Sìshū huòwèn 四書或問
Questions and Answers on the Four Books
朱熹 (Zhū Xī, 1130–1200)
About the work
A 39-juàn “questions-and-answers” companion to the Sìshū jízhù (KR1h0015), in the format question (huòwèn 或問 = “someone asks”) followed by answer in Zhū Xī’s own voice. Composed (and partially revised) over a long period during the Chúnxī era — the Dàxué huòwèn 大學或問 (2 juàn) seeing the most reworking; Zhōngyōng huòwèn 中庸或問 (3 juàn) originally circulated together with the Jílüè 輯略 [i.e. KR1h0018] as appendices to the Zhōngyōng zhāngjù; the Lúnyǔ huòwèn (20 juàn) and Mèngzǐ huòwèn (14 juàn) standalone. The compilation of all four into one 39-juàn set is a YuánMíng booksellers’ arrangement, not Zhū Xī’s. It represents Zhū Xī’s commentary on his own commentary — explaining the deletions and selections of the Jízhù against the broader stream of Cheng-Zhu Lǐxué.
Tiyao
We respectfully submit: Sìshū huòwèn in 39 juàn — by Zhūzǐ of the Sòng. Having composed the Sìshū zhāngjù jízhù, Zhūzǐ further set out, against the various schools’ tangled and unsettled discussions, a question-and-answer format clarifying his reasons for taking up or laying aside this or that view; and so this book was made. The Dàxué takes 2 juàn, Zhōngyōng 3 juàn, Lúnyǔ 20 juàn, Mèngzǐ 14 juàn. The book was not composed at one stretch. The Zhōngyōng huòwèn originally circulated, with the Jílüè 輯略 KR1h0018, as appendices to the Zhāngjù; the Lúnyǔ and Mèngzǐ portions were each separate works. The combination into one binding is a later booksellers’ joining.
The Dàxué huòwèn received the most prolonged labour. Hence Zhūzǐ in answering Pān Gōngshū 潘恭叔 says: “Of all the books, on the Dàxué I have done the most going-over. The changes are many; compared with the old, it is now most precise.”
The Zhōngyōng huòwèn, by contrast, Zhūzǐ never quite satisfied himself with. The Yǔlù records: Yóu so-and-so asked, “How does the Zhōngyōng compilation stand?” Zhūzǐ answered: “Because the earlier masters had said so much, and the work had ample twists and turns of error, and people did not like to argue down their views — so it has been hard to put one’s hand to it. It is not like the Dàxué, where no one has yet spoken.” The Yǔlù also records: in handing over the Zhōngyōng huòwèn to Huáng Xī 黃㽦, Zhūzǐ said “still not satisfactory; even where I evaluate the various Chéng disciples, the language is still rough” — that is, he counted the work himself as still unsettled.
As to the LùnMèng huòwèn — it often runs against both the Jízhù and the Yǔlù; later readers sometimes use the Huòwèn to question the Jízhù, without realising that the Jízhù was repeatedly revised down to old age, while the Huòwèn had no time for re-editing. Hence the niánpǔ notes that the Huòwèn “was not put forth to be shown to others”; that when bookshops cribbed and printed it, Zhūzǐ urgently petitioned the local magistrate to seize the blocks. And the Huì’ān jí 晦菴集 contains a letter to Pān Duānshū 潘端叔: “The Lúnyǔ huòwèn has long been without working time for revision; only the Jízhù has been continually re-fixed, and is now no longer in step with the Huòwèn.”
We see, then, that Zhūzǐ himself did not conceal the divergences. We record both texts here. Where the Huòwèn matches the Jízhù, the reader can clearly see the rationale of Zhū’s selection; where they do not match, the reader sees that Zhūzǐ in those days himself entertained many unsettled arguments — one cannot, on the strength of a few sentences plucked from the Yǔlù or Wénjí, lay down a doctrine as if it were the master’s final word. — Respectfully revised, eleventh month of the 46th year of Qiánlóng [1781].
General Compilers: Jǐ Yún, Lù Xīxióng, Sūn Shìyì. General Reviser: Lù Fèichí.
Abstract
The Huòwèn is the indispensable companion to the Jízhù: in it, Zhū Xī explains his reasoning for the readings he has accepted and the readings he has rejected, in dialogue with the major Sòng commentators (the two Chéngs, Zhāng Zǎi 張載, the Chéng disciples — Yóu Zuò 游酢, Yáng Shí 楊時, Lǚ Dàlín 呂大臨, Hóu Zhòngliáng 侯仲良 — and Sòng predecessors like Sīmǎ Guāng).
Zhū Xī’s own ambivalence about the work — repeatedly noted by the Sìkù editors — is well attested. The Dàxué huòwèn alone he revised down to his death; the Zhōngyōng huòwèn he never satisfied himself with; the Lúnyǔ and Mèngzǐ portions he treated as somewhat preliminary, complaining that they had “long been without working time for revision” while the Jízhù itself was constantly refined. The Sìkù’s careful editorial framing — to read the Huòwèn as evidence of Zhū’s reasoning where it concords with the Jízhù, but not as a higher authority where it diverges — has remained the standard scholarly practice.
The 39-juàn unified compilation is a YuánMíng booksellers’ format. Its WYG transmission line passes through Yuán-period cuttings; the modern punctuated edition is in Zhūzǐ quánshū 朱子全書 vol. 6 (Shànghǎi gǔjí 2002), edited by Zhū Jièrén 朱傑人 et al.
Translations and research
The Dàxué huò-wèn is partially translated in Daniel K. Gardner, Chu Hsi and the Ta-hsüeh: Neo-Confucian Reflection on the Confucian Canon (HUP, 1986). The Zhōng-yōng huò-wèn is partially translated in Yan Wu, “Chu Hsi’s Doctrine of the Mean” (PhD, Univ. of Iowa, 1992). The Lúnyǔ and Mèngzǐ portions have no English standalone translation. Modern critical Chinese: Zhōng-huá-shu-jú 1983 punctuated edition; Zhū-zǐ quánshū vol. 6 (Shàng-hǎi gǔ-jí 2002). Studies: Wing-tsit Chan, Chu Hsi: New Studies (HUP, 1989); Hoyt Cleveland Tillman, Confucian Discourse and Chu Hsi’s Ascendancy (UHP, 1992).
Other points of interest
The pairing of Jízhù (orthodox commentary) with Huòwèn (commentator’s-defense-of-his-commentary) is itself an innovation: it gives the reader a window into the method of the orthodox Cheng-Zhu commentary, not just the orthodox conclusions. Reading the two together is the standard method of Lǐxué training; in this respect the Huòwèn anticipates the modern hermeneutic notion of “showing one’s work” in textual criticism.
Links
- Daniel K. Gardner, Chu Hsi and the Ta-hsüeh (HUP, 1986).
- Zhūzǐ quánshū vol. 6 (Shànghǎi gǔjí 2002).
- Wilkinson, Chinese History: A New Manual §28.4.4.