The Hall of Three Pines: An Account of My Life

Chapter Six. The Forties

In the ten uprooted years of my life during the turmoil of the Anti-Japanese War, I wrote six books: A New Philosophy of Principle (published in 1939), New Discourse on Events (1940), New Social Admonitions (1940), A New Inquiry into Man (1943), A New Inquiry into the Tao (1944),and A New Understanding of Language (1946).The uprootedness and turmoil did not interfere with my writing.The vicissitudes of a nation and the transformations of history were what opened my eyes and gave me impetus. Without this impetus, these books would not have been written. Even if they had been written, they would not have taken the form they did. These six books were actually a single work in six sections.The main content of this work was a reflection on the traditional spiritual life of the Chinese people. Reflection occurs only when we encounter some difficulty or obstacle or misery in our lives. A river in flat country can only flow slowly onward, but when it rushes against steep banks or hidden snags, it throws up crests of foam, and when it meets with fierce winds, great waves rise up within it. But these are external causes. External causes act through internal causes to produce an effect.The internal causes were my own subjective wishes and interests. After my History of Chinese Philosophy was finished, my interests shifted from studying the history of philosophy to creating 253 c h a p t e r s i x t h e f o r t i e s philosophy. Philosophical creativity is inevitably based on the materials of past thought, so there is no clear separation between studying the history of philosophy and creating philosophy. But there are differences nonetheless .The key thing in the history of philosophy is to explain what people in the past thought about certain philosophical problems. Creating philosophy requires you to explain your own thinking on a question. Your own thinking takes its materials from what people in the past have said, but there has to be a difference.This difference is the distinction I drew in A New Philosophy of Principle between “reenacting the discussion” and “carrying the discussion forward.” In 1931 I published several pieces of a series called “New Dialogue” in the Dagong Bao supplement Currents ofThought. In 1937 I published an article entitled “Philosophy and Logic” in volume 7, number 3 of Philosophy Review. In these articles the main viewpoints of “the new philosophy of principle” were present in incipient form. I went on to write a few rough manuscripts of book chapters.When I got to Nanyue I was ready to continue writing, but I had forgotten to take my rough drafts with me, so I had to begin writing anew. In a few months’ time I came close to finishing, and then I set off for Kunming. Once I reached Mengzi and got temporarily settled, I finished the part I had not finished in Nanyue.This was the book A New Philosophy of Principle. There was a lithographer in Mengzi, so I had one or two hundred copies of the book printed lithographically and passed them out to friends. This was the very first printing of the book.The lead-type edition published formally by Commercial Press in 1939 was actually the second edition. A New Philosophy of Principle was an overview of my philosophical system at the time. If we look at all six books as a single work, then A New Philosophy of Principle should have the subtitle Part One:An Overview. Thus the words “new philosophy of principle,” as I use them, have two meanings. In one sense they refer to the book I wrote in Nanyue and Mengzi, published by Commercial Press in 1939, and in the other they refer to the philosophical system I formulated in the 1940s. Philosophy is reflection on man’s mental life. The scope of man’s mental life is quite broad, and so the scope of reflection on it must be broad as well. In general terms this scope can be divided into three parts: nature, society, and the individual. In traditional Chinese philosophy 254 : philosophy nature is called “Heaven,” while society and the individual are called “man.”The relations between man and nature are what Chinese philosophy calls “the meeting ground of Heaven and man.” Human life, whether material or...