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11-2010
Review of Neo-Confucianism in History by Peter
K. Bol
Thomas A. Wilson
Hamilton College, [email protected]
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Wilson, Thomas A., "Review of Neo-Confucianism in History by Peter K. Bol" (2010). Hamilton Digital Commons.
http://digitalcommons.hamilton.edu/articles/8
This Article is made available by Hamilton College for educational and research purposes under a Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 4.0 license. For more
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Neo-Confucianism in History. By Bol, Peter K.. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Asia
Center, 2008. xi, 366 pp. $49.95 (cloth).
By Thomas A. Wilson
Peter K. Bol describes his book as “an interpretive, at times polemical, inquiry into the NeoConfucian engagement with the literati as a social and political elite, with local society, and with
the imperial state during the Song, Yuan, and Ming dynasties.” The first half surveys the
emergence of “Neo-Confucianism” in the eleventh and twelfth centuries and subsequent
developments into the sixteenth century. The book examines the “Ancient Style” movement of
the late Tang and its quest to revive the values of the ancient sages by internalizing the modes
of literary expression found in the Classics. Bol discusses the ways in which Song Confucians
continued the Ancient Style revivalist agenda but shifted to understanding the Way of the sages
through illuminating coherence immanent in all things in order to morally transform society. He
situates the origins of Neo-Confucianism in a reaction to the intrusive political reforms of Wang
Anshi's New Policies, primarily in the south, away from the capital.
The second half takes up four major themes of Neo-Confucianism in history. Chapter 4
examines the concern for the moral transformation of society at the local level through literatiled voluntary associations rather than through the central court's legislative authority. Chapter
5 discusses the theory of the underlying coherence of all things through li (principle). Possessing
the innate endowment necessary to apprehend the coherence of li in things, the ancient sages
created civilization by giving cultural form to li, and transmitted their insights in their teachings.
Chapter 6 analyzes Dao Learning's (Daoxue) faith in the unity of the cosmic order attributable
to li; in a single correct doctrine enunciated by the ancient sages and transmitted among
Confucian literati who followed the proper path to understand it; in the perfect integration of
the human world built by the ancient sages; and ultimately in the mind's innate capacity to
apprehend the coherence of all things and thereby act morally. Chapter 7 examines the
creation of the Dao Learning curriculum, which aimed at the student's moral cultivation, and
private academies, which offered a locally generated alternative to the examination curriculum
taught in state schools. This chapter also considers locally maintained private academies, which
stressed moral cultivation over examination success, and community compacts, which fostered
moral action and managed local resources through granaries and low-interest loans.
The book's thesis is that, beginning in the Song, Confucians worked to transform the world by
concentrating their efforts on local society. In contrast to historians who focus on Dao
Learning's role in the formation of imperial orthodoxy, Bol stresses the concern for fostering
local and community alternatives to imperious New Policies. The ideas of Cheng Yi and Zhu Xi
figure prominently throughout the book and constitute a matrix from which subsequent NeoConfucian learning developed. Bol superbly captures Cheng's and Zhu's urgent reactions to New
Policy excesses as they developed a theory of communal action.
By configuring “Neo-Confucianism” as an essentially localist reaction to an activist state, Bol
effectively writes out of his story generations of Zhu Xi's champions who sought to effect moral
governance through imperial institutions. Neo-Confucianism in History ends with Wang
Yangming's followers and leaves out late Ming and Qing figures. It remains unclear how to
reconcile this localist orientation with the Donglin movement, whose members, Bol
acknowledges, were active both at the local level and at the court, or with Cheng-Zhu stalwarts
at the Kangxi court, such as Xiong Cili (1635–1709) and Zhang Boxing (1652–1725). Bol's
configuration tends to flatten out the internal complexity of Neo-Confucianism when Zhu's
advocates acted on the conviction that the court could transform the world, even while others
deployed localist strategies.
Largely in response to the New Policies debacle, Bol argues, Zhu Xi and his followers bifurcated
moral and political authority. They in effect removed the emperor as a necessary element in
the moral authority of an age and stressed instead the primacy of literati who practiced and
transmitted the Dao. In Bol's history, proponents of Dao Learning abandoned the court as a
viable arena of moral action and authority, and worked to transform local society. One
wonders, though, whether the specter of Wang's excesses in the collective memory of Zhu's
later advocates had diminished considerably by the Ming, if not before. Evidence suggests that
they worked even during the reigns of such autocratic sovereigns as Hongwu (1368–98) and
Jiajing (1521–66) to realize a universal moral order centered on the court. Song and Ming
sources abound with court debates on the emperor's sacrifices at the Altar of Heaven—often
invoking Zhu's writings—in order to perfect a ritual that lay at the heart of the emperor's moralpolitical authority. The dilemma between serving the emperor or withdrawing from the court—
the bifurcation of moral and political authority in a corrupt age and the remerging of them
under an enlightened lord—encompasses a spectrum of moral action that has defined what it
meant to be a Confucian from Confucius to Dao schoolmen.
This book is less of a “polemical” engagement with existing interpretations of NeoConfucianism than a formulation of an alternative thesis. Much of Bol's polemics—his critique
of other accounts—is relegated to footnotes, which leaves little room for him to develop his
criticisms of alternative views. How might Bol's account of intellectual conformity in Ming
examination culture be reconciled with Benjamin Elman's analysis of cognitive virtuosity in
composing the eight-legged essay? (see A Cultural History of Civil Examinations [Berkeley and
Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2000]). Developments in Cheng-Zhu thinking
articulated in examination essays during the Ming and Qing belie a profound commitment to
the court's moral authority.
Neo-Confucianism in History presents a provocative, often compelling approach to the history
of late imperial Confucianism. “Neo-Confucianism” here is neither bound to the court nor
guided by metaphysical speculations motivated by internal debate or argument with Buddhism.
Bol demonstrates that Zhu Xi and his followers were deeply engaged in society and politics.
Bol's analysis of the many forms of local activism from Zhu through Wang Yangming's radical
followers offers a convincing alternative to reductionist Marxian analyses that view NeoConfucianism as a tool of state power. A question that remains unresolved, though, is how the
changing nature of Dao Learning in the last five hundred years of imperial China, when many of
its proponents ardently served at court as a proper venue for moral action, challenges the
localist thesis that informs Neo-Confucianism in History.