This book is a useful contribution in English to the better understanding and appreciation of Gu Yanwu 顧炎武 (1613–82), whom I have characterized as the most influential progenitor of mainstream Qing thinking.Footnote ¹

The meat of the book is Ian Johnston's translation of some fifty selected items (out of a total of 370) from Gu Yanwu's most important work, the posthumously published Ri zhi lu 日知錄Footnote ² (1695), in 32 juan 卷. For each juan (which Johnston calls a “section”) there is a summary description of the contents or themes of the juan that gives some context for the item(s) selected from it. The book also includes translations of three sets of essays (lun 論) on local versus central control of governance, on media of taxation, and on holders of lower-level examination degrees, ten letters or excerpts from letters, two prefaces for books, and four essays (lun) that Gu probably drafted as memorials in 1645 for leaders of the Southern Ming regime in Nanjing. There also are translations of sixteen poems (out of more than three hundred in Gu's collected poetry), with brief explanatory comments by the translator. This amounts to a Gu Yanwu sampler, most of which has not had a previously published English translation.Footnote ³

The translations are preceded by an Introduction that provides a short biographical narrative (mostly based on my “The Life of Ku Yen-wu”Footnote ⁴ ), brief descriptions of Gu's major works, including of course the Ri zhi lu and the collection entitled Gu Tinglin shi wen ji 顧亭林詩文集, published in 1959, which are the two sources of the selected translations. The Introduction also has section entitled “A Practical Philosophy,” which attempts a brief statement of the “key concepts” (17) of the two works from which the pieces for translation are selected. Acknowledging that such concepts are difficult to elucidate in Gu's own words, Johnston resorts to a generalization: for Gu, “the pursuit of knowledge is for the purpose of its practical application to the moral cultivation of the individual and the general betterment of society” (18; similarly 31 and elsewhere). This generalization would seem to be applicable to every major thinker associated with the ru 儒 tradition, and it does not distinguish Gu but merges him with many authors he explicitly criticized. Moreover, prescriptions of “moral cultivation” and “betterment of society” are difficult for the reader to extract from Johnston's summary discussions of the six groups of juan into which he divides the 32 in the Ri zhi lu or of the genres by which the pieces in the Shi wen ji are grouped. After the translations there are four appendices, including a condensed chronology of Gu's life and a list with brief descriptions of all of the separate works, short and long, printed and not, attributed to Gu.

The translations, supplemented by the Introduction and the appendices, are intended to aid English readers in better appreciating why Gu Yanwu for more than three hundred years has been regarded as “a figure of considerable importance in Chinese intellectual history” (1). By increasing the available reliable translations into English of Gu's writings by ten- or twenty-fold, Ian Johnston and the Columbia University Press have, as I said at the outset, made a useful contribution to our field. This book will be on my syllabus for my undergraduate seminar next year.

Yet some questions should be raised.

Are the pieces selected for translation and publication “representative”? Gu Yanwu himself named three main areas of knowledge to which his Ri zhi lu contributed: judging strengths and weaknesses in 1) handling classical texts (jing shu 經術); in 2) means of governance (zhi dao 治道), including institutions and practices; and in 3) participation in the broad cultural heritage (bo wen 博文), tempered by practice of ritual (li 禮). Later readers of Gu Yanwu over the centuries have found different aspects of him to be important. He was the acerbic critic of recent and contemporary social and political practices, the founder of skeptical evidential learning, the insightful proponent of statecraft reforms, and the patriot defending Han traditions against foreign invaders. Without apparent favor for any of these assessments but at least passingly referring to them, Johnston has his own partiality in representing the breadth and purpose of Gu's knowledge. There are more items (eight) from juan 13 than from any two other juan. Johnston labeled this set of eight “Customs and mores,” presumably because Gu used the term feng su 風俗 in the title of three of the items in juan 13. Johnston says the items constitute “the main statement of Gu's opinions on ethics and related matters” (95). In my view the items in juan 13 are examples of Gu using historical sources to demonstrate episodes of the continuing debasement, with occasional recoveries, of the ideals of antiquity down to his present day. I do not want to overemphasize this, because any commentator or translator of the Ri zhi lu, including me, to some extent is like one of the blind men touching an elephant; we tell only about the parts we have touched. In selecting what to translate, Johnston's touch is perforce limited. Where he tries to bring in some of the more technical items that need to be contextualized for English readers, the translations verge on the incomprehensible (e.g., “Superfluous characters in historical writings” on pp. 160–61, or “Notes on the Xunzi” on p. 162, or “The Pattern [wen] of the heavens [astronomy]” on pp. 168–69).

Are the translations “faithful” to Gu's intended meanings? Generally yes, but in some instances Johnston relies on conventional English translations that may not be conveying Gu's points. For example, that same juan 13 has an item entitled “Zhengshi 正始,” meaning the first reign period of the third Wei 魏 emperor, covering the years 240 to 248 CE. Gu quoted, and Johnston translated, passages from dynastic histories that showed in that period a different ethos developed in which men of high standing, celebrated for their cultural innovations, were self-indulgent and did not take responsibility to combat the political decline that directly led to the Sima usurpation and thus the demise of their Wei dynasty in 264. Gu explicitly named and blamed leading intellectuals of the time. As in similar instances, Gu wanted his readers to think of the recent collapse of the Ming dynasty in 1644. To stress his point, Gu drew a strong distinction that was crucial: you wang guo you wang tianxia 有亡國 有亡天下. Johnston's translation is: “There is loss of the kingdom and there is loss of (the moral basis) of the world” (103). But Gu specified what he meant by the two parts of his distinction. First: yue yi xing gai hao wei zhi wang guo 曰易姓改號 謂之亡國. For this Johnston has, “It is said that a change in family name of the emperor and in the reign period constitutes loss of the kingdom,” which does not make sense. Kingdoms were never led by emperors, and before the Ming dynasty changing reign period names was routine. Gu was following Ming usage, so guo here means dynasty, and change of family surname means change of the ruling family and thus change to the new name by which the new dynasty was known. Wei was destroyed and replaced by the Sima family's Jin 晉 dynasty. As we all know, many dynasties, including the Ming dynasty, have been destroyed, annihilated. Gu's strong point was in the second part of the distinction. He explained wang tianxia as complete blockage of morality, to the point of beasts eating humans, and even humans eating humans. Here Johnston translated wang tianxia as “loss of the moral basis of the world,” which presumably means moral values were annihilated. But Gu's underlying assumption is that there were and are timeless moral values that always exist; his task was to help in their re-implementation. Gu was taking tianxia as something more enduring than a guo (dynasty), but not as the human world in general, which Johnston's translation implies. Gu was using tianxia here (as in some other places) to refer to something like the civilized world, or just civilization as he knew it, which he was suggesting had been put in jeopardy by irresponsible intellectuals, notably in the Zhengshi period, and by implication at other times, including late Ming. Gu's self-appointed duty (yi 義, which is the subtheme of this item, as the word is repeated again and again) was to call on others to join him, regardless of the recent dynastic change. This strong point is repeated in Gu's concluding sentences. Johnston has: “Protecting the state [guo, which I think must mean “dynasty” here] is something that is planned by the ruler, ministers, and high officials. Protecting all under heaven [Johnston is using a conventional, evasive translation for tianxia here] is the responsibility of every man, even the meanest” (104). If “all under heaven” implies political territory, as in another conventional translation, “empire,” then Gu's assignment of responsibility would be nonsensical. Gu is using tianxia to refer to his civilization, which explains and justifies why as a commoner he is motivated to write his Ri zhi lu; he is not saving the world in general, nor is he merely concerned with ethics and betterment of society, as Johnston has it.

Another important example of not conveying Gu's point is Johnston's translation of the long item under the untranslated title “Ming jiao,” also in juan 13. His introductory comment starts his readers out on the wrong foot by referring to well-known early uses of ming 名 as in zheng ming 正名 (sometimes misleadingly translated as “rectification of names”) in the Lunyu, and ming jiao 名教 (the “teaching of names”) as standing in contrast to xuan xue 玄學 (which Johnston translates as “abstruse learning”). But all of the examples Gu gives in this item are implying ming means something like “good name,” going in the direction of “good reputation,” and used in contrast to being self-interested or seeking profit (li 利). In the translation Johnston mostly leaves ming untranslated; at only one point does he add after ming two square brackets enclosing “being of good repute” (111). Johnston's translation does not help his readers grasp where Gu was going with this discussion; he was proposing that by richly rewarding the descendants of men who have achieved ming, good reputations for probity, the state could avoid the deleterious effects of having self-interested men serving in government.

There are other examples, but not a whole lot, I assure would-be readers, of items in which Johnston translates without conveying Gu's meaning. One particularly bothered me. On page 176, in a translation of Gu's first essay (lun) on the junxian 郡縣 system of governance, for the sentence gai zi Han yi xia zhi ren mobu wei Qin yi guli er wang 蓋自漢以下之人 莫不謂秦以孤立而亡 Johnston gives: “People from Han times onward all said that Qin was lost because of isolation.” That makes no sense to me. “Isolation” is certainly a dictionary translation for guli, but it seems far from conveying the idea of “sole rule” or “one-man rule” in the context of assessing failure in a discussion of the implications of the junxian (appointed regional and local officials) and fengjian 封建 (inheriting regional and local rulers) systems of government, which was one of Gu Yanwu's central concerns, as shown in a number of pieces that Johnston selected.

Gu Yanwu wanted the knowledge he had worked so hard to acquire to be used to save his world, whether in his own time or later, as he wrote in several contexts. There is nothing casual or routine in his Ri zhi lu. Perhaps another symptom of Johnston's not conveying this is his acceptance of the translation of ri zhi 日知 in Gu's title as “daily knowledge.” This is a conventional translation going back at least to the late W.T. deBary's influential Sources of Chinese Tradition of 1960 (and still in the update in 2000). I have never quite grasped what “daily knowledge” is intended to mean in English: Knowledge produced day after day, like a daily newspaper? Quotidian knowledge in the sense of what is ordinary, even commonplace? Homespun wisdom, applicable in everyday life? None of that is in the Ri zhi lu. In a note that appears at the beginning of the list of contents of the Ri zhi lu and tagged with his name, Gu explained how he chose the title. “From when I was young I have immediately made notes of what I grasped in my reading [that others had not]. When there were inconsistencies, from time to time I would go back to revise and fix them. If I later found that some person in the past had it before me, then I would erase my note on it. Continuing this for more than thirty years [i.e., since about 1640, when he gave up trying to pass the provincial-level examination], I now have one set [of items, which were the basis of the first printed version, in 1670]. Drawing on the words of Zixia 子夏 [in Lunyu 19.5, about day after day gaining knowledge that previously one did not knowFootnote ⁵ ], I have entitled it Record of Knowledge Gained Day by Day (Ri zhi lu) in order to provide correction for some future superior ruler.”

By means of skeptical examination of the evidence in the ru heritage of written texts, particularly classics and histories, and their associated bodies of scholarship, Gu's intention and claim was to discover new understanding—true knowledge—that would be the basis of what should be done by individuals at every level of society. My hope is that Johnston's selected translations serve Gu's interest by widening the audience and attracting others to participate in the project of reading Gu Yanwu, who set us the task of acquiring new knowledge day after day.