COMPTES RENDUS - AFEC

Comptes rendus
crises between 1022 and 1085 (Zhang Zai), and the problem of pervasive
factionalism in officialdom between 1086 and 1128 (Cheng Yi).
Just as the Wujing zhengyi linked political values with a particular
view of cosmic process grounded in the idea of formless and shapeless
originating structures of wu te and the phénoménal realm of you fë, eleventh-century
thinkers linked together their ideas about the processes of
heaven-and-earth and their political views. Yet for the Song thinkers the
message of the cosmos was that humans had a responsibility to participate
in serving the common good through government and their own social
involvement. Hon's discussion of Hu Yuan illustrâtes this. For Hu, the
dualistic processes of heaven-and-earth left the realm of human action
open to choice: what happened in the world depended on human action
rather than heaven's agency. Thus, although the first three Sung rulers
repeatedly asserted their claim to "heaven's mandate," Hu insisted that the
sage was not a dynastie founder (which the claim the heaven's mandate
implied) but one who, thanks to his totalistic understanding, was capable
of "giving assistance the emperor, bringing welfare to the people, and
facilitating the myriad things" (p. 60). The scholar-official, rather than the
hermit who had withdrawn from society, was the true source of wisdom.
He thus had the responsibility to share in ruling the state and correcting
the emperor.
Hon argues that Zhang Zai makes the Yijing into a moral cultivation
text (although as Hon notes Zhang was mainly interested in philosophical
issues in the Xicï), in which the figure of Yan Hui as one who was devoted
to "controlling his mind" (a concept that could use greater élaboration)
and cultivating himself before taking on public responsibilities loomed
large. For Zhang to participate in public life was to do in the human realm
what heaven and earth did in their domain: to continue the ongoing and ail
encompassing process of création, something that literati should take as
their moral duty irrespective of whether they rose to high office. The point
could be strengthened by a discussion of Zhang Zai's ideas about the wellfield
and fengjian Systems, which show in more concrète terms how
Zhang thought his vision could be realized. Hon may be right that Zhang
was responding to the over-production of officiais by the examination
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