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THE REIFICATION OF FATE IN EARLY CHINA

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 July 2019

Mercedes Valmisa
Mercedes Valmisa*
Affiliation:
Mercedes Valmisa, 梅麗, Gettysburg College Philosophy Department; email: [email protected]
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Abstract

Early Chinese texts make us witnesses to debates about the power, or lack thereof, that humans had over the course of events, the outcomes of their actions, and their own lives. In the midst of these discourses on the limits of the efficacy of human agency, the notion of ming 命 took a central position.

In this article, I present a common pattern of thinking about the relationship between the person and the world in early China. I call it the reifying pattern because it consisted in thinking about ming as a hypostasized entity with object-like features. Although external and independent, ming was not endowed with human qualities such as the capacities for empathy, responsivity, and intersubjectivity. The reification of fate implied an understanding of ming as an external, amoral, and determining force that limited humans without accepting intercommunication with them, thereby causing feelings of alienation, powerlessness, and existential incompetence.

I first show that the different meanings of ming hold a sense of prevailing external reality, and hence can be connected to the overarching meaning of fate. Then, I offer an account of the process of reification of fate in early China and its consequences, theoretical and practical, through cases study of received (Mengzi 孟子) and found (Tang Yu zhi dao 唐虞之道) texts. I end with some reflections on the implications of ming as a nonpersonal and nonsubjective type of actor for both early Chinese and twenty-first-century accounts of agency.

提要

早期中國文本裡有很多關於人類是否對事件的進程、其行動的結果以及他們自己的生活具有影響力的争論。在關於人類能動性功效的爭論中，命的概念佔據了中心位置。在這篇文章中，我提出了一個早期中國關於人類與世界關係的思維範式。我稱其為物化模式，因為它將命視為具類似物體特徵的實體。雖然命是外在和獨立的，但它並不被賦予人性的品質，例如同理心、反應能力和主體間性。命的物化暗示了把命理解为一種外在的、非德的、決定性的力量。這種力量限制了人類而不接受與人類的互動交流，從而導致異化、無力和存在無能的感覺。我首先表明，命的不同含義皆有佔優勢的外在現實感，因此可以與命運（fate）總體意義建立關聯。然後，我通過《孟子》與《唐虞之道》文本的案例研究，提供了早期中國命運的物化過程及其理論與實踐的後果。最後，我提供一些反思，闡明命作為一個非個人和非主體性的能動者對早期中國和廿一世紀的能動性理論有何種影響。

Keywords

ming 命fateagencynonpersonal agentreification命命運能動性非個人能動者物化
Type
Articles
Information
Early China , Volume 42 , 2019 , pp. 147 - 199
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Study of Early China and Cambridge University Press 2019 

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Footnotes

I thank Willard Peterson and Albert Galvany for their insightful comments on earlier versions of this manuscript, all of which helped revise, improve, and add complexity to the presentation of my arguments.

References

1. See Csikszentmihalyi, Mark, “Allotment and Death in Early China,” in Mortality in Traditional Chinese Thought, ed. Olberding, Amy and Ivanhoe, Philip J. (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2011), 178Google Scholar.

2. Csikszentmihalyi, “Allotment and Death in Early China,” 179.

3. On Sihou, see also Csikszentmihalyi, “Allotment and Death in Early China,” 178.

4. It is probably no coincidence that most of our philosophical texts mention the figure of Siming only rhetorically while focusing on the vicissitudes proper to a reified notion of fate as part of their philosophical program. As an example, the Sunzi 孫子 uses the expressions “the people’s Manager of Allotments” (min zhi Siming 民之司命, ch. 2) and “the enemy’s Manager of Allotments” (di zhi Siming 敵之司命, ch. 6) in a rhetorical effort to convey the fundamental role of a commander in his own people’s and the enemy’s chances of survival. While here a belief in the figure of Siming is not excluded, neither is it part of the Sunzi’s argument.

5. All translations are mine, although I have greatly benefitted from the work of previous translators. Mengzi zhushu 孟子注疏 (Shisan jing zhushu 十三經注疏 ed., 1816; rpt. Taipei: Yiwen, 1985), 6A.169b.

6. Zhuangzi jijie 莊子集解, ed. Wang Xianqian 王先謙 (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1982), 4.38.

7. See Dennett, Daniel, Elbow Room: The Varieties of Free Will Worth Wanting (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1984)Google Scholar; Searle, John, “Free Will as a Problem in Neurobiology,” Philosophy 76 (2001), 491–514CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Honderich, Ted, On Determinism and Freedom (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2005)Google Scholar.

8. Fu Sinian 傅斯年 articulated five theories of ming in early China. See Fu, , “Xingming gushun bianzheng” 性命古順辯證, in Fu Mengzhen xiansheng ji 傅孟真先生集, vol. 2 (Taipei: Guoli Taiwan daxue, 1952), 114Google Scholar. Nylan, in turn, distinguished twelve meanings of ming in the Han, although many of them can already be seen in the Warring States period, in Nylan, Michael, The Canon of Supreme Mystery: A Translation with Commentary of the T’ai Hsüan Qing (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993), 35Google Scholar. Tang Junyi 唐君毅 associated different attitudes towards ming with Chinese schools of thought, in Tang, “Xian Qin sixiang zhong de tianming guan” 先秦思想中的天命觀, Xinya xuebao 2 (1957), 1–2. For a review of the secondary literature that classifies the different meanings and aspects of ming in early China, see Youngsun Back’s dissertation, “Handling Fate: The Ru Discourse on Ming” (University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2013), 8–18.

9. Lupke, Christopher, ed., The Magnitude of Ming: Command, Allotment, and Fate in Chinese Culture (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2005)Google Scholar.

10. Lawson, Jack Newton, The Concept of Fate in Ancient Mesopotamia of the First Millennium: Toward an Understanding of “Šīmtu” (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1994), 5Google Scholar.

11. 子曰：天何言哉？四時行焉，百物生焉，天何言哉？ (“The Master said: Which use has Heaven for words? The four seasons follow its course, and the hundred kinds of things are born. Which use has Heaven for words?”) (Lun yü zhushu 論語注疏 17. 157b).

12. Lawson, The Concept of Fate, 5.

13. Lawson, The Concept of Fate, 5.

14. Ming is a textual category in the Documents (Shang shu 尚書), which we can translate as “charges.” Other textual categories include “admonitions” (gao 誥), “canons” (dian 典) and “oaths” (shi 誓).

15. Some texts inscribed in early Western Zhou ritual bronze vessels suggest that the ideology of the Mandate of Heaven was already at work in this period. I discuss this issue in the paper “Is the Ideology of the Mandate of Heaven Already Present in Western Zhou Bronze Inscriptions?,” presented at the International Consortium for Research in the Humanities (IKGF) in Erlangen, 2018.

16. Sarah Allan has discussed the ideology of the Mandate of Heaven in terms of the tension between the “heir” and the “sage,” that is, between hereditary and meritocratic approaches to rulership. See , Allan, The Heir and the Sage: Dynastic Legend in Early China (New York: SUNY, 2016)Google Scholar.

17. It is in this sense that Solomon distinguishes between determinism and fatalism. Determinism proposes that there is causal necessity inherent to all events, whereas fatalism offers not a causal necessity but a narrative one. In the fatalist view, outcomes attributed to fate would be necessary only within the narrative of a group that shares a common sense of purpose. Solomon, Robert C., “On Fate and Fatalism,” Philosophy East and West 53.4 (2003), 437–39CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

18. The terms ming 命 and ling 令 are interchangeable in Western Zhou bronze inscriptions. See Sagart, Laurent, The Roots of Old Chinese, Amsterdam Studies in the Theory and History of Linguistic Science 184 (Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 1999)CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Boltz, William, “Language and Writing,” in The Cambridge History of Ancient China: From the Origins of Civilization to 221 B.C, ed. Loewe, Michael and Shaughnessy, Edward (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 74–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar, for a discussion about the intimate relation between these two terms. For the origins of the graph ming and its evolution, see Meiling, Lin 林玫玲, Xian Qin zhexue de minglun sixiang 先秦哲學的命論思想 (Taipei: Wenjin, 2007), 54–78Google Scholar.

19. For subordinates accepting appointments, see, for instance, the inscriptions on the Shi Qiang pan 史牆盤 and the Lai pan 逨盤. The royal inscriptions Wu si Hu zhong 五祀㝬鐘 and Hu gui 㝬簋 are examples of kings accepting Heaven’s command to rule as an extension of the original appointment given to the founding kings Wen 文 and Wu 武.

20. See for instance, Maogong ding 毛公鼎, Da Yu ding and Shi Hong gui.

21. A greater variety of illustrations of the unstable and compromising nature of the command can be found in received texts. For instance, they abound in the Documents and the Odes. See also Tang Junyi, “The T’ien Ming [Heavenly Ordinance] in Pre-Ch’in China,” Philosophy East and West 12.1 (1962), 202.

22. Shang shu zhushu 尚書注疏 (“Kanggao,” 201a).

23. Yin Zhou jinwen jicheng shiwen 殷周金文集成釋文 (Hong Kong: Xianggang zhongwen daxue zhongguo wenhua yanjiusuo, 2001), no. 2841.

24. See David Schaberg, “Command and the Content of Tradition,” in Magnitude of Ming, ed. Lupke, 23–48, for a thorough discussion of ming as command.

25. Zhuangzi jijie 6.58.

26. Zhuangzi jijie 27.248.

27. Lun heng jiaoshi 論衡校釋, ed. Huang Hui 黃暉 (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1990), 3.20.

28. Zhuangzi jijie 4.45.

29. See, for instance, “Xingshi” 形勢 chapter of the Guanzi 管子. Guanzi jinzhu jinyi 管子今注今譯, ed. Li Mian 李勉 (Taipei: Taiwan shangwu, 1988), 64.940.

30. On these practices, see for instance the Huangdi neijing 黃帝內經. Yang Weijie 楊維傑, Huangdi neijing suwen yijie 黃帝內經素問譯解 (Taipei: Lequn, 1977), 1.9. Livia Kohn has thoroughly studied Daoist religious and hygienic practices. See, among others, her Introducing Daoism (New York: Routledge, 2008)Google Scholar. On the Huangdi neijing and Chinese medicine, see Sivin, Nathan, “Huangdi neijing,” in Early Chinese Texts: A Bibliographical Guide, ed. Loewe, Michael, Early China Special Monograph, no. 2 (Berkeley: Society for the Study of Early China and the Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, 1993), 196–215Google Scholar; and Unschuld, Paul, Huangdi neijing Suwen: Nature, Knowledge, Imagery in an Ancient Chinese Medical Text (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

31. Zhuangzi jijie 29.263.

32. Wenzi zuanyi 文子纘義, ed. Du Daojian 杜道堅 (Shanghai: Shanghai guji, 1989), 2.4b.

33. Lun heng jiaoshi 6.45.

34. The Lun heng is commonly understood as the work of Wang Chong. However, it is a compilation of many different writings, many of them surely not written by Wang.

35. Dietrich, Bernard Clive, Death, Fate and the Gods: The Development of a Religious Idea in Greek Popular Belief and in Homer (London: University of London, Athlone Press, 1967), 2Google Scholar.

36. Zhuangzi jijie 20.173. The divide is not always so clear, as tian and ming, Heaven and fate/different kinds of mandates, may appear conflated in philosophical discourses.

37. Some of the most important representatives are Tang Junyi, “The T’ien Ming [Heavenly Ordinance] in Pre-Ch’in China,” Feng Youlan 馮友蘭, 中國哲學史 (Shanghai: Shangwu, 1934; translated by Derk Bodde as A History of Chinese Philosophy, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1983); Graham, A. C., Disputers of the Tao: Philosophical Argument in Ancient China (La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1989)Google Scholar; Puett, Michael, The Ambivalence of Creation: Debates Concerning Innovation and Artifice in Early China (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001)Google Scholar.

38. Graham, Disputers of the Tao, 107–8.

39. Puett, The Ambivalence of Creation.

40. Common to these twentieth-century approaches (much less so in twenty-first-century scholarship) are the assumptions that (1) masters’ texts were authored by the masters that give them name, or disciples within their school of thought; (2) we can date texts and thinkers with enough precision to establish an intellectual line of development within the pre-imperial period.

41. Ning, Chen, “The Genesis of the Concept of Blind Fate in Ancient China,” Journal of Chinese Religions 25 (1997), 154, 159Google Scholar. Eno, Robert, The Confucian Creation of Heaven. Philosophy and the Defense of Ritual Mastery (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990), 27Google Scholar.

42. Many scholars find the locus classicus of the concept of reification to be György Lukács’s History and Class Consciousness, published in 1923. The word “reification” is found and used in different ways in the work of previous philosophers such as Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Husserl, and Heidegger to point out the dehumanizing and alienating tendencies of modernity. After Lukács, twentieth-century philosophers have often criticized and reinterpreted the concept in a variety of ways. None of these interpretations is particularly relevant for my usage of the concept here.

43. On Siming, see the Overview section. In Greek mythology and philosophy, fate also became personified as the “Fates” or Moirae, goddesses with fully intentional and subjective capacity of agency. Lisa Raphals compares the understanding of fate in Greek and early Chinese philosophy in her article “Languages of Fate,” in The Magnitude of Ming, ed. Lupke, 70–106.

44. Chen Ning, “The Genesis of the Concept of Blind Fate,” 158. Wang Chong is one of the first philosophers to criticize the anthropomorphization of Heaven. In his view, Heaven is not an intentional, subjective agent, but a part of the natural order which acts in a spontaneous, non-purposive manner. We will return to this point in the Implications section.

45. On hybrid objects, see Latour, Bruno, We Have Never Been Modern (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993)Google Scholar.

46. See this definition of ming in Zhuangzi jijie 19.163; Lüshi Chunqiu xin jiaoshi 呂氏春秋新校釋, ed. Chen Qiyou 陳奇猷 (Shanghai: Shanghai guji, 2002 [1984]), 20.8.3, 1347; and Liezi jishi 列子集釋, ed. Yang Bojun 楊伯峻 (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1979), 2.2.64 and 6.6.193.

47. Zhuangzi jijie 19.156.

48. Lüshi Chunqiu xin jiaoshi 20.8.3.1347.

49. In her influential 1966 essay, “Against Interpretation,” Susan Sontag said that “Real art has the capacity to make us nervous. By reducing the work of art to its content and then interpreting that, one tames the work of art. Interpretation makes art manageable, conformable.” Sontag, Susan, Against Interpretation and Other Essays (New York: Picador, 1966), 8Google Scholar.

50. Petrović, Gajo, “Reification,” in A Dictionary of Marxist Thought, ed. Bottomore, Tom, Harris, Laurence, Kiernan, V. G. and Miliband, Ralph (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1983), 411Google Scholar.

51. On this issue see Berger, Peter L. and Luckmann, Thomas, The Social Constructions of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge (London: Penguin, 1991; first edition 1967), 106Google Scholar.

52. Huainan honglie jijie 淮南鴻烈集解, comm. Liu Wendian 劉文典 (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1989), 2.10b.

53. Zhuangzi jijie 20.173.

54. Zhuangzi jijie 20.173.

55. Mengzi zhushu 7A/3.229b.

56. See the “Gong Meng” 公孟 chapter. Franklin Perkins notices that the Mohists’ major concern when attacking the belief of a preexisting and prescribed fate was to encourage their contemporaries to end war. See , Perkins, Heaven and Earth are not Humane: The Problem of Evil in Classical Chinese Philosophy (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2014), 56Google Scholar.

57. Nietzsche analyzes different kinds of fatalism, among them the same one criticized by the Mozi, and denounces the “will to hibernation” of those who have placed their fate externally and in opposition to the subject, feeling relieved and content to do nothing in the face of fate. Nietzsche, Friedrich, Ecce Homo: How One Becomes What One Is, trans. Large, Duncan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007; originally published 1908), 1.6Google Scholar.

58. Sloterdijk, Peter, Selected Exaggerations. Conversations and Interviews 1993–2012 (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2016), 302Google Scholar.

59. See, for instance, the third of the “Against fate” 非命 chapters, and the “Inclusive Concern” 兼愛 triad. All the examples argue for a causal connection between actions and success or failure. Perkins’ Heaven and Earth are not Humane, 57, includes an interesting discussion on the Mohist argument against a fatalistic notion of fate.

60. In order to recover existential competence and deal with what seems to be beyond human control, some strategies should be designed. Which solutions did early Chinese thinkers propose to deal with the problem of a reified fate and the uncertainty that it produced? By which means did they recover their existential competence? I discuss some of these solutions in “Beyond our Control? Two Responses to Uncertainty and Fate in Early China,” in New Visions of the Zhuangzi, ed. Kohn, Livia (St. Petersburg, FL: Three Pines Press, 2015), 1–22Google Scholar.

61. Slingerland, Edward, “The Conception of Ming in Early Confucian Thought,” Philosophy East and West 46.4 (1996), 568CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

62. Mengzi zhushu 7A/3.229b.

63. Mengzi zhushu 6A.195a.

64. Mengzi zhushu 2A.66.

65. See, among others, Lao Siguang 勞思光, Xinbian Zhongguo zhexue shi 新編中國哲學史, vol. 1 (Taipei: Sanmin, 1984), 197–99. Chen Zhengyang 陳政揚, “Mengzi yu Zhuangzi minglun yanjiu” 孟子與莊子命論研究, Jiedi 8 (2005), 138.

66. Mengzi zhushu 7B.253b.

67. Lisa Raphals reads it in this way in “Debates about Fate in Early China,” Études Chinoises 33.2 (2014), 27Google Scholar.

68. The distinction between the two uses of xing has often been noticed. Mou Zongsan 牟宗三, Yuan shan lun 圓善論 (Taipei: Taiwan xuesheng, 1996), 151. Lin Qiping 林啟屏, Cong gudian dao zhengdian: zhongguo gudai ruxue yishi zhi xingcheng 從古典到正典：中國古代儒學意識之形成 (Taipei: Guoli Taiwan daxue, 2007), 276. Chen Zhengyang, Mengzi yu Zhuangzi, 137–38.

69. See Mou, Yuan shan lun, 151. Fuguan, Xu 徐復觀, Zhongguo renxinglun shi –Xian Qin pian 中國人性論史—先秦篇 (Taipei: Taiwan shangwu, 1999), 167–68Google Scholar.

70. See Mou, Yuan shan lun, 151. Lin, Cong gudian dao zhengdian, 276. Lao, Xinbian Zhongguo zhexue shi, 197–99. Tao, Liang 梁濤, Guodian zhujian yu Si Meng xuepai 郭店竹簡與思孟學派 (Beijing: Zhongguo renmin daxue, 2008), 454–55Google Scholar.

71. Some scholars have expressed this conflict in the Mengzi in terms of a difference between ming understood as mingxian 命限 (external limitations) and ming understood as li ming 立命 (the fate that one establishes for oneself by following a moral path). See Chen Zhengyang, Mengzi yu Zhuangzi, 144. We go back to the idea of li ming at the end of this section.

72. Ning, Chen, “The Concept of Fate in Mencius,” Philosophy East and West 97.4 (1997), 495Google Scholar. And Chen Ning, Zhongguo gudai mingyunguan de xiandai quanshi 中國古代命運觀的現代詮釋 (Shenyang: Liaoning jiaoyu, 1999), 131–32.

73. Junyi, Tang, Zhongguo zhexue lun –daolun pian 中國哲學原論─導論篇 (Taipei: Taiwan xuesheng, 1993), 526–27Google Scholar. Lin Meiling, Xian Qin zhexue de minglun sixiang, 228.

74. Scholars holding the unifying view promote the slogan “xing ming heyi” 性命合一. For evidence that ming, and xing are not in opposition in the Mengzi, we must turn to revelatory passages in texts such as Zhongyong 中庸 and Xing zi ming chu 性自命出. See, for instance, Yao Yanqi 姚彥淇, “Mengzi ‘xingming duiyang’ zhang yiyun zaitan” 孟子「性命對揚」章義蘊再探, electronic publication at Guoli Gaoxiong Shifan daxue, www.nknu.edu.tw/~jingxue/download/99jingpdf/011.pdf, 2010, 8. This line of argumentation is based on the assumption that all these texts belong to the same branch of Confucianism coming from Mencius and Zi Sizi 子思子 and share the same philosophical worldview, hence we can use the one in support of the other. A different methodology is used by scholars such as Fu Sinian and, more recently, Chen Zhengyang, who argue for the unifying view based only in textual evidence found in the Mengzi. See Fu Sinian, Fu Mengzhen xiansheng ji, 355–56; and Chen Zhengyang, Mengzi yu Zhuangzi.

75. Michael Puett, “Following the Commands of Heaven: The Notion of ming in Early China,” in The Magnitude of Ming, ed. Lupke, 50–53 and 56–57.

76. Mengzi zhushu 2B.85a.

77. Puett, “Following the Commands of Heaven,” 59–61.

78. Shun, Kwong-loi, Mencius and Early Chinese Thought (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1997), 77–78Google Scholar. This is certainly the case in the Mengzi. “Liang Hui wang B,” for instance, says that a king must do whatever efforts that will ensure his people inherit a better world, but “whether he is able to accomplish it or not, lies with Heaven” (若夫成功，則天也) (Mengzi zhushu 2B.46).

79. Mengzi zhushu 2A.65a.

80. Mengzi zhushu 2B.80b.

81. Mengzi zhushu 2A.66b; 3A.98b; 6A.204b.

82. See, for instance, Mengzi 1B.31–32, 43a.

83. Mengzi 4A.124 says that the calamity of a kingdom is not to not be able to protect itself with big walls against enemies, but to be lacking in virtue, because then Heaven will enable its defeat. Along the same lines, Mengzi 5A.168–171 explains that Heaven gave the throne to Shun because, unlike the Shang king, Shun was virtuous.

84. Mengzi 1B.222.

85. Mengzi zhushu 2B.85a.

86. I follow Mengzi commentators in their interpretation of this line. The persona of Mencius would be contrasting the time when he said the sentence that his disciple Chong Yu attributes to him (“The gentleman does not complain against Heaven, nor blame men”), and the present time in which the conversation takes place, during Mencius’ trip to Qi to deal with a chaotic political situation. See Mengzi zhengyi 孟子正義, vol. 1, ed. Jiao Xun 焦循 (Taipei: Zhonghua, 2009), 309. Due to the current situation, Mencius cannot help feeling discontentment. The same happens to the Confucius of the Analects in several occasions. For instance, when his beloved Yan Yuan 顏淵 died, Confucius cried out “Alas! Heaven has abandoned me, Heaven has abandoned me!” (噫天喪予天喪予) (Lun yü zhushu 11.97a).

87. This is a contended passage, as it is difficult to accept that Mencius could complain against Heaven. I follow Mengzi commentators in their understanding of this last line as an explanation of why Mencius should feel dissatisfied (我所以有不豫，為此也). The logic is that Mencius will stop feeling dissatisfied when Heaven decides that it is a good time to stop chaos and charges Mencius with achieving this task. See Mengzi zhengyi, vol. 1, 311.

88. The phrase, 不怨天不尤人 (“not to complain against Heaven or to grudge against men”), also appears in Analects 14.35, where it is attributed to Confucius. Same phrasing in Lun heng jiaoshi 30.457; Shi ji 17 “Kongzi shi jia” 孔子世家; Shuoyuan jinzhu jinyi 說苑今註今譯, ed. Lu Yuanjun 盧元駿 (Taipei: Taiwan shangwu, 1977), 14.475. Zhongyong zhushu 中庸注疏 52.883b contains the sentence with a variation: 上不怨天，下不尤人 (“Above, [the gentleman] does not complain against Heaven; below, he does not grudge against men”). Also with a variation, in Xunzi jishi 荀子集釋, ed. Li Disheng 李滌生 (Taipei: Xuesheng, 1979), 4: 59: 自知者不怨人，知命者不怨天 (“Those who know themselves do not complain against men, and those who understand fate do not complain against Heaven”).

89. Mengzi zhushu 5A.160a.

90. See the rest of the story in Mengzi 5A.160a–161a.

91. Shuo wen jiezi reads: 仁閔覆下，則稱旻天 (“It covers everything below with humanity and compassion, therefore it is called ‘compassionate Heaven’”). Shuo wen jiezi zhu 說文解字注, attributed to Xu Shen 許慎, comm. Duan Yucai 段玉裁 (Shanghai: Shanghai guji, 1988), 8.46.

92. The epithet “Son of Heaven” for the ruling king suggests that Heaven acts as a father for the ruler. Beyond the ruler’s kinship with Heaven (symbolic or otherwise), there are numerous textual examples of the representation of Heaven and Earth as father and mother of the people and all entities (min 民/ wanwu 萬物). See, among others, Shang shu zhushu 1A.152b; Zhuangzi jijie 6.58; Guanzi jinzhu jinyi 41.703; Huainan honglie jijie 7.1b; and Heguanzi 鶡冠子, ed. Lu Dian 陸佃 (Taipei: Taiwan zhonghua, 1965), 10.80.

93. Laozi Daode jing zhu jiaoshi 老子道德經注校釋, ed. Lou Yulie 樓宇烈 (Beijing: Zhonghua, 2008), 185.

94. In his book named after the famous Laozi phrase, “Heaven and Earth are not Humane,” Perkins discusses these Mengzi passages to explore the issue of “Heaven’s role in the world” (Perkins, Heaven and Earth are not Humane, 122). However, he reaches the opposite conclusion: “Mengzi has come to equate heaven with fate, ming. Heaven simply represents those forces or events in the world that are inexplicable and irresistible” (p. 123; the idea comes up again on p. 127).

95. I only consider the cases where ming means fate. When ming is used as “command” or “order” in the Mengzi, the most common verb is “receive” (shou 受), but this is irrelevant to my analysis.

96. Following Ivanhoe and Schwartz, Back has argued that the Ru 儒 perceived the world in moral terms and separated it into two domains: one morally relevant (where there is a causal connection between moral actions and non-moral outcomes, such as external goods), and one morally irrelevant (where such connection does not exist). According to Back, ming would be the line separating these two domains, a relational concept that expresses the interrelation between humans and Heaven. See Back, “Handling Fate: The Ru Discourse on Ming,” 13–14.

97. Mengzi zhushu 5A.8.

98. Shun also remarks this point. Shun, Mencius and Early Chinese Thought, 79.

99. Mengzi zhushu 7A.228b.

100. Mengzi Zhengyi, vol. 2, 878. Shun, Mencius and Early Chinese Thought, 79–80.

101. Mengzi Zhengyi, vol. 2, 878.

102. Shun, Mencius and Early Chinese Thought, 77.

103. Slingerland, “The Conception of Ming,” 576.

104. Huainan honglie jijie 14: 17b; Wenzi zuanyi 4: 10a. In the form of zhiming buyou 知命不憂, see Shi ji “Qu Yuan Jia sheng liezhuan” 屈原賈生列傳 in Shi ji, attributed to Sima Qian 司馬遷 (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1959), 2500; and Han shu, “Jia Yi zhuan” 賈誼傳 in Xin jiaoben Han shu jizhu bing fubian erzhong 新校本漢書集注并附編二種, ed. Yang Jialuo 楊家駱 (Taipei: Dingwen, 1976), 2228. In the Xici shang 繫辭上, we find 樂天知命，故不優 “rejoices in Heaven and understands fate, therefore has no anxieties.” See Zhou yi zhushu 周易注疏 (Xici shang 繫辭上, 147b).

105. Wenzi zuanyi 4: 9b–10a.

106. Liezi jishi 6.6: 212.

107. Lun yü zhushu 12.106b.

108. The manuscript was first published in Guodian Chumu zhujian 郭店楚墓竹簡, ed. Jingmenshi bowuguan 荊門市博物館 (Beijing: Wenwu, 1998), 39–41 and 157–59. For an English analysis of the material features of the manuscript and the intellectual content of The Way of Tang and Yu, see Scott Cook, The Bamboo Texts of Guodian: A Study and Complete Translation (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2012), vol. 1, 521–64. Sarah Allan discusses The Way of Tang and Yu, together with other manuscripts from the Warring States period, in terms of their strong advocacy for political abdication. According to Allan, other narratives of abdication are found in the transmitted “Yao dian” 藥典 chapter of the Documents, Mengzi 5A “Wan zhang shang” 萬章上, and the “Shang xian” 尚賢 trilogy of the Mozi, as well as in the found texts Rongchengshi 容成氏, Zigao 子羔 and Bao xun 保訓. See Sarah Allan, Buried Ideas: Legends of Abdication and Ideal Government in Early China (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2015).

109. Guodian Chumu zhujian, 158. The addition of the three missing characters in brackets [知其能] is unproblematic, as they are supplied by parallelism with the two previous sentences. See Li Ling 李零, Guodian Chujian jiaoduji 郭店楚簡校讀記 (Beijing: Zhongguo renmin daxue, 2002), 95.

110. I am referring the reader to the pages that show the slips’ photographs, and to the number of the slips where the text I am quoting appears.

111. The precondition of rectifying oneself through self-cultivation before attempting to govern the world is a common theme in early Chinese political texts. The locus classicus in the Analects reads: 子曰：苟正其身矣，於從政乎何有？不能正其身，如正人何？ (“The Master said: If a minister rectifies himself, what difficulty will he have in assisting in government? If he cannot rectify himself, how can he rectify others?”) The same theme appears with similar phrasing in parallel passages in Shuoyuan jinzhu jinyi 1.41 and Kongzi jiayu 孔子家語, ed. Wang Yuan 王淵 (Shanghai: Shanghai guji, 1987), 2.15.

112. Guodian Chumu zhujian, 157.

113. Puett, The Ambivalence of Creation, 27–28 and 35–36.

114. sheng 生 can be read as “being born” in the royal family with the succeeding king position, as in my translation above, or as sheng 升, to raise as Son of Heaven, much as Shun would raise after Yao despite his plebeian origins. As Cook notes, in the received literature there is more evidence for Yao having received the throne through hereditary succession than by abdication. See Cook, The Bamboo Texts of Guodian, vol. 1, 559, footnote 87. Although it seems open to interpretation in this text, I would suggest that, Tang Yu zhi dao being an open and unapologetic statement in favor of abdication, had the author wanted to claim non-royal origins for Yao, he would have done so more explicitly.

115. Li Ling reads yu 於 as wei 為. Li Ling, Guodian Chujian jiaoduji, 98. Also in Li Ling “Guodian Chujian jiaoduji” 郭店楚簡校讀記, Daojia wenhua yanjiu 17 (1999), 455–56.

116. Zhou Fengwu ends the sentence here, and Cook follows. I agree with this arrangement. See Fengwu, Zhou 周鳳五, “Guodian Chumu zhujian ‘Tang Yu zhi Dao’ xinshi” 郭店楚墓竹簡唐虞之道新釋, Zhongyang yanjiuyuan lishi yuyan yanjiusuo jikan 70.3 (1999), 739–59Google Scholar; and Cook, The Bamboo Texts of Guodian, vol. 1, 559, footnote 90.

117. Missing characters. Li Ling supplies them with xian 賢 and sui 雖. Li Ling, Guodian Chujian jiaoduji, 98. I follow Zhou Fengwu, “Guodian Chumu zhujian ‘Tang Yu zhi Dao’ xinshi,” and Cook, The Bamboo Texts of Guodian, in the choice of characters, but not in their reading.

118. I follow Li Ling, Guodian Chujian jiaoduji, 98, in reading bing 並as bing 秉, to grasp.

119. The editors rendered this graph as jun 均: “all,” “equally.” Even though the change in meaning is not decisive, I follow Li Ling, Guodian Chujian jiaodjui, 98, in reading jiang 將.

120. Li Ling punctuates with a comma where other editors have seen a full stop. I follow Li Ling, Guodian Chujian jiaoduji, 98, and Chen Wei 陳偉, Guodian zhushu bieshi 郭店竹書別釋 (Wuhan: Hubei jiaoyu, 2012) to see the entire sentence as a hypothetical conditional: “had he not yet” (wei chang 未嘗), “then, even though” (cong 縱). For a summary of other arrangements and word choices, see Cook, The Bamboo Texts of Guodian, vol. 1, 559 and Allan, Buried Ideas, 130.

121. I follow Li Ling, Guodian Chujian jiaoduji, 98, in reading yu 與 as ju 舉, to elevate.

122. See Valmisa, “Beyond our Control?”

123. This graph has been read as shen 身 (“his person”) by the original editors, and as sheng 升, (“to elevate”) by Qiu Xigui and others. I follow Li Ling, Guodian Chujian jiaoduji, 98, in reading deng 登, with the similar meaning of “climbing up,” “rising.” All choices point at the same reading.

124. I follow Li Ling’s reading of this graph as zhuan 專, “especial,” “unique.” Another possible reading is liu 流, in the sense of “to give oneself to abandon.” See Cook, The Bamboo Texts of Gudodian, vol. 1, 560. I understand bu zhuan 不專 in the same sense given in other early texts of not acting arbitrarily and tyrannically according to one’s own wishes. See, for instance, Wenzi 4: 5b (不為始，不專己), and Qian fu lun jian jiaozheng 潛夫論箋校正, attributed to Wang Fu 王符, ed. Peng Duo 彭鐸 (Taipei: Zhonghua, 1985), 6.25.293 (不專任以斷事). If we read the graph as zhuan 專, it can also be understood in the sense of “monopolizing” (the throne, or its benefits; see Allan, Buried Ideas, 93–95) within a family lineage. Namely, the opposite of abdication, as in the opening sentence of the manuscript: 唐虞之道，禪而不專 (“The way of Tang and Yu was to abdicate and not to monopolize”) (Li Ling, Guodian Chujian jiaoduji, 95).

125. Other texts, such as the manuscript from the Shanghai Museum Collection Zigao 子羔, and the Zhanguo ce 戰國策, coincide in that Yao found Shun in the middle of the countryside, that is, far away from the court. See Cook, The Bamboo Texts of Guodian, vol. 1, 560, footnote 102.

126. The idea of rising to a high position or being morally superior without showing pride is a common theme in early texts. For superiority in terms of moral character, see the Analects, which contrasts the superior and inferior person in this way: 君子泰而不驕，小人驕而不泰 (“The gentleman is poised and not arrogant; the base person is arrogant and not poised”) (Lun yü zhushu 13.119b). For superiority in terms of position, see Zhong yong describing the gentleman: 是故居上不驕，為下不倍 (“Thus, when occupying a high position he is not arrogant, and in a low position he is not insubordinate”) (Zhong yong zhushu 31.898a). A closer contrast to the one that appears in Tang Yu zhi dao is found in Lüshi chunqiu 1.2.21: 上為天子而不驕，下為匹夫而不惛 (“Acting above as the Son of Heaven he is not arrogant; acting below as a common man he is not depressed”).

127. Allan, Buried Ideas, 109.

128. Allan, Buried Ideas, 109.

129. A reader interested in literary and philosophical comparisons will like to know that there are similar lines of argument in the Western tradition. Famously, Petrarch’s Remedies Against Fortuna reinterpreted the Stoic standpoint towards fate and created a therapeutic manual to learn to cope with Fortuna’s capricious lashes. The advice was to develop indifference and distance: to learn to care as little for lucky outcomes as for disastrous ones.

130. On “understanding ming” as a precondition to becoming a gentleman, see the Analects: 不知命，無以為君子也 (“If one does not understand ming, one does not have the means to become a gentleman”) (Lun yü zhushu 20.180a).

131. On the standard conception and theory of agency, see Markus Schlosser, “Agency,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Fall 2015 edition, ed. Edward N. Zalta, https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2015/entries/agency/.

132. Latour, Bruno, Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 71Google Scholar.

133. Latour, Reassembling the Social, 52–53.

134. Latour, Reassembling the Social, 54. When actors have more than one figuration, or no explicit figuration yet, Latour calls them “actants.”

135. The early Chinese loose identifications of a hybrid and obscure agency behind certain actions, events, or behaviors, as in “x is due to fate,” should remind us of today’s equally loose ascriptions of actions, events, and behaviors to similarly hybrid and obscure entities such as “culture,” as in “she did x because it is her culture.”

136. Latour, Reassembling the Social, 56.

137. Zhuangzi jijie 23.201.

138. Liezi jishi 6.6.203.

139. Shuo yuan jinzhu jinyi 17.7b–8a.

140. Latour, Reassembling the Social, 58.

141. Mozi xiangu 墨子閒詁, ed. Sun Yiran 孫詒讓 (Taipei: Shijie, 1962), 7.27: 182.

142. This is also the case of the personification of life span as a deity, Siming, the Manager of Allotments. As a subjective and intentional entity, Siming displays capacity to comprehend and respond to human queries, as well as to act through its own power.

143. See Robinson, Edward Heath, “A Theory of Social Agentivity and its Integration into the Descriptive Ontology for Linguistic and Cognitive Engineering,” International Journal on Semantic Web and Information Systems 7.4 (2011), 62–86CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Some scholars have already suggested something similar. Chen Daqi 陳大齊, referring to the Mengzi’s observation that “what is done without no one doing it, is due to Heaven” (莫之為而為者，天也), interprets that Heaven acts through human agency. See Chen, Mengzi dai jie lu 孟子待解錄 (Taipei: Taiwan shangwu, 1981), 94–96. See the discussion in Shun, Mencius and Early Chinese Thought, 77.

144. Mengzi zhushu 2B.48a.

145. Lun heng jiaoshi 54.775.

146. Lun heng jiaoshi 54.776.

147. Zhuangzi jijie 5.52.

148. Zhuangzi jijie 6.69.

149. Zhuangzi jijie 17.145.

150. In his article in defense of fatalism, Solomon explained that “Fate and fatalism can exist without acknowledging any agency. The emphasis is on the narrative where outcomes are doomed necessary, and not in the agency producing them.” See Robert C. Solomon, “On Fate and Fatalism,” 442. His study does not concern Chinese views of fate and fatalism. Speaking specifically for the early Chinese case, I agree with his general claim in that narratives privilege the necessary character of outcomes over the means or the agency that make these outcomes happen. However, in early China fate is thought of as an agent, even though an agent whose theory of action remains unknowable.

151. The term “double contingency” was first coined by Parsons, Talcott, The Social System (New York: Free Press, 1951)Google Scholar.

152. Sloterdijk, Selected Exaggerations, 266.

153. Sloterdijk, Selected Exaggerations, 266–67.

154. I have discussed some of these strategies in Valmisa, “Beyond our Control?” and at length in “Changing Along with the World: Adaptive Agency in Early China,” Ph.D. dissertation (Princeton University, 2017), ch. 4, 253–328.