Buddhism and Social Darwinism: The Changing Functions of Korean Buddhism

When Liang Qichao’s (1873-1929) writings were first introduced into Korea in the late 1890s, his Social Darwinist understanding of evolution took hold of the Korean intellectual consciousness.[1] Liang believed in a world defined by competition, and suggested several ideas to emerge victorious, such as ‘self-strengthening through (modern) education’ and ‘the encouragement of a collectivist, self-sacrificing and adventurous spirit’.[2] We see evidence of Liang’s influence across Korean Buddhist thinkers during the turn of the century like Han Yong-un (1879-1944), Kwon Sangno (1879-1965) and Yongsong Jinjong (1864-1940). I will examine how they engaged with the evolutionary and scientific ideas of their time, highlighting similarities not just within their ideas but also with prominent Western theories at the time, concluding that evolutionary theory was ultimately inescapable as an influencing factor, and on a broader scale, ask what this meant for the existential role Korean Buddhism was to play.

Han Yong-un wrote extensively on the ‘modern’ aspects of Buddhism, citing its altruism and the idea of a Buddha-nature present in all beings as indicators of equality – and hence, modernity – inherent in Buddhist ideas.[3] Han also drew Social Darwinist ideas from the translated works of Liang, emphasizing ideas such as degradation, strength, and competition in his works.

On the topic of the education of monks, Han writes: ‘The absence of education mean[t] degradation to the level of barbarians or animals’.[4] This conveyed a fear particularly popular in the West during the late 19th century when theories of degeneration took off. Cesare Lombroso and other public intellectuals proposed the notion that as there was no moral rationale to evolution, there is no guarantee that progress will take place instead of regression.[5]

The other great ‘forebearer’ of Korean Buddhism alongside Han was Kwon Sangno, who published a treatise titled ‘Materials on the Evolution of Korean Buddhism,’ in which he set out four key reforms to revitalize Korean Buddhism.[6] Social Darwinist principles appeared not just in Kwon’s title but also throughout the treatise. For instance, Kwon warned that ‘if Buddhism does not conform with the civilization of the future we will definitely fail in revitalizing it, even if we were to bring back to life Martin Luther and Cromwell and put them to the task’.[7] This idea had obvious parallels to Liang Qichao’s earlier work. Liang’s writings discussed heroism extensively, including pieces on heroes such as Napoleon, Columbus, Bismarck, Washington and others on which the ‘survival of nations in the evolutionary competition’ depended.[8] But unlike Liang, Kwon took pains to emphasize that heroism alone was not enough to revive Buddhism in the modern landscape.

Han and Kwon evidently integrated ideas of Social Darwinism, but other Buddhist monks were less accommodating. Yongsong Jinjong was concerned with the longevity of Buddhism in a time when Christianity was rapidly on the rise. He believed that in order to rival Christianity, he must offer a Buddhist narrative on the ‘arising’ of the world and its inhabitants.[9] His ‘Mind-Only Theory’ did just that, arguing that the mind was the origin of all dharmas including everything from the four elements to the ripening of fruit.[10] Yongsong further critiqued scientific explanations of natural phenomena, disregarding evolutionary theory for his own version of the ten causes for human life, including such causes as ‘thought arising’, ‘essence of the true mind’ and ‘non-enlightenment’.[11]

Yet, Yongsong’s ideas are more similar to Han and Kwon than immediately apparent. Kwon placed a similar priority on the mind as Yongsong does, emphasizing as his first rule of reform for Korean Buddhism that monks must ‘reform their minds before the material realities’ such that all monks would be ‘unified in mind’.[12] In this way, Kwon almost appeared as a middle way between Yongsong who disregarded science and leaned on the primacy of the mind instead and Han who fully endorsed evolutionary theory as the primary cause of the environment surrounding us.

However, we must not discount evolutionary theory from Yongsong’s ideas completely. Huh argued that Yongsong refused to provide more detailed answers regarding his theory of how the world came to be because ‘he just assume[d] that the evolution of the corrupted world “naturally” proceeded. By perceiving the corrupted situation of the world as a “natural” phenomenon, Yongsong avoid[ed] the necessity of answering those questions’.[13] Much like his Social Darwinist counterparts, Yongsong assumed that the world proceeded along its natural stages to become what it is now. Also, similar to the proponents of the degeneration theory of the time, Yongsong does not preclude the rising of a corrupted world from natural phenomena, because as Lombroso argued, there was no moral rationale behind evolution.

Traditionally, Buddhism has been regarded more as a way of life rather than a religion. However, by the end of the 19th century, Buddhists were beginning to turn to Buddhism for answers to questions beyond the ‘how,’ as they delved deeper into the ‘why’. Korean Buddhists wrestled with questions on what it means to be human by engaging with theories of evolution or of the mind, either looking to integrate science into their worldview or by forming a theory distinctive due to its opposition to science. And in a climate where Buddhism seemed to have fallen out of favour in comparison to Christianity, Buddhists attempted to modernize their own religion by incorporating science. Ultimately, evolutionary theory permeated the ideas of major Korean Buddhist figures during this time, and even those who attempted to disregard it had themes of evolutionary theory in their writings.

[1] Han Yongun, Selected Writings of Han Yongun: From Social Darwinism to Socialism with a Buddhist Face, trans. Vladimir Tikhonov and Owen Miller (Folkestone, 2008), p. 1.

[2] Ibid, 2.

[3] Ibid, 7.

[4] Ibid, 58.

[5] R.B. Kershner, ‘Degeneration: The Explanatory Nightmare’, The Georgia Review 40 (1986), pp. 431.

[6] Kim Hwansoo Ilmee, Empire of the Dharma: Korean and Japanese Buddhism, 1877-1912 (London, 2012), p. 301.

[7] Ibid, 304-5.

[8] Han, Selected Writings, p. 6.

[9] Huh Woosung, ‘Individual Salvation and Compassionate Action’ in Jin Y. Park (ed.), Makers of Modern Korean Buddhism (Albany, 2010), p. 29.

[10] Ibid, 31.

[11] Ibid, 30.

[12] Kim Hwansoo, Empire, p. 303.

[13] Huh, ‘Individual Salvation’, p. 32.

 

The Conservative Character of the Taiping Rebellion

A surface level study of the ideology of the Taiping Rebellion may lead one to view the movement as distinctly unique and unprecedented in Chinese history. Though Christianity, a religion obviously not indigenous to China, had made itself known to China for centuries prior to the rebellion, it certainly never inspired social movements anywhere near the scale of the Taiping. A first impression of the Taiping rebellion as revolutionary and progressive may be reinforced by historiographical schools of thought that see the Taiping’s as peasant rebels and revolutionary ancestors of the Communists.[1] Whilst land redistribution was a theme in the rhetoric of the Taiping’s it was never realized in practice. Additionally, whilst foot-binding was abolished in areas controlled by the Taiping rebels, the practice was far less common in Guangdong and Guangxi province where the revolt effectively was born, therefore, for the leaders of the rebellion abolition of foot-binding was a less revolutionary step than it would have been in other parts of China.[2]

The political and theological orientation of the Taiping’s was conservative in nature, rhetoric and ideology concerned a return to a time when China was favoured by God (Tianzhu). The connection between God and the Chinese people was severed at the time of Qin Shi Huang’s wars of unification when Qin adopted the title of (Di), usurping a title that can only legitimately be held by God, and began worshipping Daoist false Gods.[3] Since then, China had become increasingly morally corrupt not least due to the idolatry associated with foreign Buddhism. It is of course, a classic conservative rhetorical move to harken back to a Golden Age when people had pure morals and society existed in perfect order. The widespread iconoclastic attacks on Buddhist and Daoist idols bare superficial resemblance in imagery to the iconoclastic attacks perpetrated by the Communist Party against antiquated superstition. However, the purpose of the iconoclastic attacks conducted by the Taiping’s was not to destroy old ways to make way for a new, progressive society, but to reverse the spiritual decline that China had suffered due to the worship of false Gods.[4]

Perhaps the most striking example of the Taiping’s conservatism was their distinctly patriarchal view of the role of women in society. In Poems of the Heavenly Father, Hong Xiuquan, leader of the Taiping rebellion, outlines his misogynistic feminine ideal. The poems lay out ten offences which are punishable by beating, clearly establishing a link with the Decalogue so that women serving Hong in the palace would associate the ten offences with the will of heaven. The ten offences are:

 

          1. Disrespectfulness
          2. Refusing to obey instructions
          3. Raising the eyes
          4. Disrespectfulness in asking for instructions
          5. Rashness
          6. Speaking to loudly
          7. Refusing to respond
          8. Cheerlessness
          9. Casting the eyes to the left or right
          10. Unmannerly speech[5]

 

In the palace of Heavenly Capital (Tianjing) feminine virtue was an instrument of patriarchal domination. Hong’s patriarchal doctrines where not always Biblically inspired, but in the case of the ‘three obedience’s’ inspired by the Chinese classics. The three obedience’s instructed women to obey their fathers, then their husbands, then (as widows) their sons.[6] In his monograph on Taiping ideology, Carl S Kilcourse argues that the patriarchal nature of the Taiping movement was the clearest example of Hong’s attachment to classical Confucian morality, even though the movement’s outward rhetoric disavowed Confucianism.[7] Poems of the Heavenly Father demonstrate Hong’s reluctance to move away, even nominally, from the oppressive patriarchal role of women that was the norm in China, and is perhaps the most illustrative feature of the Taiping movement’s conservative character.

[1] Kilcourse, Carl S. Taiping Theology: The Localization of Christianity in China, 1843–64. Springer, 2016. p.157

[2] Ibid. p.158

[3] Ibid. p.51

[4] Ibid. p.54

[5] Ibid. p.161-162

[6] Ibid. p.164

[7] Ibid. p.165

Xunzi and Ogyu Sorai, Exploring Bad Human Nature as a Justification for Authoritarianism

Xunzi (310BC – 235BC) was a Confucian scholar who wrote in the warring states period most noted for his disagreement with Mengzi (372BC – 289BC) over the question of whether human nature was fundamentally good or bad. In Chapter 23 of the Xunzi he argues that everything humans do that is good is a matter of deliberative effort.[1] The most important contribution of the Sage Kings was to creates rites, rituals and standards of righteousness so that people could act properly despite their nature. Ogyu Sorai (1666-1728) was a Japanese Confucian scholar who sought to influence the Shogunate to reform along Confucian principles. Sorai generally aligned with Xunzi on the question of human nature, believing that the only way to correct people’s nature was through sagely social institutions.[2] As a result, Sorai’s conception of the way (Dao) was more materialist, rooted in the rites, rituals and standards of righteousness that Xunzi claimed the Sage Kings invented to correct people’s natural inclinations to evil action. Mengzi’s conception of the way was more loose, emphasizing virtue in a more vague sense although rites and rituals were still important.[3] It is not hard to see how Xunzi’s negative view of human nature could be used as a theoretical foundation for authoritarian governance. Sorai’s reform programme was top-down in every sense of the phrase, for example, he recommended that all people be registered in ‘census registers’ and everyone should be under strict control so that free movement is curtailed.[4] If your political philosophy is that people are naturally evil and chaos is the natural way of things, and the best if not only solution is to have people adhere to specific social mores and standards of righteousness, the logical step of arguing that the state should enforce these standards of righteousness is not hard to make. Xunzi in his writing evoked a distinctly ‘Hobbesian’ view of society when imagining that the power of rulers was abolished writing “Now suppose one were to try doing away with the power of rulers and superiors… Then stand aside and observe how all the people of the world would treat each other… then the strong would harm the weak and take from them.”[5] It might be argued that what characterizes authoritarian rule most distinctly is its arbitrariness. For Xunzi, rule must be strict but it must not be arbitrary, it must strictly adhere to the rituals of the sages. However, it is not as if an authoritarian ruler would described their governance as arbitrary, they would defend themselves by arguing that their strict rule adheres to some sort of supposedly inviolable ideal, which in a Confucian society would be the way of the Sage Kings. This observation certainly does not imply that Confucian societies are by nature more authoritarian but it does align with the fact that late Qing and early 20th century radical reformers in China saw adherence to Confucianism as one of the key enemies of progress.

[1] Ivanhoe, P. J., and Bryan W. Van Norden. 2005. Readings in classical Chinese philosophy. Indianapolis: Hackett Pub. P.298

[2] Tiedemann, Arthur. Sources of Japanese Tradition : 1600 to 2000, edited by Wm. Theodore De Bary, et al., Columbia University Press, 2005. p.219

[3] Ibid. p.219

[4] Lidin O.G. (2014) Ogyū Sorai: Confucian Conservative Reformer: From Journey to Kai to Discourse on Government. In: Huang C., Tucker J. (eds) Dao Companion to Japanese Confucian Philosophy. Dao Companions to Chinese Philosophy, vol 5. Springer, Dordrecht p.173

[5] Ivanhoe and Norden. Readings p.302

The Paradox of Tianzu – Freedom or humiliation?

“These incongruities bring to the fore the contradictions that a woman had to embody as remnant of the old order and bearer of the new”1

Within the book ‘Cinderella’s Sisters: A Revisionist History of Footbinding’ I found the Tianzu movement to be a double-edged concept which Dorothy Ko analysed from a controversial perspective. Ko regarded that alongside anti-footbinding movements being chiefly male organised they were also misonganistic in their approaches to foot binding. As they did not take into account the irreversible nature of the process or the pain these woman had experienced, but rather the male “Chinese elite” wanted to distance themselves from the backwards tradition of foot binding.2 As they recognised this tradition as halting their advancement in the modern world. The Anti-footbinding movements that gathered urgency during the early Twentieth Century were known as Tianzu, meaning literally “heavenly foot”.3  Through the use of Dorothy Ko’s book we can reflect on the paradoxical issues that accompanied the work of male Chinese abolitionists to reveal the historical implications of Tianzu and the enforcement of unbinding.4

“One womans pride and freedom was prediction on another woman’s shame and bondage”5

The humiliating view of women who had their feet bound became a hallmark of Chinese modern nationalist discourse. Ko sort to present an alternative to the transitional period that was the end of foot binding, by revealing the true and authentic female voice that demonstrates the complexity of Tianzu.6 One of the chief outcomes of this process was the criminalisation of foot binding, and to enforce this social surveillance was used to check that the process was being stamped out.7  For example newly installed authorities were able to “scrutinise and look” to gather the number of footboard females in their area.7 However, this surveillance was humiliating, and treated women as objects to be gazed at. One of the key factors behind the aura of foot binding had previously been the concealment of the flesh by bindings. However these checks meant that women were forced to show their feet in public, and felt ashamed rather than liberated. Ironically this had a more humiliating effect as it was public, resulting in issues of groping during inspections. Alongside this, the bureaucratisation of feet inspection led to ambiguity between the aims of the movement, as rather than freeing women it led to a misogynistic attitude towards those with bound feet as they were called “parasites and femme fatales harmful to the nation”.5

This humiliation, however, did not stem from the abuses and imperfect method of inspections, but rather from a culture of national shame that resulted in an urgency to unbind feet. This reveals that the tactic of these campaigns was paradoxical because the female suffering, that had previously provoked people to challenge traditional thinking, stressed the link of femaleness with victimhood.8 And in this way the experiences and pain of these women were adopted by anti-foot binding movements that dictated the response to foot binding, resulting in those who had undergone the irreversible process being branded as symbols of China’s backwardness.

 

  1. Ko, Dorothy, Cinderella’s Sisters: A Revisionist History of Footbinding, (California, 2007), p.14 [↩]
  2. Ibid., p.29 [↩]
  3. Ibid., p.22 [↩]
  4. Ibid., p.18 [↩]
  5. Ibid., p.68 [↩] [↩]
  6. Ibid., p11 [↩]
  7. Ibid., p55 [↩] [↩]
  8. Ibid., p.58 [↩]

Ogyu Sorai and the Recurring Motif of the Debasement of the Ruling Class

Ogyu Sorai (1666-1728) was a Japanese Confucian scholar influential in the Tokugawa period. His most influential work, Discourses on Government (Seidan), laid out a vision for reform of the government along Confucian principles. Sorai’s impetus for writing Discourses on Government was a growing sense of Japan’s moral degradation. According to Sorai, the natural hierarchy of Japanese society was being flipped on its head with the merchant class getting richer than the Samurai and Daimyo.[1]  Sorai observed that the Daimyo had become moral debased, corrupted by luxury and decadence. The Daimyo had become sedentary in Edo and started to expect the state to pay for their decadent lifestyles. Sorai observed that this occurred because there were not institutions (seido) regarding clothes, housing and food, so there was no established way to suppress luxury.[2] The situation was doubly tragic according to Sorai since the lifestyle of the Daimyo became a financial burden for the Shogunate and, by becoming accustomed to luxury, the morally debased Daimyo were not less efficient rulers of their territories. In fact, Sorai recommended that people from the lower classes, who had endured many hardships should regularly be rotated into bureaucratic roles. He wrote “Why is that during a period of prolonged peace, men of ability are found only in the lower classes, while men of the upper class grow increasingly stupid? As far as I can see, men’s abilities are developed only through hardship and tribulation.”[3]  In my opinion there is a clear aspect to which Sorai’s language is gendered. With the trend of Daimyo marrying women from the Kyoto court nobility, they had adopted feminine luxury, and had become emasculated by the now more economically successful merchants. I’ve noticed that there is a recurring motif not just in the history of the Sino sphere, but world history, that of the upper/ruling class becoming gradually, over generations, accustomed to foreign luxuries, becoming morally/sexually debased as a result, and then the state, which was founded on according to high moral principles, inevitably collapses. This motif most strikingly appears in explanations for the collapse of the Roman Empire, which was founded on such pure virtues like the rule of law and equality between citizens. Once the empire stopped expanding, military and political rules became sedentary accustomed to Persian luxury goods and lost their civic and military virtue. In Chinese dynastic history a recurring motif is that of the early rulers of a dynasty winning the mandate of heaven due to their pure morals and sagely ways. However, over generations, the emperors become sedentary, become sexually deviant, and lose the mandate of heaven because of their lax morals. Until modern Western enlightenment political theory, I believe it was taken for granted by most that the state was at its core a moral entity, and the health of the state was a matter of adhering to rule that was morally virtuous (however defined). I believe Sorai wrote the Discourses on Government with a sense of urgency for this reason, that he did not want to he the Tokugawa Shogunate descend into unrecoverable moral chaos and collapse.

[1] Lidin O.G. (2014) Ogyū Sorai: Confucian Conservative Reformer: From Journey to Kai to Discourse on Government. In: Huang C., Tucker J. (eds) Dao Companion to Japanese Confucian Philosophy. Dao Companions to Chinese Philosophy, vol 5. Springer, Dordrecht p.178

[2] Ibid. p.175

[3] Tiedemann, Arthur. Sources of Japanese Tradition : 1600 to 2000, edited by Wm. Theodore De Bary, et al., Columbia University Press, 2005. p.236

‘Love has no boundaries’, and what that can teach us about the self

I am a hopeless romantic. So, when we were assigned readings on new conceptualisations of love in China, I jumped on the chance to learn more about something that resonates deeply in me. I ended up reading Lee Haiyan’s Revolution of the Heart: a genealogy of love in China, 1900-1950, which maps the way perceptions of love changed within Chinese society. Lee does this by taking Chinese sentimental fiction as her source material. With the rise of popular press in China, it became a genre that was both widely-written in and widely-consumed – pervasive, in short. This pervasiveness meant that sentimental fiction had a social utility: an ability to reflect on and perpetuate certain views within society.1 Therefore, in applying a historical analysis to works within sentimental fiction, Lee argues that we can shed light on what ‘the social order, the self, and sociality’ were like at the time, and how they were expressed.2. To demonstrate Lee’s point, I take as reference her analysis of Hu Chunbing’s play, Ai de geming/愛的革命 (The Revolution of Love), and expand on the serious historical implications her analysis of it has on our understandings of the self, vis-a-vis the external world.

Zhong Sanmin is the rebellious son of a well-to-do compradore merchant. His name, Zhong (invoking Zhongguo, China) Sanmin (invoking Sun Yat-sen’s sanmin zhuyi, the Three People’s Principles), marks him as a  … Nationalist patriot … [Sanmin] steadfastly courts a free-spirited New Woman appositely named Hua Ziyou (free China). 3

In the extract above, Lee references the lovers’ names, arguing that the symbolism contained within them indicates that love and revolution were seen as an ‘essential oneness’ in Hu’s time.4 Private emotions can be united with public political commitment; the public action of revolution is just another means of expressing the private feeling of love. Moreover, one could also speculate that Hu, in naming his characters after nationalistic and revolutionary ideals, believes that love is a necessary factor drives revolution. Of course revolution is, by no means, guaranteed through the use of love on its own. However without love, revolution cannot emerge and/or is fruitless. Either way, no matter what inference we draw out, Lee’s point is Hu’s characterisation of love and revolution as an ‘essential oneness’ gives rise to a unique understanding of the self. (( Lee Haiyan. The Revolution of the Heart: a genealogy of love in China, 1900-1950 (Stanford, 2007), p. 276 )) If we believe that love and revolution are two sides of the same coin, then love exists externally as much as it does internally, with the boundary between the two fluid.

I think this point comes with some very serious – but important- historical implications. I turn to the philosophy to explain why. ‘Internalism/Externalism’ is a dichotomy that is used in philosophical debates to draw a distinction between the external world and the self. Traditionally conceptions of this distinction take ‘internal’ and ‘external’ to mean ‘inside the skin’ and ‘outside the skin’ respectively.5. However, if internal feelings, like love, can arise in external events, like revolutions, then this means that internal feelings can arise outside the skin – a contradiction. Traditional philosophical interpretations of the internal/external distinction thus fail to explain cases of the sort that Lee describes. This poses a serious problem for history. If we have been analysing Chinese history with the presupposition that there is a distinction between the internal and external when no such distinction really exists, then our historical analysis is misguided. This means that our understanding of Chinese society, and particularly the way in which individuals relate to the outside world, needs to be overhauled – an unsettling thought. On the bright side, at least we now know better.

  1. Lee Haiyan. The Revolution of the Heart: a genealogy of love in China, 1900-1950 (Stanford, 2007), pp. 4-5 [↩]
  2. Lee Haiyan. The Revolution of the Heart: a genealogy of love in China, 1900-1950 (Stanford, 2007), p.7 [↩]
  3. Lee Haiyan. The Revolution of the Heart: a genealogy of love in China, 1900-1950 (Stanford, 2007), p. 276 [↩]
  4. Lee Haiyan. The Revolution of the Heart: a genealogy of love in China, 1900-1950 (Stanford, 2007), p. 276 [↩]
  5. Farkas, Katalin. ‘What is Externalism?’ in Philosophical Studies: An International Journal for Philosophy in the Analytic Tradition, Vol 112, No. 3 (February 2003), p. 189 [↩]

‘I cannot but sigh at this’: He-Yin Zhen’s Use of Confucianist Ideas and Methods

He-Yin Zhen (1886-1920?) was a Chinese anarchist feminist, advocating the feminist struggle as equal to or even superseding ‘the nationalist, ethnocentric or capitalist modernisation agendas’.1  After moving to Tokyo in 1907 with her husband, fellow activist Liu Shipei, they began publishing the anarcho-feminist journal Natural Justice.2 In this journal, Zhen’s anarchist sentiments became more pronounced. Her suspicion of state logic and all institutions of social hierarchy led her to argue for the removal of government, replaced instead with the instalment of communally owned property.3 For Zhen, the ‘goal of women’s struggle is no more and no less than the restoration of universal justice for all’.4

In her 1907 essay, ‘On the Revenge of Women’, Zhen detailed the tools and ideas with which women are made unequal to men. She specifically argued that Confucian scholarship was one of the main instruments of male tyrannical rule through looking at four of the Confucian ‘Five Classics’: the Book of Songs, Book of Changes, Book of Rites, and Spring and Autumn Annals.5 However, I will argue that He-Yin Zhen employs Confucianist methods and ideas in her critique of Confucianism. 

The first reason why she believed Confucianist scholarship had played a major role in the oppression of women is through its insistence that women maintain obedience and consequently made ‘subsidiaries of men’.6 She argued: ‘Does this not amount to controlling women so that they cannot be free?’7

She gave further examples in Confucian classics such as the expectation that women remain faithful to one man unto death8 and that women are often blamed for bringing disorder to both families and to the state9 . She claimed that through scholastic traditions such as Confucianism, men had monopolised learning and allowed women to ‘internalise patriarchal values’10 

Eventually, she concluded that ‘all Confucian teachings are teachings that kill people,’ because they have led to the ‘draconian suppression and control of women’11 . 

However, I would argue that throughout this critique of Confucian teachings, she based some of her arguments on the concepts and ideas that Confucian teachings use. For instance, Zhen highlighted a quotation by Zheng in Annotations to the Mao Tradition of the Songs as an example of women being blamed for disorder being brought to the state:

‘The man is yang, so when he plots and schemes he benefits the country. But the woman is yin, and when she schemes she disrupts the country.’12

Zhen argued that ideas like these perpetuate ‘deviant teachings as “yang initiates, yin harmonizes”’.13 These teachings have caused ‘the relationship between men and women’ to become ‘one of absolute inequality [through cosmic abstraction]. I cannot but sigh at this’14 . Yet, Zhen herself used cosmic abstraction such as yin and yang to support her own ideas. In her section on ‘Women Suffering Death by Cloistering’, she argued that forcing women to cohabitate in harems was a punishment equivalent to death. She cited a Han official, Xun Shuang, who wrote: 

‘I heard that as many as five to six thousand women are gathered in the harem […] The qi [vital energy] of harmony is disturbed, leading to frequent calamities and freakish omens. […] all women who were neither betrothed by the proper ceremonies nor consummated their unions should be released […]. This would alleviate their forlorn sorrow and return yin and yang to harmony’.15

By citing quotations that use the logic of yin and yang to argue for the improvement of female conditions, she relied on the same ‘deviant teachings’ as those Confucian scholars she tried to disprove.

Strands of Confucianist ideas were also evident in Zhen’s critique of the ruling parties. In describing the process of accumulating women for their harems, she wrote that ‘[…] the Ming […] were even more relentless than the alien races in drafting maidens’.16  She described the Ming rulers as examples of ‘despotic sovereigns [who] committed against women heinous crimes of cruelty’.17 This critique fell in line with the idea of ‘virtue politics’, a specific mode of politics that Confucians pursued. Sage-kings were given the responsibility of being teachers for their subjects and to uphold a moral order, or the Way, which would translate to sociopolitical harmony – failure to rule according to the Way was perceived as a failure to rule.18 Zhen’s attack on the morality of Ming rulers drew on the Confucian tradition of critiquing the moral disposition of rulers if they did not uphold the Confucian expectation of being a benevolent ruler.

Zhen continued to discuss the importance of virtues in the subjugation of women. She proposed that men knew ‘docility was not a good virtue but nonetheless made women abide by it. Does this not imply that they were banishing women from the realm of the human?’19 By posing this question, Zhen evidently believed that following good virtues was a fundamental aspect of being human. There are parallels between this belief and the teachings of Confucian philosopher Mengzi. In his writings, Mengzi noted that human nature is good, as every human ha[d] the potential to develop that goodness. He wrote: ‘Benevolence, righteousness, propriety and wisdom are not welded to us externally. We inherently have them’.20 When Zhen claimed that by deviating from good virtue, we are deviating from being human, she made the same assumption that Mengzi did: human nature is inherently good. 

In the areas of cosmic abstraction, virtue politics, and human nature, Zhen followed the Confucian methods and ideas that she attempted to denounce. It is clear that Zhen’s ideas could not be extricated from the indigenous Chinese traditions and philosophies that she was surrounded by. Whether this was accidental or intentional in order to better convince her contemporaries by using the mode of thinking they have become accustomed to, Zhen could not completely separate her own, albeit radical, work from the intellectual traditions and tools of the time. 

 

  1. Sharon R. Wesoky, ‘Bringing the Jia Back into Guojia: Engendering Chinese Intellectual Politics’, Signs 40 (2015), p. 649. [↩]
  2. James St. Andre and Lydia H. Liu, ‘The Battleground of Translation: Making Equal in A Global Structure of Inequality’, Alif: Journal of Comparative Poetics 38 (2018), p. 381. [↩]
  3. Lydia H. Liu, Rebecca E. Karl, and Dorothy Ko (eds), The Birth of Chinese Feminism: Essential Texts in Transnational History (New York, 2013), p. 107. [↩]
  4. Ibid, 108. [↩]
  5. Ibid, 122 [↩]
  6. Ibid, 129. [↩]
  7. Ibid, 130. [↩]
  8. Ibid, 133. [↩]
  9. Ibid, 141. [↩]
  10. Peter Zarrow, ‘He Zhen and Anarcho-Feminism in China’, The Journal of Asian Studies 47 (1988), p 805. [↩]
  11. Liu, Karl and Ko, The Birth of Chinese, p. 124. [↩]
  12. Ibid, 142. [↩]
  13. Ibid, 128. [↩]
  14. Ibid. [↩]
  15. Ibid, 154. [↩]
  16. Ibid, 156. [↩]
  17. Ibid, 158. [↩]
  18. Sungmoon Kim, Democracy After Virtue: Toward Pragmatic Confucian Democracy (New York, 2018), p. 8. [↩]
  19. Liu, Karl and Ko, The Birth of Chinese, p. 131. [↩]
  20. Bryan W. Van Norden (ed.), Mengzi: With Selections From Traditional Commentaries (Indianapolis, 2008), p. 149. [↩]

China’s Rousseau

Jin Tianhe, author of The Women’s Bell, is mostly remembered for being not only a revolutionary nationalist in late Qing China, but also one of the primary advocates for gender equality in that period. Presumably his tendency to approach the issue from a Western perspective led other feminists of his time to favourably call him “truly China’s Rousseau”1 or “our women’s Rousseau.”2
However, this comparison may seem rather bizarre, if not sarcastic, to readers who are familiar with some of Rousseau’s writing beyond the famous Social Contract, as the Swiss 18th-century philosopher was anything but progressive when it comes to the propagation of women’s rights. In fact, Rousseau’s views become especially obvious when looking at Emile, or On Education. Here, he claims that women were “made specially to please men” and are supposed to be “passive and week.”3 The nature of women therefore, according to him, requires a special type of education:

Thus all women’s education must be relative to men. To please them, to be useful to them, to be loved and honoured by them, to bring them up young, to care for them as adults, to counsel them, to console them, to make their lives pleasant and sweet: these are the duties of women in all times, and what they must be taught from their childhood.4

Were then Chinese feminists comparing Jin Tianhe to Rousseau simply not aware of this rather conservative position? Not according to Wenxuan Peng, who claims that Emile, or On Education was rather popular among Chinese intellectuals in the late Qing period and even inspired a new trend of using novels for education.5

Els van Dongen and Yuan Chang present a solution to this paradox: They argue that Rousseau and his work in late Qing China became symbolic for a wider trend of selectively using elements of Western (political) philosophy in support of already existing theories with Chinese origin. For this purpose, two elements of Rousseau’s thought were particularly interesting: First, his advocacy for a utopian revolution, and second his proclamation that all men are equal. Especially the latter was also appropriated by anarchists like Liu Shipei when arguing for gender equality.6  We can therefore see that China’s Rousseau was a very versatile figure as, rather than there being only one canonical interpretation of his philosophy, his theories were adapted to multiple different and individual causes.

Thus, when the comparison is drawn between Jin Tianhe and Rousseau, we can assume that the feminism of the former was thought to be largely based on the latter’s call for equality of all men, broadened in Chinese interpretation to equality of all humans.

Nevertheless, scholars like Lydia Liu, co-author of The Birth of Chinese Feminism: Essential Texts in Transnational Theory, think that at the same time “the linkage between Jin and Rousseau sarcastically pointed at the misogynous, androcentric nature of nationalist feminism”7 promoted by Jin Tianhe, among others. This nationalist feminism was already severely criticized in late Qing China by women like He-Yin Zhen who stated that, rather than having the women’s benefit in mind, the feminism of nationalist-progressive Chinese men was mostly born out of their own desire to imitate Western nations and receive international appreciation for their efforts.8

Lastly, He-Yin Zhen also argued that the realization of nationalist feminism would only lead to a new systematic way in which men would claim women as property.9 Surprisingly, this resonates with yet another aspect of Rousseau’s opinion on women and their education. In a passage already attacked by Mary Wollstonecraft in A Vindication of the Rights of Women, Rousseau makes the following statement: “Educate women like men, […] and the more they resemble our sex the less power will they have over us.”10
Based on this quote alone, the comparison between Jin Tianhe’s nationalist feminism and Jean-Jacques Rousseau maybe no longer seems so far-fetched at all.

  1. Ono, Kazuko and Fogel, Joshua A. Chinese Women in a Century of Revolution, 1850-1950. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1989, p. 59. [↩]
  2. Ibid., p. 58. [↩]
  3. Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. Emile, or On Education. New York: Basic Books, 1979, p. 358. [↩]
  4. Translated from             Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. Émile, ou de l’Éducation. https://gallica.bnf.fr/essentiels/anthologie/education-femmes. [↩]
  5. Cf. Penx, Wenxuan. Rousseau and His Chinese ‘Apprentices’: Interpretation, Adaption and Internalisation of Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Thoughts in Late Qing China in the Realm of Literature and Social Concepts through Intellectual Elites, 2017. https://openaccess.leidenuniv.nl/handle/1887/52052. [↩]
  6. Cf. Van Dongen, Els and Chang, Yuan. “After Revolution: Reading Rousseau in 1990s China.” Contemporary Chinese Thought 48, no.1 (2017): 1-13. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10971467.2017.1383805. [↩]
  7. Liu quoted in Neubauer, Daene E. and Kaur, Surinderpal. Gender and the Changing Face of Higher Education in Asia Pacific. Berlin: Springer, 2019, p. 92. https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=npaDDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA92&lpg=PA92&dq=jin+tianhe+china%27s+rousseau&source=bl&ots=Qs-kash_3z&sig=ACfU3U11oA6Lp5kiwSabip6BUIE8Hp8wpA&hl=de&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwizprqGyqPlAhVxTxUIHX65D7gQ6AEwBHoECAgQAQ#v=onepage&q=jin%20tianhe%20china’s%20rousseau&f=false. [↩]
  8. Cf. Liu, Lydia et al. The Birth of Chinese Feminism : Essential Texts in Transnational Theory. New York: Columbia University Press, 2013, p. 2. https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/st-andrews/reader.action?docID=1103412&ppg=150. [↩]
  9. Cf. ibid. p. 2 [↩]
  10. Rousseau, quoted in Wollstonecraft, quoted in Darling, John and Van De Pijpekamp, Maaike. “Rousseau on the Education, Domination and Violation of Women.” British Journal of Educational Studies 42, no. 2 (1994), 115-132. https://www.jstor.org/stable/3122332?seq=8#metadata_info_tab_contents. [↩]

Anarchism vs. Socialism – A comparison of radical Chinese thought

During a period of national crisis within China Anarchism evolved into a strong force within radical intellectual discourse. It succeeded in making a lasting impact on Chinese thinking by forming a new consciousness of society and awareness of the self. A key aspect of Anarchism was its introduction of novel themes, as Chang Hao wrote that it encouraged people to “re-examine the institutional foundation of the Chinese socio-political order”.1 Socialism was another radical political movement at the beginning of the Twentieth Century in China that propagated a belief in building a revolution through the use of the elected office as an implement for social change. Therefore despite similarities in their desire for the transformation of society we can detect variation between these two radical movements.

By analysing chapter’s 2 (“Nationalism, Utopianism and Revolutionary Politics”) and 4 (“Anarchists against Socialists in Early Republican China”), I have identified differences in these movements approaches. A large part of these differences can be attributed to their attitude towards revolution and consequently how the transformation of society should be approached. This is the aspect the following article with chiefly concentrate on.

  1. Interpretation of ‘revolution’

Whilst both movements wanted to alter society there was a discrepency between their visions for achieving social change through revolution. Therefore an underlying reason for their differences was their vision of how the revolution should occur and thus their concept of political space.

The Anarchists wanted to “transform society at its very base”, and did not believe in replacing one government with another.2  For instance, they “believed revolution could not be imposed… through inherently authoritarian institutions”.3 This reveals that for the Anarchists the revolution meant a total abolishment of all existing institutions, not the use of them as a method for gaining control. This explains the friction and conflicting interests between the Anarchists and Socialists as this use of the elected office as a tool deviated from the spontaneous revolution that the Anarchists envisaged. As shown by their awareness of “the rift between political structures and society”.4 This difference is highlighted by how the Communist Party of China (CPC) regarded social revolution as the “basis of a new world of politics but not a substitute for it”, making clear the two movements varied outlooks.5

2. Organisation

On another note, the newly formed CPC began to take influence from the Anarchist movement after its formation in 1921, predominantly due to its superior organisation and the use of institutions to aid cross-regional synchronisation.6  The early Socialists had also succeeded in creating a distinct policy and identity, resulting in less inconsistency within the Socialist movement and therefore increased support. In comparison the Anarchists had the disadvantage of the diffusion of their concepts and ideas to the point where is was difficult to “define the contours of anarchism as a movement”.7  This lack of a clear-cut identity meant that it was unable to distinguish itself against other schools of thought, leading to its loss of support to the CPC who showed organisational skills that the Anarchists lacked.

 

  1. Arif, Dirlik, Anarchism in the Chinese Revolution, (London, 1991), p.53 [↩]
  2. Ibid., p.118 [↩]
  3. Ibid., p.86 [↩]
  4. Viren, Murthy, “Reviewed Work: Anarchism in the Chinese Revolution”, Philosophy East and West 46 (Hawai, 1996), p.123 [↩]
  5. Arif, Dirlik, Anarchism in the Chinese Revolution, (London, 1991), p.147 [↩]
  6. Ibid., p.147 [↩]
  7. Ibid., p.12 [↩]

In defense of “Imperialism”

Imperialism: Monster of the Twentieth Century by Kotoku Shusui was undoubtfully one the most innovative and radical publications of its time. This is partly, as Robert Tierney stresses, due to Shusui’s dedication to his beliefs; even in an extremely hostile and oppressive society, he became the forerunner for the Japanese anti-imperialist movement.[1] Unlike his contemporaries, Shusui was the first to acknowledge and condemn Japanese imperialism, as anti-Imperialists had, prior to Shusui, solely fixated their criticisms towards European imperialism.[2] Shuisui’s work specifically focuses upon two characteristics of imperialism, patriotism and militarism, both for which he has often received unwarranted criticism.[3] I, for one, feel that such criticisms that have been levied are outdated and would like to demonstrate this in conjunction with revisionist scholarship. Before this, however, it is best to first analyse Shuisui’s work to understand the roots of said criticisms.

Patriotism

Patriotism is a key theme within Shusui’s text, as he looks to outline the contradictory nature of such an ideology in an imperial context. Foremost, he emphasises the shallowness of patriots, whose love for their country is plainly fuelled out of hatred towards other nation-states. It is this ‘otherness’ complex that Shusui is quick to denounce: “for the sake of those whom one loves, one should attack those one hates. This in a nutshell is the logic of patriotism”.[4] When reflecting internally on Japan, Shusui clearly blames the Japanese elite for spreading patriotic fever as an instrument of war. Surprisingly, however, the Emperor appears to be pardoned, for “he prefers peace to war and values freedom over oppression”.[5] This baffling paradox will be discussed later in reference to secondary scholarship.

Militarism

In “Militarism,” Shusui questions the intellect of modern military tacticians, comparing their armaments to toys, while simultaneously belittling their rhetoric.[6] One of the main criticisms Shusui highlights is the contrived argument that war leads to the progression of humanity. Rather skilfully, Shusui points to a plethora of examples that would denote otherwise; furthermore, he goes on to illustrate the archaisms of warfare and how war is an impediment to global society.

Criticisms

The most vocal critiques of Shusui’s Imperialism can be found amongst Marxist historians, such as Itoya Toshio, who stipulate that Shusui fails to capture the importance of capitalism within the imperialist ideology.[7] Itoya Toshio, in turn, is most likely to have been influenced by a Leninist interpretation of imperialism which underlines imperialism as the “highest form” of capitalism itself.[8]

Additionally, criticism can also be seen from a postcolonial perspective in light that the focality of Shusui’s work is based on the detriment of imperialism on the transgressors and not the indigenous. Only fleetingly are the consequences of imperialism for the indigenous populations mentioned, found at the end of “Militarism”, and they can scarcely be understood as more than an afterthought.

Finally, others, like Max Ward, highlight the emperor paradox and state that the acclaimed “symbolic transcendence” of the emperor implied he could be, and indeed was, used by the proponents of imperialism to galvanise the Japanese populace into supporting war.[9]

Revisionism

Post Marxists would question the degree of impetus placed upon capitalism in a Leninist interpretation of imperialism; a state can be imperialist or have imperialist intentions without economic motivations. One should not view history through teleological lens.

Not much can be said as a retort to the post-colonialist, their criticisms are fair and measured. The emperor paradox, on the other hand, should be redressed in its entirety, a reinterpretation best captivated by John Hennessey. Perhaps instead of viewing Kotoku’s work as a singular publication, it needs to be understood within its surrounding context, namely, that “Imperialism” was, or would have been, censored due to any negative connotations directed against the emperor.[10] Socialism and anarchism were barely tolerated in Japanese society and anything remotely controversial towards the Emperor would have severely diminished Shusui’s reputation. Perhaps Hennessey’s justification also explains the events of 1910, when Shusui was arrested for high treason; otherwise, this abrupt transition in developing a hatred for the emperor would seem rather inconsistent.

[1] Robert. T. Tierney, ‘Monster of the Twentieth Century: Kotoku Shusui and Japan’s First Anti-Imperialist Movement’, University of California Press: 2015, p.2
[2] Ibid., p.3
[3] Ibid., p.8
[4] Ibid., p.149
[5] Ibid., p.157
[6] Ibid., pp.163-165
[7] Itoya Toshio, ‘Kōtoku Shūsui: Hito to shisō (Kōtoku Shūsui: The man and his thought)’, Tokyo Century Books: 1973, p.116
[8] Robert. T. Tierney, ‘Monster of the Twentieth Century: Kotoku Shusui and Japan’s First Anti-Imperialist Movement’, University of California Press: 2015, p.2
[9] Max Ward, ‘Monster of the Twentieth Century: Kotoku Shusui and Japan’s First Anti-Imperialist Movement review)’, The Journal of Japanese studies, 45,(2019), p.409
[10] John Hennessey, ‘Monster of the Twentieth Century: Kotoku Shusui and Japan’s First Anti-Imperialist Movement review)’, itinerario, 40, (2016), p. 157