A Brief Exploration Of Wang Fuzhi's Political Theory

Wang Fuzhi (1619-1692), one of the most outstanding thinkers living in late Ming Dynasty and early Qing Dynasty, was most prominent for his achievements in philosophy. But his thoughts on politics also occupy an important place in his works, especially his theory on state administration, which are mainly embodied in his masterpiece on history criticism, Comments about History as a Mirror.Wang's political theory stemmed from his reflection on the fall of the Ming Dynasty. Corruption in the late Ming Dynasty reign and the conflicts between Man and Han nationalities after the invasion of Man troops prompted him to reflect and think dispassionately about the situation. On the one hand, he reflected on the fall of the Ming reign and directed his criticism at the concentration of power in monarchical dictatorship. On the other hand, after an examination of the Chinese political history of more three thousand years, he proposed some insightful political theory in hope of maintaining the feudalist reign. This thesis makes a systematical study into his theory on politics with a view of critically accept his thoughts. Wang's theory are mainly demonstrated in four aspects: his thoughts on the form of government, his notion of managing state affairs, his thoughts on selection of talented personnel and his thoughts on stability of the regime.The core issue of political thoughts is the state regime. Inheriting traditional thoughts of Confucianism, Wang upholds the centralization of power. He advocated respecting the emperor, and proposed the standards of it, but he objected to blind respect to the emperor and proposed his theory of relative power of the emperor. In view of the disadvantages of monarchical dictatorship, he put forward his idea of "division of power and rule by all" as a remedy. He firmly criticized the so called "orthodox theory" of "divine right of the Monarch" proposed by Confucians in Han and Song dynasties. However, Wang's attempts to "rectify the minds of people" by advocating respect for the emperor were obviously pedantic and out of date.Wang upheld that the rule of a country should be base on the Confucian benevolence and humanity and was opposed to snobbism. He put forward his ideal of being "strict with government officials and kind to the subjects" . He valued the construction of feudalist legal system and emphasized on the importance of penalty, but he also advocated the combination of severe punishment and leniency. However, Wang objected to drastic reformation movement of abolishing the old legal system to establish a new one and proposed the mild improvement of it, which showed his conservatism.Wang attached great importance to the finding and employing of talents. He appreciated those rulers who valued talented people and expressed his indignation and criticism to those rulers who wrongly used talented people thus resulting in severe consequences. He proposed three aspects to assess the talented people and emphasized the assessment of talented people in practice. He valued the ways to select talented people. He advocated recommendation of talents by local authorities, and selection of talents by imperial examinations. However, there existed political bias against talents from the class of businessman and other lower classes in his thoughts on talented personnel.To secure and stabilize the feudalist regime, Wang proposed to be cautious with those powerful officials and heirs of authorities. He proposed measures to deal with the factors which might affect the stability of regime such as eunuchs, royal relatives, treacherous court officials, influential officials and political partisans.In general, Wang Fuzhi's political theory were solid, objective, dialectical, and with a touch of bourgeois enlightenment. As a treasure in ancient Chinese political thoughts, they are enlightening and worthy of our critical inheritance.