Lúnyǔ xué’àn 論語學案
Records of the Schools of Analects-Learning
劉宗周 (Liú Zōngzhōu, zì Qǐdōng, hào Niàntái / Jíshān, shì Zhōngjiè, 1578–1645)
About the work
A 10-juàn late-Míng Lúnyǔ commentary by Liú Zōngzhōu — the leading orthodox-conservative Lǐxué figure of the Wànlì / Chóngzhēn era and the Jíshān xuépài 蕺山學派 founder, whose disciple Huáng Zōngxī 黃宗羲 went on to write the SòngYuán xuéàn and Míngrú xuéàn. The work expounds the Lúnyǔ under Liú Zōngzhōu’s distinctive doctrine of shèndú 慎獨 (vigilance-when-alone), reading every passage through this lens. Methodologically descended from the Yáojiāng (Wáng Yángmíng) Xīnxué, but explicitly correcting its excesses — particularly the liángzhī 良知 reductionism of the late Yáng-míng-school — and placing shèndú as the load-bearing concept.
Tiyao
We respectfully submit: Lúnyǔ xuéàn in 10 juàn — by Liú Zōngzhōu of the Míng. Zōngzhōu has the Zhōuyì gǔwén chāo 周易古文鈔 already catalogued. Zōngzhōu’s jiǎngxué takes shèndú as its zōng (governing point); hence his explication of “Wéi zhèng yǐ dé 為政以德” (2.1) and “zhāo wén dào, xī sǐ kě yǐ 朝聞道, 夕死可矣” (4.8) — both lift this point of zhǐ (purpose) at the head.
His zhuàn (commentarial transmission) — although coming out of the Yáojiāng (Wáng Yángmíng) school — was much able to jiùzhèng qí shī 救正其失 (rescue-and-correct its failings).
His explication of “duō wén zé qí shàn, duō jiàn ér shí zhī 多聞則其善, 多見而識之” chapter (7.27) says: “the world says that wénjiàn zhī zhī 聞見之知 (knowledge from hearing-and-seeing) and déxìng zhī zhī 德性之知 (knowledge from inborn nature) are two; I say cōngmíng ruìzhì 聰明睿智 (acute intelligence) — is that not nature? The body of ruìzhì cannot but be exhausted by cōngmíng — and wénjiàn opens it. To insist on wénjiàn as external — to abolish the body and reject cōngmíng in seeking ruìzhì — that withers ruìzhì itself. This is to abolish nature in the void — the chánxué (Chán-learning) of tánbǐng (talking-handle, glib chatter).” His acupuncture-strike on the liángzhī end-of-school is most penetrating-and-pointed.
His explication of “xìng xiāng jìn 性相近” chapter (17.2) says: “qìzhì 氣質 (psycho-physical disposition) — return it as qìzhì; how can it be drawn into ‘nature’? Nature is what one points to as yìlǐ within the qìzhì — not that qìzhì itself is xìng.” This is somewhat different from Zhūzǐ’s argument, but is also fairly clear-and-not-frivolous.
Zōngzhōu’s book zhíshū jǐjiàn 直抒己見 (directly draws his own views); his arguments are not without admixed-with-purity, but all draw on real attainment — not the piáoqiè (snatch-and-steal) of Buddhist phrasing in pretence of explaining Rú texts and self-arrogating “the highest truth-meaning”. His explication of “jiàn wēi zhì mìng 見危致命” chapter (19.1) says: “men have never failed to err on the yìlì (righteous-and-utility) gate without being able to make bànrán (clear) discrimination of the divide between life and death.” The Míng society having tumbled (1644), he willingly trod the Shǒuyáng one-fast (i.e. starved himself in protest, on the model of Bó Yí and Shū Qí); he may be called dàjié zhuōrán 大節皭然 (great-integrity gleaming) — not betraying his words. — Respectfully revised, sixth month of the 45th year of Qiánlóng [1780].
General Compilers: Jǐ Yún, Lù Xīxióng, Sūn Shìyì. General Reviser: Lù Fèichí.
Abstract
The Lúnyǔ xuéàn is the principal Sìshū commentary by Liú Zōngzhōu — the foremost late-Míng Lǐxué synthesiser. Unlike his disciples Huáng Zōngxī (the SòngYuán xuéàn and Míngrú xuéàn compiler) and Chén Què 陳確, Liú Zōngzhōu was substantively a constructive philosopher: he took the late-Yáng-míng Xīnxué tradition and re-anchored it on the Zhōngyōng-derived doctrine of shèndú 慎獨, attempting to rescue the Xīnxué programme from the kuángChán tendencies it had developed by the late Wànlì.
The Sìkù editors’ diagnostic citation of two passages — Liú Zōngzhōu’s Lúnyǔ 7.27 reading (correcting the liángzhī extreme by reuniting wénjiànzhīzhī with déxìngzhīzhī) and his Lúnyǔ 17.2 reading (carefully distinguishing xìng from qìzhì) — pinpoints the work’s two principal philosophical contributions. The closing remark on the jiàn wēi zhì mìng gloss, set against Liú Zōngzhōu’s actual 1645 self-starvation in protest at the Manchu conquest, gives the heroic frame: a commentary that the commentator lived-and-died by.
Liú Zōngzhōu is the most senior Míng loyalist Confucian whose Sìshū commentary the Sìkù editors approved into the jīngbù. Their relatively warm assessment is the more striking given that he was simultaneously: a Wàn-lì-era Dōnglín-aligned figure; a self-conscious Yáng-míng-school heir who corrected the school’s excesses; and a Míng martyr who died in the Manchu transition. Their willingness to canonise him — under Qiánlóng’s Qing-orthodox imperium — testifies to the genuine philosophical depth of the work.
Translations and research
No English translation. Modern Chinese: 點校本 in Liú Zōng-zhōu quán-jí 劉宗周全集 (Zhè-jiāng-gǔ-jí 2007, ed. 吳光). Studies: Cài Fāng-lù 蔡方鹿, Míng-dài Sì-shū xué shǐ; Wú Guāng 吳光, Liú Zōng-zhōu yánjiū (Zhè-jiāng-gǔ-jí 2008). Western: Wm. Theodore de Bary, Neo-Confucian Orthodoxy and the Learning of the Mind-and-Heart (Columbia, 1981); the standard biographical-philosophical study is Tu Wei-ming’s chapters in his Centrality and Commonality: An Essay on Confucian Religiousness (SUNY, 1989); also On-cho Ng, Cheng-Zhu Confucianism in the Early Qing (SUNY, 2001), peripheral.
Other points of interest
The work is the principal late-Míng Sìshū commentary by a martyr of the dynastic transition: Liú Zōngzhōu’s 1645 self-starvation, in protest at the Manchu conquest of his native Zhèjiāng, gives the Lúnyǔ xuéàn’s reading of jiàn wēi zhì mìng (19.1) a moral charge that few other Confucian commentaries can match.
Links
- Míngshǐ 255 (Liú Zōngzhōu biography).
- Wm. Theodore de Bary, Neo-Confucian Orthodoxy and the Learning of the Mind-and-Heart (Columbia, 1981).
- Wilkinson, Chinese History: A New Manual §28.7.3.