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知言

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Text ID
KR3a0049
Date
1140–1162
Dynasty
宋

Zhī yán 知言

The Knowing Word by 胡宏 (Hú Hóng, zì Rénzhòng 仁仲, hào Wǔfēng xiānsheng 五峯先生, 1106–1162, 宋)

About the work

A six-juan work of recorded yǔlù-style philosophical reflection by Hú Hóng — the founder of the HúXiāng xuépài — composed as a biji throughout his Wǔfēng teaching period and revised over many years before completion. Lǚ Zǔqiān judged it superior to the Zhèng méng. Substantively the work develops Hú’s distinctive doctrines: that xìng 性 has no shànè 善惡 (good or bad), that xīn chéng xìng 心成性 (the heart-mind completes the nature), that tiānlǐ rényù tóng tǐ yì yòng tóng xíng yì qíng 天理人欲同體異用同行異情 (“Heaven’s principle and human desires share one body but differ in function, share one practice but differ in feeling”). Zhū Xī wrote his Zhī yán yí yì 知言疑義 against this work, conducting a systematic three-way exchange with Lǚ Zǔqiān and Hú’s own disciple Zhāng Shì over the merits of the propositions. This exchange is one of the principal mid-Southern-Sòng Lǐxué doctrinal documents.

The work was little circulated in YuánMíng tradition; the Míng scholar Chéng Mǐnzhèng 程敏政 first recovered an old recension at Wúzhōng, after which the work circulated again. The transmitted Míng printing was however heavily corrupted; the SKQS editors used the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn-preserved Sòng original to restore the proper sequence and chapter divisions.

Tiyao

We respectfully submit that the Zhī yán in six juan with one juan of appendix was composed by Hú Hóng of the Sòng. Hóng’s Huáng wáng dà jì has been catalogued elsewhere. This compilation is his discussions of learning — biji records, repeatedly revised before completion. Lǚ Zǔqiān once held it superior to the Zhèng méng.

But Hóng’s learning derived from his father Ānguó’s. Ānguó’s learning, although issuing from Yáng Shí, also drew jointly from Dōnglín Cháng Zǒng 東林常總. Zǒng once said běnrán zhī xìng 本然之性 is not paired with è (evil); Ānguó followed this saying and accordingly took the běnrán and the shànè-paired forms as two distinct natures. Hóng made this book also retaining his family-house transmission. Hence his statements: xìng wú shànè, xīn yǐ chéng xìng, tiānlǐ rényù tóng tǐ yì yòng tóng xíng yì qíng — naming its body xìng, naming its function xīn; xìng cannot but move, and when it moves it is xīn.

Zhūzǐ vigorously attacked these as wrong, going so far as to write the Zhī yán yí yì in mutual debate with Lǚ Zǔqiān and Hóng’s disciple Zhāng Shì. Even Shì did not dare to take all his master’s positions as right. His arguments on zhìdào (the way of governance), holding that the jǐngtián and fēngjiàn must not be abolished, are pedantic and lapse into archaic absurdity. But the rest is in many respects clear and bold, sufficient to expound zhèngxué and to refute yì duān. Zhūzǐ also once praised the place where his thought was finely arrived as inimitable. One ought not, on the strength of one or two flaws, dismiss the whole book.

From the Yuán onward the work was little current. The Míng Chéng Mǐnzhèng first obtained the old text at Wúzhōng; later the booksellers cut the woodblocks. But Míng-period reprintings of ancient books are fond of arbitrary alteration; this text too was given names of piān by some pretender, with the order reversed and the wording corrupted — losing the original altogether. Only the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn preserves the Sòng qiàn original, head and tail complete, threads cleanly drawn. We have respectfully relied on the chapter-titles, carefully restored and corrected, to recover the old form.

[Tíyào continues; abbreviated.]

Respectfully revised and submitted, [date].

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

Abstract

The Zhī yán is the foundational text of the HúXiāng xuépài and one of the cleanest cases of an alternative Lǐxué tradition surviving alongside the Zhū Xī mainstream. The composition window is the working life of Hú Hóng at Wǔfēng — most likely the 1140s through 1162. The frontmatter brackets to ca. 1140–1162.

The substantive innovations — particularly the xìng wú shànè and tiānlǐ rényù tóng tǐ doctrines — became the major points of intra-Lǐxué contention with the Mǐn / Zhū Xī mainstream. Zhū Xī’s Zhī yán yí yì, written in correspondence with Lǚ Zǔqiān and Zhāng Shì, is the principal documentary record of the dispute. Modern scholarship since Mou Tsung-san’s Xīn tǐ yǔ xìng tǐ 心體與性體 has tended to elevate the Hu-Xiāng tradition (Hú Hóng → Zhāng Shì → eventually Liú Zōngzhōu and Wáng Yáng-míng-influenced lineages) as a vital alternative to the Mǐnxué mainstream.

The textual transmission is well-documented: the work was little known after the fall of the Sòng, recovered in the Míng by Chéng Mǐnzhèng, then corrupted by Míng printers, and finally restored by the SKQS editors using the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn base. The frontmatter brackets the work to its composition; the editorial restoration is much later.

The bibliographic record: Sòng shǐ yìwén zhì; Wénxiàn tōngkǎo; SKQS Zǐbù — Rújiā lèi. Modern critical text: Wú Rénhuá 吳仁華, Zhī yán (Zhōnghuá Shūjú, 1987 / Lǐxué cóngshū series).

Translations and research

  • Conrad Schirokauer, “Hu Hong: Confucianism in 12th-century Hu-nan”, in Symposium on Hu Hong (various venues).
  • Hoyt Cleveland Tillman, “Hu Hong’s Zhi yan and the Confucian Synthesis”, in his Confucian Discourse and Chu Hsi’s Ascendancy (1992) — major treatment.
  • Mou Tsung-san 牟宗三, Xīn tǐ yǔ xìng tǐ 心體與性體, 3 vols., Zhèng-zhōng Shū-jú, 1969 — foundational reassessment of Hú Hóng.
  • Wú Rén-huá 吳仁華, Zhī yán (Zhōnghuá Shūjú critical edition, 1987).
  • Wing-tsit Chan, Source Book in Chinese Philosophy (1963), partial translation.
  • Wang Robin Wang, Yinyang and other related work.

Other points of interest

The Zhī yán is one of the principal sources for the historiographical reassessment of the Hu-Xiāng tradition’s importance within Sòng Lǐxué. Mou Tsung-san’s reading positioned Hú Hóng as a precursor to a “Liú Zōngzhōu line” of xīnxìng doctrine that was eclipsed by the ZhūXī orthodoxy but recovered through Wáng Yángmíng and Liú Zōngzhōu. This reading, while contested, has become standard in modern Chinese-language SòngMíng Lǐxué historiography.

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