Chinese Dialectics: From Yijing to Marxism (review)

Introduction: Scope and Thesis of Tian's Work

Chenshan Tian's Chinese Dialectics: From Yijing to Marxism is a study in intellectual history and philosophy. The text serves as a comprehensive introduction to a group of Chinese philosophers who were active from the beginning of the twentieth century to 1976, the year of Mao Zedong's death. In particular, readers will find this text useful for acquainting themselves with the reflective thoughts and practices of Liang Qichao, Li Da, Qu Qiubai, Cai Yuanpei, Ai Siqi, and Mao Zedong. This is somewhat evidenced by the table of contents alone.

The book contains an introduction, seven chapters, and a conclusion. The historically oriented chapters include "Marxism in China: Initial Encounters" (chapter 2), "Qu Qiubai's Reading of Dialectical Materialism" (chapter 4), "Ai Siqi: Sinifying Dialectical Materialism" (chapter 6), and "Mao Zedong: The Mature Formulation of Dialectical Materialism" (chapter 7). Liang Qichao, Li Da, Cai Yuanpei, and several other philosophical reformers are discussed more substantially in chapter 2 and in chapter 5, "Popularizing Dialectical Materialism." Chinese Dialectics is encyclopedic. It gives detailed descriptions of each reformer's studies, correspondence, publications, and professional associations.¹

The author's exposition is not merely descriptive; he has an explicit philosophical agenda. Throughout his argument, Tian maintains that the form and content of dialectical materialism in China are particular to a Chinese universe of discourse. Chinese dialectics, or bianzhengfa 辯證法,² has strong cultural roots in the classical texts of China (p. 41 and passim). Tian's understanding of Chinese dialectical modes of thought is that they are based primarily on the philosophy of the Xici zhuan 繫辭傳 (Appended Words Commentary) of the Yijing 易經 (Classic of Changes) (pp. 11, 24, and passim). Tian dedicates much of his introduction, and the entirety of chapters 1 ("Tongbian: A Chinese Strand of Thought") and 3 ("Tongbian in Preliminary Readings of Dialectical Materialism"), to explicating this philosophy.

For Tian, the philosophical terms and propositions of the Xici were presupposed as the conceptual categories of Chinese thinkers such as Ai, Qu, and Mao, when they came to interpret Marxist (material) dialectics. These presuppositions can be thought of as culturally grounded (or inherited) categories of understanding. Working within this categorical schema, Chinese interpreters constructed novel and creative meanings for the imported doctrines of the material dialectics (pp. 9, 41). Marxism (i.e., material dialectics) in China thus took on a new form and content; indeed, it was "sinified" to become a distinct form of Chinese dialectics. This argument is part and parcel of Tian's thesis.

Continuity through Change (Tongbian 通變): The Philosophical Tradition of the Xici

Following a tradition based on the Yijing, the Chinese reconstruction of material dialectics (bianzheng weiwu zhuyi 辯證唯物主義) should be understood as a radical process philosophy.³ In Tian's view, this entails that the world and its constituents are all changing and correlated events. This is the philosophical thesis of the work at hand. To state the point negatively: no thing has any unchanging essence, nature, or quality. Moreover, no thing is an atomic, self-subsisting substance. Each thing is an event that is ontologically dependent on a matrix, nexus, or field of correlative events.⁴Yijing-based philosophy, Tian continues, must hold that every change is a "creative process entailing the interaction and interdependence of complementary opposition" (p. 11). Creative change occurs everywhere and at all times (p. 35). Everything is in a process of becoming something new.⁵ Moreover, there is no teleological end to any process (pp. 96-97). All change is spontaneous, creative, ceaseless, and continuous.⁶

Tian substantiates and elucidates his position by citing several key propositions of the Xici.⁷ He accepts these claims as axiomatic for Chinese dialectics, which he deems "philosophy of tongbian 通變," or "change with continuity" (pp. 11-12). In chapter 1, he restates and develops his thesis: "If expressed in one phrase, then tongbian is 'continuity through change between any correlative pairing.' Here, continuity itself always entails movement, change, processes, and [End...