Guǐsì Mèngzǐ shuō 癸巳孟子說
The Guisi-Year Discussions of the Mencius
張栻 (Zhāng Shì, zì Jìngfū, 1133–1180)
About the work
A 7-juàn Mèngzǐ commentary by Zhāng Shì, completed in Qiándào 9 (guǐsì, 1173). The work began in wùzǐ 戊子 (Qiándào 4, 1168) when Zhāng was Vice-Director of the Left Office (Zuǒsī yuánwàiláng); was interrupted by his appointment to govern Yánzhōu 嚴州; resumed in xīnmǎo 辛卯 (1171) when he resigned and travelled home down the Yangtze, revising and pruning the manuscript en route; and was completed two years after his return to his ancestral residence. Particularly clear on the wángbà yìlì zhī biàn 王霸義利之辨 (the discrimination of the kingly Way from the way of the hegemons, of righteousness from utility) — the central political-philosophical problem of the Mèngzǐ in Zhāng Shì’s reading.
Tiyao
We respectfully submit: Guǐsì Mèngzǐ shuō in 7 juàn — by Zhāng Shì of the Sòng. The book was also completed in Qiándào 9, guǐsì. On the discrimination of wáng and bà, of yì and lì, his statement is most lucid. The author’s preface says: in wùzǐ (1168) “I assembled what I had seen and made the Mèngzǐ shuō; the next year, in winter, I received my appointment to Yánlíng [Yánzhōu], and could not complete the book; in xīnmǎo (1171), having been dismissed from the zuǒsī, I returned, autumn-winter travelling down the Yangtze, reading my old draft and finding much I no longer agreed with, so I revised and pruned. I returned home, and after two further years was finally able to copy out a clean text” — so this work was made in the period of his transition from Zuǒsī yuánwàiláng 左司員外郎 to Zhī Yánzhōu 知嚴州, and his subsequent retirement to private residence.
Zhāng Shì had been driven from court for protesting against the appointment of Zhāng Yuè 張說 to the executive — hence in this book, the chapters on Zāng Cāng 臧倉 obstructing Mencius (Mèngzǐ 1B.16) and on Wáng Huān 王驩 going as deputy emissary (Mèngzǐ 4B.6) both have a slight allusive load against the events of the day. On the chapter on diplomacy with neighbouring states (Mèngzǐ 1B.3) — “what is called fearing Heaven, how could it be merely serving the great state and doing nothing else? It is just refusing to consign oneself to mìng. Hence cultivating virtue, governing well, and so opening the kingly enterprise — that was Tàiwáng. Nourishing the people, training the troops, and so finally destroying his enemy — that was [Yuè] Gōujiàn 句踐. The end of the Zhōu House: only Píngwáng 周平王 declined to be angry over the matter of Líshān 驪山 [the Quǎnróng sack of 771 BCE], and so the Eastern Zhōu finally could not raise itself up.” His language of gǎnfèn 感憤 — moral indignation — is also stirred by the Nándù 南渡 (Southern crossing of the Sòng dynasty after the Jurchen sack of Kāifēng).
Yet his readings all draw out what is in the canonical sense — quite unlike Hú Ānguó’s 胡安國 Chūnqiū zhuàn (KR1e0009), which sets out to use historical events to vent moral discussion and so often misses the bǐxuē 筆削 [editorial] sense of the Chūnqiū. — Respectfully revised, first month of the 44th year of Qiánlóng [1779].
General Compilers: Jǐ Yún, Lù Xīxióng, Sūn Shìyì. General Reviser: Lù Fèichí.
Abstract
The Guǐsì Mèngzǐ shuō, finished in 1173, complements Zhāng Shì’s parallel Guǐsì Lúnyǔ jiě (KR1h0021). The composition history is unusually well-documented: the preface itself records the 1168/1171/1173 stages, situating the manuscript in Zhāng Shì’s political career.
The political-allusive load of the work — what the Sìkù editors call its gǎnfèn (moral indignation) — is real but should not be over-stated: the chapter-glosses on Zāng Cāng (1B.16) and Wáng Huān (4B.6) carry a discreet polemic against Zhāng Yuè (the executive against whom Zhāng Shì had protested), and the gloss on Mèngzǐ 1B.3 (Tàiwáng, Yuè Gōujiàn, the Eastern Zhōu Píngwáng) is animated by the recent memory of the Jìngkāng 靖康 catastrophe and the Sòng’s Southern crossing. Yet, as the Sìkù editors fairly argue, none of this strays from the canonical yìlǐ: Zhāng’s contemporary politics is read into the text only where the text itself permits.
The work’s clearest achievement is its sustained articulation of the wángbà yìlì zhī biàn — the most important Mèngzǐ-derived doctrine in Sòng Neo-Confucian political philosophy. Zhāng Shì gives this discrimination a sharper edge than Zhū Xī, who in the Mèngzǐ jízhù tends to soften the implications. In this respect, the Guǐsì Mèngzǐ shuō is the high-water mark of the HúXiāng 湖湘 school of Lǐxué.
The textual history follows the 1173 manuscript through the Yuán; the Sìkù WYG copy is taken from a YuánMíng manuscript line.
Translations and research
No standalone English translation. Modern Chinese: 楊世文 Zhāng Nán-xuān xiān-shēng wén-jí 張南軒先生文集 (Wén-shǐ-zhé 2010), incorporating the Guǐsì Mèngzǐ shuō. Studies: Cài Fāng-lù 蔡方鹿, Sòng-dài Sì-shū xué yánjiū, ch. 6; Tian Hao [Hoyt Tillman], Confucian Discourse and Chu Hsi’s Ascendancy (UHP, 1992); Conrad Schirokauer, “Chu Hsi’s Sense of History,” in Robert P. Hymes and Conrad Schirokauer eds., Ordering the World: Approaches to State and Society in Sung Dynasty China (UCalP, 1993). Wilkinson §28.7.3.
Other points of interest
The contemporaneous composition of the Guǐsì Lúnyǔ jiě and Guǐsì Mèngzǐ shuō makes them the only paired Lúnyǔ + Mèngzǐ commentaries by a single Southern Sòng author — an effective Hú-Xiāng-school counterpart to Zhū Xī’s Sìshū jízhù. Were Zhāng Shì not eclipsed by Zhū Xī’s overwhelming subsequent influence, his pair could plausibly have served as the orthodox Lǐxué presentation of the Sìshū.
Links
- Wilkinson, Chinese History: A New Manual §28.7.3.
- Sòngshǐ 429 (Zhāng Shì biography).
- 全國漢籍データベース 四庫提要