Huang Tsung-Hsi's Confucian critique of Emperors

Huang belongs to the critical tradition in Confucianism, those who emphasized the duty to criticize the Emperor over against those who emphasized loyalty. Huang refers to those Confucians who emphasized loyalty as "petty scholars." This shows how a good Confucian criticizes actual Confucian government in the name of Confucian ideals.  Note that his analysis of the situation, and his response to it, is different from the way a Western person might analyze and propose solutions.  For example, he does not think that the problem is that Emperors are not elected by the people, nor does he suggest that the solution would be to give the masses of the people power to depose a bad Emperor.  His solution is to try to correct the subservient habits of "petty scholars" and calling to their mind the teachings of Mencius refusing to be mere instruments of the Emperor and demanding that he treat them with respect as independent moral authorities.

Theodore DeBary, who translated Huang=s work here, has published many books bringing to our attention this critical side of Confucianism. For those interested in further background on Huang Tsung-hsi I have appended at the end of the excerpt a short passage from  DeBary's introduction to his translation.

In the beginning of human life each man lived for himself and looked to his own interests. There was such a thing as the common benefit, yet no one seems to have promoted it; and there was common harm, yet no one seems to have eliminated it.

Then someone came forth who did not think of benefit in terms of his own benefit but sought to benefit all-under-Heaven, and who did not think of harm in terms of harm to himself, but sought to spare all-under-Heaven from harm. Thus his labors were thousands of times greater than the labors of ordinary men.

Now to work a thousand or ten thousand times harder without benefiting oneself is certainly not what most people in the world desire. Therefore in those early times some men worthy of ruling, after considering it, refused to become princes -- Hsü Yu and Wu Kuang were such. Others undertook it and then quit --Yao and Shun, for instance. Still others... became princes against their own will and later were unable to quit. How could men of old have been any different? To love ease and dislike strenuous labor has always been the natural inclination of man.

However, with those who later became princes it was different. They believed that since they held the power over benefit and harm, there was nothing wrong in taking for themselves all the benefits and imposing on others all the harm. They made it so that no man dared to live for himself or look to his own interests. Thus the prince's great self-interest took the place of the common good of all-under-Heaven. At first the prince felt some qualms about it, but his conscience eased with time. He looked upon the world as an enormous estate to be handed on down to his descendants, for their perpetual pleasure and well-being. When Han Kao-ti [founder of the Han Dynasty 206 b.c., addressing his father] asked, "Considering the estate I have acquired which of us, Elder Brother or myself, has done better for himself?" With these words he betrayed his overweening selfishness [in speaking of the Empire as a private family estate].

This can only be explained as follows: In ancient times all-under-Heaven were considered the master, and the prince was the tenant. The prince spent his whole life working for all-under-Heaven. Now the prince is master, and all-under-Heaven are tenants. That no one can find peace and happiness anywhere is all on account of the prince. In order to get whatever he wants, he maims and slaughters all-under-Heaven and breaks up their families -- all for the aggrandizement of one man's fortune. Without the least feeling of pity, the prince says, "I'm just establishing an estate for my descendants." Yet when he has established it, the prince still extracts the very marrow from people's bones, and takes away their sons and daughters to serve his own debauchery. It seems entirely proper to him. It is, he says, the interest on his estate.

Thus he who does the greatest harm in the world is none other than the prince. If there had been no rulers, each man would have provided for himself and looked to his own interests. How could the institution of rulership have turned out like this?

In ancient times men loved to support their prince, likened him to a father, compared him to Heaven, and truly this was not going too far. Now men hate their prince, look on him as a "mortal foe@, call him "just another guy@. And this is perfectly natural. But petty scholars [bad Confucians] have pedantically insisted that "the duty of the subject to his prince is utterly inescapable" so much so that [they say] even tyrants like Chieh and Chou should not have been executed by T'ang and Wu. And they have irresponsibly passed on unfounded stories [disparaging] Po I and Shu Ch'i.  As if the flesh and blood of the myriads of families destroyed by such tyrants were no different from the "carcasses of dead rats." Could it be that Heaven and Earth, in their all-encompassing care, favor one man and one family among millions of men and myriads of families?...

Princes of later times, wishing to use vacuous comparisons of themselves to "Father" and "Heaven" so as to prevent others from coveting the imperial estate, and finding that the words of Mencius did not serve their purpose, have gone so far as to disestablish him. Now did not all of this originate with petty scholars?

If it were possible for latter-day princes to preserve such an estate and hand it down in perpetuity, such selfishness would not be hard to understand. But once it comes to be looked upon as a personal estate, who does not desire such an estate as much as the prince? Even if the prince could "tie his fortune down and lock it up tight," still the cleverness of one man is no match for the greed of all. At most it can be kept in the family for a few generations, and sometimes it is lost in one's own lifetime, unless indeed the life's blood spilled is that of one's own offspring...

Therefore, if the position of the prince were understood.... everyone would pass the job on to someone else... The position of prince not being clearly understood, every man in the marketplace covets it... It is not easy to make plain the position of the prince, but any fool can see that a brief moment of excessive pleasure is not worth an eternity of sorrows..

The reason for ministership [the position of administrator/advisor] lies in the fact that the world is too big for one man to govern so governance must be shared with colleagues. Therefore, when one goes forth to serve, it is for all-under-Heaven and not for the prince; it is for all the people and not for one family. When one acts for the sake of all-under-Heaven and its people, then one cannot agree to do anything contrary to the Way even if the prince explicitly constrains one to do... And if it were not in keeping with the true Way, one should not even present oneself to the court -- much less sacrifice one's life for the ruler. To act solely for the prince and his dynasty... is to have the mind of a eunuch or palace maid...

But those who act as ministers today, not understanding this principle, think that ministership is instituted for the sake of the prince. They think that the prince shares the world with one so that it can be governed, and that he entrusts one with its people so that they can be shepherded, thus regarding the world and its people as personal property in the prince's pouch [to be disposed of as he wills].

Today only if the toil and trouble everywhere and the strain on the people are grievous enough to endanger one's prince, do ministers feel compelled to discuss the proper means for governing and leading the people. As long as these do not affect the dynasty's existence, widespread toil, trouble, and strain are regarded as trifling problems, even by supposedly true ministers. But was this the way ministers served in ancient times, or was it another way?

Whether there is peace or disorder in the world does not depend on the rise or fall of dynasties, but upon the happiness or distress of the people...

If those who act as ministers ignore the "plight of the people," then even if they should succeed in assisting their prince's rise to power or follow him to final ruin, they would still be in violation of the true Way of the Minister. For governing the world is like the hauling of great logs. The men in front call out, " Heave!, " those behind, "Ho!@ The prince and his ministers should be log-haulers working together. If some, instead of holding tightly to the ropes with feet firmly set on the ground, amuse themselves by cavorting around in front, the others behind will think it the thing to do, and the business of hauling logs win be neglected.

Alas, the arrogant princes of later times have only indulged themselves and have not undertaken to serve the world and its people. From the countryside they seek out only such people as will be servile errand-boys. Thus from the countryside those alone respond who are often servile errand-boy type; once spared for a while from cold and hunger, they feel eternally grateful for his Majesty's kind understanding. Such people will not care whether they are treated by the prince with due respect [lit., according to the proper rites governing such a relation] and will think it no more than proper to be relegated to a servant's status. In the first years of the Wan-li period (1573-1620) Chang Chu-cheng was treated by Emperor Shen-tsung with more respect than most ministers are shown, but it was not one-hundredth of what was shown to the counselors of ancient times. At the time people were shocked because of Chu-cheng's acceptance of ritual respect that seemed inappropriate to a subject. His fault, on the contrary, lay in being unable to maintain his self-respect as a counselor, so that he had to take orders from servant-people. Yet he was blamed for exactly the opposite. Why so? Because people's minds had been saturated for so long by vulgar notions about what a minister was -- notions that had become accepted as standard. How much less did they realize that prince and minister differ in name only, and are in substance the same?

It may be asked, is not the term "minister" always equated with that of "child? " I say no. The terms "prince@ and "minister" derive from their relation to all-under-Heaven. If I take no responsibility for all-under-Heaven, then I am just another man on the street. If I come to serve him without regard for serving all-under-Heaven, then I am merely the prince's menial servant or concubine. If, on the other hand, I have regard for serving the people, then I am the prince's mentor and colleague...

and the background of his Waiting for the Dawn

( From DeBary=s introduction p. 4)

It would be unfortunate... if, in focusing attention upon the persistent features of Chinese autocracy, the impression were given that all of Chinese history and civilization bears the mark of unrelieved oppression and totalitarian control. This danger besets especially any attempt to characterize Chinese society in general terms, which may highlight only those segments of the traditional order that lie close to the center, contributing to our sense of its massive unity.

One example of this is the expression "Confucian state," which points to the historically close association of the leading intellectual tradition with the dominant bureaucracy. This may also have the misleading effect of identifying Confucianism with autocratic institutions it had little part in creating, as well as of emphasizing unduly that teaching's susceptibility to state control. Confucianism was indeed wholly committed to the responsibilities of political leadership, even in the most unpromising circumstances, and it cannot escape entirely the judgment of history upon the imperial institutions its adherents held so long in custody. But we have learned much in recent years about the workings of both the Chinese state and the Confucian mind, about the difficult marriage between the two as they lived through a long and problematic history, and especially about those of the Confucian company who kept their distance from the state and sustained a persistent critique of many features of dynastic rule.

Foreign observers, it is sometimes alleged, have difficulty coming to a balanced estimation of things Chinese, owing to unconscious assumptions of Western superiority, the biases of imperialistic cultural hegemony, or, at the other extreme, overcompensation for the same. Be this as it may, in the years we speak of here--the seventeenth century--there could be no sharper contrast than that between the appreciative, indeed enthusiastic, accounts of China by early Jesuits in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and the severe criticism of Chinese institutions by contemporary Confucians of the seventeenth century (or, for that matter, by twentieth-century Chinese scholars and students after the T'ien-an men Square incident, who have despaired over their country's seemingly hopeless bondage to tyranny). If Huang Tsung-hsi can be placed anywhere on this wide spectrum, it would have to be near the latter, negative end--that is, except for two balancing factors: his sharp, unrelenting attack on imperial institutions is informed by an uncommon knowledge of Chinese history and culture, and it is infused by an equally strong determination to see that the Confucian Way should not be lost in the surrounding darkness. His protest breathes the fire of robust indignation, not a sigh of pusillanimous despair or hopeless resignation.

Huang Tsung-hsi... was the son of a high official of the Ming dynasty, one of the "Six Noble Men" of the Tung-]in reform movement, who died in prison (some eighteen years before the fall of the dynasty) because of his opposition to the powerful eunuch Wei Chung-hsien. Huang himself spent many years in study, partly under an outstanding independent interpreter of the Wang Yang-ming school, Liu Tsung-chou (1578- 1645). Although unsuccessful in the civil service examinations, Huang became involved in the politics of the Fu-she Academy at the close of the dynasty. As a supporter of the Ming refugee regime active along the southeast coast of China, he participated in guerrilla resistance to the Manchus for many years and may even have visited Nagasaki on an unsuccessful mission to get Japanese help. He did not return home and settle down to serious intellectual production until 1653, when he started composing a series of political essays for the sake of posterity, not for immediate publication. The Ming-i tai-fang lu was the first important outcome of this work, completed in 1663, when Huang was fifty-two.Thereafter, Huang turned from politics and political writing to history, literature, and philosophy, leaving many works of lasting importance, among which his survey of Confucian thought in the Ming period, Case Studies of Ming Confucians (the Ming-ju hsueh-an) is the most highly regarded. His reputation as a scholar was well established years before his death, and the Manchu regime attempted to enhance its own prestige by patronizing him, though he declined the formal honors thus proffered to him.

In the history of Chinese thought, Huang has been important less as an original philosopher or as the founder of a new school than as one who combined the broad scholarship characteristic of the Chu Hsi school with the active interest in contemporary affairs shown by the best of the Wang Yang-ming school (although of course some members of the latter followed a broad scholarship of their own, while many Chu Hsi scholars were interested in contemporary affairs). A competent classical scholar, Huang gave more attention to the study of recent history than did most scholars of his time, whose interests were increasingIv in the study of the more distant past. In this sense, Waiting for the Dawn may be considered truly representative of his best work and of the dominant theme of his learning as a whole: to bring the values of the classics and the lessons of history to bear on the problems of his own day...

We can accept the Tai-fang lu itself as representing Huang's major political testament--one that is meant by him to sum up the essence of Chinese high civilization, and sharply differentiate genuine Confucian values from debased dynastic traditions. He hoped thereby to preserve these civilized values through the dark night of barbarian rule but what he achieves is more than mere conservation of received tradition. In the process Huang contributes significantly to the reformulation of that legacy and the further development of Confucian thought.