Usher New Concepts Into The Confucian Rhetorical Canon

By Author: jennie
Total Articles: 286
Comment this article

Whereas Wenxue resorted to yin-yang to criticize the malfunctioning of the officials, Daifu used the same concept to respond to Wenxue's criticism. He explained that everything happens according to the Way of Heaven, and one should not only blame the officials: "Floods and droughts are caused by Heaven; hunger and good harvests reflect the change of yin and yang. People will suffer from drought when Taishui Star orbits in the yang position, or they suffer from floods when the star moves to its yin position. Hunger occurs every six years while bad harvest comes once every twelve years". Daifu turned yin-yang into ED Hardy Boots his own service. However, while Confucians believed that a balance of yin-yang could be acquired through human knowledge and effort, Daifu harbored a more deterministic conception of yin-yang. His defense further confirms that yin-yang had become not only a common epistemic term in agriculture and cosmology, but also the vocabulary of any learned man in Western Han society.

Besides borrowing from the Yin-Yang school, Confucian ...
... debaters also embraced Daoist notions, particularly the idea of non-action. The Daoists, headed by Laozi, emphasized speaking, acting, and governing according to dao, or the natural Way, which was the most efficient and effective way to persuade and to govern (Combs). In governing the populace, Daoists advocated a least intrusive approach called non-action. The Confucian debaters repeatedly appealed to this approach. For example, Wenxue praised earlier Han emperors for taking a Daoist laissez-faire approach to state making, in order to contrast with and attack the monopoly policy: "In the past, we fostered a peaceful relation with Xiongnu through interethnic marriages. All neighboring tribe states presented tributes to us. There was a deep trust between the emperor and his subjects, so ethnic Hu and ethnic Yue did not pose any threats to the empire. In those days, the government demanded little and thus was satisfied easily. People lived in peace and happiness". Portraying the past as an ideal state of government was Ed Hardy Clothing a conventional strategy in the Confucian school, but praising the early Han emperors affirmed the Daoist non-action approach to government. On another occasion, the Confucian debaters criticized a severe legal practice by mixing Laozi's non-action with Confucius's rectification of names. According to the civil code of the empire, when one family committed a crime, the neighboring four or nine families would also be punished. Wenxue argued against such a practice: "Laozi says, 'The ruler has no desires and the people return to the good and simple life. The ruler does nothing and people become rich.' When the ruler and his officials, or the father and his son, submitted to their socially designated roles, why do we need to group five families together [to prevent crimes] or what does the government need to worry about".

Like the discourse of the pro-Legalist officials, the Confucian debaters' discourse was a cultural and rhetorical hybrid. Concerned about uniting the warring states, Confucius promoted the old culture of Zhou as the ideal for a united China, and he developed a full-fledged system of thoughts on governing the state. In contrast, while the Confucian debaters concurred with Confucius on human nature and cultural ideals, they consciously incorporated thoughts from other schools, such as the Yin-Yang and the Daoist. Rhetorically, they continued to use Confucius's favorite concepts, such as rectification of names and ritual, when making arguments. Responding to the exigencies of their times, such as the rise of Confucianism as the state orthodox and the Western Han's metamorphosing into an increasingly multiethnic society, Confucian debaters added kairotical meanings to the old concepts and ushered new concepts into the Confucian rhetorical canon.