Sìshū jìnzhǐ 四書近指
Near-At-Hand Pointers on the Four Books
by 孫奇逢 (Sūn Qíféng, 1584–1675, zì Qǐtài, hào Zhōngyuán / Xiàfēng, 撰)
About the work
A 20-juàn Sìshū commentary completed by Sūn Qíféng in Shùnzhì jǐhài 順治己亥 (1659), when the author — by his own dating in the original preface — was seventy-six suì. Sūn was already by 1659 the surviving senior figure of the YángmíngZhūLù héliù school of MíngQīng transition Confucianism (later canonised, with Huáng Zōngxī and Lǐ Yóng, as one of the “Three Great Confucians of the Early Qīng”). The Jìnzhǐ is his major Sìshū work and is built on a single controlling thesis — that the whole of the Sìshū can be read as elaborating the opening Lúnyǔ phrase xué ér shí xí 學而時習 — learning and timely-practice. Each chapter of the two Lúnyǔ halves is therefore made to point at the word xué 學, and the Dàxué, Zhōngyōng, and Mèngzǐ are summarised under the same rubric. The exegesis is non-philological (xíngwén deliberately avoids xùngǔ dispute), preferring direct moral pointing — hence the title “jìnzhǐ”, near-at-hand pointers.
Tiyao
We respectfully submit: Sìshū jìnzhǐ in twenty juàn — by Sūn Qíféng of the present dynasty. Qíféng has the Zhōuyì dàzhǐ 周易大旨 already separately catalogued. This compilation, on the books of the four masters, lifts up the essentials and discusses the great purport, occasionally drawing in the views of earlier rú to verify the points of agreement and divergence. However, the yìzhǐ is not free of occasional one-sidedness — for example: the saying that “the sage’s instruction is in every case learning” is the most exact of his lùn; yet the two Lúnyǔ halves chapter by chapter all forced into the xué word; he goes so far as to read the chapter “governing a thousand-chariot state with respect, trust, frugality, love-of-the-people, and timely employment” as also being shíxí (timely-practice). Concerning the Dàxué opening passage on root-and-branch and antecedence-and-consequence: he says “míngdé must rest upon the people; míngxiūshēn must rest upon the realm-state-house; xiū…” — and again says: “géwù has no separate transmission, this is the most subtle point of the Dàxué; since wù cannot be exhaustively named, there is no point that is not wù, hence no point that is not gé; what Zhūzǐ called ‘pursuing-to-the-utmost the principles of things’ simply runs through the several Dàxué chapters in continuous reading.” All these are not free from the gāomíng (over-elevated, lofty-clear) defect. For Qíféng’s learning gathers materials from both Zhū and Lù, but its great trunk rests on qióng zé lìxíng, chū zé jīngshì 窮則勵行, 出則經世 (when retired, sharpen one’s conduct; when in office, manage the world); hence his explication runs in this fashion. Although it is not in every point fully consistent with the jīngyì, the reader who turns inward to seek practical application is not without benefit thereby. — Respectfully revised, seventh month of the 44th year of Qiánlóng [1779].
General Compilers: Jǐ Yún, Lù Xīxióng, Sūn Shìyì. General Reviser: Lù Fèichí.
Abstract
The Sìshū jìnzhǐ is the principal Sìshū commentary by Sūn Qíféng (1584–1675), the Míng-loyalist xiàfēng (peak of summer-mountain) recluse-teacher who, refusing Qīng office, taught at Mount Sūmén 蘇門 in Hénán for the last three decades of his life. The work bears Sūn’s own preface dated Shùnzhì jǐhài (1659), the dàshǔ (Greater Heat) day minus three, “in the Jiānshān cǎotáng 兼山草堂, the year of his being seventy-six.” This dates the work precisely. Sūn’s preface and fánlì (editorial principles) lay out the controlling thesis: that all Sìshū moral teaching converges on xué 學 (learning) — and that the Lúnyǔ opening word xué anticipates míngdé zhìshàn (the Dàxué), xiūdào and jiào (the Zhōngyōng), and jíyì yǎngqì (the Mèngzǐ).
The work is methodologically anti-philological by design (fánlì: “this compilation summarises the great purport of the Sìshū, not chapter-and-verse glossing; the omissions are many”); it is also self-consciously non-sectarian on the ZhūLù divide (fánlì: “where I differ from earlier rú … I borrow the difference to print the same; not finally to part ways”). Sūn quotes from named figures — Zhōu Dūnyí, the Chéng brothers, Zhāng Zài, Zhū Xī — by zǐ (master) when their identification is firm, and from less-secure attributions by huòyuē 或曰 (someone said), declaring this caution explicitly to avoid mis-attribution. He cites Liú Jìngxiū’s 劉靜修 lost Sìshū jīngyào and Lù Zhōngjié’s 鹿忠節 (Lù Shànjì 鹿善繼) Shuōyuē as antecedents — placing his own work in a Héběi/YānZhào Sìshū lineage rather than in the southern Lǐxué traditions.
The Sìkù editors note, with measured criticism, that Sūn’s reduction of every Lúnyǔ chapter to the xué rubric — including such manifestly political-administrative passages as Lúnyǔ 1.5 (dào qiānshèng zhī guó 道千乗之國) — produces over-strained readings; and that his treatment of géwù tries to read its “missing transmission” as already implicit in the surrounding Dàxué chapters. They name the diagnosis precisely: the gāomíng zhī bìng 高明之病, “the over-clear-and-elevated defect” — i.e. the schematism of the LùWáng mind-learning tendency. But they accept Sūn into the jīngbù on the ground that the moral-practical orientation of his exegesis (qióng zé lìxíng, chū zé jīngshì) provides genuine benefit to the reader who turns inward.
The catalog meta gives Sūn’s birth as 1584; CBDB gives 1583. The discrepancy is the customary lunar/solar boundary issue (Sūn was born in the early days of Wànlì 12 / 1); the person note retains the 1584 reading.
Translations and research
No English translation. Modern Chinese: 點校本 in Sūn Xià-fēng quán-jí 孫夏峯全集 (Zhōng-zhōu-gǔ-jí, 2003 reprint of the 1937 Cǐ-yuē-xuān edition). Studies: Wang Yi 王漪, Sūn Qí-féng yánjiū (Bā-Shǔ-shū-shè 2010); Cài Fāng-lù 蔡方鹿, Míng-dài Sì-shū xué shǐ (final chapter on the Míng-Qīng transition); Wing-tsit Chan, “The Hsing-li Ching-i and the Ch’eng-Chu School of the Seventeenth Century,” in The Unfolding of Neo-Confucianism (de Bary ed., Columbia, 1975). For Sūn as one of the “Three Great Confucians of the Early Qīng” set, see On-cho Ng, Cheng-Zhu Confucianism in the Early Qing (SUNY, 2001).
Other points of interest
The work is a key jiànshēng document of the MíngQīng intellectual transition: a Míng loyalist recluse, working at the Jiānshān cǎotáng on the borders of Hénán, takes the Sìshū — by 1659 already absorbed into the new dynasty’s official-orthodox apparatus — and reads it through a deliberately Yáng-míng-Lù-Wáng-tilted xué ontology. The Sìkù editors’ acceptance of the work into the jīngbù, despite their explicit diagnosis of its gāomíng defect, is a striking case of late-Qián-lóng generosity to a Míng-loyalist Lǐxué heterodox.
Links
- Wilkinson, Chinese History: A New Manual §28.4.4 and §28.7.3.
- Qīngshǐgǎo 480 (Sūn Qíféng biography).