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Confucian and Taiping “Heaven”: The Political Implications of Clashing Religious Concepts

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2009

Joseph R. Levenson
Joseph R. Levenson
Affiliation:
University of California, Berkeley
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Extract

In “The Suggestiveness of Vestiges: Confucianism and Monarchy at the Last”, I wrote of the draining of the monarchical mystique in modern China. Vestigial monarchism, it seemed to me, was related to an equally vestigial Confucianism — really related, that is, not just parallel in some modern course of corrosion. The relation was the thing, a novel one of untroubled association (in a common, new ideology of “national spirit”), unpromising departure from what seemed, more and more, the devious, uncertain, tense partnership of pre-Western days. The loss of this ambivalence, this Confucian-monarchical attraction-repulsion, comprised the Chinese state's attrition. And if in its time that traditional state was a prodigiously hardy perennial, perhaps its vitality, in a truly Nietzschean sense, was the measure of its tolerance of tensions: their release was the bureaucratic monarchy's death.

Type
Research Article
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 4 , Issue 4 , July 1962 , pp. 436 - 453
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 1962

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References

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13 Hugh of Fleury, “Tractacus de Regia Potestate et Sacerdotali,” (ca. 1102), quoted in Lewis, I, 166–168. Consistent with this identification of monarchical supremacy with a God of power is the medieval papal party's emphasis on morality when it challenges monarchical supremacy. Cf. Mangold of Lautenbach (a partisan of the greatest anti-imperial pope, Gregory VII), “Ad Gebehardum Liber” (ca. 1085), quoted in Lewis, I, 165; “Therefore it is necessary that he who is to bear the charge of all and govern all should shine above others in greater grace of the virtues. Yet when he who has been chosen for the coercion of the wicked and the defense of the upright has begun to foster evil against them … is it not clear that he deservedly falls from the dignity entrusted to him and that the people stand free of his lordship and subjection …?”

As in China, an interest in tension with monarchy de-emphasizes power in favor of virtue, recommends rule by example, not by force. The right of rebellion against kings suggested by Mangold represented, of course, no more a “democratic” challenge to monarchy than did the Confucian right of rebellion: as the latter was a bureaucratic, not a democratic challenge, the former was an ecclesiastic, not a democratic challenge.

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20 See T'ai-p'ing T'ien-kuo (The Heavenly Kingdom of Great Peace), ed. Hsiang Ta et al (Shanghai, 1952) [hereafter TPTK], I, frontispiece and caption. The North-China Herald originally gave the impression that T'íen-te and Hung were the same person: e.g., in “Proclamation of One of the insurgent Chiefs,” NCH No. 137 (March 12, 1853), 126. But later in the year a correspondent noted that after the recent fall of Nanking to the Taipings, no more T'ien-te proclamations had been issued, and the Taipings were said to deny his existence. The correspondent conjectured the existence of two parties, one of Ming legitimists, who spoke in the name of T'ien-te or Huang-ti, and the other of Taiping rebels, who considered the use of ti in a sovereign's designation as blasphemous, since they reserved it for God. See “Passing Events in China”. The personal name of T'ien-te was Hung Ta-ch'üan. In Ch'ing official sources he was identified as T'íèn-te and taken to be Taiping co-sovereign with Hung Hsui-ch'üan; see Teng Ssu-yü, “Hung Hsiu-ch'üan”, in Arthur Hummel, W., ed. Eminent Chinese of the Ch'ing period (Washington, 1943), I, 363. For Hung Ta-ch'üan correctly identified as T'ien-te Wang, in the ranks of the T'ien-ti hui, see Kuo Ting-yee, T'ai-ping T'ien-kuo shih jih-chih (Daily record of T'ai-ping T'ien-kuo historical events) (Shanghai, 1946), II, Appendix, 37.Google Scholar

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22 “Huang Wei kao-shih” (Proclamation by Huang Wei), TPTK, II, 898

23 “Ch'in-ting shih-chiai t'iao-li” (By imperial order: regulations for official ranks), TPTK, II, 551.

24 “Pien yao-hstieh wei tsui-li lun” (Despising the pit of fiends as durance vile), TPTK, I, 293.

25 Yang Yu-ch'iung, 181.

26 “Chien T'ien-ching yü Chin-hang lun” (On building the Heavenly Capital in Nanking), TPTK, I, 267, 269.

27 “T'ien-ming chao-chih-shu” (Book of heavenly decrees and imperial edicts), TPTK, I, 59–61; “The Book of Celestial Decrees and Declarations of the Imperial Will”, NCH, No. 148 (May 28, 1853), 172.

28 See Lun-yü, “The Analects,” XVII, 1–3: “The Master said, ‘I would prefer not speaking.’ Tsze-kung said, ‘if you, Master, do not speak, what shall we, your disciples, have to record?’ The Master said, ‘Does Heaven speak? The four seasons pursue their courses and all things are continually being produced, but does Heaven say anything?’” Cf. “T'ien-fu hsia-fan chao-shu” (Book of declarations of the divine will made during the Heavenly Father's descent upon earth), TPTK, I, 9 [NCH, No. 149 (June 4, 1853), 175], where T'ien-fu speaks to T'ien-wang.

29 “Chao-shu kai-nien pan-hsing lun” (On the promulgation of imperial proclamations under fixed seal), TPTK, I, 313.

30 “T'ien-fu hsia-fan chao-shu” 10; NCH, No. 149, 175.

31 “T'ien-lu yao-lun” (On the essentials of the principles of Heaven), TPTK, I, 345348 et passim; “T'ien-t'iao shu” (Book of the Laws of Heaven), TPTK, I, 73 [“The Book of Religious Precepts of the T'haeping Dynasty,” NCH, No. 146 (May 14, 1853), 163]. The NCH article corresponds to “T'ien-t'iao shu” only in certain passages.

32 “T'ien-ming chao-chih-shu,” 67; NCH, No. 148, 172.

33 “T'ai-p'íng chiu-shih-ko” (Taiping songs on salvation), TPTK, I, 284–243; NCH, No. 178 (December 24, 1853), 83.

34 “Ch'in-ting ying-chieh kuei-chen” (By imperial order: a hero returning to truth), TPTK, II, 574–575.

35 “Ch'in-ting shih-chiai t'iao-li” (By imperial order: regulations for official ranks), TPTK, II, 546, 552, 561.

36 “Tsei-Ch'ing hui-tsuan” (Collected materials on the circumstances of the thieves), TPTK, III, 112.

37 “T'ai-p'ing t'ien-jih” (Taiping days), TPTK, II, 635–636.

38 “Pan-hsing chao-shu” (Proclamations published by imperial authority), TPTK, I, 164.

39 “T'ien-t'iao shu” (Book of the laws of Heaven), TPTK, I, 74.

40 “Chien T'ien-ching yü Chin-ling lun”, 261.

41 “T'íen-t'iao shu,” 73. See NCH, No. 146 (May 14, 1853), 163, for a translation of another version of this sentiment.

42 Boardman, 116, following Chien Yu-wen.

43 “T'ien-ch'ing tao-li shu” (Book of the divine nature and principles), TPTK, 1, 360.

44 See Boardman, 4, for the Western denunciation of this claim as blasphemy.

45 “T'ai-p'ing chao-shu” (Taiping imperial proclamations), TPTK, I, 92; NCH, No. 150 (June 11, 1853), 180; James Legge, The Li Ki, Books I-X, Sacred Books of the East, ed. Müller, F. Max (Oxford, 1885), 364.Google Scholar

46 “T'ai-p'ing chao-shu” 88; NCH, No. 150, 180. It should be noted in this connection that the Taipings held that God could be worshipped by all the people, not just by sovereign princes, in marked contra-distinction to the standard Confucian reservation to the emperor alone of the sacrifices to T'ien. See 'T'ien-t'iao shu; 73; NCH, No. 146, 163.

47 “T'ien-ch'ao t'ien-mu chih-tu” (The land system of the Heavenly Court), TPTK, I, 321.

48 Nomura Kōichi, “Seimatsu Kōyō gakuha no keisei to Kō Yūi gaku no rekishiteki igi” (The formation of the late Ch'ing Kung-yang school and the historical meaning of K'ang Yu-wei's doctrine), Part II, Kokka gakkai zasshi, LXXII, No. 1 (1958), 38.

49 “Tsei-ch'ing hui-tsuan”, 249.

50 “T'ai-p'ing chiu-shih-ko” (Taiping songs on salvation), TPTK, I, 244; NCH, No. 181 (January 14, 1854), 95.

51 David S. Nivison, “Ho-shen and His Accusers: Ideology and Political Behavior in the Eighteenth Century”, in Confucianism in Action, 227.

52 Hung Jen-kan, “Tzu-cheng hsin-p'ien” (New essay to aid in government), TPTK, II, 524.

53 “Pan-hsing chao-shu” (Proclamations published by imperial authority), TPTK, I, 161; NCH, No. 152 (June 25, 1853), 187, translates this portion of the text but says, “the Empire belongs to the Chinese (i.e., unaccountably and confusingly substitutes ‘Chinese’ for ‘Shang-ti's’), not to the Tartars.”