The Craft of a Chinese Commentator: Wang Bi on the Laozi

Chapter Two: The System of the Classics

THE SYSTEM OF THE CLASSICS 27 27 Chapter Two The System of the Classics W ang Bi’s biographers, as well as his opponents, have described him as a philosopher bent on establishing a coherent and systematic argument through his commentaries and treatises. In his “Biography of Wang Bi,” He Shao writes: “Wang Bi wrote a commentary to the Laozi and made a Zhilüe of it which works out that [the Laozi] has order and system” .1 Sun Sheng (299–369), a critic of Wang Bi’s and author of several historical works such as the Jin yang qiu ,2 writes in his treatise entitled “The Xiang in the [Zhou]yi are More Subtle than Visible Forms” : As the [Zhou]yi as a book “penetrates the spirit and knows about the changes” [an ability defined in the Xici 3 as “the epitome of capacity” ], who but the most sublime [person ] in All Under Heaven could be a match to it? Sadly enough, the commentaries and elucidations [on the Zhouyi circulating] today are altogether useless. How true is this even for [Wang] Bi who aspired to an all-encompassing systematization of the purport of the Dark by means of [his] argumentative devices of fitting and combining [arguments and terms in different places 28 THE CRAFT OF A CHINESE COMMENTATOR of the text] !3 Thus, when he is lining up esoteric meanings [of the hexagrams ], the brilliantly wrought phrases dazzle the eye, and when he is holding forth on Yin and Yang one subtle and fine point follows another; but as to the transformations of the six lines, the premonitions contained in the xiang , the periods of the day and the months of the year as well as the sequence of the 5 ethers [associated with the five elements], wuqi , [Wang] Bi completely leaves them out, and does not concern himself with most of them. Although there are indeed passages deserving attention [in Wang Bi’s Commentary to the Zhouyi], I am afraid he [basically] obscures the Great Way.4 The core problem in this passage lies with the Chinese term fuhui. It often comes with negative connotations in the sense that this technique imposes an extraneous system and structure on texts. Sun argues that Wang Bi indeed does impose such a structure and thereby neglects and discards the traditional and established interpretation of the late Han, which seems to him to be the natural way of reading this text. Basically, however, the term denotes an interpretive technique elucidating the very structural core of a text. In this sense it is used by Liu Xie (465–522), who devotes a chapter of his The Literary Mind and the Carving of Dragons, Wenxin diaolong to this concept. There, he writes: What is the meaning of fuhui ? It denotes the systematization of the literary and the argumentative [elements] [of a text], the integration of [its] beginning and end , the fixing of what is to be added and at is to be taken away, the harmonization of the [text’s] boundaries [so that] a single “encompassing ” piece of work [comes about, which is, according to Xici 3, encompassing as the Zhouyi is able to “encompass the ways of Heaven and Earth,”], which, “while [its words are] diverse, will not [have them] encroach on each other” [in the same way in which this is solved with the words of the Zhouyi according to Xici 5]. It is as in the building of a house where a basic plan is needed and as in the tailoring of a dress where a pattern is required. It is a fact that, when a gifted child studies the art of writing, he should get the structure straight; for this he should take the feelings and intentions as THE SYSTEM OF THE CLASSICS 29 the spiritual core, events and meanings as the bone and the marrow, phrases and words as the musculature and the integuments , and the gong and shang [notes] as the sound and breath; he will then give proper value to the yellow and the dark [the color pattern] and apportion metal and jade [the sound pattern], offer what is appropriate, and replace what is not, and thus achieve [that it corresponds to] the Mean—this is the lasting art of connecting thoughts. It is generally true that a large-scale literary text has manifold branches and currents; he who regulates the currents, takes his...