Welcome to my second lecture which I call The Way of the Confucian Tradition. When one talks about the Confucian tradition, one normally begins with Confucius and his very popular text, the Analects. However today, I want to choose a different person and a different text. A Tang dynasty Confucianist, whose name is Han Yu, who has written among many essays he had done, a very seminal piece called The Essentials of the Way You End Up. Now, why do I chose Han Yu and not Confucius or Mencius or any of the early Confucian figures? Because I feel that there is a considerable difference. Historically, and intellectually between early Confucianism, especially the teaching of Confucius himself, and what might be called later Confucians. His followers who claim to derive their teachings or doctrines from early Confucianism. The Confucian tradition as it were, was formalized only later in the Song dynasty as a fairly regularly defined doctrine. However, it was in the Tang dynasty, particularly with Han Yu that the term Confucian tradition was first used. Han Yu was the one who used it, actually. Although he did not use exactly the word Confucian tradition itself. The word he uses is called Way or Tao. Tao is the Confucian way, not the way of Taoism. Now, this is basically the sort of a doctrinal background, if you like of Han Yu's position. Historically, Han Yu lived in a very interesting period. What I would call the mid town period. The eight and ninth centuries AD. This was the period after the so-called An Lushan rebellion. When for a brief time, the dynasty was invaded by people from Central Asia, what the Chinese called barbarians. They nearly took over the dynasty, so Han Yu lived in a post An Lushan rebelling era, in which the call was for political reunification or restoration, if you like. So in a way you can say that his sort of orthodoxy, his conservative character was built by the force of his circumstances. Another more important reason of course, was the influx of Buddhism. Buddhism as we all know, is from India. It came to China via Central Asia and many other roads. And it became very popular in the hundreds of years before Han Yu's time. Soon as the later Han dynasty, all the way through the so called sixth dynasty period. So down to early Tang times, although officially Confucianism or the Confusion ideology was upheld normally as state ideology. And yet, quite a few Tang dynasty emperors really wanted to be Buddhist because Buddhism offered some of these emperors a certain ritualistic and even supernatural satisfaction. Han Yu was dead against Buddhism. And some later scholars would fault him for being ideologically too orthodox, and not shall we say, multicultural. But we'll have to understand his reason for it, because his reason behind his opposition to Buddhism was precisely that Buddhism so to speak, had muddled the air, the intellectual air. Buddhism had also messed up the social structure that Han Yu regarded as ideal, as the Confucian ideal actually. Because one could argue that early China, Ancient China, basically was quite chaotic despite the Han empire. But ideally, intellectually Han Yu like Confucius, harks back to that golden age of order and ritual and stability, all based on a certain hierarchy of relationships. So this is the ideal that Han Yu wanted to re-established in the Tang dynasty. And yet the method with which he chose to do this, was the essay. Why? Because very simply, he was a frustrated official. He passed the highest degree of civil service examination, the jinshi degree. But in his period, although the examination system was established one still needed certain connections. What the present day Chinese will call guanxi. You have to have networks, social networks, personal connections or even better, if you know the Prime Minister, you're more likely to get a higher position in the officialdom. Han Yu was frustrated in spite of the fact that he wrote three times to the prime minister, offering his services and his talent and even his morality, and he received no answer. So out of that frustration and out of that sense of Confucian idealism, he wanted to use the written word as the key vehicle to express his way as opposed to the Buddhist and the Taoist way. And that was the reason why he wrote the seminal essay [FOREIGN] or the fundamentals or essentials of the way. Later on he was regarded as the founder of the so called Eight Masters of the Tang Song classical prose. So when we have to say a word about this notion, classical prose. What so classical about it? In Han Yu's definition, that classical period referred to the pre Six Dynasties or even better, to the pre Han period because he felt that the prose writing in the so called Six Dynasties was too ornamental, too empty of meaning. It was a whole sort of bunch of verses, rooting in parallel form with a lot of sentiments expressed forcefully in order to meet the rigid rhyming patterns. Instead because he was a Confucianist, he wanted to use the essay or the written word as a true carrier of the way, a true vehicle of the way, his way. So this whole notion [FOREIGN] the written word, broadly speaking all writings, must be to carry a certain moral essence or intellectual content. In short, content over form. So he want you to establish a kind of a cleaner prose form, a prose form that is more meaningful, that is less ornamental, it has more substance. So that this becomes a more important vehicle to convey his Confucian teachings. Of course, he can not fully imitate the prose of the ancient times. Because every era requires its own style, has its own style. So scholars have been arguing that in fact Han Yu's classical prose is a combination of the early classical style and the style that he has invented or the style of his own time. And that's why in many ways, if you are literary scholar you would consider Han Yu above all to be an originator of style and that is by no means unimportant. And yet in my view this is where the sorta conflict begins. This is probably the hidden theme of my lecture. That is to say that can one achieve a total unity of style and content or form and moral teaching? Can moral teaching be fully expressed in what Han Yu calls scholastical style? My answer is yes and no. It all depends on how you interpret, whether you sort of place more weight on formalistic dimensions on the moral substance or content. Anyway, Han Yu was still practicing his classical prose. And he carried forth was a voluminous output of essays of all forms. As I said before, he was the prophet official. So he became a teacher and later on an intellectual figure. So pros form or his pro form became a very interesting useful vehicle to convey his vision. So if I were to use another essay that can be sort of relevant to Han Yu's Confucian way. It would be progress in learning or [FOREIGN], which has a very excellent translation, by Charles Hartman and I have put that in my reading list for you. But if you read these two essays in combination, you can see that Han Yu as a person basically moves between these two rows. That of a frustrated scholar official on the one hand and that of a master teacher on the other hand. One could argue in fact, that he finds more satisfaction in the world of the teacher, professor if you like. That's why we professors like Han Yu. There's a certain hidden identification there, yeah. And yet, the third part of Han Yu's personality, a kind of a Confucian intellectual that sets up a true orthodoxy for the later generation to follow. That was debatable, because later on quite a few Zhong Confucianists attacked him. Criticized him for being shallow, for being too superficial, for being too concerned with form. So that he simply could not get into the moral essence or the depths of the moral essence itself. So let's try to take his essays seriously and go into his essays in translation. Now here of course, we are faced with a certain problem. How do we convey classical Chinese essays in translation, no matter how good the translation is? Maybe you could think about some of the famous classical essayists in the West. Of course, the proper parallel would be someone like Cicero, in ancient Rome. Although Cicero was an orator, not an essayist. Or Saint Augustine, although Saint Augustine was a monk or a sort of religious intellectual. Perhaps later on in the 16th century the French essayist, the most famous French essayist Montaigne. Montaigne would be perhaps a useful example for comparison because on the personal side the two men are very much alike. Han Yu aside from being an official Confucianist, was a conversationalist, a good friend, a humorous intellectual who's often mocked himself. So all of these manifestations of his personal side can be compared with Montaigne. And yet Han Yu on the hand never wants to, shall we say use his personal side to overshadow his official side. In other words, official Confucianism for him is still crucial. The other essays were written for friends, for relatives. And yet for all his essays, there is a notion of publicity in the sense that this is written for other people to read. It is not in a western sense, private. As in a private letter which is shared only by two people. The letter writer and the letter recipient. Everything's meant to be public because Han Yu became famous all of his essays were very much in demand whether it was written for this person or that person.
