A Study On Pre-Qin Confucian Notion On Shanrang (禅让/Abdication)

Pre-Qin Confucianism’s notion of abdication, basing upon the construction of Yao and Sun’s legends, mainly concerns with the matter that how to hand over sovereign power (HHSP)—the power of "the son of heaven". The notion subsumes following several aspects:modes of Ming-receiving (someone becomes the king following heaven’s or ordinary people’s will), principles of conferring power and position, moral grounds for the subject and object of abdication, and the procedure of conferring power and position, etc.The thesis carefully and systematically analyzes relevant excavated and extant literatures. It aims at making explicit inner principles of these literatures; the main connotation of HHSP (which is inherent in the notion of abdication) and its development will be generalized in conclusion part.Chu bamboo slips Way of Tang and Yu, in which the notion that the king could hand over sovereign power to another is dominating, not only dissects the framework and basic spirit of abdication politics and points out the transformation between virtues such as filial piety (xiao), loyalty (zhong), benevolence (ren) and righteousness (yi) required by the politics as such, but also elucidates how abdication politics--the politics that advances the unity of virtue and position--realizes itself at different levels and clarifies the deep requirements for political practitioners of xing and ming. To make it more explicit, Way of Tang and Yu illustrates the principles of abdication politics and depicts the ideal horizon of completeness of both humanity and politics; it provides the coordinate for understanding the development of HHSP in Pre-Qin Confucianism; More than that, Way of Tang and Yu comes up with the paradigm which could help us comprehending different layers of Pre-Qin Confucian political thoughts and value hierarchy. It is a valuable lost ancient Pre-Qin Confucian political literature.Chu bamboo slips Zi Gao is an important lost ancient Pre-Qin Confucian political literature. Its theme is to construct a new mode of Ming-receiving—to receive Ming as a king’s son--in interpreting Yao and Sun’s abdication legends, basing on that, it argues against former mode of receiving Ming as the son of heaven, which is represented by tele-fertility of myths of Yu, Qi and Houyi. In the meantime, Zi Gao has the face of criticizing hereditary system. These two modes respectively manifest the way of thinking of Pre-Qin Confucianism and Three-generation (historical periods governed by Yao, Shun and Yu) and internally determine two distinctive political principles and constructions of system and thus make themselves so important a basis for discriminating Pre-Qin Confucianism and that of Three-generation politics. The new mode expressed in texts of bamboo slips of Chu is built up in the political context nevertheless; it is the intermediary between the unity of heaven and king (Ming-receiving mode in Three-generation) and unity of heaven and human (Ming-receiving mode based on the theory of Xing and Ming).Chu bamboo slips Rong Cheng Shi describes several ancient kings’stories that they "all hand over their power to the virtuous rather than their sons" as the initial state, in order to make it into Yao, Shun and Yu’s abdication tradition. Yao, not only reflects on virtues of the son of heaven, but also personally hand over the power to the virtuous, representing the true spirit of abdication; Shun governs tian-xia (world) by respecting virtuous people and ends up conferring power to the virtuous as well. Through properly appointing virtuous officials, he even initiates the politics based on the will of heaven and well-being of ordinary people (dub as "way of tiandi and people"-centered political practice); For Yu, he completes the civilization of politics by establishing towns, constructing political system and formulating propriety (Li), etc. However, after Qi replaces Yi by fighting him, the tradition of abdication as the tradition that only hands over power to the virtuous rather than the son is unfortunately terminated, and just here begins the empire politics which is featured by the very opposite:only handing over power to the son but not to virtuous people.Two important dialogues, carried on between Mencius and Wanzhang about Yao, Shun, Yu and Qi’s becoming king in succession, not merely deeply reflect on whether or not the king can be the subject of HHSP, based on fundamental principles of HHSP and crucial notion that "the son of heaven cannot hand over the world to certain person at will," but also reconstruct a new mode of HHSP, which regards speechless tian as the highest subject of power and position, the son of heaven as the object of power and position, and views government officials and ordinary people as actual subjects of the power and position. The new mode of HHSP includes following procedures:the son of heaven recommends the certain virtuous person to tian, virtuous people come to power, three year mourning, the recommended dodges the son of previous king, and officials and ordinary people finish the process, etc. It’s easy to tell that the mode as such spontaneously make virtue the primary and consanguinity the supplementary, however, since government officials and ordinary people are actual subjects of the power and position, who, unlike the sage king, cannot always make accurate judgment on virtues that the successor king holds, utilitarian factors and contingency thus are possibly to be involved in actual principles of HHSP. The aforementioned determine that the theory of Mencius’s HHSP would not orient toward generating sage king. Although the mode might bright out that the king’s son comes to be the king, in essence it is against the hereditary succession. Meantime, the new mode is circumscribed in the political system; it is therefore a mode of HHSP that can limitedly expresses the will of ordinary people. Mencius makes use of this new mode to interpret the legend of Yao, Shun, Yu and Qi, after the success he tries to unravel all phenomena of sovereign power by putting them into the same mode.The Book of Rite·Li Yun emphasizes the commonality of tian-xia, while Xunzi underlines its "unity" and "oneness". He distinguishes tian-xia and country as two different political entities and goes further to contrast principles of sovereign-power-conferring with principles of other common-political-power-conferring. Being different from the perspective adopted by early stage Confucians in which Yao and Shun’s abdication legends is interpreted on basis of principles of Xing and Ming and of king’s impartial mind—which is thought to be able to ensure the power goes to the virtuous, later stage Confucians think of tian-xia as an independent political affair. The reflection on immanent characteristics of tian-xia makes Confucians switch their way of thinking. The former, as what early stage Confucians manifest, focuses on the impartial mind of king, whereas the latter bases on the commonality of tian-xia. The contrast between the two show well that new way of political thinking on Pre-Qin Confucian theory of HHSP arises. The abdication and recommending the virtuous in public tian-xia respectively represent early and advanced stage of Pre-Qin Confucian’s political arrangement. The crucial indication of their distinctions is just that tian-xia comes to be thought as an independent political affair. What needs to be added here is the mode of recommending the virtuous in public tian-xia is still an uncompleted one, and so it requires further construction in moral, ethical and political realms under the spirit of "tian-xia is for all".