[ { "id": 204842, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1964", "page_number": 145, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "120\n\nFORKE'S TRANSLATION OF THE LUN HENG'\n\nReviewed by D. LESLIE2\n\nThe Lun Heng\n\nof about A.D. 85, is the work of Wang Ch'ung £ (c. A.D. 27-96), one of the most original thinkers of Han China.\n\nMany, including Hu Shih and most western scholars, have praised his critical ability. In fact, this praise is not entirely justified. Wang Ch'ung, in this respect, falls far short of the Chou Confucian philosopher Hsüntzu (also Chuangtzu and Hanfeitzu). Han philosophy is generally considered to lack the originality of the classical Chou philosophers, and Wang Ch'ung, as Fung Yu-lan points out, was a child of his time. The most we can say is that he rises head and shoulders above his Han contemporaries in his critical abilities.\n\nIt is true that Wang Ch'ung demands proofs and verification by experience at all stages in his arguments, but his idea of proof and experience is insufficiently empirical. He does not seek out the facts. He believes some of the weirdest stories (that Duke Ai was changed into a tiger; that Huang Ti, the Yellow Emperor, was twenty months in the womb; that hares give birth via the mouth). As Marcel Granet has expressed it (in his La Pensée Chinoise, 1934, p. 580), \"son scepticisme a quelque chose de livresque\".\n\nWang Ch'ung's criticism is always based on pre-conceived postulates. Rather than reject the superstitions of his time, he merely reinterprets them in accordance with these postulates. Herein lies both his strength and his weakness. A good example is his denial (in his chapter 15 and elsewhere) of the many supernatural births accepted by his contemporaries. For, together with this denial, he accepts the factual truth of all the omens that accompanied these supernatural births. Omens, such as signs in the sky or lines in the hand (the Lun Heng incidentally gives the earliest extant reference to palmistry in China), the appearance of weird animals and plants, all mark, he believes, the rise and\n\n1 Lun-Hêng. By Alfred Forke. Paragon Book Gallery, New York, 1962. Pt. I, iv+577; Pt. II, vi+536. U.S.$20.00,\n\n2 D. Leslic is a Research Fellow in the Department of Far Eastern History, Australian National University, Canberra,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204843, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1964", "page_number": 146, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "LUN HENG\n\n121\n\nfall of great men and reigns. He similarly accepted the claims of divination, astrology and physiognomy (all rejected by Hsüntzu). But for Wang Ch'ung no less than for Hsüntzu there is nothing supernatural about any of these phenomena. Wang Ch'ung always demands a natural explanation. A further example which may help to clarify the difference between the naturalistic scepticism of Wang Ch'ung and of Hsüntzu is their attitude to ghosts and apparitions. Hsüntzu (in his chapter 17) denies any reality to ghosts or spirits of any kind. Apparitions are hallucinations of an inferior or diseased mind. Wang Ch'ung, on the other hand, is not sure whether ghosts and apparitions occur or not. He is inclined to accept that they do. However, if they do exist, he writes, they are not the ghosts of the dead come back for revenge as believed by most of his contemporaries. He outlines several possible explanations of the appearance of apparitions (in his chapter 65), probably selected because they do not accept the theory that ghosts are dead men's souls. Two of these theories are favoured by Wang Ch'ung. The first states that ghosts are a kind of hallucination produced by men's thoughts when they are sick and afraid. The other theory is that ghostly apparitions are omens. Wang Ch'ung cannot step out of his time and reject the widespread belief in ghosts, but he manages to give an explanation with a distinctive twist of his own. He suggests that ghosts are made up of the Yang fluid alone without the Yin, and hence are not real but mere \"semblances\" of reality.\n\nSo much for Wang Ch'ung's critical ability and scepticism. To turn now to his constructive philosophy, this has been underestimated, in particular by Fung Yu-lan. As a Confucian, Wang Ch'ung offers little that compares with Mencius' theory of man's nature or Hsüntzu's analysis of the value of ritual. His own suggestion, a compromise three-grade theory of human nature (taken up by Han Yü of the T'ang) is of no great significance. It was in any case already present, though less explicitly, in the thought of Tung Chung-shu and Huainantzu of the earlier Han. Similarly, as a Taoist, Wang Ch'ung, though clear and convincing, falls short of the subtlety of Chuangtzu. Nevertheless, we can agree with Li Shih-fan, in his criticism of Fung Yu-lan's History of Chinese Philosophy (see Yenching Journal of Chinese Studies 26, 1939, pp. 215-250, 286-8), that Wang Ch'ung's attempt", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204844, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1964", "page_number": 147, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "122\n\nD. LESLIE\n\nto marry a Taoist naturalistic metaphysics to Confucian rationalistic ethics marks a great step forward, even though it was only partially successful.\n\nThe Taoism of Chuangtzu was anti-rationalistic and mainly destructive; destructive of ethics and also a hindrance to the development of logic and to the search for truth. Fung Yu-lan has characterised the Taoism of Huainantzu, as opposed to that of Chuangtzu, as positive. This is even more true of Wang Ch'ung, who eschews all mysticism and supernaturalism. Similarly, Hsüntzu's emphasis on the Way of Man, equal partner with Heaven and Earth, led him to ignore the Way of Nature. The crucial difference between Chou and Han philosophers is exemplified by the difference between Hsüntzu and Wang Ch'ung. Both reject any divine or supernatural intervention in natural phenomena, but only the latter sought to explain the workings behind these natural phenomena.\n\nTung Chung-shu of the Han had already given an explanation of such phenomena as the cosmic and biological abnormalities looked on as omens. By Wang Ch'ung's time these omens were almost universally taken to be warnings and messages from Heaven. Calamities, such as floods or drought or plagues of insects, were the punishments which followed when these warnings were not heeded. Wang Ch'ung cannot escape the Han view of an interaction between man and Heaven. But he changes the explanation. Good and bad omens are certainly signs of good and bad government but not caused by them,\n\nFor the Han philosophers phenomena were governed by the rise and fall of the ch'i, both cosmic and human. In the hands of Wang Ch'ung's contemporaries this ch'i was very close to shen* and ching-shen** \"spirit\". For Wang Ch'ung himself however, the ch'i is a material fluid, the \"life's breath” in biological terms, the \"pneuma\" in cosmic terms. It has no shape or form but only substance. The claim of modern materialists to see a forerunner in Wang Ch'ung is in many ways justified. It is supported in particular by his theories of causation. These are closely tied to his concept of a material ch'i. A physical cause must, he claims, be adequate for the result, and must operate by contact of the chi. Where there is no physical contact causation is not possible,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 } ]