Philip J. Ivanhoe, Trans., with an Introduction, On Ethicsand History: Essays and Letters of ZHANG XuechengStanford: Stanford University Press, 2010, 195 pages

Q. Edward Wang

Published online: 11 January 2013# Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2013

In 1789, while Europe was witnessing the outbreak of the French Revolution, whichwas to presage more turbulences as well as more progress in the years to come, Chinawas experiencing a relatively peaceful age. It was the 55th year of the rule of EmperorQianlong (r. 1735–1796) of the Qing dynasty (1644–1911), one of the longest reignsin the history of imperial China. In that year ZHANG Xuecheng (1738–1801), a quiteunnoticed scholar of the age, wrote 23 essays (eight of them included in this book),offering his thoughts on the essence of Confucian teaching. Ironically, Zhang waslargely overlooked by his cohorts because of the long peace the country had enjoyedunder the Emperor. Like many of his peers, Zhang aspired to earn fame andrecognition, as well as a stable living, by taking the civil service examinationswhen young. But, at his time, in Ivanhoe’s words, “competition was intense, and itsimply was impossible for a large number of highly qualified candidates to securedecent posts within the Qing bureaucracy” (1). Zhang was relatively lucky in that,after repeated failures, he finally succeeded in obtaining the jinshi degree at age 40.But after spending so many years preparing for the examinations, he seemed to havelacked the street-wisdom to help him become a successful administrator. To the endof his life, Zhang never held posts significant enough to earn a decent living.

Zhang was never shy about complaining to any willing ear about how he wasmistreated by life. But to his readers, especially those of a later age, his “misery”perhaps constituted one of the conditions that molded him into who he was. Instead ofan able official, he produced some of the most original works in the Confuciantradition the country had seen in years. Indeed, in the course of development ofChinese intellectual history, what Zhang wrote was no less inconsequential than theimpact of the French Revolution on modern Europe. And thanks to Philip Ivanhoe’spainstaking translations, English readers can now have a glimpse of Zhang’s expan-sive and at times also enigmatic writings. What concerned Zhang, as Ivanhoe tries toforeground in this translation, was one’s relationship with and position in the world.

Dao (2013) 12:125–127DOI 10.1007/s11712-012-9308-8

Q. Edward Wang (*)Department of History, Rowan University, Glassboro, NJ 08028, USAe-mail: wangq@rowan.edu

That is, how one relates to one’s world, socially and politically, and how one shouldbehave and act accordingly in order to live properly in a given age. (Were these alsosome of the goals and concerns expressed in and pursued by the French Revolution?Was the Revolution triggered by King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette’s“improper” behavior?) In other words, though ZHANG Xuecheng’s writing touchedupon a variety of issues, what constitutes its core, as Ivanhoe emphasizes, is essen-tially a philosophy of ethics.

As a Confucian scholar, it ought not to be so surprising that like his predecessors,ZHANG Xuecheng showed a high concern for one’s ethical behavior. But in evaluatinghim, Ivanhoe’s emphasis on Zhang’s being an ethical philosopher does offer a freshlook at this Qing scholar, for from the early 20th century when such modern scholarsas NAITŌ Konan in Japan and HU Shi in China “rediscovered” ZHANG Xuecheng, theydid not think of him as a “typical” Confucian scholar. In fact, Zhang was attractive tomodern scholars precisely because, in certain ways, he seemed to have departed fromthe traditional Confucian belief in an eternal and immanent moral truth that everyonecould and should uphold, irrespective of times. In his elucidation on the Dao, which isthe first chapter in the book, Zhang famously took a historicist approach to explainingthe nature of the Dao. “For the dao,” he explained, “is that by which all things andaffairs are as they are; it is not how they should be. However, all that human beingsare able to see is how things and affairs should be” (27). By evaluating the accom-plishment of the Duke of Zhou, Zhang further explained that Duke of Zhou simplydid what his age required him to do, which was to sum up the “complete orchestra” ofthe past. “This was so because his position in time happened to be what it was; noteven the Duke of Zhou himself realized that this was the case” (29). If a moralparagon like the Duke of Zhou was also shaped by his time—rather than as someonewho intended to and also succeeded in establishing the presupposed ideals forhis age—none could do otherwise. This is Zhang’s logical reasoning, which isutterly historicist.

If Ivanhoe’s emphasis on ZHANG Xuecheng’s ethical philosophy marks a sort ofdeparture from previous scholarship, he is quite measured in making this step. In theIntroduction, he acknowledges most of the scholars who wrote on Zhang before himand, as the title of this book suggests, Ivanhoe also considers history as impor-tant as ethics if one wants to understand Zhang: “ZHANG Xuecheng’s ethicalphilosophy is inextricably intertwined with the other strands of his thought and inparticular with his speculative theories about the nature and meandering course ofhistory” (3). In discussing the three aspects of Zhang’s ethical philosophy,Ivanhoe stresses that time and place, two essential components in historicalthinking if I might add, were Zhang’s primary considerations while structuringhis thoughts on ethical issues. Ivanhoe’s presentation of ZHANG Xuecheng’sethical philosophy is shown more saliently in the excerpts he has selected forthe book. These excerpts belong in two categories: essays and letters; all of themserve to highlight ZHANG Xuecheng’s discussion on ethics. In addition, the bookhas a third part, which consists of three works by HAN Yu (768–824), a TangConfucian advocate. The purpose of including HAN Yu’s works, I suppose, is toplace Zhang firmly within the Confucian tradition, even though at the same timeIvanhoe also duly points out the key differences between Han and Zhang in theirtakes on Confucian teachings.

126 Q. Edward Wang

If it were Ivanhoe’s intention, with this collection of translations, to repositionZHANG Xuecheng in the tradition of Confucianism, or more precisely, the tradition ofConfucian learning from the Song to the Ming, which is also known in Englishscholarship as Neo-Confucianism, there were some predecessors whose works hecould have referred to (relied on?). One of them, who failed to enter the list of hisacknowledgement, was HE Bingsong (1890–1946), a historian and Zhang’s fellowprovincial. As a friend of HU Shi’s, He wrote a preface to Hu’s work on ZHANG

Xuecheng. He also wrote articles himself, discussing Zhang’s ideas of history andemphasis on the ethical quality of the historian. CANG Xiuliang, a PRC historian whois from eastern Zhejiang, where Zhang was born and reared, also published exten-sively on Zhang, discussing, among others, the need to take a balanced approach toevaluating Zhang as both a historical thinker and a moral philosopher. Indeed, ifZhang was not fully appreciated by his cohorts, it was perhaps because he did not fitwell with the zeitgeist, which was empiricist and historicist, as exemplified by thework of the Evidential School (kaozhengxue 考證學). Of course, as shown in his ownwritings, Zhang was quite sympathetic to the need to historicize Confucian learning.But he went farbeyond that. Now thanks to Ivanhoe, this additional dimension isrevealed in English.

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