On The Interpretation Of The Analects In The Northern Song Dynasty

The Northern Song dynasty in China witnessed a shift in the evolution of Confucian philosophy in reaction to the contemporary development in social politics, economy and culture, instanced by the great changes made in the hermeneutics of The Analects. For a time, the status of The Analects was elevated to an unprecedented level and the Confucian doctrine attracted a myriad of interpreters who would annotate The Analects of Confucius and form different schools of ideology. The Song School of Confucianism, fraught with the awareness of doubt and criticism and the spirit of innovation and enterprise, provided the most important resources for the Song Confucianists to pursue the learning later called the Song School of Neo-Confucianism, to rejuvenate Confucianism and to construct the ideology of Neo-Confucianism(Lixue).The approach of dividing history into periods is adopted to interpret The Analects in this dissertation that focuses on examining the cultural ecology of the Northern Song dynasty for the exegesis of The Analects, sums up the exegetical methods, thoughts and achievements of different annotations of the book and clarifies the evolutionary path and hermeneutic features of and the contribution to the exegesis of The Analects in the Northern Song dynasty.Imbued in the peculiar cultural ecology of the Northern Song dynasty, both the content and form of the exegesis of The Analects were predestined by the national political system and social cultural conditions and the historical mission of studies on Confucian classics and the development of Confucian philosophy in ancient China.There were two parallel paths, i.e. the official and the unofficial path adopted to evolve the interpretive style of The Analects before the Qingli years of Emperor Renzong of the Song dynasty (1041-1048). The meticulous exegesis and comprehensive textual research typical of The Annotations and Exegesis of The Analects by Xing Bing, which can be subsumed into the Han School of Confucianism, is a benchmark work for the official interpretation of The Analects during the early period of the Northern Song dynasty. However, the shift from the Han School of Confucianism to the Song School of Confucianism is symbolized by the attitude of Xing Bing in his interpretation of The Analects, the rejection of foolish loyalty and persistence. According to a critic, Xing Bing prefers "to probe into the Confucian ideology of virtues and ethics". In contrast to the conservative style of official exegesis, the unofficial style of exegesis was imbued with fresh ideas. On The Analects 8 chapters or by Hu Yuan, one of the forefathers of the Song School of Neo-Confucianism, interpreted The Analects by adopting the methodology of revealing the implicit meaning of Confucian texts, by carrying the purport of focusing on the virtues and ethics embodied in the Confucian doctrine, and by pursuing the objective of inculcating the ideas in the disciples. A Brief Biography of The Analects 87 chapters by Liu Chang which presented the fresh ideas of the author by refuting the outdated interpretations were already tinged with the style of the Song School of Classicism in its inherent trends of thought and interpretive methods though the incomplete book was outwardly painted by the studies on annotations of classics.During the middle and late periods of the Northern Song dynasty, the fresh hermeneutic style of probing the Confucian ideology of virtues and ethics began to prevail over the conventional style of interpretation. During the Xining years of Emperor Shenzong of the Song dynasty(1068-1077)when the Government adopted students by examining their understanding of the Confucian doctrine as an effort to reform the civil examination system, the official style of Confucian hermeneutics tended to converge with the fresh unofficial style of Confucian hermeneutics. Then the Song School of Confucianism completely took place of the Han School of Confucianism. Su Shi’s interpretation of The Analects was full of profound ideas and probed the implicit meaning of Confucian doctrine as a whole by breaking the bondage of surface meaning. According to his brother Su Zhe, Su Shi’s exegesis was so "painstaking" and "penetrating" that it "reveals from time to time the implicit meaning of the Confucian doctrine". As a typical scholar from the Shu (Sichuan) School of Neo-Confucianism, Su Shi’s exegetical explanation of The Analects that frequently referred readers to current issues and his personal confrontations with life as well as historical events, generally criticized the contemporary social evils or argued with Mensius from the standpoint of secular rationality. Despite the traces of Taoism and Buddhism in his citations, Su Shi cherished the final purpose of interpreting Confucius and made great achievements in expounding the Confucianist concept of "ethics life".In addition, Omissions in Interpreting The Analects (27 chapters) by Su Zhe changed or refuted Su Shi’s proposition that "the meaning is to some extent unstable". Greatly characterized by interpreting Confucianism from the perspective of Taoism and Buddhism and interpreting Confucianism from the perspective Confucianism itself, Su Zhe’s exegesis of The Analects offered fresh ideas of interpreting the Confucian concept of "ren (benevolence)". According to some critic, "his unique wisdom was indelible". The two brothers have been the paragons of Confucian exegesis in the Song School of Confucianism.In the meanwhile, the Neo-Confucianism(Lixue) approach to the exegesis of The Analects was incubated along with the evolution of the Song School of Confucianism. A Complete Exegesis of The Analects by Chen Xiangdao that was completed during the period when Wang Anshi reformed the civil examination system, later became popular with the examinees and exerted great influence on the contemporary society after the years of Shaosheng of Emperor Zhezong of the Song dynasty(1094-1098). Chen tried to interpret The Analects by constantly quoting opinions of the various schools during the pre-Qin dynasty and especially by highlighting Confucian classics, historical facts and teachings of the Confucian classics teachers in the Han and the previous dynasties. However, Chen is on the whole no less than a Confucianist scholar. According to Chen, The Analects is the work of Confucius devoted to expounding the "Li(ideology)", so the interpreter of Confucian doctrine must follow up its ideology and nature. Though the thought of Neo-Confucianism (Lixue) expounded by him is not systematic and lacks in speculative tone, Chen surely has been ranked among one of those scholars who have made their contribution to the exegesis of The Analects during the Confucianism Renaissance Movement in the Northern Song dynasty. Cheng Yi’s exegesis of The Analects are two-dimensional:one dimension is the expounding of the Confucianist virtues of Xiu, Qi, Zhi and Ping (to cultivate the moral self, regulate the family, maintain the state rightly and make all peaceful) and the cultivation path of combining self-learning with school education and the moral principles of keeping honest by respecting one’s own conscience; the other dimension is the method of accumulating knowledge by means of speculation that introduces the exegetical "Tao (method)" into the philosophical "Li (ideology)". By means of interpreting The Analects, Cheng Yi expounded the "Tao" through speculating on the "Li" so as to lay a solid foundation of methodology and ideology for his thought of Neo-Confucianism. Cheng’s stature in the history of the exegesis of The Analects throughout the Song dynasty is irreplaceable.Generally speaking, two parallel paths of the exegesis of The Analects that traversed through the early period of the Northern Song dynasty converged into one in the middle period of the Northern Song dynasty. The Confucianist scholars at that time made innovative interpretations of The Analects of their own by breaking the bondage of scholium and traditional annotations. Though they had doubts on certain words and sentences in The Analects and made mild variations on them, such scholars as Xing Bing, Ouyang Xiu, Su Shi and Cheng Yi just focused on the doubting of the authenticity of the records of Confucian maxims and the errors occurring during the process of transcribing the texts. These scholars certainly have never dared to refute the ideology of Confucius and that recorded by The Analects; on the contrary, they have actually made a fetish of Confucian doctrine in their practice of exegesis. The Neo-Confucianist scholars, including Cheng Yi, created the so-called concept of "Four Books" by putting The Analects, Mensius, Great Learning, and The Doctrine of the Meaning together and above all the rest classics.With a view to meeting the political needs of the contemporary society, they expounded the Confucianist political ethics and the ideas on moral and spiritual cultivation by resorting to certain thoughts and contents of Taoism and Buddhism and enlisting the help of some philosophical concepts from The Book of Changes, established a speculative system for universal evolution and their own philosophical epistemology and paved the way for the formulation of the ideology of Neo-Confucianism.