| The hermit thoughts are a kind of value orientation which contains scholar-bureaucrats'views, attitudesand even tendency to become the hermits. The hermit thoughts, as a confronting and supplementarythinking of the idea of officialdom, are different from the traditional mainstream thoughts of officialdom ofthe literati. The thoughts are a value orientation out of the secular society, and they are formed under somecertain historical conditions. The formulation of hermit thoughts is arisen from the reality which thescholars are unable to change while they are not willing to degenerate, so a better choice is to escape andavoid confrontation from politics.In ancient China there always existed a tendency of being politicization which rendered the hermitthoughts to have a close connection with the changes of politics in those dynasties. The period of Qin andHan dynasties is the time of formation and improvement of China's authoritarian system. Compared withthe previous dynasties, the situation of the social politics of this period had a deep change which exerted agreat influence on the development of the scholars' hermit thinking.The development of the hermit thoughts was closely related to political development in Qin and Handynasties, and they had different features in different stages of the period.In Qin dynasty and early Han dynasty the authoritarian system was just formed and the unifiedcountry was also formed, which had much attraction to the scholars. Most of them wanted to bescholar-bureaucrats. The hermit thoughts did not develop. However, with the refinement of the unifiedempire and its pre-eminence in the political, economic, cultural, ideological tendencies, the extremecentralization and authoritarian regime had brought an unprecedented pressure to the scholars. Thedespotism of the imperial power was so extreme that the scholars could not decide their fate, so theirambitions of serving the society were not realized. Consequently, the seclusion of the feelings came intobeing. Therefore, in the early period of the authoritarian regime, though the thoughts of actively serving thecountry occupied the scholars'main thinking, yet the hermit thoughts were also potentially in existenceand development.Since the mid-Western Han dynasty, the absolutism had been further consolidated and improved, andthe scholars were, in general, classified into the bureaucracy. The unified official ideology was graduallyformed, so the scholars'free political space was forced to shrink. They were firmly controlled by thecombination of learning, officialdom and economic benefits. They sensed the political pressure, whichresulted in the emergence of the idea of reclusion. On the other hand, the scholars generally showed theirhermit tendencies, but in objective they did not have the real hermit behaviors. Between the two differentchoices of officialdom and reclusion, the scholars constantly adjusted themselves to the development of thesystem. That was why Dongfang Shuo's "hermit thinking in the Imperial court" emerged.In the late Western Han dynasty, with the social unrest and the decline of the dynasty, there appearedthe seclusion climax for the first time in Chinese history since the Qin and Han national unification. Both the traditional idea of reclusion and allegiance for one dynasty affected the hermit thoughts in this period,which demonstrated the unified national consciousness in the hearts of the scholars. Accordingly, thehermit thoughts were interfered by the consciousness. In the early Eastern Han dynasty, the courtadvocated the seclusion. The advocacy was an attempt of the government putting the seclusion figures andtheir ideas under the state control, which further fortified the link between seclusion and politics. Sincethen, with the replacement of dynasty, the hermits did not serve the new regime, which implied theirloyalty to the former regime. It is the result of the state's consciousness advocacy. This change, in a certainextent, eliminated the rebellious spirits of the hermit thoughts.The government's advocacy and reward stimulated hermit behaviors, and actions become veryprevalent in the Eastern Han dynasty. The figure of hermits far exceeded the one of the Western Handynasty, and it was throughout the various periods of the dynasty. The advocacy of the spirits of integrityto the seclusion figures by the government of the Eastern Han dynasty led to the two results: on the onehand, the scholars emphasized the integrity, which made the real hermits respected by the society; on theother hand, but it also made some scholars, in the name of the reclusion, to seek fame and wealth, whichbecame a major malpractice in the development of hermit thoughts.In the late Eastern Han dynasty, due to the bane of cliques and the collapse of the Eastern Han regime,the scholars were distracted from the unified state. The hermit thoughts in this period alienated deliberatelyfrom the regime. This also rendered them to rethink the meaning of life in seclusion, and theself-consciousness of the scholars started to wake up in the same period. The self-consciousness of thescholars ultimately embodied the intrinsic value of independence and freedom hibernated in the hermitthoughts, which provided an important condition for the further development of the thoughts in the Weiand Jin Dynasties. |
