Cultural and political authority in fourteenth century China: Song Lian (1310-1381) as practitioner of the Dao and architect of the Ming empire

Ph.D.This thesis aims to study Song Lian’s intellectual trajectory and political engagement in the fourteenth century. As a reputable literatus in the late Yuan and a major counselor of Ming Taizu at the Ming founding, Song Lian represented both the daotong (moral authority) and the zhengtong (political authority) of his time. On the one hand, he continued his teachers’ work of defining the Wuzhou neo-Confucians as the orthodox inheritors of Zhu Xi’s moral authority. On the other hand, he was engaged in continuous negotiation between moral and political authority, and assisted Taizu in becoming a “sovereign-teacher”. His tragic death was a result of the rising tension between the two authorities. Three major aspects of the fourteenth century are revised over the course of Song Lian’s life. Above all, Song Lian lived most of his life in the Yuan, under the alien Mongol rule and through the enduring turbulences attendant on dynastic change. Although marginalized in modern scholarship, the Yuan bridged the Song and the Ming, and formed a continuity between the three dynasties. Second, in the Yuan intellectual world, Cheng-Zhu neo-Confucianism was recognized as the state orthodoxy, while the Three Teachings increasingly converged. The Dao of Song Lian and a number of contemporary literati was not just elitist Cheng-Zhu Daoxue. It was also inclusive of Daoism and Buddhism. Under the construction of Song Lian and other scholar-officials, the Hongwu regime embodied a dualistic structure, with Confucian rituals in the seen world and spirits and ghosts in the unseen world, which corresponded with Taizu’s populist focus on the vast rural area. Finally, the unity of the Three Teachings in intellectual world and in state ideology was legitimized in Confucian discourse by the literati effort to restore antiquity. Open-minded literati like Song Lian invoked the ancient classics centered on the moral-metaphysical concept xin (heart-mind), a key notion in all Three Teachings, and in this way enriched and vitalized fourteenth century neo-Confucianism.本篇論文旨在研究宋濂在十四世紀的思想發展和政治活動。作為一位元末名士和明初太祖皇帝的重要參謀，宋濂是他那個時代政統和道統的代言人。他一方面繼承師長們的遺志，宣揚婺州學統為朱學世適，延續道統；另一方面，他調和文化與政治權力，輔佐明太祖成為一代“君師”。而政治和文化權力之間日益白熱化的角力最終導致了他悲劇性的死亡。通過對宋濂的研究，本文將主要審查十四世紀的三個方面。首先，宋濂的大部分人生都在元朝度過，活在異族統治下，浮沉於改朝換代的動蕩局勢中。元朝雖然在學術研究中處於邊緣地位，但它連接著宋明兩大漢族王朝，維繫著宋元明時代的延續性。其次，在元朝的文化界，程朱理學成為了官方正統，同時儒釋道三教也日趨融合。宋濂與大批同時代學者所尊的“道”不僅是精英主義的程朱之道，也是釋道兩家的道。宋濂和其同僚合力設計了融合三教的二元化政權架構，“明有禮樂，幽有鬼神”，與太祖的民粹主義導向和注重農村地區的戰略相呼應。再次，以宋濂為代表的思想開放的士大夫們在復古的旗幟下，對盛行於官方和民間的三教合一大潮作出了儒家語境下的解釋。他們從古代經典中發掘“心”這一跨越三教的古老概念的內涵，以此融會三教，給十四世紀的思想世界注入了全新的生命力。Lu, Chentong.Thesis Ph.D. Chinese University of Hong Kong 2019.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 206-229).Abstracts also in Chinese.Title from PDF title page (viewed on 7, April 2021)