The Hall of Three Pines: An Account of My Life

Chapter Five. The Thirties

My main work in the 1930s was the writing of my two-volume History of Chinese Philosophy. Since I commenced work on this in the late 1920s, my account begins with the late 1920s. Along the way I speak of the state of research into the history of Chinese philosophy at that time. During the New Culture Movement of the May Fourth period, an epoch-making book in the study of Chinese philosophy was published. This was the first volume of Hu Shi’s Outline History of Ancient Chinese Philosophy. Hu Shi came to Beijing University in 1917, where he taught a course in the history of Chinese philosophy to first-year students. Copies of his lecture texts were passed out, and these were formally published in book form in February 1919, with a preface by CaiYuanpei (the president of Beijing University) that began with the words: In compiling a history of ancient Chinese philosophy, two difficulties present themselves.The first is a problem of materials.Books of the Zhou and Qin are mixtures of authentic and apocryphal material. Even the authentic books have many mistaken words and misplaced lines. Without the work done by the “Han-style” scholars of the Qing dynasty, most of the materials collected would necessarily be riddled with errors.The second is a problem of form. Ancient Chinese scholarship was never codified into systematic 221 c h a p t e r f i v e t h e t h i r t i e s texts.The “Wide World” chapter in Zhuangzi, along with the “Survey of the Six Arts” and “Survey of Philosophers” in The History of the Han, all give synchronic accounts of philosophers from different periods. In making a systematic compilation, we find nothing in works of ancient writers to model our work on, so we must model it on histories of philosophy by Westerners. For this reason only a person who has studied the history of Western philosophy can erect a suitable structure.1 The preface went on to say that Mr. Hu Shi, “being born into the Hu family of Jixi, which is noted for Han-style scholarship,” had received an education in textual criticism and studiedWestern philosophy in America. In his hands the two difficulties mentioned above were not hard to solve. This is why, in the short space of a single year, while teaching English at Beijing University, he had completed this Outline History of Ancient Chinese Philosophy. Cai Yuanpei felt that the book was outstanding in a number of ways: first for its methods of proof, second for its concise writing , third for its impartial attitude, and fourth for its systematic research. Given the level of scholarship at the time, CaiYuanpei was not being effusive when he placed such high value on this book. But he made one point that did not tally with the facts: Hu Shi did not complete this book within one year. Before returning to China he wrote a doctoral dissertation at Columbia University entitled A History of the Pre-Qin Logicians. This dissertation made up a substantial section of the Outline History. There is no question that he put a good deal of effort into this section. The remainder of the book was probably added piece by piece as he gave his lectures.The difference in mastery between the two parts is noticeable to people in the field. What is more, the “Hu family of Jixi, noted for Han-style scholarship” was not of the same clan as Hu Shi. When I studied at Beijing University, the professor who taught me the history of Chinese philosophy could not go beyond the bounds of China’s feudalistic philosophical history. When the feudalistic philosophers from the Qin and Han onward set forth their own thinking, whether or not they had new ideas they would always express themselves in the form of commentaries on ancient classics. On the surface it would seem that latter-day ideas had already been thought of in ancient times, and that people of later times attained to only an incomplete understanding of the classics. The history of ancient Chinese philosophy, as it was 222 : philosophy taught to our class, began with the legendary sage-emperors.The lectures went on for half a year before we got to the Duke of Zhou.2 The students felt as though they were surrounded by two miles...