本語

Běnyǔ 本語

Words from the Root

by 高拱 (Gāo Gǒng, 1512–1578; Zhōngjídiàn dàxuéshì under the Lóngqìng emperor, dismissed 1572)

About the work

A 6-juan miscellany of philosophical, historical and political essays composed by Gāo Gǒng 高拱 in the closing years of his retirement in Hénán. The author’s preface, signed Wànlì bǐngzǐ 萬曆丙子 = 1576, dates the work to thirteen years after Gāo’s dismissal from the Zhōngjídiàn dàxuéshì office in 1572 by the regents Zhāng Jūzhèng 張居正 and Féng Bǎo 馮保. Opening with a meditation on the Pǐ 否 and Tài 泰 hexagrams of the Yìjīng and on the natural waxing and waning of jūnzǐ and xiǎorén, the book is part philosophical-political testament, part settling of accounts: discussions of Péi Dù 裴度 and Liú Yàn 劉晏 implicitly compare Gāo to those statesmen, while discussions of Lǐ Línfǔ 李林甫 and Hāmá 哈麻 implicitly compare his enemies to those notorious figures, and his discussion of Lú Huáishèn 盧懷愼 implicitly attacks Yīn Shìdàn 殷士儋 and his faction. From juan 5 onward the discussion turns to contemporary affairs, with sustained criticism of late-Míng administrative malpractice that the Míng shǐ itself singled out as evidence of Gāo’s “practical command of administration and economic talent” (練習政體, 有經濟才). Catalogued under Záxué zhī shǔ 雜學之屬 of the Zájiā 雜家 division.

Tiyao

We respectfully submit that Běnyǔ in six juan was composed by Gāo Gǒng of the Míng. Gǒng has [his] Chūnqiū zhèngzhǐ 春秋正旨 also catalogued. This book was completed in Wànlì bǐngzǐ [1576], thirteen years after his dismissal and return home — hence its opening immediately takes up the Pǐ 否 and Tài 泰 hexagrams and the waxing-and-waning of jūnzǐ and xiǎorén as its theme. Within: his discussions of Péi Dù 裴度 and Liú Yàn 劉晏 secretly compare them with himself; his discussions of Lǐ Línfǔ 李林甫 and Hāmá 哈麻 secretly compare them with [his enemies]; his discussion of Lú Huáishèn 盧懷愼 secretly compares with Yīn Shìdàn 殷士儋 and that crowd — clearly a man writing in indignation. Some passages — like the entry under “the sixth year of Lóngqìng I lodged at Liángxiāng and dreamed of seeing Confucius” — are rather inflated and grandiose; or such things as “the marvel of no-intent is what intent cannot do, hence the sage values forgetting” are also somewhat tinged with void-and-nothing. As for his rebuttal of [Chéng] Yīchuān 伊川’s reading of Chūnqiū portents in one entry — wishing to break the line of Dǒng Zhòngshū 董仲舒, Liú Xiàng 劉向 and Liú Xīn 劉歆, going so far as to say that the way of Heaven has nothing to do with human affairs — this is particularly ill-considered. The other arguments in which he challenges the failures of earlier Confucians and prises out the errors of received commentary are vehement in tone, the residue of his harsh and combative habit. Yet there are passages of acute and apt analysis that cannot be effaced. From juan 5 onward, all is on contemporary affairs and goes squarely to the heart of the malpractices of the late Míng — hence the Míng shǐ says of him “he was practiced in administration and had economic talent.” A book in which flaws and merits are visible side by side, just like the man himself.

Respectfully revised and submitted, seventh month of the forty-fifth year of Qiánlóng [1780].

General Compilers: Jǐ Yún 紀昀 (note: 均 in the original is a typographical slip for 昀), Lù Xīxióng 陸錫熊, Sūn Shìyì 孫士毅. General Reviser: Lù Fèichí 陸費墀.

Abstract

Gāo Gǒng 高拱 (1512–1578, zì Sùqīng 肅卿, hào Zhōngxuán 中玄, posthumous Wénxiāng 文襄) was the principal political figure of the Lóngqìng (1567–1572) era and Zhōngjídiàn dàxuéshì (Senior Grand Secretary, the de facto first minister) under the Lóngqìng emperor. He was dismissed in 1572 in the famous transition-power-struggle by the Wànlì regents Zhāng Jūzhèng and Féng Bǎo, returned in retirement to his native Xīnzhèng 新鄭 in Hénán, and died there six years later. Běnyǔ is one of the major literary products of his retirement. The author’s own preface — zìxù 自序 — is dated Wànlì bǐngzǐ wǔyuè shíyǒu sān rì 萬曆丙子五月十有三日 = 13th day of the 5th month of 1576, and signed Zhōngyuán shānrén 中元山人. The signature dates the entire work precisely to 1576; both notBefore and notAfter are accordingly set to 1576.

The preface frames the book around two propositions: that tiānlǐ 天理 (heavenly principle) is not separate from rénqíng 人情 (human disposition); and that the sages took rénqíng as tiānlǐ, while later Confucians distanced themselves from rénqíng in the name of tiānlǐ, with the result that “the learning of the sages is dammed up and their transformation is choked off” (聖學湮, 聖化窒). This is a direct anti-lǐxué manifesto from a major late-Míng statesman, and explains the Sìkù tiyao’s two-edged response: the editors note Gāo’s “harsh and combative” tone and his “ill-considered” rejection of Dǒng Zhòngshū’s correlative cosmology, but acknowledge as well that from juan 5 onward the book “goes squarely to the heart of the malpractices of the late Míng” and that Gāo’s Míng shǐ biography itself credits him with “practical command of administration and economic talent” (練習政體, 有經濟才).

The Sìkù editors’ reading is, as so often with high-late-Míng statesmen filed under Záxué, partisan in inheritance: Zhāng Jūzhèng’s faction wrote the Míng shǐ account, and the standard Qīng-era assessment of Gāo derives from it. Recent Chinese-language scholarship — notably Yuè Tiānyǔ’s 岳天宇 Gāo Gǒng yánjiū 高拱研究 (Běijīng Dàxué chūbǎnshè, 2010) — has substantially rehabilitated Gāo against this consensus, arguing that his administrative measures (notably in personnel selection, frontier defence, and biānjiāng affairs) were the foundation of much of what is conventionally credited to Zhāng Jūzhèng’s Wànlì xīnzhèng 萬曆新政 reforms.

The work is included in the Sìkù; it is also reprinted with Gāo’s other major works in the Gāo Wénxiānggōng wénjí 高文襄公文集 (preserved in WYG and other collectanea). Of Gāo’s other catalogued works, his KR1e0080 Chūnqiū zhèngzhǐ 春秋正旨 (an anti-Hú Ānguó commentary) and Wènbiànlù 問辨錄 (KR3a0119, on the Sìshū) are the principal monuments of his classical scholarship.

Translations and research

No European-language translation of Běnyǔ exists. Gāo Gǒng has been the subject of substantial recent Chinese-language reassessment:

• Yuè Tiānyǔ 岳天宇, Gāo Gǒng yánjiū 高拱研究 (Běijīng Dàxué chūbǎnshè, 2010). The standard modern monograph; revisionist with respect to the standard Míng shǐ account.
• Yuè Jīnxǐ 岳金西 et al. (eds.), Gāo Gǒng quán-jí 高拱全集, 2 vols (Zhōngzhōu gǔjí chūbǎnshè, 2006). The standard modern collected works, with Běnyǔ included.
• Wáng Tiānyǒu 王天有, Wǎn-Míng dōng-lín dǎngzhēng 晚明東林黨爭 and related studies of late-Míng factional politics give Gāo extended treatment.
• Western Ming-historiography (Goodrich-Fang, Dictionary of Ming Biography entry by Hung-lam Chu) provides a brief Anglophone account but no full study.

Other points of interest

The book’s structural opening with the PǐTài 否泰 hexagrams is a deliberate Confucian rhetorical move: the Yìjīng’s analysis of the cyclical alternation of obstruction and prosperity gives Gāo a classical frame in which to read his own dismissal as a moment in a larger natural pattern. The Sìkù editors clearly read this as self-pleading; modern readers may also read it as Gāo’s intellectually-coherent response to his political defeat. The work is unusually personally-inflected for a sixteenth-century záshuō and its political-philosophical edge is sharp.

Links

• Sìkù quánshū zǒngmù tíyào 四庫全書總目提要, Zǐbù · Zájiā lèi, Běnyǔ entry.
• Wikipedia: Gao Gong.
• Wikidata: Q15921680.