YANG CHU IN THE HISTORY OF
CHINESE PHILOSOPHY

John J. Emerson

(At g mail dot com, emersonj)

Also at www.idiocentrism.com

 In an earlier paper1 I described Yang Chu's contribution to Chinese philosophy as "the discovery of the body". My paper was built around Maurice Leenhardt's description of detribalization in recent colonial Melanesia, and I also compared Yang's vitalistic private ethic to similiar developments in classical Greece and Rome and in early modern Europe. The body's existence has never been doubted, but during the earliest periods human reality was not thought to consist of a collection of individual selves defined by bodies; instead, selves were thought to derive their reality from their participation in ritual forms which predated them and which would survive them. Persons became real when taking their place in meaningful spiritual occasions involving other persons (not all of whom were human or corporeal), and they could retain or even enhance their reality in the absence of their body (as ancestors, ghosts, witches or shamans.) Persons who were thought to be capable of functioning independently of their bodies were, furthermore, regarded as dependent for their being on other persons (clan members, ancestors, totem animals, fellow-initiates, etc.) with whom they shared identity.

I concluded that Yang Chu himself he did not go so far as to propose a strictly individualist system. The Yangists probably accepted the demanding and very extensive obligations of the Chinese family and clan, separating themselves only from their public identifications (most notably the identification with the feudal superior.) The traditional Chinese nobility was bound together by a strict system of loyalties comparable to the familiar samurai code, and it was this that Yang Chu rejected. Instead of pursuing honor and glory within this code, he dedicated himself to the cultivation of his own bodily essence and the strengthening of his clan's vitality. (Some of the self- obsession of the Yangists probably derived from the traditional belief that the body is a gift from the ancestors and should be returned perfect as a kind of sacrifice. It seems likely that the successful Yangist householder most resembled the retired Brahman, who devoted himself to self-cultivation only after his family duties had been fulfilled -- though there is some evidence that gluttonous and bohemian tendencies were present from quite early.)

In this paper I will put Yang Chu into the context of the history of Chinese philosophy, showing how his arguments provoked "a metaphysical crisis"2 during the last two centuries of the Chou dynasty. To us Yang's doctrines seem, philosophically speaking, rather unexceptional. "Each for himself"; "preserve life, maintain the real, don't get entangled in things"; avoid danger and military service; sacrifice nothing for the sake of the empire.3 This is egoism with a reclusive tinge: we can see how conservatives would object to these doctrines, but why should
anyone find them exciting and original?

In summary, I will argue that Yang Chu made the previously- ignoble (and even taboo) private realm the main focus of positive value. The public realm had become increasingly impersonal and even inhuman as a result of the rationalization of public life. Rationalization (ends-and-means thinking) was promoted by the authoritarian Mohists and Legalists in their attack on the traditional forms defended by the Confucians, who regarded traditional culture in itself as the the main source and standard of value -- more an end than a means. Yang Chu's thought was also rational, but he proposed that ends and means be calculated from the point of view of the individual rather than from the point of view of the state (the Legalists) or of all humanity (the Mohists.)

Yang Chu's bodily emphasis was the outcome of his focus on the no-longer-unclean private realm; "the body" served neatly as a marker for the non-public, non-social, non-ritual self. Impersonality can also be seen in the new naturalistic cosmologies (which saw a world of bodies where there had previously been a world of persons or spirits), and even in the mystic's indifference and neutrality. It is probably a mistake to view Yang Chu's new doctrine primarily as a form of liberation: it seems to have been an essentially defensive response to an enormous increase in the power of the increasingly inhuman and impersonal state.

CONFUCIUS

The history of pre-Ch'in Chinese philosophy divides almost too neatly into five periods: the pre-Confucian period, the life of Confucius (551-479 B.C.), the life of Mo Tzu (ca. 480-390 B.C.), the life of Mencius (ca. 390-305 B.C.), and the period between the death of Mencius and the triumph of Ch'in (ca. 220 B.C.) The great bulk of philosophical activity took place during the lives of Mo Tzu and Mencius: Confucius was Mo Tzu's only real predecessor, and of the important thinkers of the late Chou only Han Fei Tzu, Tsou Yen, and Kung-sun Lung could not be described as contemporaries of Mencius.

Confucius was able to look back on an entire millenium of Chinese culture, but this culture did not include philosophy. What survives (always in Confucian editions) includes oracular material, poems (most of them ritualistic, liturgical or moralistic), and proclamations and memorials. Confucius believed that this cultural inheritance embodied a perfect political system and a complete way of life, and he traced China's problems to the neglect of this heritage and the encroachment of innovation. (He ascribed this perfect system to the founders of the Chou dynasty -- Wen Wang, Wu Wang, and Chou Kung -- who had reformed and strengthened the rich but corrupt culture of the Shang.)

In fact, as Confucius well knew, the China of his immediate past had been chaotic. Exaggerated though they seem in hindsight, Confucius' fears for the survival of China were quite realistic. Around 800 B.C. the Western Chou dynasty had been extinguished by rebellions and barbarian invasions: the succeeding Eastern Chou dynasty was something of a fiction. During the period from 800 to 600 B.C. the barbarian invasions continued, usurpers seized power, and subordinate feudal states ignored the authority of the king, devoting themselves to plunder and ostentatious luxury. China may never have been much different than this: systems of the Western Chou type are always vulnerable to contentions within the nobility and usurpation by the officer families. But Confucius was scandalized.

Confucius'ideal China was a reconstruction from the vestiges and traces he found in the local traditions of the small states and in the official documents which had survived the Western Chou collapse. Confucius was not really a reactionary or a conservative trying to preserve or revive some actual or recent system; he was a reformer who took his models from the distant past, rather as the Enlightenment thinkers found their models in the Roman Republic and the Magna Charta. (Western Chou fell more than two centuries before Confucius was born, and had been founded two and a half centuries earlier still.)

No philosophy survives from Confucius' predecessors and contemporaries, but we do have the names of two early statesmen widely respected for their wisdom: Kuan Chung (fl. ca. 649-639 B.C.) and Tzu Ch'an, an older contemporary of Confucius. Interestingly, both of these men were identified with shrewd, practical, expedient statecraft. Neither shared Confucius' traditionalist idealism, and both made it a point to deal with the world as they found it. Confucius is the first Chinese philosopher who left a body of work, but before his time a realistic tendency (later identified with Legalism) had already been established in practice; its practitioners and advocates were widely respected.

What Confucius proposed was that political order could be attained if the nobles (each representing a domain or a governmental office) would govern their interactions by the traditional ritual code. Power relationships and functional interactions were to be regulated as relationships between persons. Confucius saw this system in operation in the small states and in humble village festivities, where etiquette, face- to-face relationships and traditional humane values retained their power. The Confucian system required that festivity and glory be centralized in official activities -- "ritual." These rituals were not formalistic obligations; they were the chief focus of aristocratic life and, for the nobles, the main focus of personal identity and the main source of prestige and satisfaction. Confucius' objections to private ceremonies and festivities derived not from puritanism or even from frugality, but from the fact that the nobles' unregulated, non-canonical private festivities inevitably superseded the official ceremonies, creating illicit avenues to prestige, recognition, and power, and reducing to insignificance the legitimate heierarchies embodied in the traditional rituals.
The important point here with regard to our discussion of Yang Chu is that the Confucian system relied on the power of these rituals. Traditionally the private world (the home and family, which were in some respects secret and even taboo) had been restricted in scope and limited in significance. The noble's identity and self-esteem derived from his public role, which ideally involved an intense identification (of the samurai type) with his feudal superior. If the most exciting events in the Chinese world were anything other than the public ceremonies honoring public service and reinforcing the feudal identifications, the Confucian system became a dead letter. The retreat into the private world advocated by Yang Chu entailed the destruction of the Confucian order.

MO TZU

By Western standards Mo Tzu was the first Chinese philosopher, since he used arguments. It is difficult for us to appreciate his violent impact on Chinese culture -- first, because much of his thought (like Yang Chu's) is rather ordinary by our standards, and second, because his influence in China was transient. (There has not been a Mohist in China for two millenia.) Nothing of the "Mysterious East" can be seen in Mo Tzu: as a rational, egalitarian utilitarian he has an eerie resemblance to Jeremy Bentham.

Mo Tzu was probably a dissident Confucian and is thought to have risen from the artisan class: his works are full of metaphors from carpentry and other crafts, and his practical, results-oriented attitude is alien to Confucian culturalism. To the Confucians, traditional practices and norms were authoritative regardless of consequences: the gentleman did what was right and did not calculate results (though he could be sure of good results in the long run.) Mo Tzu was as moralistic as the Confucians and intensified the Confucian public spirit. In many respects he was still a traditionalist: he defended the traditional states against usurpers and invaders, and staunchly upheld the reality of the spirits and the magical efficacity of ritual. Where he differed from the Confucians was in his use of the calculation of benefit and harm as the main test for action, together with his entire rejection of personal and family considerations. (This is the meaning of "universal love": impartial concern for everyone -- family, friends, and strangers -- without regard for relationship.) All acts, including such traditional ritual acts as funerals and festivals, were to be judged by their actual results: Bentham's "greatest good of the greatest number". Precedent and sentiment were of secondary importance at best, and frugality was to be the first rule.

Mo Tzu is significant as the man who brought universalism (impersonality) and rationality (the calculation of ends and means and the demand that reasons be given for choices) to China. He rejected the Confucian attempt to keep alive (or revive) the traditional system of ritual cultural rule, since within this system the reasons for acts could not usually be known: "We always do it this way." After Mo Tzu Chinese rationality went in two different directions: toward the authoritarian statism of Shang Yang (which found precedents in the centralized regime proposed by the Mohists), and toward the apolitical private rationality of Yang Chu.

SHANG YANG AND LEGALISM

Shang Yang (ca. 390 -- 338 B.C.) was roughly contemporary with Mencius and Yang Chu and is regarded as the archetypal Legalist. (Two precursors, Li K'o and Wu Ch'i, were contemporaries of Mo Tzu, but their works have not survived.) Shang Yang figures in most histories of Chinese philosophy as a villain (sometimes with explicit comparisons to Hitler and Stalin), and as a result the Legalists seldom receive a sympathetic hearing. There are reasons for this attitude, but from a historical or philosophical point of view it is regrettable. All modern states (and all large organizations of any sort) operate at least partly on Legalist principles, and for us to denounce the Legalists too vehemently is to evade our own past. Instead of comparing the Legalist Ch'in dynasty to recent totalitarian states, we would do better to make the comparison with classical Sparta and Rome, or with such absolute states as the France of the Ancien Regime.

The Legalists, including Shang Yang, were the first Chinese thinkers (and perhaps the first thinkers anywhere)4 to attempt to put government entirely on an objective basis. The rule of laws rather than of men, the rational calculation of ends and means, the systematic use of rewards and penalties, management by objectives, the differentiation of functions, accountability, promotion according to performance, close systematic supervision, budgeting, currency management, the control of credit, the promotion of economic development -- the Legalists pioneered all of these widely-accepted governmental practices. It is true that the human and cultural cost was enormous. The only activities deemed meritorious in Shang Yang's system were agricultural production and military exploits -- everything else, including much of family life and most of what we call culture, ethics, and charity , was regarded as parasitical and was tightly restricted or forbidden. The Mohists never ruled, but the Legalists were able to put their ideas into effect: with the founding of the Ch'in dynasty all of China came to be ruled on Legalist principles, though briefly.

With the movement from Mo Tzu to Shang Yang, Chinese rationality had to face, for the first time, the question of "point of view". From what point of view should ends and means be calculated? The Mohist answer was ethically attractive but impractical and probably impossible: the universal human point of view, or absolute rational altruism. The Legalist solution was much more workable. Government should work in the interest of the State (or the ruler), maximizing its wealth and territory by means of warfare and agricultural development. Individuals should work for their own interests, motivated by the fear of death and the desire for profit. Government can control the people by controlling punishments and rewards: individuals thus are able to seek their own interests only by working in the interest of the state. In theory at least, this system did not require moral or cultural incentives, and the entire ritual structure and a large part of the extended-family structure were simply to be abolished.

The point of view proposed by the Legalists, while more practical than that of the Mohists, had its own internal problems. Within this system there was no reason for a minister, seeing an opportunity to usurp power, to prefer the ruler's interest to his own. Furthermore, if the public interest is simply identified with the ruler's interest, the state will command no loyalty, nor will there be a way to restrain rulers willing to risk weakening the state for their own pleasure. These problems prevented the rise of Legalism as a public ideology -- the Ch'in state promoted a vaguely Confucian morality among the people. (Most of the martyrs of Chinese philosophy, ironically enough, were Legalists: Li Ssu, Shang Yang, and Han Fei Tzu all died horrible deaths, whereas the great majority of the idealists and mystics lived to a ripe old age.) Over the centuries, overt Legalism has been as rare as Mohism, but Legalist practice has flourished: the saying "Confucian on the outside, Legalist on the inside" has been used to describe many important statesmen.

YANG CHU

It is now possible to put Yang Chu in the context of his past. He shared the rationality of the Mohists and the Legalists, and like the Legalists he rejected (or ignored) the whole ritual structure upon which Confucianism was founded. He replaced the altruistic rationality of the Mohists and the statist rationality of the Legalists with a private rationality: each is to act entirely on the basis of his own personal (or family) interests.

For Yang Chu, public life was external and was to be thought of primarily in terms of its risks. Because of wars and intrigues, the lives of the ambitious nobility had never been secure, and the weaker the traditional ritualism was the riskier public life became: furthermore, as militarism, ambition and greed became dominant, public life became increasingly less satisfying from an ethical or public-spirited point of view. Yang Chu was not really rejecting the same system that Confucius advocated: he merely rejected the corrupt world he saw, without attempting to reform it. Yang Chu can be thought of as an ancestor of various later movements, but it is probably best to think of him as a rational hedonist (or familialist) who judged every action strictly in terms of its immediate personal effects, placing no value on rank, honor, reputation, tradition, or public opinion.

The Legalists and Yang Chu were polar opposites in the relative valuations they gave the public and the private welfare, but they defined the two realms similiarly. Both entirely rejected the traditional ritual order, which ideally united the public and the personal. In their different ways Yangism and Legalism can be seen as theoretical expressions of the rationale and methodology of exactly those practices (private festivity, tax-farming, aggressive warfare) which had motivated the Confucian and Mohist protests. In either system the "public interest" defined by the Confucians and Mohists was nonexistent, and all action was directed toward particular interests -- in the case of the Legalists, the interest of the ruler and his line.

Yang Chu remains a shadowy figure, and on the basis of what we know it would be rash to try to define his views too precisely: in any case, the topic of this paper is not so much Yang Chu himself as his influence. In the remainder of this paper I will show how Yang's privatism and the Legalist-Yangist rationality worked themselves out during the last century or so of the Chou dynasty.

SHEN PU HAI

Yang Chu's indifference to honor and glory appears in a different form in the case of his near-contemporary Shen Pu-hai. Shen's shrewd, amoral, technical approach is generally classified as Legalist, though it lacks the brutality which is usually regarded as the hallmark of Legalism. In one celebrated case he advised his ruler, the king of Han, to subordinate himself to the king of Wei during a formal meeting, thereby effectively acknowledging the overlordship of Wei. Shen's expectation was that the ruler of Wei, emboldened by this triumph, would subsequently destroy himself by his own arrogance and leave the state of Han in an improved position. His plan worked and his reputation was established.5

This Machiavellian scheme seems unexceptional, but it would have been impossible during any earlier period. The traditional rituals were the culmination and consummation of aristocratic life. The power of ritual was real as long as power and prestige really did flow through the ritual order, and it maintained itself to some degree long after real power had begun to come primarily from other sources. The pride of the earlier Chinese nobles had been so great that they would no sooner have submitted to ritual subordination, even for the sake of gain, than they would have prostituted their wives for the same reason. The possibility of faked participation in ritual cuts Confucianism to the bone: it was a cornerstone of Confucian belief that no one who has participated in a correctly-ordered public ceremony will thereafter be capable of rebellion or usurpation.6 The Confucian attempt failed, but it was not ridiculous: if sly self-abasement on public ceremonial occasions had really been easy, Shen Pu-hai could not have established his reputation by advocating it.

SHEN TAO

The movement from Confucius through Mo Tzu to Shang Yang and Shen Pu-hai was characterized by the increasing impersonality of public life. (Yang Chu was the reflex of this: he spoke for the personal values which were being excluded from the public arena.) With Shen Tao (a considerably younger contemporary of Yang Chu) this impersonality reaches its apogee: he emptied the self entirely.

Shen Tao argued that political power is entirely the result of position and status, and not at all the result of personal qualities: "A villainous emperor can disrupt the whole world, whereas a sage in a humble position cannot even get the respect of his own family." His most famous saying was "Emulate the mindless clod."7 Is this an expression of mystical detachment, or is it a description of the automatic behavior of a cog in the bureaucratic machine, enmeshed in a chain of command and ruled by impersonal laws? The Chinese ritual state never did entirely separate itself from devotional forms, and it is quite possible that Shen Tao was both a mystic and a bureaucrat. Yang Chu detached himself from public life for the sake of protecting and developing his private self; for him public life became impersonal, but life itself did not. The moralistic recluses left public life in protest, in the hope of eventually reforming it: their alienation was situational and not essential. Shen Pu- hai took this impersonal attitude toward the public ceremonial values and turned it into a political device: the schemer who really doesn't care about ceremony will have the advantage over opponents deluded by feelings of shame and honor. It is only with Shen Tao that detachment and impersonality come to be taken as a positive ideal and to penetrate to the core of self. Compared to the intensely personalized ritual order of two centuries earlier, we have a new man living in a different world.

MENCIUS

It was left to Mencius (a near-contemporary) to defend the Confucian ideal against Yang's attacks. Mencius' debate with Kao Tzu hinges on the question of whether "righteousness" is internal (natural and part of oneself) or external (artificial and imposed from without.)8Here the adversaries are clearly standing on opposite sides of the line drawn by Yang Chu. Before Yang Chu, public life (with its entailed identifications and involvements) was, for a noble Chinese, a necessary condition and defining element of the self. After him public life could be thought of as an external nuisance, perhaps of some interest (particularly as a source of income), but certainly not essential or intrinsically valuable. The question of righteousness was hardly a factual one: it was an existential-political disagreement about who we are and how we should live. (Note that for both Kao Tzu and Mencius family obligations are internal and natural.)

Mencius' doctrine that "human nature is good" means that a just political order is the natural outcome of normal human feelings. It is not merely that man is a political animal: the just society grows naturally from man's deepest emotions. Confucians believed that political loyalties and identifications can be seen to develop (with the help of exemplars of virtue) naturally from such bonds as those between a parent and child. (In practice there is a demographic problem here: the Confucian political system requires that I feel the same devotion to my grandfather's elder brother's grandson that I feel toward my own elder brother.) Mencius' doctrine was soon challenged from Confucian standpoint by Hsun Tzu, who felt that righteousness was external and artificial -- though still valuable and necessary. The ensuing discussion of "human nature" has dominated Chinese philosophy to this day. It is in this discussion, above all, that we see the power of Yang Chu's challenge to traditional Chinese belief.

SUNG HSING

Recluses of various types were known in China even before the time of Confucius. (Po Yi and Shu Chi in the Analects were two examples; the Confucian attitude toward these two worthies, who refused to accept the Chou conquest, was of necessity very complex.) Whether practicing austerities or protesting crimes, these recluses were recognizably exceptional individuals. Yang Chu proposed withdrawal from public life as a normal choice for ordinary persons, but did not really propose an alternative political system. Sung Hsing, a considerably younger contemporary of Yang Chu who has been described as a Mohist- Taoist, developed ideas much like Yang Chu's into a form of political protest. He proposed that war is unprofitable, that the real desires are few, and that there is no shame in insult, and advocated tolerance, equality, and contentment. Like the Yangists (and probably unlike the Mohists) he developed systematic ascetic discipline; unlike Yang Chu (but like the Mohists) he proposed his doctrines as a political solution and founded a sect or party. However much his doctrines coincided with Yang Chu's, he was obviously a personage of an entirely different type, and can stand as an example of a kind of dissidence made possible by Yang Chu's example.9

YANG CHU AND LAO TZU

Lao Tzu accepted the naturalistic viewpoint of Yang Chu and the Legalists but rejected the rational orientation they shared. Any ends-and-means interpretation must choose some point of view from which to separate reality into two parts (ends and means, reality and explanation). As we have seen, this point of view cannot safely be taken for granted, and Lao Tzu rejected all those suggested: universal humanity, the state, and the individual. Yang Chu has been called the first Taoist, and by making it possible to separate oneself from public affairs to dedicate oneself to self-nurture, he certainly paved the way for Taoism. Yet for the Taoists, or at least for Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu, Yang's "self" was just one more obsession standing in the way of openness to the cosmic process. Lao Tzu did not even entirely reject politics: "Just because he values himself more than he values the empire, he can be entrusted with the empire." (Lao Tzu Ch. 13.) Another passage moves still further away from Yang's self-care, and seems in fact to be an explicit criticism of Yangism: "The sage is able to fulfill himself precisely because because he has no self" (Ch. 7). A final passage even seems to denounce the Yangist project as such: "The people do not fear death because their ruler strives for life too vigorously." (Ch. 75.) (Are these "the people who move into the realm of death through valuing life" in Ch. 50?) With Lao Tzu we have moved a long way from Yang Chu's straightforwardly egoist position.

Maspero saw the origin of Taoism in the need for a religion more personally satisfying than the public ritual religion.10 He was probably correct, but the public religion had not always been impersonal and unsatisfying. It became so only with the debasement of public life and the diminution of ritual resulting from the Legalist rationalization. That is why Taoism arose when it did and not earlier.

THE YIN-YANG SCHOOL

So far I have focussed on the political consequences of Yangism, somewhat to the neglect of Yang's somatic focus. It was the body which made it possible to differentiate the private self from its public roles and relationships, and Yangists devoted themselves to the care and perfection of the bodies which had come to define their being. With this disengagement of the "real self" from its social extensions, together with the increasing depersonalization of public life and the non-human world, the cosmos came to be seen as an assemblage of bodies (or "natures") rather than of persons. A naturalistic description of this physical world was now required, and the various systematizers of the Yin-Yang / Five Elements school (most notably Tsou Yen) provided it.

Though this school probably expanded on traditional medical and cosmological concepts, it is not (contrary to widespread belief) at the deepest level of Chinese culture: Tsou Yen (ca. 305-240 B.C.) was one of the latest of the classical Chinese thinkers. Various branches of this school, which provided naturalist explanations for traditional beliefs about the intervention of Heaven in human affairs, were dominant during the early Han dynasty. Finally during the last century B.C. Wang Ch'ung and other skeptics (whose ideas can be traced back to Lao Tzu and Hsun Tzu) rejected the entire correlative cosmology, with its normative and symbolic survivals, and produced a causal and virtually materialistic explanation of the cosmos. The yin-yang cosmology remained influential in divination and dynastic mythology for centuries, and still is important in Chinese medicine. The Yin-Yang school, when it is not regarded as primal and ancient, is often thought of as the revival of antiquated ideas of a superstitious sort. There is some truth in this, but it must be remembered that this school expressed the old ideas in entirely different terms.

SYNCRETISM / YANGISM

Once the Yangist themes entered the philosophical debates of the Hundred Schools period, they became public property. These themes could now be used in arguments of many different kinds, in the same way that mathematical formulae can be applied to problems far different from those for which they were originally devised. During this period wandering sophists went from state to state with their recipes for happiness and success, and all the schools sharpened their dialectical and rhetorical skills. These sophists worked for the market and produced arguments on demand;11 the Yangists were renowned for their debating skills, but there probably never was a "Yangist School" in an organized, disciplined sense. The Yangists were merely those of the Sophists who claimed descent from Yang Chu and stressed privatism, rationality, and the care of the body. (There is evidence for deliberate doctrinal adaptation in Chuang Tzu, where two significantly different versions of the "mountain tree" story are seen. The earlier, in the fourth of the "Inner Chapters", unreservedly advocates "uselessness", whereas the later version, in the "Mountain Tree" chapter, draws back from this extreme position.)12

Positive statements of the Yangist themes can especially be seen in Chuang Tzu, Lü Shih Ch'un Chiu, Kuan Tzu, and the "Yang Chu" chapter in the late collection Lieh Tzu.13Each group has its own emphasis, and the differences are often sharp. The doctrines presented fall under two headings: the body (hedonism, asceticism, and temperance) and the state (renunciation vs. service.)

Yang Chu's own doctrine made the body primary: life was the end, and everything else the means. As a result, he advocated the entire abandonment of state involvement, which he regarded as unhelpful and dangerous, in favor of self-care which was neither ascetic nor gluttonous. The Yangist chapters of the Lü Shih Ch'un Ch'iu, which assume self-interested state service, still reject both asceticism and gluttony: they are unremittingly rational, continually reminding the reader not to let the means (wealth, pleasure, the world) do damage to the end -- yourself, your life. (This transformation of ritual position into a source of income is, of course, exactly what Confucius preached against; he found it much more pernicious that the renunciation of office.) More ascetic, contemplative versions of self-care also soon arose, including the physiologically-oriented precursors of "immortality Taoism" and of Chinese medicine -- though Yangist attacks on this asceticism were also seen.14

Especially because of the late date of the Lieh Tzu collection within which they are especially prominent, it is often thought that the hedonistic, gluttonous versions of Yangism were late developments. I believe, however, that the gluttonous interpretation, though probably not found in Yang Chu's own thought, appeared almost immediately. Chuang Tzu's "Robber Chih" chapter (ca. 200 B.C., according to Graham) expresses such a view, and the following anti-Yangist passage from Kuan Tzu certainly seems to be directed against it: "If talk of living to the full prevails, integrity and a sense of shame will not be established." (A commentary on this passage found elsewhere in Kuan Tzu refers explicitly to orgies, gluttony, and animalistic behavior.)15

It is possible that abstemious Yangism was actually preceded by the gluttonous forms of "nourishing life", and was a response to the perceived dangers of unrestrained greed. The following passage from Granet is suggestive, though its source and dating have proved elusive: "The overlord prepares for death by gorging himself with savory meats and life-giving drinks. He eats 'fish richly fried', he drinks wine mingled with pepper which 'sustains the strength of old men with bushy eyebrows.' In the course of his life, he has assimilated quantities of essences. The vaster and richer his domain, the more he will have assimilated..... The nobles of the feudal period were beautiful and pure in mind and body because their food was pure and rich....They forbade themselves many varieties of food; wolf's tripe, dog's kidney, brains of the suckling pig, entrails of fish, rump of domestic goose, breast of stag, gizzard of bustard, liver of chicken.....”16  "Nourishing life" in this case certainly lacks any trace of asceticism or even temperance.

At least during the earlier periods, gluttony in ancient China was really possible only for high officials and those with high connections, and the frequently-murderous consequences of high position were the prime motive for Yang Chu's rejection both of public service and of luxury. In the Lü Shih Ch'un Chiu17 and elsewhere, ill health and popular resentment are mentioned together as potentially fatal outcomes of greed, and this passage may be a reaction to the kind of gorging self-nurture mentioned just above. (But against this prudence, the libertine Yangists pointed out that death is inevitable, no matter what18, and the possibility of a wretched old age was also argued quite early in China.)

When the private, corporeal view of life came to replace the traditional public, symbolic view, asceticism, hedonism and temperance were the three possible outcomes. All three probably appeared soon after Yang Chu's original break with tradition, and questions of origins, dating, and purity of doctrine are secondary and probably undecidable. Even non-egoist forms of Yangism were seen: in Lieh Tzu we read "There is an old saying that we should pity the living and abandon the dead. This saying puts it exactly. The way to pity others is not simply to feel for them. When they are toiling we can give them ease, hungry we can feed them, cold we can warm them, in trouble we can help them to get through."19 Yang Chu's philosophical significance comes more from the change he made in the terms of the argument than from his actual doctrine.

STATE YANGISM

Yang Chu's original doctrine advocated the renunciation of public life, (a view also seen in several sections of Chuang Tzu),20 but there exist many versions of Yangism adapted for the use of public servants, and eventually Yangist doctrine was even developed into a quasi-liberal political theory. (The two different views of uselessness mentioned above are probably part of this development.) The story of Chung Shan Mou Tzu, which is seen in several different versions, is another: Mou Tzu wishes to renounce his position, but cannot bear to tear himself away from court life; he is counseled that forcible repression of desire is even more harmful than submission to desire.21 In Lieh Tzu the sensible point is made that real poverty is even more destructive to life than any form of public involvement, an argument which certainly justifies at least low-level public service.22 The Yangist sections in Lü Shih Ch'un Ch'iu are adaptations of the same sort: the ruler or minister is advised throughout that the state is only a means, and that life is the end; unhealthy self-indulgence, perilous arrogance, and wearisome diligence are equally to be avoided. In any case, practicing "Yangists" were not necessarily recluses or renunciates. (In the introduction to his translation of Mencius, W.A.C.H. Dobson argued that Mencius did not mention any of the Yangists by name because of the fact that the ones he knew were not recluses or travelling sophists, but high public officials.)23
In the final transformation, the supposedly anarchist Yangism formulae were presented as methods of government. The various passages within which Chuang Tzu was offered political office are probably vestiges of this development, as are the syncretic chapters in Chuang Tzu (notably "The Way of Heaven") and the final line of Ch. 13 of Lao Tzu (as discussed above on p. 19.) A fair number of Yangist passages are explicitly political:

1. Chuang Tzu's "Old Fisherman" chapter (classified Yangist by Graham) : "Let officials mind their own departments, let the people stick to their own affairs. Then they will not bother anyone else......Earnestly cultivate your own person, carefully guard the genuine in you, turn back and leave other things to other people."24

2. Lü Shih Ch'un Ch'iu : "The methods for caring for one's person and for ruling a nation have the same principle. If lands are jointly cultivated, progress is slow since effort is grudging; if the lands are divided, progress is swift since loafing and evasion cease."25 (This is identical to one of Shang Yang's principles: see p. 121.)

3. Lü Shih Ch'un Ch'iu: "A man will care more for a single jade than for all the jade in the K'un Lun mountains, if it is his own jade."26

4. Several passages in Lao Tzu may speak of the establishment of order through the manipulation of self-interest (as opposed to moral teaching): "Hence the sage is always good at saving people, and so abandons no one......hence the good man is the teacher of the bad man, while the bad man is the material for the good man." (Ch. 23; see also Chs. 23,49, 62, and 68.)27

5. Shen Tao is regarded as a Legalist, but some of his arguments resemble those of political Yangism: "Therefore, make use of men's self-serving efforts, and not of their efforts for your sake; then there will be no one who cannot be successfully employed."28 "If a rabbit is running in the street, a hundred men will chase it; it is not that it would be enough for a hundred men, but that ownership has not been fixed.... When rabbits are heaped up in the market, passers-by don't even give them a second look. It is not that they don't like rabbit, but that ownership is fixed.....Truly, ruling the whole empire or a single state lies simply in fixing ownership."29

These passages, within which Legalism and Yangism seem to combine into a unified system, have aroused interest as expressions of a kind of proto-liberalism. Though China has long been regarded as the essentially and archetypically illiberal society, in the light of these passages it makes sense to ask instead why China did not produce a system of free-market liberalism two thousand years ago. I think, however, that the liberalism which many see in this period was limited and defective.

To begin with, while Yangism seems like liberating philosophy, it developed in the shadow of the Legalist state and was essentially defensive. The shared ritual order had been a source of meaning and value, and not merely a system of power relationships. It seems quite clear that the destruction of this order by the amoral state came first, and that the Yangist reconstitution of a satisfying private world was a response to this fait accompli. Some of the earliest expressions of systematic asceticism actually present themselves using political terminology : "The mind's place in the body is like the prince's place in the state"30 or "The senses are servants; they must be kept to their offices and not allowed to usurp the ruler's place." 31(The political argument used in the second of these is strictly Legalist.) The liberated private self, threatened (and defined) by the rapidly-encroaching state, is here being defensively organized on rational bureaucratic principles.32

Second, Yangism itself seems to have condoned exactly the kinds of tax-farming and graft to which free-market liberalism is most opposed. There is no evidence that the Yangist individualists were private businessmen producing for a competitive market; instead they seem to have been either bureaucrats or else landowners with state connections. It is true that the Legalists advocated the promotion of economic development within a system of private property, as well as the rule of law (up to a point), but they never really renounced expropriation and confiscatory taxation. Both schools opposed the doomed ritual tradition, but the positive step of recognition of individual rights was never taken. (Much the same can be said of equality in China: under the imperial rule, aristocrats and officials were reduced to servility, whereas the bourgeois revolutions in the West moved toward equality by extending to other groups the protections and rights which had previously been granted only to the nobility.)33


Finally, even though all of the pieces of a rational modern society were in place during the last century of the Chou dynasty, its religious foundations were weak. Ch'in modernism was not merely secular, but actively impious. To the Chinese living under its rule, it was, by and large, both personally unsatisfying and morally offensive: unlike ritualism, as mentioned above, it could not be a source of meaning. Perhaps it was the presence of a religious justification (in the form of the Protestant ethic: the sacredness of property and the fallenness of flesh and blood) which ensured that modernity was not rejected in the West as it was in China.34