Shifting Contours of the Confucian Tradition

Imagining Boundaries: Changing Confucian Doctrines, Texts, and Hermeneutics, edited by Kai-wing Chow, On-cho Ng, and John Henderson, is an anthology containing nine original essays plus an introductory chapter written by two of the three editors. The essays offer contemporary theoretical accounts of the practice of Confucian interpretation, examine traditional Chinese views on orthodoxy and heresy, and explore issues regarding syncretism and the struggle for self definition among a range of Confucian thinkers. The volume offers a rich resource for students of the Confucian tradition, and a number of the essays will be appreciated by anyone interested in the general or comparative study of traditions and their interpretation. I learned something important from every essay in this book, and each made me think about new issues in new ways. Some left me with questions as well as answers, which is often a mark of the best original scholarship.

In "A Problematic Model: The Han 'Orthodox Synthesis,' Then and Now," Michael Nylan argues that there was no orthodox synthesis in the Han and that for most of the period the notion of what constituted being a Confucian was in a fluid state, much as it was during the late Warring States period. One of the first claims Nylan musters in defense of this view is the inherent vagueness of the term ju. This is a very good point, and one might support it further by noting that such vagueness can be found even within the Lunyü itself. If we consider Confucius' various "disciples"—several of whom he criticizes and some of whom he denounces in the course of the Lunyü—we find examples of all three senses of the word ju that Nylan describes (pp. 18-19).

Nylan also is surely right to claim that contemporary scholars tend to read too much Neo-Confucianism back into the tradition, often accepting the accounts of later Confucians as accurate history. I wonder, though, whether her standard of "a single synthesis" (p. 23) might represent an example of reading later, idealized Confucian views back into the tradition. The ideal of "a single synthesis" strikes me as offering too high a criterion for any period of the Confucian tradition. Nylan begins by citing "the Ch'eng-Chu masters' palpable distaste for Han Confucianism." However, no one should accept the idea that the "Ch'eng-Chu masters" ever represented all of the Confucian tradition. Not only was there the competing Lu-Wang school; there were also significant philosophical differences even at the very heart of the "Ch'eng-Chu orthodoxy"—for example, between the Ch'eng brothers themselves. In other words, Nylan's arguments against the idea that there was some clear and distinct definition of what constituted being a Confucian in the Han can be extended, with various qualifications, to the entire breadth of the tradition. Indeed, many of the essays in this volume offer strong evidence for such a view.

If we accept that the idea of "a single synthesis" offers at best a notional standard that is never actually realized in practice, we might want to qualify some of Nylan's claims about the Han. For while Confucians of this period were a diverse and often eclectic group, Wu Di's decision to restrict the position of court scholar to those who had mastered the Five Classics, together with the remarkable and pervasive influence of the notion of correlative cosmology, did focus the term ju more than she suggests.

Nylan's claim that there was a "partial synthesis" among late Warring States thinkers, which continued into the Han, shows the need for more nuance in our analysis of this issue. Part of the problem lies in the ambiguity of the expression "partial synthesis." Like the notion of a "shared language" this can mean everything from the minimal claim that two thinkers can talk with one another to the maximal claim that they agree about...