The New Chinese Classics
The Emergence of China: State Formation and Classical Thought
A Taeko Brooks and E Bruce Brooks
(estimated publication date: 2008)

This is the master overview of Chinese thought in historical context for which scholars have been waiting. It arranges the early texts in historical order, and draws from them a coherent narrative of intellectual and political development, with many a byway and dead end, but leading as a whole to the unified Chinese state which is still with us.

1. The unification process begins in 0771 with the fall of the Jou, who had presided over an indirect sovereignty system (experts are divided over whether to call it "feudal"), and who left in their wake a suddenly acephalous set of tributary or obligational states. Over the next few centuries, called the Spring and Autumn period after the chronicle of Lu which is our major source for it, those states realigned themselves laterally, and disputed for priority within the resulting multi-state system. Confucius lived his life within the last quarter of the period thus defined, and cannot be understood without some acquaintance with this older China, out of which he came, and of which he was himself a part.

2. The end of Confucius's life coincided with the transition to a period of more intense warfare, in which the armies of the state were reformed on a popular (in effect, a Napoleonic) rather than elite warrior model, and the state itself was transformed into a larger and more bureaucratic entity, which alone could provide for, and control, that much larger and much more deadly army. A major social restructuring was part of this complex of changes, and Confucius contributed by adapting the warrior's code into a new, less personal, and more civilian service ethic. Trade developed along with the created fiscal sophistication of the state, and an ethic of the trader also emerged, to compete with the adapted ethic of the warrior. These developments take us to the end of the 05th century.

3. Major realignments occur from the beginning of the 04th century. The Micians organize themselves around the earlier trader ethic. The Confucians adopt an ideology based on ritual, and increasingly defined by ritual procedures and their accompanying text traditions. Philosophers of the new state as such (conventionally called Legalists) also emerge, and begin to accumulate advocational texts of their own. The practice of meditation, known since the early 05th century, develops into at least two independent schools, both of which address the hot topic of statecraft from their special point of view. Military science advances by small practical leaps and then by larger theoretical bounds. The relation between the human and cosmic orders attracts attention toward the end of the century, spawning yet another set of thinkers and theorists. This is the High Warring States period, the golden age of its classical thought. Its diversity is widely appreciated (the Chinese name for it is The Hundred Schools), but its interconnectedness has never before been adequately appreciated: what we have here is the thought and self-awareness of a whole culture, evolving at a rapid pace, and expressing itself in the seemingly multiple but actually related voices of individuals. This book sets forth that interactive situation in detail, and for the first time.

4. By the 03rd century it has become obvious to all that political unification is going to be achieved in one way or another. The philosophical schools either assimilate their agendas to the priorities of the new state, or adopt a stance of opposition to the whole unification process, powered powered as it was by increasingly unrestrained and brutal warfare. Thought in this period was no longer the gnomic wisdom of the preceding period, but looked toward system coherence in the modern sense, as well as to practical effectiveness in the insistent business of killing the people of the neighboring states. These system tendencies, and their human cost, are given their share of space.

5. Under unification, first in 0221 by the short-lived Chin Dynasty and then in 0202 by the more successful Han, the question of one state versus many, and of force as a tool of social engineering, were worked out over many highly perilous decades; an art of the courtier, explaining how to survive and succeed under these extremely dangerous conditions, also gradually developed. Tension between the desire for wealth (and thus a policy favoring trade) and the need for security in the recurrent wars with the peoples to the north, defined the policy spectrum. Careers were sacrificed, and supposedly ancient texts of justification were forged, as part of that policy pendulum. Eventually the ongoing intellectual wars were decided in favor of a now bookish and loyal Confucianism as the ideology of the serving elite, and Chinese intellectual history from that point on lost the variety and vibrancy it had had in the classical period. The reign of the Han Emperor Wu, and not the end of the multi-state system as such, is thus the true conclusion of the Warring States story. It is at that point that this overview of the story comes to an end.

This book tells that story in a series of brief chapter introductions, and illustrates it with hundreds of sample translations from the writings of the period. On the one hand, it provides a uniquely rich and real-worldly overview of the process and its thought. It includes the much-read standard anthology pieces, and it also includes the almost neglected texts in which the real ideological winners, the statecraft theorists, tell how the unification was actually accomplished, and the China we know was created. Part of that story is the evolution of China as it likes to think of itself, and here is where the Confucians seem indeed to be the winners. As for the Dauists, they are everybody's winners, and part of the intellectual furnishings of all modern persons.

On the other hand, this book is meant as a summary and overview for scholars; it is an extended demonstration of the historical consistency and plausibility which, along with archaeological support, provides the final argument for the correctness of the Project's system of text datings. The book is merely unique within that series in being aimed at also at a classroom readership. Its publication will be preceded by a field test of one segment in classroom context. In final form, it will provide sufficient material for a semester course on ancient China, from either the political or the philosophical viewpoint. Aspects of this overview work will be made separately available in the paperback Introducing China series, for readers or teachers who want a more straightforwardly political account of the period (see Founding an Empire), or those who wish to introduce units on some major thinkers (Confucius, Mencius, Jwangdz) or major movements (such as the unique and unexpected Micians) into a more general survey course. In all these ways, this book is central to the first phase of the Project's publication plan.

17 May 2007 / Contact The Project / Exit to Publications Page