Friedrich, Michael
Senior Fellow: May–August 2024
Research Project: “Doubting the Classics” in the Northern Song (960-1126): Politics or Scepticism?
Contrary to modern Confucian and Peoples’ Republican lore, the authenticity of Confucian tradition and transmission as canonised by the imperial court was never uncontested. Ouyang Xiu (1007–72) is famous for his criticism of the Book of Songs, Sima Guang (1019–86) doubted the authenticity of Mengzi – one of the Four Books of later orthodoxy, and Zhang Zai (1020–78) even proclaimed doubt to be the beginning of philosophical insight. It is quite clear that these attacks were, at least to some extent, directed against the political reforms of Wang Anshi (1021–86). He was a homo novus from the south and fiercely opposed the ruling establishment which consisted of landowners from the north. In the young emperor Shenzong (r. 1067–85), he found a patron who was willing to raise him to the highest offices in order to reform the financial and social foundations of the empire and create a centralised state. Wang based himself on a new interpretation of some of the classics, Mengzi among them, and imposed his exegesis on officialdom by proscribing it as compulsory for the imperial examinations and using the new medium of print for the distribution of his commentaries. Scholarship has more or less focused on two aspects: first, on the political aspects, because there is no doubt that the motives for at least some of these utterances are immediately related to Wang’s reforms; second, on a general attitude towards criticism, which may be viewed more or less positively. To the best of my knowledge, there has not yet been a systematic study attempting to investigate the relation between these two aspects and, in a more general approach, the relevance of “doubting the classics” to the paradigm of scepticism.
The proposed research will take Zhang Zai as a starting point and discuss his position in the context of his time. A search for further “doubting” voices besides those already well known will be undertaken, and the resulting corpus will be critically surveyed for its relevance for a scepticism more sinico.
Michael Friedrich is Professor of Sinology at the Universität Hamburg.