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Li Guangdi 李光地 (1642–1718), whose literary and style names were respectively Jinqing 晉卿 and Hou’an 厚庵, was a native of the Anxi 安溪 district of Fujian. He attained jinshi status in 1670 and worked as a bachelor in the Hanlin Academy, given the assignment to learn Manchu. The Kangxi Emperor, impressed by his plans for the pacification of Fujian, promoted him to the sub-chancellorship of the Grand Secretariat in 1680. He further enhanced his stature in the eyes of the emperor by offering sound advice for the conquest of Taiwan. In 1690, he was appointed junior vice-president of the Board of War. From 1696 to 1698, he was Director of Education of Zhili, while concurrently serving in 1697 as a vice-president of the Board of Public Works. He assumed the governorship of Zhili in 1699, with an additional position in the Board of Civil Service. From 1705 until his death in 1718, he was a Grand Secretary, in the capacity of which he also served as an imperial lecturer to the emperor (Yang and Li 1993:38–51).

As a scholar devoted to the Cheng-Zhu 程朱 tradition, in the 1690s, Li edited in private several works of Zhu Xi and the Cheng brothers. He is best known as the chief compiler of the court-sponsored scholarly anthologies designed to affirm Cheng-Zhu learning as the official orthodoxy, namely, the Complete Works of Master Zhu (Zhuzi daquan 朱子大全; 1713), and the Essential Ideas of [the Cheng-Zhu School of] Nature and Principle (Xingli jingyi 性理精義; 1715). Reputed as an expert of the Classic of Changes, the Kangxi Emperor charged him with the task of annotating the classic, resulting in the well-respected Balanced Annotations of the Classic of Changes (Zhouyi zhezhong 周易折中; 1715). His writings and sayings, amounting to some thirty-eight items, are collected in the Complete Works of Rongcun (Rongcun quanji 榕村全集; preface dated 1829) (Yang 2008:157–170).

Situating Li Guangdi

To situate and contextualize the philosophy of nature (xing) of Li Guangdi, the keeper of the Cheng-Zhu flame in the early Qing, two prolegomena seem helpful and necessary. The first is theoretical; the second historical. The former addresses some comparative issues that arise from the avoidable usage of contemporary conceptual vocabularies and analytical categories, insofar as a seventeenth-century thinker has to be made comprehensible by a Western-trained, English-wielding interpreter writing for a twentieth-first-century audience. The latter explains the temporal and cultural significance of the central subject-matter at hand—just why and how xing came to be the cornerstone of Li Guangdi’s architectonic thought. All of which is to make two points: first, taking Chinese thought seriously involves engagement with some sort of comparative philosophy; and second, philosophy finds its natural complement in intellectual history.

In Plato’s Symposium, Socrates is likened to a sculpture that, beneath its unremarkable exterior, houses a golden figure of excellence. This golden interior is our potentialities that we are obliged to know, to realize, and to actualize. It is the basis of an ethical doctrine summed up in the two basic injunctions inscribed on the temple of Apollo at Delphi—“Know thyself” and “Accept your destiny.” Thus, in the ancient Greek tradition, there is a notion of the goodness of human nature in the sense that our potentialities furnish some innate conditions for conceptions of a good life and criteria of distinction between good and evil. The ethical animus is directed toward living the life that one already is, while also building an environment in which others may achieve such flourishing. Such is the very genesis and foundation of what we generally call virtue ethics, which, contrary to the deontological or utilitarian focus on the character of the ethical action, emphasizes the character of the moral agent. In recent years, much has been remarked about the congenial convergence and fundamental difference between virtue ethics and Confucian moral ethics, the details of which need not concern us overmuch (Huang 2008; Yu 2007; Van Norden 2007).

Nonetheless, to the extent that my pointed reference to virtue ethics, with its generous take on the goodness of human nature, serves the purpose of throwing into relief the uniqueness of the Confucian position on the same matter, which may be regarded as a fuller account, and of which Li Guangdi’s view may be seen as its epitome, I should highlight the major points of convergence and divergence. With regard to commonalty, both presume the fundamental goodness of the grand universal scheme of things, of which humanity is integrally a part. Evil is the consequence of departure from this benign order, a failure to comport and correspond with it. Moreover, the source of this dereliction is primarily internal, even if external influences are at work; and hence the taken-for-granted internal perfectionism and goodness of human nature (Hurka 1993; Foot 2003). Concerning divergence, Confucian moral perfectionism, while premised on the very idea of self-realization, presumes the immersion in and mediation by surrounding culture, of which the self is both an extension and encapsulation, inasmuch as it is immersed in tradition and governed by it. In contrast, virtues ethics, in the last analysis, is anchored on the notion of a free individual subjectively and introspectively answerable to their own conscience. Moreover, such a moral agent in virtue ethics is ontologically complete, a being that is essentially substantial and substantive, replete in itself; it is defined, represented, and embodied in the eternal soul. Such a stance constitutes the one major difficulty or deficiency in virtue ethics: the apparent self-centeredness or even selfishness that stems from the centrality ascribed to self-realization. As with the Protestant emphasis on directly appealing to one’s conscience so as to apprehend God without obstructions by bypassing traditions and conventions, virtue ethics, in arguing for the exhaustion of one’s potentialities (talents, virtues, and excellences), runs the risk of producing moral agents who are self-regarding, if not self-indulgent and self-absorbed; for their conscience or their soul alone dictates what they consider to be morally right. Kierkegaard’s Abraham is one example, who in following his conscience, is prepared to kill his own son, Isaac, even though such an act demonstrably contravenes accepted social mores. Another example is Goethe’s Werther who, being so consumed by his inner life, views the outer world with utter disregard and insouciant disinterest. While virtue ethics no doubt provides some sound philosophical arguments and paradigms for moral flourishing in accordance with one’s conception of a good life, it may, instead of giving fuel to righteousness and clarity, yield to self-righteousness and self-deception, thus contributing scant moral good to the community and society at large (Keekes 1989: 118–120).

In short, since the moral agent in virtue ethics is an essential being already formed, on account of the Being of the soul, its self-realization is inward-looking, individually animated and subjectively adjudicated. On the other hand, the Confucian person, being inexorably and inextricably tied to culture, tradition, and history (or family, community, state, and cosmos), is forever in the process of becoming, even if one is endowed with goodness. Self-cultivation, as the means toward the end of self-realization in this homo-cosmic context, recognizes the inseparability of the personal and the social, which consists of accrued experiences and received wisdom of tradition, a repertoire of moral choices that we select and elect to follow (Rosemont 1998; Ames forthcoming; de Bary 1998; Tu 1985, 1989). Roger Ames, in his recent works, has continued to hammer home the basic variance between the Greek ontological definition of human “being” and “the Confucian aesthetic project of ‘becoming’ human,” cautioning us not to read the former conception into our understanding of Confucian conceptions of human nature (Ames forthcoming). It is in light of such difference that Li Guangdi’s views of human nature (xing) are read in this essay.

The second prolegomenary situating of Li’s views of xing is historical. To understand Li’s significance is to understand a small piece of the intellectual history of the Ming-Qing transition, a time of dynastic declension, dynastic collapse, and dynastic change. It was also a time when the question of nature (xing) figured prominently in many scholars’ rethinking of the import of Confucian culture. Attacking Wang Yangming’s 王陽明 idea of fundamental human condition/state (benti 本體) as being beyond good and evil (wushan wu’e 無善無惡), which gained potency with the growth of the Taizhou 泰州 school, a host of scholars reaffirmed the goodness of xing (Ng 2001: 25–48; Peng 2003: passim). The late Mou Zongsan 牟宗三 has told us about the bracing importance of xing in the Confucian construal of reality and ethics, in that it is the source of the manifestations of the acting and thinking self, and as such, it is a morally creative reality. For him, xing, as the very reality mandated by heaven, is fully embodied in the self. Xing is thus a holism with human and cosmic dimensions. It is in the xing of one’s self that the moral-ethical order commingles with the cosmic order. To highlight the fact that the Confucian xing cannot be simply rendered as “nature”/“essence”/“substance”/“being,” he resorts to the neologism of “xingti 性體,” which may be translated as the onto-cosmological condition of the self’s nature (Mou 1968: 21–41).Footnote 1 Regardless of whether Mou’s contemporary reading is entirely accurate or tenable, the primary significance he ascribes to xing is an accurate representation of the seriousness and gravity with which the Confucian scholars themselves approached it. We may say that, for them, the goodness of xing was an article of faith in the sense that it represents the very reality on which it discourses. Pondering the self is really an articulation of what is already there. It is something that one already knows. Such is the metaphysical condition that enables the oneness and simultaneity of knowing and acting. To know xing is to cultivate and realize it (Zhang 1982: 497–527). By the same token then, not to know xing is to misconceive reality and vitiate truth, which is tantamount to ethical dereliction and moral corruption. To borrow Ortega y Gasset’s notion of “certainty of faith” (creencia) in a culture’s self-perception and self-definition, it may be said that the goodness of the nature as the wellspring of innate moral creativity is a Confucian creencia that is not merely an idea that one has, but an idea which one is (Ortega 1941:165–233; Weintraub 1966: 260–274; Holmes 1975:122–124). That is to say, it is not a matter of epistemological knowing of the nature of xing; it is a matter of our very ontological self.

Small wonder then that from the late Ming onward, two generations of scholars, from the Donglin 東林 stalwarts such as Gu Xiancheng 顧憲成 (1550–1612) and Gao Panlong 高攀龍, to Cheng-Zhu partisans such as Lu Shiyi 陸世儀 (1611–1672) and, of course, Li Guangdi, many Confucian literati debated the age-old question of the nature of xing. They saw the notion of xing’s transcendence of good and evil as one of the root causes of moral-ethical failure. They therefore endeavored to countervail and demolish any pernicious idea that cast doubt on the essential goodness of human nature. Vociferous debates broke out and disquisitions on xing abounded. It was in this intellectual context that Li Guangdi sought to refashion his Cheng-Zhu-based philosophy on the foundation of xing. In short, Li Guangdi’s reconceptualization of xing and his reassertion of its goodness, using Cheng-Zhu resources, was a timely response to a distinct intellectual concern of seventeenth-century China (Ng 2001:13–25, 2007: 102–111).

Establishing the Primacy of Xing

Although Li subscribes to the Cheng-Zhu li-qi 理氣 (principle-vital energy) metaphysical scheme, he takes xing, and not li, as ontologically prior: “Xing is the master, while li is its flow. Ming 命 (destiny) is the source” (Li 1828a: 2/2a–b). Xing is the “all-conclusive name” for li (Li 1829 g: 47a). Adding his own spin on the Cheng-Zhu maxim that “principle is one, but the manifestations are varied” (liyi fenshu 理一分殊 ), Li declares that “the diverse varieties of the myriad things are ultimately nothing but the completion of their immanent nature” (Li 1829a: 6/2a), which is dynamic, as with the growth and nature of grain:

The germination of the seeds of grain is not the nature itself. That which enables germination and is immutable throughout the ages is the nature. Nature itself has no shape. But barley is always barley and wheat is always wheat. If not for their nature, why is that they never change? Because there is the nature, there are multifarious things. If there were no such unchanging and yet non-stagnant entity, how could there have been the multifarious things? Therefore, it can be said that the nature establishes all beings under heaven. (Li 1829b: 25/11a)

Xing, according to Li, is the genetic force that provides the patterns of the life and growth of all things.

Of the three categories of xing that Li Guangdi posits, the seminal one is the “nature of heaven-and-earth” (tiandi zhi xing 天地之性), “the overlord and fundamental bond,” which is equated with the Great Ultimate (taiji 太極) (Li 1829a: 7/10a–11b). Then there are “human nature” (renxing 人性) and the “nature of things” (wuxing 物性). Although both are endowed with “goodness mandated by heaven” (Li 1829 h: 10/7b), only the former enjoys the full share of goodness because only humanity can claim the virtue and position of being “central” (zhong 中): “Leaning to one side (pian 偏) or straightness (zheng 正) is what differentiates human beings from things.... Balance (zhong 中) is exclusively human” (Li 1829a: 1/15a). Following Mencius, Li maintains that humanity is replication of heaven’s comprehensive goodness: “Mencius, in the final analysis, claims that the innate goodness of human nature is different from that of things. Things may be brilliant in one respect but are dim in all other respects” (ibid.: 7/18b). Li contends that “the great intent of heaven is to create humanity.... Since heaven wants to create humanity, it cannot do otherwise but produce the world as the ground for [humanity]… . Therefore it can recognize the mind of heaven and embark on the way of heaven” (Li 1829b: 26/7a–b). In other words, the universal nature of heaven-and-earth finds full manifestation in humanity, such that “heaven and humanity have one nature” (ibid.: 26/7b). In short, xing is human nature that is the manifestation of heaven.

Li measures the contribution of Cheng Yi 程頤 and Zhu Xi 朱熹 (and of Zhou Dunyi 周敦颐 and Zhang Zai 張載, for that matter) in terms of their effort “to illuminate nature” (mingxing 明性), which enabled the “continuation of the succession from Confucius and Mencius” (Li 1829a: 16/2b). They revived the sages’ “interrupted learning” (juexue 絕學) of human nature (ibid.: 1/18a), so distorted by Buddhism and Daoism which each mistakenly took “material disposition” (qizhi 氣質) and “the enlightened illuminated mind” (心之靈明) as the nature (Li 1829b: 25/8a). Sagely learning was lost after Mencius’ time because of the ignorance about the illumination of human nature (Li 1829d: 15b). For Li, the lineage of the way (daotong 道統) is, in its essentials, the transmission of the meaning of xing, as evidenced by the four canonical Learning of the Way (daoxue 道學) texts: Zhou Dunyi’s “Discourse on the Diagram of the Great Ultimate” (“Taiji tushuo” 太極圖說), Zhang Zai’s “Western Inscription” (“Ximing” 西銘), Cheng Hao’s 程顥 “Essay on Securing Nature” (“Dingxing shu” 定性書), and Cheng Yi’s “Discourse on the Favorite Learning [of Master Yan]” (“Haoxue lun” 好學論). Zhou’s diagram portrays the “vital creation of human beings and things” in the Great Ultimate. As humanity and human nature originate in “the vital production of heaven-and-earth” by the Great Ultimate, “humanity is at one with heaven-and-earth’s nature.” Zhang’s “Western Inscription” elaborates Zhou’s diagram by positing qian and kun as our “universal parents,” the source of our nature, the utmost extension of which through plumbing principle fully realizes our nature, and fulfills heaven’s mandate. The older Cheng further explicated the importance of xing, the securing of which requires “impartiality, fairness, humaneness, and rightness, with an emphasis on equanimity.” Equanimity (jing 靜) makes possible the ultimate oneness with heaven-and-earth. The younger Cheng summed up “the sequence and order” needed to secure xing: being aware of the goodness of human nature endowed by heaven, consolidating this nature by mastering equanimity, illuminating the mind/heart, and achieving completion with “diligent action” (lixing 力行). Li conclusively remarks: “With the poignant two words of ‘diligent action,’ the way [of securing xing] is complete. The four works are coherent, complete with beginning and end” (Li 1829b: 18/2a–3b).

In brief, as Li propounds an anthropologism of humanity’s nature, he also strongly hints that the human person, being the moral agent, must seek to work out xing’s potentialities, with which he/she is endowed.

Xing as the Metapractical Ground for Action

Li Guangdi’s metaphysics of the innately good xing is experientially realized in action. For him, rumination of xing as the fundamental condition/state (benti) perforce needs substantiation in effort (gongfu 功夫), as human nature is revealed in the human community. The entire Cheng-Zhu daotong, for Li, is celebration and preservation of the innately good human nature, construed as the cardinal virtues of ren 仁 (humaneness), yi 義 (rightness), li 禮 (propriety), zhi 知 (wisdom), and xin 信 (trustworthiness) (ibid.: 25/8a). Moreover, the realization of human nature is a transformative process:

Therefore, when the idea of innate goodness of human nature is comprehended, it can be seen that all people under heaven have this innately good nature. While caring for one’s elder relations, one cares for the other elderly; while nurturing one’s young relations, one nurtures the young of others. With such nourishing and teaching, there are joy, pleasure, harmony, and generosity. (Ibid.: 25/10a)

Li argues that the primal nature of heaven-and-earth, manifested as yuan 元 (origin), heng 亨(success), li 利 (furthering), and zhen 貞 (perseverance), becomes, in human nature, humaneness, rightness, propriety and wisdom, the four moral sprouts (si duan 四端), as Mencius has called them (Li 1829f: 2a–b). Humaneness, derived from yuan, embodies the other sprouts and finds its concrete expression as xiao 孝 (filial piety), which Li considers to be the “basis of virtues” (de zhi ben 德之本) (ibid.: 11a). Filiality is the “basis of humaneness” (ren zhi ben 仁之本), while “humaneness is the basis of the Five Constants” (五常之本) (Li 1829b: 7/20a). Privileging xiao in this way serves to drive home the importance of acting virtuously as the way of realizing the inner nature of humaneness, rightness, propriety, and wisdom, beginning with “caring for parents and following elder brothers,” which “is the way of following nature,” a way “decreed by heaven” (ibid.: 6/1a-2b). Here, using the opening words of the Doctrine of the Mean (Zhongyong 中庸) and referring to the Book of Change (Yijing 易經), Li reminds us that even though heaven may have mandated nature and the tendencies for its realization, it is up to humanity to exhaust its potentialities. To wit, human beings must act, grow, and develop in such a way that they become their nature.

If Li privileges xing over li, it is because he wants to bring heaven’s principle down to earth, such that it is squarely in the midst of the human world of actions. Li is concerned that the idea of li on its own does not spell intimacy and commerce with the human world: “Not knowing that principle is human nature, [many] seek the transcendent, abstruse principle, falling short in pursuing quotidian practicality. Drowned in the deluge of principle, one is ignorant of the fountainhead” (ibid.: 26/4b–5a). Xing, on the other hand, is human. Hence Li interprets Zhu Xi’s doctrine of gewu zhizhi 格物致知 (investigating things and extending knowledge) in terms of xing: “[To pursue] humaneness, rightness, propriety, and wisdom is gewu zhizhi. It is illuminating goodness and knowing human nature (明善知性)” (ibid.: 1/19a). To “investigate things” is to embark on “self-cultivation,” which is the “root;” and “knowing the root” (zhiben 知本) is the very “completion of knowledge” (zhizhi 致知) (ibid.: 1/16b). Such knowledge engenders moral self-definition: “Knowing that the world and the state regard the self as the root, it is then known that the self and the mind cannot be indulgent, derelict, and selfish” (Li 1829i: 4a). In a nutshell, for Li, investigation of things boils down to knowing and cultivating one’s xing. But such cultivation is not an isolated and isolating affair; it is inevitably conjoined with social relationships (renlun 人倫). He explains: “Father and son, brothers, ruler and subjects, friends, and husband and wife are the social relationships. Humaneness, rightness, propriety, intelligence, and trustworthiness are human nature. In terms of their fundamental unity, humaneness pervades the Five Relationships; rightness, propriety, wisdom and trustworthiness also pervade the Five Relationships.” In other words, human nature and human beings are socially circumscribed and conditioned, because “the way is social relationships,” and “the way cannot be followed without the establishment of one’s self” (Li 1829f: 14b–15a).

Since realizing xing means coming to grips with practical and social existence and not apprehension of metaphysical truth or some form of transcendental enlightenment, Li stresses practical cultivation at the expense of inward introspection and abstract speculation. Such orientation is very much reflected in his compilation of the Complete Works of Master Zhu (Zhuzi daquan 朱子大全) and the Essential Ideas of [the Cheng-Zhu School of] Nature and Principle (Xingli jingyi 性理精義), both sponsored by the court. They were demonstrably long on the straightforward and practical “small learning,” “elementary learning,” and “great learning,” and noticeably short on jejune contemplations of recondite questions of nature, destiny, and heaven (Chan 1975: 560). To be sure, Li does not flinch from metaphysical ruminations; indeed, he engages in them with vigor and rigor. But the fact remains that his abstract pondering is in large part designed to provide a strong philosophical argument and justification for practical action and involvement in the quotidian world.

Yü Ying-shih has written cogently about the rise of Confucian “intellectualism” in the Qing, by which he means the overshadowing of the pursuit of “honoring the virtuous nature” (zun dexing 尊德性) by “the pursuit of the way of inquiry and learning” (dao wenxue 道問學) (Yü 1975: 105–136). Interesting enough, Li Guangdi takes the two as a synergistic pair. Whereas Zhu Xi ties the former to the fundamental condition/state (ti 體) of the way and the latter to function (yong 用), Li sees “the mutual reinforcement of the root and the branches, the complementary nurturing of the inner and outer” (Li 1829b:18/15b–16a). For him, the Lu-Wang followers, focusing on “virtuous nature,” are blind to the utility and sociality of xing, whereas others, seizing upon the Zhongyong’s notions of “extending breadth and greatness to the utmost” (zhi guangda 致廣大) and “raising to the greatest height and brilliance” (ji gaoming 極高明) to dao wenxue, gives short shrift to xing’s demand for broad learning (ibid.: 8/17a). Even as Li asserts xing as foreknowledge and inborn capability (yizhi yineng 已知已能), he avers that nature’s realization cannot dispense with inquiry and learning. “Blood and breath” may be xing, but it can scarcely flourish in the absence of food and medicine (ibid.: 8/17b–19b). His cogitation on human nature implies praxis of learning and action: “Learning involves knowledge and action, rooted in xing’s wisdom and humaneness” (Li 1829a: 8/19a). Such knowledge and action are pursued by “establishing the will” and “maintaining reverence” (ibid.: 6/20a). Establishing the will develops the “tendency” toward the way and humanity (Li 1829j: 22b–23a); reverence creates “an empty heart/mind without depravity” (Li 1829a: 6/3a). A metapractical program thus emerges: establishing the will, dwelling in reverence, gaining knowledge, undertaking action, and ultimately, realization of human nature. Li reminds us that Confucius followed a life-long plan:

Therefore, Confucius said, “When I was fifteen, I established the will to learn.” That was establishing the will. What he said about his character’s being formed at thirty referred to achieving reverence. As he became no longer perplexed, knowing the mandate of heaven and being at ease with whatever he heard, his knowledge became superior. When he could follow his heart’s desire without moral transgression, he knew well how to act. Many scholars have thought that the Master was simply describing himself. In fact, he established a method for learners. (Ibid.: 6/6a–b)

Since this “method” begins with moral intents and goals, knowledge is prior to action. Li endorses Zhu Xi’s dictum of “prior knowledge and posterior action.” Just as yang is prior to yin, so knowledge comes before action: “The order of knowledge and action, and the principle of xing and destiny cannot be changed” (ibid.: 8/8a–9b).

By proclaiming the metaphysical supremacy of xing, Li brought to the foreground praxis. For him, li-qua-principle easily lapses into incorporeal truth that elides the experiential and phenomenal lives of the self. Xing is human living here and now, and moral cultivation should therefore not turn inward toward the self’s substance, as the Lu-Wang 陸王 scholars are wont to do. Xing confirms the everydayness of reality. A metaphysics of the ultimate, not properly anchored on solid ground, often ends in emptiness or remoteness. Thus Li so announces the nature of his lucubration, which is to get to know various aspects of reality by identifying their actual and substantive existence: “My learning has three themes: first is to preserve the concrete mind (存實心), second is to illuminate concrete principle (明實理), and third is to act on concrete matters (行實事)” (Li 1829b: 33/3b).

Multi-Dimensionality of Xing

In the late Ming and early Qing, many scholars, in affirming the goodness of xing as a revivifying response to the ethico-moral degeneration putatively brought on by the erroneous and emaciating teachings of the latter-day followers of Wang Yangming, also reconstrued xing as multi-dimensional. If xing is realized in the corporeal world, then its affective, emotive, and sensory faculties should well be regarded as primary rather than secondary nature. Material nature (氣質之性) need not be posterior to moral nature (義理之性). Xing is thus most appropriately seen as a holism of equally important components. As xing must be realized in the intentions and actions in the experiential world, scholars increasingly pointed to the mutuality of the fundamental condition of human nature and purposeful effort of the human person. They rejected the view that this fundamental condition, in the absence of concrete efforts, could be a transcendental substantiality that culminates in spontaneous and instantaneous self-enlightenment or self-realization. The result is the emergence of a reconceptualized xing as an integrated whole, in which the moral and material natures cannot be sharply distinguished and evaluated in discriminatingly axiological terms. The cognitive, affective, sentimental, and conative elements in the so-called physical and material nature were increasingly seen as consonant and complementary with the innate moral essence of xing (Qian 1937: 9–14, 18–19; Ng 1993: 35–49).

Following the standard Cheng-Zhu anthropological theory, Li Guangdi associated qi (vital energy) with evil. Nevertheless, he also strove to limn human nature holistically, seeking to assuage the sense of dualistic dichotomy of principle versus vital energy. Li appealed to Han Yu’s 韓愈views on human nature in his attempt to advance his own understanding. He regarded the Tang scholar as the mediating figure who bridged the positions of Mencius and Cheng-Zhu. In Li’s 1707 work on Han, Choice Words of Master Han (Hanzi cuiyan 韓子粹言), he assembled Han’s major writings and offered his own glosses and commentaries. Han Yu, as the outspoken, self-proclaimed defender of the Confucian tradition against the centuries-old onslaught of Buddhism and Daoism, advanced a theory of xing premised on its concrete moral and ethical contents, taking to task the notion of xing’s ultimate emptiness or nothingness that lays at the heart and core of Buddhist and Daoist anthropology and soteriology (Chan 1963: 450–456). Han did not have an entirely unified view of human nature, for he identified three “grades” (pin 品) of xing. There is the superior xing which is inexorably good but there is also the inferior xing which is bad and accounts for depravity and transgression. In the middle is the medium xing which can be good or bad. But significantly, to counter the insubstantial, negating, and nullifying Buddhist and Daoist conceptions of xing, Han asserted the substantiality of human nature, in which the five cardinal virtues of humaneness, propriety, trustworthiness, rightness, and wisdom inhere and are embedded (Li 1829 k: 1a–2b).

It is precisely because of these assertions that Li praised Han Yu, whose contribution to the Confucian discourse on xing at a time of Buddhist and Daoist predominance cannot be underestimated. It was Han who unequivocally reminded China that it was in “the way of humaneness and rightness that the complete xing emerges,” and in so preserving China’s Confucian memory, Han “continued Mencius’ [teachings] of old and paved the way for [the learning of] Cheng-Zhu to come” (ibid.: 8a). Li lauds Han for propounding the idea of the three grades of human nature and in the process clearly expounding the notion of the material nature. For Li, that represents a refinement of and addition to the Mencian view, which in the main conceives of xing in terms of what heaven decrees. As far as Li is concerned, Han’s conception of xing is complex and nuanced, concatenating material nature and moral nature. However, notwithstanding his praise, in the end, he finds Han’s picture of xing muddled, in that the Tang master ultimately did not build his theory of xing on the five genetically constitutive virtues, which define and make up the fundamental nature, and which, in Li’s terms, is the nature of heaven-and-earth: “[Han Yu’s] three grades are material nature. But there are the five [virtues] which constitute it [i.e., material nature]. They are heaven-and-earth’s nature. Knowing that what constitute that the nature are those five [virtues], then it is known that the nature is nothing if it is not good” (ibid.: 2b–3a). Thus, not unlike Mencius, Li condensed his view of xing into the one fundamental nature, which is the heaven-of-earth nature. As the only nature that really matters, in the sense that it defines what is authentically human, it trumps material nature. In short, for Li, xing should be monistically conceived as good, and it is this very goodness that undergirds a holistic conception of being human.

In his other writings, Li repeatedly stresses the fact that there is only one human nature that both encases and manifests the “pure and supremely good” nature of heaven-and-earth. This monistic view, as he himself admits, is a departure from the dichotomous one that the Cheng brothers and Zhu Xi propounded:

Cheng-Zhu demarcated principle and vital energy when discussing human nature. I feel that this was not how Mencius spoke of it. Rather, Mencius said that principle and vital energy are naturally within [human nature]. If principle and vital energy are demarcated, it would appear that principle is simply principle and vital energy is simply vital energy.... The vital energy of heaven-and-earth originates from the principle of heaven-and-earth. When is it ever not good?... However, human beings...after all cannot be completely like heaven. But even though [their] material deposition may vary and differ, they all possess heaven-and-earth’s nature. It is like the developed color of silver, which is of different grades. Although the grade may be the lowest, it is after all developed silver. (Li 1829b: 6/14b–15a)

Here, Li harkens back to Mencius by asseverating the essential idea that all of human nature, coming from heaven, is innately good. Dereliction in some people comes from the failure to conform to nature and to develop its potentialities to the fullest. Therefore, Li regards the notion of “material nature” as a superfluous “addition” by Zhang Zai and Cheng-Zhu. Instead of accepting what he deems to be the redundant and unnecessary notion of material nature, he critiques Zhang, Cheng, and Zhu by explicating the notion of “native endowment” (cai 才) as it was construed by Mencius (Li 1829e:18/2a–3b).

Simply put, Cheng Yi’s “material nature” is nothing but what Mencius calls “native endowment,” as Li avers:

Mencius said, “[If one is not good,] it is not the fault of native endowment. It is that one fails to exhaust one’s native endowment. It is not that heaven bestows to those below different native endowments. Native endowment is material nature. What is wrong is the inability to extend to the utmost native endowment. If people’s native endowment and nature vary, it is just that some lean toward humaneness, and some toward rightness, propriety or wisdom; there are some who are deficient in humaneness, some in rightness, propriety, or wisdom. There is none who is completely without humaneness, rightness, propriety, and wisdom; nor is there one who lacks completely one [of the virtues] of humaneness, rightness, propriety, and wisdom.” (Ibid.: 6/21a)

If there is material nature, it is not something that produces and breeds the bad. It is native endowment which receives different allotments of inherent goodness. Li reiterates Mencius’ view that “heaven’s nature, as it is endowed in human beings, is not limited by what material nature receives.” There is not the source of wickedness, which supposedly is found in material nature. There is only the individual, the person, the moral agent, who fails to conform to nature and fully realize its goodness. Li believes that Masters Zhang, Cheng, and Zhu erroneously confected a deficient native endowment (identified with/as material nature) as the genetic origin of evil, and they thus readily attributed moral failings to this very source. Instead, as Li argues, they should have converged on the effort of “exhausting native endowment” (ibid.: 6/19b/20a).

As Li sees it, evil stems from and owes much to the insufficient development of the universally good human nature. He develops the notion of quan 權, or human agency, in the sense of choosing and adjudicating one’s actions in contingent circumstances. Such deeds and actions antedate and transcend the original heaven-endowed conditions which are xing with its innate goodness. But insofar as one is not fully formed by a xing that statically guides and defines one’s action, mastering quan is the only existential source and guarantee of the human conditions that define moral living, as a person seeks to become moral by capitalizing on the positive endowments of xing:

Confucius said, “By nature, [human beings] are alike.” This is the same as Mencius’ statement that there is no nature that is not good. Therefore, it is said that whether people are different or alike is a matter of practice (xi 習). Mencius also said, “Those who prefer the major parts of their body become noble people; those who prefer the minor parts become mean people.” The agency (quan) rests with people. (Ibid.: 6/15a–b)

Needless to say, the contingency of quan here is not the Heideggerian thrownness of existence that is radically inserted into a historical space, detached from the metaphysical Being of being human. Rather, Li makes a point to underscore the fact that quan has its reference in xing, which is original goodness and therefore enables moral perfection. Li likens the process of developing the good xing to the process of creating flavors:

It is like the blending of the five flavors. If something is not salty, it is a matter of not adding enough salt and not because there is no salt at all. If something is not sour, it is because few plums are added and not because there are no plums at all. Although one may be somewhat deficient in one’s native endowment, with motivation and diligence, one’s achievements can be limitless. Therefore, [Mencius] said that it is not the fault of native endowment. A talent of an individual can be expanded ten-fold; ten talents of an individual can be expanded one thousand-fold. Although initially dull, one can become bright; although meek, one can become strong. This is what is called extending to the utmost one’s native endowment.... The manifestations of people’s native endowment may vary, but all may seek to expand and substantiate it in order to apprehend [nature] in its entirety. (Ibid.: 6/21b–22a)

Li concludes that the inherent goodness of xing, which is heaven’s bestowal on humanity, requires effort for its realization. Therefore, even if most of us are not sages, we can become one: “Not everyone is Yao or Shun, but everyone can be Yao and Shun” (ibid.: 6/22a). Xing’s endowment from heaven is universal, imbued in all, just like the falling of rain from the sky: “It is never the case that rivers and streams get more, while gutters and shallow brooks get less; or that clear spots get clear [rain], while filthy places get turbid [rain]. There is the same rain everywhere” (ibid.: 18/11b).

What is particularly of note in Li’s construal and dissection of xing-qua-goodness is his refusal to accept it as an eternalized human condition, even if it is heaven’s endowment. He spares no effort in talking about “preserving nature” (cunxing 存性) and “nurturing nature” (yangxing 養性) (ibid.: 6/24a), which in life means pursuing ceaselessly and unstintingly the Mean (zhong 中), that which is central. It is a process; it is not the revelation of an already attained state of being. To attain centrality is to complete goodness:

The Mean is that which completes this goodness. It cannot be said that the Mean is goodness. Analogously speaking, millet and meat are delicious, but eating too much [of them] will make one sick. Fine silk garments are warm, but wearing too much [of them] will be burdensome. Millet, meat, and fine silk garments are in themselves good. If one does not overdo it, how will the problems of causing sickness and burdening the body arise? Humaneness and rightness, vis-à-vis human beings, are just like a sumptuous fare and fine silk garments. Give them concrete expression through the Mean, and [one] achieves the likeness of heaven-and-earth. (Li 1829a: 8/16a) Footnote 2

In other words, human beings are vessels in which the heaven-endowed innate goodness of xing can be expressed in everyday human living. They do so by following the Mean and achieve human flourishing, just as robust human physical constitution and material well-being are the result of proper intake of food and appropriate use of clothing.

Conclusion: The Open-Endedness of Xing

It seems apparent that Li, as a keeper of the Cheng-Zhu flame, nonetheless found fault with the Song masters’ dualistic conception of xing as moral nature and material nature. He opted to follow the Mencian view, which, in premising itself on the innate goodness of humanity, offers an integrated conception. But such integration based on the intrinsicality of xing’s goodness suggests no stasis. In fact, as mentioned early, the Confucian human being is in the midst of becoming. Xing should duly be interpreted dynamically. Quite some years ago, A.C. Graham already observed that Mencius “in particular seems never to be looking back towards birth, always forward to the maturation of a continuing growth,” and famously, the ancient master employed many botanical analogies to demonstrate the dynamic process of personal growth. Graham was struck by the fact “that analogies for human nature in Mencius are always dynamic, trees growing on a denuded mountain, ripening grain, water finding its natural channels” (Graham 1986a: 8, 43). To go one step further, Roger Ames pointedly claims that to translate xing as “human nature” is to miss the Confucian point about human flourishing and cultivation. Whereas nature as such in the Western philosophical tradition is regarded as “a ‘given’ that exists from birth,” which “cannot be altered through human action,” the Confucian xing is not set once and for all (Ames 1991: 144). Ames prefers to compare the Mencian xing to what we generally describe as character, personality, or constitution, rather than nature as such, as xing connotes a dynamic process. Its original proclivities and tendencies are inexorably mediated and influenced by human growth, from birth to death (ibid.: 150–165).Footnote 3

This dynamic interpretation that stresses the open-endedness of innate xing in terms of the inexorable existential mediation and commerce of one’s everyday living must also be applied to Li Guangdi’s view of xing. His discourse on the subject places small stock in the statically predetermined innate elements, save the elemental goodness of nature, which is nevertheless only the point of departure. Li resorts to his own dynamic metaphors and analogies as explanatory devices, as we have seen. To analogize developing silver and blending flavors with realizing nature is to stress quotidian efforts to preserve and nurture nature. He asks everyone to act out xing, which is to practice filial piety, pursue the Mean, follow heaven’s mandate, tread the way, and fulfill destiny, all of which is process. Accordingly, there is little ambiguity that one of the major philosophical contributions of Li Guangdi to the Cheng-Zhu tradition is his rethinking of the primacy of human nature in Mencian terms. As he syndicates the centrality of xing in his general thought, he links metaphysical theory to human living. If our nature is the metaphysical fulcrum on which the universe and the world turn, then human action is imperative in the claiming, defining, and testing of the truths of reality. (Li 1829c:2/7a–b)

However, this anthropology of xing reopens and readmits an age-old philosophical problem that made its early appearance in the Zhou times, to the extent that Li’s interpretation does not quite resolve the issue of whether nature is good or bad. Put in another way and to be specific, it does not quite satisfactorily answer the question of the emergence of evil. The opening lines of the Zhongyong clearly state that “what heaven mandates for humanity is called nature; following this nature is called the way.” It stands to reason that humanity is the work of heaven, and the nature is the human tendency to follow this very nature and thereby establish the good human way. But there is the recurring question of the emergence and prevalence of evil. Given that the good heaven mandates a good human nature, it naturally follows that human beings and their deeds are good. But evil persists in such a way and to such a degree that it is ostensibly a part of humanity. In other words, inherent in such a conception of good nature is the fact-value tension, which is a tautology of some sort. On the one hand, there is the ontological fact that xing is good to begin with, but on the hand, there is the existential value that xing ought to be good as one lives out one’s life. But why should something that is good still need to be kept and made good? Whether it is Mencius who propounds the goodness of nature, Xunzi 荀子who posits the badness of nature, or Gaozi 告子who proposes the neutrality of nature, all “wandered around in circles,” as Graham puts it, for none of the theories seems to be able to reconcile fully ontological goodness with experiential moral defects (Graham 1986b: 412–413).

It should be pointed out that the theory of the innate goodness of xing is a full-fledged metaphysical one; it is not necessarily an empirical thesis. The famous Mencian scenario of one watching a child about to fall into a well is an imagined situation manufactured for illustrative purposes. It cannot be proven that one will feel, as Mencius tells us, horror, compassion, sympathy, or empathy when one sees an imperiled child. It can only be asserted that it must be so, given the nature of our xing. But a metaphysical theory can have enormous explanatory power, which rests in its plausibility. In the case of Mencius, its potency lies in the reasonableness and sensibleness regarding how and what one instinctually feels in that particular hypothetical situation. One may say that Mencius’ claim about ren, at least ren as moral sprout, is so resonant with reality, or so realistic an averment of what can or ought to happen, that it becomes the truth. But even if one accepts the metaphysical truth of the innate goodness of xing, it still has to explain in a persuasive manner the existence of evil. We need not belabor the fact that Mencius attributes evil to our failure to develop and conform to our moral sprouts, the basic constitution of our good xing. But it leaves something to be desired, as pointed out above. Herein lies the significance of the Cheng-Zhu dualistic theory of human nature, which is an attempt to provide a better metaphysical explanation for what Mencius argued regarding the goodness of xing. To begin with, Cheng and Zhu are more thorough-going than Mencius in their affirmation. They explicitly state that human nature is good in the same way that heaven and the way are good, while Mencius did not often overtly state that human nature is good as such, unless he was debating with Gaozi. What Mencius mainly contended is that it is human nature to become good. In their own rigorous and systematic way, the Cheng brothers and Zhu Xi explain how and why it is the case that xing is good. They first posit that there is the fundamentally good moral nature, which is principle, or heaven/the way/the Great Ultimate. Then there is the nature constituted by material force, which can be bad, but it is not the basic nature. This dichotomous scheme affirms the goodness of the primary xing while accommodating pervasive evil, which can be located in everyone’s secondary nature. Human transgressions occur when principle (li) comes to be beclouded by turbid qi. This li-qi dialectics enables the simultaneity of the universality of goodness of xing and the instantiation of evil in particular individuals in specific circumstances. Moreover, as with Mencius, the Chengs and Zhu also empower and drive their theory with pleas for moral and intellectual amelioration, to the extent that it is self-cultivation that ensures the dispelling of unwanted qi (Graham 1986a: 54–59; Graham 1986b: 421–435).

As we have seen, Li Guangdi does not accept such a bifurcated human nature and simply affirms that xing is good, just as principle, heaven, and the way are good. Without adopting the Cheng-Zhu metaphysical intervention, Li fell back on the Mencian formula that evil is nature stunted. But in so doing, he dooms himself once again to the circular effort of explaining how evil ensues from the originally good xing.

There is another ambiguity in Li Guangdi’s philosophy of xing, common to many Confucian formulations, including that of Zhu Xi: the tension and relation between the self’s internal moral authority and efficacy, and external guidance such as li 禮 (propriety, rituals and norms). In other words, the conviction of the inherence of principle in individuals does not negate the awareness that self-revelation is not always possible. Principle, or xing for that matter, needs to be complemented and realized by propriety. Zhu Xi and many others wrestled with the ways in which these two crucial sources and standards of cultivation might be duly balanced, such that one does not overly concentrate on one (internal apprehension of principle and nature) at the expense of the other (external adherence to norms and rituals) (Munro 1988: 9). To the extent that Li Guangdi’s xing-based philosophy argues that the cohesion of all truths and meanings ultimately occurs inwardly in the form of introspection, it mitigates his call for external engagement with society. The investigation of things and the extension of knowledge are the illumination of the goodness of human nature with knowledge that comes with the realization of xing.

Still, Li’s reformulation of xing does seek to embed within it a metapraxis that demands and explains individual activism. By focusing on xing and its goodness, Li brings attention to the nobility of humanity and its everyday responsibility in both the internal and external realms, inscribing ultimate, ontological meaning onto the actions that human beings must embark upon, be it moral self-cultivation or practical melioration of state and society.