Huai-nan Tzu: Philosophical Synthesis in Early Han Thought

Introduction

Introduction The Nature of Huai-nan Tzu 准南子 When Liu An 劉安， King of Huai-nan 准南(1 79 ?-122 BC), paid his state visit to Emperor Wu 武(r. 141-87 BC), he presented him, as a token of esteem, with a book in twenty-one chapters that had ‘just recently been completed'.1 The Emperor treasured the work and had it placed in his private library. As far as we know, and notwithstanding the problems of authorship and transmission, it is this work which has come down to us under the title of HuaÌ-nan hung-lieh 准南鴻烈 (The Radiant Light of Huai-nan) or, more simply, HuaÌ-nan Tzu 准南子 (The [Book of] Master Huai-nan). For the sake of clarity 1 would like to offer at the outset a preliminary description of HuaÌ-nan Tzu. It emcompasses a wide variety of subjects, from ancient myths to contemporary government, from didactic historical anecdotes to applied psychology, and from astronomy and topography to philosophy and mysticism. The diversity of content is compounded by the I See Han shu 44/2145 (Biography of Liu An). The date is not mentioned therein, but may be determined from the paralIel biography in Shih chi 118/3082 (Watson, 11, 368). 2 Irztroductiorz many pre-Han schools of thought that find a voice in Huai-nan Tzu, a fact which is reflected by the large number of quotatìons sprinkled throughout the work. 2 Finally, the reader of Huai-nan Tzu cannot escape being struck by the lack of stylistic unity, not only from one chapter to the next, but also from one paragraph to the next within the same chapter. It was apparently on the basis of this threefold lack of unity and consistency that Huai-nan Tzu was viewed by a large number of traditional Chinese scholars as a composite work, both in subject-matter and authorship, belonging to the category of the Eclectic School (tsa-chia 雜家).3 However, recent scholarship on Huai-nan Tzu has revealed the inadequacy of this assessment and has argued for the basic unity of the work.4 It is also my contention that despite the diversity of subject-matter, ideas and style, one overriding concern pervades Huai-nan Tzu, namely, the attempt to define the essential conditions for a perfect socio-political order. The perfect order is seen to derive primarily from the p.erfect Ruler, conceived as the Taoist True Man (chen-jen 真人). The basic content of Huai-nan Tzu may accordingly be described as Taoist-oriented political utopianism, and the work as a handbook for the instruction of an enlightened ruler and his court. As a philosophical foundation for this program Huai-nan Tzu argues that political rule is bound by the same patterns that rule the natural world. The universal patterns are conceived along the lines of Taoism and the School of Yin 陰 -Yang 陽 and Five Elements. Government, in this light, appears as a particular case of the Taoist conception of the universe, and falls under the same binding principles. ln the final analysis, Huai-nan Tzu may generally be characterized as a Taoist-oriented summa of Chinese philosophy of the Former Han perioq (206 BC-AD 8). The twenty-one chapters of Huai-nan Tzu lend themselves to a threefold division, as follows: ~ See Chapter IV. j We find a recent expression of the traditional view in Chu時-kuo ssu-hsiang t'ung. 的 ih 中國思想通史 (A General History of Chinese Thought), published in 1957 by Hou Wai-lu 候外廬 et al.; we read in the second volume, p. 78: Huai-nan Tzu is a work similar in nature to L必 shih ch 'un-ch'山， and may be said to borrow left and right and be impure. The teachings of YinYang , Confucianism, Taoism, Names [and Performance], and Legalism are collected together [in that work]. Therefore, the ideas show much confusion, and the text is protracted and repetitive. The traditional view probably originated from the fact that Han shu yi-wen chih 漢書藝文志 classified Huai-nan Tzu next to Lü shih ~h 'un-ch '~u among the Eclectics (tsa-chia). The problem of the philosophical unity of Huai-nan Tzu, one of 4the main themes of this study, will be discussed in Chapters I, IV and VI See Chapter 1. Introduction 3 1 Basic Principles (Chapters 1-8) Huai-nan Tzu deals mainly here with Taoist and Yin-Yang principles that apply to all reality: Heaven, Earth and Man. These...