Book of Lord Shang and Elevation of Confucianism in the Han—Including the Discussion of the Conflict Between Shang Yang, His School, and the Confucians

EDITOR’S ABSTRACT

This article presents a counterintuitive view that the rise of Confucianism in the Han dynasty is indebted to the Book of Lord Shang. It analyzes chapter 7, “Opening the blocked,” and shows that the chapter can be read as promoting a combination of force and morality. The sophisticated historical view of this chapter solves apparent contradictions between societies based on family ties, meritocracy, and monarchic power by showing how new levels of social development inevitably open up when old paths are blocked. This dynamic view was abandoned by the followers of Shang Yang but was rediscovered by the Confucian scholar Lu Jia (ca. 2401–170 BCE) early in the Han dynasty. It is under the impact of this dynamic view that Lu Jia tried to convince the first Han emperor that one can attain the world from horseback but not rule it without an inspiring ideology. The dialectic historical approach presented in “Opening the blocked” chapter remains valid well into our days.

Notes

Published in Confucius Studies (Kongzi yanjiu) 3 (1992).

Balanced Discussions [Lunheng], chapter 83, “Comments on different books” (An shu).

Tang Yan’s preface to a new edition of Lu Jia’s New Sayings, cited from Wang Liqi, ed., New Sayings, Collated and Annotated [Xinyu jiaozhu] (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1996), p. 222.

Citations are scattered throughout the “Rejecting [Shang] Yang” (Fei Yang) chapter of the Salt and Iron Debates. See more on the view of Shang Yang in these debates in the article by Zeng Zhenyuan in this issue.—Trans.

For this point, see also Tong Weimin’s article, in this issue.—Trans.

All citations from the Book of Lord Shang are from the translation by Yuri Pines, The Book of Lord Shang: Apologetics of State Power in Early China (New York: Columbia University Press, 2017). Henceforth only the chapter and section number are provided throughout the text.—Trans.

Zheng Liangshu, Shang Yang and His School (Shanghai: Guji, 1989), p. 97.

Cited with minor modifications from Burton Watson, Records of the Grand Historian (Hong Kong, 1993), p. 95.

Of these three passages, the first is identifiable as “Look at the Rat” poem (Mao 52) from the current collection of the Canon of Poems. Two other passages are taken from an unknown poem and document.—Trans.

This is a story from the “Biography of Lord Shang” in the Records of the Historian.—Trans.

The traditional opinion that Shang Yang’s reforms brought about private landownership in Qin is not supported by currently available paleographic evidence; it is more likely that full privatization of land (i.e., the right to sell and buy land plots) ensued only in the Imperial Qin. See more in Yuan Lin, New Discussion of the Land System under the Two Zhou Dynasties (Liang Zhou tudi zhidu xinlun) (Changchun: Dongbei Shifan Daxue, 2000), pp. 215–57.—Trans.

Han Feizi, “Establishing the standard” (Ding fa).

The “well-field” (jing tian) system, which is most vividly depicted in the Mengzi 3A3, was considered since Dong Zhongshu and his associates to be an ideal land system of the “Three Dynasties” (i.e., Xia, Shang, and Zhou), and was allegedly destroyed by Shang Yang. The system of enfeoffment (feng jian, often inaccurately translated as “feudal system”) refers in this context to the decentralized mode of rule of relegating regional power to the ruler’s relatives and allies. This system is associated with the early Zhou dynasty and attributed to its predecessors as well. Despite the periodic reinstitution of the enfeoffment system in parts of the Chinese empire or even, briefly, in the empire as a whole, it never fully supplanted the centralized mode of rule inherited from the Qin dynasty.—Trans.

These negative traits of Shang Yang’s personality are cited from the summary of his biography by Sima Qian. Shang Yang reportedly deceived his erstwhile friend, Prince Ang of Wei, who led the Wei armies against Qin. Shang Yang is said to have invited Prince Ang to sign a peace treaty, but cheated him and took him prisoner, defeating the leaderless Wei army.—Trans.

“Unification of teaching” (yi jiao), namely, singularly focusing the entire people on war as the only means of social advancement, is the topic of chapter 17, “Rewards and punishments” (Shang xing), of the Book of Lord Shang.—Trans.

Mengzi 3A14.

For a different view of this chapter, see Zhang Linxiang’s essay in this issue.—Trans.

Zheng Liangshu, Shang Yang, pp. 35–40.

Shennong (Divine Husbandman) epitomizes primeval simplicity; kings Tang and Wu are, respectively, the founders of the Shang (ca. 1600–1046 BCE) and Zhou (1046–256 BCE) dynasties.—Trans.

Xia is the semilegendary dynasty that allegedly succeeded the rule of the sage Thearch Shun, whose surname was Yu (虞) (not to be confused with the Great Yu [禹], the legendary founder of the Xia).—Trans.

Cited from the “Biography of Lord Shang” from the Records of the Historian (cf. Watson, Records, p. 92).

Under King Fuchai (r. 495–473 BCE) the state of Wu reached the apex of its power, expanding northward and southward; however, he underestimated the challenge from the southern neighbor, Yue, which eventually extinguished Wu. Zhi Bo Yao (d. 453 BCE) was the singularly powerful minister of the state of Jin; however, at the end he was annihilated by the coalition of three rival ministerial lineages, Zhao, Wei, and Han. “The Zhao family” refers to the infamous plotter Zhao Gao (d. 207 BCE), who masterminded the enthronement and subsequent murder of the Second Emperor of Qin, causing the downfall of the dynasty.—Trans.

Cited from the “Biography of Lu Jia” in the Records of the Historian [Shiji] (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1997), 97: 2699.

King Wen (d. 1047 BCE), the father of King Wu, is the nominal founder of the Zhou dynasty.—Trans.

Guan Zhong (d. 645 BCE) is a famous Qi statesman and alleged reformer of his state; it is possible that Han Fei hints at the broad proliferation of texts associated with Guan Zhong or attributed to him; these texts became the core of the current compendium, Master Guan (Guanzi).—Trans.

Modified from The Huainanzi, translated and edited by John S. Major, Sarah A. Queen, Andrew Seth Meyer and Harold D. Roth (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010), p. 833. Two other texts cited are chapter names from the [currently lost] text of Shenzi, attributed to Shen Buhai, and from Han Feizi.—Trans.

The original text probably used qi, which was replaced with kai to avoid the tabooed name of Liu Qi, Emperor Jing of Han (r. 157–141 BCE).

Jia Yi’s “Faulting the Qin” (Guo Qin lun) appears as an attachment to the “Basic Annals of the First Emperor” in Sima Qian’s Records of the Historian.

“Speeches” may refer to a historical genre (see more in Jens Østergård Petersen, “Which Books Did the First Emperor of Ch’in Burn? On the Meaning of Pai Chia in Early Chinese Sources,” Monumenta Serica 43 [1995]: 1–52).—Trans.

“Biography of Han Fei” in Records of the Historian.

For the nature of these events and the debates over the historicity of “executing Confucians,” see Yuri Pines, “The First Emperor and His Image,” in Birth of an Empire: The State of Qin Revisited, ed. Yuri Pines, Lothar von Falkenhausen, Gideon Shelach, and Robin D. S. Yates (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2014), pp. 228–32, q.v. for further references.—Trans.

From “The Hereditary House of Confucius” in the Records of the Historian and from the “Basic Annals of Emperor Gao” in the History of the Former Han Dynasty [Hanshu], we know that when Liu Bang passed through Confucius’s hometown of Qufu he used a “great lao” offering to sacrifice to Confucius.

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Li Cunshan

Li Cunshan is the head of the philosophy section of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing.