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Reviews 547 Hans van Ess. Politik und Gelehrsamkeit in der Zeit der Han (202 v. Chr220 ?. Chr.): DieAlttext/Neutext-Kontroverse (Politics and scholarship in the time ofthe Han: The Old Text/New Text controversy). Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 1993. xvii, 338 pp. isbn 3-447-03384-3. No other tide could better reveal the contents ofthis work. These few words aptiy state the main point ofthe author's argument: scholarship during the Han dynasty (202 B.c.-A.D. 220) is inextricably bound up with politics. When defining scholarship during the Han dynasty, commentators usually indicate the Old Text/New Text controversy as its dominant feature. During the six hundred years preceding die Han, intellectual life in China was characterized by a remarkable creativity out ofwhich the main lines ofChinese thought emerged. With the victory of Confucianism around 135 b.c., the debate between various lineages was gradually replaced by controversies between different movements within the Confucian tradition. In this new debate, attention was focused on the correct transmission of the Chinese classics. The Old Text/New Text controversy ofHan times became the center ofinterest among Chinese intellectuals during the Qing dynasty, especially at the end of the nineteenth century and die beginning ofthe twentieth. This revival ofa twothousand -year-old debate was launched by die reformer Kang Youwei (1858-1927) in an attempt to explain the problems that China was facing as it was being confronted by the West. Kang Youwei blamed die Old Text school, whose policies had been adopted in Han times, for the ossification ofthe Chinese system, which made it impossible in his own time to adopt Western ideas. The main culprit, according to Kang, was die Han scholar and librarian Liu Xin (32? b.c.-a.d. 23), who had forged the Zuozhuan and the Zhouli, two texts that became part ofthe Old Text tradition. It was on this scholarly tradition that the Later Han had modeled tiieir institutions and thus laid the basis for further developments in Chinese history. To Hans van Ess, it is clear, however, that Kang Youwei, in going back to the old controversy , was using it merely as an argument in support ofhis own political ideas. Van Ess starts his study with a brief oudine of the different approaches to the Old Text/New Text controversy from the end of the nineteenth century through the present day. Looking at the research ofKang Youwei, Gu Jiegang, Feng Youlan, Tjan Tjoe-som, Jack Dull, and Anne Cheng, he concludes that most of their attempts to describe the controversy are rather abstract. The terms often used to© 1996 by University define both schools are rationalism or humanism for the Old Text school and irrationalism or superstition for the New Text school. The author points out the vagueness of these terms borrowed from the European tradition. Moreover, the work of scholars like Kang Youwei and Feng Youlan was undoubtedly influenced 548 China Review International: Vol. 3, No. 2, Fall 1996 by the contemporary political situation at the end of die nineteendi century and the beginning of die twentieth. Most later studies are based on their opinions, and they have thus determined die present-day presentation ofthe two-millennia -old controversy. Van Ess feels that a new approach to the Old Text/New Text problem is necessary . In an article that so far has not received much attention, the Japanese scholar Shigezawa Toshirö postulated that the main issues in the Old Text/New Text debate were purely political. Where the New Text tradition offered to the Former Han dynasty die basis for the legitimation of their power, the Old Text tradition had a similar function at the time ofWang Mang (45 b.c.-a.d. 23). Yet, Shigezawa has not sufficiently proven his proposition. This hypothesis—that it was not abstract philosophical or theological problems that stood at the center of the Old Text/New Text debate but rather practical problems ofhow to legitimate power—is taken by van Ess as the starting point of his own research on the Old Text/New Text controversy. From this perspective, he does not immediately dismiss die findings ofprior studies on die same topic, but rather scrutinizes them. Van...

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