynasty who have somehow found themselves living during the time of the Qing. After his time in jail in Shanghai, Zhang used this temporality of return to define “revolution.” In one of the first essays that he wrote after being released, he explains: “What I call ‘revolution’ ( geming) is not revolution ( geming), but restoration ( guangfu); to restore the Chinese race, to restore the Chinese states and counties and to restore Chinese political power.”97 The “conservatism” of proponents of national learning shows an awareness of the Han race and “restoring” implies the revolutionary overthrow of the Qing dynasty, so that Chinese could come back into the present. But such returning could not simply reject modern institutions. To complete this narrative of going back to the past in order to be present, proponents of the national essence needed to make a link between the national-essence past and modernity. Despite their constant rhetoric of “bringing back” the Han nation from the Manchus, their critique of the Manchus was at the same time a critique of Chinese despotism throughout the centuries. Like their New Text counterparts, the Old Text school scholars looked to the pre-Qin classics in order to imagine a political alternative appropriate to the world-system of nation-states. This contradictory relation to the tradition, a seeming return to tradition to overcome it, is partially a result of the formal requirements of the “national” dimension of “national learning.” Here we clearly see the way in which the nation of the national learning school performs the contradictory task of “celebrating hoariness”98 and providing a bridge to modernity. In this regard, the main difference between the national essence and New Text school proponents concerned their narratives of the nationstate and their relation to the existing governmental structures. In other words, not only was the object of national identification different, but the national-essence scholars depicted a different world-stage and temporality on which identification takes place. Whereas Kang Youwei married Confucianism to elements of modern political thought, such as constitutionalism, national essence scholars imbued Han culture with more radical strands in modern Western politics and imperialism.

97 98

Zhang Taiyan, “Geming zhi daode,” 292. Anderson, “Narrating the Nation.”

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Zhang’s discussion of national essence aimed at a fundamental resistance to Western scholarship along with Western imperialism.99 Unlike Kang, after 1906 Zhang would associate “civilization” with imperialism and the status quo and posit the national essence against this. In Zhang’s words: “Worshiping civilization (wenming) is another word for following the trend of the times.”100 Thus national-essence scholars showed how Chinese culture is actually in line with movements that resisted dominant narratives of politics and history. For example, one of the most famous proponents of national-learning and, for some time a close friend of Zhang Taiyan, Liu Shipei, claimed that a chief characteristic of Han culture was its streak of anarchism. In a similar vein, in his famous speech to exchange students in 1906, Zhang explained that traditional Chinese culture was close to socialism: China has a positive feature that European and American countries cannot attain. This is the “equitable field system” ( juntian), which is close to socialism. There was not only the well-field system of the Three Dynasties, but the Wei and Jin and the Tang dynasties all implemented the equitable field system. Consequently, there was no great difference between rich and poor and local regions were easy to govern. . . . All of China’s historical institutions are close to socialism.101

Although Zhang’s idea of socialism seems vague and different from our present conception, we can see that he attempts to posit an alternative to Euro-American political systems by drawing on the past. More concretely, despite its utopian or anarchist dimension, the national essence is a nation without a state and one whose presence, or whose “return,” requires institutional embodiment in the state in the immediate future.102 Thus national essence emerges as a transcendental symbol of anti-imperialist struggles, and Zhang encouraged inhabitants of other oppressed countries, such as India, to seek their national essence. 99 In so doing, Zhang continues his Old Text school opposition to the New Text school, but the contributors to the National Essence Journal emphasized the importance of indigenous learning as opposed to borrowing from other cultures. One could say that they created a narrative of “discent” in which the Other is no longer primarily Manchu, but imperialists. This double Other is of course already present in Zhang’s early writings, but the emphasis shifts during his writings about the national-essence. 100 “Fuchou shifei lun,” in Zhang Taiyan quanji, vol. 4, 274. 101 Zhang Taiyan, “Dongjing liuxuesheng huanyinghui yanshuo ci,” 147. 102 The reference to the immediate future is perhaps how Liu Shipei could continue to support anti-Manchu revolution even while he promoted anarchism as the national essence.

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National essence was a principle that extended to all weak nations and Zhang explicitly distinguished between nations’ respective global positions. In his essay “Indian Discussions of National Essence,” published in Minbao in 1907, Zhang writes: With respect to Japan and Europe, they can be relaxed about their seeking national essence, since their nation is already complete. If they continue to seek meaning in their national essence, if they do not invade other people, they will treat people as slaves and pigs. Thus those who are angered [ by such practices] assert that one should get rid of the national essence. They must say these words in order to correct previous wrongs, but such words do not apply to China and India. For thieves to destroy the writings of ancient robbers such as Dao Zhi and Zhuang Qiao would be a virtuous act, but would it not be crazy to do the same for good families?103

These words give us a glimpse of Zhang’s notion of nationalism in relation to his larger Buddhist-inspired goal of transcending the state, which we will discuss in later chapters. Here, he argues that the idea of national essence has different results depending on whether it is used by countries that are already strong and in the process of expanding or whether it is invoked as part of an anti-imperialist struggle. The essay “Indian Discussions of National Essence,” along with a series of short essays about his Indian friends in Japan, all published in Minbao, explicated the political dimension of Zhang’s distinction between weak nations and imperialist nations; these essays also connect the peculiar nationalism expressed in the National Essence Journal to Zhang’s Minbao writings. In short, Zhang’s perspective on the national essence involved a larger project to liberate other oppressed and weak countries in Asia. He expresses this aspect of his nationalism in an often cited passage from the 1907 essay, “On the Five Negations”: As long as people establish nation-states, we must hold to nationalism. But there are more broad nationalisms. We uphold a nationalism that is not limited to the Han race. If we have enough power, we must also help other weak nations, nations that have been conquered by other nations, whose governments have been stolen and made into slaves. Alas, India and Burma were destroyed by England. Vietnam was destroyed by France. The wise and benevolent races will be eliminated. Our nation must counter this trend. Except for our nation, which wise and ancient

103 “Indian Discussions of National Essence,” in Zhang Taiyan quanji, vol. 4, 367; cf. Shimada Kenji, Pioneers of the Chinese Revolution, 73.

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chapter two state still stands to let its people fall into slavery? If we want a complete nationalism, we must extend our hearts to help people suffering from the same ailment, and make their land totally independent.104

Here we see the beginnings of a meta-national narrative in which a multinational self is defined based on various nations’ positions and potential in the global capitalist world. Given the goal of a general liberation from colonialism, Zhang met with “freedom fighters” from other countries and even participated in anti-imperialist groups, such as the Asian Solidarity Society in 1907.105 Conclusion Zhang Taiyan’s thought about race began within the New Text school framework and eventually developed into a response to the global capitalist system of nation-states based on his synthesis of Old Text school scholarship and a theory of the national essence. Both Kang Youwei and Zhang Taiyan responded by promoting a narrative or screen that articulates the relationship between human and national identity. Kang Youwei attempted to revive old imperial ideals of community in order to build a nationalist discourse that harmonized tensions between various ethnicities, especially between the Han and the Manchus. Zhang began his revolutionary career by invoking discourses of evolutionary civilization in order to construct a theory of why the Han race is superior to the Manchus, but eventually he invoked a temporality of return, which orients the Han nation against both the West and the Manchus. Buddhism played a role in Zhang’s response, but at this point, rather than the content of Buddhism, it was the symbolic effect of Buddhism that encouraged a cultural bond between India and China. Zhang Taiyan, “Wu wu lun,” 255. We do not know much about the Asian Solidarity Society, and various scholars’ descriptions of the organization of this group conflict. We know that, in 1907, Zhang Taiyan accompanied a few Indian scholars to a meeting to commemorate the birth of the Indian leader Shivaji. Shortly thereafter, Zhang wrote several essays describing the meeting and stressing the importance of a pact between India and China. See Karl, Staging the World; Müller, China, Kropotkin und der Anarchismus; and Takeuchi Zensaku, “Meiji makki ni okeru Chū Nichi kakumei undō no kōryū.” According to Takeuchi, the first meeting of the Asian Solidarity Society, which the members of the society translated at the time as “The Asiatic Society of Humanitarian Brotherhood,” took place in the India House, where several Indian politicians resided. At the meeting were revolutionaries from China, India, the Philippines, Burma, Malaya, and Japan. 104 105

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This represents a type of counter-discourse to reformers’ emphasis on evolution and to their global hierarchy, which took Western nations to be the most civilized. Zhang constructed a revolutionary discourse working within the parameters of nationalist ideology in the early twentieth century. He combined race, culture, and lineage both to build a narrative of the nation and to gesture toward transnational alliances against imperialism. Although these concerns continued throughout his life, after he was incarcerated in 1903, there was an important shift in his thinking towards Buddhism and thereafter he began to develop a framework that went against some of his nationalist assumptions. In the next three chapters, we will examine some of the political implications of Zhang’s Buddhist worldview.

CHAPTER THREE

BUDDHIST EPISTEMOLOGY AND MODERN SELF-IDENTITY: ZHANG TAIYAN’S “ON ESTABLISHING RELIGION” As late Qing thinkers confronted an increasingly rationalized and reified world of nation-building and global capitalism they struggled to create a new subjectivity to enable China to compete as a nation-state. It was in this new and different environment that Qing thinkers sought to reinvent religious traditions. Their discourse on religion became a philosophical project to create a new subjectivity, to enable China to hold its own in this new, competitive, if not Social Darwinist, world. Recently, scholars have tended to argue that late Qing thinkers should be understood as deeply committed to various traditional Chinese spiritual traditions and religious projects.1 However, much of the literature on late Qing thought does not theorize the relationship between concepts such as “religious project,” or “spiritual traditions” and larger global epistemological shifts associated with nation-building and global capitalism. In other words, in the eagerness to save traditions from an overly political reading and reductionism, global historical context is often left out. There was something new about the late Qing attack on religion and it was in this qualitatively different environment that religious traditions were reinvented. In particular, the late Qing discourse on religion became a philosophical project to create a new subjectivity, to enable China to compete as a nation-state in an increasingly rationalized and reified world. Thus rather than “spiritual traditions,” it was the global project of modernity that drove late Qing intellectuals to reform religion and to reinterpret traditions such as Confucianism,

1 Vincent Goossaert makes the following characteristic point, arguing against scholars who try to reduce elite intellectuals’ views of religion to politics: It was actually such spiritual traditions [Buddhism and Confucianism], rather than rationalism or atheism, that drove political leaders to reform the religious scene. For this reason, although the reformers’ discourse on superstition, religious reform, and temple seizures was self-serving and partly motivated by social and political projects, it would be a major mistake not to consider that it was at the same time also a religious project aiming at improving China’s spiritual conditions. (“1898,” 307)

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Buddhism, and Daoism. It was precisely because late Qing intellectuals saw an overlap between Buddhism and a modern rationalized-secular world that they invoked this framework as part of various projects to re-enchant the reified world of global capitalism. Zhang Taiyan’s and Liang Qichao’s respective uses of religion provide a way to understand the possibilities associated with such reenchantment projects. Zhang is perhaps best known as an anti-Manchu nationalist revolutionary, but the most complex and philosophically interesting phase of his career is his so-called Minbao period (1906–1908), when he edited the Tokyo-based revolutionary journal The People’s Journal (Minbao) and expressed his “Buddhist voice.”2 Although many late Qing intellectuals studied Buddhism and invoked religion, Zhang is one of the few who approached Buddhist ideas in a philosophical manner and engaged in a serious dialogue with Western philosophies, such as German idealism. His philosophical endeavors had political significance, since unlike the early Liang Qichao, who confined Buddhism to the level of nationalism, Zhang gestured towards overcoming more abstract forms of domination. The discussion that follows looks into how Zhang interrogated the epistemological framework of modernity by invoking Yogācāra Buddhism. His Buddhist philosophy was fundamentally a romantic critique of capitalist modernity. As Michael Lowy and Robert Sayre have argued, romantic anti-capitalism does not merely condemn the economic domination of classes, but responds to “those characteristics of capitalism of which the negative effects are felt throughout the social classes, and which are experienced as misery everywhere in capitalist society.”3 The negative effects that pervade social classes are more abstract than phenomena such as inequality; in the eyes of these romantics they included such things as fragmentation and the split between subject and object. Zhang targeted such negative effects of capitalist modernity at a philosophical and religious level by drawing on Buddhism to posit a unified subject-object, and thus overcome divisions and alienation that result from reification. At first his project of creating unity appears to be an existential task delinked from politics. In his critique of various philosophies and religions from the standpoint of Yogācāra Buddhism, Two exemplary works on Zhang Taiyan’s Buddhist writings as a critique of modernity are Kondō Kuniyasu, “Shūheirin no kakumei shisū no keisei,” and Wang Hui, “Wuwo zhi wo yu gongli de jiegou.” 3 Sayre and Lowy, “Figures of Romantic Anti-Capitalism,” 55. 2

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Zhang repeatedly claimed that other religions and philosophies had not been able to really overcome the duality between subject and object and thus they posit a deity outside of the self. Zhang’s standpoint overcomes this reified conception of a deity by positing ālaya—or “storehouse”— consciousness as an identical subject-object. Zhang’s emphasis on transcendence in his appeal to Buddhism appears to have removed him from politics, since he ostensibly argued from a space beyond politics and subjectivity. However, Zhang left politics in order to re-politicize it from a more radical perspective. He mobilized Buddhism for politics by drawing on ideas such as “delusion” (mi) and then imagined a self that can enter the world of modern politics in a different way. In the late Qing, as Chinese intellectuals took up the task of transforming China so that it could compete in the world-system of nationstates, they studied Western political and philosophical theories, often through Japanese translations and commentary, and struggled to spread the discursive conditions for nationalism and modernity. Zhang Taiyan used Buddhism to engage in a dialogue with globally circulating discourses of subjectivity and narratives of the nation-state. He drew on concepts that he had developed in his pre-Buddhist and pre-revolutionary phase. Partly because of his difficult experience in jail, Zhang was an exception to the general trend during the late Qing in that he questioned concepts and ideals that others took for granted. He brought out the tensions between Buddhism and nationalist narratives. And he articulated a unique response to imperialism, nationalism, and the modern epistemological aporia between the subject and object by attempting to combine an understanding of Yogācāra philosophy with a commitment to political action. Like Tan Sitong, the famous reformer who became a martyr during the Hundred Day Reform, Zhang derived from Buddhism an originary subject-object to overcome the dichotomies of the modern world. This ontology, and in particular the identical subject-object, represents the real movement of capital in a misrecognized form. By couching this subject-object in Buddhist terms, Zhang’s stance was of course different from that of the German idealists. In particular, Zhang attempted to negate rather than affirm existence. He affirmed both a transcendental realm and the deluded world of human projects to posit a provisional narrative of a self that identifies with all living beings, which he would later draw on to resist oppression. Although ultimately Zhang followed Yogācārins in claiming that one must overcome both the self and delusion, he constructed a concept of cosmic

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delusion that propels people to ethical action and will eventually overcome itself, when all beings are saved. The Conundrums of Modern Religion: Finitude and Philosophy The late Qing use of “religion,” and Liang Qichao’s and Zhang Taiyan’s respective uses of Buddhism in particular, must be understood in relation to a global discourse associated with the modern world of nation-states. As China entered the global capitalist system of nationstates, intellectuals promoted religion, including Buddhism, as part of a larger project related to developing new epistemologies and subjectivities linked to the development of a modern nation-state. The nation-state was imbricated with the problems posed by a new conceptual world populated by subjects and objects. This new world not only created the condition for a new concept of religion, but also generalized a type of identification prevalent in modern political life—what I call, following William Egginton, “theatrical identification”—which is intimately connected to the politics of nationalism. Both Liang and Zhang used Buddhism to formulate and fashion the subjective conditions for nationalism. However, when they invoked Buddhism in relation to new forms of global politics, they participated in a larger discourse of religion in the modern world. Scholars have discussed how the modern discourse of religion implied a separation between the religious and secular worlds and have pointed out that this distinction was intimately connected to the rise of modern science, modern production, and the modern state. Moreover, this modern discourse of religion emphasizes the belief of the individual.4 In order to better understand the appeal of religion in the modern world and in modern China, we need to ask how the transformations associated with modernity conditioned the individual believer’s moods and motivations for belief. Modern religious belief is a response to the social and epistemological shifts associated with modernity. With the advent of modern capitalist society, human beings have come to inhabit a fragmented world apparently divided between subject and object. This apparent division is experienced through the combination of a scientific worldview,

4

Asad, The Genealogies of Religion, 39.

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which stresses the independence or objectivity of laws and things from human subjectivity, and the liberal idea that human beings are free. I call this an apparent division because capitalism encompasses both subject and object, but people do not immediately experience it in this manner. Rather, they grasp it in reified form or in “small fragments.”5 Moreover, this fragmentation splits the experience of human subject as well and affects people regardless of their social class: “Even for the capitalists there is this doubling of personality, this tearing (Zerreissen) of human beings into an element of the movement of commodities and a (objectively powerless) spectator of this movement.”6 In other words, the subject in modern “bourgeois” society is split between a spectator, who seems to have the ability to think and act, and an object that is acted on by a vast number of impersonal forces including social process and natural laws. One can understand religion as part of a romantic impulse to envision a holistic ontology that can recover freedom by overcoming alienation and division. We will return to the idea of religion as a romantic response to flesh out a framework for studying Zhang Taiyan’s synthesis of Buddhism and German idealism. However, to grasp specific uses of religion for political purposes, we must examine a less abstract level of mediation, namely the construction of the self, not just in relation to ontology, namely objects and laws, but also in relation to human others. When late Qing political theorists used religion to construct subjects that see themselves in the nation, they drew on the scopic dimension of modern subjectivity. Martin Heidegger highlighted this scopic dimension of a modern world in which we are both spectators and the observed when described the modern world of subject and objects as a “world picture.” Heidegger’s discussion of this world suggests that the split of the self as subject and object involves not just the self and objective processes, but also the look of others. Heidegger notes that in the modern age, man “gets into the picture” in precedence over whatever is. But in that man puts himself into the picture in this way, he puts himself into the scene (die Szene), i.e., into the open vicinity of that which is generally and publicly represented (allgemein und öffentlich Vorgestellten). Therewith,

5 6

Georg Lukács, History and Class-consciousness, Gr. 348, Eng. 165. Ibid., Gr. 350, Eng. 166.

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chapter three man sets himself up as the scene (die Szene) in which whatever is must henceforth set itself forth (vor-stellen), must present itself (sich . . . präsentieren), i.e., be picture.7

Heidegger here describes a pattern of modern subjectivity that both religious and political discourses attempt to manipulate. In the modern world, people take “precedence over what is,” which implies that they are subjects which confront the world that is, namely the objective world. However, human beings are part of the objective world. However, the self exists as an object only for another and, in particular, self-consciousness is made possible by the mediation of others.8 The term “sich in der Szene setzen” can literally mean to put something into the limelight, which suggests that the subject is always already on a type of stage being looked at. Because one can never completely be an object to oneself, one needs the existence-gaze of other selves before one can have self-consciousness. Eventually one internalizes the gaze of the other and this gaze becomes implicit in our own sense of self. When this other is internalized, it looses specificity and is a generalized Other, an audience that witnesses one’s actions. Thus the modern self encompasses a virtual dimension, which various political and religious narratives struggle to manipulate.9 The world picture could be understood as a stage of identification in which people assume various roles. When people “get into the scene,” they really get onto a type of stage.10 Of course, role-playing has been pervasive throughout history and the importance of the world picture does not lie here. Rather, we should note that, in the above cited passage, Heidegger speaks of being “generally and publicly represented” by a disembodied Other. For actors on stage, the audience is the Other, since they represent a gaze that is absolutely exterior to the space and time of the play. Insofar as people are being-for-others, their identity is fundamentally constituted by the Other, as if they were on stage.11

7 Heidegger, “Die Zeit des Weltbilds”; English translation in idem, “The Age of the World Picture,” 132 (trans. amended). The expression “sich in die Szene setzen” can also figuratively refer to “putting something into the limelight.” 8 Egginton, How the World Became a Stage, esp. chaps. 1 and 4. 9 Ibid., 12. 10 Supporting Egginton’s argument is the fact that the German Szene is sometimes translated as “stage” as in the expression hinter der Szene (“backstage”) or the verb in der Szene setzen (“to stage”). 11 Egginton contends that this original exteriority of modern identity enables and mimics the identification process at the heart of theater. In other words, when people

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People identify with characters on stage in the same way that they identify with a nation or take up abstract political identities. In fact, nationalist narratives attempt to cast people into a specific role, the person as citizen, who in turn identifies with the nation-state. This logic of identification operates not only with respect to nationalist narratives of identification, but also in certain religious narratives. For instance, when one identifies with a religious figure or a transcendent spiritual self, one must transpose oneself onto an abstract non-experiential self. To some extent, we can see the late Qing intellectuals as drawing on Buddhism to promote such identification and reconstitute the self as oriented to a specific type of community. The Identification of Subject-Object and Finitude The clear split between the subject and object intensifies our sense of human finitude or what Paul Ricoeur calls the aporia of time,12 the distinction between our finite temporal experience of subjectivity and the objective flow of time. Any narrative of identification that responds watch a play, they identify with persona on stage and actually feel the pain that various characters feel, even though the characters exist in a fictional or virtual space. They are able to make such an identification precisely because the modern subject’s own identity is constituted by the gaze of the Other; one is always identifying with a character-self who represents a role. Unlike in premodern societies, where roles are to a large extent written into the cosmic order and often express relations between concrete subjects in hierarchical positions, the modern concept of space is leveled and fungible, allowing for a variety of different identifications within the larger parameters of modern epistemology and prevalent cultural and ideological hegemonies. That is, Egginton redefines the split in the modern self as a split between our lived feeling of our selves, what Lacan and Freud would call our ideal ego, and the character we want to be and believe that others like, our ego-ideal, which exists in the space of the Other. The phenomenon of identification involves some type of fantasy screen in which the character (ego-ideal ) plays a specific role. This fantasy screen that enables identification is what allows the self to provisionally unify its two halves (ideal ego and ego-ideal ). A provisionally unified self thus plays out a role for the Other, which is an audience. The self comes into crisis when it does not live up to this Other or when the Other is made present, thus deconstructing the fantasy. This would be tantamount to subverting the distinction between audience and stage in a play and making the play present as fantasy. Thus the aim of the Lacanian analyst is often to make this fantasy screen, which constitutes the Other that gazes at the self, present to the self, thus dissolving it. This is analogous to ideological critique. For example, nationalist narratives are much less powerful when one reveals them to be nationalist narratives. After all, nationalist narratives themselves aim to interpolate people into a particular fantasy screen, which then produces a moral “character-self,” which has specific aims and obligations. 12 Ricoeur, Time and Narrative.

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to the aporia of time must have an abstract and relatively enduring component, since such narratives aim to overcome the temporal world. Religious and philosophical narratives often attempt to bridge the gap between the temporal self and some form of eternity and perform something akin to what Hegel calls the annihilation of time, which implies a transcendence of the mundane world.13 One of the key themes we shall see in Zhang Taiyan’s writings is a tension between two different resolutions to the problem of finitude: the nation-state and religious and philosophical ideas of transcendence, which are intimately linked to a romantic response. In particular, the nationalist and religious responses to human finitude can conflict as the latter can be expressed at a philosophical level that transcends the nation-state and attempts to completely overcome the distinctions between subject and object. We see this subject-object in the thought of the German idealists and Zhang Taiyan in his Buddhist mode. Although dogmatic philosophers take the world of subject and object as given, critical philosophers, such as Fichte and Hegel, conclude that there must be a more primordial process behind the split between subject and object. Lukács explains this romantic impulse in the following manner: What is important for our problem here is that the subject of knowledge, the ego (die Ichheit) is known in terms of content and can consequently serve as a methodological guide. Speaking purely generally, thus the following tendency for philosophy comes into being: to advance a conception of the subject that can be conceived as the creator of the totality of content. And again, in general, speaking purely programmatically, the following demand ( forderung) comes into being: to find and show a level of objectivity, a positing of the subject, where one annuls (aufzuheben) the duality of subject and object (the duality between thinking and being is a special case of this structure), where subject and object come together and are identical. . . . In contrast to the dogmatic acceptance of purely given reality—outside the subject (subjektsfremden)—the following demand comes into being: to grasp each given as a product of the identical subject-object and to grasp each duality as a special derivation of this primordial unity (dieser Ureinheit).14

13 Hegel writes: “Time is the concept that is there (der da ist) and, as empty intuition, represents itself in consciousness. Therefore, Spirit appears necessarily in time and appears as long as it does not grasp its [Spirit’s] concept; that is, as long as it does not annihilate time (nicht die Zeit tilgt)” (Phänomenolgie des Geistes, 584). 14 Lukács, Geschichte und Klassenbewußtsein, Gr. 301, Eng. 123.

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This primordial unity, in Lukács’ view, is a misrecognized form of capitalism, which German idealists grasped at the level of thought. In other words, the German idealists made a major advance in underscoring the fragmentary and reified nature of everyday experience and constantly posited a transcendental totality that served as the basis for a more holistic knowledge. Moreover, unlike dogmatic rationalists, who posit the existence of such transcendental unity as an objective fact, German idealists conceived of it as both subject and object and as something inseparable from consciousness. However, they did not realize that this transcendental unity is a historically specific social form and thus they conceived of both fragmentation/reification and the totalizing subject object as transhistorical. A major theme in Zhang’s writings during the years 1906–1910 revolves around the goal of grounding, with the help of Buddhism and Daoism, all discrete phenomena in an identical subject-object. However, while German idealists, such as Fichte and Hegel, used the identical subject-object to justify the nation-state, due to a combination of adverse experiences, Zhang’s revolutionary project, and the philosophical structure of Buddhism, Zhang mobilized the identical subject-object, in his case, ālaya consciousness, against the state and much of what we understand by modernity and civilization. In this sense, Zhang’s thought veers in the direction of Arthur Schopenhauer, Friederich Nietzsche, and Martin Heidegger, all of whom represent a reaction against modern subjectivity, but remain attached to some version of a transhistorical subject-object. Modern China and Religion Chinese intellectuals began to shift to a modern epistemological worldview as the late Qing was incorporated into the global capitalist system of nation-states. Clearly, the late Qing state, through its policies of state-building, initiated changes in social life and practices that were partially responsible for late Qing intellectuals’ interest in the problems of modern philosophy and religious theory.15 However, intellectuals A detailed discussion of these changes goes beyond the scope of this book, but in a recent essay, Manu Goswami maps out the general transformations that accompany entry into the world system of nation-states. She notes that “colonial and capitalist expansion was the source of novel forms of universalization that shaped both objective 15

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often acted in a dialectical relationship with state policies and equally important, they also actively attempted to spread ontological assumptions about human beings and their objective world (the world picture), in order to construct, and in Zhang’s case, perhaps overcome, the subjective conditions for nationalism. Chinese intellectuals undertook these projects with a sense of being confronted by imperialist powers and believed that becoming a nation-state was a primary means for China to resist being invaded and, as a famous simile has it, cut up like a melon by the foreign powers. However, the particular context of Chinese nationalism shaped Chinese intellectuals’ interpretation of religion. The formal equality of the nation-state system masks unequal relations in the world-system, relations that shape particular ideological strategies of nationalism.16 Wang Hui argues that Chinese intellectuals’ consciousness of China as building a nation-state in order to resist imperialism initiated interpretations of political philosophy fundamentally different from that of the well-established North Atlantic nation-states. In particular, Chinese intellectuals did not emphasize a separation between state and religion; rather, in the Chinese case, the problem of religion and religious philosophies emerged in a context of state-building. In 1898, the newspaper Shenbao, run by classically educated late Qing scholars, published three editorials advocating transforming temples into schools and all of them stressed that the government needed to act immediately and transform temples because they were in “a context in which international competition put China’s survival into question.”17 For intellectuals, this enthusiasm for transforming religion was inextricably connected to a movement to promote the world of science and attack superstition, a process in which intellectuals accepted a more global epistemological framework. Kang Youwei, Liang Qichao, Tan Sitong, and Zhang Taiyan were all involved in a campaign to transform temples into schools. They justified this by drawing a clear distinction

and subjective processes” (“Rethinking the Modular Nation Form,” 787). Goswami notes that these processes included globalizing universal tendencies that homogenized space and time through “a dense network of socio-economic flows and cultural interconnectedness” (ibid.). Following Goswami, we can assert that affirmations of national particularity are made possible through these larger universalizing processes. On how such global transformations affected China, see Wang Hui, Xiandai Zhongguo sixiang de xingqi, vol. 4, 1398–99. 16 Wang Hui, Xiandai Zhongguo sixiang de xingqi, vol. 3, 837. 17 Goossaert, “1898,” 316.

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between what they called religion and the beliefs and rituals practiced by the people of China.18 We shall see how Liang Qichao and Zhang Taiyan developed narratives of religious identification to create the subjective conditions for nationalism. Liang’s use of Buddhism is especially significant since it was one of the first explicit examples of modern religious discourse in China and since his works express some of the basic parameters of the modern scientific worldview and reproduce a conventional model of collective identification. On the other hand, in his “On Establishing Religion” (“Jianli zongjiaolun”), published in 1906, Zhang Taiyan attempts to ground critically the world of subjects and objects by invoking the concepts of Yogācāra Buddhism. This is the foundation for Zhang’s project of using Buddhism to create a revolutionary morality and criticize several concepts, such as evolution and the state, which we associate with modernity. Liang Qichao’s Concept of Religion Since Zhang’s own ideas about religion can be read as a critical response to Liang Qichao’s thinking, I begin with Liang’s ideas about religion. Liang began to use the term “religion” (zongjiao) in the modern sense in 1899 after being exposed to Japanese writings on the subject.19 During the next few years, he wrote several essays in which he linked Buddhism to science and nationalist identification. For example, in his essay “On the Relationship between Religion and Governing Society,” published in 1902, he asserts that the Buddhist doctrine of karma works just like sending a telegram: “When someone in the east of the sea uses his machine, regardless of whether the distance is long or short . . ., even if there is a separation of many thousand li, the machine at the west of the sea will respond, regardless of whether it is long or short.”20 Karmic cause and effect work in the same manner, but with respect to time instead of space. Liang interprets karma as a collection of actions that sediment and eventually can begin a process of evolution or devolution. He asserts that people’s relation to previous causes begins with

18 19 20

Ibid., 311. See, Bastid-Bruguière, “Liang Qichao yu zongjiao wenti,” 404. Liang Qichao, “Lun Fojiao yu qunzhi zhi guanxi,” 50.

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the “storehouse” consciousness (ālaya consciousness) and this can also transcend the individual. Liang switches the subject of self-reliance and karma from the individual to the state and claims that people now need to act well in order to ensure that the state evolves in the future. Liang’s references to science and causality to some extent create the spatio-temporal conditions for the world picture, insofar as such a world must be one of even and empty space that serves as the condition for causality and action at a distance. This is the type of space that can be populated by discrete entities. In his essay “On the Relationship between Fiction and Governing Society,” Liang invokes a space for people to “get into the scene” or become embodied in the world picture in a particular way.21 Although this essay is primarily about the role of fiction in constructing the self, Liang constantly uses Buddhist concepts to make his case. As in his discussion of karma, Liang discusses fiction in terms of spatiality. Thus in the beginning of his essay, he justifies the type of split spatiality characteristic of theatricality: The world we can touch and directly perceive is spatially limited. Thus apart from direct tactile and perceptual contact, we often desire to touch and perceive things indirectly; this is what is called a body outside one’s body or a world outside of the world (shen wai zhi shen, shijie wai zhi shijie). . . . Thus, fiction leads us to a different realm and transforms the atmosphere that we constantly touch and perceive.22

Liang looks at the production of a virtual space as an essential function of fiction and as an important part of forming the subject. He then invokes a key Yogācāra Buddhist concept, perfumation (xun 熏, vāsanā). Perfumation refers to karmic seeds (zhongzi, bijas) constructing the perception of objects even at the most immediate level. Hence they show that even “direct perception” entails a virtual dimension. Liang quotes the Lankavatara sūtra: “Deluded wisdom (mizhi) is consciousness and in transforming consciousness one attains wisdom.”23 We will look at the Yogācārin theory of self-identity in more detail in our discussion of Zhang Taiyan, but here we should note that Liang claims that fiction works just like karmic seeds to perfume or create emotions. Liang

21 Liang Qichao, “Lun xiaoshuo yu qunzhi zhi guanxi”; English trans., “On the Relationship between Fiction and the Government of the People.” I provide both the English and Chinese page numbers, but have amended the translation to bring out the spatial metaphors. 22 Ibid., Chin. 283, Eng. 75. 23 Ibid.

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explains that “when people read fiction, their eyes and consciousness become deluded (miyang), their brain sways ( yaoyang), and their nervous system becomes focused ( yingzhu).”24 However, Liang describes delusion in both fiction and Buddhism by invoking the split space that we have seen above. He explains that when one reads fiction, “one is no longer oneself and leaves this world and enters another world. This is similar to what the Avatamsaka sūtra calls ‘the tower of Huayan’ or ‘the layered net of the God Indra,’ in which myriad lotus flowers appear in a single pore of skin and a million kalpas are spanned in a snap of the fingers.”25 This transformation of the self in Liang’s view also entails “theatrical identification” with a character in the story one reads. Liang explains that, for example, if one reads a story in which Buddha or Confucius is the hero, “one transforms oneself (huashen) into Buddha or Confucius.”26 The term huashen (化身) can literally mean “transform oneself,” but it also invokes the Buddhist concept of the “transformation body” (nirmānakāya), which refers to the body of the Buddha that emerges according to the needs of sentient beings. In the Yogācāra school in particular, huashen refers to the Buddha appearing in any form to help sentient beings. Liang probably had this Buddhist concept of transformation in mind, since he continues his explanation by claiming that apart from reading fiction, “there is no other dharma-gate ( famen) to transcend worldly life (dushi, 度世).”27 The term dushi existed in Chinese before Buddhist texts were translated and referred to leaving the world of dust, in other words, the mundane world. However, in Buddhism, the term du can translate nayati, which refers to moving to the other shore and achieving enlightenment. Liang clearly has the earlier meaning of dushi in mind, insofar as becoming someone else in another space is a means of enjoyment, but given his use of the Buddhist term “dharma gate” and more importantly his emphasis on the didactic nature of fiction and its role in transforming people with respect to religion and morality, he seems to affirm the Buddhist valences of the term as well. In his essay on fiction, Liang invokes Buddhism and shows that consciousness is Ibid. Liang Qichao, “Lun xiaoshuo yu qunzhi zhi guanxi,” Chin., 285, Eng., 78. Kalpa is a long period of time (aeon). Ibid. 26 Ibid. 27 Ibid. 24 25

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always already perfumed, but one needs to re-perfume it through fiction in order to save the nation. He notes that political leaders depend on the powers of fiction to “organize political parties.”28 In spite of the essay’s title, “On the Relationship between Fiction and Governing Society,” Liang does not explain in detail how fiction or Buddhism actually connects the individual to the community. However, we can get a glimpse of how he thought of Buddhist concepts related to group identity by examining one of his last essays on Buddhism before the 1911 Revolution, “My Views on Death and Life,” published in 1904 in Xinmin congbao.29 Although Buddhism is usually considered a religion that emphasizes individual salvation, Liang uses the idea of cause and effect and karma to connect the notion of overcoming death to identification with the group. That which does not die is none other than spirit. If one summarizes the various renowned philosophers’ respective theories, they all separate life into two realms: one is material and the other is the non-material realm. The material realm belongs to the unit and the individual privately owns this. . . . The non-material realm belongs to the group, which people have in common. There are large and small groups. With respect to the large group, it encompasses a thousand worlds. Among small groups, every family has one, every nation has one, every state has one, and every society has one. All of these groups do not die.30

Here Liang sets the stage for theatrical identification in his religious theory; however, he realizes that if the individual is only material and the group is spiritual or ideal, identification with the group would be inconceivable. Hence, as in his essay on fiction, he adds an important note in the midst of the above text: “the individual is not only material, but also belongs to the non-material realm.”31 With this statement, Liang makes some type of otherness constitutive of individual identity and can thus explain theatrical identification. Put differently, if we conceive of the immaterial self as intimately involving the perspective of the other, insofar as the immaterial self is always linked to some type of group identity, we can say that Liang’s individual embodies the space of the Other. A particular group is not specified in advance; rather, Liang describes the individual as occupying a space in between the material and the ideal or the individual and the communal. 28 29 30 31

Liang Qichao, “Lun xiaoshuo yu qunzhi zhi guanxi,” Chin. 285, Eng. 78. Liang Qichao, “Yu zhi sisheng guan” in Yinbingshi wenji, no. 17, 1–12. Ibid., 6. Ibid.

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In a word, it is clear that Liang believed the Chinese people needed something more than pure theory to move them to political action. His encounter with Buddhism did not lead to a radical critique of the political. It would be wrong to say that for Liang, Buddhism was merely a tool, since it fundamentally constituted a vision of the world. However, we get a sense that Liang came to Buddhism with some idea of the nation-state in mind, and although his reading of Buddhism probably deepened his understanding of the subjective conditions of nationalism, his views of Buddhism did not challenge the world picture or nationalism. Zhang Taiyan’s view of Buddhism, which will consider next, poses precisely such a challenge. Zhang’s Early Metaphysical Framework and His Views on Religion Zhang’s conception of religion, like Liang’s, went through a number of changes. During the years Zhang advocated reform, roughly from 1895 to 1899, he constantly criticized belief in demons and ghosts and hence participated in a critique of superstition. In this sense, Zhang invokes something like the world picture or the world of science, but as we will see below, by 1899, shortly after the failure of the Hundred Day Reform, Zhang was already developing a metaphysical view of the world as created by confusion. Hence from this early period, Zhang’s work embodies a contradiction between endorsing the rationalized world of science and confusion. Zhang expressed his antagonism to religion in an essay published in 1899, on transforming temples into schools: “Now is not the time to follow the auspicious way of the gods. If humans merely find their assigned place between heaven and earth, there will be almost no way to serve the people.”32 Moreover, in the same year, he wrote a series of essays criticizing religious concepts. For example, in essays such as “The Truth about Confucianism,” “Looking at Heaven,” and “On Bacteria,” all published in 1899, Zhang repeatedly used the language of sciences such as astronomy to counter concepts such as heaven, ghosts, and other supernatural phenomena. In these essays, he took great pains to show that classical Chinese philosophy and Buddhism were compatible with the scientific world. In many ways, such essays

32

Zhang Taiyan, “Yu miao.”

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created a conceptual space for a view of religion and Buddhism that dealt with nation-building and the problems of modern philosophy. At the same time, Zhang interpreted science by drawing selectively on traditional categories, thus creating hybrid conceptual formations. Such a hybrid view of the universe emerges in his essay “On Bacteria,” which on the one hand supports the world of science and criticizes Buddhism, but, on the other hand, invokes the Zhuang Zi and the Book of Changes to assert that “the myriad things stem from confusion.” Zhang derives the title of the essay “On Bacteria” from a line in the second chapter of the Zhuang Zi, translated by Burton Watson as “music ( yue) from empty holes, mushrooms springing from the dampness” ( 乐出虚，蒸成菌). Watson seems to follow the commentaries of Guo Xiang and Cheng Xuanying, both of whom interpreted the characters yue and jun as music and mushrooms respectively.33 However, at the beginning of “On Bacteria,” Zhang links these two concepts to modern medical science by reading the character 乐 as le—“happiness” or “emotion”—and glossing jun as “bacteria” or “germs”: I once read Zhuang Zi’s “Discussion on Equalizing Things” in which it is written “emotions come out of empty space and mushroom like bacteria are formed from the warm moisture” but we don’t know the basis of his statement. The music of people’s hearts emerges from the void, but to say that this moisture can produce bacteria with form, is this not nonsense? Recently, I got Duncan J. Reid’s book A Discussion of Humans’ Struggle with Small Bacteria and know that the above words are not nonsense.34

Zhang then explains how Robert Koch discovered that tuberculosis is caused by small bacteria. But Zhang does not simply use modern biology to interpret the Zhuang Zi. He also brings Robert Koch into the world of traditional Chinese medicine and philosophy. In Western medicine, bacteria can be used to explain sickness and a number of transformations; however, Zhang tries to make bacteria ( jun) into a more fundamental category and interprets them as the root of human existence.35 33 Guo Xiang (d. 312) and Cheng Xuanying ( fl. 631–650) were commentators on the Zhuang Zi. Watson, The Complete Works of Chuang Tzu, 37–38. 34 Zhang Taiyan, “Jun shuo,” 54. 35 Zhang makes this link between the human existence and bacteria by citing an obscure passage from the Huai Nanzi: “I read Huai Nanzi’s chapter ‘Di Xing Xun’ in which he says ‘The baren [person with thick hair produces] the dark person. The dark-skinned person produces ruojun [bacteria] and the ruojun produce the sage and the sage produces the common people. All baren are produced by the common people.’

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He continues by connecting bacteria to the polysemic character in classical Chinese gu (蛊), which can mean “insect,” “confusion,” and “affairs.” Zhang explains that Koch of course discovered that cholera was produced by small bacteria and named the bacteria that causes tuberculosis, tubercle bacillus. These are all the same thing, namely bacteria. I will not mention cholera, but tuberculosis begins with extreme desire and lasciviousness. Excessive desire becomes a mycotoxin and crawling bacteria emerge therein. Is this not what is meant by “emotions come out of empty space and mushroom-like bacteria are formed from warm moisture?” Although their contaminating nature is not related to enjoyment, these bacteria always begin with enjoyment. The famous doctor Yihe said “Women are objects of men’s desire and when having sex at night, if one overindulges, one will get the sicknesses of internal heat and the gu [a legendary venomous insect] will arise.”36

By associating various characters with one another, namely moving from emotion/bacteria ( jun) to sexual desire and insect, Zhang links the basic element of his view on enjoyment. Zhang explains that sexual desire, emotion, and sickness can mutually produce one another: “Nonetheless, it is not only lasciviousness that can produce bacteria and the gu-insect. Once the bacteria and poison have been formed, they can control people’s will and cause people to be lascivious. Besides lasciviousness, emotions such as joy, anger, sorrow, and happiness all are influenced by this bacteria-poison.”37 In addition to making a connection between insect and emotion, Zhang further moves the concept of gu to the ideational level by playing on the two senses of the word gu. In the Book of Changes, the character gu is glossed as both “confusion” (huo, 惑) and as “affair” (shi, 事). Zhang brings these two meanings of the word together by invoking the interpretation of the gu trigram by the brilliant interpreter of Daoism Fu Manrong (also known as Wang Bi; 226–249), which links “confusion” with “affair.” Wang Bi writes: “Gu is confusion and chaos. The myriad affairs and things arise from chaos. Hence confusion is affairs and things.”38 Through Wang Bi, Zhang interprets bacteria in relation

Huai Nanzi places the bacteria between the dark-skinned person and the sage; hence the ruojun are also people” (ibid., 59). 36 Ibid., 55. 37 Ibid., 57. 38 Ibid., 60. Wang Bi’s original text is in the Wenyuange siku quanshu, vol. 7, 677 (Taipei: Taiwan shangwu yinshuguan).

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to confusion (gu), which he in turn associates with the Buddhist idea that human beings become conscious of their existence mediated by ignorance or confusion. The left-wing historian of philosophy Hou Wailu praised Zhang’s essay “On Bacteria” for being materialist and resisting Tan Sitong’s Confucian idealism, which Tan developed in A Study of Benevolence, published in 1899.39 However, as we have seen, Zhang links bacteria to confusion and uses Wang Bi to show that all things arise from confusion, hence putting into question the materiality of bacteria. Zhang develops this position further when he notes that human beings are not created by God but through confusion, which inhabits the sperm: People have the desire to mate and transfer this desire to their sperm. The sperm receives this and it feels the same way as the person in whose body the sperm resides. The sperm then admires the human form and hence becomes a fetus to imitate humans. . . . Sperm cells create human beings. Human beings begin with confusion and the sperm cells complete their project using confusion. It is not that “God” creates them; rather, things create themselves. Hence Zhuang Zi says “all take what they want for themselves, but who does the sounding?”40

Desire and confusion transcend the particular, but are always embodied in individuated things. Unlike Tan Sitong’s cosmic love, which represents an ontological source, desire and confusion do not themselves become a metaphysical entity. Zhang uses this worldview to criticize all religions, including Buddhism. Hence in this essay, he claims that contrary to Buddhism, “outside of illusion there is no reality.”41 In 1899 Zhang drew specific political consequences from his metaphysics, calling for controlling confusion through the state and hierarchical relations. In the next section we shall examine how Zhang reinterpreted Buddhism after becoming a revolutionary. In this new context, he will develop his idea of ontological confusion in a Buddhist framework.

See Hou Wailu, Zhongguo jindai zhexueshi, 345. Zhang Taiyan, “Jun shuo,” 60. The full passage from the Zhuang Zi is “Blowing on the ten thousand things in a different way, so that each can be itself—all take what they want for themselves, but who does the sounding?” (second chapter of the Zhuang Zi). 41 Zhang Taiyan, “Jun Shuo,” 70–71. 39 40

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Zhang Taiyan’s Jail Experience and His Reinterpretation of Buddhism Zhang Taiyan began to change his ideas on religion when he went to Japan in 1900. Like Liang Qichao, Zhang also at first accepted the Western concept of religion after going to Japan, specifically after reading the works of Anesaki Masaharu (1873–1949), the father of religious studies in Japan.42 However, while Liang was interested in Buddhism early on in his career, in Zhang’s case, a specific experience determined his stance toward Buddhism. That is, in 1903, Zhang was convicted for revolutionary activities and then sent to a Western jail in Shanghai, where the English had extraterritorial authority. Zhang’s particular philosophical path was encouraged by the circumstances of his incarceration, from 1903 to 1906. Visitors were not allowed to bring prisoners any reading matter except Christian scriptures and books on Christianity. A member of the Chinese Society of Education (Zhongguo jiaoyuhui) in Shanghai visited Zhang every week and asked him if he needed anything. Zhang replied that he wanted to read the Discourse on the Stages of Concentration Practice (Yuqie shidi lun, 瑜伽師地論, Yogācārabhūmi śāstra). Another member of the Society, Jiang Zhiyou, found these texts in his library and passed them to Zhang.43 Zhang avidly read this and other Buddhist scriptures when he was incarcerated, and it was probably the difficult conditions in the jail that led him to seek transcendence and search within himself. As soon as they entered jail, both Zhang Taiyan and his younger revolutionary comrade, Zou Rong, constantly contemplated death.44 Zhang noted that when he and Zou first saw the “inhuman” way in which the foreign guards treated the prisoners, he told Zou that it would be better to commit suicide than to be humiliated by white people in a foreign jail. They each knew that if one of them died, it would cause a scandal, and

42 In general, scholars had considered the essay “On the Origin of Religions,” where Zhang Taiyan first accepts the Western concept of religion, to contain Zhang’s original ideas, but Kobayashi Takeshi has recently shown that most of the first part of the essay is a translation of Anesaki Masaharu’s “An Explanation of the Concept of Religion” (1901) (Anesaki Masaharu, Shūkyūgaku gairon). See Kobayashi Takeshi, “Shō Heirin to Anesaki Masaharu.” 43 Tang Zhijun, Zhang Taiyan nianpu changbian, vol. 1, 198. 44 The following information about Zhang’s jail experience is documented in ibid., 191–92. Tang quotes from an essay in which Zhang published this information in the journal Han zhi (The Han Flag), vol. 2, 1907, after he was released from jail.

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officials would be more lenient to the one who survived. Hence Zhang and Zou each offered to sacrifice himself in order to save the other. Committing suicide was not a simple task, since, as Zhang notes, they were not allowed to take any pills or knives into their cells. Zhang thus resolved to starve himself to death. After seven days without food, Zhang began vomiting blood, “since when one does not eat, blood rises.” However, a fellow inmate who knew what Zhang was trying to do told him that fasting for seven days is insufficient to end one’s life. He explained that people who take drugs sometimes do not eat for forty-two days, and even if they are dizzy, vomit, and have diarrhea, they do not die. Upon hearing this, Zhang decided to resume eating, but notes that the food was terrible: since the husks of grain were not removed, he could even see them in his excrement. Zhang explained that because of these conditions, out of five hundred inmates about one hundred and sixty died every year. The harsh conditions associated with bad food and a monotonous living style45 were clearly important in sparking the conceptual shift we see in Zhang’s thought about religion and Buddhism. Zhang suggests that he was able to get through his jail experience by concentrating on Buddhism, which perhaps provided him a framework to reinterpret the meaning of his pain and suffering and thus experience it in a different way. Zou Rong, however, was not so fortunate and died in jail. In his biography of Zhang Taiyan, Jin Hongda records that Zhang turned to Zou, gave him a copy of the Introduction to [Buddhist] Logic (Nyāyapraveśa, yinmingruzhenglun) and said, “Carefully read this; it can help you overcome the difficulties you face in these three years in jail.”46 But Zou did not listen. In his autobiography, Zhang writes, “I read and studied the Buddhist scriptures day and night and then understood the meaning of Mahayana Buddhism. Zou Rong could not read them; he was young and restless, and eventually became sick.”47 After Zou Rong died, in 1905, officials became worried that there would be more commotion if Zhang died and hence there were orders to improve Zhang’s living conditions. These changes probably contributed to Zhang’s relatively good health; however, Shen Yanguo, a Other than work and visits from foreign missionaries on Sundays, prisoners had very few activities (Zhang Taiyan, Zhang Taiyan zhenglun xuanji, 262–63). 46 Jin Hongda, Taiyan xiansheng, 134. 47 Tang Zhijun, Zhang Taiyan nianpu changbian, 189. 45

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friend of Zhang Taiyan, suggests that Zhang came out of jail in 1906 looking healthy and refreshed largely because of the power he derived from reciting Buddhist sutras.48 Zhang remarks in many places that before going to jail, he did not really understand the Buddhist sutras. His time in jail changed his attitude toward Buddhism, as is apparent in his “Zhang Taiyan’s Notes on Reading Buddhist Texts,” which he published while still in jail in 1905 in the National Essence Journal.49 These notes are random and do not focus on a particular topic; however, we can see that throughout the two pages of notes, Zhang is concerned with a number of concepts that he did not stress before he was jailed, namely freedom, constraints, sadness, and happiness. These notes seem to have been an attempt to make sense of his jail experience by using new concepts. Zhang begins his notes by mentioning Aristotle and the Japanese scholar Moriuchi Masaaki, both of whom linked human action to happiness. Moriuchi claimed that human beings really desire not happiness but movement. Zhang claims that suffering is actually caused by the obstruction of action. He notes, for example, that women giving birth experience pain because the fetus obstructs the activity of the blood and energy (xue qi ). Zhang concludes there is neither pure freedom nor pure un-freedom. He explains that so-called free people are still constrained by natural laws such as hunger, and also codified laws, which are enforced by policemen. On the other hand, he contends that even an imprisoned slave is not purely unfree. Even when one is locked up in a cell, one can always chose to die. A person locked up in prison as a slave does not lose his freedom at all (qi ziyou wu suo shi ). Why? The imprisoned slave is coerced, but there is really no such thing as coercion in the world. If one encounters coercion and resists it with death, coercion ceases to be effective. Now (those who are alive) do not want to die and chose to be coerced. Hence there is freedom of choice between death and being coerced.50

This statement points to the theoretical implications of Zhang’s own choice to live rather than die in prison. Moreover, the idea that freedom is not lost at all when one goes to jail is a transcendental perspective.

48 49 50

Shen Yanguo, “Ji Zhang Taiyan xiansheng,” 66. Zhang Taiyan, “Zhang Taiyan du fodian zaji,” 6. Ibid.

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Japanese historian Kobayashi Takeshi claims that this transcendental perspective is linked to a combination of Buddhism and German idealism. It is clear that Zhang had read Buddhist texts by this time and Kobayashi suggests that he might have already been introduced to Schopenhauer through the works of Moriuchi, whom Zhang mentions.51 In any case, Zhang at this time advocated a transcendental act of choice, which determines freedom. We find a similar conception of freedom in Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason: “Freedom from a practical perspective is the independence of the will (Willkür) from sensuous drives.”52 However, unlike Kant, Zhang did not base his theory on reason; rather he developed a philosophy closer to that of Nietzsche and Heidegger, but based on the Yogācāra concept of ālaya consciousness; then from there he eventually came to criticize various religions and philosophies, including Kant’s. I now turn to the philosophical foundations for his various critiques, namely his Yogācārin framework. “On Establishing Religion” When Zhang Taiyan was released from jail on June 29, 1906, the Revolutionary Alliance (Tongmenghui) led by Sun Zhongshan sent people to ask Zhang to come to Tokyo to edit the revolutionary People’s Journal (Minbao). Given that he was now a notorious revolutionary and future conflicts with the Qing government were inevitable, Zhang accepted the position of editor and left for Tokyo in the evening of June 29. Zhang had been to Tokyo twice before, but this time was different since he was now a revered revolutionary. Minbao published essays by famous anti-Manchu activists such as Hu Hanmin (1879–1936) and Wang Jingwei (1883–1944), both of whom wrote about a variety of topics related to revolutionary politics. However, Zhang’s essays for Minbao are unique since in many of them he discussed Buddhism. In November 1906 Zhang published his first detailed discussion of Yogācāra Buddhism in an essay entitled “On Establishing Religion.” This essay uses a Buddhist framework to evaluate religions and Yogācārin principles

51 Kobayashi Takeshi, “Shō Heirin to Anesaki Masaharu,” 97. But it is unclear how he got ahold of Moriuchi’s essay. 52 Kant, Kritik der Reinen Vernunft, 524, A534/B562.

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to deconstruct the mundane world and present a discourse that identifies the smaller self with a larger self. Zhang begins by following a Yogācārin analysis to dissolve both the subject and the object, but then towards the end of the essay he affirms a notion of subjectivity and identification with living things. We will see that unlike Liang’s discourse, Zhang’s more serious study of Yogācāra Buddhism stemming from his jail experience gave him a critical distance from contemporary politics that he later critiqued. Although in his earlier essay on religions in A Book of Urgency (Qiushu), he contended that all religions are equal, in this essay, Zhang evaluates various religions based on new criteria: “One cannot determine whether a religion is base or exalted a priori. I take as a standard that religion should not lose truth (zhen) above and it should help the people’s morality below.”53 It is precisely the gap between these two principles, the above and the below, that separates Zhang’s more profound reading of Buddhism from Liang’s more instrumental use. Like Liang, Zhang holds up Buddhism as a response to specific problems he sees unfolding him around him. Today’s world is not that of the Zhou, Qin, Han, or the Wei dynasties. Those times were simple and undifferentiated and so, even Confucius and Lao Zi’s words were sufficient to transform the people’s customs. Today things are different. The idea of the six paths54 and the transformation of hell are not useful. If one does not say that there is no life, one cannot get rid of the fear of death. If one does not break the idea of possessions, one cannot get rid of the worship of money. If one does not talk of equality ( pingdeng), then one cannot get rid of the mind of the slave. If one does not say that all things are the Buddha, then one cannot get rid of the mind of retreating. If one does not hold up the purity of the three wheels [the body, speech, and the mind—shen, kou, yi ] one will not be able to renounce false virtue (dese).55

Here Zhang selects the more philosophical aspects of Yogācāra Buddhism, excluding its complex notions of hell, which involve a completely different metaphysics. Moreover, he invokes religion and Buddhism in response to a number of social and political problems, including commodification, the worship of money, the lack of autonomy, and the fear of death. However, the logic of Zhang’s discussion of Buddhism goes

53 54 55

Zhang Taiyan, “Jianli zongjiaolun,” 202. Hell, place of demons, animals, Asura, human beings, and heaven. Zhang Taiyan, “Jianli zongjiaolun,” 212.

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beyond explicit links to national or revolutionary morality. Put differently, Zhang’s pursuit of “the truth” exemplifies a romantic impulse and provides a framework for questioning political givens. Hence the bulk of Zhang’s essay is a detailed interpretation of Yogācāra Buddhism without direct reference to current social problems. Instead, his discourse deals with modern capitalist society at a higher level of abstraction, attempting to overcome the fundamental antinomy of subject and object. Zhang begins explicating this framework by making a gesture towards ontology: “any philosophy that creates a religion, establishes something as an ontological ground (benti). Although their images of substance are different, the form that they raise is the same.”56 Zhang shows that the “ontological ground,” the identical subject-object posited by Yogācāra Buddhism is capable of accounting for the world of subjects and objects, while also showing that the world of objects is ultimately illusory and that illusions conceal a primordial ethical subject. Zhang configures his argument by explaining the Yogācārin theory of three self-natures. Although these are Buddhist concepts, Zhang does not discuss them as part of a religion; instead, they appear to have something like the status of science. In the opening paragraph of his essay, Zhang comments: These three natures do not make up a theory of religion. The sun travels in the sky and gives light and warmth to the whole earth. It is not because the ancestral shrines and altars are dark and cold that the sun rises, but the thousands of dust particles cannot escape the sun. The three natures are also the same.57

Hence the basic principles of Yogācāra Buddhism themselves do not make a religion but, as Zhang will say later, they are to be treated as a philosophy based on evidence. Following classical thinkers such as Xun Zi ( fl. 298–238 bce) and Wang Chong (27–97 ce), Zhang stresses that the sun does not follow human needs and has an objective force. Similarly, the three natures are not mere matters of individual belief; rather, Zhang uses Yogācārin theory, including the idea of the three natures, to show how belief is possible. He contends that precisely because the

56 57

Ibid., 198. Ibid., 197.

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three natures have an explanatory force beyond mere individual belief, they can serve as criteria for discussing religion.58 The three natures are “the self-nature of erroneous discrimination,” the “other-dependent self-nature,” and the “self-nature of complete truth.” “The self-nature of erroneous discrimination” (bianjisuozhizixing 遍計所執自性, parakalpita-svabhāva) refers to the common realm of things that exist in space and time. In Zhang’s view, this is the level where one experiences oneself as a subject in a world of objects. These various self-natures are related to the different levels of consciousness in the Yogācāra system. Although Yogācārins contend that experience happens as a unity, to explain the origin of human suffering and to illuminate a path to overcome it, they distinguish between eight levels of consciousness: ālaya consciousness, or the storehouse consciousness; manas consciousness (cogitation); the sense-center consciousness or the sixth consciousness ( yishi, manovijñāna); and the five consciousnesses, which refers to the senses: sight, hearing, smell, touch, and taste. The self-nature of erroneous discrimination occurs primarily on the last six levels of consciousness. In Zhang’s view, the real contribution of Yogācāra Buddhism lies in the discovery of the highest two levels of consciousness, which we can understand through examining the second self-nature. The second self-nature, the other-dependent self-nature ( yitaqizixing, 依他起自性, paratantra-svabhāva), is the most difficult to grasp, and Zhang claims that all Western religions and philosophies overlook it. The second self-nature emerges from a combination of the eighth, ālaya consciousness and the seventh, manas consciousness and the confused distinctions of the five consciousnesses, which include sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch, and so on. The realm of color and space is created by the cognition of the five consciousnesses. The realm of self and other is created by the cogitation of manas consciousness.59

58 For Zhang Taiyan’s discussion of whether Buddhism is a religion or philosophy, see his “Lun Fofayu zongjiao, zhexue ji xianshi zhi guanxi” (On the Relationship between Buddhist Religion, Philosophy, and Reality) in idem, Gegudingxin de zheli, 398. In this essay, originally published in 1910, Zhang argues that because one experiences Buddhist concepts such as “suchness” (zhenru, tathatā) and “matrix of the thus comeone” (rulaicang, tathāgathagharba), Buddhism does not depend on belief and cannot be called religion. 59 Zhang Taiyan, “Jianli zongjiaolun,” 197.

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This self-nature holds that things do not have independent existence and is often considered synonymous with the Buddhist idea of co-dependent origination ( yuanqi, pratitya samutpada). However, the self-nature that depends on others also implies a concrete analysis of things that appear to have independent existence to show that they are in some way constituted or mediated by otherness. One of the most important conclusions emanating from the self-nature that depends on others is that the self actually depends on ālaya consciousness, or the “storehouse consciousness.” In this way, Zhang grounds both the subjective and objective dimensions of the self in ālaya consciousness: Ālaya consciousness through its self-conscious ability to reflect objects ( jian fen, drsna) recognizes the seeds [power to create phenomena] in its consciousness as phenomena (xiang fen, laksanā/msa). Hence its mind does not need to appear and yet its realm is always there. Manas consciousness through its self conscious ability to reflect objects recognizes ( yuan, ālambana) ālaya consciousness as an objective aspect. The objective aspect is either taken as a self or as things in the world. The mind does not [always] appear and yet its realm is constant. It is not different from the ālaya consciousness.60

The above passage describes an externalization of consciousness that creates self-consciousness. Ālaya consciousness, which can be described as a pure stream of consciousness, stores the myriad potential to create phenomena, also known as seeds. The self, subject, and object are created by transformations of ālaya consciousness and its seeds. By sticking close to the original doctrines of Buddhism and stressing the transcendental dimension more than does Liang, Zhang can move beyond the level of identification-nation to the level of transcendental subject-object/spirit-capital. As in the case of the German idealists, Zhang’s thought does not remain at a level of originary sameness or transcendence. When manas consciousness takes ālaya consciousness as an objective aspect, the idea of an independent self is born. Since manas consciousness is really also ālaya consciousness but does not realize it, the temporal self is born through self-misrecognition. The Yogācārin theory of the self involves alienation from a state in which there is no distinction between subject and object to a derivative state where there is a self. While it is difficult to place this theory

60

Ibid.

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of the self in relation to Western philosophy, it does relate to Hegel’s thinking. Like Hegel’s Spirit, ālaya consciousness is a realm of primal unity, which then separates into subject and object. However, Yogācārins emphasize the psychological nature of this movement and they describe a moment of misrecognition. The Discourse on the Stages of Concentration Practice (Yuqie shidi lun, Yogācārabhūmi śāstra) states: The mind (mansa) whose mode (akara) is conceiving (manyana) “I making” (ahamkara), the conceit “I am” (asimana), always arises and functions simultaneously with the ālaya vijñāna (consciousness) in states with mental activity (sacittaka) and even in states lacking mental activity (acittaka). That [mind] has the mode of taking the ālaya vijñāna as [its] object and conceiving [it] as the “I am [this] (asmiti) and “[this is] I.”61

So it is that ālaya consciousness constantly accompanies manas consciousness even when manas consciousness thinks it is independent. This is similar to the way Hegel’s Spirit always accompanies things individuated in time. Hegel writes, “the power of Spirit lies rather in remaining the same in its externalization (Entäusserung).”62 We have seen above that manas takes its object, ālaya consciousness, as a self or subject and so it is simultaneously subject and object and both of these are always externalizations of ālaya consciousness. However, there are several ways in which manas is not quite an ordinary self. We will take up the political implications of this difference, which involve the peculiar nature of manas, toward the end of this chapter. First, it has an unusually abiding presence. Yogācārins believe manas consciousness is present even when it does not appear, as in unconsciousness states, such as deep sleep. Moreover, despite the statement “this is I,” Yogācārins do not explicitly theorize manas consciousness as the space of others or even in a space of objects in the world, but only as an uninterrupted self. The Buddhist monk and scholar Xuan Zang (602?–664) describes manas in his Discourse on the Theory of Consciousness-only (成唯識論) and asserts that it “is called ‘cogitation’ or ‘deliberation’ because it cogitates or deliberates at all times without interruption in contradistinction to

From the Pravrtti portion of the Yogācārabhumi āśstra, cited from Waldron, The Buddhist Unconscious, 121. 62 Hegel, Phänomenolgie des Geistes, 588; English trans. in idem, Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, 490. 61

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the sixth consciousness (manovijñāna) [sense-center consciousness], which is subject to interruption.”63 Manas consciousness is in a special category because it does not cognize objects but only functions to misrecognize ālaya consciousness. Hence even if one concludes that saying “I” implies the existence of an other, at the level of manas, the concept of other is nebulous and, from a Yogācāra perspective, “the delusion that it [manas] generates, namely an idea of self, is much more resistant to being transformed in order to attain enlightenment.”64 Thus, according to Yogācāra Buddhists, the split between subject and object occurs when the sixth level of consciousness and the five senseconsciousnesses combine to perceive objects. The sixth consciousness, manovijñāna, or the sense-centered consciousness, produces the perception of objects by taking in data from the five senses. Although ālaya consciousness splits itself into subjective and objective aspects, these happen on different levels of consciousness—the seventh and sixth level respectively. Moreover, Yogācāra Buddhists consider these various distinctions mere heuristic devices in order to help people understand their ignorance and attain enlightenment. In the end, this system shows that all objects in time and space are delusions produced by consciousness and so Yogācāra Buddhists find no need to posit anything existing outside consciousness.65 A true understanding of the concepts of Yogācāra Buddhism along with meditative practice would enable one to grasp the second nature, namely the self-nature that depends on others, and move on to the third self-nature, “complete or prefect self-nature.” In other words, when one recognizes that the sense of self is produced by manas’ dependence on ālaya consciousness and that our sense of the objective world is also premised upon ālaya consciousness mediated by the first

Hsüan-tsang [Xuan Zang], Ch’eng wei-shih lun, 97. Wei Tat’s translation of this text is filled with his own commentaries, which he does not separate from the text. In the above quotation, Xuan Zang’s original says nothing about the difference between the seventh and sixth consciousness. His text ends with “cogitates or deliberates at all times.” I nonetheless include Wei Tat’s extra lines because they are helpful. 64 Tao Jiang, “Ālaya vijñāna and the Problematic of Continuity in the Cheng Weishi lun,” 256. 65 The term “consciousness-only” often is interpreted as giving consciousness an ontological status, but, as the above interpretation should make clear, the Yogācārins argued from an epistemological perspective and their main aim was to deconstruct the idea that objects existed independently. Dan Lusthaus emphasizes this point in his Buddhist Phenomenology. 63

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six consciousnesses, one can attain a level beyond the abstractions of concepts and language and experience complete self-nature. Zhang describes this nature in the following manner: The third self-nature is the Buddhist idea of truth and is the true image or suchness (zhenru)66 and emerges as itself. It is also established through ālaya consciousness’ reverting to nothingness. There is no self-nature in what the understanding grasps as things and gives names and language to, but apart from this understanding there is self-nature. This self-nature is complete self-nature ( yuanchengshizixing, parinispanna-svabhāva). The complete self-nature is also called suchness, the origin of all things ( fajie, dharma-dhātu) or nirvana.67

At this point, Zhang has established an ontological ground and asserts that “wise people assent to the establishment of complete self-nature” as an ontological foundation.68 This is a standpoint that he did not invoke in his early writings, such as “On Bacteria,” when he believed that there was nothing outside illusion. Zhang assesses various other religions and philosophies from the perspective of this complex system that posits an ontological source that is at once subject and object. As we have seen, he describes the relationship between the ontological source and the production of consciousness in a transhistorical manner. However, with this transhistorical movement of consciousness, he attacks any type of reified vision of God. Zhang’s description of the psychological process by which people posit deities highlights the gap between the finite subject in an infinite world. He explains the appearance of the aporia between subject and object in terms of two Buddhist concepts, “afflictive ignorance” and “hindrance by the known”: One is oppressed from all sides by starvation, cold, sickness, and pain, not knowing when death will come and having no certainty about satisfying wishes and desires. Hence people believe that there must be a thing existing outside the body which is forcing them. At this point, they worship it and pray in order to attain happiness. This religion is produced by “afflictive ignorance” ( fannaozhang, kleśa āvarana).69

Anesaki Masaharu theorized religion as attempting to resolve the problems of human finitude, and we now know that large sections of 66 67 68 69

The content of satori. Zhang Taiyan, “Jianli zongjiaolun,” 198. Ibid. Ibid., 200–201.

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Zhang’s essay in the second edition of A Book of Urgency, “On the Origin of Religion,” written around 1902, consist of Chinese translations of Anesaki’s essay “An Explanation of the Concept of Religion.” The following passage from Anesaki’s essay resonates with Zhang’s point cited above: “If one talks about immediate motivation [for religion], when the self ’s desire transcends (koeru) its ability, in order to realize this desire, the self looks to a human personality above itself.”70 However, in his 1902 essay, Zhang mainly emphasized Anesaki’s point that all religions are equal; he overlooked Anesaki’s comments about the existential roots of the religious instinct in human finitude. Kobayashi Takeshi suggests that Zhang’s insufficient understanding of Schopenhauer and German idealism during his pre-Minbao period explains his lack of interest in the problem of human finitude. This is perhaps a partial explanation. But Zhang’s jail experience is at least as important in explaining his shift in interest. After all, we have seen that in his notes from jail, he explicitly addresses the limitations on human freedom. In “On Establishing Religion,” Zhang goes beyond his notes from jail and tries to provide a resolution to the aporia of time without fetishizing any particular object. Zhang shows that the desire for happiness, which is at the root of the positing of a deity, arises from “afflictive ignorance.” Afflictive ignorance emerges from clinging to a self, and, in particular, the self as it is manifested when the sixth level of consciousness interacts with the five senses. Zhang then describes how the feeling of human finitude and the religious reactions to it can also be caused by a more conceptually grounded confusion: Some people live in secluded mountain valleys or come from caves and they go up to the high mountains and look up to see the stars and look outside and view the sea and ocean. Then they are at a loss and sad about their own small form. What one sees and hears is limited to what is extremely near and what one does not know is like the infinite sea and innumerable grains of sand. Moreover, the myriad things are mixed together in such a way that one cannot grasp them, but they still follow an order and do not go beyond this order. Hence people suppose that there must be a thing that orders them and worship it and believe it. This religion is caused by the “hindrance of the knowable” (suo zhizhang, jñaya āvarana).71 70 71

Anesaki Masaharu, Shūkyūgaku gairon, 569. Zhang Taiyan, “Jianli zongjiaolun,” 201.

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In this case, it is not desire, but rather a cognitive understanding of the infinite cosmos that causes a feeling of fear similar to the Kantian sublime. In the Yogācārin system, “hindrance by the known,” which originally referred to a person’s inability to recognize that all things are empty, is a more subtle obstacle to enlightenment. In the above passage, Zhang refers to the hindrance by the known to criticize the “cosmological argument for the existence of God,” namely positing the existence of God in order to explain the sublime order of the cosmos. Zhang asserts that a lack of knowledge hinders people from realizing that the world stems from transformations of consciousness. “They are not able to turn inside and look from the heart/mind; therefore they look outside. With respect to this outside, they give it the name of a god and endow it with a human personality. This heart is true, but this god is an illusion.” He adds that many people take an illusion as an ontological source and hence “fail to understand the self-nature that depends on others.”72 Put in terms of Yogācāra, because advocates of most religions move directly from the self-nature of erroneous discrimination to their vision of complete truth, they are not able to think significantly past the sixth level of consciousness, the sense-center consciousness, which discriminates between objects in the world. Zhang uses the above argument to discredit religions, including Christianity, pantheism,73 and “lower” religions that advocate worshiping fire or other material objects: They take what the understanding grasps as self-nature to be the complete truth ( yuanchengshi, parinispanna). One says that the way (dao) is in barnyard grass and in excrement and mud, but this does not mean that we can take barnyard grass, excrement, and mud as the dao. One says that the wall and tiles are Buddha nature, but this does not mean that Buddha nature stops with the walls and tiles. If one takes barnyard grass, excrement, mud, walls, and tiles as being the sole place of the dao and Buddha nature, this is the fault of the understanding. It is not just lower religions that are like this; the high religions such as Vedanta, Christianity, and Islam also take Brahma or Jehovah as the sole place of the dao or the sole place of God and thus are limited by the same reality. They want to take one thing in reality to cover the infinite without boundaries; in the end, they cannot leave the erroneous discrimination. They are

Ibid. Zhang also criticizes pantheism in his “On Atheism,” which he published in 1906, the same year as “On Establishing Religion.” 72 73

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In this passage, Zhang anticipates his comparison of Yogācāra Buddhism and Daoism in his 1910 essay “An Interpretation of a ‘On the Equalization of Things’” (“Qiwulun shi”), a reading of the Zhuang Zi, which I will discuss in more detail in the next two chapters. In “On Establishing Religion,” Zhang uses Zhuangzi by invoking the famous statement in the “Knowledge Wandering North” (“Zhi beiyou”) chapter of the Zhuang Zi that the way (dao) “is in barnyard grass” and “in excrement and mud.”75 In the above passage, Zhang echoes Zhuang Zi’s point that although one “must not expect to find the way (dao) in any particular place, the way does not lie outside of things.”76 The key point here is that the ontological source must logically precede the reified world of things. Heidegger perhaps explains this most clearly with his concept of the ontological difference. Heidegger contends that since Plato, but especially in the modern age of the world picture, people are oblivious to Being since they have forgotten the ontological difference and have interpreted Being as a thing (a being). Thinking Being requires somehow deconstructing the world of subjects and objects, which is premised on the obfuscation of the distinction between Being and beings. However, Zhang grounds what we would call a particularly modern subjectivity and objectivity in Buddhist concepts. He not only believes that Yogācārins expound the categories of Kantian philosophy, but that Buddhist concepts surpass the notion of the Kantian subject and categories. First, he suggests that Kant’s twelve categories are already present in the Yogācārin concept of the objects ( fachen, 法塵 ) of the sixth consciousness.77 Yogācārins separate objects of the five senses (wuchen) and objects ( fachen) of the sixth consciousness, which are direct mental perceptions, not dependent on the sense organs. Zhang explains that at the level of the objects of senses, we do not really perceive differentiated objects, but have only vague sense impressions. Then the sixth consciousness performs a synthesis that creates objects and in the process makes use of categories. This is why Zhang believes Yogācāra

Zhang Taiyan, “Jianli zongjiaolun,” 202–3. See Zhuang Zi, Zhuang Zi yigu, 438–39. For an English translation of the passage, see idem, The Complete Works of Chuang Tsu, 240–41. 76 Ibid., Chin. 439, Eng. 241. 77 Zhang Taiyan, “Jianli zongjiaolun,” 199. 74 75

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anticipated Kant’s Copernican turn by emphasizing consciousness and distinguishing between the mere reception of sense-impression, which is similar to Kant’s idea of intuition (Anschaung), and the production of an object through a synthetic use of categories. However, Zhang claims that Kant did not really grasp the relationship between objects in the world and their ontological source. Because he [Kant] knew that his position was extreme and eccentric, he had to conclude that the objects of the five senses in the material world were illusory and claim that their ontological source was the thing-initself. If this so, why should not space and time be illusions? Things have a thing-in-itself, so why should not space and time have a space-in-itself and a time-in-itself ?78

Zhang notes that Kant’s paradigm of an unknowable “thing-in-itself ” along with illusory objects of the senses is inadequate, since Kant does not really understand that the thing-in-itself is also dependent on an other ( yita). Thus he seeks to correct the Kantian paradigm: The objects of the senses are not in the outside world, they are born through archetypical concepts in ālaya consciousness. The stupid person takes the outside world to exist and the objects of the senses to be nothing.79 Actually, one must take the objects of the five senses and the external world to be nothing. So how can one say that the objects ( fachen) of the sixth consciousness are not nothing? From the perspective of the original archetypical consciousness, the objects of the five senses and the objects of the sixth consciousness (wuchen and fachen) are both empty. But we must say that the archetypes ( yuanxing) of the objects of the five senses and the objects of the sixth consciousness both exist. The reason that humans have these archetypical concepts is because of delusion (mi). But delusion does not delude itself, it becomes deluded through the essence (benzhi, 本質).80 If this essence does not exist, delusion will not arise by itself.81

Ibid., 200. Zhang adds a note saying that “the stupid person thinks of a nothing within a space.” 80 The Foxue dacidian explains this concept as the basis for perception. For example, when the eyes cognize a material realm, apart from the image that occurs in the eye, there is outside a material dharma created by the seeds of ālaya consciousness, and the image in the eye depends on this material dharma. The material dharma is the essence (benzhi). If one freely imagines things on the sixth level of consciousness, such as a rabbit with horns, then one only has an image and no essence. This is called “illusory perception.” See Ding Fubao, Foxue dacidian, 851. Zhang argues that confusion is caused through the essence, because confusion is dependent on the movement of seeds of ālaya consciousness through which distinctions between the self, image, and essence are born. 81 Zhang Taiyan, “Jianli zongjiaolun,” 203–4. 78 79

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Here Zhang introduces the idea of archetypical concepts, which also gestures towards a Kantian position insofar as it stresses the construction of the world through subjective mediation. We see Zhang explicitly link the concept of archetype to the Kantian categories in his “Interpretation of the Equalization of Things.”82 Zhang’s concept of ālaya consciousness grounds subjectivity in a movement of delusion that goes beyond the individual subject. This is Zhang’s main criticism of Kant, and he echoes criticisms of the thing-in-itself by Hegel and Fichte, since they both claim that there is a transcendental subjectivity that precedes the distinction between subject and object. However, now in a gesture towards Nietzsche, instead of a rational spirit, we have delusion. This delusion develops through a series of misrecognitions that are expressed as ālaya consciousness transforming into the other seven consciousnesses. We have seen how in on “On Bacteria,” Zhang referred to confusion (huo) as a fundamental ontological state. With Buddhism, Zhang is able to explain this ontological state of confusion in relation to subjective confusion. He will also eventually, in “On the Five Negations,” which we will discuss in the next two chapters, gesture to a realm that overcomes confusion, but since confusion or delusion is inherent in the basic movement from which individual consciousness is born, ending confusion will imply negating the perceiving subject and its world.83 However, once Zhang

Zhang Taiyan, “Qiwulun shi,” 13–14. Kobayashi Takeshi sheds light on another aspect of Zhang’s text “Interpretation of the Equalization of Things” by showing that Zhang was able to interpret ālaya consciousness as containing archetypical concepts through reading Anesaki Masaharu’s work on Indian philosophy, where Anesaki makes a similar connection. Anesaki wrote “the fundamental ālaya consciousness on which all dharmas depend, holds (ādhāna) the seeds or archetypical concepts of all phenomena. These archetypical seeds appear as differentiated recognition through consciousness (manas)” (Anesaki Masaharu, Jūsei indo shūkyūshi, 261; cited in Kobayashi Takeshi, “Shū Heirin to Anesaki Masaharu,” 99). For some reason, Anesaki glosses yishiki (意識) as manas, the seventh level of consciousness, when it usually refers to the sixth level. In other words, it is because of the karmic seeds in ālaya consciousness that people perceive the world as they do. Kobayashi notes that in philosophy in the Meiji era, the idea of archetype (genkei, 原型) was often linked to Plato’s concept of the “Idea” (Kobayashi Takeshi, “Shō Heirin to Anesaki Masaharu,” 99). Kobayashi cites Asanaga Mitsutoro’s Dictionary of Philosophy (Tetsugaku jiten) published in 1905 as evidence. In “On Establishing Religion,” Zhang echoes this trend and notes that “suchness” in Buddhism, which is established through ālaya consciousness, is similar to Plato’s Idea (“Jianli zongjiaolun,” 198). 83 I translate mi (迷) as delusion and huo (惑) as confusion, but Zhang uses them interchangeably. 82

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has transcended the subject, he needs to reinstate some type of self in order to re-enter the world of politics. Reverting to Subjectivity and Identification As we have seen, Zhang uses Yogācārin principles to deconstruct the world of subject and objects and to show how they are produced by the transformations of ālaya consciousness. However, towards the end of “On Establishing Religion,” Zhang refrains from following Yogācārins to declare the self and world empty and tries to construct a political subject. There are two steps to this construction. First, Zhang suggests that the self identify with all things and hence such a self is inclined to universal liberation. The second step is more difficult since he must link such universal liberation to the particular goal of an anti-Manchu revolution. In Yogācārin philosophy, from the standpoint of ālaya consciousness, there is no self, no other, and no things and, in fact, there is not even consciousness as such. Hence ālaya consciousness represents a realm that can be theorized from other levels of consciousness, but experientially it can only be accessed by intense meditation associated with Buddhist practice. Zhang may have had something similar to this type of experience in jail, since we know that he was reciting the sutras daily during his imprisonment. However, in his essays during the time when he was the editor of Minbao, Zhang argued that Buddhism is not a philosophy of quietism and that in fact it has practical applications. In a sense, Zhang anticipated criticisms from fellow revolutionaries who chided him for ignoring issues related to the revolution. For example, in 1908 he responded to Meng An (Takeda Hanshi), who asked why Buddhism, which was based on negating the world, could contribute to revolution.84

84 Zhang answers Takeda’s questions with sympathy and this suggests that he thought of Takeda as a fellow revolutionary. However, Takeda himself was a fairly complex figure. He was a Sōtō Zen monk who had supported the Japanese invasion of Korea, participating in military actions to suppress the Tonghak rebellion in 1894. In 1904, when Itō Hirobumi became governor general of Korea, Takeda was invited to Korea to spread Buddhism. We do not know that much about his relation to Zhang Taiyan, but he was a drinking companion of Zhang and they communicated with each other through writing. See, Nagao Ryūshin, “Uchiyama Gudō to Takeda Hanshi,” 235. See also Jorgensen, “Indra’s Network.”

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In “On Establishing Religion,” Zhang had already anticipated such objections and urged readers not to think of Buddhism as mere pacifism and opposed to revolution. As Kondō Kuniyasu explains, Zhang thought of the anti-Manchu revolution as a stage on the way to the liberation of all sentient beings.85 In “On Establishing Religion” Zhang argues against a total deconstruction of the subject and also expresses a discourse of identification, similar but not identical to that of Liang Qichao. Zhang ties Buddhism to action but due to his long detour through Yogācāra, his goal not only transcends national boundaries, it promotes saving all sentient beings and not just humans. He notes that Buddhism is not a philosophy that promotes “hating the world”: To speak from a common perspective, what we call the world can be separated into two things. The first is the three worlds. This consists of inanimate objects and is called the world of the quality of things (qijie). The other consists of sentient beings and is called the world of animate objects or things with feeling (qing). Buddhists do hate the world, but the world they hate is just the world of implements (qi) and not the world of things with feeling. Because the world of sentient being has fallen into the world of things, one must rescue them from the three worlds.86

Zhang creatively uses Buddhist concepts to formulate a critique of reification, and introduces dualisms that are not apparent in the original concepts. In Buddhism the “three worlds” (sanjie, tri-dhātu) and the world of the quality of things (qijie, bhājana-loka) are not synonymous.87 The “three worlds” refers to various realms of human desire, but the third of these three worlds (wusejie, ārupyā-dhātu) is without material form and refers to a sphere of high spiritual cultivation. Zhang highlights a distinction between sentient beings and the material world in a way that was not present in the original Buddhist philosophical system. Although Yogācāra does distinguish between sentient beings ( youqing/ zhongsheng, sattva) and the natural world, it considers both to be empty. Zhang’s interpretation enables him to target the world of things from the standpoint of life. Zhang continues to make his argument based on the Yogācāra emphasis on consciousness:

85 86 87

Kondō Kuniyasu, “Shō Heirin no kakumei shisū no keisei,” 85. Zhang Taiyan, “Jianli zongjiaolun,” 209. Wu Rujun, Fojiao dacidian, 525.

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With respect to inanimate objects such as the sky, the stars and the earth, water, fire, and wind, they are illusions that arise through depending on the minds of sentient beings. If sentient beings are saved and brought to nothingness, then the inanimate objects will empty themselves. This is why one saves living things and not the four elements.88

Zhang argues that given that things are dependent on consciousness and the liberation of sentient beings implies liberation from consciousness, things will cease to exist once people are liberated. This would be close to the position he outlines in “On the Five Negations.” In that essay, he argues that we must negate both living things and the world. However, in “On Establishing Religion,” he retreats from this radical position of following the logic of Buddhism, since it would problematize any type of identification and would obliterate politics as we know it. After all, strictly speaking, Yogācāra philosophy destroys the root of identification, namely the self. Zhang tries to save some notion of the self and asserts that “Mahayana Buddhism advocates extinguishing the idea that elements are inherently real ( fazhi, dharma-grāha), but does not advocate completely extinguishing the idea that the self is inherently real (wozhi, ātma-grāha). The idea of saving sentient beings is an element of taking the self as inherently real.”89 In Zhang’s view, the desire to save sentient beings stems from some conception of the self, which expands to identify with all sentient beings. Although Zhang will later use a Buddhist/Daoist perspective to criticize a Hegelian conception of unity, in this essay, he invokes Fichte in order to explain the unity of all things with the self: Fichte says: From the principle of singularity, the self is the self. From the principle of contradiction, what I call “I” is the “other” of others. What I call “the other” is the I of another person. But from the principle of sufficient reason (chongzulu, 充足律), there is no such thing as the other, there is only the self.90

Zhang describes a movement from a self that that exists in the space of the Other as “the other of others,” to a self that encompasses everything. He contends that Buddhists who want to save all sentient beings overcome the singular self, but never renounce the self that stems from the principle of sufficient reason. 88 89 90

Zhang Taiyan, “Jianli zongjiaolun,” 209. Ibid., 209. Ibid.

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The principle of sufficient reason is something like ālaya consciousness, which Zhang equates with all sentient beings and the self, and claims that this identity explains why Buddhists vow to save other beings. “Because sentient beings are the same as ālaya consciousness, a great vow is established according to which one desires to save all sentient beings.”91 This primordial self is linked to action and, in Zhang’s case, specifically ethical action. Zhang makes his point by distinguishing his position from that of passive Buddhists: “The monks who wear black clothes only practice passive morality. They do not have the morality that is supposed to stem from them spontaneously.”92 In developing a theory of the primordial ethical self, Zhang draws on Yogācāra Buddhism, but he reads the sutras creatively.93 Although as Buddhists, Yogācārins obviously presupposed a link between wisdom and compassion, they were more concerned with individual salvation and rarely discussed the problem of “other people” at the level of ālaya consciousness; after all, at this level there is no other and no self. Kondō Kuniyasu explains Zhang’s interpretation of Yogācāra philosophy as implying a self that includes all sentient beings by pointing out the relationship between manas consciousness and ālaya consciousness. From a Yogācāra perspective, manas consciousness is really the root of human suffering since it represents a subtle form of attachment to the self that only sincere meditative practice can overcome. But Kondō suggests that “Zhang believed that manas consciousness which grasped ālaya consciousness as a self was the confused medium which, as something that depended on others and was convenient, was pointing to truth. He separated this from the differentiated self of the sixth level of consciousness.”94 Since according to Yogācāra philosophy everything is produced by the confusion of consciousness, people require a medium that can lead to enlightenment and, in light of the general Yogācāra scheme,

Ibid. Ibid., 210. 93 The early Yogācārin texts warn against thinking of ālaya consciousness as a self. The end of chapter 5 of the Sutra of the Explication of the Underlying Meaning (Samdhinirmocoana Sūtra, 解深密經), which Zhang cites on occasion, states: The appropriating consciousness [ālaya consciousness] profound and subtle Like a violent current, flows with all the seeds I have not taught it to the ignorant Lest they should imagine it as a self 94 Kondō Kuniyasu, “Shō Heirin no kakumei shisū no keisei,” 82. 91 92

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manas consciousness, the seventh consciousness, appears to be the best candidate. Unlike the other six consciousness, which are in some way linked to the world of material objects, manas consciousness only takes ālaya consciousness as its object. According to Yogācāra, manas takes ālaya consciousness as a self and by this they refer to the root of individuation. Hence meditative practices are aimed at transforming rather than attaining manas consciousness. By an extension of Yogācāra logic, Zhang can conclude that through transforming manas consciousness one attains a stage of the self that is not individuated but encompasses all sentient beings. At this stage, one embodies the highest level of the selfnature that depends on others, since the other on which one depends is ālaya consciousness. Kondō’s interpretation is a possibility and Zhang himself explains the self of ālaya consciousness in a compatible manner. But what is important here is not so much manas consciousness itself, but a reevaluation of primordial delusion or confusion in a positive light. Zhang follows Yogācāra in claiming that getting rid of the self involves getting rid of delusion. However, he then distinguishes between active and passive relations to delusion. In short, Zhang suggests that by tapping into the primordial movement of confusion, one can act spontaneously to save all sentient beings from reification. In his “An Interpretation of the Equalizaton of Things,” Zhang returns to this problem of the all-encompassing self and action by invoking both Yogācāra Buddhism and the “Geng Sang Chu” chapter of the Zhuang Zi. To explain how the self spontaneously acts, he quotes from the Zhuang Zi: Action which is done because one cannot do otherwise is called virtue. Action in which there is nothing other than the self is called order. By definition the two seem to be opposites, but in reality they agree. Archer Yi was skilled at hitting the smallest target but clumsy in not preventing people from praising him for it. The sage is skilled in what pertains to heaven but clumsy in what pertains to man. To be skilled in heavenly affairs and good at human ones as well—only the Complete Man can encompass that. Only bugs can be bugs because only bugs can abide by heaven. The complete man hates heaven, and hates the heavenly in man. How much more, then, does he hate the “I” who distinguishes between heaven and man.95

95 Zhuang Zi, Zhuang Zi yigu, 480–81; idem, The Complete Works of Chuang Tsu, 259–60.

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By linking spontaneous action to an all encompassing self (where there is “nothing other than the self ”) Zhuang Zi alludes to a type of action that does not conform to common codes of morality or rationality. Moreover, Zhuang Zi highlights a bridge between heavenly and the human realms, which gets precisely to the issue that Zhang faces—the connection between Buddhist wisdom and action in the human realm. The Jin dynasty (265–420) commentator Guo Xiang glossed the first lines of the above passage, saying: “If one acts with intention, this is forcing action and thus one loses the mark. If one acts imitating an other, this leads to chaos.”96 Zhuang Zi’s key point refers to acting spontaneously without the distinctions between self and other. Zhang grasps the complex relationship between the all-encompassing self and action in the human world in terms of Yogācāra concepts and in particular in relation to the above-mentioned idea of primordial delusion: “Acting with only a self means that the six objects of consciousness (liuchen, sad visayāyah) are formed through delusion as the single locus for the production of all dharmas (mi yifajie). Delusion is the matrix of the thus come-one (rulaizang, tathāgathagarba) and the true self.”97 Zhang here combines two seemingly opposed Yogācāra concepts in order to elevate the status of the deluded temporal world. Originally, yifajie, or the single realm of reality, referred to ultimate truth in the Yogācāra system and mi or delusion to that which prevents people from understanding truth. However, Zhang puts the two together and hence delusion itself becomes a truth when recognized in the proper way. Here the parallels with Nietzsche show how Zhang was expressing a more global critique of objectivist ontology, which began in the nineteenth century and continues until today. Nietzsche pointed out that “the only being guaranteed to us is being that represents itself, and is therefore changing, not identical to itself, completely relative.”98 In this case, then, as Pierre Klossowski, in his seminal book on Nietzsche, explains, not only is “existence sustained only through fabulation” but “existence is itself a fabulation.”99 Given what Nietzsche saw to be the grounds of existence, his task was to demystify “in order to mystify better.”100 Since at least his 1899 essay “On Bacteria,” Zhang thought

96 97 98 99 100

Liu Wendian, Zhuan zi buzheng, 651. Zhang Taiyan, “Qiwulun shi,” 42. Klossowski, Nietzsche et le cercle viscieux, Fr. 195, Eng. 132. Ibid. Ibid. (emphasis in the original ).

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of confusion (huo) or delusion (mi) as being at the base of existence and did not appeal to truth outside of delusion. In that essay, he used confusion as an ontological condition to criticize Buddhism. During the Minbao period, he combined this concept of primordial delusion with Yogācāra epistemology to positively evaluate confusion and postpone overcoming delusion to a utopian future, which we will see in “On the Five Negations.” In “On Establishing Religion,” he connects delusion as an ontological condition to spontaneous action. In Zhang’s view, “mystifying better” entails not only understanding delusion but embodying it in a way that encompasses all things and impels one to moral action. However, this moral action is not limited to conventions and hence it is delusional and crazy. In his famous speech to students in Tokyo upon his release from jail in 1906, Zhang described himself as “mad.” In fact, his words suggest a similarity between the enlightened and the insane. Generally human beings never admit that they themselves are mad. Brilliant poets or great artists who howl in the mountains are different, but everyone else fits this rule. Yet, I alone confess that I am mad, that I suffer from a nervous disorder. What’s more, when I hear it said that I am mad or nervous, I become elated.101

Zhang refers to his own famous fit of epilepsy on the day that he was to sit for the imperial examinations. This experience led him to adopt a position outside the imperial system, which is an aspect of his “craziness” and links madness to revolution: “When one meets difficult situations, if one is not neurotic, one will definitely not be able to face a hundred setbacks without turning away and put one’s ideas into practice alone.”102 Here we see that along with identification with the group, which not only Zhang but all nationalists invoke, Zhang stresses an individuality and aloofness that implies refusing the subjectivity he associated with existing structures of power, especially the Qing dynasty state. In his speech to the students, Zhang narrates his own jail experience in religious terms and invokes Buddhism.

101 Zhang Taiyan, “Dongjing liuxuesheng huanyinghui yanshuo ci,” 141; translation in Shimada Kenji, Pioneers of the Chinese Revolution, 29. 102 Ibid.

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chapter three My secret crazy ( fengdian) thoughts were in the end difficult to attain. I just wanted to wear Buddhist robes and become a monk and break off my contacts with the scholarly and political worlds. To my surprise, after I returned from three years in prison, the number of people who support me has increased a hundredfold. I now realized that people’s heart-minds have really advanced ( jinhua).103

Although Zhang read Buddhist scriptures during his stay in jail, there is no evidence that he wanted to become a monk before he went to jail. In fact, most of his pre-jail writings on religion are neutral or even mildly hostile to Buddhism. Zhang was forced to sever his ties with the scholarly and the political worlds in jail, just as monks do when they enter a monastery. However, Zhang also separated himself from monks, whom he criticizes for being passive. In fact, Zhang did not leave either the scholarly or the political worlds, but he entered them in a different and even crazy or maverick way, which was at the same time social. In the above passage, we sense a connection between Zhang’s subjective transformation and the subjectivity of others. In other words, traditional recluses go into the mountains to meditate, and might come back to see whether the government has changed. As Mencius’ famous proverb states, “in obscurity one cultivates oneself ” (qiong ze du shan qi shen).104 However, Zhang is a more modern recluse: he retreats from government but nonetheless works to produce a new consciousness to promote political change. Therefore, while others recluses may have been called crazy, in Zhang’s view individual craziness is not enough. At the end of his speech, Zhang declares, “I want to affect you with my neurosis, and from there we can infect 400,000,000 people.”105 The above passages show how Zhang constructed a provisional subject, which could enter politics. However, the logic behind the second step, namely the link between the provisional subject and revolution, remains vague. In other words, while it may be possible to move from manas to madness, in that the sage’s actions would transcend convention, it is not clear why such action would imply revolution and anti-Manchu revolution in particular. On this issue, Kondō Kuniyasu has an answer, namely the link between Buddhism and revolution is one of Zhang’s 103 Ibid., 140. Notice that when he praises the masses, he uses the term jinhua in a positive manner, even though he criticizes the use of the term later. 104 Mencius 7A 9 (Yang Bojun, Mengzi yizhu, 304; D. C. Lao, 183 [trans. amended]). 105 Zhang Taiyan, “Dongjing liuxuesheng huanyinghui yanshuo ci,” 149; Pioneers of the Revolution, 43.

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basic assumptions: “for Zhang Taiyan, this is a major premise that does not need justification” and Zhang took “anti-Manchu revolution as the target and Buddhism was the arrow.”106 Zhang merges the religious goal of a loss of self with a project about identifying with the nation and promoting revolution on behalf of it. In this project, nationalism and the perspective of the self would only be temporary but necessary stages on the way to complete liberation and the realization of originary ālaya consciousness or the consciousness of emptiness. Kondō explains that the sovereignty of the nation is based on the sovereignty of the individual. This is not to say that the nation is the substance and the individuals are accidents that belong to it. General oppression appears as the oppression of the nation and so the resistance of the individual appears as the resistance of the nation. In other words, one can say that individual sovereignty is the goal, but because sovereignty of the individual tends towards self-destruction, we can also say that self-destruction is the goal. Zhang does not see the essence of humans in terms of aggregates such as class and nation. The human essence is the self-consciousness of the individual and the boundless sentient beings that appear in this consciousness. Moreover, this consciousness is also a negative thing. Thus the view emerges that the anti-Manchu revolution is a stage on the way to the liberation of sentient beings. Here we can see two structures: as practice it is the complete revolutionary who enacts the anti-Manchu revolution, but with respect to the ideal that supports this action, it is the Boddhisattva who liberates all things.107

In short, Zhang’s Buddhism was combined with his revolutionary practice. In Zhang’s view the liberation of sentient beings and self-destruction must be mediated by national liberation, which in turn requires a self and even identification with a national-self. At this point, it may seem that Zhang’s study of Yogācāra in the end led him to the same place as Liang Qichao, namely affirming some type of a subject. However, his theoretical detour, which makes Zhang’s theory much more abstract than his contemporaries’ attempts at philosophy, enabled him to maintain a critical distance from his world. To borrow Kondō’s terminology, one could say that the force of the arrow became so strong that it began to expand and reconfigure the target greatly beyond anti-Manchu revolution. This was a move away from the politics of nationalism to the abstract mode of capital, here grasped as the subject-object = confusion. We will see how Zhang mobilized Buddhism against evolution and 106 107

Kondō Kuniyasu, Chūgoku kindai shisōshi kenkyū, 82. Ibid., 85–86.

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political structures such as the state in the next two chapters. Here we should note that Zhang was able to do so because his discourse did not subordinate philosophy or religion to the state or existing society. Unlike in Liang’s discussion of religion, political ideas, such as the state and society, rarely occur in Zhang’s essays. Moreover, Zhang’s Buddhist discourse transcended anthropocentrism and delved into the ontological ground of confused existence and aimed to liberate all sentient beings. But given his commitment to anti-Manchu revolutionary nationalism, he often had to balance more particular narratives of identification with the more universal narrative we have seen here. This was especially important given that he was writing in a context where people like Takeda Hanshi demanded he link his theory with immediate projects and translate his Buddhist voice in terms of the people’s voice. Zhang’s Buddhist voice is clearly linked to projects including anti-Manchu revolution; however, ultimately it speaks of a project of negating existence itself. This is an aspect that is only hinted at in “On Establishing Religion,” but will be developed more completely in “On the Five Negations,” discussed in the following chapters. If we follow the idea that existence is delusion, the only way to get rid of delusion would be to get rid of existence. However, we have seen that according to Yogācāra, existence itself is dependent on the transformations of consciousness of living things. Thus “no living things” is one of the five negations.108 Conclusion Zhang Taiyan’s interpretation of Yogācārin philosophy called into question modern epistemology and ontology. However, Zhang did not reject modernity. As we have seen, he began by establishing the Yogācāra themes of the three natures and the eight levels of consciousness to deconstruct both the subject and the object and described their genesis

108 Zhang’s theory differs from Nietzsche’s by Zhang’s addition of a temporal dimension and conceiving of negation differently. Nietzsche believed that negating existence was a “will to nothingness” and an example of resentiment; he counterposed this to an active affirmation of delusion and fabulation. However, Zhang affirms both ontological delusion and the overcoming of this delusion as an asymptotic ideal that gestures to a future world in which the root of suffering, namely “human beings,” “the world,” “groups,” “sentient beings,” and “governments,” have all been negated. This shows that there are different ways of thinking of “negating life” and that not all of them imply passivity.

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as a process of confused misrecognition, which in turn is connected to a primordial delusion. To this extent he followed German idealists in tracing the distinctions of the world to primordial unity, but rather than springing from a positive or normative force such as spirit, they stem from the delusional processes of consciousness or karmic seeds, which we will discuss in the following chapter. Moreover, because confusion comes from the essence of the world, rather than from the outside, Zhang had to find a space inside the confused world picture in order to overcome it. At this point, Zhang established a temporary subjectivity that affirms the collectivity of sentient beings of delusion along with the idea that one needs to save them from reification. In Zhang’s terms, one must rescue sentient beings from the world of things (qijie). I have focused on the more philosophical or metaphysical aspects of Zhang’s thought, but in Zhang’s view metaphysicians who fail to grasp their delusion often aid politicians who need to conceal their repression. Zhang eventually mobilized this framework to attack evolution, resist imperialism, and advocate annihilating existence. But the importance of Zhang’s philosophical argument is that the agents of liberation are themselves part of the problem, since in Zhang’s view imperialism itself stems from the confusions of existence, which give rise to the ideas of the self and world. Hence while he sanctioned the construction of a provisional self in order to resist imperialist aggression, these resisting agents’ ultimate aim must be to destroy their own conditions of possibility. Thus like the German idealists, Zhang constructed a philosophy that leads to a higher level of abstraction beyond the political realm and towards overcoming the oppositions between self and other and self and object. In this way, he tended to go beyond the realm of nationalism and theatrical identification and engage capitalism at an abstract level. In other words, if one claims that Hegel’s concept of Spirit ahistorically grasps the abstract dynamic of capital and legitimates it in thought, Zhang makes a similar gesture, but from the opposite direction. His concepts of ālaya consciousness and delusion represent an alienating dynamic in which people are struggling, but rather than the realization of this dynamic, the goal for Zhang is its negation. Of course, Zhang’s negative perspective will make the gap between theory and practice even wider than for the German idealists, who eventually affirmed the modern world. Given that existence is always perfumed by karmic seeds of delusion, Zhang’s path will eventually lead to the negation of existence and history itself. I will now turn to Zhang’s critique of history as evolution.

CHAPTER FOUR

TRANSFIGURING MODERN TEMPORALITY: ZHANG TAIYAN’S CRITIQUE OF EVOLUTIONARY HISTORY For the past twenty years or so, the idea of history as progress has been the subject of a sometimes bitter debate. While so-called modernization theorists have extolled a uniform model of development around the globe, postcolonial theorists have vehemently attacked pretentions to universality as masking Eurocentrism and imperialist domination. Ideas of history and time have been at the center of this debate and this has also been the case in China and Japan. The concept of history—especially history as evolution—entered both China and Japan in the process of their confrontation with Western imperialism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Chinese and Japanese intellectuals often translated their perceived sense that their countries were backward into temporal categories based on a framework of evolutionary history. Moreover, they combined their conceptions of evolutionary history with various non-Western religious traditions, such as Buddhism, Confucianism, and Daoism. Many intellectuals attempted to construct theories of history using Buddhist categories in order to understand and clear the path for their nation-states’ march towards modernity and development. Zhang Taiyan’s effort to draw on a specific form of Buddhism to formulate a theory of history is particularly noteworthy because unlike most of his contemporaries, who accepted an evolutionary view of history, Zhang critiqued the idea of progress in history in a way that reflects a larger global trend critical of capitalist modernity, a trend that continues among twentieth- and twenty-first-century thinkers. As I suggested in the Introduction, the literature on Zhang Taiyan is vast. Chang Hao provides an overview of Zhang Taiyan’s thought and a description of his “Buddhist worldview.”1 Two representative fulllength manuscripts on Zhang Taiyan in English are Wong Young-tsu, The Search for Modern Nationalism, and Kauko Laitinen, Chinese Nationalism in the Late Qing Dynasty. Wong focuses on Zhang’s modernity and 1

See Chang Hao, Chinese Intellectuals in Crisis, chap. 4, 105–45.

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nationalism and does not delve deeply into his Buddhist ideas. Laitinen shares Wong’s modernist interpretation of Zhang, but focuses on his anti-Manchu ideas. Nishi Junzō was one of the first to interpret Zhang Taiyan as a critic of modernity.2 Kondū Kuniyasu builds on this interpretation at length in a chapter on Zhang Taiyan.3 Wang Hui develops this line of argument and links it to a general critique of modernity in his chapter on Zhang Taiyan in his Xiandai Zhongguo sixiang de xingqi (The Rise of Modern Chinese Thought). Kobayashi Takeshi discusses Zhang Taiyan’s Buddhist thought in relation to Meiji intellectual trends, particularly romanticism.4 The above scholars have described Zhang’s critique of evolution as a response to modernity, but have rarely examined in detail how Zhang used Buddhist concepts and categories in order both to explain and to negate the emergence of modern linear time and a progressive view of history. Consequently, they have failed to grasp the significance of Zhang’s writings in a global context. By focusing on Zhang’s critical use of Buddhism and his original reading of the Zhuang Zi through a Buddhist lens, we shall see that in Zhang’s texts, Buddhism plays the dual role of both enabling modern objectivity as he explicitly admits and challenging a linear model of history associated with capitalist modernity. Moreover his challenge of the linear model is again twofold. On the one hand, he counterposes a relativistic or pluralistic model to a unilinear model, and on the other hand, he attempts to ground models of history as progress in the play of karmic forces. I suggest that we can see Zhang’s Buddhist critique of evolution in relation to a global circulation of philosophical discourses, which were responses to the logic of capitalism. This in turn can be a step towards placing late Qing intellectual history in a more encompassing global trajectory. In what follows, I begin by invoking G. F. Hegel, Martin Heidegger, and Moishe Postone to describe the parameters of a global emergence of a crisis of modernity, focusing specifically on the consequences of this crisis for visions of history and time. Then I will briefly comment on the general shift towards morally progressive visions time and history in late Qing China, since Zhang would place himself both politically and theoretically against proponents of evolutionary thinking. However,

2 3 4

See his “Chūgoku shisō no naka no jinmin gainen.” See Kondō Kuniyasu, “Shō Heirin no kakumei shisō no keisei.” See Kobayashi Takeshi, Shō Heirin to Meiji shichō mō hitotsu no kindai.

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Zhang’s essays critical of evolution and linear history involve more than just the Chinese context, since he wrote these essays in Japan. When Zhang went to Japan to edit the Minbao in 1906, Japanese scholars were already debating the compatibility of Buddhism and evolutionary visions of history. To give a sense of the Japanese context, I touch on the debate about evolution and linear history between Inoue Enryō and Katō Hiroyuki. Zhang’s thought responds to Inoue’s own attempt to synthesize Hegel and Buddhism to formulate a criticism of evolution. However, we shall see that Zhang’s interpretation of Buddhism, especially in its Yogācāra version, enabled him to be more radical in his criticism than were either late Qing or late Meiji proponents of evolution. That is, Zhang invoked Buddhism not to endorse evolutionary history, but to confront and overcome it. In this project, Zhang used Yogācāra categories in order to perform two distinct tasks: on the one hand, he accounts for the apparent objectivity of history and describes an ethical imperative to respect the space of the other or historical difference. On the other hand, he mobilizes the Yogācāra concept of karmic seeds both to ground and undermine the historical process of evolution, which entails a totalizing and hierarchically organized narrative of the world. Modernity and Crisis As China entered the global capitalist system of nation-states, Chinese intellectuals faced a new conceptual terrain, including new modes of thinking about time and history. These new modes were linked to the distinction between subject and object. In the modern international system, any particular nation-state depends on the recognition of the entire system of nation-states for its own existence.5 Thus at a global level, a nation’s own identity as subject is dependent on the look and acknowledgement of a generalized other, whose gaze must to some extent make it into an object. However, this dialectic between subject and object also characterized the domestic realm of nation-states, since nation-state building was inextricably linked to modernization, which

5 Japan’s attempt to get the League of Nations to recognize Manchukuo is an example of how the existence of a particular nation-state requires recognition by the system of nation-states.

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usually entailed science and its related epistemologies. In early twentiethcentury China, intellectuals connected state-building and science. The scientific framework evokes aspects of what Martin Heidegger called “the world picture.” Heidegger explains that one of the key ideas of the modern age of the world picture is the conceptual opposition of subjects to a world populated by quantifiable objects. In Europe, such a worldview was intimately linked to the emergence of capitalism and the waning of the mélange of Aristotelianism and Christianity characteristic of medieval and Renaissance philosophy. Heidegger contends that starting with Descartes, philosophers no longer conceived of things as having a specific final cause or teleological function related to some transcendent deity (Christianity) or some robust view of nature (Aristotle). The process of disenchantment described above created a crisis related to a loss of meaning, which became particularly acute during the turn of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This crisis involved two conceptions of modern temporality, which informed Zhang Taiyan’s reading of Buddhism and Daoism. As people move away from an enchanted world populated by divinities to a world of discrete subjects and objects, they begin to see and experience time as constituted of discrete objective now-points. In his explanation of this conception of time in relation to modern thought Charles Bambach foreshadows a discussion of another mode of time, namely evolutionary time: Modernist thought is punctuated by a peculiarly historicist understanding of time as a linear rosary bead sequence of cause and effect. This way of thinking about the past produces a kind of “neutral time,” a time in which all events are measured objectively, much as cartography measures space according to empirical canons of distance and location. “Empty homogenous time,” as Benjamin calls it, the time of cartography and mathematics, provides the ultimate context for sustaining value neutrality; it creates the illusion of a historical continuum with equally measured intervals where one can, as Leopold von Ranke expressed it, “see with unbiased eyes the progress of universal history.”6

Bambach deals with two different temporalities, one which is abstract and empty and the other more concrete, namely the movement of a historical subject through time. These are precisely the two types of time we will see in Zhang Taiyan’s discussion of history and evolution.

6

Bambach, Heidegger, Dilthey, and the Crisis of Historicism, 9.

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These two types are conditions for the modern conception of history, and evolution in particular. Historical evolution or the progression of universal history clearly involves a concept of abstract time along with the idea of a subject moving to higher and higher levels. In short, abstract time forms the background against which the subject of history progresses. We can link both of these two aspects of time to modern capitalism, which forms the global conditions for modern philosophy, including Zhang’s. Schematically, the abstract and concrete dimensions of time reflect in turn the quantitative and qualitative dimensions in capitalism, namely the exchange-value and use-value sides of the commodity form. From the standpoint of use-value, a commodity is a concrete sensuous thing, which has various uses, but in terms of exchangevalue, all commodities differ merely in quantity or the amount of value they embody. In capitalist society, people experience these two aspects of the commodity form in daily life whenever they buy, sell, or use commodities. The commodity pervades capitalist society and the commodity form is dialectically related to ideas of time. Time forms the condition for the possibility of capitalist social relations as people’s wages are measured in terms of time and on the other hand, the form of the commodity affects various aspects of society. The abstraction related to the exchange-value side of the commodity form concerns not only so-called economic transactions, but it is also embodied in the formulization associated with modern bureaucracies and the rule of law. What these different forms have in common is an abstraction from concrete specificity. With respect to conceptions of time, the quantitative dimension of the commodity corresponds to the abstract continuum of now-points, which is used to measure speed and work-time. This abstract notion of time constitutes the conditions for the possibility of historical continuum. While the quantitative dimension provides the abstract frame for evolutionary history, the concrete qualitative side provides the content, namely the movement of history towards greater perfection, which is often interpreted in terms of achieving modern goals. One can call this idea of historical progress illusory, but the more important question for our purposes is what makes such a notion of historical progress possible. In other words, why is it that such notions of history as progress are ubiquitous during the modern period and absent in previous epochs? I contend that this corresponds to something historically specific, namely the actual movement of society to increasing levels of productivity,

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which implies an increased production of use-values in shorter intervals (of abstract time). As is now well known, capitalism involves the production of commodities at an increased rate through the combination of human labor and mechanization and this changes individual units of time. In Moishe Postone’s words, “With increased productivity, the time unit becomes ‘denser’ in terms of the production of goods. Yet this ‘density’ is not manifest in the sphere of abstract temporality, the value sphere: the abstract temporal unit—the hour—and the total value produced remains constant.”7 In other words, in capitalist society, with greater mechanization, the quantity of value produced in one unit of time remains constant, since the amount of labor-time required to produce each commodity decreases. Moreover, because the social labor hour remains constant at sixty minutes, as the value of individual commodities decreases, this movement to greater productivity is not measurable in terms of abstract time, but requires another conception of time, namely historical time. The “intrinsic dynamic of capital . . . entails . . . a flow of history,” which Postone calls “historical time” as opposed to abstract time.8 This flow of history includes the radical and repeated restructuring of life in capitalism as firms use technology and machines to produce greater quantities of use-values more efficiently. Keeping this historical dynamic in mind, I suggest that the notions of evolutionary temporality are not mere illusion; they are attempts to grasp a real movement of history in capitalist society but in an ahistorical manner. Put simply, in a capitalist world people tend to misrecognize the actual movement of society to greater levels of productivity as a general dynamic of historical progress valid for all epochs. The orthodox Marxist vision of society, prevalent in Communist China, propagated one form of this misrecognition by positing a progression from slave, to feudal, to capitalist societies. The misrecognitions related to the production of evolutionary temporality are made possible by a number of factors, including the fact that capitalist relations present themselves as transhistorical. However, we should also understand the modern theories of history as responses to an existential crisis associated with the transition from preexisting to modern social forms. We will see Zhang deal with two types of response,

7 8

Postone, Time, Labor, and Social Domination, 292. Ibid., 293.

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one emphasizing value-neutrality, and the other evolutionary history. Both dimensions of the above dialectic, abstract time, which is divided into now-points and the dynamic of capital towards greater levels of productivity, are indifferent to traditional values. It is well known that time as now-points entails a type of value neutrality, since each point is interchangeable with the others. Historical time, on the other hand, appears more concrete and is experienced at some level, since it involves the constant acceleration of practices and creates a culture of timesaving. However, this more concrete time presents itself primarily as a blind dynamic in which the rhythms of life are constantly accelerating. Taken together, the dialectic between abstract and concrete times tends to produce what one can call, following Paul Ricoeur, the aporia of time—the experience of meaninglessness when one encounters a split between cosmological time, which is infinite, and experiential time, which is plagued by limitation and death.9 Bambach suggests that when traditional narratives which link the individual to the cosmos collapse, this aporia between the subjective and the objective returns with more force and in turn encourages intellectuals to seek historical narratives that conceal the existential gap.10 Joseph Levenson was one of the first historians to explicitly theorize this crisis of meaning in late Qing China as the dynastic system gave way to a world-system of nation-states. Although he does not deal with crisis in terms of the aporia of time, his analysis allows us to perceive some of the antinomies that result from the dialectic between abstract and historical time in relation to relativism and absolutism with respect to value in history. Moreover, his discussion of relativism echoes Zhang Taiyan’s own relative vision of history. Levenson famously notes that as China became a nation-state, intellectuals began to see their own tradition from an historical perspective, which de-centered the Chinese worldview. In Levenson’s words, in a nationalist framework, in “history relativism is all.”11 History in this context is governed by precisely neutral time and, Levenson contends, as a result, late Qing intellectuals ceased to conceive of their tradition as universally valid and valued it

9 Ricoeur, Time and Narrative, 273. Ricoeur treats this gap as universal, but as Prasenjit Duara notes, the acceleration in change characteristic of modern society and a world of global capitalist nation-states makes the gap between experiential and abstract time more pronounced. See Duara, Rescuing History from the Nation, 28. 10 Bambach, Heidegger, Dilthey, and the Crisis of Historicism, 9. 11 Levenson, Confucian China and Its Modern Fate, vol. 3, 87.

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only as particular. Thus Levenson frames much of his interpretation within the relativist parameters described above and deals with the problem of the existential aporia of time only implicitly insofar as he presupposes that the crisis of identity and temporal flux can be solved by appealing to a subsisting nation-state. However, Levenson’s narrative does not theorize critically the relationship between spatial relativism and the temporal absolutism that legitimates modernity. Relativism is only half the story of modern temporality, and its relation to the other half is ambiguous.12 The other half is “the illusion of historical continuum,” which makes it appear as if one can “see with unbiased eyes the progress of universal history.” Bambach describes this as “the Hegelian pageant of world history,” which is an evolutionary narrative that attempts to bridge the gap between value and objective history. Combining Bambach and Postone, we can say that phenomena such as “the illusion of historical continuum” and “the progress of universal history” are misrecognitions originally made possible by the concrete dynamic of capitalism. In other words, evolutionary views of time are related to fetishism in capitalist society, in which people transpose a dynamic specific to capitalist society onto narratives of history in general, to construct a transhistorical moral narrative of progress. Historians invoke evolutionary narratives to explain the modern world divided between the developed and underdeveloped nations. Given that a nation presupposes historical continuity and usually demands progress, nationalists often propagate narratives of evolution.13 However, the narrative of evolution is just one of the narrative responses to capitalism and the nation-state. Zhang Taiyan’s critique of evolution reflects another trend. During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as the attendant problems with industrialism became increasingly apparent, scholars in Europe began to question the validity of the

12 Levenson does not deal with Zhang Taiyan’s theory of history but Zhang’s theory of history represents a case in which relativism goes directly against the values of modernity, which in Levenson’s view were to have relegated Chinese culture to the periphery. Although Levenson had grasped an important aspect of modern historicality through his emphasis on relativism, he was not able to see the potentially deconstructive force this concept could exert on dominant narratives. 13 Duara, Rescuing History from the Nation, 28. Insofar as the nation-state is conceived as being modern, separate from and superior to primitive or premodern communities, nationalists often invoke an evolutionary narrative to legitimate the nation-form as an advance beyond previous political organizations.

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“Hegelian pageant of world history.” Bambach describes a sense of crisis among German intellectuals in the early twentieth century, and focuses specifically on Heidegger. As intellectuals rejected the interpretation of history as progress, they could embrace a relativism associated with abstract time. However Heidegger along with Nietzsche and Schopenhauer was not satisfied with simply describing the value-neutrality of time as a series of equally valid now-points. They represent a type of counter-movement against Hegel’s evolutionary vision of history and made their own judgments about the movement of historical time. All of these three thinkers represent a pessimistic or critical turn with respect to the narrative of modernity, or what we now call modernization theory. They each sought to explain the emergence of the various splits and aporias of modernity, such as the rift between subject and object, by appealing to some primordial dimension of human existence and history. Thus in Heidegger’s words, “Philosophy will never find out (dahinterkommen) what history is as long as it analyzes it as an object of contemplation (Betrachtungsobjekt), in terms of a method. The riddle of history lies in what it means to be historical.”14 The question of “being” is of course complex. On the one hand, it clearly involves an interpretation of existence, but, on the other hand, Heidegger’s contrast between history as object and “being historical,” immediately invokes a notion of historical existence as subjective or as connected to subjective activity. At the heart of philosophies as different as those of Hegel, Nietzsche, and Schopenhauer, is precisely this link between existence and subjective activity or even between subjectivity and existence as an activity that precedes and produces the distinctions between subject and object. For each of them, history is a practical activity, but their intellectual trajectories are separated by whether they believe that such activity represents a progressive pageant motivated by self-conscious spirit or whether they gesture behind the curtains of the pageant to a degenerative disaster propelled by unconscious tendencies. In the latter case, the task would be to transform this blind development to increasing levels of imbalance and propose an alternative. As we shall see, Zhang Taiyan will affirm the latter project.

14 Heidegger, The Concept of Time, 20 (trans. amended). Cf. Bambach, Heidegger, Dilthey, and the Crisis of Historicism, 15.

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We must understand Chinese intellectual history in the context of the global configurations of modern thought. As Chinese responded to the so-called unequal treaties imposed by the foreign powers, they expressed a dialectic associated with the two sides of the commodity form. From an abstract standpoint, a treaty takes place between two equal states and both the treaties and the various contracts associated with commercial development in the late nineteenth century implied a notion of abstract time. A treaty between two states presupposes that the two have the same concept of time, one which is independent of national particularity. Clearly, if a treaty or international agreement stipulates that it will be valid for one year and each of the two states has a different conception of a year, the treaty would make little sense. During the late Qing, as part of their project to modernize the state, both the government and intellectuals begin to utilize a new abstract sense of time, which was associated with modern clocks and calendars.15 This enabled Chinese to participate more easily in transnational treaties and commerce, and of course made it possible to measure time for wages. However, the defeats China suffered in wars beginning with the Opium War (1839–1842) also produced a new sense of more concrete historical time. Chinese signed treaties to which they would not have otherwise consented; they felt forced to do so because of a perceived difference between China’s productive capacity and military strength and those of the powers. This perceived difference implies a complex spatio-temporality: from various perspectives or in certain domains, Chinese scholars and officials began to consider themselves temporally behind imperialist powers. This sense of lagging behind implied the goal of attempting to catch up, which in turn implied an orientation to the future and a sense of crisis and uncertainty about whether China would survive in this new world. In the face of the wars and crises of the late nineteenth century, Chinese scholars and officials began to question or at least supplement a Confucian view of history as one of decline.16 In coming to grips with China’s new place in the world of nationstates, Chinese thinkers also had to grapple with their own inner

15 16

Bastid-Bruguière, “Liang Qichao yu zongjiao wenti,” 41–54. Kwong, “The Rise of the Linear Perspective on History.”

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conflicts, tensions, and confusions. This is readily apparent in, for instance, Tan Sitong’s attempt to synthesize Buddhism, Confucianism, and modern science. Tan’s An Exposition of Humanity (Renxue), written in 1896, posits an ontological source, which Tan glosses with various terms, such as “ether,” the Confucian concept of “humanity,” and the Buddhist idea of the “ocean of nature” and “compassion.” The tensions in Tan’s philosophy extended to his view of history, in that he claimed that the goal of history was embodied in ideas of time-saving and mechanization, but that this had already been adumbrated in Confucian classics. Within a very short span of time, the civilization of the Western countries emulated that of the Three Dynasties. They relied on nothing other than time-saving, so that they never fell short of time, and this is like putting into one man all the energies of a few dozen men. It is written in the Great Learning: “One must do things quickly.” Only machines can do this.17

The reformer Tan Sitong here combines a sense of the relative surplusvalue and the importance of machines in production with the Confucian ideal of the Three Dynasties—the Xia (c. 2100–c. 1600 bce), the Shang (c. 1600–c. 1100 bce), and the Zhou (c. 1100–256 bce)—which represented a past in which the empire was well-governed. Tan thus relays the Western countries’ progress back to an idealized Chinese past, which endows linear development with moral validity. The past is now connected to the temporal category of speed, saving time, and machines. By linking these concepts to Confucianism, Tan presents them as normative and compatible with a nationalist narrative. Tan of course was not alone in this attempt to combine traditional Chinese texts with modern temporality. Kang Youwei’s theory of the three ages—the age of disorder, the age of ascending peace, and the age of peace—and Yan Fu’s famous creative interpretations of Herbert Spencer and Thomas Huxley are examples of attempts to combine Confucianism or Daoism with evolutionary temporality in order to posit a moral vision of progress for the Qing empire. Yan Fu’s combining of the Daoist notion of cyclical temporality with a linear vision of evolution emerges clearly in the preface to his 1904 translation of Edward Jenks’ A History of Politics:

17

Tan Sitong, An Exposition of Benevolence, 132–33; idem, Renxue, 80.

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chapter four If one examines the stages of evolution ( jinhua) of the various peoples of the world, they all begin with totem societies, advance to kinship societies, and then become states. . . . The sequence of these is just like the four seasons, like a person’s body changing from infancy to old age. There may be variations in speed, but no one can be without one stage.18

Thus Yan maintains the linearity of evolution while still invoking cyclical metaphors such as the four seasons. However, while a number of traditions, including the system of divination in the Book of Changes, Buddhism, and especially Daoism, inflect Yan’s theory of evolution, when it came to applying these traditions to a vision of history, Yan often emphasized a more linear version of evolution. Zhang Taiyan took an opposite position, and attacked the theory of evolution. Of course, since Zhang was famous for being a revolutionary and pungent critic of Kang Youwei, Yan Fu, Tan Sitong, and their cohorts, one might argue that his critique of evolution was a politically motivated attack on reformist Confucian and Daoist visions of evolution. This is, however, only partially true. Zhang Taiyan was critical of the reformers’ adherence to Confucianism and consequently of their attempt to connect evolution to Confucianism. However, the evolutionary framework pervaded revolutionary discourse as well. For example, Zhang’s fellow revolutionary Zou Rong famously connected revolution to evolution. In this context, Zhang’s critique of evolution points beyond the mere opposition between revolutionary and reformist politics and attempts to undermine philosophical assumptions about time and history shared by both political camps. Japanese Attempts to Link Buddhism to Evolution Zhang expounded his critique of evolution from a Buddhist perspective when he was in jail for sedition from 1903 to 1906. After his release and move to Tokyo, he wrote several essays that attacked the theory of evolution and explicitly mention the thinking of famous Japanese intellectuals, such as Anesaki Masaharu’s ideas about religion and German idealism. Thus it is likely that Zhang was familiar with Japanese assessments of the concept of evolution. If so, the debate between Katō Hiroyuki (1836–1916) and Inoue Enryō (1858–1919) over the

18

Yan Fu, Shehui jubian yu guifan zhongjian, 133.

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relationship between a progressive conception of history and Buddhism would have been especially significant for Zhang. Japan and China faced incorporation into the global capitalist system at the same time and Japanese intellectuals observed China and Chinese intellectuals often wrote their important works while in Japan. There is, moreover, evidence that Zhang was familiar with major Japanese thinkers of the time.19 However, Japanese theories of evolution are important for understanding Zhang beyond whatever influence they may have had on his thinking. As in the Chinese case, we should understand the debates surrounding evolution in Japan in the context of Japan’s trajectory of incorporation into the global capitalist system of nation-states. Even without discussing the question of influence, we can ground similarities between the Chinese and Japanese cases, and between Zhang and Meiji Buddhists in particular, with respect to this more fundamental global history. In other words, the movement of ideas from Germany to Japan to China gestures towards a type of global contemporaneity, which would include other states entering the global capitalist world late, such as India.20 An important aspect of this contemporaneity concerns transformations of conceptions of time in the face of imperialism. In response to the threat of Western imperialism, the Meiji state had rapidly developed its industries and in the process new concepts of time emerged. For example, a few years after the Meiji Restoration (1868), the Japanese government promulgated a unified calendar based on the Western model.21 Using new concepts of time, numerous intellectuals, such as those associated with the Meiji Six Society, an intellectual society associated with Westernization, promoted “civilization” and “enlightenment” in an evolutionary context.22 However, precisely 19 Kobayashi Takeshi provides a great amount of evidence to show that Zhang was deeply immersed in Meiji philosophical texts. For example, he points out that when Zhang came to Japan in 1906, he immediately asked fellow revolutionary Song Jiaoren for books relating to philosophy. Among the books Song recommended were Inoue Enryō’s Tetsugaku yōrei (Outline of Philosophy). See Kobayashi Takeshi, Shō Heirin to Meiji shichō, 93. 20 Andrew Sartori has recently discussed how intellectuals in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Bengal conceived of theories resisting modernity and civil society. Sartori, Bengal in Global Concept History. 21 Stefan Tanaka, New Times in Modern Japan, 6. 22 The original members of the Meiji Six society were Mori Arinori, Fukuzawa Yukichi, Nishimura Shigeki, Katō Hiroyuki, Mitsukuri Rinsho, Mitsukuri Shuhei, Nakamura Masanao, Nishi Amane, Tsuda Mamichi, and Sugi Koji. They promoted ethics and civilization through public lectures and through their journal, the Meiroku zasshi.

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because, compared to Qing China, the Meiji state was more successful in modernizing, by the end of the nineteenth century, intellectuals were exposed to the dark underbelly of capitalist modernity. As a result, they searched for something beyond the material self-interest that seemed to characterize the modern world. This led to a renewed interest in philosophical interpretations of Buddhism. In the 1890s, one of the leading Buddhist philosophers of the time, Inoue Enryō, launched Buddhist arguments against the materialistic tendencies of the Meiji Six group and especially his one-time philosophy teacher, Katō Hiroyuki. Both sides of this debate made recourse to ontology, which served as the condition for the possibility of their theories of evolution and history. Katō Hiroyuki advocated a monistic materialism and considered the egoistic individual to be the root of evolution. In some writings, Katō interpreted the individual broadly to include all things in the world, including aggregates such as the nation-state and society, and hence, he could derive a nationalist ethics from his philosophical framework. He combined these two perspectives by claiming that individuals should realize that by promoting the evolution of the group as it struggles against others, they promote their own individual survival.23 Katō opposed all religions, since they posit something above the state and hence, he concluded, they would eventually harm a nationalist ethics. He rejected the concept of heaven since he linked it to the old polity, which had to make way for a modern state.24 In 1895, he published an essay using this argument to attack Buddhism.25 In response, several late Meiji thinkers defended Buddhism and attempted to reconcile Buddhist concepts with evolution and morality. Buddhist philosophers such as Inoue Enryō expounded a theory of bi-directional evolution— that is, evolution could also be retrograde and lead to degeneration— anticipating Zhang Taiyan’s own theory of evolution.26 Inoue gave a number of different names to the combination of progressive evolution and regression, among them “great change” and “revolving change.” Inoue then synthesized this vision with Hegelian concepts, which link change to an ontological and moral ground. First, he claimed that

Godart, “ ‘Philosophy’ or ‘Religion,’ ” 78. Thomas, Reconfiguring Modernity, 101. 25 Godart, “ ‘Philosophy’ or ‘Religion,’ ” 84. Julia Thomas notes that Katō distinguishes between two types of struggle for survival, one based on selfish desire and the other directed by wise rulers (Reconfiguring Modernity, 106). 26 Funeyama, Funeyama Shinichi chosakushū, 1996: 358. 23 24

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evolution deals only with phenomena; it does not get at the substance behind change. Thus he explained that even if it is commonly believed that the organic comes from the inorganic and that conscious life comes from things without consciousness, this is only looking at things from the perspective of appearance. He provides both a Buddhist and a Hegelian metaphor to explain this. Using a Buddhist metaphor, he notes that although there are many changes in waves, they are all contained in the water, which consistently remains water. Similarly, invoking Hegel’s Phenomenology, he points out that a seed sprouts and grows to become a tree, but this transformation is contained in the seed.27 Hegel wrote in the Phenomenology of Spirit: The bud disappears in the bursting-forth of the blossom, and one might say that the former is refuted by the latter; similarly, when the fruit appears, the blossom is shown up in its turn as a false manifestation of the plant, and the fruit now emerges as the truth of it instead. These forms are not just distinguished from one another, they also supplant one another as mutually incompatible. Yet at the same time their fluid nature makes them moments of an organic unity in which they not only do not conflict, but in which each is as necessary as the other; and this mutual necessity (diese gleiche Notwendigeit) constitutes the life of the whole.28

Inoue follows Hegel’s logic. For example, both make a distinction between phenomena and that which is constant or eternal. In the Hegelian system, spirit (Geist) remains constant even as it grounds the myriad phenomenal changes. According to Inoue, there is a substance ( jitsuzai, 実在) that is eternal while supporting transformation. While Hegel’s Spirit “falls into history” and becomes involved in a linear progression of forms of life, Inoue contends that evolution can only be used to discuss biological things and cannot be applied to the realm of psychology, society, morality, religion, or philosophy. However, given that from Inoue’s perspective spiritual things and material things are intimately interwoven, it seems that his concept of great change (daika) encompasses both history and the natural world. Hence his comments on evolution are clearly compatible with the Hegelian model. After all, there is evolution and regression in the Hegelian vision of history as well. It is only when a previous forms of life regresses and is destroyed that a new one emerges. Moreover, for

27 28

Inoue Enryō, Inoue Enryō senshū, 576–77. Hegel, Phänomenolgie des Geistes, 12.

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all of Inoue’s stress on regression, he does not want to attack modern institutions such as the state, which proponents of evolution, such as Katō Hiroyuki, supported. Rather, Inoue’s political point is merely that the materialist and evolutionary worldview entails an individualism that runs counter to the goals of national morality. Thus, even if one concedes that neither Inoue nor late Qing intellectuals wanted to make philosophy a mere instrument of the state, their philosophies have a component of social morality that explicitly seeks to promote citizenship and implicitly takes the state as a more evolved political community than previous political forms.29 In other words, whether we are dealing with most Meiji Buddhists or late Qing reformers, their interpretations of Buddhism were connected to the respective modernization projects of the Meiji state and the late Qing empire/nation-state. Zhang Taiyan’s Buddhist/Daoist View of History as Objective Zhang Taiyan’s Buddhist vision of history was more critical and pessimistic than that of his contemporaries. We can speculate about why this was so. Perhaps the circumstances of his acceptance of Buddhism were a factor. The early 1900s were a turbulent period in Zhang’s life. He experienced physical and mental abuse in prison and, as we have noted, his close friend and fellow revolutionary Zou Rong died in jail. Such “boundary situations” probably encouraged Zhang to use Buddhism to go beyond conventional limits and to question concepts and theories taken for granted by his Chinese and Japanese contemporaries.30 Chief among such theories was the idea of history as progress. Like Inoue Enryō, Zhang constructed a theory of evolution that separates phenomena and a deeper level of reality as process. However, Zhang grounds both of these levels in the categories of Yogācāra Buddhism. At the phenomenal level, namely the level of science, Zhang constructs a theory of history in the mundane sense of objective events. Like his Neo-Kantian contemporaries, Zhang sees the importance of objectivity, and perhaps because he was confronted with the problem of imperialism, he tries to carve out a space for temporal and spatial others. However, Zhang recognizes that history itself involves the negation

29 30

See Inoue, Inoue Enryō senshū, 662. Chang Hao, Chinese Intellectuals in Crisis, 120.

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of the other and he will eventually use the Yogācāra concept of seeds to explain and negate the homogenizing movement of history. Zhang looked at Buddhism as a means for understanding history as objective. In his famous letter to Tie Zheng31 written in 1907, where he defends Yogācāra Buddhism as a practical political ideology, Zhang comments on the confluence of Yogācāra theory and science: There is another reason why I only respect Yogācāra Buddhism. Modern scholarship slowly moved in the direction of seeking truth from the facts and the people from the Han-learning school discussed things in a reasoned manner ( fentiao xili), which was far beyond what Ming scholars could attain. This came close to the sprouts of science and they used their minds in an increasingly meticulous manner. This is why, although Yogācāra was not appropriate for the Ming, it is extremely appropriate for the modern period, because of the direction of scholarship.32

Zhang associates Yogācāra Buddhism with “seeking truth from the facts” (shishi qiu shi ), which is intimately linked to his debate with Kang Youwei and the New Text school, which advocated using history for politics. Zhang now draws on Buddhism to elaborate a position with respect to history, which he sees in Confucianism and Daoism. For example in the above-mentioned letter he praises Confucius as a historian more than anything else and in his “An Interpretation of ‘On the Equalization of Things,’” (“An Interpretation”), published in 1910, he points out that Daoists were officials in charge of recording history (shiguan). However, in “An Interpretation,” and other works, Zhang explains the objectivity of history and time using the concepts of Yogācāra Buddhism. In other words, he shows that the conditions of so-called objective history are generated by the movement of consciousness. From this perspective, Zhang’s reading of Yogācāra Buddhism is similar to Kant’s epistemological turn. In his “On Establishing Religion,” Zhang explains the emergence of time and space: The twelve categories in the objects of conscious ( fachen) and the objects of the five senses (wuchen) are both independent and need not be causally linked to one another. For example, space is related to the static state of the object of the five senses while time is related to the active state of the object of the five senses.33

Tie Zheng, whose real name was Lei Shaoxing, was a revolutionary from Sichuan who argued that nationalism and anarchism were compatible. 32 Zhang Taiyan, “Da Tie Zheng,” 370. 33 Zhang Taiyan, “Jianli zongjiaolun,” 199. 31

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Zhang here invokes the Yogācāra schema for the production of the self and objects through the misrecognition of ālaya or storehouse consciousness. The movement from the ālaya consciousness to manas consciousness or the rise of the self is initiated by karmic seeds (bijas), which emerge as a result of past actions. Once self-consciousness arises, and especially when self-consciousness meets the empirical world at the sixth level of consciousness (see Chapter Three), the conscious mind produces the feeling of time. Zhang explains this point in his “An Interpretation”: The mind at the present experiences itself in the present and one feels that there is a now. If one uses the mind of the present to look at the mind that is no longer now, one feels that there is a past. If one uses the mind of the present to look at the mind that is not yet, then one concludes that there is a future. Therefore, when the mind arises there is time. When the mind is quiet, there is no time.34

The karmic seeds produce time consciousness and thus can be read as creating the conditions of history. These seeds enable Zhang to both explain and defend his stance with respect to the ordinary concept of history as objective and they also allow him to posit an alternative to progressive evolution. With respect to the mundane concept of history, Zhang stresses “seeking truth from the facts” and also a type of historicist relativism, which we can relate to idea of “value neutrality” along with the “illusion of a historical continuum with equally measured intervals.” After all, most schemes of historical periodization presuppose some idea of equal measurable intervals. Zhang deals with the issue of history in “An Interpretation,” as he comments on the following obscure passage in the Zhuang Zi: What is outside the cosmos, the sage locates but does not discuss. What is within the cosmos, the sage discusses but does not assess. The records of the former kings in successive reigns in the Annals the sage assesses, but he does not argue over alternatives.35

34 Zhang Taiyan, “Qiwulun shi,” 10. I am translating “ziwei xin” as “mind at present,” but in the context of Zhang’s argument, it is actually the “position of the mind,” where position refers to the five positions of the mind in Buddhist theory. The nature of this positions does not affect his argument about the emergence of the feeling of the past, present, and future. 35 Zhuang Zi, The Complete Works of Chuang Tsu, 57.

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Using Buddhist categories to analyze this passage, Zhang points out that one can have cognitive knowledge (biliang, anumāna) about what is outside the cosmos, but no direct perception (xianliang, pratyaksha). Therefore, with respect to the outside of the cosmos, one cannot have knowledge of discrete events or entities because in Kantian terms we have no intuition of such objects. However, with respect to things within the cosmos, the veritable scope of history, we have cognitive knowledge and we can also have a type of knowledge of discrete events. The events on the earth ( yu nei) are also unlimited. With respect to the records of the ancient past and reports about foreign lands, one can list them. However, since the human situation is different, one does not uniformly establish right and wrong. The Spring and Autumn Annals records events that happened in this land, but its time is already gone. Whether something is recorded or not depends only on custom.36

Zhang equates “records of the ancient past and reports about foreign lands” and notes that in both cases one cannot “uniformly establish right and wrong.” While Zhang can be interpreted as expressing value neutrality, his stance actually affirms an openness to future and past others, such that one does not impose one’s vision on those who are not present. This is itself an ethical value.37 In other words, Zhang resists putting all of history under one narrative that hierarchically orders various moments in time. In another part of the same text he cites the following passage in which Zhuang Zi discusses Confucius in order to show that things change through time: Confucius has been going along for sixty years and he changed sixty times. What at the beginning he used to call right, he has ended up calling wrong. So now there is no telling whether what he calls right at the moment is not in fact what he called wrong during the past fifty-nine years.38

Zhang interprets this passage as expressing the importance of historical particularity. In other words, throughout history value judgments change and one cannot use the standards of one period to judge another. If one holds on to the perspective of one time and then uses the present to negate the past or the past to negate the present (or uses a foreign

Zhang Taiyan, “Qiwulun shi,” 37. For an exploration of this idea of respect for the space and time of the other in relation to Kant, see Karatani Kōjin, Transcritique, esp. chaps. 2 and 3. 38 Zhang Taiyan, “Qiwulun shi,” 16. Zhang is quoting Zhuang Zi, “Imputed Words,” cited from Zhuang Zi, Chuang Tzu: Basic Writings, 305. 36 37

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chapter four country to negate one’s own country or uses one’s own country to negate other countries), this is precisely upside down (diandao, viparīta) theory.39

Zhang thus rejects ahistorical value judgments. He goes on to compare categorical callousness to the other to “using Han dynasty laws to discuss the people of the Yin or using the criteria of the Tang to select officials from the Qin.”40 However, in the above-cited passage, the words within parentheses show that Zhang’s conception of otherness is not just temporal but also spatial or geographical, and thus bear out Levenson’s point about nationalist particularity. Zhang mobilizes this translation of time into space in his 1907 intervention against representational government: Today people look at Europe and Japan and note that a constitutional government has brought some stability. They conclude that since all places within the four seas are similar, China cannot be an exception. They only know that countries inhabit the same space, but they do not understand that they exist in different times (但知空间之相同而不悟时 间之相异). This is a grave mistake.41

These remarks were part of Zhang’s argument linking the feudal or fengjian system with parliamentary government and thus concluding that the constitutional system was appropriate for the West and Japan since they were historically close to feudalism.42 In Zhang’s view, China, on the other hand, had abolished feudalism after the Qin unification in 220 bce, and so, while a parliamentary system may have been appropriate then, in the early twentieth century such a system would only disrupt existing practices of equality. Hence we see that Zhang’s belief in historical particularity does not lead to total arbitrariness or relativism with respect to political judgment, since in addition to the ethical imperative of tolerance, concrete social conditions of a particular nation-state ground his arguments in a specific context. Moreover, despite appearances, the above passage does not endorse a linear model of historical development since Zhang does not claim that

Zhang Taiyan, “Qiwulun shi,” 16. Ibid. The Han dynasty (206 bce–220 ce) followed the Yin (or Shang) dynasty by around a thousand years, and the Tang dynasty (618–907 ce) followed the Qin (221–206 bce) by a like number of years. 41 Zhang Taiyan, “Zhengwenshe dahui pohuai zhuang,” 374. 42 For a discussion of the views of Zhang Taiyan and other late Qing thinkers on this issue, see Murthy, “The Politics of Fengjian in Late Qing and Early Republican China.” 39 40

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Western countries will follow China’s path. In fact, following Zhang’s adoption of Yogācāra Buddhism after his jail experience, he repeatedly criticized evolutionary theory. For example, in “An Interpretation,” Zhang declares that “people who follow evolution use the present to criticize the past; this is a confused theory.”43 Thus Zhang seems to reject all universal theories and appears to rely on a historically specific and nation-based epistemology. Zhang’s Grounding of Evolution in Yogācārin Concepts Although Zhang criticized the theory of evolution he did not believe one could get rid of it merely by changing ethical principles. In the late Qing, evolutionary theory served as an overarching ethical and metaphysical worldview for reformist thinkers like Kang Youwei, Liang Qichao, and others. In a word, reformists like Kang understood Chinese history in an evolutionary framework. According to Zhang Taiyan, this ethical framework was grounded in a more fundamental movement. To some extent, when Zhang attempts to explain evolution from a Buddhist perspective he anticipates the Heideggerian question of “what it means to be historically.” The answer cannot be limited to the fragmented world of nation-states; rather at this level, Zhang’s discourse responds to a global dynamic of modernity by putting forth a universal theory that transcends national boundaries. In his essay on evolution, “On Separating the Universality and Particularity of Evolution,” published in 1906, Zhang interprets history as a movement of ālaya consciousness. In this essay, Zhang does not just criticize theorists of evolution for using the present to negate the past; rather, he attempts to ground evolution as a double movement in the Yogācārin theory of karmic seeds. Zhang explains the production of larger narratives and institutional embodiments that obscure the space of the other. He wants both to account for the phenomena of evolution and to explain how people misrecognize it as linear progression. Zhang begins this essay by linking evolutionary thinking and Hegel: The modern theory of evolution begins with Hegel. Although he does not clearly use the term evolution, the theory of evolution burgeons amidst 43

Zhang Taiyan, “Qiwulun shi,” 16.

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chapter four what he calls the development of the world, namely the development of reason. Darwin and Spencer use this theory. The former uses living things as evidence and the latter uses social phenomena as evidence. They both grasp a final telos, namely that in the end, society/the species will attain a place of ultimate beauty and pure virtue. This is where the theory of evolution begins.44

In Zhang’s view, the problem with evolutionary theories is not so much what they describe but rather their evaluative dimension. As we have already seen, Zhang criticized judging the past in terms of the present, but when attempting to explain evolution from a Buddhist perspective, he asserts the reality of evolution. “One cannot negate the fact of evolution, but one should not accept the affects of evolution on us.”45 In other words, Zhang accepted evolution, but did so more critically than his contemporaries. We can see clues of this when he says “I do not say that the theory of evolution is wrong. In fact, what Schopenhauer calls pursuit (zhuiqiu) can be called evolution ( jinhua).”46 The reference to Schopenhauer suggests that Zhang constructs a theory of history as the result of the blind progression of the will. Zhang admits that Schopenhauer’s theory is appealing, but claims that there is no proof of it. Instead, he believes that only Buddhism can actually explain the movement of history. He asserts at the outset that, contra proponents of history as evolution, history or evolution is not linear but moves in two directions. As the good progresses so does the bad; as pleasure increases, so does pain. Zhang points to a dual-oriented structure of history produced by karmic seeds. In Yogācāra Buddhism, as we have seen, karmic seeds produce phenomena and are stored in ālaya consciousness. Zhang explains this in his “On Establishing Religion”: Ālaya consciousness does not begin at a given time and contains many seeds, like sorghum. In this realm of seeds, there are the phenomena of the twelve categories, color and space, the three worlds, up to the seeds in the sixth consciousness. These are all in ālaya consciousness. Because it is its own condition, ālaya consciousness does not arise, it does not fall and it does not break. Ālaya consciousness is not like the sixth level of consciousness that arises when perceiving objective phenomena and ceases when far from objective phenomena.47 44 45 46 47

Zhang Taiyan, “Jufen jinhua lun,” 150. Ibid., 151. Ibid., 150. Zhang Taiyan, “Jianli zongjiaolun,” 208.

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Ālaya consciousness is its own condition, because its own subjective dimension ( jianfen) grasps its objective dimension (xiangfen) and thus produces the split between knower and known. Hence, unlike the sixth consciousness, which is centered in the empirical world, ālaya consciousness and the seeds therein work even when one is not conscious; they are the conditions of the possibility of cognition. Since Yogācāra does not use ālaya consciousness to discuss societal trends and instead focus on the individual level, they used both seeds and perfuming to indicate cycles of birth and rebirth. However, Yogācāra does posit a degree of collective karma which forms the condition for the possibility of human beings’ perceptual world and communication. In Zhang’s view, this collective karma is grounded in ālaya consciousness, which he claims is identical to living things. “All living things are the same as suchness (zhenru, tathātā); they are the same as ālaya consciousness. Therefore, consciousness is not limited to one’s body.”48 From this perspective, the seeds in ālaya consciousness not only propel the cycle of the rebirth of individuals, they also drive history. We can understand the effects of karmic seeds as historicality. Dan Lusthaus points out that like plants, karmic experiences stem from unseen roots, which emerge from seeds.49 These new experiences in turn plant new karmic seeds and so a cycle of the interplay between past, present, and future continues. In addition to the horticultural metaphor, Yogācārins use the olfactory metaphor of perfuming (xunxi, vāsāna). Just as a cloth acquires the scent of nearby perfume, humans’ behavior and mental activity are conditioned by karmic actions and experiences.50 In Yogācāra Buddhism, the concept of seeds and perfuming have a moral dimension since they are often used to show how the self is constantly confused and hence clings to things in the world. In fact, as Lusthaus felicitously puts it, from a Yogācāra perspective, objects in the phenomenal world are produced by seeds and these objects “are the screen on which the film of our desire is projected.”51 However, Zhang uses this moral dimension of Yogācāra to argue for a general theory about the nature of evolution as a double movement:

Ibid., 207. Lusthaus, Buddhist Phenomenology, 478. For the link between karmic seeds and history, see 25 and 179. On the plant metaphor, see 193–94. 50 Ibid., 193. 51 Ibid., 478. 48 49

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chapter four Why do morality and immorality advance together? One cause is perfuming. Sentient beings’ original natures are neither virtuous nor immoral, but through action they can become virtuous or immoral. Ālaya consciousness is a state of non-impedimentary moral neutrality (wufu wuji, aklista-avyakrta). Manas consciousness is a state of impedimentary moral neutrality ( youfu wuji). With consciousness we began to have virtue, immorality, and neutrality.52 Pure neutrality is called original seeds. When good and bad are mixed, this refers to when the seeds begin to sprout. All things advance according to the law of evolution; hence they cannot stay at the level of neutrality. One must mix the seeds of good and bad. The only creature that does not mix these two is the earliest amoeba. From that time on, because there are impediments ( youfu), various types of good and bad slowly appear and develop. They perfume the original consciousness and become seeds.53

Here Zhang combines Yogācāra concepts with a notion of linear development so that the temporal interaction of past, present, and future seeds leads to the emergence of species and historical change. The movement from ālaya consciousness to manas, the seventh level of consciousness, and manovijñāna the sixth level of consciousness, corresponds to a type of evolution. Zhang points out that the amoeba does not mix the seeds of good and bad and thus perhaps remains at the level of manas consciousness, with impediments, but no moral view. Traditionally, Buddhist categories were used primarily with respect to humans, and so the question of the manas consciousness of an amoeba would not arise. Clearly influenced by modern discourses of science and biology, Zhang brings evolution into dialogue with Yogācāra: From a biological perspective, the good and bad seeds are just the karmic consciousness that one’s grandfather passed down. Seeds cannot have good without bad and hence the phenomenal world they produce also cannot have good without bad. As the biological level advances and becomes good, the power of bad also increases.54

Hence by the time human beings emerge in natural history, the impediments of manas consciousness lead to moral consciousness. In Yogācāra theory, the impediments associated with manas consciousness refer to the four perspectives (sijian): the view of the self ( youshen jian); attachment to extremes; erroneous views about cause and effect (xiejian); and

The consciousness ( yishi) in this case refers to the sixth level of consciousness, when one can grasp an object. 53 Zhang Taiyan, “Jufen jinhualun,” 153. 54 Ibid. 52

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attachment to views ( jian qu jian).55 Although these are characterized as morally neutral, the third term, xiejian (邪見), can also be translated as an “evil perspective,” and hence failing to understand causality seems to have ethical consequences. From a Buddhist perspective, when one does not understand that things are caused through dependent co-origination, one tends to conceive of the self as independent and become attached to things. Hence ignorance of causality initiates a karmic cycle, which would also motivate evil. Zhang claims that it is precisely because people are attached to their selves that morality and immorality or good and bad advance together: “The reason for this dual advancing is self-conceit (wo-man xin, asmimana).56 This arises when manas consciousness grasps ālaya consciousness as a self and does not stop thinking about it. At this point, the four minds arise.”57 The four minds (sixin) refers to ignorance about the self (wochi, atma-moha), ego belief (wojian, atman), self-conceit (wo-man xin, asmimana), and love of the self (woai, atma-sneha). However, Zhang focuses on the self ’s will to win (haosheng xin), which he derives from self-conceit. He further separates the will to win into a desire that stems from some goal and a desire that is without a goal. In the former, people “seek to gain concrete objects to fulfill the five desires and to realize cravings for property, fame, and so on.”58 Zhang compares the latter, namely the will to win without relation to material gain, to crickets and chickens fighting or people wanting to win in chess. Zhang’s discussion of the will to win is part of a larger argument about how as desires are further removed from their immediate objects, people become capable of experiencing greater pleasure and pain. In other words, according to Zhang, people move increasingly from enjoying concrete things to enjoying the means to things, such as money, or even abstract things, such as fame. Things such as land, money, a high post, and a good salary cannot be directly enjoyed, but the means to enjoyment must begin here. After one has these one can fulfill the desire for food, warmth, and marriage. When one begins to enjoy these things [i.e., money, etc.], it is indirectly, as a means to fulfill the desire for food, warmth, and marriage. But in the end, one pursues these things as bearers of happiness and may even

55 56 57 58

Muller, Digital Dictionary of Buddhism. Believing that there is a self and that this self is the most important thing. Zhang Taiyan, “Jufen jinhualun,” 153. Ibid.

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chapter four sacrifice food, warmth, and marriage because of these things. Or even more seriously, one may take fame as happiness and because of this sacrifice, land, money, a high official post, and good salary. Can animals seek this kind of happiness?59

Zhang’s comments foreshadow his critique of money as trickery in his “On the Five Negations,” and of societal pressure, in a 1908 essay, “On the Four Confusions.” The two points are interrelated since both refer to a process of abstraction and mediation that separates human communities from animals. In other words, human beings developed the capacity to disconnect themselves from an immediate link in the food chain and thereby also the ability to systematically exploit their fellow humans and the animal world.60 Zhang’s discussion of the “will to win” implies a striving for social or abstract objects, which entails a social mediation unique to the human species. Moreover, the basic misrecognitions of ālaya consciousness, which lead to the will to win and attachment to the self, also produce related institutional developments that are two sided, both beneficial and detrimental. Zhang’s critique of the state, which we will examine in the next chapter, can be understood as stemming from his complex grasp of the evolutionary mode of history. In short, he clearly believes that as humans form states, their capacity to do both good and bad increases. In his essay “On the Five Negations,” Zhang explains the detrimental effects of the state by quoting the Jin dynasty Daoist Bao Sheng: When common people fight, they . . . cannot combine the power of others and they cannot use other people’s authority. How can one compare this to the anger of kings who send the army out and make their soldiers march? They use people with no enemy and attack innocent countries.

Ibid., 152. Zhang Taiyan does not take his insight to imply vegetarianism, but for an argument in that direction, see Martin, Ethical Marxism, part 3. In his own way, Zhang points to a tendency to fetishize the abstract means to procure use-values and eventually forget about the concrete objects themselves. Moreover, by emphasizing fame, Zhang underscores the importance of the look of the other in constituting the self and notes how dependence on other people’s recognition can lead to extreme actions. Paradoxically, Zhang notes that in human society, in order to seek fame, people may actually have to undergo humiliation, since one must pursue fame, money, and related goals in a society with power differentials. Again these are problems unique to life that has evolved to the human level and we could add that such abstractions become systematic in a modern society. 59 60

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This results in more than 10,000 corpses and one cannot count the amount of blood that is shed and makes the fields red.61

In both his essay on evolution and in his “On the Five Negations” Zhang stresses that although people only focus on the positive aspects of political development, with the birth of the state and the advancement of technology, such as the invention of firearms, human beings’ potential for causing harm has greatly surpassed that of their forebears. Again, when making this point, Zhang shifts between naturalbiological and political perspectives. That is, the capacity for bad increases both with the evolution from animals to humans and with the movement from primitive forms of community to the state. Drawing on the distinction between the concrete and abstract will to win, Zhang argues that sentient beings’ capacity for harm, pleasure, and pain increases as their lives are more mediated by abstraction. In the following passage, Zhang makes an oblique reference to Kang Youwei’s “Great Community” and the anarchists’ utopia, and points to a deeper cause of political problems: Even if the world were united and people did not use weapons, the use of knowledge and strategy for attack would still be greater than before. Why? Killing someone with a blade is not as good as killing with strategy. This becomes a situation where “when we deal with other people, everyday we use our minds to attack one another.” In this way they chase their own kind and the number of people who are disheartened, sad, and angered to the point of death is greater than in battles and this mind is crueler than war. This definitely does not happen with leopards and tigers; it only occurs with humans.62

In this thought experiment, Zhang follows Kang Youwei and the anarchists’ logic and conjectures that life has evolved to the realm of the Great Community beyond the state. He claims that if such a realm is an evolution of previous spheres of being, it will necessarily increase people’s will to win and their psychological capacity to inflict and suffer harm. In Zhang’s view, as life evolves to a human level, people become capable of offending and even killing each other with their minds. He thus takes literally Zhuang Zi’s line about using our “minds to attack

61 Zhang Taiyan, “Wu wu lun,” 258–59. Cf. Yang Mingzhao, Baopuzi waipian jiaojian, vol. 2, 547. 62 Zhang Taiyan, “Jufen jinhualun,” 151.

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one another” (ri yi xin dou).63 Moreover, by invoking the second aspect of the will to win, namely the will to win without a goal, he stresses that such a will is not reducible to any object or material condition. It is not dependent on inequality or scarcity, but emerges from and increases with the sedimentation of temporal development or of history itself. By linking temporal development to karmic seeds, Zhang stresses that the two-track development of both good and bad, from biological, political, and psychological perspectives, will only continue to become more intense. In this way, he argues against people, such as Kang Youwei, who believed that if one lets evolution run its course, the good will eventually prevail. Zhang contends that “it is better to leave this world early and seek enlightenment, outside of sight, hearing, words, and thought and save all living things and negate them (miedu zhi, 灭度之).”64 The term miedu foreshadows Zhang’s argument in “On the Five Negations,” since it refers to nirvana, the cessation of suffering and the act of negation. This forms an essential part of Zhang’s argument that in order to solve the problems associated with contemporary institutions, such as the state, one cannot simply attack the institutions themselves; rather, one needs to grasp something more fundamental. One must stop the primordial dynamic related to karmic seeds, the will to win, and attachment to the self. Echoing Nietzsche, Zhang argues that if one does not attack karmic processes at the root, history can be nothing other than an eternal recurrence of the same. In his “On the Five Negations,” the first two negations, no state and no groups, target political life at what he would call a superficial level, while the last three negations, no-self, no-sentient beings, and no-world, aim to eradicate the root of history. Zhang explains the problem when discussing the importance of negating all sentient beings: From extremely small things such as monella they mutually produce one another until the human race emerges. People call this evolution, but it is actually suchness amidst the deluded transmigration of life and death (liuzhuan zhenru). In short, if one sentient being still exists one cannot break from the human race. The newly born thing will slowly evolve and become a human being and gradually it will be completely corrupted and then today’s society and state will arise again. Therefore, the Buddha did

63 Zuang Zi, Zhuang Zi yigu, 26. For an alternate English translation of this line, see Zhuang Zi, Chuang Tzu: The Inner Chapters, 50. 64 Zhang Taiyan, “Jufen jinhua lun,” citing from Zhang Taiyan quanji, vol. 4, 393.

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not rest in nirvana; he was born in the three evil realms [hell, demons, and animals] and taught the people there to understand no-self and to stop the self from arising again.65

There is a logic among sentient beings that forces them to constantly follow the same patterns of oppression and domination. We can find traces of Zhang’s analysis of the causes of evolution in his pre-Buddhist essay “On Bacteria,” which he wrote in 1899. In that essay, he explained that organisms evolve due to their own mental effort, which eventually causes changes in their species. In “On the Five Negations,” Zhang continues this line of argument with concepts such as self-love and the will to win, which we can interpret as not only having an effect on this world, but on the evolution of the species after reincarnation. However, after Zhang’s jail experience and his immersion in Buddhist texts, he couches all of this in terms of karma, seeds, and other Buddhist concepts and this puts the emphasis on larger processes rather than on the individual will. Consequently, while in “On Bacteria,” Zhang looks at the mental effort to change one’s species as a positive thing and encourages it, in “On the Five Negations,” the will to evolve is a result of karmic sediments and thus is beyond one’s control; the process is governed by ignorance. Moreover, rather than being part of the solution, the will to win is part of the problem and evolution itself must become the object of negation. At this point we can return Zhang’s juxtaposition of his interpretation of evolution to Hegel’s. In “On the Five Negations,” Zhang discusses Hegel’s idea that history should be understood as the evolution of Spirit and counterposes his own idea of history as the blind activity of karmic seeds: Some steal Hegel’s theory of being, non-being, and becoming and believe that the universe emerged because of a goal and hence only things that accord with this goal are correct. If we take the universe not to have any knowledge/consciousness then there is originally no goal. If we take the universe to have knowledge/consciousness then it is as if this peaceful and happy self suddenly created the myriad things to bite into itself. It is as if it eats without stop and in the end the harm of a parasitic worm emerges and so the universe repents [creating]. Sometimes one thinks of how one can use laxatives such as lilac daphne and croton to get rid of these

65

Zhang Taiyan, “Wu wu lun,” 259.

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chapter four things.66 So the goal of the universe is perhaps precisely this repentance about its “becoming.” How can one be happy about “becoming”? The person who manages the world must be the person who repents about the universe. This person should not be the one who floats around with the universe. If one speaks from the perspective of humans limited by their physical form, then both purity and contamination stem from one’s will. What use is it to make loyalty and filiality the goals of the universe? If one speaks from the perspective outside of form and matter then the universe originally does not exist, so how can there be a goal?67

In this passage, Zhang separates the perspective of suchness, according to which all phenomena are empty and thus without movement or evolution, and the mundane perspective, according to which one must account for the phenomena of history and becoming. But because Zhang looks at history as produced by blind karma, rather than as the triumphant march of rational spirit, he understands historical becoming as the tragic torment of deluded impulses. It is as if the motor of history is an alien parasite that the universe must try to purge through laxatives. However, given that the parasite is created by human will, selves, and actions, the only laxative that would work is the negation of the self and all the contents of the world or the realization of the world’s original emptiness.68 From this perspective, we can see that both Hegel and Zhang seek an end of history. However, while Hegel conceives of the end of history as the final point of a teleological process in which Spirit realizes its goal, Zhang thinks of it as the negation of the processes that produce history. The distinction lies also in a different conception of the beginning

66 Zhang mentions two traditional Chinese herbal medicines, 芫華 ( yanhua) and 巴豆 (badou)—the latter is especially used to remove poison from the body. 67 Zhang Taiyan, “Wu wu lun,” 264. 68 It may appear as if Zhang’s theory of the “five negations” is also a form of evolution, moving from “no government” to “no groups” to “no human race” to “no living things” to “no world.” However, this cannot be understood as evolution in the common sense of word and definitely not in the way that Zhang and his contemporaries understood evolution. For Yan Fu, Inoue Enryō, and others, evolution involves necessity and history moving in a particular direction. One could categorize Zhang’s five negations, on the other hand, as teleological but not evolutionary. In other words, negation is a goal but there is no force propelling this outcome. On the contrary, the possibility of our realizing the five negations arises because it is actually the karmic actions of living things that have created this historical necessity that governs our lives. To some extent, one could understand Zhang as positing a type of freedom against evolutionary necessity, but the problem is any subject of such a freedom is already implicated in karmic processes and thus Zhang comes to the paradoxical conclusion of negating the subject and its world.

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of history and time. In Hegel’s view, Spirit falls into history and thus externalizes itself in time. Zhang asks how one should understand this production of time and history. For both Hegel and Zhang there is in a sense no outside of this process of history. Hegel points out that absolute knowing is precisely the process of Spirit’s self-knowledge in history, and in Zhang’s view, historical evolution is actually “suchness amidst the deluded transmigration of life and death (liuzhuan zhenru).”69 But Zhang asks the natural question, why does Spirit fall into history and “bite into itself ” if it is perfect? Towards the end of Being and Time, Heidegger made a similar remark with respect to Hegel’s idea of Spirit falling into time: “It remains obscure what indeed is signified ontologically by this ‘falling’ or by the ‘actualizing’ of a spirit which has power over time and really ‘is’ (seienden) outside of it.”70 However, Heidegger replaces Hegel’s paradigm with an equally ambiguous formulation: “Spirit does not fall into time; but factical existence ‘falls’ as falling (verfallende) from primordial authentic temporality.”71 Here again one could ask why factical existence falls. In other words, while Heidegger criticizes Hegel for producing a dichotomy between temporal and eternal realms, his own perspective describes but does not really explain the emergence of so-called fallen or everyday temporality and the interpretations of beings as subject and object. For Zhang, the foundation of history, time, and evolution is ignorance and the karmic seeds in ālaya consciousness. In other words, in Zhang’s view, history, time, and evolution are the misrecognition of ālaya consciousness, which is the foundation of human existence.72 Hence, while Hegel advocates a type of self-realization, Zhang stresses self-negation and the end of history as the negation of history. This of course becomes the philosophical

Zhang Taiyan, “Wu wu lun,” 259. Heidegger, Being and Time, 485. 71 Ibid. (emphasis in the original ). 72 Of course, one could say that the Heideggerian problem plagues Zhang’s interpretation of Yogācāra, since one could ask why manas consciousness misrecognizes ālaya consciousness. The Yogācārin answer is because of the effect of past karmic seeds and hence, in sense, Yogācāra uses history to explain the emergence of history. This is because the question of misrecognition or movement from ālaya consciousness can only occur at mundane levels where movement and time exist and thus Yogācāra posits a type of absolute past to explain the emergence of manas consciousness, namely a temporal movement that represents the production of time from the non-temporal ālaya consciousness. One must naturally concede that such an interpretation of Heidegger’s distinction between authentic and inauthentic temporality would also be possible. 69 70

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ground for their differing views about the institutions of modernity, such as the state. Conclusion As we have seen, Zhang Taiyan used Buddhism to construct a twofold theory of history. On the one hand, he considered Yogācāra modern and valuable both for its respect for temporal and spatial otherness and for the importance it places on objectivity in history. When speaking of objectivity, Zhang invoked the world of abstract time along with a scientific gaze, which entails a world of subjects and objects. In this realm, he tried to carve a space for the other through defining the limits on the scope of values. On the other hand, he realized that the move to put the other into an evolutionary narrative is grounded in a deeper process. Zhang attempted to explain the movement of history and, indeed the production of the world, using Yogācārin concepts and finally sought the negation of the world and history. Zhang’s critique of the history is, however, not adequate to its object. This brings us back to the problem of history in Marx’s eyes. Unlike Hegel, Marx does not posit a transhistorical subject of history, but rather, looks at the movement of modern history as linked to the intrinsic dynamic of capital. Thus capital is the subject of history and Marx’s aim, rather than the realization of this subject, is its negation. German idealists such as Hegel presented an optimistic narrative of history based on transposing the historically specific categories of capitalism to the whole of history. Beginning with Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, there was a countercurrent to Hegelian optimism which Zhang followed in developing a narrative of blind compulsion. Zhang considered Hegel’s Spirit as representing an actual phenomenon and thus he clearly states that he does not simply deny the “fact of evolution.” Zhang tried to ground the phenomena of evolution in a fundamental dynamic linked to human action and he constructed a narrative of evolution based on the karmic ignorance of all things in the world. Then he attempted to negate this dynamic and concluded that this would involve negating existence and living things themselves. Thus like Schopenhauer, Zhang aimed to overcome the blind compulsion associated with capitalist modernity. At a practical level, Zhang’s project won few followers and he was often ridiculed by his contemporary revolutionaries. One could then

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perhaps conclude that his critique of capitalist modernity was a failure. However, looking back at the history of the twentieth-century revolutions, perhaps it is precisely Zhang’s pessimistic vision of modernity and his totalizing critique of history that was missing. In other words, most so-called May Fourth intellectuals were wedded to an evolutionary vision of history, including Marxists versions of such a history, which involved an evolution progressing in specific stages. Blinded by this framework, Chinese Marxists were unable to see that the ideas they extolled, including linear time, were inextricably linked to the mode of production that they hoped to overthrow. Although Zhang did not grasp capitalism as the ground of evolutionary history, using Buddhist categories he proposed a totalizing critique of evolution that is both subjective and objective. Indeed, human practice as represented by ālaya consciousness constitutes both the subjective and objective world and thus Zhang’s work points to the fundamental insight that transforming our world involves a transformation of both subjectivity and objectivity. Such a fundamental critique of evolutionary thinking is perhaps the starting point towards imagining a different future.

CHAPTER FIVE

DAOIST EQUALIZATION AGAINST THE UNIVERSAL PRINCIPLE: ZHANG TAIYAN’S CRITIQUE OF LATE QING POLITICAL THEORY In the preceding chapter we have seen how Zhang Taiyan evaluated the concept of evolutionary history from a Buddhist perspective and then advocated negating the karmic processes that produce evolution. In this chapter, we will see how Zhang formulated a critique of political institutions and ideologies from his unique Buddhist/Daoist perspective. While several scholars have dealt with Zhang’s Buddhism and Daoism, they have generally overlooked how his use of Buddhism and Daoism was conditioned by the transformations associated with global capitalist modernity and how he sought to explain and negate aspects of this system in a Buddhist framework. Zhang’s texts do not show a clear periodization with respect to modernity, but draw on elements of imperial Chinese thought to criticize the concept of “universal principle” (gongli) and “society,” both of which became salient concepts as China entered the global capitalist system of nation-states. With this criticism Zhang, drawing on the Daoist philosopher Zhuang Zi, gestured towards an alternative world of equalization (qi ) as difference. We can think of Zhang’s “equalization” as his attempt to resist a world dominated by abstract principles and forces that were becoming increasingly prevalent in early twentieth-century China. At that time, Chinese proponents of state building and economic development and their anarchist critics often referred to the “universal principle” to justify their endeavors. That both reformers and anarchists, two groups with radically different political agendas, promoted this principle or used it in their arguments suggests that it had a discursive hegemony that points to a larger historical process. This discursive hegemony involved the confluence of three factors: the conceptual legacy of neo-Confucianism, globally circulating discourses of modern philosophy, and the concrete forces of the global capitalist system of nation-states. Zhang was one of the most thorough critics of this period and dedicated many of his essays during the years 1906–1910, often referred to as his Minbao

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(The People’s Journal ) period, to addressing both the reformers’ and the anarchists’ ideologies. As discussed in earlier chapters, Zhang formulated a philosophical critique of his contemporaries by synthesizing German idealism and Buddhism. As I suggested in the Introduction, the attempts of both Japanese and Chinese thinkers to bring German idealism into dialogue with Buddhism represents a complex form of translingual practice.1 The global dynamics of capitalism and nationalism form the abstract conditions for the possibility of translingual practice, but the conditions of discursive production differed in Meiji Japan and late Qing China and Zhang, being a late Qing intellectual in Meiji Japan, was clearly influenced by both contexts. Meiji society was more integrated into the global system of nation-states and thus one could say that the abstract dynamics of capital, including the commodity form and abstract labor, were more pervasive in the late Meiji than they were in the late Qing. However, given the global dimensions of this dynamic, late Qing society was also clearly affected. Late Qing China was an empire in the process of becoming a player in the global capitalist system and thus late Qing elites and officials were actively attempting to promote the ideological and institutional conditions of a regime of reification and scientific rationality. The concept of “universal principle” was part of this project and Zhang was one of the few intellectuals to criticize thoroughly this undertaking from a uniquely Buddhist perspective. Thus one could say that late Qing philosophical culture, including the protean radical culture of which Zhang was a part, was marked by optimism with respect to institutions and history. In this sense, like Kant and Hegel, late Qing intellectuals believed in the progressive march of history. To some extent, late Qing intellectuals also shared with the German idealists the attempt to ground the empirical world of subjects and objects in some pristine ontological unity. Zhang makes a similar gesture, but, as we saw in the preceding chapter, rather than accepting the process that emerges from the development of the ontological source, he seeks to negate the movement of existence. In this chapter, we shall see Zhang continue this negative gesture as he attacked the concept of “universal principle,” which in the late Qing could include the ideas of “evolution,” “natural and scientific law,” and “ethical norm.” These various, often interrelated, manifestations of the

1

Lydia Liu, Translingual Practice.

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universal principle bring difference and particularity under a homogenizing principle. In this sense, the “universal principle” expresses the logic of exchange-value, which brings incommensurable particulars under the same form. Indeed, the universal principle is intimately linked to the concept of equality (pingdeng), which became salient during the late Qing. Zhang’s critique of the universal principle is connected to his attempt to formulate an alternative world of equalization. In articulating this world, Zhang invoked traditional thought and pushed language to its limits to express an ideal that escapes conceptual categories. Thus, understanding equality in Zhang’s paradigm involves delving into passages that juxtapose archaic Chinese phrases with modern Western philosophy to produce new meanings or, given the Buddhist and Daoist dimension of Zhang’s project, determinate non-meanings. But, despite the elusive nature of Zhang’s philosophy of equalization, it is a response to concrete problems such as those of the state and imperialism. Zhang’s juxtaposition of past and present often served to decenter hegemonic concepts such as the universal principle and the distinction between civilization and barbarism, which he believed lies at the root of state domination and imperialist invasion. Part of what made Zhang’s strange juxtaposition possible was the ambiguity of late Qing discourse in relation to transformations in imperial Chinese thought. Although the late Qing could be described as launching the beginning of Westernization, and late Qing society clearly showed signs of entering the world political economy, intellectuals constantly attempted to make sense of these beginnings by using and reinterpreting indigenous conceptual categories. Thus, while we can say that the late Qing concept of the universal principle expressed a new conceptual structure associated with late Qing state and societybuilding, late Qing intellectuals inflected these categories with classical philosophical significances. Given this hybrid philosophical structure of the concept, Zhang used elements of its intellectual history against it. To help us understand the hybridity of late Qing thought, I begin with a genealogy of the concept of universal principle and briefly examine conceptual transformations in the concept of “principle” (li) in imperial China. Then I discuss state-oriented reformers’ and utopian anarchists’ invocation of the universal principle as a crucial part of their theory. In the balance of the chapter, I examine Zhang’s critique of the state and the universal principle along with his idea of equalization (qi).

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chapter five Cosmic Principles and Equality in Imperial China

Zhang Taiyan’s Buddhist-Daoist inspired political and cosmological theory was a response to the reformers’ concept of “universal principle.” This concept has a complex relation to its Song dynasty counterpart, the “heavenly principle” (tianli ). This ostensible “pre-history” of the universal principle is especially important, since although one usually thinks of Confucianism as the nemesis of equality and modernity, the Song Confucian concept of “heavenly principle” anticipates aspects of what later thinkers would call the universal principle of science and morality. In this section, we shall briefly look at the genesis of the concepts “principle” and “heavenly principle” through to the Song dynasty. The character for “principle” (li) does not appear in Confucius’ Analects nor in Lao Zi’s Dao De Jing. During the mid-Warring States period (475–221 bce) and the Han dynasty, the concept of principle (li) was primarily interpreted as connoting “differentiation” ( fen). The term originally referred to the “lines running through a piece of jade,”2 but Han Feizi (280–233 bce), in his interpretation Lao Zi, brings out how the concept connotes differentiation: “Overall, principles (li) are what differentiate square from circular, short from long, coarse from fine, hard from brittle.”3 In short, before the Qin dynasty (221–206 bce), each particular thing had its own principle; there was no overarching “heavenly principle.” We can explain this lack by referring to the non-metaphysical nature of pre-Qin Confucian thought, which aimed at reviving the system of rituals and music during the Three Dynasties. For example, in Confucius’ view, the system in which humans and heaven were harmonious was the Zhou dynasty system of rituals and music and hence his political project consisted of reviving that system. The Three Dynasties’ political structure included a decentralized enfiefment system of government called fengjian, sometimes translated as “feudalism.”4 The emergence of the concept of heavenly principle in the Song and universal principle

Zhang Dainian, Key Concepts in Chinese Philosophy, 26. Ibid., 30. 4 There is a growing consensus that one cannot use the term “feudalism” to describe early China. See Li Feng, “ ‘Feudalism’ and Western Zhou China.” 2 3

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during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries would involve delinking the Three Dynasties ideal from its historical reality.5 Although the proponents of the heavenly principle during the Song dynasty were Confucians, they drew on non-Confucian traditions, particularly Daoism, in formulating this concept. Zhuang Zi and his Jin dynasty (265–420) interpreter Guo Xiang (d. 312) are particularly relevant to our discussion because Zhuang Zi’s and Guo’s discussions of principle inform the Song Confucian concept of the heavenly principle, the late Qing extension of this concept in the universal principle, and Zhang Taiyan’s critique of late Qing reformers from the perspective of his notion of equalization as difference. The term “heavenly principle” appears in the Zhuang Zi and in a way that anticipates the Song Confucian concept. Zhuang Zi writes: “Get rid of intelligence and trickery and follow the principle of heaven (tian zhi li).”6 Wang Hui suggests that for Zhuang Zi, the concept of li is a “universal principle and is not knowledge about any particular thing.”7 We see this in other passages where Zhuang Zi uses similar terms such as “the great principle”: You cannot discuss ice with a summer insect; it is bound to a single season. You cannot discuss the way with a cramped scholar—he is shackled by his doctrines ( jiao). Now you have come out beyond your banks and borders and have seen the great sea—so you realize your own pettiness. From now on, it will be possible to talk to you about the “great principle (dali).”8

The theme of the “Autumn Floods” chapter of the Zhuang Zi is that people and animals are trapped in their own perspectives and hence are unable to understand others. In this light, “great principle” suggests an overarching principle that transcends particular principles. However, the transcendental interpretation is by no means the only one. The above passage suggests a correlation between the way (Dao) and the “great principle.” The following passage from the “Zeyang” chapter helps to bring out the ambiguities in Zhuang Zi’s texts: “The myriad things each have different principles; but the way is not partial (si) to any one of them. Thus it is nameless. Because it is nameless it does nothing;

5 The late Qing perhaps presents us with an unusual case of how intellectuals made use of the idea of the Three Dynasties, since they often claimed that they embodied a democratic ideal. 6 Cited in Wang Hui, Xiandai Zhongguo sixiang de xingqi, vol. 1, 189. 7 Ibid. 8 Zhuang Zi, Basic Writings, 97; idem, Zhuang Zi yigu, 307.

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because it does nothing, nothing is left undone.”9 Such passages have sparked debate among Zhuang Zi scholars about whether the “great principle” exists independently of particular principles or whether it refers merely to the agglomeration of particular principles. Guo Xiang initiated and popularized an interpretation that stresses particularity. Guo’s notes to the Zhuang Zi place the idea of the heavenly principle at the center of the work and emphasize that each thing in the world follows its own logic. Guo’s concept of the heavenly principle holds that because things produce themselves, the cause of things is that “they are naturally so” (ziran er ran).10 To the modern reader, Guo’s words may appear to be an endorsement of liberation and equality. However, Guo’s philosophy must be understood in relation to the politics of the Jin dynasty. During the Wei period (386–535 ce), the imperial system was fragmented—power was shared by the imperial center and the distinguished families of hereditary power (menfa). In short, sinologist Chen Yangu contends, by asserting that all things are equally legitimate and self-creating, Guo attempted to provide a balance between the distinguished families of hereditary power and imperial power, thus raising the status of the former.11 In the midst of Jin dynasty political struggles, Guo was concerned with neither equality nor individuality. Nonetheless, in the late Qing, Zhang could draw upon Guo’s ideas to formulate one of his key ideas, equalization as difference. However, Guo’s ideas were also instrumental in the formation of what would become one of the nemeses of Zhang’s position, namely the concept of the heavenly principle. We have already seen that Guo used this concept, which was in a sense both independent of all particular logics and yet did not form a logic of its own. The history from the fragmented Jin dynasty to the centralized state of the Song need not detain us here, but the difference between Guo Xiang’s interpretation of the heavenly principle and the Song Confucian interpretation of the term lies precisely in the change in the political system. The Song Confucians were critical of the changes that occurred after the transition from the Tang to the Song dynasties, but their

Zhang Dainian, Key Concepts in Chinese Philosophy, 29. Wang Hui, Xiandai Zhongguo sixiang de xingqi, vol. 1, 198. 11 See Chen Yangu, “Meiyou zhongji shizai de bentilun.” See also Togawa Yoshio, “Kakushō no seiji to sono Sōji chū.” Brook Ziporyn provides a primarily philosophical account of Guo Xiang in his The Penumbra Unbound. 9

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metaphysical worldview mimicked the abstract nature of their state. That is, just as the Song dynasty prefectural state cleared away the remnants of the so-called fengjian system linked to hereditary power, the heavenly principle now represented a principle abstracted from the empirical world. The heavenly principle is difficult to define. Here is Wang Hui’s gloss on the term: The concept of the heavenly principle combines the ideas of heaven (tian) and principle (li): “Heaven” expresses the highest point of the principle and an ontological foundation. “Principle” suggests that the cosmos and myriad things become their own foundation. The compound “heavenly principle” occupies the highest place and replaces categories such as heaven, deity, the way and the heavenly way, which formerly occupied the highest place in traditional cosmologies or theories of the mandate of heaven or morality. From this time onwards, it is presupposed that all categories and concepts are organized in relation to the heavenly principle at the center.12

According to this reading, which is also reflected in Guo Xiang’s annotations to Daoist texts, the heavenly principle refers to self-production. But for the Song Confucians, it is also an a priori principle. As Wang explains: The establishment of the concept of the heavenly principle indicates that morality must be based on an a priori principle. . . . It is not a specific system, rituals, and music and morality, but an abstract and all-pervasive “principle” that forms the source of morality and its highest standard.13

This overarching a priori principle emerged in a complex relationship between the transformations from the Tang to the Song dynasties. The link between heavenly principle and rituals and music, or any empirical thing, was broken. Thus like Zhuang Zi’s Way, it was no longer partial to anything. The relation of heavenly principle to what we would call equality is complex. On the one hand, Song Confucians still associated it with hierarchical relations.14 However, they also invoked the heavenly principle and their reinterpretation of Confucian theory in order to

Wang Hui, Xiandai Zhongguo sixiang de xingqi, vol. 1, 111–12. Ibid., 209. 14 Yu Yingshi and others have explained that hierarchical relations were conceived differently during the Song because of the increased role of the scholar-officials, who began to take the responsibility of governing. In other words, there was equality among them. 12 13

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deal with the inequalities that emerged with the political and economic transformations of the Song dynasty. Song Confucians such as Zhu Xi (1130–1200) and Hu Hong (1105–1155) used the abstract heavenly principle along with radical reinterpretations of classical ideals of the Three Dynasties to critique what they considered the central problems of their time, such as the inequality of landholding.15 For example, Hu Hong interpreted fengjian as following the heavenly principle and asserted that it entailed equal-land relations ( juntian).16 Sublimating the Heavenly Principle: The Late Qing Concept of the Universal Principle The Song dynasty represented a break in both political and intellectual history. It is not always easy to see this because both the thinking of Song Confucians and of their later critics was shaped by an idealized past, just as was the case with thinkers during the Warring States era. However, by the time of the Song dynasty returning to the Three Dynasties system of rituals and music and fengjian was inconceivable. Thus Song dynasty thinkers accepted a break with the past and attempted to imagine a future system that would overcome the problems of their present by re-invoking classical concepts of Confucianism in the context of the new framework of the heavenly principle. This structure of thought would continue until the late Qing. Although various thinkers during the next few dynasties, especially the Qing (1644–1911), were extremely critical of Song Confucians and their concept of the heavenly principle, Qing Confucians were also wedded to the project of using the Confucian classics to conceive a regime that dealt with the problems they faced. The Song dynasty concept of the heavenly principle enabled both an justification of the present as a historical phenomenon and a critique of historical institutions from a moral perspective.17 Thinkers from later dynasties also accepted historical necessity, but the heavenly principle and Song Confucianism in general were incorporated by later ruling dynasties, such as the Qing,

15 A full discussion of how Zhu Xi and others managed this would involve a discussion of the Song dynasty concept of history. See Wang Hui, Xiandai Shanghai sixiang de xingqi, vol. 1, 231–34. 16 Ibid., 231. 17 Ibid., 234.

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and thus the concept lost its moral power to criticize the government and instead became associated with repression. Consequently, mid-Qing scholars such as Dai Zhen (1724–1777), who was praised by late Qing and early Republic reformers and revolutionaries alike, attacked the heavenly principle and supported a more particularist interpretation.18 Thus the era from the Song dynasty, when the notion of the heavenly principle was formed, through the early and mid-Qing, when the heavenly principle came under attack, was marked by intellectual continuity: it was not Confucianism itself that thinkers by the mid-Qing rejected, rather the Song version Confucianism. However, in the early twentieth century a new logic emerged as China entered the global capitalist world system of nation-states. As it did so, China went from being a multiethnic empire with no clear outside to becoming part of a global system in which China was one nation among many other formally equal nations. Thus China changed from a more or less self-contained and self-sufficient empire to a nation-state that required recognition by the Other, namely the entire system, for its existence.19 The domestic side of this transformation involved the emergence of a new category of “citizens” who were also formally equal and required recognition from the state and would be schooled to identify with the nation. Wang Hui has described this new category of the citizen and the aggregate “the people” and the social and political transformations entailed by this category: The formation of the people must legally abstract and separate each individual from various communal, local place, and kinship relations and then construct formally equal national citizens. The latter can participate in the activities of the sovereign nation either as a unit or as a group. This political process simultaneously follows the development of industry, the expansion of cities and increase in the power of money, the formation of professional society, the establishment of a market system, and so on.20

Thus, in late Qing China the idea of human equality and equality in general was inextricably linked to the global processes of territorialization and nation-building and the spread of capitalism. Both of

18 On the relationship between Dai Zhen and Zhang Taiyan, see Ishi Tsuyoshi, “Daishin tetsugaku wo meguru shisōshi.” 19 Pre-national Chinese identity is a complex topic since there are conflicting narratives of how to construct China’s identity in the tribute system. For an analysis, see Hamashita Takeshi, Chōkō shisutemu to kindai Ajia. 20 Wang Hui, Xiandai Zhongguo sixiang de xingqi, vol. 4, 1399.

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these processes involve a degree of formal rationality associated with the development of large bureaucracies, a modern legal system, and a world of commodities created for exchange.21 These processes, which can be understood at either the national level or the global level, were confronted by late Qing thinkers, including Zhang Taiyan, as they constructed their political thought. In other words, late Qing intellectuals used equality and related concepts to make sense of their world and to conceive of political ideals at global and local, as well as collective and individual, levels. The opposition between the collective and the individual became especially salient in the age of capitalism and the nation-state system. In China, historical conditions tended to encourage the collective dimension. While early modern Western political theorists often thought of society and the state as opposed spheres in which the former encompasses the realm of individual action, in China, reformers and the Qing government thought of local groups as essential for strengthening the state.22 Late Qing intellectuals—particularly Kang Youwei, Yan Fu, and Liang Qichao—linked the English word “society” to the classical Chinese term qun. Qun is an ambiguous term that can refer to “group,” “society,” or “state” and hence hints at the intimate link between these three categories during the late Qing. Thus, in a word, the interconnection between local groups, society, and the state in the theoretical realm corresponded to an institutional process of the expansion of state power through local organizations or groups. The Qing government was initially hostile to the reformers’ proposals of 1898, which sought to give more power to the localities. However, during the early 1900s, it implemented the so-called New Government Policies, which to a large extent incorporated much of the reformers’ agenda. In his Culture, Power, and the State, Prasenjit Duara shows how, in pursuing these reforms, the Qing state penetrated 21 Of course, there were huge bureaucracies in imperial China, but one must distinguish between the nature of these two bureaucracies as following different logics. It is probably even difficult to say that premodern Chinese bureaucracies had a specific logic, but Max Weber attempted to describe them as “irrational” or “patrimonial” bureaucracies and opposed to modern rational bureaucracies. One may disagree with Weber’s description of premodern bureaucracies, but his main point is still important, namely that with the modern period a qualitatively distinct logic that emerged. I would add, as I mentioned in the Introduction, that this qualitatively distinct form of rationalization is connected to the global dynamic of capitalism. For an early discussion of Weber on China, see van der Sprenkel, “Max Weber on China.” 22 Cf. Wang Hui, Xiandai Zhongguo sixiang de xingqi, vol. 3, 840.

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society. He describes the New Government Policies of the late Qing as a “Chinese pattern of state strengthening—closely interwoven with modernizing and nation-building goals.”23 He notes that “all regimes, whether central or regional, appeared to respect the administrative extensions of state power in local society. . . . Whatever their goals, they assumed that these new administrative arrangements were the most convenient means of reaching rural communities.”24 This process of course influenced late Qing intellectuals’ understanding of individualism and their vision of society as an agglomeration of equal individuals. Given that late Qing intellectuals were struggling to transform an empire into a nation-state, rather than secure the autonomy of individuals or classes from the state, they often saw the unleashing of the individual as a means to strengthen the state. The late Qing concept of the individual was always linked to some narrative of community, be it local, national or, in the case of anarchists, global. To facilitate the imperative both to promote individuality and to immediately overcome it at the level of the collective, most late Qing intellectuals gestured toward their Song dynasty counterparts and invoked an abstract principle, the universal principle, which they linked to community. Appeals to the universal principle were found throughout the political spectrum. At one extreme reformers such as Kang Youwei, Liang Qichao, and Yan Fu used it to promote political change under the Qing dynasty. At the other extreme, the anarchists wielded it to promote the overthrowing of all states. The term “universal principle” shares the character for principle (li ) with the character couplet for the “heavenly principle,” and like its Song dynasty ancestor, the “universal principle” has both an epistemological/ontological and an ethical/political dimension. The word for universal (gong) in the character couplet for “universal principle” (gongli) refers to both universality, as in universal scientific laws, and “public” or “community”—often political groups such as the nation-state. The character couplet gongli, which became extremely popular during the late Qing, was inherited from an earlier era, and had a similar meaning. For example, the “Biography of Zhang Wen” section of the Sanguo zhi (Record of the Three Kingdoms; third century ce), opposes the term “universal principle” to “personal feeling” (siqing), which

23 24

Duara, Culture, Power, and the State, 2. Ibid., 3.

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suggests that the universal principle already referred to “a principle people recognized as correct.”25 The term was rebaptized during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when the word li was used to translate “principle” in the scientific sense. Liang Qichao clearly shows the connections between the universal principle and science when he writes about the “mothers of modern history” ( jinshi shi zhi mu), Francis Bacon and René Descartes. He notes that Bacon propagated the theory of science (gewu zhi shuo), advocating that “principles must be proven by experimentation,” and that Descartes stressed “the theory of exhausting principles” (qiongli zhi shuo).26 In explaining the modern scientific method associated with Descartes and Bacon, Liang used terms for both science (gewu) and for “exhausting principles” derived from Song Confucianism. The universal principle was connected to moral and political philosophy as well as to science. The term was used in numerous compounds, such as “the universal principle of science” and the “the universal principle of evolution,” but in general what it meant resembles Lukács’ description of modern rationalism. “What is novel about modern rationalism is its increasingly insistent claim that it has discovered the principle which connects up all phenomena which in nature and society are found to confront mankind.”27 Thus Lukács describes the philosophical tendency of the modern epoch as the equation “of formal, mathematical and rational knowledge with knowledge in general and ‘our’ knowledge.”28 From the perspective of science, all things are equal before the universal principle; it is at once an abstract standard and metaphysical principle to which all things conform. Hence, just as the Song Confucians had to link the heavenly principle to Confucian views of community, reformist proponents of the universal principle faced an aporia between the broad scope of the universal principle and the more limited nature of the nation-state. Zhang Taiyan and the anarchists would exploit this aporia. Moreover, although the universal principle includes a moral imperative, late Qing intellectuals began to perceive a gap between gongli as

25 Hanyu da cidian, vol. 2, 70. This definition and the example are part of the first definition for gongli in the Hanyu da cidian. 26 Liang Qichao, “Lun xueshu zhi shili zuoyou shijie,” 217. 27 Lukács, Geschichte und Klassenbewußtsein, 290; idem, History and Class Consciousness, 113. 28 Ibid., 289, Eng. 112; Feenberg, Lukács, Marx, and the Sources of Critical Theory, 102.

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scientific principle and gongli as moral principle and hence like their Song counterparts, but to a much greater degree, they had to re-inscribe moral categories into the scientific side of the universal principle or the seemingly amoral movement of the material world. Among the reformers, Kang Youwei perhaps went the furthest in couching scientific concepts in Confucian terminology. Already in 1886 Kang linked Confucian ideals to the scientific principle of the universe. In his “Inner Chapters of Master Kang,” he wrote: “All things have humanity, righteousness and rituals, not only humans” and spoke of rituals as “the necessity of things” (wu zhi bi ran).29 Kang Youwei’s disciple Fan Zhui (1872–1906) linked the universal principle to equality in a way that continues the emphasis on morality. With respect to heaven’s producing things, all things are one. That which is one is the universal principle and the universal principle is equality. . . . Since all things come from heaven, all things are heaven. Moreover, the infinite heaven is also equal. If everything is equal, then everything is the same.30

In Chapter Two, we have seen how Kang connected the universal principle and equality to history, but created an evolutionary model of historical change. Liang Qichao continues this point when he writes: “In the past one thousand years, there has been no time without change and no event that has not changed. This is the way of the universal principle and is not caused by human action.”31 But change is not random. A number of late Qing intellectuals conceived of the combination of the universal principle and change as the equivalent of social evolution. Thus Yan Fu speaks of “the universal principle of evolution.”32 Kang Youwei, Yan Fu, and Liang Qichao used the universal principle and evolution to legitimize the state. However, while Yan and Liang attempted to reconcile their ideals within the state, Kang went a step further and posited that the universal principle can only be realized

29 Kang Youwei quanji, vol. 1, 191–92, cited in Wang Hui, Xiandai Zhongguo sixiang de xingqi, vol. 1, 249. 30 Cited in Wang Ermin, Wan Qing zhengzhi sixiang shilun, 228. The original is in Xiangbao leicuan jia shang (The Classified Compilation of Articles from the Xiang [Hunan] Newspaper), 1899, vol. 1, 38–39. 31 Liang Qichao, “Bianfa tongyi zixu,” 1. 32 In his notes to Huxley’s Evolution and Ethics, “Tian yan lun, xu yu anyu,” 328, Yan Fu uses a different character for “principle” 例, which usually means example, but I think that in the context the couplet gongli signifies something like the universal principle.

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when the world evolves into a perfectly egalitarian society without national divisions. The age of heavenly peace is the great community; human equality and the great community of the human race themselves are definitely the universal principle. However, the inequality of things is their condition. If the conditions are not correct, even if one forces people with national laws and oppresses people with monarchical power to make people follow the universal principle, one will not be able to successfully put it into practice.33

When explaining the conditions required to attain this type of equality, Kang reveals that his ideal implies an eradication of difference: If one wants the human race to advance to the great community of equality, one must begin with the sameness of human conditions and form. If these conditions and form are not the same, then rituals, occupations, and loving feeling naturally will not be the same. If one wants to make those who have different conditions and bodily form the same, apart from selective mating, there is no way to do so.34

Several late Qing intellectuals used the concept of equality as a marker of civilization as opposed to barbarism. Kang Youwei combined Confucianism and evolution in his political vision, but later reformists would more directly invoke theorists such as Hegel to link abstract universal principles, equality, and history. For example, in a 1905 issue of the journal Qingyi bao (The Pure Opinion Paper), which Liang Qichao edited in Japan, Guan Yun, an associate of Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao, wrote an essay, “The Conflict between Equality and China’s Old Morality,” repeating some of Kang’s points in an explicitly Hegelian framework: From Hegel’s discussion of ethics and according to the principle that his philosophy establishes, the world is an expression of a great spirit and the individual is just a small part of this great spirit. . . . Hence all things such as states, families, societies, and countries do not have the goal of developing the individual, but only that of developing the great spirit of the world. According to Hegel’s theory, the myriad things of the world

33 Kang Youwei, Da tong shu, 145; cf. Wang Hui, Xiandai Zhongguo sixiang de xingqi, vol. 2, 771. 34 Kang Youwei, Da tong shu, 145–46. Kang, who was not above making racist comments, claims that “since white women are beautiful and black men are strange and ugly, humans would be repulsed at the attempt to make them mate in order to improve the human race” (ibid., 146).

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are equal as one. It appears that there are differences, but in actuality there are none. . . . Socialism and cosmopolitanism both take equality as their moral foundation and thus they both can be deduced from Hegel’s theory.35

Although part of Guan Yun’s purpose in this essay is to extol equality, like Kang and to some extent Hegel, Guan uses the concept of equality in order to legitimate partial inequality through making distinctions between the civilized and the barbarian and the intelligent and the stupid. He connects equality to civilization: “The more civilized a country is, the more it strives for equality and barbarian countries do the opposite.”36 As we have seen, equality is a result of evolution and hence to attain equality, one must support evolution, which might involve inequality. “If one wants to attain equality, the situation is such that one must take from the wise and hardworking and give to the stupid and lazy. As a result all will be stupid and lazy and the world will regress. Thus those who speak of equality must separate people into two classes.”37 In other words, according to Guan, in order to attain the equality that corresponds to the evolution of the world, one must ensure that the wise and hardworking are richer than the stupid and lazy, since in this case, the stupid and lazy have an incentive to change, which will eventually promote evolution. Although Guan does not directly use racial categories, he reproduces a version of Kang Youwei’s logic, since ultimately equality can only be reached when all people become the same, that is, “wise and hardworking.” One of Zhang Taiyan’s aims in his writings from 1906 to 1911 was precisely to criticize two characteristics of the universal principle in the thinking of Yan Fu, Liang Qichao, Kang Youwei, and their followers. The first is that reformers connected the universal principle to stateand society-building and thus demanded sacrifice to a collective. The second is that they resorted to the universal principle to legitimate the eradication of difference through evolution. Since evolution is beyond human control (except for the completely unrealistic possibility that Kang raises of “selective mating”), accepting the reformer’s version of the universal principle means rejecting revolution.

Zhang Dan and Wang Renzhi, eds., Xinhai geming qian shinian qian shilun xuanji, vol. 2, part 1, 21. 36 Ibid., 22. 37 Ibid., 23. 35

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This move away from revolution is also part of a general eradication of particularity, since it stresses a general principle of evolution over human agency. When arguing for the universal principle against revolution, the reformers overlook or undermine the potential of particular human subjectivity. Zhang conceives of this eradication of difference and particularity as the inevitable outcome of the distinction between civilization and barbarism, which is in turn linked to the scientific worldview associated with the universal principle. In short, Zhang claims that while it appears that the universal principle promotes equality, it paradoxically reproduces inequality by perpetuating distinctions between the civilized and the uncivilized or the scientific and the unscientific. In Kang Youwei, Zhang saw a clear case of a thinker who used the discourse of civilization and the universal principle to legitimate discrimination—Kang even supported America’s oppression of the blacks.38 Against this, as we shall see towards the end of this chapter, Zhang envisioned a world beyond the homogenizing tendencies of the universal principle. In other words, the distinction between barbarian and civilization is made on the assumption that the standards of civilization are homogenously valid for all. It is an attempt to bring the other into the logic of the same. During the late Qing, the notion of the universal principle along with the distinction between civilized and uncivilized was by no means restricted to the reformers; in fact, it had become hegemonic. For example, in Chapter Two we have encountered the term “universal principle” in Zou Rong’s tract on revolution, which Zhang Taiyan had wholeheartedly endorsed and for which he wrote the preface.39 Zhang himself used the term in his response to Kang Youwei, who declared that the Chinese people were not ready for revolution because they did not understand the universal principle. Zhang retorted that “since the universal principle is not clear, one must make it clear through revolution.”40 But we already see that, in 1903, even when Zhang still accepted the notion of the universal principle, he believed in the efficacy of human agency over the universal principle. In later years, he will critically dissect the relationship between the individual and the universal principle. See Kang Youwei, Da tong shu, 145. Zou wrote: “Revolution is the universal principle of the world. . . . Through revolution the barbarians enter civilization” (Zou Rong, Geming jun, 8). 40 Zhang Taiyan, “Bo Kang Youwei lun geming shu,” in Zhang Taiyan xuanji, 178. 38 39

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Zhang Taiyan and Radical Political Culture in Tokyo In the preceding chapters, we have touched on how Zhang seriously engaged Buddhism in jail and then upon his release in 1906, went to Tokyo to edit the revolutionary periodical Minbao (The People’s Journal ). In Japan, in 1906 and 1907, Zhang closely associated with Sun Zhongshan’s Revolutionary Alliance, but by early 1907, Zhang and Sun had already begun their famous feud. While most members of the Revolutionary Alliance continued to support Sun’s aim of overthrowing the Manchu government, they were concerned about his alleged dishonesty, including his embezzling funds.41 We need not go into the details42 but apart from fighting over money—including Sun’s refusal to continue to support the publication of Minbao—Sun and Zhang clashed over the issue of revolutionary activities in Hanoi. Sun obdurately insisted on courting the French authorities in Indo-China while Zhang and other members repeatedly argued the futility of that enterprise. This split in the Revolutionary Alliance may have encouraged Zhang’s engagement with more radical ideas. Shortly after Sun left Tokyo for Hanoi in 1907, Zhang began to participate in the Society for the Study of Socialism (Shehuizhuyi jiangxi hui), which was founded on August 31 of that year.43 The society was popular among what scholars call the Tokyo anarchists, such as Liu Shipei (1884–1919) and Zhang Ji (1882–1947), both of whom supported Zhang Taiyan’s movement for revolution when in China and were now reunited in Japan. The Tokyo anarchists had much in common with Zhang Taiyan during his Minbao period, especially his faith in traditional Chinese philosophy. These anarchists envisioned an egalitarian regime rooted in the Chinese tradition. For example, Liu Shipei, a leader of the Tokyo anarchists and close friend of Zhang Taiyan, had a profound knowledge of the classical texts, and linked anarchism to Buddhism and Daoism. He published frequently in Minbao and Tianyi bao (Natural Justice), a journal Liu edited with his wife, He Zhen, a formidable feminist and anarchist in her own right.44 A connection between traditional Chinese philosophy and anarchism was further encouraged by the famous

Wong Young-tsu, Search for Modern Nationalism, 68. For the details, see ibid. 43 Ibid., 71. 44 See Zarrow, “He Zhen and Anarcho-Feminism in China,” and Liu Huiying, “Feminism: An Organic or an Extremist Position?” 41 42

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Japanese anarchist Kōtoku Shūsui (1871–1911), who gave a lecture at the first meeting of the Society for the Study of Socialism.45 Zhang’s essays in Minbao often seemed close to the thinking of the anarchists in Tokyo and targeted the Paris anarchists. The Tokyo anarchists, including Liu Shipei and He Zhen, were generally more sympathetic to the Chinese tradition while the anarchists based in Paris took Western civilization as a model and looked down on Chinese civilization.46 Zhang specifically targeted Wu Zhihui (1865–1953) among the Paris anarchists. Like Liu Shipei, Wu shifted political allegiances from one extreme to another during his life. In 1898, he defended the Manchu government against the Hundred Day reform movement led by Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao. But by 1903, he joined the revolutionary movement with Zhang Taiyan and others.47 In 1903, Zhang and Wu already had begun to accuse each other of deceit and malfeasance during the trial in which Zhang and his fellow revolutionary Zou Rong were convicted of sedition, the famous Subao case, which resulted in Zhang going to jail.48 Throughout his life, Zhang was convinced that Wu had betrayed him and the revolution. After the Subao case, Wu fled from Shanghai to Hong Kong and eventually ended up in England, where he was visited by Sun Zhongshan and joined his Revolutionary Alliance. By the end of 1906, Wu went to Paris after being invited by his friends Li Shizeng (1881–1973) and Zhang Jingjiang (1877–1950), who convinced Wu to become an anarchist. Together the three would edit and contribute to the journal Xin shiji (The New Century), where they would propagate Westernized anarchism, stressing the universal values of science rather than the Chinese tradition. Wu Zhihui was perhaps the most philosophical of the 45 Kōtoku was deeply trained in the classical Chinese texts from a young age and supported the reviving of Confucius and Lao Zi, as he stated in the Asia Solidarity Society, mentioned in Chapter Two. See Ishimoda Shō, “Kōtoku Shūsui to Chūgoku,” 389. In his famous work on imperialism, Kōtoku invoked Mencius’s analogy concerning helping other people’s parents as if they were one’s own to break down the barriers of states. See Kōtoku Shūsui, Teikokushugi, 21. 46 For a discussion, see Arif Dirlik, Anarchism in the Chinese Revolution. 47 On Wu’s political life, see Zarrow, Anarchism and Chinese Political Culture, 60–72. 48 In the high-profile Subao case, Zhang Taiyan, Zou Rong, Wu Zhihui, and Cai Yuanpei were tried for sedition. The accused were residing in the International Settlement in Shanghai and although the Qing authorities wanted to sentence them to life imprisonment, the British court in which the case was tried only agreed to a lighter sentence: three years for Zhang and two for Zou. Wu Zhihui and Cai Yuanpei had left Shanghai and escaped arrest. Zhang allowed himself to be arrested, and subsequently emerged a hero in 1906.

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three and thus engaged with Zhang Taiyan and the Tokyo anarchists on a theoretical level. The theoretical base for Wu’s anarchism was the universal principle, which Wu associated with Western science. Hence many of Zhang’s criticisms of the universal principle served as a double-edged sword to combat both tradition-oriented reformers such as Kang Youwei and the Western oriented anarchists such as Wu Zhihui and his associates. In the opening article of The New Century, “The Revolution of the New Century,” Wu began by linking the universal principle to revolution and evolution: The characteristics of the human race during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries are the discovery of the universal principle of science (kexue gongli) and the rising tide of revolution. These two mutually complement and cause each other to implement the universal principle of evolution ( jinhua zhi gongli). The universal principle is the goal that revolution aims to attain and revolution is the way to put the universal principle into practice. Thus without the universal principle, there is no revolution and without revolution, there is no way to extend the universal principle.49

Both the Tokyo and the Paris anarchists were influenced by Kropotkin, but Wu Zhihui and his friends stressed the evolutionary dimensions of Kropotkin’s thought more than their Tokyo counterparts did. In the fifth issue of The New Century, Li Shizeng went so far as to claim that in English, “Revolution” means “Re-evolution” or to “evolve again.”50 Like the Tokyo anarchists, Wu Zhihui also conceived of the endpoint of evolution as a society based on equality, pure freedom, no pursuit of private interest, and the universal principle alone. However, as avid Francophiles living in Paris, Wu and his cohorts had no sympathy with attempts to find traces of anarchism in the past. They looked upon the Chinese past as the antithesis of their anarchist ideals of justice, equality, and public-mindedness. Not surprisingly, as Wu denigrated the Chinese past and extolled the West, he was less sensitive to the problem of Western imperialism than were the Tokyo anarchists and Zhang Taiyan. As Arif Dirlik notes, “In the early years of this [the twentieth]

49 Zhang Dan and Wang Renzhi, eds, Xinhai geming qian shinian qian shilun xuanji, vol. 2, part 2, 976. 50 Zhen Min (Li Shizeng), Xinhai geming qian shinian qian shilun xuanji, vol. 2, part 2, 976. Part of Li’s aim in doing this was to separate the new revolution from the old ones and also to delink the revolution from anti-Manchuism.

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century it was still the more ‘conservatively’ inclined Chinese who saw Western intrusion as a major problem of Chinese society.”51 Wu attacked Zhang and the Tokyo anarchists for being lost in the Chinese past and criticized their notion of a revolution based on the Han race. As Li Shizeng’s tying revolution to evolution already suggests, the Paris anarchists favored peaceful progress toward anarchism and stressed the importance of education. Their view of education again centered on learning the universal principle, which included its scientific and moral dimensions. In Wu’s view, when everyone in society had reached an advanced stage and understood the universal principle, they would naturally be moral and there would be no need for laws and states. Wu claimed that by looking to the past, Liu and Zhang were hindering evolution. Zhang’s Personal Relations with Wu Zhihui and Liu Shipei Zhang Taiyan responded to Wu Zhihui’s attacks in the best revolutionary tradition: he mocked and insulted Wu. The personal animosity between the two permeates letters they published in Minbao and The New Century. In this competition in diatribes, Wu charged that Zhang was anachronistic and Zhang retorted with evidence of Wu’s suspicious activities during the Subao case. Zhang charged that Wu’s attacks on a Han-based revolution from an anarchist perspective were no more than a front for Kang Youwei’s project to protect the Manchu Qing government, and that Wu was a slave of the West.52 The irony of Zhang’s accusations is that although Wu Zhihui probably betrayed Zhang to the Manchu government in 1903, by 1908, Zhang’s close friend, the young Tokyo anarchist whose scholarship he greatly respected, Liu Shipei, was already a spy for the Qing official Duan Fang. By late 1908, Liu tried to frame Zhang Taiyan as a traitor, but without success.53 This complex story is worth retelling since it partially explains Zhang withdrawing from the revolutionary movement Dirlik, Anarchism in the Chinese Revolution, 109. Zhang Taiyan, “Fu Wujingheng han,” in Zhang Taiyan xuanji, 446. Originally published in Minbao 1908. 53 As Jiang Yihua notes, even when Zhang became clear about Liu’s betrayal, he remained sympathetic and hoped that Liu would have a change of heart. Jiang suggests this is because Zhang admired Liu’s scholarship and hoped he would collaborate in his project of national learning (Zhang Taiyan pingzhuan, 673). 51

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after 1908, precisely when he was writing his famous treatise on equality, “An Interpretation of ‘On the Equalization of Things’ ” (hereafter, “An Interpretation.”) The Qing official Duan Fang bribed Liu Shipei and his wife, He Zhen, and convinced them to become spies for him. One of their tasks was to stop Zhang Taiyan’s activities at Minbao. Around this time, Sun Zhongshan already was feuding with Zhang and stopped funding the journal, and consequently Zhang was looking for money. Huang Kan (1886–1935), Zhang’s comrade and protégé, noted that Zhang even “often had no decent meals to eat for months and left his clothes and sheets unwashed for the whole year.”54 The lack of funds, of course, also affected Zhang’s ability to run Minbao.55 Early in 1908, Liu, He Zhen, and her cousin Wang Gongquan, also a former anarchist then working for the Qing government, met Zhang in Tokyo and told him that if he wrote to Duan Fang, he could get 30,000 yuan in return for ceasing to be a revolutionary and going to India to become a Buddhist monk. Liu and He persuaded Zhang that he should accept this offer since he could either go to India or use the money to run Minbao. Zhang thought they were sincere, but relations between Liu and Zhang deteriorated for other reasons. Around this time, Zhang found that Liu’s wife, He Zhen, was having an affair with her cousin Wang Gongquan. As a friend, Zhang told Liu about this and Liu became enraged. Moreover, when Wang Gongquan found out about Zhang’s conversation with Liu, he vowed to stab Zhang to death. As a result, Zhang left their company.56 Zhang did want to go to India, and wrote to Duan Fang telling him that he would go if he could get the money in one lump sum before he left. Duan offered to give him the funds in monthly installments but only after he first shaved his head and became a monk, and had done so somewhere in Manchu jurisdiction. Zhang refused and thus Liu and Duan’s plan to divert Zhang from editing Minbao failed. However, Liu

Wong Young-tsu, Search for Modern Nationalism, 74. According to Zhang, “Tenchu [Song Jiaoren] was so depressed that he would often get drunk, and just lie on the floor laughing. He had repeatedly borrowed money from the maid working for the Minbao. When I discovered this, I told [him] that the Japanese would ridicule us for this, and quickly gave him some petty cash from my office. But Keqiang [Huang Xing] had already used up our funds; [my] office was really penniless. [I] cabled Yixian [Sun Zhongshan] for financial assistance, but [he] never responded” (Wong Yong-tsu, Search for Modern Nationalism, 74; trans. amended). 56 Jiang Yihua, Zhang Binglin pingzhuan, 669–70. 54 55

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then took the letters that Zhang wrote to Duan Fang and sent them to members of the Revolutionary Alliance, claiming they proved Zhang was not a true revolutionary. In any case, Minbao was shut down by the Japanese government in October 1908 for being seditious. Sun Zhongshan again did not help but rather waited for the journal to be totally shut down before reestablishing it with a new, pro-Sun editor, Wang Jingwei (1883–1944). Zhang Taiyan was of course furious with both the Japanese government and Sun and declared that the new Minbao was a fake (weiminbao). Sun retaliated by contacting Wu Zhihui and encouraging him to use the letters that Liu Shipei had made public in order to defame Zhang. The scandal and confusion surrounding Zhang’s potential trip to India continued and Zhang’s name was more or less cleared only after the revolution. Zhang’s Yogācāra Interventions into Political Theory In his theoretical interventions during 1906–1908 in the Minbao, Zhang aimed to reveal, using the abstract concepts of Yogācāra Buddhism, the oppressive tendencies of his various adversaries’ standpoints. By pitching his arguments at an abstract metaphysical level and invoking concepts such as atoms and ālaya consciousness, Zhang was able to delve deep into the phenomena of his world, including capitalism and the nation-state. Of course, he did not really recognize the dynamics of the global capitalist world as a specifically modern social form nor seek its negation in the transhistorical categories of Yogācāra Buddhism. Thus Zhang aimed not for the negation of a historically specific world but for the cessation of existence itself. As we have seen in Chapter Four, in Zhang’s view history and all phenomenal existence involves a process of increasing reification and egoism. His concern in his Minbao writings was not just the immediate future of the revolution, but also the long-term problem of the relationship between oppression and modern institutions, particularly the state. Zhang’s Critique of the State: Propensity against Principle Zhang’s writings in the Minbao were not limited to attacking the reformers led by Kang Youwei and the Paris anarchists led by Wu Zhihui, but were also directed against his Tokyo anarchist friends such as Liu Shipei. Liu’s position was clearly very close to Zhang’s, but, unlike Zhang, Liu

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never developed a systematic critique of modern science and social theory from a Buddhist or Daoist perspective. Hence although Liu’s work frequently draws on classical Chinese texts, in his essay “The Theory of the Equal Power of the Human Race,” he advocates “harmonizing with the universal principle of world evolution.” He describes this as one moving from the simple and barbaric to the complex.57 There are, of course, resources in Liu’s texts to counter such statements, but Zhang may have hoped that his writings would draw the Tokyo anarchists closer to his own position. For example, with respect to the idea of the state and anarchism, Zhang expressed reservations and aimed to launch a pragmatic justification of the state, while formulating an epistemological critique. Zhang’s essay “On the State,” one of the first in which he applied Yogācāra Buddhism to political theory, was originally a speech given at the Society for the Study for Socialism. During the first six meetings, Japanese anarchists, such as Kōtoku Shūsui, spoke about their philosophies of socialism and anarchism. Liu Shipei made some remarks about Chinese culture being already close to anarchism, and proclaimed that their goal was “not only socialism, but anarchism.”58 The Society for the Study of Socialism met sometimes weekly and other times biweekly for a total of about twenty time before the Japanese government stopped their meetings. Zhang Taiyan was the speaker at their third meeting, on September 22, 1907. He spoke about the state and sought to articulate his Buddhist position in relation to the anarchism and socialism that other members of the society were discussing. In the version of his speech that he published in Minbao as “On the State,” in October, he prefaced his argument with the following remarks: In the past, in the socialist lecture group, I spoke about negating the state. This was not to promote anarchism. Even if one hopes that there is government, one cannot deny this [theory of no state]. But most people of the world just grasp one side of the issue and go too far in negating my views. So here, I again present my previous speech on negating the

57 Zhang Dan and Wang Renzhi, eds., Xinhai geming qian shinian qian shilun xuanji, vol. 2, part 2, 911. 58 Ibid., 944. Liu’s judgment about China being autocratic in name and anarchistic in reality was shared by Zhang Taiyan and Liang Qichao. Liang considered this kind of anarchism to be a bad thing, since it showed that people do not have a sense of duty toward the group or the country—he called this “barbaric freedom.”

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chapter five state and supplement it with later thoughts to allow people to get a balanced view.59

In the body of the essay Zhang applies Yogācāra principles to analyze the state, focusing on the Abhidharma-mahāvibhāsā-śāstra (Da piposha lun) and the theory of atoms. In general, Zhang attempts both to de-reify the state and to assert its functional importance. He makes three points: First, the state is “posited” and not real.60 Second, contrary to the claim of Liang Qichao and others that the state follows from principle, “one establishes a state because the situational propensities (shi) leave one no other choice; it does not follow from principle.”61 Finally, the state is extremely lowly rather than sacred. Of the three points, the first most directly draws on Buddhism and was one that his anarchist audience would have found appealing. The key Buddhist concept that Zhang uses is the “atom” ( yuan zi). He includes a note explaining that the Abhidharma-mahāvibhāsā-śāstra had a theory of atoms, which he will use to analyze the state. Zhang is probably referring to the paramānu (weichen), which Yogācārins used to designate the smallest unit. Here we see a strange interplay between Yogācārin theory and the discourse of science or atoms. Zhang will temporarily stress the analogy between Yogācāra and science in order to deconstruct the state, but in other essays, he will ground science in Yogācārin concepts when he attacked the universal principle. The Yogācārin philosopher Vasubandhu (fl. fourth century) discussed these “atoms” ( paramānu) in a debate with the Vaisesika school (second century bce) and the Sarvastivadins (third century bce). Both the Vaisesikas and the Sarvastivadins put forth theories of an interrelationship between part, individual atoms, and the whole.62 Vasubandhu’s argument undermines their theories by claiming that “the external object cannot logically be one, because we cannot grasp the substance of the whole apart from the parts. Also, it logically is not many, because we cannot apprehend the atoms separately. Again logically they do not

Zhang Taiyan, “Guojia lun,” 359. Jiayou ( prajñapti) is the phenomenon where no more exists than a turtle’s hairs or rabbits horn’s. In a similar way, the state is a jiayou phenomenon that does not really exist but is posited. 61 Zhang Taiyan, “Guojia lun” 359. 62 The subtleties of this debate need not detain us here. For details, see Bronkhorst, “Sanskrit and Reality.” 59 60

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in agglomeration or combination make objects, because the theory of single real atoms is not proved.”63 Zhang Taiyan recognized that the aim of the Yogācārins was to criticize both the atomists and those who assert the reality of the whole, but just as he developed a provisional subject of revolution, he provisionally maintained the reality of atoms to deny the state or any aggregate reality. He notes, “If something is made by combining many other forms, then the various parts have self-nature, but it is not the case that on top of this, the whole has self-nature.”64 Zhang uses a Buddhist term, “self-nature” (zixing, svabhāva), although in Yogācāra theory, atoms or individual things do not really have self-nature, since they are empty. Zhang points out that when making an argument about individuals and the state, even if one takes atoms to be real, one must say that individuals have no self-nature, since individuals can be broken down into cells. However, when we limit our discussion to political entities, such as states and groups, the individual is real, since cells do not enter into the picture. The state is made up of the people and hence each person temporarily has reality, but there is no reality for the state so to speak. It is not just the state, but in a village, a tribe, a group, or an assembly, only the individuals have real self-nature, while the village, tribe, group or assembly have no real self-nature. In short, the individual is real and the group is illusory. This is true for all matters and the examples are too numerous to count.65

In making this argument, Zhang is of course criticizing the reformers and perhaps even the New Government Policies, both of which ascribed more reality to the group (qun) than to the individual. Zhang considers a number of counter-arguments, many of which he himself endorsed during his pre-jail years. In particular, we have seen in Chapter Three how Liang Qichao contended that although the individual perishes, the state lives on and thus the latter has more reality than the former. Zhang responded by invoking materialism or empiricism. He notes that “If one tries to grasp the country with one’s senses, apart from the people, there are only mud, fields, mountains and rivers.”66 Moreover, even though laws seem to exist longer than 63 64 65 66

Vasubandhu, Wei shih er shih lun, 45. Zhang Taiyan, “Guojia lun,” 359. Ibid., 360. Ibid., 361.

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people, it is really the people who support the laws, although their support does not appear (wubiaose). The point about the state having no reality was probably accepted by most of the anarchists; however, with his next point, namely that the state emerges due to situational propensities rather than principle, he criticizes both the reformers and the anarchists. Against the reformers, he notes that the state does not gain moral legitimacy from the universal principle, which he will attack explicitly in a later essay. However, against the anarchists in Paris and even in Tokyo, Zhang argues that the propensity of things makes the state necessary. Although the concept of “the propensity of things” (shi) originated in the Warring States period, it was the Tang dynasty literatus Liu Zongyuan (773–819) who used it to denote historical necessity. In Liu’s writings shi referred to historical pressures that necessitate an institutional response without being linked to a teleological worldview. For example, Liu argued that although the feudal ( fengjian) system was appropriate in the past, given that propensities had changed, in the Tang the prefectural system was more suitable.67 The Song Confucians incorporated this concept into their idea of principle to create the character couplet “principled propensities” (lishi ), which added a moral dimension to historical propensities. Thus it is not surprising that when the term “principle,” especially in the combination “universal principle,” became linked to evolution and ethics, Zhang Taiyan used the term “propensities” to stress this concept’s non-teleological possibilities. In short, Zhang used the term to argue that although there is nothing moral about erecting a state, China could implement anarchism at that point. Since the universal principle encompasses not only morality, but also science or a statement about reality and the direction of history, Zhang went on to show that the state does not exist, but propensities make it a necessary fiction. He thus used Yogācāra Buddhism to argue against the reification of the state and at the same time admitted that the state performs an important practical function in the present world. Zhang argued that the state was needed for defense against foreign invasion and imperialism. Zhang characteristically used etymology to make his point: In the beginning when a country was formed, it was originally for defense from outside invaders. Therefore the ancient term for country was written 67

Liu Zongyuan, “Fengjian lun.”

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或, which combines the character (ge, spear) 戈 and ( yi, one) 一. In the beginning people only hoped for this. As the military and the state developed, they slowly were separated and hence political affairs emerged. Governing people by laws is not as good as using non-action to transform them. If there are governmental offices above, then their powers will mutually interconnect and one cannot stop the chain. If there is no foreign threat in the future, then what use is there for the state?68

The implication of these words is that although from a moral perspective Zhang prefers the Daoist ideal of non-action (wuwei) as a foundation for political order, this would be impossible in a world of imperialist aggression. Zhang does not support the collective action of erecting a nationstate on principle and hence he differed from Liang Qichao and others who claimed that imperialist nationalism was an unavoidable stage in progress. Given that the state follows from propensities, rather than a sacred principle, Zhang claims that one must separate nationalism in powerful and weak countries: When people talk about love of the country in a prosperous and strong country, they only invade other places. They use such words to decorate their name, but they are actually like ravenous vultures. Hence it is appropriate to oppose it. But when it comes to countries like China, India, Vietnam, and Korea, they are only cut up and trampled on by others and they only think of getting back what was originally theirs. Apart from this do they harm anyone? When they talk of love of the country, what is there to oppose? The idea of loving one’s country is something that people of strong countries should not have and something people of weak countries should not lack.69

Sticking with his functional defense of nationalism, Zhang supported anti-imperialist nationalism, while realizing that in general, and especially in powerful countries, nationalism will lead to imperialism. We should keep in mind that Zhang repeatedly argued that just as India had fallen to England, China had already fallen to the imperialist Manchus. Thus he conceived of his anti-Manchuism as part of a global struggle against imperialism. By linking the necessity of the state to historical propensities rather than principle, Zhang adumbrates his final point in the essay, namely that one must support the state even though it is not sacred. He

68 69

Zhang Taiyan, “Guojia lun,” 362–63. Ibid., 367.

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compares nation-building or revolution-making to cooking: it is greatly beneficial but nothing sacred. Although Kondō Kuniyasu argued that Zhang saw the Boddhisattva as a revolutionary, in this essay Zhang explicitly separated the religious from the political based on the distinction between the sacred and the lowly. Zhang compares Buddha and other spiritual leaders to revolutionaries and notes that “Buddha began by trying to save all living beings and to help them to break free of the realm of pain and suffering and he did not avoid himself entering the bad world, but he never tried to pull others down into it. With respect to the affairs of the state this is not so.”70 Unlike spiritual leaders, proponents of social change do not accomplish things on their own, but only with the help of the masses. Zhang considered works of communal effort for utility as inherently little sacred or worthy. All accomplishments must be done by one person in order to be considered outstanding. With respect to those things that are done by combining the forces of many people, even if there is great merit, it is dispersed among the various individuals and so neither the leader nor the group can monopolize the fame.71 The people of the world are stupid and dull. They take utility [profit, gongli] as a goal. . . . Moreover, utility is not something that one person can attain; it actually requires a group of people to accomplish it together.72

Although Zhang repeatedly asserted that communal movements and revolutions must be performed by the people together, he did not want to attribute them to the group. Rather, by comparing such activities to sex for reproduction or to cooking and making food in each person’s home, he conceived of revolution as the collective effect of many individuals each acting independently. In other words, just as copulation eventually increases the population based on a number of individual acts, a revolution combines the individual actions of numerous revolutionaries. Given that the state does not exist and that political movements are dirty and base, in the final part of the essay Zhang faces the question of how it is psychologically possible to love one’s country. His argument about how one can eagerly participate in something that seems dirty

70 71 72

Ibid., 365. Ibid., 364. Ibid.

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begins with simple analogies. He gives the example of coal miners, who become extremely dirty in order to get coal, and of sex for procreation: “The human body is originally made from unclean and smelly things forming a fetus, which comes out of the same opening from which urine comes out. Hence when people think about life, they do not take it as unclean to go into dirty places.”73 Again, Zhang notes that the state is different from most dirty things, since it has no reality, but it is precisely this illusoriness that adds to the state’s allure because the self or base of cognition is itself illusory. In “On Establishing Religion,” Zhang developed a related perspective in a Yogācāra framework in which the formation of the self was caused by a fundamental misrecognition. In short, for Zhang and Yogācāra Buddhism, consciousness of a self arises when one mistakenly takes the un-individuated storehouse consciousness (ālaya consciousness) as a self.74 Thus, an original fetishism makes it possible to fetishize objects and eventually the nation-state. In “On the State,” Zhang does not invoke such concepts, but he makes a similar argument about the self ’s vacuity in order to show how loving a nonexistent or imagined nation is possible. Zhang begins by showing that the self is an illusion since, like the state, it is an aggregate: A person himself is not real, but is also a made by collecting a number of organs. One takes one’s self as a measure and then extends this to think about other things. Hence what one loves are also not the real parts, but the posited aggregate. This is also the reason why when one loves one’s country, one loves the aggregate.75

Like Liang Qichao, Zhang underscores that human selves have a virtual dimension and, although he will make this the condition for love of the nation, he does not link this virtual dimension too closely to the other. Here Zhang contends that this is something basic to the structure of human desire, which begins from a posited self. Moreover, he goes on to point out that some aggregates have a real essence. The essence of a gold ring, for instance, is the individual gold atoms that make it up. However, the human self is totally illusory. Zhang likens it to simulacra depicted in paintings or in magic acts. These objects continue to produce desire, but they have no reality.

Ibid., 369. Strictly speaking it is manas consciousness (cogitation or the seventh level of consciousness) that misrecognizes ālaya consciousness as a self. 75 Zhang Taiyan, Gegudingxin de zheli, 366. 73 74

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chapter five When people see the painting, their happiness sometimes surpasses that of people who enter the mountain and pasture and see the real thing. Why is this? This is because the human body is itself without essence, it is just the inorganic elements such as energy, fluid and fixed form that have changed into muscle, bones, blood, and sweat. Because one takes one’s body as a measure and looks at the various things outside, one loves posited illusory things without essence. Thus people who love the country love this type of scene ( jingxiang).76

Zhang continues by pointing out that when people love their country, they not only love something that has no essence or that is not real, they also often love something that is in the past or future and thus not there in the present moment. Here Zhang makes a point that echoes Plato and anticipates Lacan, namely that desire is always constituted by a lack and so our love for something that is not present is much greater than for something that is present. He gives a number of examples, such as “longing after high-class beautiful women, clothes, horses . . . which are difficult to obtain” and concludes that similarly in the case of loving one’s country and its history, “what one loves is not something that is already there, but that which is past or future.”77 Zhang sees nationalism too as involving becoming attached to one’s past and acting in the present to make an absent future real. The Necessity of the State and Its Overcoming Zhang’s deconstruction of the idea of the state is based on a theory of discrete atoms, but he claims that one can love the nation-state precisely because the self is already alienated from the more real elements of experience. Although one’s love for the nation-state is that of an absent simulacrum, Zhang underscores that it is necessary both for dealing with internal inequalities and for warding off external oppression. Although Zhang’s ultimate goal is to overcome illusion through negating the self and consciousness, as long as one lives within the world of delusions and simulacra produced by consciousness, one will need the state. Zhang deals with the state in relation to his Buddhist/ Daoist utopia in his essays “On the Five Negations,” “On the Four Confusions,” and “An Interpretation.”

76 77

Ibid. Ibid., 367.

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“On the Five Negations” was published in September 1907, one month before the publication of “On the State,” and members of the Society for the Study of Socialism were probably familiar with both essays. In “On the Five Negations,” with respect to the confused and illusory world, Zhang makes a plea for equalizing land, attacking representative government, and promoting unity among weak nations to resist imperialism. But most of the essay is devoted to the question of eliminating the self, consciousness, and all the objects within it to attain ultimate equality. Thus, we can already see in this essay that Zhang has two concepts of equality, one at the level of mundane illusion and the other at the level of nothingness. With respect to the world of illusion, Zhang again distinguishes between external and internal policy. At the domestic level, Zhang argues against the anarchists and privileges law over morality. In line with the policy of the Revolutionary Alliance, he argues that laws should equally distribute land, enable workers to share in the profits they produce, and limit inheritance so wealth does not transfer, but he adds that one should dismantle the parliamentary system. However, he claims that these are only temporary measures and one must eventually advance into the “high reaches of nothingness.”78 By this, Zhang is referring to the five negations, namely no government, no villages or groups ( juluo), no self, no sentient beings, and no world. In short, Zhang claims that even the anarchists have not been sufficiently self-reflective and have thus failed to grasp that problems related to the state and imperialism stem from phantoms generated by consciousness. Zhang will develop this argument in his later essays, but here he adds a criticism of the anarchists to the effect that they do not pay enough attention to the problem of groups and thus are blind to the threat of imperialism. He points out that although the anarchists are correct in claiming that human beings are naturally equal, they fail to take geographical and climatic conditions into account and consequently cannot recognize the problem of imperialism. Zhang argues that the world is divided into places that are warm, fertile, and comfortable, and places that are cold and disagreeable. Eventually, the places that are cold and disagreeable, namely Western countries, invade the places with more fertile land in order to seize their resources. Hence Western countries

78

Zhang Taiyan, “Wu wu lun,” 256.

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would be delighted if the other countries got rid of their governments and abandoned nationalism. In Zhang’s view colonialism is all about dismantling some governments, but reproducing inequalities based on distinct villages or groups. He explains that imperialists seek to abolish all governments while perpetuating inequality between their own group and the other. Thus, if one suddenly gets rid of government without getting rid of groups, the stronger groups from cold climates will more easily invade other places. Zhang takes up the issue of imperialism by giving examples that would make an impression on the Tokyo and Paris anarchists. Since the Tokyo anarchists often praised the Russians, while the Paris anarchists admired the French, Zhang specifically mentions these two in his argument: Why do the Russians dare to promote anarchism? Their land is cold and uncomfortable and so they may invade other countries but they do not have to worry about other countries invading them. Why is it that the French dare to promote anarchism? Although their land is fertile, their area is not great. [People from] small rural areas invade warm and humid lands, but one does not have to worry about [people from] warm and humid lands invading small rural areas. Thus in practice, they have nothing to fear. However, the various countries in the east are not so.79

In the same vein, Zhang also attacks the Western promotion of Enlightenment ideals, especially equality. He suggests that anarchists have totally overlooked the ideological use of these ideals and the inequalities they conceal. People believe that anarchism is the pinnacle of freedom and equality. However, the countries that began to implement freedom and equality in their own country practice the utmost inequality and implement unfreedom in other countries. If we speak within state boundaries, today the French make the Vietnamese pay taxes to be born, to die, to beg for food, and to clean the bathroom. Those who criticize are killed; those who cross the boundary are killed and those who gather together are killed. This is unprecedented cruelty. We call this a country that eats people. Even Mongolia and Islam have never practiced even a fraction of the cruelty that France has practiced. Is this not the France that created the concepts of equality and freedom? Where there is a government, France can implement freedom and equality in its own territory, but implement the utmost lack of freedom and inequality in Vietnam.80 79 80

Ibid., 257. Ibid., 258.

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With this Zhang notes that when discussing equality ( pingdeng) one needs to take the global situation into consideration, and this requires the temporary construction of a nation-state. Thus, the loss of the Vietnamese government did not really obliterate the distinction between “France” and “Vietnam.” Zhang warns the anarchists that if they do not get rid of groups or villages and only discuss abolishing government, those “who try to copy the theory of anarchism will be swallowed up by the founders of the theory.”81 Zhang’s alternative is an anarchism without groups in which “farmers must be wandering farmers, workers must be wandering workers, and women must be wandering women.”82 In other words, when there are no cliques or groups, there will be no imperialism and no inequality. Throughout the rest of “On the Five Negations,” Zhang uses Yogācāra Buddhism to show the subjective conditions under which such an anarchic utopia could be realized and also what type of subjective conditions would need to be overcome in order to achieve his utopian vision. In short, if wandering workers, farmers, and women act from the perspective of the self, they will only reproduce the world of states and oppression. Zhang’s Critique of the Universal Principle and His Philosophy of Equalization In his essay “On the Four Confusions,” published in July 1908, Zhang Taiyan connected the oppression of both the state and of imperialism and the “universal principle.” He claims both the anarchists and the reformers support the universal principle because they are not reflective enough to understand the oppressive nature of this concept with respect to the state and imperialism. Moreover, he contends that they fail to recognize the oppressive nature of the universal principle because they overlook how the concept actually emerges from primordial delusions. Zhang criticizes the universal principle for naturalizing confusions created by the transformations of consciousness. In this essay, Zhang deals with a topic that recurs in his writings, namely primordial confusion and its relation to the production of the world. We have seen

81 82

Ibid. Ibid.

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in Chapter Three that in an essay written in 1899, “On Bacteria,” Zhang presented a cosmology in which the existence of everything was produced through a bacterium that results from confusion. In “On Bacteria,” he quoted one of his favorite passages from Wang Bi’s interpretation of the Book of Changes, “the myriad things stem from confusion,” and then went on to demonstrate how confusion would be overcome by following the path laid out by Xun Zi (c. 312–230 bce) and other Confucians. By the time he wrote “On the Four Confusions,” he had shifted from a Confucian to a Buddhist outlook, but continued to grapple with primordial confusion. In this essay, he addressed four “confusions”: “the universal principle,” “evolution,” the idea that things are “only matter,” and the idea of “nature.” These four are related in that they all arise from insufficient reflection on the role of consciousness in their production. It is Zhang’s criticism of the universal principle that is most germane to our concerns here. Zhang notes that just as the Song Confucians used the concept of the heavenly principle, modern intellectuals and politicians use the universal principle, which they portray as an objective law, to control people. However, in fact, “this principle does not have self-nature and does not exist independently in the cosmos. It is constructed through the application of people’s archetypical concepts to things.”83 We have already encountered the idea of “archetypical concepts” in Zhang’s “On Establishing Religion,” where he used this concept to relate Kant’s idea of the categories to the Yogācārin concept of karmic seeds, which he reads as the conditions for all phenomena. Hence one could say that like Kant, Zhang takes categories as subjective and also projects them transhistorically. This can be called the moment of misrecognition. That is, just as Kant mistook historically specific notions of space and time as transhistorically valid, Zhang argues that such concepts emerge out of the movement of karmic seeds, which in a sense produce history. However, Zhang’s Buddhist framework allows him to be more critical than Kant. For Kant, the categories have a normative force and reason serves to reinscribe obligation to the group. In Zhang’s view, since the archetypical concepts are just expressions of a confused understanding of ālaya consciousness, they do not bind one ethically. Thus, according to Zhang, Kant’s categories are a symptom of a problem, rather than

83

Zhang Taiyan, “Si huo lun,” 299.

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a normative standard. Zhang hence attacks the general principle for posing as normative, while actually being caused by confusion. Both the anarchists and the reformers conceived of the universal principle as an objective principle that involved an obligation to the community, whether it be to the state or some other entity. By grounding the universal principle in human archetypical concepts, Zhang denaturalizes obligations that stem from principle and concludes that human beings “are not made for the world, not made for society, not made for the country and not mutually made for other people. Hence people originally have no responsibility to the world, society, the country, or to other people.”84 Zhang sees the universal principle as a means to make people internalize their subordination to society, which he claims is new and not present with the heavenly principle or even laws. In making this argument, Zhang transposes to a new context an earlier critique of the Song Confucian concept of the heavenly principle made by the midQing scholar Dai Zhen (1724–1777). During Dai Zhen’s time there was of course no “universal principle,” but Dai famously claimed that the heavenly principle was worse than the law: When the superiors censure the inferiors on the strength of “principle,” there would be a countless number of crimes from below. When men die because they have violated the law, there are those who have pity for them, but when men die because they have violated principle, who has compassion for them?! Alas to mix Daoist and Buddhist ideas with those of the sages can result only in calamities worse than were ever inflicted by Shen Buhai and Han Fei.85

Dai’s attack on heavenly principle partly contradicts Zhang’s philosophy since while Dai considers Daoism and Buddhism as part of the problem, in Zhang’s view, they are part of the solution.86 However, Dai and Zhang share a critique of people in power using the concept of principle to naturalize domination.87 Thus, Zhang repeats Dai’s judgment above,

Ibid., 300. Dai Zhen, Tai Chen on Mencius, 85 (trans. amended). Shen Buhai and Han Feizi were Legalist philosophers during the Warring States period (475–221 bce). 86 In his essay “Shi Dai,” Zhang criticizes Dai Zhen for misunderstanding Zhuang Zi. 87 Perhaps because of his experience with affairs such as the one between He Zhen and her cousin, Zhang begins by saying that one of the things that separate proponents of the universal principle from the Song dynasty supporters of the heavenly principle is that the former give free reign to desires related to food and sex (Zhang Taiyan, 84 85

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while adding a new term, namely the universal principle: “Thus, the heavenly principle constrains people more than laws and the universal principle constrains people more than the heavenly principle.”88 Although Zhang’s evaluation is diametrically opposed to that of Liu Shipei and Liang Qichao, he bases his criticism of the universal principle on a similar reading of society. All three contend that in traditional China, although there was an emperor with more power than the common people, the common people were relatively free because the power of the court could not extend to all areas. Moreover, Zhang asserts that Confucian relations of hierarchy allow mobility: a son can become a father and so on. But the universal principle is different, and, in Zhang’s eyes, Liu and Liang did not realize that by resorting to a scientific principle to promote their ideas, they legitimated social domination from which it was much harder to escape. “Those who advocate the universal principle use society to oppress the individual and there is no place in the universe to hide.”89 As mentioned above, the idea of universal principle expresses the processes associated with China’s entry into the global capitalist system of nation-states. This involved the subordination of individuals to transnational social logics, and as Wang Hui notes, the various institutional transformations associated with the building of a modern nation-state “greatly expanded the demand for free labor.”90 Thus, it is not surprising to find in Zhang’s discussion of the four confusions a critique of late Qing intellectuals’ mystification of labor. By the time Zhang published “On the Four Confusions,” in 1908, he had become aware of Liu Shipei’s betrayal, and perhaps Zhang had Liu in mind when he presented his critique of labor. In 1907, Liu wrote an article in Tianyi bao in which he described his anarchist utopia and in the process extolled labor power and contended that to labor was human nature: “To enjoy movement is human nature, and working hard (qin gongzuo) fulfills a person’s nature of desiring to move.”91 Zhang disagrees: such a description of labor, he asserts, is precisely an example of using abstract principles to force human beings in line with

Gegudingxin de zheli, 299). This statement goes against Dai Zhen, who was concerned with liberating the idea of sentiment. 88 Zhang Taiyan, Gegudingxin de zheli, 299. 89 Ibid., 304. 90 Wang Hui, Xiandai Zhongguo sixiang de xingqi, vol. 4, 1399. 91 Liu Shipei, “Renlei jun li shuo,” 912.

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progress or evolution. Such a theory of labor as natural allows rulers and officials to coerce people into working an increasing number of hours while telling them that they are actually fulfilling their human nature. To make his point, Zhang separates the common character couplet for “work,” laodong, into its two components, lao (to labor) and dong (to move), and provides several examples of why although movement (dong) is natural, labor (lao) is not. He explains that “when it comes to movement as labor, everyone thinks of rest.”92 Zhang then makes a distinction between laboring in order to become rich and practicing a pleasurable activity, a distinction that roughly corresponds to our contemporary ideas about alienated and non-alienated labor. Zhang, however, defines these terms from a subjective perspective and does not conceive of alienation in terms of “work for someone else.” Rather he distinguishes between labor for livelihood or because of necessity, and labor or activities for enjoyment. Hence in this reading, when independent farmers till the land to feed themselves, they are laboring and will also rejoice when they can rest. Zhang further explains his point by making the following comparison: Suppose there are three people: one paints flowers on trees, one is an accountant, and the third writes family genealogies. After one day of doing the same amount of labor, the person who paints appears happy and content, but the accountant and the person who writes genealogies are eager to stop laboring. Why is this? This is because one takes labor as pleasure; the time when this person labors is also a time of pleasure. The others labor in order to seek wealth, and thus look upon labor as uninteresting and bland. Hence the two types of labor have different tendencies.93

Zhang contends that since labor is not natural, rulers need concepts such as the universal principle and its relative, the theory of evolution, to ensure that people continue to work. Both the universal principle and evolution entail a distinction between the civilized and the barbarian, which is often associated with a distinction between productive and unproductive societies. We have seen the distinction between civilization and barbarism and the concept of evolution at play in the writings of both reformers such as Kang Youwei and anarchists such as Wu Zhihui. Zhang repeatedly compares the cluster of concepts related to

92 93

Zhang Taiyan, Gegudinxin de zheli, 306. Ibid.

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the universal principle, such as evolution and the distinction between civilized and barbarian, to religion or theology (shenjiao). For example, Zhang protests that “to say that ‘work (laodong) is human nature’ can precisely be called ‘the religion of evolution.’ ”94 Judging from the various contexts in which Zhang discusses religion, we can conclude that he conceives of it as fetishism and alienation that is at the base of both daily life and political regimes. We can compare his stance to that of Ludwig Feuerbach and perhaps that of Max Stirner as well. Feuerbach criticized religion as an alienation of the human essence and Stirner claimed that Feuerbach was still religiously holding on to the concept of the human essence. While Zhang never mentions Stirner, Stirner’s works were known to Meiji Japanese anarchists. In any case, Zhang made a critique similar to Stirner’s about the lingering presence of religion in seemingly secular doctrines. However, because he places this critique in a Buddhist framework, he also scrutinizes certain fundamental categories of modernity such as science and individualism. For example, in Zhang’s view, the belief in the legitimacy of the state and in progress and science are both religious. Such religious beliefs not only legitimate the oppression of individuals in a society, but, Zhang contended, they are used as fig leafs by imperialists. Hence, unlike almost all of his contemporaries, Zhang did not think of religion and science as opposed. In fact, as we have seen, he connected key scientific concepts, such as evolution, to a religious attribution of existence to that which is illusory. Hence Zhang believed that in order to oppose the hegemony of the universal principle and other religious concepts, including those of what is conventionally considered religions such as Christianity as well as ideologies associated with science, one must return to Yogācāra Buddhism and Daoism. Although Zhang sometimes refers to Buddhism as a religion, in 1910 he wrote an essay explaining that although people call Buddhism a religion, it is really a philosophy, since it relies on the evidence of direct experience. In order to attain this experience, one needs to break free from the various ideologies associated with the state and society and retreat. In “On the Four Confusions,” Zhang makes this point using Schopenhauerian language:

94

Ibid., 307.

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The organic and inorganic realms are both an expression of the will and all worries begin when one becomes confused about its ontological source (benti). Therefore, those who seek nirvana must get rid of the will, and the path for this begins with retreat. If one retreats in order to get rid of the will, then one does not hate receiving the way (dao) from others and one must also teach it to others.95

Here we can see one of the reasons why, despite his commitment to the social dimension of Buddhism, Zhang repeatedly stresses the independence of the individual from the group or the state. The above passage repeats Zhang’s description of the quasi-objective dimension of Buddhism, namely how through actions and experience people perfume or influence their karmic seeds, which then begins a logic of evolution. As discussed in Chapter Four, Zhang believed that Hegel’s philosophy expresses this narrative of evolution in an ideological manner, but the real task is to negate the logic of evolution, thus extinguishing consciousness and karma. Zhang grounds categories in consciousness and hence asserts that the path to overcome the process by which one confuses the ontological source, namely ālaya consciousness, and to stop the illusion of an independently existing universe, “begins with retreat.” This is the opposite of religion, since “theologians believe that God gave humans their souls, and hence their bodies and lives do not belong to them.”96 In other words, in Zhang’s view, most religions, including “science,” overlook the role of human action or karma ( ye) in creating the phenomenal world. Zhang claims that the universal principle and evolution, which are embodied in Hegel’s philosophy, are all variations on this basic structure of confusion, alienation, and domination. Hence Zhang contrasts Zhuang Zi with Hegel in order to gesture toward a world beyond confusion. He notes that according to Zhuang Zi’s philosophy of the equalization of things there is no correct place, no correct taste, no correct color; it lets each things be what it wants. The understanding cannot grasp the extent to which this surpasses the universal principle. As Zhuang Zi says, “all things are so and all things are permissible (wu wu bu ran, wu wu bu ke).” The literal meaning of this phrase is the same as Hegel’s “all events are in accord with principle and all things are virtuous and beautiful (shi shi

95 96

Ibid., 302. Ibid.

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chapter five jie heli, wu wu jie shanmei).”97 However, the former takes people’s hearts and minds to be different and difficult to even out, while the latter posits a final end, which is the process by which things are realized. This is a basic and huge difference.98

Zhang notes the formal similarity between his own ideal and Hegel’s theory of Spirit, which we have seen appeared in discussions of equality during the late Qing. Moreover, famous Meiji Japanese philosophers such as Inoue Enryō argued that Buddhism was really just like Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit. On the Chinese side, the universal principle drew on Western conceptions of scientific laws and the Song Confucians’ attempt to unite epistemology and morality in the heavenly principle. However, the heavenly principle itself developed out of the Jin dynasty thinker Guo Xiang’s interpretation of principle in the Zhuang Zi. Zhang separates Guo’s concept of “things creating themselves” from its role in the history of the Song dynasty heavenly principle. The above passage in “On the Four Confusions” adumbrates Zhang’s move to develop Guo Xiang’s interpretation of Zhuang Zi’s philosophy of equalization, which he extends in what many take to be Zhang’s masterpiece, “An Interpretation.” An Interpretation of “A Discussion On the Equalization of Things” Zhang was extremely proud of this piece and in his autobiography, he exclaimed that in this text, “each character is worth one thousand gold pieces.”99 In his “Self-Narration of Changes in My Thought,” published in 1916, Zhang explains that the idea of writing a treatise on Zhuang Zi’s “On the Equalization of Things” emerged as he was lecturing on the subject to Chinese exchange students in Japan from around 1908 to 1910. Among the students were a number of intellectuals such as Lu Xun, Zhou Zuoren, and Qian Xiantong, who would become famous during the New Culture Movement less than a decade later. While recounting his experience lecturing to students about Zhuang Zi, he tells his readers that he wrote this treatise on equalization partly

This must be Zhang’s rendition of the “real is the rational and the rational is real.” 98 Zhang Taiyan, Gegudingxin de zheli, 304. 99 In “Zishu xueshu cidi” cited in Tang Zhijun, Zhang Taiyan nianpu changbian, 346. 97

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because he was dissatisfied with previous interpreters of Zhuang Zi, including Guo Xiang.100 Zhang Taiyan of course goes beyond Guo Xiang by using Yogācāra Buddhism and modern Western philosophy to interpret Zhuang Zi. However, we should not underestimate Guo’s role in Zhang’s interpretation of Zhuang Zi. First, the text of the Zhuang Zi that Zhang used was the one that Guo Xiang had edited and redacted and commented on—Guo’s was the only version available in Zhang’s time.101 But more than this indirect influence, Zhang cites Guo approvingly in a number of places when he repeatedly expresses Guo’s idea of each thing following its own course. Earlier in this chapter, we saw that Guo Xiang proposed a cosmological theory to mediate the conflicts between the families of hereditary power and the imperial center during the Jin dynasty. Zhang attempts to make this theory do new work by placing it in the international context of the early twentieth century. Scholars have shifted between arguing that “An Interpretation” affirms particularity or individualism and that it extols community and universality.102 In fact, Zhang’s interpretation of Zhuang Zi is complex because by combining Guo Xiang’s interpretations of Zhuang Zi’s idea of equalization, Yogācāra Buddhism, and elements of German idealism, Zhang aims to criticize both the universality of the universal principle and the particularisms embodied in individualism and nationalism. One way he does this is by claiming that both universality and particularity are produced by the processes of karmic consciousness. If we follow Moishe Postone in thinking of the opposition between particularity and universality as being at the center of modern thought conditioned by capitalism,103 we can interpret Zhang as struggling to think of a way to escape this opposition, even though he does not connect this opposition to capitalism. We have already seen him negate the universal as principle and throughout his writings on Buddhism he negates the individual or particular self. Zhang constantly gropes for a way to express something beyond mundane concepts, such as universality and particularity. Thus he

Zhang Taiyan, “Zishu sixiang qianbian zhi ji,” 589–90. On Guo Xiang’s commentary and redaction of the Zhuang Zi, see Ziporyn, The Penumbra Unbound, 4. 102 The two extremes are represented by Wong Young-tsu and Wang Hui respectively. 103 Postone, Time, Labor, and Social Domination. 100 101

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begins his interpretation by showing that Zhuang Zi’s idea of “equalizing things” involves making distinctions without concepts, something Kant and Hegel would have thought impossible: “Equalizing things” refers to absolute equality. If we look at its meaning carefully, it does not only refer to equality among sentient beings, such that there is no inferior and superior. “It is only when one is detached from speech, detached from words and detached from the mind taking objects as its causal conditions, that one understands absolute equality.” This is compatible with the “equalization of things.”104

In the first lines of this text, Zhang already pushes the limits of the concept of equality by juxtaposing modern Western, Buddhist, and Daoist conceptions of equality. It is well known that late Qing intellectuals often drew on the Buddhist conception of equality to discuss modern Western political theory since they used the Buddhist term pingdeng to translate “equality.” However, Zhang highlights the tension between Buddhist and Western concepts of equality. Then he interprets the Buddhist concept of equality as emptiness in light of Zhuang Zi / Guo Xiang’s idea of equalization (qi) as difference. Through these two gestures, Zhang provides an alternative to the hegemony of the universal principle. But both the Buddhist and Daoist ideas of equality/equalization resist conceptualization and elude clear and definitive definition. Takada Atsushi notes that the phrases “It is only when . . .” come from the Awakening of the Mahāyāna Faith (Da sheng qi xin lun), which suggests a reference to this sutra’s idea that “since everything is one mind, we call it suchness” (zhenru, tathata).105 However, it is significant that Zhang does not cite that portion of the text and on the next page of the essay begins to explain what such a leaving could imply. The above passage also suggests that although Zhang is definitely critical of the ordinary use of language and concepts, he clearly does not think that silent contemplation is the answer. Rather, we see in Zhang something like writing under erasure, a new use of signs.

Zhang Taiyan, “Qiwulun shi,” 4. Takada Atsushi, Shingai kakumei to Shō Heirin no seibutsu ronshaku, 137. This is the context of the quote in the Awakening of the Mahāyāna Faith in the original: 離言說 相離名字相離心緣相。畢竟平等無有變異不可破壞。唯是一心故名真如. From Muller, Digital Dictionary of Buddhism. 104 105

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One only uses traces to guide transformations. Without words nothing can appear and words have the nature of returning. Thus one uses words to signify things. This is what is said in the following passage [from the Zhuang Zi]: “In speaking there are no words. One speaks one’s whole life and has never spoken. One does not speak throughout one’s life and has never stopped speaking (wei chang bu yan).”106

The radical changes taking place during the late Qing required intellectuals to develop new terms in order to make sense of their world and translate new concepts. Before standardized Japanese translations became hegemonic, late Qing intellectuals such as Yan Fu borrowed creatively from classical texts in order to create new meanings. However, Zhang goes beyond this practice, since he is not just mining the myriad characters in classical Chinese to come up with hypothetical equivalents to Western terms.107 Rather, he formulates a radical critique of what he considers to be distinctions and value judgments that have become hegemonic, and so he must not only use arcane terms, but constantly resort to paradoxes that push language and signification to its limits. Perhaps nowhere are these paradoxes more forceful than when he is discussing his use of language in this text: To refute a theory with a theory is not a theory of equalization. Why? This is because one establishes the refutation. When we say something is equalization, it already goes against equalization. Why? This is because one excludes the unequalized. That is why the “Yu Yan” chapter says, “Without words there is equalization. Equalization and words are not equal. Words and equalization are not equal.”108

Reading the above passages together, we should not think that Zhang’s “equalization” simply refers to an ineffable state. Rather, Zhang is trying to uncover the tension between words and equalization, which mimics the tension between things. He makes this point in a key passage in this text: “To equalize the unequal is the position of the lowly scholar, but to see the equal in the unequal is the theory of the elevated philosopher.”109 This passage may seem opaque, but given that Zhang opposes his philosophy of equalization to Hegel’s teleological vision of history, it is Zhang Taiyan, “Qiwulun shi,” 6. This is the process Lydia Liu describes as translingual practice, through which we can say that “new” (neither Chinese nor Western) meanings are produced primarily as an unintended consequence. Zhang, on the other hand, is much more reflective about the production of new meaning. See Lydia Liu, Translingual Practice. 108 Zhang Taiyan, “Qiwulun shi,” 4. 109 Ibid. 106 107

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possible to interpret him as groping for a concept of difference free from conceptualization, a gesture we may find in Henri Bergson and more recently in Gilles Deleuze. In particular, in Deleuze’s interpretation of Bergson, he distinguishes difference from determination. According to Deleuze, Hegel’s dialectic represents a linear movement because his idea of difference is exterior to the thing itself and hence inevitably involves both determination and contradiction. We see this in a number of the antinomies that pervade his thought such as the opposition between being and nothing, or between particularity and universality. Deleuze is clearly attempting to draw on Bergson to think his way outside such oppositions, and claims that in Bergson’s view “not only will vital difference not be a determination, but it will rather be the opposite—given a choice (au choix) it would select indetermination itself.”110 Of course, were it merely indetermination, Hegel could retort that in essence Bergson is simply unable to think difference and thus the phrase “given a choice” is crucial. In other words, it would be best not to choose between the determinate/indeterminate opposition, but from our usual conceptual grid, this type of “vital difference” can only appear as indeterminate. To express something like this paradoxical determination, Zhang cannot stop at leaving words, concepts, and mind. He alludes to a mark made in this non-conceptual space by form. We can understand Zhang as attempting to think of an equality that avoids the contradiction between the universal and the particular, or the antinomies between the equal and the unequal, which he sees in Kant and Hegel. Of course, Zhang contends that it is not just because of Hegel that we are stuck in more mundane antinomies related to language and concepts; rather our whole conceptual framework, which is generated by karmic seeds and the movement from the various levels of consciousness, confronts us as an inescapable logic. Zhang repeatedly claims that such a Yogācārin analysis of the production of categories actually anticipates Kant’s idea of categories as the conditions for the possibility of experience.

110 Deleuze, “La conception de la différence chez Bergson,” 92; idem, “Bergson’s Conception of Difference,” 50 (trans. amended).

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The Critique of Imperialism and Religion from the Standpoint of “Equalization” Zhang believed that the production of categories also leads to politically dangerous consequences, such as those analyzed above in relation to the universal principle. In “An Interpretation,” he does not mention the universal principle, perhaps because he has somewhat retreated from politics, but he constantly refers to religion and hence continues the problematic he began in his Minbao period. For example, he notes that if conventional boundaries or distinctions are made, there will always be a tendency to oppression: If in one’s sensibility there is the distinction between this and that or in the mind there is affirmation and negation, then even if one has universal love and benefits all things and the self and others are sufficient, there is already a distinction between boundaries and so what equalization is there? . . . If one relies on the spirit above as a family temple and follows god when using the mind, although one can temporarily practice universal love, and even stop war for a while, the space where the standard arises can clearly be measured. The master-subject [mind] relies on the magician/shaman. If people all have a mind, when they meet someone who violates their ideas they will attack them and even if one steps on corpses and produces buckets of blood by killing, one will still say that one is grasping a heavenly dictate. In this case, universal love is more cruel than humaneness and righteousness and humaneness and righteousness is more ruthless than law.111

Although Zhang does not attack the concept of the universal principle, he is still attacking an ideology through which subjects internalize and naturalize oppression. As we saw above, Zhang’s concept of religion has greater breadth than the conventional definitions of the term. In his view, religion refers to any attempt to posit a definite goal to history or to imagine an origin to the universe and derive universal ethical values from it. Moreover, these problems issue from the existence of a mind or a self, which gives rise to relations of domination related to religion. In this text, we see some formulations structurally similar to his earlier writings, but with religion taking the place of the universal principle. For example, in “An Interpretation,” universal love, which refers to Mohism and to Christianity, ends up being worse than Confucianism (humaneness), which in turn is worse than law. In asserting

111

Zhang Taiyan, “Qiwulun shi,” 4.

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this, Zhang continues his earlier reflection that the universal principle is worse than the law, namely that underneath the superficial appearance of legal oppression is a type of subjective activity or indeed the existence of the subject itself. In “An Interpretation,” Zhang is more philosophical than in his Minbao writings and rarely discusses topics such as race, nationalism, or even society. However, he repeatedly warns that universals and related distinctions can be used to promote imperialism. He makes this point most clearly in his interpretation of an obscure passage in the Zhuang Zi: Long ago, Yao asked Shun: I wish to attack the countries Zong, Kuai, Xu Ao.112 Why is it that I am not at ease on my South-facing throne? Shun replied: These three countries exist among mugwort and brushwood. Why should you be unhappy? In the past, ten suns came out together and shined on the myriad things. How much more in a person whose power is close to the sun.113

Scholars of the Zhuang Zi have had difficulty interpreting this passage; most modern commentators simply avoid it. For example, A. C. Graham notes that this “story seems out of place.”114 But Zhang claims that this is one of the most important passages in the chapter “On the Equalization of Things,” and contends that it is actually a critique of imperialism. Zhang asserts that previously the only person who had understood Zhuang Zi’s point in this section was Guo Xiang, when he commented: “It depends on the sage to clarify the principle of equalization.” “Thus, he asks a strange question and provokes a response. The dwelling place of things is never lowly and so mugwort and brushwood are the mysterious spaces of the three kings. Would it be in agreement with the comprehensive way, if one attempted to change the aspiration of the people who live in the mugwort and brushwood and compel them to follow one’s self ? Thus Shun is unhappy and cannot get it off of his mind. Let everything follow its own nature and be where it is. There is no near, far, or deep. Things are as they are. They all receive their ultimate. Thus,

112 There is some debate about whether the character xu (胥) should actually be gu (骨). See Zhuang Zi, Sō Ji, 74. 113 Cited by Zhang Taiyan in “Qiwulun shi,” 39; English translation (which I have consulted but amended) in Chuang Tzu: The Inner Chapters, 58. 114 Chuang Tzu: The Inner Chapters, 58.

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the others are all appropriate and I am always happy.”115 Only Zi Xuan [Guo Xiang] understands Zhuang Zi’s main point.116

This is a classic expression of Guo Xiang’s philosophy of each thing following its own nature, which was a response to the context of the Jin dynasty. But Zhang believes that the problem of making other people follow oneself has plagued history—and especially recent times—after Zhuang Zi.117 He claims that throughout history rulers have used the distinction between civilized and barbarian to justify invading other countries and yet assert that they are bringing culture to backward countries. However, those who intend to annex other countries appear to reject the label of devouring other people and depend on lofty words. For example, they will say that they are transforming the barbarians into civilized people. Thus the perspective in which the civilized and barbarians are not equal is clearly the whistling arrow that signals the actions of [tyrants like] King Jie and Robber Zhi.118

In “On the Five Negations,” Zhang notes that European countries use discourses of equality and civilization to legitimate invasion, but in “An Interpretation,” he claims that the roots of this thinking go back to Mo Zi and Mencius. He cites a passage in the Mencius as evidence that the ancient king Tang and Yi Yin used religion in order to control other countries. Hence, although throughout history imperialists have been distinguishing between civilized people and barbarians, apart from Zhuang Zi, scholars have been fooled by their protestations. Zhang explains that if one takes the equalization of things as a standard “even if one cannot end wars, still rulers will not be able to use the distinction between civilization and barbarism in order to force people to do what they do not want to do.”119 In short, Zhang sees himself as uncovering an ideological mechanism through which rulers and invaders fool the people. In this context, Zhang returns to the anarchists, whom he berates for believing that they promote equality, while they actually only reproduce

Feng Yu-lan, A Taoist Classic Chuang-tzu, 51. Zhang Taiyan, “Qiwulun shi,” 39. 117 Ibid., 6–7. 118 Ibid., 39. The last phrase draws from the “Zai You” (“Leave It Alone”) chapter of the Zhuang Zi; The Complete Works of Chuang Tzu, 118; Zhuang Zi yigu, 193. 119 Zhang Taiyan, “Qiwulun shi,” 40. 115 116

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the logic of domination. He develops an argument that he began in “On the Four Confusions” with respect to labor: If we look at modern anarchists, they say that they advocate equality and doing away with countries, cities, states, and official gates. They want to get rid of chastity, purity, trickery, and sycophancy. But they still uphold the distinction between civilization and barbarians. They definitely seek to make machinery increasingly industrialized and make food and clothing increasingly beautiful. They work the body and physical form in order to achieve this end and claim that this is the appropriate occupation for people. How confused this is! Thus the theory that accords with the task120 of the day takes equalizing the perspective that separates civilization and barbarism as the ultimate.121

Zhang criticizes the anarchists on the grounds that as long as people are conscious of the self, they will inevitably move in the direction of annexing countries and hence states will be inevitable. But in his view, the anarchists are not even moving in the correct direction, since they endorse the expansion of the consciousness of the self rather than annihilating it by returning this consciousness to its conditions of possibility, namely emptiness and equalization. Of course, Zhang realized that for his proposal to have any political relevance, there would need to be a mass-scale extinction of consciousness; in other words, everyone would in some way have to move from what Buddhists call the mundane perspective, in which things have identity, to the realm of truth, in which things are empty and equal (qi). The Political Alternative of Equalization In “An Interpretation,” Zhang only discusses the political consequences of his Buddhist/Daoist cosmology in extremely abstract terms, citing obscure passages in the Zhuang Zi. For example, he cites a passage from the “Turning of Heaven”: with respect to the laws of China, “if one can reflect them on the earth, then one is an exalted emperor.”122

The second edition, published in 1914, replaces 务 (task) with 物 (things). Zhang Taiyan, “Qiwulun shi,” 40. 122 Ibid., 6; Zhuang Zi yigu, 268; The Complete Works of Chuang Tzu, 154. Watson translates 九洛之事 as “instructions of the Nine Lo” and then glosses “Nine Lo” as a reference to the Great Plan section of the Book of Documents. I follow the Tang dynasty Chinese commentator, Cheng Xuanying, who believes that 九洛 refers to 九州 (China). 120 121

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Zhang comments that Zhuang Zi puts these words in the mouth of the Shaman Wu, who suggested that rulers should just follow nature when governing an empire. The movement of heaven and the place of the earth and the sun, moon, clouds, and rain cannot be suddenly known. Therefore, people stole the categories [such as the rites and music] of Yu the Great and Jizi and use these categories to clog the ears and eyes of the people and take the spiritual implement [the symbol of rulership]. So, one has a ruler because there is no other choice. In the extreme [best] case there is no ruler.123

As in Zhang’s earlier work, this passage justifies the temporary necessity for a ruler. At times he even claims it is unfortunate that there is no tyrant like the Qin emperor to get rid of all the books that use civilization to promote imperialism.124 But he ends the opening section of “An Interpretation” with an optimistic note in which he slightly alters a phrase from the Book of Changes: heaven “allows clouds to scud and rain to fall and things in their different categories to flow into forms.”125 The notion of “different categories” fits with the main theme in “An Interpretation,” but Zhang uses these words to draw a more historically specific conclusion: “when clouds scud and rain falls, then Rome (Daqin) will lose its pride and the scholars of eastern Rome (Fulin zhi shi), will lose their arrogance. This is not so far away.”126 The double reference to Rome is actually a reference to the Western imperialist powers, who are proud of their civilization, but will eventually lose their power and give way to a world of Buddhist/Daoist equalization.127 Zhang rarely discusses the details of a political or cultural system of equalization. In “On the Five Negations,” we have the statement about wandering workers and we can assume that Zhang is still committed to some version of this ideal. But the question remains, what would this mean in terms of equalizing the distinctions between civilization and barbarism? Zhang’s treatment of this problem is intimately linked to his views on language. Zhang invokes tradition to dislodge the terms “civilization” and “barbarism” from their usual content and thus suggests new

Zhang Taiyan, “Qiwulun shi,” 6. Ibid., 40. 125 Wang Bi, The Classic of the Changes, 129. This is in the commentary on the first hexagram (qian). Chinese text in Wang Bi ji jiaoshi, 213. 126 Zhang Taiyan, “Qiwulun shi,” 7. 127 Takada Atsushi, Shingai kakumei to Shō Heirin no seibutsu ronshaku, 145. 123 124

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possibilities. There are two significant passages where he discusses this issue. First, he defines equalization in relation to the civilized and the barbaric: “In the mundane world there are ‘cultivated city-people’ (du) and the ‘barbaric rural folk’ ( ye). If the ‘barbaric rural folk’ are happy in their lowness and the ‘cultivated city-people’ are content with their culture and the two do not hurt one another, this is equality (pingdeng).”128 However, Zhang notes that this is not possible because the cultivated will use their “cultivation” to “steal the other people’s lowness.”129 In other words, the categories are such that they cannot exist independently of each other since they contain desire related to the “small wisdom” that is linked to the consciousness of the self. Cultivation and civilization inevitably involve looking down on the barbaric and the city eventually expands to encompass the rural areas, just like the so-called “civilized” countries invade other, “barbaric nations.” Zhang claims that this explains the recurrence of imperialism clothed in nicesounding words. Because both nice-sounding words like civilization and their opposites are linked to the perspective of the self and of the mind or consciousness, Zhang cannot criticize imperialism for being barbaric. Hence whenever he names the imperialists, he often uses archaic terms, such as Tao Tie, Tao Wu, and Qiong Qi.130 These three figures are legendary tyrants who are described in the Zuo Commentary (Zuo Zhuan), but they have become mythical figures. They invoke the ancient pre-Qin world, when China was a kingdom supposedly surrounded by beastraces/rulers on four sides, Hun Dun, Tao Tie, Tao Wu, and Qiong Qi. In the preface to “An Interpretation,” Zhang explicitly compares this ancient period, namely Zhuang Zi’s period, to his own and notes Zhuang Zi’s contemporary relevance. In the past at the end of the reign of Cang Ji131 the way of the world was lost. There were powerful deceitful people everywhere. The people in the world lived in hard times. Only Zhuang Zi knew that the knowledge of sages resulted in calamity. He attacked the superfluous nature of things such as rank and salary. . . . Did not Zhuang Zi write this theory in a period of worries or crisis? [He wrote] “After a thousand generations,

Zhang Taiyan, “Qiwulun shi,” 6. Ibid. 130 Ibid., 7, 40. 131 Cang Ji was a king during the Zhou dynasty and so here Zhang refers to the end of the Zhou dynasty. 128 129

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one can see that there will definitely be a time when people eat each other.”132 Today is precisely such a time.133

By juxtaposing the ancient world with the twentieth-century world, Zhang suggests both a domestic and international crisis. Domestically, people are only worried about profit and salary. Internationally states have turned into imperialist man-eaters that bring to mind the beastraces/rulers on four sides, Hun Dun, Tao Tie, Tao Wu, and Qiong Qi. In short, China and other weak countries are surrounded by beast-races waiting to devour them. These four terms refer to mythical beasts that have merely fictional existence, especially when placed in the context of a scientific worldview. For example, the Classic of Divine Wonders (Shenyi jing ) describes Tao Wu as having “a human face, tiger’s feet, pig’s teeth, and a tail eight feet long.”134 Zhang hopes that by invoking the fantastical and mythical, he can make his critique and yet avoid a simple re-inscription of the civilization-barbarism dichotomy, which he believes is presupposed by the scientific worldview. With respect to the other side of this dichotomy, namely civilization, Zhang gestures back to the premodern use of the characters used to signify civilization (wenming) and engages in what we might call subversive “translingual practice.” In classical Chinese texts, the term wenming referred to Confucian culture and also served to exclude barbarians— namely those who did not practice the Confucian rituals (see Chapter Two). However, Zhang uses the term as it occurs in the Jin dynasty scholar Wang Bi’s commentary on the Book of Changes, where wenming is linked to Daoist cosmology. Zhang introduces and cites Wang Bi’s commentary to the “Contrariety” hexagram of the Book of Changes: Wang Bi says in his commentary to the Kui (Contrariety) Hexagram: “To gaze upon the filthiest of things from the most cultured and enlightened (wenming) vantage point is certainly Contrariety at its utmost. There is nothing more filthy than a pig covered with mud. But when Contrariety is brought to its most extreme, it means that things will tend to unity, and when differences are at their most extreme, it means that things will tend to harmony. ‘Things might be oversize, deceptive or strange, but the Dao tends to make them all into one.’”135

This is a line from the Geng Sangchu chapter of the Zhuang Zi. Zhang Taiyan, Zhang Taiyan quanji, vol. 6, 3. 134 Cited from the Hanyu da cidian, vol. 4, 1350. 135 Zhang Taiyan, “Qiwulun shi,” 40; Wang Bi, The Classic of the Changes, 372–73; Chinese text in idem, Wang Bi ji jiaoshi, 407. 132 133

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This passage expresses what some would call the traditional Chinese dialectic, which famous twentieth-century philosophers such as Zhang Shiying have compared to Hegel’s dialectic. However, to understand Zhang Taiyan’s point, we must emphasize that such a dialectic does not have any directionality. Moreover, although contraries are overcome, there is no transcendental subject beyond distinctions. Harmony (he) presupposes difference rather than eradicating it. The final line in the passage above is crucial and brings us back to a major theme in Zhang’s “An Interpretation,” since in it we see Zhang citing Wang Bi to explain Zhuang Zi, but in the final line, Wang Bi himself is citing from “The Discussion of the Equalization of Things” chapter of the Zhuang Zi. This passage may appear to refer to a resolution in unity, but we should be careful about to how we understand the term “one.” Zhang claims that the above passage in the Zhuang Zi is extremely important and he emphasizes that its implications are different “from Hegel’s theory of being, nothing and becoming.”136 The passage brings us back to a statement in the Zhuang Zi that Zhang quoted in “On the Four Confusions”: Why so? By being so? Why not so? By being not so. It is inherent in a thing that from somewhere that’s so of it; all things are so and all things are permissible. . . . Things might be oversize, deceptive or strange, but the Dao tends to make them all into one.137

Zhang claims that it is not only Hegel who does not understand this, but that even Guo Xiang and the Buddhists failed to grasp Zhuang Zi’s point. In Zhang’s view the passage shows that unity implies affirming things without rational ordering.138 Thus again Zhang posits a world in which people are not dominated by the quasi-objective myth of reason or principle. Zhang between Two Worlds The paradox of course is that the self necessarily constructs the illusions of reason and hence until the world is transformed such that there is no self, Zhang contends that one has no other choice but to

136 137 138

Zhang Taiyan, “Qiwulun shi,” 24. Cited in ibid., 19. Zhang Taiyan, “Qiwulun shi,” 23.

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live in a fictional world, while knowing that it is a fiction. He believes that Zhuang Zi is discussing this problem in his famous parable of the monkeys: A monkey keeper handing out nuts said, “Three every morning and four every evening.” The monkeys were all in a rage. “All right then,” he said, “four every morning and three in the evening.” The monkeys were all delighted. Without anything being changed in name or substance, their pleasure and anger were put to use; his too was the “That’s it” which goes by circumstance. This is why the sage smoothes things out on the potter’s wheel of heaven. It is this that is called “walking along two paths.”139

Zhang contends that this parable is really about both the illusion of the existence of independent causes or reasons and the understanding that reasons as fictions still move people. He claims that with the phrase “their pleasure and anger were put to use” Zhuang Zi clarifies the fact that people mistakenly believe that sages know about causes while foolish people do not. However, in actuality, the issue is not about causality in any ordinary sense. Rather, as Zhang notes, “the sage knows the contradictory nature of the world inside, but must still appear to follow the world.”140 We can guess that this is the situation in which Zhang Taiyan saw himself in 1910, a year before he would be surprised by the outbreak of the Republican Revolution. He dreamt of a world organized around Buddhist and Daoist principles without the domination of the universal principle and other by-products of self-consciousness and knew that he was literally imagining something empirically impossible. After all, the empirical world itself was produced by slippages and misrecognitions of ālaya consciousness or the Dao and this world had to be negated before true equalization could be realized. He perhaps saw himself like Kang Youwei, his archenemy, as a Boddhisattva who had to bring other people to enlightenment and also find ways to deal better with existing institutions, such as the state. Thus, towards the end of “An Interpretation,” Zhang repeatedly reminds readers that according to both Zhuang Zi and Yogācāra Buddhism, the Boddhisattva or the sage does not rest in nirvana because “things are always already nirvana.” The problem is that people do not realize this and this lack of realization will inevitably reproduce the mundane world with all its political problems, which will then confront the individual as objective karma. 139 140

Ibid. A. C. Graham trans. 54 (trans. amended). Zhang Taiyan, “Qiwulun shi,” 23.

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Hence towards the end of “An Interpretation,” Zhang cites a passage from the Zhuang Zi which perhaps expresses his feeling of isolation from his contemporaries and the relative lack of real consequences stemming from his complex philosophy: “Veiled and arcane, he [the sage] is the one who has never been comprehended.”141 Conclusion Zhang Taiyan reinterpreted classical Chinese thought and Yogācāra Buddhism both to attack practices and institutions in the world of appearance and to point to a world of equalization beyond the mundane world. As I have suggested in previous chapters, the mundane world of modernity can be described as a world governed by oppositions between subjects, objects, individuals, and communities. Following Lukács, we can ground this world in the social forms of capitalism. Aspects of both this worldview and its material conditions, namely the capitalism-nation-state complex, were in the process of entering China during the late Qing. Although Zhang did not explicitly recognize this, he clearly resisted some of the basic categories of the so-called scientific worldview and he opposed imperialism, which was one of the means by which such a system spread and legitimated itself. In other words, Zhang used Buddhist categories to grasp more fundamentally than his contemporaries the movement of capitalism and nationalism as totalizing forms, as cultural and not just economic or political. Hence Zhang not only attacked inequalities, but targeted, along with linear time and the universal principle, an emergent worldview. His ultimate goal was to negate all of these phenomena by stopping existence itself. Zhang’s legacy of anti-imperialism would be continued by the May Fourth intellectuals and by the communists but they would also inherit their anarchist forerunners’ ideas of progress and reproduce concepts analogous to the distinction between civilized and barbarian. Zhang’s own legacy and the arguments he made were obscured as later historians placed his work in an evolutionary paradigm. The issues that Zhang’s philosophy of equalization summons but never resolves are how to think politics outside of these dominant paradigms or how to envision more concretely his abstract negation of the modern world, a world of equalization, in relation to political practice. 141

Zhuang Zi, The Complete Works of Chuang Tzu, 373–44; idem, Zhuang Zi yigu, 714.

CONCLUSION

ZHANG TAIYAN, LU XUN, WANG HUI: THE POLITICS OF IMAGINING A BETTER FUTURE In the preceding chapters, we have seen how Zhang moved from a nationalist narrative of anti-Manchu theatrical identification to an abstract philosophical critique of his contemporary world based on Yogācāra Buddhism. Zhang at times drew on the religious power of Buddhism to buttress his nationalist narrative, and in this sense, despite the differences in their political goals, he shared with Liang Qichao and others the project of using Buddhism to unite the individual with the nation. However, Zhang’s deeper understanding of Buddhism enabled him to gesture beyond mere nationalist politics and drove him to question the foundations of what we call modernity. For example, in Chapter Five we examined Zhang’s critique of late Qing intellectuals’ concept of the universal principle of science and morality along with his search for an anarchic utopia. We can see the significance of Zhang’s Buddhist writings by looking at the work of Lu Xun and Wang Hui, since they are prominent intellectuals, respectively at the beginning and end of the twentieth century, who construct a critique of modernity partially inspired by Zhang Taiyan. Lu Xun was perhaps Zhang Taiyan’s most famous student and Wang Hui, one of the most famous intellectuals in China today, was a student of one of Lu Xun’s disciples, Tang Tao (1913–1981). Lu Xun is arguably the most famous intellectual of twentieth-century China and is often called the father of modern Chinese literature. Since his death in 1936, he has been heralded as one of China’s most important enlightenment intellectuals. Examining Lu Xun’s work allows us to understand the influence Zhang had and continues to have. Lu Xun’s ideas of resistance, as Japanese scholars such as Kiyama Hideo have argued, have their roots in Zhang’s Buddhist voice. Lu Xun continued Zhang’s critique of rationalization in capitalism, but unlike Zhang, he countered this trend by affirming popular religion, particularly the idea of ghosts. Wang Hui’s recent interpretation of ghosts in Lu Xun’s work brings out the contemporary significance of Zhang’s works by drawing on the trope of ghosts to point to a future beyond capitalism and

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adumbrating a different type of revolution. That is, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, when people are bidding adieu to revolution, Wang attempts to revive ideas of radical change by invoking Lu Xun. Even if we do not accept the frameworks with which Zhang Taiyan, Lu Xun, and Wang Hui attempted to resolve the problems of modernity, we can see their responses as part of a larger trend and also realize that we continue to grapple with many of the issues they faced. The Significance of Zhang Taiyan’s Writings Scholars of Zhang Taiyan have tended to regard his works as significant primarily because of his role as an anti-Manchu propagandist for the 1911 Revolution and as a prominent scholar of national learning. From the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949 to the early 1980s, Chinese interpreters of Zhang’s writings saw the significance of his Buddhist writings by placing them in the context of revolution. Throughout this book, I have argued that these writings have implications that go well beyond mere anti-Manchu revolution and point to more fundamental change. However, after the failure of the 1989 social movement, Chinese intellectuals tended to become suspicious of revolution. The prominent Chinese intellectuals of the 1980s, Li Zehou and Liu Zaifu, popularized this anti-revolutionary position in their widely disseminated tract, Gaobie geming huiwang ershishiji Zhongguo (Farewell Revolution).1 This text not only targeted the concept of revolution in general, but specifically attacked the 1911 Revolution and many late Qing radical thinkers, including Tan Sitong and Zhang Taiyan. Although anti-revolutionary writings such as this might appear conservative, they also opened up a way to examine the significance of Zhang’s work free from an evolutionary narrative of history that described a progression from the 1911 Revolution, to May Fourth radicalism, and thence to the victory of the Chinese Communist Party in 1949.2 In the West, scholars responded to global trends that made Zhang’s work significant in new ways. As David Harvey and Frederic Jameson

1 Li Zehou and Liu Zaifu, Gaobie geming. See also Van Dongen, “Goodbye Radicalism.” 2 In postwar Japan sinologists combined a criticism of evolution with a celebration of the Chinese revolution. I will deal with the Japanese context in a separate work on the Japanese sinologist and literary critic Takeuchi Yoshimi.

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have pointed out, since the 1970s with the global crisis in the fordist welfare state and the advent of neo-liberal capitalism, scholars have shifted their theoretical framework away from master narratives. They have thus increasingly criticized the Enlightenment and put reason into question. While the relationship between changes between the transformations in global capitalism and theoretical trends is complex, the loss of faith in the rational structures of the state accompanied the actual dismantling of state-socialist alternatives and caused people to mistrust teleological visions of history. In short, although the new phase of global capitalism had two sides to it, being both totalizing and fragmentary, postmodern theory has stressed the fragmentary, the irrational, and the contingent. From this perspective, Zhang’s Buddhist voice, especially his critiques of evolution and the state, appear in a new light. Throughout this book, I have discussed Zhang’s Buddhist voice as a response to China’s incorporation into the totalizing dynamic of the global capitalist world. In Chapter Three, we have seen how Zhang’s Buddhism was intimately connected with his personal experience in jail. Even though Zhang at times used Buddhist ideas to buttress a collective revolutionary subjectivity, his Buddhist voice encompassed a logic that went beyond immediate political goals. Indeed it is this transcendence that makes his work speak to capitalist modernity at a deeper level. Zhang used a Yogācāra framework to criticize the idea of progress, the hegemony of the group, and the idea of the state. This critique was more than a mere anti-Manchu polemic—it was a response to the rationalizing tendencies of global capitalist modernity as it unfolded in early twentieth-century China. The significance of Zhang’s Buddhist writings in Chinese history, however, may not be obvious. Unlike his anti-Manchu writings, his Buddhist-inspired essays cannot be easily connected with any major historical event, such as the 1911 Revolution. Indeed, Zhang was criticized during his time for turning the People’s Journal into the “Buddha’s Journal” and betraying the revolution. Yet, it was precisely because Buddhism provided Zhang some distance from contemporary politics that it opened up a space for him to pose fundamental questions about politics and ontology, questions that were part of a global trend to resist the rationalizing forces of global capitalist modernity. In this sense, Zhang Taiyan continued the legacy of post-Hegelian philosophers, such as Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, to whose works he was introduced in Japan. Through Zhang’s confrontation with post-Hegelianism, his

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writings during the years immediately before the 1911 Revolution posit an obscure Buddhist alternative to global modernity without explicitly grounding thought in global capitalism. Moreover, although Chinese Marxists seem to have surpassed Zhang with their explicit critique of capitalism and imperialism, they have endorsed an evolutionary or progressive vision of history, which continues the legacy of late Qing proponents of the universal principle. The logic of Zhang’s analysis leads to the inescapable conclusion that the late Qing idea of the universal principle expressed the teleology of the global capitalist system of nation-states. By the same logic, then, Chinese Marxist ideology has been inextricably linked to the rationalizing forces of global capitalism, which it has grasped one-sidedly as class struggle. When the Chinese Marxist discourse became hegemonic, Zhang Taiyan and other radical writers were stuffed into the model of class struggle and thus their resistance to the rationalizing tendencies of global modernity was obscured. For this reason, throughout this book, I have attempted to contextualize modern thought and Zhang Taiyan’s Buddhist writings in particular by elaborating a theory of capitalism as involving a dynamic that is more fundamental than merely a conflict of interests or class struggle. We will return to this in the end of this chapter when we discuss ghosts and the possibility of a future. Lu Xun and the Resistance to Groups from the Heart Zhang Taiyan’s most famous disciple, Lu Xun, continued the resistance to rationalization. It is well known that Lu Xun studied with Zhang Taiyan when both of them were in Tokyo. Lu Xun moved Tokyo in spring 1906 and Zhang arrived that summer, after his release from jail. From 1907 to 1908, Lu Xun published several essays in which were aspects inspired by Zhang’s work. Shortly after Zhang Taiyan’s death in 1936, Lu Xun praised Zhang’s Minbao writings because they used religion to inspire self-confidence and bolster national morality.3 However, the influence of Zhang Taiyan’s writings during his Buddhist phase goes much deeper than mere national morality. In December 1908 Lu Xun published “On a Refutation of Malevolent Voices” (“A Refutation”) about five months after Zhang Taiyan published “On the Four Confusions.” It is likely that Lu Xun modeled “A Refutation” on

3

See Lu Xun, “Guanyu Taiyan xiansheng ersan shi.”

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Zhang’s “On the Four Confusions.” Recall that Zhang’s essay criticized the theory of evolution, materialism, the universal principle, and the idea of nature. Lu Xun’s essay presented the gist of Zhang’s critique, especially with respect to the liberation of the individual from group domination. What is striking about Lu Xun’s early writings, and his “A Refutation” in particular, is his resistance to groups, both national and transnational, from the standpoint of the individual, and more specifically from the heart, which is something like a non-rational ontological source. Echoing Zhang’s writings, the heart-mind (xin) offers a type of transcendence, which in turn enables one to struggle against prevailing trends and circumstances. Lu uses concepts such as the heart to attack any form of group, but at the same time he links the voice and heart to the construction of a new type of community. “On a Refutation of Malevolent Voices” refers to differences in voices based on whether they stem from the heart-mind or from some external source. In short, malevolent voices are bereft of heart-mind or life and are abstractly imposed from the outside. In the view of both Lu Xun and Zhang Taiyan, when one implements an abstract ideal without regard to particulars, one homogenizes and eradicates differences. The heart-mind becomes the locus of difference, but the scope of this locus is not fixed. It is linked to the individual, but it can also be national.4 Lu Xun connects the fate of the nation with a specific type of voice that could clear the way for something new. Corroded at the core and wavering spiritually, our once-glorious nation seems destined to wither away of its own devices amid the throes of internecine quarrelling among the heirs to our civilization. Yet throughout the empire not a word is spoken against this, idle chatter reigns, and all channels are blocked.5 4 Wang Hui has recently pointed out that this idea of voices is also connected to late Qing issues related to language reform. In short, both reformers and anarchists proposed unifying language. In his famous speech to the exchange students in Tokyo in 1906, immediately after his release from jail, Zhang proposed to develop the national essence through reviving “language and writings,” “traditional political systems,” and “events about historical characters.” Wang Hui, “Sheng zhi shane: yuyan, mixin yu ren de dansheng: Lu Xun dui minzhuzhuyi yu shijie zhuyi de shuangzhong pipan (po esheng lun jiedu),” unpublished manuscript. Against both reformers such as Kang Youwei and anarchists such as Wu Zhihui, Zhang stressed national particularity related to the Chinese language. 5 Lu Xun, Lu Xun quanji, vol. 8, 25. I would like to thank Jon Kowallis for sharing with me his elegant unpublished translation of “On a Refutation of Malevolent Voices,” “Concerning Imbalanced Cultural Development,” along with other early works by Lu Xun.

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The context of this essay is of course the events leading to the 1911

Revolution, the New Government Policies of the Qing dynasty, and the sense of crisis in late Qing China. These factors encouraged thinkers during the early twentieth century to constantly ponder the question of national survival. However, by grounding nationalism in the heartmind, Lu Xun like Zhang Taiyan initiated a logic that goes beyond the nation. Lu argues that to counter this blockage and idle chatter, one must make recourse to a special type of voice intimately connected to subjectivity and the heart. As I have not yet abandoned hope for the promise of the future, I remain eager to hear the voices from the hearts (xinsheng) of all thinking men and earnestly entreat them to share with me their illuminating thoughts. For such illuminating thoughts can provide the wherewithal to smash through darkness and silence, while the act of giving voice to sincere and deep-felt sentiments may well prove our deliverance from falsehood and chicanery. Such voices function in society like the roar of spring thunder stirring the plants into bud, like the first light of dawn heralding the passing of the night. 6

These voices are linked to the emotive side of the human being and can break through the idle chatter of superficial language that does not come from the heart. They are voices connected to radical change, as Lu Xun suggests with the image of the first light of dawn. The precondition for this change is the liberation of the individual from the group. Sentiments are thus affected by seasonal change, sometimes resulting in grievances and conflicts. Yet no external events, be they natural or human, have the power to alter a man’s convictions so long as his words come from the heart. If something runs counter to his beliefs, though the entire world might sing it with one voice, he cannot chime in.7

Lu Xun elaborates on two points that Zhang made in his Minbao writings: the autonomy of the heart-mind or consciousness, and the ethicalness of resistance of the individual to the group. He stresses interiority and subjectivity as a standpoint from which to resist external forces. Hence although human emotions are affected by the change in seasons, when language emerges from the heart, it cannot be shaken by anything

6 7

Ibid. Ibid.

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outside of it. Following Zhang’s essays on the state and his “On the Four Confusions,” Lu Xun claims that one’s heart-mind provides one with a base to go against the whole world. Lu Xun believes that the heart can be so tenacious because it is directly connected to natural forces: “His speech is full and cannot be stopped, because of the sheer forcefulness which illuminates his heart and because these words stir in his mind like the great waves of a mighty ocean.”8 Like Zhang’s ālaya consciousness, the heart-mind is an autonomous force; like great waves, it cannot be controlled by the self. There is a direct connection between words, the heart, and nature, which seems to bypass the ordinary self engaged in the idle chatter of the day. The heart brings together contraries such as the objective world of nature and subjective emotions. The two are combined in a concept of life, which Takeuchi Yoshimi interpreted as being central to Lu Xun’s writings.9 By bringing the subjective and objective together, the heart-life also allows the possibility of connecting the individual with the social. The heart/life plays the role of an ontological source that is at once individual and social. Lu Xun discusses how it moves people: “Consequently, once his voice arises, it will revive the whole world and that strength could well prove greater than any other natural force, stirring the human world and startling it into an awakening. This awakening will mark the beginning of our rise out of the present situation.”10 In Lu Xun’s view, the voice of this person, the sage, is a world historical force. Lu Xun uses terms such as “all under heaven” (tianxia) and the “human world” (renjianshi) to suggest that in addition to awakening the nation, he is referring to a world-historical beginning. Rather than highlighting specific geographical boundaries, Lu Xun seeks to illuminate the principles underlying a new form of community. He adumbrates the beginning of a period in which the people made their own history and were not overcome by abstract forces such as artificial group conformity. It is only through this awakening that people would become individuals, the precondition for a different type of communal identity. Paradoxically, it appears that, according to Lu, one must shatter the group and return to the individual self in order to awaken the nation: “Only when one speaks from the heart, becoming master of one’s own

8 9 10

Ibid., 25–26. Takeuchi Yoshimi, Rojin, Preface. Ibid., 26.

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soul, can one begin to have an individual identity; only when each person possesses an individual identity will the public (qun) approach a total awakening.”11 The word qun can also be translated as “group” and hence Lu Xun could be understood as saying that true group identity requires individual awareness and vital subjectivity, represented by the heart. By grounding his critique in a transcendental heart/life, Lu Xun’s launches an attack on both artificial nationalism and cosmopolitanism, again echoing Zhang’s “On the Four Confusions”: But the common goal of both camps, although not spelled-out in an organized agenda, is the elimination of all human individuality, so that in their mixed-up state none dare differ from the next, and all dissolve into one great mass, as if the various colors were all overlaid with a black murky film. Should anyone make bold to disobey, the masses will be used as a weapon to attack and persecute him, as a whip to chastise him back into submission. In the past, when a man was pressed by his enemies, he might cry out to the crowd for help; if he were suffering under a tyrant, he might call upon the masses for deliverance. But now that the masses themselves shall rule by fiat, to whom can anyone turn for sympathy?12

Zhang Taiyan had already criticized cosmopolitanism and nationalism when he pointed out that human beings were not made for the world, for the nation, or for any other collectivity. Lu follows Zhang and also seeks to overcome the alienations of modernity, the subordination of subjectivity to objective forces, where the objective can be represented by the world of groups or material things. Lu Xun links the oppression of groups to domination by machines and by so doing suggests that the force of the people can, like capital, act like a machine stripping people of their individuality and vitality. Machines and Mechanization In “A Refutation,” Lu Xun employs metaphors that link his critique of the group to larger processes of mechanization. If everyone leans in the same direction and ten thousand mouths sing the same tune, this singing cannot come from the heart; it is mere chiming in with others, like the meshing of gears in a machine. Such a chorus is 11 12

Ibid. Ibid., 28.

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more disturbing to the ear than the groaning of trees or the clamorous cries of certain birds because it emphasizes the profound silence in the background.13

Lu Xun describes a situation in which life or the heart-mind confronts machines. This image recalls Weber’s description of workers as cogs in a bureaucratic machine. Marx had no use for metaphors when he described the actual machines in capitalist industry, where the “conditions of work employ the worker.” Even the lightening of the labor becomes an instrument of torture, since the machine does not free the worker from the work, but rather deprives the work itself of all content. Every kind of capitalist production, in so far as its not only a labor process but also capital’s process of valorization has this in common, but it is not the worker who employs the conditions of his work, but rather the reverse, the conditions of work employ the worker. However, it is only with the coming of machinery that this inversion first acquires a technical and palpable reality. Owing to its conversion into an autonomaton, the instrument of labor confronts the worker during the labor process in the shape of capital, dead labor, which dominates and soaks up living labor-power. The separation of the intellectual faculties of the production process from manual labor, and the transformation of those faculties into powers exercised by capital over labor, is, as we have already shown, finally completed by large-scale industry erected on the foundation of machinery. The special skill of each individual machine operator, who has now been deprived of all significance, vanishes as an infinitesimal quantity in the face of the science, the gigantic natural forces, and the mass of social labor embodied in the system of machinery, which together with those three forces, constitutes the power of the ‘master.’14

Marx describes two movements that undercut particularity, namely the predominance of abstraction and the pervasive force of the collective. The idea of work deprived of all content is inherent in capitalism insofar as it creates “abstract labor” as opposed to labor connected to the production of specific use-values. However, this process comes to culmination and becomes “palpable” when machines subordinate living labor to dead labor. Machines were introduced to accelerate the production of value, but, in the capitalist system, they make the worker into an appendage of the machine, thus robbing workers of their autonomy. The de-skilling of workers, “the separation of intellectual faculties of the production process from manual labor,” results in workers using 13 14

Ibid., 26. Marx, Capital, vol. 1, 548–49.

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their minds less and less; their actions become merely physical and mechanical like those of a machine, chiming in with the whole system of production, which becomes a collective domination. One could argue that the history of the development of science in China is intimately connected to attempts to produce relative surplus-value. In other words, once the working day is relatively stable, firms attempt to increase profits by accelerating the rate of production through new technologies. This was more successful in some regions of China than in others. Indeed, Benjamin Elman has recently argued that the Self-Strengthening movement, which began in the 1860s, produced better results than we had previously thought. Lu Xun was perhaps pointing out the flipside of some of the successes of the Self-Strengthening movement as they were continued into other reform movements and the New Government Policies of the early twentieth century. Lu Xun also pointed out a corollary to the process of production, which we could call the crisis of the rise in material culture during the nineteenth century. In “Wenhua pianzhi lun” (Concerning Imbalanced Cultural Development), published a few months before “A Refutation,” Lu Xun argues that the liberation of subjectivity was at the root of the development of material culture, but then this culture eclipsed the subjectivity that was its condition of possibility: As these fetters were removed and thought was liberated, every aspect of society was affected. Discoveries in metaphysics were coupled with inventions in the realm of the natural sciences. From those inceptions, still more new things arose—the age of discovery, mechanization, science, technology, and commerce was at hand. None of this could have been conceivable without the lifting of constraints and the liberation of the human mind.15

Although Lu Xun did not read Weber, his understanding of the emergence of industrial capitalism dovetails with Weber’s discussion in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, published about two or three years before Lu wrote this essay. The key motivator of change lies in the transformation of human subjectivity and liberation of the individual from traditional religious fetters. However, echoing Zhang’s criticism of evolution, Lu Xun also claims that such liberation paradoxically leads to enslavement to material goods and to material progress.

15

Lu Xun, “Wenhua pianzhi lun,” in Lu Xun quanji, vol. 1, 48.

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To cite the most obvious advances, we need only look toward the manifold increases in textile and steel production, mining, and other industries, the applications of which have been numerous in warfare, manufacture, and transport. With the harnessing of steam and electric power, the whole state of affairs in the world was suddenly altered in a way greatly expedient to all human undertakings. Having partaken of these benefits, one’s faith in them is naturally strengthened to a point where they become the very criteria upon which everything, be it spiritual or material, is judged.16

From the standpoint of production, increasing mechanization and technology are linked to the production of relative surplus-value or the acceleration of the production of profits. But Lu Xun contends that the effects of mechanization are not limited to the sphere of production. As he mentions, “every aspect of society was affected.” Lu Xun thus turns our attention to the other side of this process, namely the circulation and consumption of commodities and the effects this has on subjectivity. In a word, the repeated consumption of commodities turns people into passive subjects. As a result, people cease to use their spiritual faculties and do not attempt to imagine other possibilities for the social and political world. In other words, the process of consumption can mirror the separation of intellectual faculties in the realm of production. Moreover, one tends to forget the role of subjectivity in the process of material productivity and thus obliterate the human dimension of history. To some extent, Lu Xun is here adumbrating what Wang Hui has recently called “de-politicized politics.” The emphasis on consumption and material goods appears to be apolitical, but it has the political effect of creating passive subjects without imagination, bereft of life force, and subordinate to the mechanization of life. Religion and Ghostly Alternatives Lu Xun and Zhang Taiyan differed on how to deal with the problem of de-spiritualization. Zhang analyzed the problems of his world using the framework of Yogācāra Buddhism and envisioned a realm where women were wandering women and farmers were wandering farmers. However, he did not approve of common religious practices or so-called superstitions; in fact, he criticized most religions for being insufficiently reflexive. He declared that farmers can become wandering farmers only 16

Ibid., 49.

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upon the realization of the five nothingnesses and he thus presented a critical Buddhist perspective. Lu Xun, on the other hand, celebrated the lived practices of the common people and envisioned the possibility of a different future in popular religious ceremonies and the life-force they embody. Lu Xun also sought a critical perspective on the present, but he did not fit himself into Zhang’s Buddhist framework; rather, he ended up with an existential affirmation of popular culture and religion, emphasizing the plight of those who are excluded from society. He searched beyond the discourse of intellectuals, the elite, and the gentry. Lu Xun’s famous statement that “the most urgent task before us today is to rid ourselves of this hypocritical gentry; ‘superstition’ itself may remain!” is a clear example of his thinking, which eventually foreshadows his discussion of ghosts. Like Zhang Taiyan, Lu Xun was influenced by Anesaki Masaharu’s theory of religion is his Shukyōgaku kairon,17 but unlike Zhang, Lu accepted the conventional notion of religion as a search for transcendence. Religion represents the desire to go beyond the material world, a desire bound with the quest for a different type of future. By focusing on subjective desire, Lu Xun understood superstition and religion in opposition to objective movements, such as those driven by the universal principle, progress, and civilization. During the later 1910s, Lu Xun, like many other twentieth-century Chinese intellectuals, championed enlightenment and science, which of course ran counter to superstition, but he repeatedly returned to issues related to superstition, such as ghosts, which is a recurrent theme in his writings. A well-known example of Lu Xun’s reference to ghosts is the question Xianglin’s Wife asks the narrator at the beginning of “A New Year’s Sacrifice,” published in 1924: “After a person dies, does he turn into a ghost?”18 Typically, the narrator of Lu Xun’s stories is at a loss when faced with such questions because they point to an aspect of life and hope beyond abstract knowledge. Most scholarship on Lu Xun from his death in 1936 to the early 1990s has described Lu as rejecting belief in ghosts. However, recent scholarship has questioned this conclusion and speculated about the relationship between ghosts and politics in Lu Xun’s work. For example, Itō Toramaru points out that the ghost as represented by figures in Lu Xun’s novels, such as Xianglin’s Wife

17 18

On the influence of Anesaki on Lu Xun, see Nakajima Osafumi, Fukurō no koe. Lu Xun, “A New Year’s Sacrifice,” in Selected Stories, 125–43, 127.

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and Ah Q , represent the often-ignored lower classes.19 Kiyama Hideo glosses the meaning of the ghost as “a historical sense that emerges from the piling up of countless dead people.”20 These dead have a claim on the living since they represent those who have been wronged and thus they also instill in some of the living a sense of guilt. In this way, the dead as ghosts have a link to the future, a future of redemption that calls from the past, which only those who are attentive can hear. Wang Hui, in his recent discussion of the role of ghosts in Lu Xun’s works, clearly connects Lu Xun’s interpretation of ghosts to the problem of capitalism. Wang claims that the ghost is an active existence that includes the potential of great people. There are innumerable differences in the ways that ghosts appear, but if one were to abstractly summarize the characteristics of ghosts, the following should not be omitted: 1. ghosts transcend the boundary between humans and things; 2. ghosts transcend the boundary between the inside and the outside; 3. ghosts transcend the boundary between life and death; and 4. with respect to the wandering dead soul, we can sometimes call it a specter as the one described in the beginning of Marx’s Communist Manifesto in relation to communism which was wandering in Europe.21

Wang’s ghosts resemble Lu Xun’s sage whose speech awakens the public to action. Wang continues to explain this concept with reference to Derrida’s treatment of Marx and cites the following passage from Specters of Marx: Nor does one see in flesh and blood this Thing that is not a thing, this thing that is invisible between its apparitions, when it reappears. This Thing meanwhile looks at us and sees us not see it even when it is there. A spectral asymmetry interrupts all specularity. It de-synchronizes and recalls us to anachrony.22

This thing is of course the specter and it remains even when we do not see it. The interruption of specularity is precisely the coming of something different, namely communism. It de-synchronizes in the sense that it calls us to another time, thus providing a standpoint from which to show that our contemporary world is unjust. Wang acknowledges that there is a great deal separating the optimistic context

19 20 21 22

Itō Toramaru, Rojin to shūmatsuron. Kiyama Hideo, Wenxue fugu yu wenxue geming. Wang Hui, Fankang juewang, 451–52. Derrida, Specters of Marx, 6.

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of nineteenth-century Europe and Lu Xun’s dark world of early twentieth-century China. But when we read Wang invoking Derrida’s reading of Marx to interpret Lu Xun in the early twenty-first-century, rather than the optimism of nineteenth-century Europe confronting the pessimism of early twentieth-century China, we see three different pessimisms confronting each other: that of late twentieth-century Europe, early twenty-first-century China, and early twentieth-century China. Just as Derrida draws on the images of ghosts and specters in Marx to develop hope out of the darkness that obscures leftist discourse, Wang Hui highlights the use of ghosts in Lu Xun to develop a theory of revolution for the twenty-first century. He claims that within the darkness of the early twentieth century, Lu Xun sought a world radically different from the present. Wang contends that ghosts intimate the possibility of this other world and discusses the pursuit of such a possibility with reference to the idea of nothingness: “This is a pursuit that presupposes ‘nothingness,’ and the only characteristic that this ‘nothingness’ has is ‘otherness— another path,’ ‘another land’ or ‘another type of people.’ ”23 By discussing nothingness in the context of ghosts, Wang stresses the temporal dimension. He describes the ghosts as the past in the present and notes that “‘ghosts’ are not our soul, but they are the presence of the history of the dead.”24 As we have seen, this past in the present also points towards an impossible future, a radically different future outside our present system. In Wang Hui’s view, ghosts represent an outside of the self constituted by modern capitalist society. He questions the modernity of the ghost and associates the revolutionary and Chinese folk customs. The “revolutionary appears as a ghost”25 and at the same time the ghost is connected to the lives of common people (minjian shenghuo), who watch plays about ghosts and believe in them. He adds that these people’s lives are “outside of the modern self.”26 Hence, this point outside of modernity becomes a potential standpoint of a totalizing critique of modernity.

23 Wang Hui, Fankang juewang, 453. Wang says this in reference to a passage in Lu Xun’s “Picking Morning Flowers in the Evening”: “I had already seen well the face of the person from S city. In this way, it seemed that I had even understood his heart. I must always seek another type of people, people who would criticize people in S city, no matter whether they are animals or demons.” 24 Ibid., 456. 25 Ibid., 453. 26 Ibid., 456.

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Wang Hui sees Lu Xun as emblematic of the possibility of transformative political practice. However, writing at the beginning of the twenty-first century, he takes into account the failures of various revolutions of the twentieth century. He thus responds to claims that the conditions for revolutions that characterized the twentieth century are no longer present, but warns that this should not lead to a total negation of the idea of revolution.27 The problem of how to remember the Chinese revolution has been a recurrent theme in recent debates among historians of China. Arif Dirlik makes a point similar to Wang Hui’s in an essay published in 1999, in which he criticizes postcolonial scholarship for forgetting revolution: Recalling revolutions against their contemporary erasure is not to wish their return. It is rather to underline a need to remember that while political solutions and visions of the past may no longer be relevant, the circumstances that called them into existence are still very much with us.28

Dirlik poses a question that should be pursued: How should we understand the so-called conditions of revolution? In a response to Dirlik’s essay, Prasenjit Duara suggests that these conditions are linked to the narrative of the nation and capitalism:29 Critical historiography which had found its inspiration in Marxist and other radical social theory encounters a world in which the possibilities of non-capitalist emancipation have receded and one where the revolutionary states have been discredited. At the same time, capitalist globalisation continues to widen the gap between the powerful and the powerless while the erosion of a national society itself unleashes a reaction which results in still more violent and exclusive reifications of nation, race or culture.30

Nationalism is definitely part of what we would include in circumstances that are with us, but one cannot think about the revolutions of the twentieth century without considering capitalism and the possibility of its negation. Duara asks a question that remains relevant to our discussion, “Does Dirlik want a postrevolutionary foundationalism or a postfoundational revolution?” To put the question more generally, do we still want revolution and what type of revolution do we want?

27 28 29 30

Ibid., 440–41. Dirlik, How the Grinch Hijacked Radicalism, 162. Duara, “Leftist Criticism and the Political Impasse,” 86. Ibid., 87.

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How might one imagine a post-capitalist future different from previously imagined alternatives? For people who study early twentieth-century East Asia, such questions are fundamentally about the history that separates us from and connects us to our object of study. In other words, one must interrogate what it means to say that the conditions for revolution no longer exist. Wang Hui’s formulation is historically specific: “today the conditions are not longer there for the type of revolutions that occurred during the twentieth century.”31 What were these conditions that do not exist any longer? A full answer goes beyond the scope of this short conclusion. However, some preliminary remarks will enable us to situate Wang Hui’s interpretation of Lu Xun and its contemporary significance. First, if one places the revolutions of the twentieth century within the trajectory of global capitalism, one could conclude that they occurred during the shift from liberal to fordist modes of capitalist accumulation. Indeed, as in other countries that were incorporated late into the global capitalist system, from its inception in the late nineteenth century, capitalism in China has been inextricably linked with state initiatives.32 Thus rather than seeing the communist revolutions as bringing about post-capitalist societies, one should see them as variations on a trend towards state-centered capitalist accumulation.33 This would be an example of the circular history of capital that reconstitutes its logic despite revolutions against it. From this perspective, we can perceive some of the tensions between thought and practice in twentieth-century China. On the one hand, China was increasingly incorporated into the global capitalist system. As this happened, its state-centric model of late developing countries dovetailed with a global shift from liberal to statist modes of capitalist accumulation. However, on the other hand, Chinese intellectuals attempted to find alternatives to their present grasped at different levels of abstraction. The institutionalization of a supposed alternative to capitalism, however, actually followed a larger pattern. In this context, we can return to the question of “recalling revolutions” in relation to the hope for a different future. Wang Hui invokes Lu Xun to argue that revolution appears as an incomplete project that must be rethought. He offers two interpretations. At times, he claims Wang Hui, Fankang juewang, 440–41. Bergère, Capitalismes et capitalistes, 53. 33 For a discussion of a view of capitalism that would allow such an analysis of state socialism, see Postone, Time, Labor, and Social Domination. 31 32

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that revolution is an inevitably incomplete project. The “ghost [in Lu Xun] represents being doomed to a fragmentary history that cannot be completed. Because the ghost is shattered and cannot be completed, ‘revolution’ becomes his or her eternal fate.”34 Eternal revolution might imply that the revolution must constantly be unsatisfied with its gains and continually negate itself. In this case, one could argue that this dialectic mimics the revolutionary nature of capitalism itself, which constantly renews itself, while reconstituting its basic dynamic. However, in Rekindling Dead Flames, published in 2000, Wang interprets Lu Xun as struggling against the circular movement of time itself. He makes his point by citing the Japanese sinologist and literary critic Takeuchi Yoshimi. Takeuchi elaborates on Lu Xun’s theory and states “Only a person who becomes aware of ‘perpetual revolution’ is a true revolutionary. On the other hand, those who shout ‘the revolution has succeeded’ are not true revolutionaries, but are the type of people who are like the flies that get entangled on the corpse of the dead body of a warrior” (Takeuchi, Rojin). In Lu Xun’s view, only perpetual revolution can break free from the infinite repetition and circularity of history. But the person who harbors a revolutionary attitude from beginning to end must eventually become a critic of former companions, because once this person becomes complacent with “success,” s/he will fall into the spiral of history—this spiral is precisely the ultimate object of the revolution.35

This description of the spiral of history recalls Zhang Taiyan’s discussion of history as the repeated production of karmic residues. Zhang thought of history as propelled by transformations of confused consciousness, which initiated the constant planting of karmic seeds. The result might appear as evolutionary progress, but behind this was ignorance and suffering and a logic of repetition, namely a repetition of karmic seeds. In Zhang’s view, the goal was therefore to negate the logic of history itself. Wang Hui builds on this point by invoking fragmentary history and perpetual revolution, but he transposes Zhang’s idea of negation to a non-Buddhist space by making this spiral of history the object of critique. In this way, his reading of Lu Xun’s use of ghosts points to a radically different future. When he invokes Marx’s idea of the specter, he mentions its links to history in the nineteenth century. Although Wang sees the ghost as outside of history, his work points towards 34 35

Ibid., 454. Ibid., 414.

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historicizing its appearance and its potential. Indeed he criticizes Lu Xun interpretations of the 1990s for stressing independence without reference to historicity.36 This leaves us with the question of how to historicize the appearance of the ghost and eternal revolution in relation to the temporality of capitalism, a theme I have broached with respect to Zhang Taiyan. Perhaps the ghost is inextricably linked to the logic of capital and functions to constantly haunt it. In this case, the eternal revolution does not presuppose an ahistorical category of time; it is a function of capitalism. On the other hand, a revolution that creates a different future would recognize that time is constituted by capital and has as its task the overthrow of this type of time, what Wang describes as cyclical or circular time. In other words, to fully contextualize the significance of Wang Hui’s reading of Lu Xun’s idea of ghosts, one must move from Marx’s discussion of the specter in the Communist Manifesto to the way in which the dead and the specters function in capitalism. How capitalism gives rise to the possibility of a different future is a large and multifaceted topic worthy of a book in its own right. In Wang Hui’s writings one can discern how such a book might be: the ghost as possibility of a different future grounded in a historical dynamic that envelops our world. According the Marx’s Capital, capitalism involves a dynamic in which capitalists use technology to produce wealth or use-values more quickly even though the amount of value they produce is eventually the same. In other words, when productivity increases, even though one will produce more use-values in a give labor-hour, because value is measured by the average labor time necessary to produce a given article, the total amount of value produced in a given hour tends to remain constant. In short, because on the average less labor time is required to produce a given item, its individual value decreases and thus one must produce more items to make the same value. I have already dealt with the concepts of abstract time and historical time in Chapter Four, but let us recall Marx’s distinction between wealth, which can benefit humanity and satisfy needs, and value, which capitalists aim to maximize in our present society. Wealth being dominated by value is precisely what Chris Arthur describes as capital’s “spirit possession,” a situation in which dead labor, in the form of machines and technology, controls the living. Human

36

Ibid., 460.

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beings are subject to a type of treadmill dynamic precisely because, in capitalism, value is measured by labor-time, which tends to remain the same regardless of the increases in productive technology. In capitalism, the increased production of wealth is possessed by the exchange-value side of the commodity form and leads to runaway productivity. It is not surprising that a number of thinkers including Zhang Taiyan and Lu Xun have put forth some type of life, spirit, or consciousness against a process that they could have seen in its incipient forms. However, “where the danger is, so grows the saving power.”37 As Moishe Postone points out, if we look at production from the standpoint of use-value, namely from the perspective of satisfying human needs, advancements in technology make proletarian labor increasingly obsolete and this gives rise to the possibility of a society organized around a different type of production. In such a post-capitalist society, people would not have to devote most of their time to producing surplus value because the goal of such a world would not be the creation of value, but the creation of wealth for humanity.38 The gap between wealth and value as measured by labor time creates the potential for bringing the dead labor of the past under the democratic control of the living; the gap creates the possibility of bringing dead labor back to life. However, this is only a possibility and because in capitalism, regardless of advances in technology, the value-form is reconstituted and the contradiction between wealth and value only leads to crisis and unemployment. Thus the dynamic of capitalism creates the possibility for another type of society at the same time it precludes such a possibility. Hence the object of a revolution that would end capitalism entails a political practice that aims, as Wang Hui has argued, at the negation of the logic of history, namely the logic of capital—this would be an epoch-making negation. Unlike in the nineteenth century, at the beginning of the twenty-first century the end of capitalism appears like the possibility of impossibility and such a possibility has as its precondition, if we borrow a phrase of Wang Hui’s work, the negation of “the politics of depoliticization.” In other words, the constant naturalization of social processes cannot hide the fact that they are political and therefore malleable.

37 38

“Doch wo Gefahr ist, da wächst das Rettende auch” (Hölderlin, “Patmos”). Postone, Time, Labor, and Social Domination, 301.

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Zhang Taiyan, Lu Xun, and the Future of Political and Social Transformation We have seen how Lu Xun’s ghosts represent a search for a different future. Although neither Lu Xun nor Zhang Taiyan explicitly linked domination by a certain dynamic of history or by repeated mechanization to the logic of capital, Zhang’s work and the trend of anti-modern thought that followed his work attack surface appearances of the commodity form and the logic of capital. Zhang’s work is especially significant in Chinese intellectual history since it is one of the first attempts to overcome the alienation caused by capitalism in thought by invoking Buddhist categories. Lu Xun and Wang Hui introduce some of these ideas by creatively drawing on contemporary ideas of religion, superstition, and ghosts, which led to a special type of temporality and future-oriented praxis. However, for Lu Xun, capitalism was a type of economic structure and not really something cultural and philosophical. Later, when Chinese Marxists placed the concept of capitalism at the center, they often did so in a transhistorical framework that is informed by a model in which the economic base determines the political and cultural superstructure. In this way, Chinese Marxists often sacrificed the totalizing critique advanced by Zhang Taiyan and Lu Xun in favor of an economic analysis of capitalism. This leaves us with the question of how to formulate a political praxis that combines the critique of totality, the envisioning of a radically different future, and an analysis of capitalism as a totalizing dynamic encompassing politics, culture and the economy.39 This is a task for the future.

39 For a preliminary attempt to formulate some ideas along this line, see Chari, “Reification of the Political.”

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INDEX

ālaya consciousness, 114–15, 123, 156–58 Allen, Young J., 44–45 Analects, 58, 172 Anderson, Benedict, 31 Anesaki Masaharu, 46, 107, 117–18, 146, 234 “aporia of time,” 95–96 Aristotle, 109 Arnold, Matthew, 53 Arthur, Chris, 26, 28, 240 Asian Solidarity Society, 86 atoms, theory of, in Buddhism, 192 Awakening of the Mahāyāna Faith, 210 Bacon, Francis, 180 Balibar, Etienne, 52–53, 81 Bambach, Charles, 138, 141–43 Bao Sheng, 160 Bergson, Henri, 212 Bi Yongnian, 67 Book of Changes, 80, 104–05, 146, 202, 217, 219 Book of History, 81–82 Buddha, 196 Buddhism, 102. See also Yogācāra Buddhism; Zhang Taiyan: and Buddhism concept of transformation in, 101 theory of atoms in, 192 “three worlds” in, 124 Cai Jun, 82 Cang Ji, 218 capital, and cultural transformations, 26–27 capitalism. See also global capitalism abstract labor in, 231 abstract level of, 37 antinomies in, 27 and bureaucratization, 39–40 and Chinese particularity, 36 as “civilizing mission,” 26, 28 end of, 241 and eternal revolution, 239 and fragmentation, 92–93

and late Qing, 38–41 machines in, 231–32 and nation-states, 36 as reproduced in philosophy, 35, 37 and structures of thought, 4 and time, 139–42 as totalizing, 242 wealth/value distinction in, 240–41 Chang Hao, 6, 8, 135 Chen Yangu, 174 Cheng Xuanying, 104 China and citizen, as new category, 177 and emergence of capitalism, 38 and global capitalism, 177, 238 Marxism in, 21 and modern temporality, 144–46 as nation-state, 98, 137, 177 resistance to modernity in, 14–16, 22 and science, introduction of, 44–45 and Sino-Japanese war, 44–45 and surplus-value, 232 Chinese intellectuals, anti-revolutionary, 224 Chinese Marxists, 242 evolutionary view of, 226 Chinese modernity and classical ideas, 22 Japanese studies of, 8–9 civilization and culture, tension between, 54 as evolutionary, 54 Cixi, Dowager, 65 Classic of Divine Wonders, 219 commodity consumption, and passive subjects, 233 Confucius, 43, 61, 80, 111, 151, 153 Analects, 58, 172 system of rituals and music in, 172 Dai Mingshi, 41 Dai Zhen, 43, 177 on heavenly principle, 203 D’Alembert, Jean le Rond, 70 Dao, 8 Darwin, Charles, 75, 156

260

index

Deleuze, Gilles, 212 Deng Xiaopiong, 21 Derrida, Jacques, 235–36 Specters of Marx, 235 Descartes, René, 35, 138, 180 Dirlik, Arif, 21, 187 on revolution, 237 Discourses on the Stages of Concentration Practice, 107, 115 Discourses on the Theory of Consciousness, 115 Duan Fang, 188–90 Duara, Prasenjit, 36, 40, 237 Culture, Power, and the State, 178 dushi, 101 Egginton, William, 30–31, 33, 92 Elman, Benjamin, 43, 44, 232 eternal revolution, and capitalism, 239–40 Euclid, 43 exchange-value, 139 Feuerbach, Ludwig, 206 Feuerwerker, Albert, 39 Fichte, Johann Gottlieb, 37, 96–97, 123, 125 four minds, 159 Fryer, John, 42 Fu Manrong, 105 Fu Xi, 81 Fukuzawa Yukichi, 9 Gaobie geming, 224 German idealism and logic of capital, 4 on subject-object, 97 German philosophy, in Japan, 4–5 ghosts and critique of modernity, 236 and redemption, 235 global capitalism. See also capitalism and mistrust of master narratives, 225 and nation-state, 28–30 as rationalizing, 226 shifts in, 238 Gobineau, Count, 74 Goldstein, Joshua, 33 gong, 20, 23 gongli, 179–81 Goswami, Manu, 28–29 Producing India, 28 Graham, A. C., 214 gu, 105–106 Gu Jiegang, 6

Gu Yanwu, 41–43, 57, 77 Guan Yun on equality, 182–83 Guangxu, Emperor, 65 Guo Xiang (Zixuan), 104, 128, 173–75, 208–10, 214–15, 220 Han Feizi, 172, 203 Harvey, David, 28–30, 224 Limits to Capital, 29 He Zhen, 185–86 heart-mind, 229 heavenly principle, 172, 176–77 and changes in political system, 174–75 and Song dynasty, 174–75 sources of concept, 173 Hegel, G. W. F., 4, 34, 37, 48, 96–97, 123, 133, 136, 143, 155, 163, 166, 170, 182–83, 207–208, 210–12, 220 and end of history, 164 History, 36 Logic, 36 Phenomenology of Spirit, 13, 36, 149, 208 Spirit in, 35–36, 115, 165 Heidegger, Martin, 13, 35, 93–94, 97, 110, 120, 136, 138, 143 Being and Time, 165 Herder, Johann Gottfired, 73–74 history concept of, in China and Japan, 135 as progress, debate over, 135 Hobbes, Thomas, 30–31 hoshin, 13 Hotze, Henry, 74 Hou Wailu, 106 Hu Hanmin, 110 Hu Hong, 176 Hu Shi, 7 Huang Kan, 28 Huang Zongxi, 41–42, 57 huashen, 101 Hun Dun, 218–19 Hundred Day Reform, 65 Huxley, Thomas, 145 Independence Society, 67, 68 Inoue Enryō, 137, 146, 148–50, 208 Itō Toramaru, 234 Jameson, Frederic, 224 Japan and evolutionary/modern time, 147–50

index German philosophy in, 4–5 and global capitalism, 147, 170 Japanese sinologists, 8–9 Jenks, Edward A History of Politics, 145 Jiang Yihua, 43 Jiang Zhiyou, 107 Jin Hongda, 108 kaishin, 13–14 Kai-wing Chow, 65 Kang Youwei, 7, 20, 24, 41–43, 45, 49, 51, 65, 72, 77, 98, 145–46, 151, 155, 162, 178–79, 183–84, 186–88, 190, 205, 221 on equality, 182 evolutionary view of, 61–64 “Great Community,” 161 “Inner Chapters of Master Kang,” 181 nationalism of, 86 and New Text Confucianism, 55–64, 83 on revolution, 62–63 on rituals, 62–64 on universal principle, 182–82 Kant, Immanuel, 4, 35, 37, 120–21, 151, 170, 202, 210, 212 Critique of Pure Reason, 110 Karatani Kōjin, 30 Karl, Rebecca, 32–33 Katō Hiroyuki, 137, 146, 148, 150 Kauko Laitinen, 135–36 Chinese Nationalism in the Late Qing Dynasty, 135 keshin, 17 Kiyama Hideo, 226, 235 Klossowski, Pierre, 128 Kobayashi Takeshi, 77–78, 110, 118, 136 Koch, Robert, 104–105 Kondō Kuniyasu, 18–19, 24, 124, 126, 130–31, 136, 196 on Chinese modernity, 19 Kōtoku Shūsui, 79, 186, 191 Kropotkin, Peter, 187 Lacan, Jacques, 198 Lacouperie, Albert Terrien de, 77–78 Lao Zi, 111 Dao De Jing, 172 late Qing and collective/individual, 178–79 and crisis of meaning, 141 and equality, concept of, 178 and global capitalism, 170, 177–78

261

and gongli, 180–81 and universal principle, 178–79 late Qing intellectuals, 1–2, 4, 211, 223 and anti-Manchuism, 51, 82 Confucianism in, 5–8 in disenchanted world, 8 on equality, 182, 210 evolutionary theory in, 155 and German idealism, 170 and global capitalist modernity, 7–8 hybrid thought in, 171 on modernity, 24 and nation-state, 89, 92, 134 and re-enchantment projects, 90 and religion, 89, 92, 98, 134 universal principle in, 171, 180–81, 184, 226 late Qing theater, 32–34 Lefebre, Henri, 28 Levenson, Joseph, 5–7, 9, 14, 141–42, 154 Confucian China and Its Modern Fate, 5 li, 172–73 Li Hongzhang, 66–67 Li Shizeng, 186, 188 on evolution, 187 Li Zehou, 3, 224 Liang Qichao, 23–24, 42, 45, 47, 49, 64–66, 82, 90, 98, 107–109, 111, 114, 124, 131–32, 155, 178–80, 182–83, 186, 192, 197, 204, 223 and Buddhism, 92, 100–103 on delusion, 101 on fiction, 101 on group identification, 102 on karma, 99–100 “My Views on Life and Death,” 102 “On the Relationship between Religion and Governing Society,” 99–100, 102 “On Tracing the Sources of China’s Cumulative Weakness,” 76 on religion, 99–103 on universal principle, 181 Lin Shu, 79 Ling Gui, 67 Liu Fenglu, 57 Liu Kunyi, 66 Liu Shipei, 52, 84, 185–86, 190–91, 204 as spy, 188–89 “The Theory of the Equal Power of the Human Race,” 191 Liu Xin, 56 Liu Zaifu, 224 Liu Zongyuan, 194

262

index

Lowy, Michael, 90 Lu Xun, 9, 12, 15, 24, 46, 208, 223–24, 228, 236, 238–40, 242 on ghosts, 223–24, 234–35 heart-mind in, 229 individual/group in, 229–30 internal/external in, 228 on material culture, 232–33 on mechanization, 230–31 “A New Year’s Sacrifice,” 234 “On a Refutation of Malevolent Voices,” 226–27 on religion, 234 on superstition, 234 Lukács, George, 4, 8, 11, 27, 30, 37, 39, 48, 96–97, 222 on subject-object, 96 Lusthaus, Dan, 157 manas consciousness, 114–15, 126, 158 Mao Zedong, 15–16, 21 Márkus, György, 27 Maruyama Masao, 9 Marx, Karl, 45, 236, 239 Capital, 35–36, 240 on capital, as movement, 26–27 Communist Manifesto, 235, 240 Grundrisse, 26 on history and capital, 166 Das Kapital, 29 on labor, 231 Meiji Buddhists, 147, 150 Meiji Japan, and global capitalism, 170 Meiji Six Society, 147 Mencius, 130, 215 Meng An, 123 Meng Yue, 32–33, 79 Minbao (The People’s Journal), 90, 110, 189–90. See also Zhang Taiyan: and Minbao Miyazaki Ichisada, 9 Mizoguchi Yūzō, 77, 19–22, 24–25, 37 China as Method, 20 The Refraction and Development of Premodern Chinese Thought, 19 modern subject, as on a stage, 94–95 modernity and crisis of meaning, 140–41 and disenchantment, 138 and European expansion, 10–11 and evolutionary time, 138–43 and fragmentation, 92–93 and patchwork identities, 54

pessimistic responses to, 143 and subject-object split, 93, 143 Mo Zi, 215 Moriuchi Masaaki, 109, 110 Naitō Konan, 7, 9, 19 Nakajima Osafumi, 46 National Essence Journal, 80, 109 national-essence scholars, 82–84 nationalism, contradiction of, 34 nation-states complexities of, 52–54 and fictive-ethnicity, 53–54 and global capitalism, 28–30 and race, 52–53 and subject-object divide, 137 theatrical identification with, 30–34 The New Century ( journal), 186–87 New Text Confucians, 56–57, 59–61 and national essence scholars, difference between, 83 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 4, 38, 46, 97, 110, 122, 128, 143, 162, 166, 225 1911 Revolution, in China, 1, 16, 38, 224, 228 Nishi Junzō, 9, 15–17, 20–21, 24, 26, 34, 136 “Construction from Nothing,” 15 responses to, 17–18 Old Text Confucians, 56, 82 Opium War, 144 other-dependent self-nature in, 113–14 Ouyang Junxi, 38 Paris anarchists, 186–88, 190, 200 perfumation, 100 persona ficta, 53 Plato, 120, 198 Postone, Moishe, 35, 136, 140, 209, 241 Prakash, Gyan, 81 principle (li), as differentiation, 172 “propensity of things,” 194 Qian Xiantong, 208 Qing Confucians, 176 qun, 230 Ranke, Leopold von, 138 Ratzel, Frederich, 43 Reid, Duncan J., 104 reification, 27

index religion in modern China, 97–99 modern discourse of, 92 as response to finitude, 96 as romantic response to alienation, 93 Renan, Ernest, 53 revolution conditions of, 237–38 semantic shifts of, 54–55 Revolutionary Alliance, 185 Ricoeur, Paul, 95, 141 romantic anti-capitalism, 90 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 69–70 Ruan Yuan, 43 Saitō Nonohito, 46 Sanguo zhi, 179 Sarvastivadins, 192 Sayre, Robert, 90 Schneider, Axel, 8 Schneider, Joseph Ku Chieh-kang and China’s New History, 6 Schopenhauer, Arthur, 38, 46, 97, 110, 118, 143, 156, 166, 225 Self-Strengthening movement, in China, 14, 232 Shen Buhai, 203 Shen Yanguo, 108 shi, 194 Shimada Kenji, 18–19 The Frustration of Modern Thought in China, 18 Shirakawa Jirō, 77 Shu Wen, 38 Sino-Japanese War, 44–46 Society for the Study of Socialism, 185–86, 191 Song Confucians, 174, 175, 176 Spencer, Herbert, 145, 156 Spring and Autumn Annals, 58 Spring and Autumn Gongyang Commentary, 57 Stirner, Max, 206 Sun Yat-sen. See Sun Zhongshan Sun Zhongshan (Sun Yat-sen), 20, 66, 67, 82, 110, 185, 186, 190 Taguchi Ukichi, 9 Takada Atsushi, 42, 210 Takeda Hanshi, 123, 132 Takeuchi Yoshimi, 8–11, 16, 17, 19, 20, 21, 26, 34, 223, 229 on Chinese modernity, 14

263

on conservatism as revolutionary, 14–15 on Japanese modernization, 14 on Lu Xun, 239 on nothingness, 12 on resistance, 11–15 “What Is Modernity?” 9 Tan Sitong, 20, 41–43, 45, 91, 98, 146, 224 An Exposition of Humanity (also translated as, A Study of Benevolence), 106, 145 Tang Caichang, 67, 69 Tang Tao, 223 Tao Tie, 218–19 Tao Wu, 218–19 tenkō, 13 “three worlds,” 124 Tie Zheng, 151 Tokyo anarchists, 185–88, 190, 191, 200 transformation, concept of, in Buddhism, 101 Treaty of 1901 (Boxer Protocols), 67 Uncle Tom’s Cabin, 79 universal principle, 169, 170–72, 179–81, 184, 226. See also Zhang Taiyan: on universal principle and global capitalism, 204 pre-history of concept, 172 and science, 180 use-value, 139 Vasubandhu, 192 Vogt, Carl, 74–75 Wang Bi, 105–106, 202, 219–20 Wang Chong, 112 Wang Fuzhi, 74 Wang Gongquan, 189 Wang Hui, 17, 22–23, 34, 57, 59, 98, 136, 173, 175, 204, 223–24, 233, 235–37, 242 on capitalist modernity, 23, 26 on China, and nation-states, 25 on ghosts, 223, 237, 239–40 on late Qing intellectuals, 22–24 on Lu Xun, 235–36, 239–40 on modernity, 25 Rekindling Dead Flames, 239 on revolution, 237–39 Wang Jingwei, 110, 190

264

index

Wang Xiaonong Guazhong lanyin, 32 Washington, George, 69–70 Watson, Burton, 104 wealth/value distinction, 240–41 Weber, Max, 39–40, 231 The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, 232 Wen Yiduo, 81 wenhua, 71 wenming, 219 Whitman, Walt, 69 Wong Young-tsu, 3, 43, 73 The Search for Modern Nationalism, 135 Wu Yu, 7 Wu Zhihui, 186–88, 190, 205 on evolution, 187 and universal principle, 187 and Zhang, disputes between, 188 Xia brothers, 33 Xia Zengyou, 68 Xin shiji, 186 Xinhai geming shuzhang, 33 Xu Shou, 42 Xuan Zang, 115 Xun Yi, 112, 202 Yamada Keiji, 15 Yan Fu, 23–25, 45, 64, 67, 145–46, 178, 179, 181, 183, 211 Yang Huan, 58 Yogācāra Buddhism, 1, 113, 115, 156–58 on consciousness, 113, 115 on hindrance by the known, 119 and individual salvation, 126 on manas consciousness, 126–27, 158 on objects, 116, 120 other-dependent self-nature in, 113–14, 116 on subject-object, 116 Young, Robert, 54, 73 Yu the Great, 81 Yu Yingshi, 7, 19 Yu Yue, 43, 64 Yuan Shikai, 81 Zha Sitong, 41 Zhang Binglin. See Zhang Taiyan Zhang Ji, 185 Zhang Jingjiang, 186 Zhang Shiying, 220

Zhang Taiyan (Zhang Binglin), 26 abstract critique of modernity, 223 on action, 127–28 on afflictive ignorance, 117, 118 on ālaya consciousness, 114, 122, 156–58 anarchic utopia of, 201 and anarchists, 191, 194, 199–201, 206, 215–16 as anti-imperialism, 52, 78–79, 84, 86–87 as anti-Manchu, 2–3, 41, 45–46, 51–52, 65, 71–72, 76, 78, 86, 90, 124, 135, 195, 223–25 on archetypal concepts, 122, 202 on atom theory, 192–93 A Book of Urgency, 72, 77, 78, 111, 118 Autobiography, 41 on Buddha, 196 and Buddhism, 1–5, 24, 34–35, 45–47, 86–87, 90–92, 97, 99, 106–112, 123–24, 130, 136–37, 150, 156, 166, 192, 206, 209–210, 216–17, 223, 225–26, 233, 242 and capitalist modernity, 3, 46–47, 225–26 on categories, 213 and Chinese cosmology, 16–17 on “civilization,” 84 on civilized/barbarian, 215, 219, 222 on colonialism, 200 on communal movements, individual in, 196 conflicting aspects of, 1–2, 96 and Confucianism, 7, 24 on confusion, 106, 122, 201–202 as critic of Western domination, 1, 79 critique of reification, 124 on cultural past, 81–82 on delusion, 91–92, 121–22, 127–29, 133 on desires, abstraction of, 159–61 on difference, 184 early life, 41–43 and end of history, 164–65 and Enlightenment, 73 on equality, 199–201, 209, 212, 222 on equalization, 171, 211 as difference, 48, 169, 174, 217–18 on ethical self, 126 on evolution, 48, 52, 137, 146, 150, 155–57, 206–207 evolutionary racialism of, 72–73 “An Explanation of Cutting My Queue,” 68

index on freedom, 109–110 and German philosophy, 2, 4–5, 46, 133, 209 on God, 119 on groups, 7 at Gujing Academy, 43 on Hegel, 48, 207–208 on hindrance of the knowable, 118–19 on historical change, 4 on historical particularity, 153–54 on history, 135–37, 150–56, 163–66, 239 on human finitude, 118 on illusion, 119,1 25 on imperialism, 1999–200, 217–19, 222 on inanimate objects, 124–25 “Indian Discussions of National Essence,” 85 on the individual, 24, 207, 228 influence of, 223, 226 “An Interpretation,” 122, 127, 151–52, 155, 189, 198, 208–209, 213–18, 220–22 in jail, 1, 3, 45, 107–108, 118, 129–30, 146, 150, 185, 225 in Japan, 66, 79, 82, 110, 137, 185 Japanese scholars of, 8–9 journal work of, 64–66, 78–79, 90, 110, 185–86, 189 on Kant, 120–22, 202 on labor, 204–205, 216 on language, 210–11 “A Letter Refuting Kang Youwei’s Essay on Revolution,” 73 literature on, 135–36 and Liu Shipei, relationship between, 189 on love of country, 195, 197–98 on manas consciousness, 126–27, 158 and Mao, 17 and Minbao, 79, 90, 110, 169, 185–86, 189, 190–91, 226, 228 on modernity, 223 on moral action, 129 on mundane world, 222 on national essence, 80, 84–85 and national politics, 51–52 and nationalism, 85–87, 92, 195–96 and the nation-state, 34 negativity in, 5, 34, 91, 132–33 on neuroses, 129–30 and nihilism, 17

265 Nishi’s interpretation of, 17 on objects, 120–21 “On Bacteria,” 72, 74, 103–106, 117, 122, 128, 163, 202 “On Correcting the Hatred of the Manchus,” 75 “On Establishing Religion,” 110, 118, 120, 123–25, 129, 132, 151, 156, 197, 202 “On the Five Negations,” 16, 85, 122, 125, 129, 132, 160–63, 198–99, 201, 215, 217 “On the Four Confusions,” 160, 198, 201–202, 206, 208, 216, 220, 226–27, 229–30 “On the Origin of Human Beings,” 72, 75–77 “On the Origin of Religion,” 118 “On the State,” 191–92, 197 ontology in, 112 “Ordering Races and Surnames,” 77 as pessimist, 167 political subject in, 123 political theory of, 190–91 politics of, as abstract, 216–17 and polygenists, 74–75 “Prison Diary,” 80–81 and reformers, 66–67 on reification, 190 and religion, 98, 103, 106–108, 111, 118–19, 206, 213, 215, 226 as revolutionary, 1, 14, 34, 55, 64–69, 78, 83, 99, 123–24, 130–31, 184–85, 196, 224 as scholar, 1 and science, 42–45, 103–104 on self, 125–28, 197–98, 216, 220–21 “Self-Narration of Changes in My Thought,” 208 on self-nature, 117, 193 on sentient being, 124–25 on socialism, 84 on the state, 193–95 on subject-object, 90, 97, 111–12, 114, 123 suicide attempt, 107–108 and theory of atoms, 192–93 on three natures, 112–14, 117 transcendence in, 225 on unity, 125, 220 on universal liberation, 123 on universal principle, 48, 170–71, 183, 200, 202–207, 214, 223

266

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and Western anthropology, 73 on will, 207 on will to win, 159–63 and Wu Zhihui, disputes between, 188 on Yogācāra Buddhism, 151 Zhang Zhidong, 45, 69 Zhu Xi, 176 Zhu Youqin, 41 Zhu Yuhe, 38 Zhuang Cunyu, 57 Zhuang Zi, 48, 106, 128, 153, 161, 169, 173, 215–16, 218, 220 on equalizing, 210

parable of the monkeys, 221 Zhuang Zi, 47, 104, 120, 127, 173, 207–209, 214, 216, 222 heavenly principle in, 173–74 “On the Equalization of Things,” 208–209 Zhuo Zuoren, 208 Zou Rong, 69–70, 107, 108, 146, 150, 184, 186 as anti-Manchu, 70–71 The Revolutionary Army, 69–70, 78 zu, 76 Zuo Commentary, 218