Other Laozi Parallels in the Hanfeizi - Sino-Platonic Papers

Tae Hyun KIM, “Other Laozi Parallels in the Hanfeizi”
Sino-Platonic Papers, 199 (March 2010)
However, it has been pointed out that this profiling lacks concrete historical evidence to
prove its validity, and there are meaningful statements and testimonies that contradict this
conventional formulization, even in the same or related texts. 7 I believe that, as in the cases of
the Mengzi and Xunzi, there is no way to successfully resolve the obvious textual and
philosophical contradictions that occur in the text, if one sticks to the essentializing strategy. 8
An effective alternative to essentializing the text might be the “historicization of text,” as
I call it, that is, seeking to track the historical formation processes of a text based on existing
6
A similar tendency in research is shown in works by Li Xueqin 李學勤, Jiang Guanghui 姜廣輝, and Pang Pu 龐
朴, who attempt to assign the Jingmen Guodian “Confucian” texts to Zi Si 子思, a grandson of Kongzi, and his
school, which was philosophically succeeded by Mengzi. See Li Xueqin, “Xingwen guodian Chujian zhong de Zi
Sizi” 荊門郭店楚簡中的子思子, Zhongguo zhexue 中國哲學 20 (1999):75–80. Jiang Ganghui, “Guodian Chujian
yu Zi Sizi” 郭店楚簡與子思子, ibid., 81–92. Pang Pu, “Kong Meng zhijian” 孔孟之間, ibid., 22–35. For more
recent work by a younger scholar who is following this scholarly trend, providing one of the most influential views
on the Guodian “Confucian” texts in present-day Chinese academia, see Liang Tao 梁濤, Guodian Zhujian yu
Simeng xuepai 郭店竹簡與思孟學派 (Beijing: Renmin daxue, 2008).
7 In the case of the Zhuangzi, these problems have been properly pointed out by Christopher C. Rand. See his
“Chuang Tzu: Text and Substance,” Journal of Chinese Religions 11(1983):5–58.
8
By this, I do not mean that, because the text incorporation and expansion were too arbitrary, entirely lacking any
kind of consideration of the philosophical affinities among the units or sources incorporated into a text, it is
completely impossible to build a consistent philosophical interpretation of text. I admit that there might have been
criteria on which to judge or assist in determining their appropriateness for incorporating into the text. However,
even though it is true that the criteria actually existed and were exercised, the criteria applied must have been highly
diverse and loose, as is shown in the Laozi or Zhuangzi. This significantly weakens the persuasiveness of the
traditional approach to an early Chinese text, that is, consistently formulized and systematically constructed reading
of a text, which I called “essentialization.” I believe that the Laozi and Zhuangzi are good examples for disproving
the validity of such a consistent reading, and that the tendency to philosophically essentialize a text has kept scholars
in the field of early Chinese thought from paying close attention to the counterexamples in the text and significant
philological conclusions that contradict the essentialized view, and, more importantly, from differently imagining
what the text says. For example, as I will discuss below, the fixed idea that the Laozi is intrinsically different from
Confucian texts has effectively blocked any imagining that the Guodian Laozi parallels could be associated textually
or philosophically with other Guodian Confucian texts. In effect, this has made the textual quest on the Laozi
uncritically limited in the Laozi parallel sources.
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