Training Scholars not Politicians

Abstract

Conventional wisdom dictates that Chinese literati in the Qing dynasty (1644–1912), like their forerunners in previous dynasties, were politically active. Chinese Marxist historians tend to portray the Qing literati as politicians rather than scholars. Tang Zhiju, a China-based historian and the author of a book with an explicitly political title, Jindai Jingxue yu Zhengzhi (Modern Classical Learning and Politics), argues that the forefather of the Qing Evidential Research School, Gu Yanwu (1613–1682), used classical learning to maintain the Han people's national consciousness, and that the founders of the Gongyang New Text School, Zhuang Cunyu (1719–1788) and Liu Fenglu (1776–1829), applied the ‘sublime words with deep meaning’ in the Gongyang Chunqiu (Gongyang Commentary on Spring and Autumn Annals) to justify the Manchu's tianming (mandate of heaven). In late Qing, Tang contends, the New Text scholars Kang Youwei (1858–1927) and Liang Qichao (1873–1929) studied the classics with the intention of political reform, while the Old Text scholar Zhang Taiyan (1869–1936) developed the tradition in Confucianism of jingshi (managing the world) for anti-Manchu revolution.