Guodian zhujian yu xian-Qin xueshu sixiang (review)

This volume is basically a collection of Guo Yi's previously published writings. The latter part includes the manuscripts of his master's and doctoral dissertations, which were written before he embarked on his research on the Guodian manuscripts.¹ This means that a large part of this monograph is virtually a re-articulation of the author's previous publications based on his recent analysis of the manuscripts. Hence, the content is far broader than the title suggests.

First of all, for the author, who has journeyed on this philosophical detour over the past twenty years, the term "Guodian manuscripts" seems to denote a monumental undertaking to verify his initial philosophical vision concerning the history of Chinese thought rather than merely an examination of one textual source in his research. In this volume, Guo attempts to reconstruct what he calls "xueshu sixiang" (academic thought)² in the pre-Qin period by means of detecting the authorship of Confucian texts that have long and widely been doubted as representative of early Warring States thought. Those texts for which Guo claims to have resolved the issues of authorship and/or textual authenticity are the Laozi, the Yizhuan, the Xiaojing, and the Zhongyong.

The book is divided into three parts: (1) a textual analysis of the Guodian manuscripts, which have been presented as six topical treatises by the work group in the Jingmen Museum; (2) a study of the authorship of what Guo considers to be early-middle Warring States texts such as the Analects, the Laozi, the Yizhuan, and the Zhongyong; and (3) a description of some of the characteristics of Confucianism and Daoism in the history of pre-Qin thought. Yet, again, a large part of (2) and most of (3) were initially written before Guo commenced his research on the manuscripts.

Guo Yi's Research on the Guodian Manuscripts

In this first section, I will introduce the author's main contribution to the elucidation of the textual reconstruction of the Guodian manuscripts. Among his numerous insightful textual interpretations there are three points that I consider most worthy of scholarly attention.

First, Guo doubts the accuracy of an initial textual reconstruction of the forty strips, which has tentatively been titled "Cheng zhi wen zhi" (What Cheng has heard) by the work group of the Jingmen Museum (pp. 207-228). He moves a sequence of strips from No. 31 to No. 39 to the front of this treatise, and he regards the content of No. 31, which starts with the phrase Tian jiang dachang (Heaven has brought down the great constancy) as the topic sentence of the whole chapter. Meanwhile, he has divided the initial opening phrase "Cheng zhi wen zhi yue" into two separate sentences: "Cheng zhi" and "Wen zhi yue." He also regards the former phrase as succeeding strip No. 30, which ends with the passage "Shiyi junzi gui" (Thus, the superior man thinks highly of...). Accordingly, the whole sentence has become "Shiyi junzi gui cheng zhi" (Thus, the superior man thinks highly of the completion [of his own moral integrity]). Guo further argues that the remaining part of strip No. 1, which begins with "Wen zhi yue" ([I] have heard that [a tradition] said...), can become a complete sentence without any subject such as the phrase "Cheng zhi." Guo offers three examples of the passage that begin with "Wen zhi yue."³ This textual arrangement is parallel to two points of view in his interpretation of the whole text: first, the title of this group of forty strips should be called "Dachang" (Great constancy), and, second, in this treatise the term "cheng" should be a synonym for the term "cheng" (sincerity / moral integrity), which is a key concept in the Zhongyong. I suspect that these...