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注解正蒙

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Text ID
KR3a0028
Date
1670–1718
Dynasty
清

Zhù jiě Zhèng méng 注解正蒙

Annotated Exegesis of the Zhèng méng by 李光地 (Lǐ Guāngdì, 1642–1718, 清)

About the work

A two-juan early-Qīng commentary by Lǐ Guāngdì on Zhāng Zǎi’s Zhèng méng 正蒙 (the principal Northern-Sòng qì-metaphysics treatise, embedded as a major component of Zhāngzǐ quánshū KR3a0026). The SKQS tíyào describes the work as the best of the post-early-Míng commentaries, distinguished by its willingness to take positions on points where Zhāng Zǎi’s argument diverges from Zhū Xī or Chéng Yí, and by its philological attentiveness in reading Zhāng’s compressed prose. The major divergences Lǐ flags between Zhāng’s positions and those of the daoxué mainstream are: (i) Zhāng’s tài xū 太虛 vs. Zhōu Dūnyí’s tài jí 太極; (ii) the qīng shén / zhuó xíng 清神濁形 distinction, criticised by Chéngzǐ; (iii) Zhāng’s making tàijí and yīnyáng a triad — which (Lǐ argues) is the source of Hú Hóng’s 胡宏 sānjiǎo tàijí 三角太極 doctrine; (iv) the dì yǒu shēngjiàng 地有升降 (the earth rises and descends) passage, which Huáng Ruìjié 黃瑞節 had taken as Zhāng’s holding of the sì yóu 四遊 ancient cosmography. Within the SKQS Rújiā this is the standard Kāngxī-era Zhèng méng commentary.

Tiyao

We respectfully submit that the Zhù jiě Zhèng méng in two juan was composed under the present dynasty by Lǐ Guāngdì. The Zhèng méng as a book was made by Zhāngzǐ through deep reflection, and so the meaning is broad and the wording profound; commentators mostly do not catch its bearing. The chapters and sentences being already numerous, sometimes there is a slight unevenness, occasionally clashing with the views of the Chéngzǐ and Zhūzǐ — and commentators have not known how to follow nor dared to comment.

Guāngdì’s book, in opening up the substance and verifying the wording, expounds much of Zhāngzǐ’s unstated meaning. Where the senior Confucians had different positions — for instance: the discussion of tài xū differs from Zhōuzǐ’s tài jí; the distinction of clear-spirit and turbid-form was criticised by Chéngzǐ; the doctrine of tài jí and yīnyáng as three opens the door to Húshì’s sānjiǎo tàijí learning; the passage on the earth rising and descending Huáng Ruìjié takes as holding to the old sì yóu doctrine — and again in his readings within the Six Classics, like the gloss of Mèngzǐ’s guò huà as “not lingering on things”; the gloss of Zhōng yōng’s dūn huà as “embodying thickly and using divinely”; the gloss of Yì’s jì shàn as “not desisting from one’s good”; the gloss of Lúnyǔ’s shàng zhì and xià yú as “habits brought to completion”; the gloss of Zhōng yōng’s rén zhě as shēng ān and zhì zhě as xué lì; the gloss of Lúnyǔ’s kōng kōng wú zhī as “no thought, no doing”; the gloss of Yì’s méng yǐ yǎng zhèng as “rearing the immature with rectitude”; the gloss of Lúnyǔ’s xiān jìn / hòu jìn as “advancing quickly / advancing slowly”; yáng yáng yíng ěr as “music having lost its order”; and other detailed glosses on specific lines — in each case he distinguishes right and wrong, making the reader clear and unconfused. Among the various commentaries from the early Míng on, this can be called a good edition.

Respectfully revised and submitted, tenth month of the forty-second year of Qiánlóng [1777].

General Compilers: Jǐ Yún 紀昀, Lù Xīxióng 陸錫熊, Sūn Shìyì 孫士毅. General Reviser: Lù Fèichí 陸費墀.

Abstract

The Zhù jiě Zhèng méng is the principal early-Qīng commentary on Zhāng Zǎi’s Zhèng méng and stands within Lǐ Guāngdì’s broader project of integrating the Northern Sòng daoxué corpus under late-Kāngxī Hànlín Lǐxué. The work is methodologically distinctive in being willing to take positions on the divergences between Zhāng Zǎi and Zhū Xī, rather than (as the early-Míng tradition before Cáo Duān had done) silently smoothing them over.

The composition window is bracketed by Lǐ Guāngdì’s working life — from his Kāngxī 9 (1670) jìnshì through to his death in 1718. The frontmatter brackets the work to ca. 1670–1718. A more precise dating is not securely available; the work was probably consolidated in his late-Kāngxī Hànlín years.

The transmitted text is stable from Kāngxī into the SKQS WYG. Its substance has not been displaced by later commentaries — Wáng Fūzhī’s 王夫之 Zhāngzǐ Zhèng méng zhù 張子正蒙注 (also an early-Qīng commentary, but with a very different metaphysical agenda — arguing for qì monism against Lǐxué’s lǐ primacy) is the principal alternative, and the two are typically read together in modern scholarship.

The bibliographic record: SKQS Zǐbù — Rújiā lèi; reproduced in numerous Qīng-period editions of Lǐ Guāngdì’s collected commentaries; modern critical edition not standard, but Hāng Sōng’s Zhāng Zǎi jí (Zhōnghuá Shūjú 1978) integrates it as one of the two principal Zhèng méng commentaries.

Translations and research

  • For the parent text Zhèng méng: Ira E. Kasoff, The Thought of Chang Tsai (cited under KR3a0026); Wing-tsit Chan, Source Book in Chinese Philosophy, 1963.
  • For Lǐ Guāngdì’s Lǐxué generally: On-cho Ng [Wú Àn-zhǎng 吳安璋], Cheng-Zhu Confucianism in the Early Qing: Li Guangdi (1642–1718) and Qing Learning, SUNY Press, 2001. The standard English-language critical study.
  • Liú Shùxiān 劉述先, “Lǐ Guāngdì yǔ Zhū Xī xué” 李光地與朱熹學, in his Zhū-zǐ zhé-xué sī-xiǎng de fā-zhǎn yǔ wán-chéng 朱子哲學思想的發展與完成, Tabei: Xué-shēng Shū-jú, 1995 (rev.).
  • Pī-róng Yáng 楊丕榮 (and others), Lǐ Guāngdì Lǐxué yánjiū 李光地理學研究 — modern Chinese monograph.

Other points of interest

The Lǐ Guāngdì Zhù jiě Zhèng méng and the slightly earlier Wáng Fūzhī Zhāngzǐ Zhèng méng zhù (the latter not in SKQS, but available in the Wáng Fūzhī collected works) are the two principal early-Qīng Zhèng méng commentaries, embodying very different intellectual positions: Lǐ as Zhū-Sòng-orthodox systematic, Wáng as a quasi-heterodox qì-monist. Modern Chinese scholarship since the 1980s has tended to elevate Wáng over Lǐ for substantive philosophical interest; the SKQS, by including only Lǐ, reflects the late-imperial Lǐxué canon-formation.

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