Spirit and Self in Medieval China: The Shih-shuo hsin-yu and Its Legacy

2. Character Appraisal and the Formation of Wei-Chin Spirit

∫ Chapter 2 Character Appraisal and the Formation of Wei-Chin Spirit After the Wei nine-rank system had discharged character appraisal from its political responsibilities, what caused the practice to become even more prevalent and to evolve on its own into a multidimensional exploration of human nature? What motivated and sustained the two-hundred-year WeiChin desire to know, to develop, and to express one’s self, leading eventually to the creation of the Shih-shuo hsin-yü? The answer lies in the interaction between the practice of character appraisal, the growth of self-awareness, and the evolution of the dominant Wei-Chin ideology, Hsüan-hsüeh.1 All three influences contributed to the process of Wei-Chin self-fashioning and self-expression, offering terminology and methodology that, in turn, endowed the Shih-shuo hsin-yü with rich materials and provocative theories. All this happened at once. For convenience I will discuss in the first section of this chapter the interaction of character appraisal with selfawareness , which problematized as well as facilitated Wei-Chin selffashioning . In the second section, I intend to show how the Wei-Chin people, needing to use words but recognizing the inability of words to express meanings in full, negotiated their way to self-expression in collaboration with both character appraisal and Hsüan-hsüeh. This process resulted in disputes involving a series of complementary and oppositional philosophical concepts, derived from a great many intellectual sources, some inherited, some invented, and some imported. The whole chapter intends to illuminate the Wei-Chin spirit, not by giving definitions, but by showing how it was formed and how it operated. I shall draw evidence mainly from the Shih-shuo hsin-yü in order to highlight its reflexive feature, which will in turn provide a theoretical basis for my later examination of the artistic achievements of the Shih-shuo hsin-yü. Character Appraisal, Self-Awareness, and Wei-Chin Self-Fashioning In Wei-Chin times, self-awareness referred to one’s self-knowledge and desire for uniqueness, and character appraisal aimed at judging and recognizing this uniqueness through language. Both collaborated in the task of defining human identity—the former from a subjective perspective, and the latter from an objective one. With a common purpose, the two cooperated as “mutual cause and effect.”2 On the one hand, the more a person desired to be different from another, the more unique characteristics he or she would display in front of the evaluator. On the other, the evaluator would analyze, evaluate, and record these unusual features with appropriate methods and terms. Thus, the growth of self-awareness enriched the content of character appraisal and impelled it to greater sophistication. comparison/competition: the dynamic of self-fashioning A comparison/competition dynamic drove the reciprocal relationship between self-awareness and character appraisal throughout the entire WeiChin era. The following Shih-shuo episodes illustrate this phenomenon: In general discussions of the relative merits of the two men, Ch’en Fan of Ju-nan and LiYing of Ying-ch’uan, no one was able to determine which was superior and which inferior. Ts’ai Yung criticized them as follows: “Ch’en Fan is stubborn in crossing the will of his superiors, while Li Ying is strict in the management of his inferiors. Crossing the will of superiors is difficult; managing inferiors is easy.” Ch’en Fan was accordingly classified at the foot of the “Three Superior Men” (san-chün), and LiYing at the head of the “Eight Outstanding Men” (pa-chün). (9/1) The two sons of Yang Chun, the governor of Chi Province (Hopei)— Yang Ch’iao and Yang Mao—were both of mature capacity while they were still young lads with their hair in tufts. Since Chun was on friendly terms with both P’ei Wei and Yüeh Kuang, he sent the two lads to see them. 4 4 Pa r t 1 P’ei Wei’s nature was magnanimous but proper, and being fond of Ch’iao for his possession of a lofty manner, he reported to Chun, “Ch’iao will come up to you some day; Mao will fall a little behind.” Yüeh Kuang’s nature on the other hand was pure and unmixed, and, being fond of Mao for his possession of a spiritual discipline, he reported, “Ch’iao will undoubtedly come up to you, but...