Two Chinese Philosophers: The Metaphysics of the Brothers Ch'eng (review)

1 16 China Review International: Vol. 1, No. 2, Fall 1994 act in accord with one anoAier, with one set of goals. Nor does Gill look at Asiandex and other arms fairs, which play an important role in China's arms trade. Admittedly this is a complex subject, and data is hard to obtain, but without the author addressing this topic the reader is left with an incomplete picture. The People's Liberation Army, for example, needs to sell military equipment to make up for declining military budgets. This matters when analyzing the relationship between security, political, and economic goals in China's arms transfers. The internal nature of China's arms export establishment also matters when discussing the sale of missiles and the Missile Technology Control Regime, as well as several other issues raised in this book. Other scholars have addressed this subject , and it deserves more than Aie passing mention Aiat Gill gives. This is a very useful book but it is not as good as it could have been. Thomas Bickford University of California, Berkeley F A. C. Graham. Two Chinese Philosophers: The Metaphysics ofthe Brothers Ch'eng. Foreword by Irene Bloom. La Salle, Illinois: Open Court, 1992.¦ 202 pp. Specialists in Neo-Confucianism will be pleased to know that Angus Graham's (1919-1991) seminal monograph on the Ch'eng brothers, Two Chinese Philosophers : The Metaphysics ofthe Brothers Ch'eng (London: Lund Humphries, 1958; reprinted in 1967), is back in print. Finally, scholars and students can purchase what must have been one of the most frequenfiy photocopied monographs in the history ofWestern-language literature on Neo-Confucianism. Yet scholars may be disappointed to find that Open Court's new edition of Two Chinese Philosophers is little more than a reprint of the earlier work. Along with the minor change in title, this edition includes a most gracious "Foreword" by Irene Bloom and a very helpful new index by P. J. Ivanhoe and Jon W. Schofer. Minor corrections in the text have also been made. But unfortunately there are no new essays by Graham which rethink or redevelop his earlier claims about the philosophy of Aie Ch'engs. Tb appreciate the extent of Graham's contribution to the field, one need only© 1994 by University ?00?< at me bibliography ofworks in European languages (Appendix IV, A, "ModofHawai ? Pressem yvbrks") with which Graham had to work. When he wrote, not even a dozen Western language monographs on Neo-Confucianism had been published. The existing material included Bruce's Chu Hsi and His Masters (London, 1923) and Reviews 117 Philosophy ofHuman Nature (London, 1922), Forke's Geschichte der neueren chinesischen Philosophie (Hamburg, 1938), Grafs translation of the Chin-ssu lu (Tokyo, 1953), Fung Yu-lan's articles, "Philosophy of Chu Hsi" and "Rise of NeoConfucianism " (Harvard Journal ofAsiatic Studies 7 [1942-1943]: pp. 1-51, 89-125); Huang's Lu Hsiang-shan (American Oriental Series, 27 [1944]), Le Gall's Le Philosophe Tchou Hi, 2nd ed. (Shanghai, 1923), Sargent's Tchou Hi contre le bouddhisme (Paris, 1955), and Yung-ch'un Ts'ai's unpublished thesis The Philosophy ofCh'engI (Columbia University, 1950). American scholars like Wing-tsit Chan and Wm. Theodore de Bary, who came to lead the ever-burgeoning field of Neo-Confucian studies, appeared on the scene at about the same time. Yet unlike Aieirs, Graham's research interests gravitated away from Neo-Confucianism and back toward the Daoist and Mohist philosophical thought of Chinese antiquity: fhus his translations and studies of the Lieh-tzu (1960), Later Mohist Logic, Ethics and Science (1978), and the Chuang-tzu (1981). Graham's masterful analyses of the ancient schools of Chinese philosophy, Disputers ofthe Tao: Philosophical Argument in Ancient China (1989), is already recognized as a classic of sorts. Graham's explorations in Chinese philosophy , each as valid and as integral to his whole life's work as the next, revealed his true genius. In each field he turned to, including T'ang dynasty poetry with Poems ofthe Late T'ang (1965), Graham produced a gem. Irene Bloom righdy observes that Two Chinese Philosophers has not been superseded , despite the proliferation of Neo-Confucian students in the last Airee decades . Yet neiAier has it been as persausive as Graham might have wished. After all, one of his key points in Two Chinese Philosophers is that Neo-Confucianism was a school of philosophy. Wing-tsit Chan and others, especially at the University of Hawai'i, where East-West philosophical dialogue has been avidly explored, have endorsed Graham's view on the nature of the ideas of Aie Ch'eng brothers. But most post-Graham studies of Neo-Confucianism have not followed him on this point. As the tide TWo Chinese Philosophers reveals, Graham did see the issue as crucial. When his writings in ethical philosophy, The Problem ofValue (1961), Reason and Spontaneity (1985), and Unreason within Reason (Open Court, 1992), are considered, it is clear that Graham's project as a Sinologist was intrinsic to his vision ofphilosophy as being more than a Plato-centered discipline. The subtitle to the Open Court edition, "The Metaphysics of the Brothers Ch'eng," seems crafted to reiterate tiiat point. Vis-à-vis recent scholarship on Neo-Confucianism, Graham's study is occasionally somewhat idiosyncratic. For example, in praising the originality of Ch'eng Yi (1033-1107), Graham belittles Chu Hsi (1130-1200). In the "General Introduction," he states: Although Chu Hsi polished the system he inherited from his predecessors, bringing out its dualism by clarifying the relations between Principle and Ether, 118 China Review International: Vol. 1, No. 2, Fall 1994 and exploring the implications ofthe identication of Principle and the Supreme Ultimate, he added nothing signicant of his own. The truly creative figure in the movement is Ch'eng Yi-ch'uan, and if one measures the greatness of a philosopher by the originality of his contribution together with the extent of his influence, there can be no question that he is the greatest Confucian thinker of the last two thousand years, (p. xxi) Graham also argues that Chu Hsi "obscured their (the Ch'eng brothers) importance by a misunderstanding of the origins of Neo-Confucianism which has lasted as long as the authority of Chu Hsi himself" (p. xxi). Graham argues that Chu Hsi mistook Chou Tun-yi (1017-1073) for a Confucian, when in fact Chou was a "Confucian-Taoist syncretist." Chu thus claimed that Aie philosophy which he promoted was tracable to Chou Tun-yi, even though (according to Graham) it actually began with the Ch'eng brothers, who were never decisively iAuenced by Chou Tun-yi's ideas. Wing-tsit Chan has defended Chu Hsi's claims here, insisting that views like Graham's "ignore certain indisputable facts" (see A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy [Princeton University Press, 1963], pp. 520-522, and Chan's review of Two Chinese Philosophers in the fournal ofthe American Oriental Society, 79 [1959]: pp. 150-155). The validity of Graham's appraisals hinges on the sources that he used. Herein lies the chief methodological difficulty of his, and any, study of Aie Ch'eng brothers: the main "primary sources" on the Ch'eng brothers, the Yi-shu (Surviving works) and the Wai-shu (Additional works), were compiled and edited by Chu Hsi. Thus scholars can only view the thought of the Ch'eng brothers through the kaleidoscope left to us (as Graham admits in Appendix I, "Works of the Ch'eng Brothers") via "the conscientious scholarship of Chu Hsi." Just as it is virtually impossible to know Socrates apart from Plato, one can hardly expect to discover what the Ch'engs Aiought without substantial primary source material independent of the editorial work of Chu Hsi. The methodological problems here are compounded by the confusion generated in the Yi-shu and Wai-shu when they refer to Master Ch'eng without stating to which of the brothers they were referring. Yet even if the use of Chu Hsi-edited sources be allowed, there are still methodological problems with Two Chinese Philosophers. Graham explicates the Ch'eng philosophy via conceptual analysis. Yet the primary source material he relies on does not justify this method; instead, conceptual analysis of Confucian terminology traces back to Chou Tun-yi's T'ung-shu (Penetrating the Book of Changes). Yet that work, too, was edited by Chu Hsi. Looking beyond both Chou and Chu, the second major work of Neo-Confucian conceptual analysis was Ch'en Pei-hsi's (1159-1223) Hsing-li tzu-i (Neo-Confucian terms explained), wherein Ch'en Pei-hsi systematically explains the philosophy of his teacher, Chu Hsi, term by term. Later anthologies like the Hsing-li ta-ch'uan (Great anthology of Neo-Confucianism) used the same mefhod. Since so much Neo-Confucian literature employed this methodology, Graham's use of it in analyzing the thought of Reviews 119 the Ch'eng brothers is somewhat misleadingbecause the suggestion is that they appropriated the same. These difficulties notwithstanding, Graham's book will stand for some time to come as the starting point for future studies of the Ch'engs, however those studies maybe defined methodologically. This is true because Graham's analyses are buttressed by lengthy translations from the works attributed to the Ch'eng brothers. Though it is not a translation of any one "text," Graham's study includes as many translations from the Ch'engs as are found in a single volume except, perhaps, Wing-tsit Chan's rendition of the Chin-ssu Iu (1967), edited by Chu Hsi and Lu Tsu-ch'ien (1137-1181), or Ts'ai Yung-ch'un's The Philosophy ofCh'engI:A Selection ofTextsfrom the Complete Works (1950). John Allen Tucker University of North Florida Gregory EIiyu Guldin, editor. Urbanizing China. Foreword by Fei Xiaotong. New York: Greenwood Press, 1992. viii, 272 pp. $49.95. This book is a collection of seven major papers written by an interdisciplinary team of authors trained in anAiropology, geography, sociology, and urban planning . The papers focus on die progress of urbanization in China in an attempt to answer the question: "Can China now be considered urbanized?" The editor groups the papers into three parts: (1) PRC urbanization, then and now, (2) small towns and the urbanizing countryside, and (3) the Pearl River delta, an advanced area of urbanization. He also provides an introduction and an epilogue, thus setting the background and cross-referencing the ideas in this diverse group of essays . The book contains a glossary of Chinese terms and ends with an annotated list of further readings on the subject. This skillful arrangement ofpapers by the editor has helped gready to provide the necessary continuity which is commonly lacking in a collection ofthis nature. Part 1, which gives broad reviews of urbanization in China, contains Airee papers: (1) "The Role of Great Cities in China," by Clifton Pannell; (2) "Post-1949 Urbanization Trends and Policies," by Kam Wing Chan; and (3) "Urbanization© 1994 by University under Economic Reform," by R. Yin-wang Kwok. Pannell's valuable paper traces ofHawai'i Pressthe development of the great cities in China through history to modern times. He points out the political, social, and economic importance of these cities, and notes the increased peasant migration to the city and the pattern of circular migration ...