Debates around Jixia: argument and intertextuality in Warring States writings associated with Qi.

• Author: Weingarten, Oliver
• Position: Critical essay

1. JIXIA: INTELLECTUAL ACTIVITY AND ROYAL PATRONAGE

The so-called Jixia Academy has been considered one of the foremost intellectual centers of early China. It has been portrayed as a place where talented thinkers could discuss political and philosophical matters under royal patronage, enjoying a "proto-form of 'intellectual freedom.'" (1) It has been compared to a modern "think tank," (2) and the notion has been voiced that the atmosphere at Jixia was "pluralistic, free, and equitable". (3) According to another scholar, this was a "free podium for debate" in a "democratic system for aristocrats". Jixia has also been identified as one among several similar institutions in the Warring States period that occupied an intermediary position between the aristocratic "palaces of learning" (xuegong) of the Spring and Autumn period and before, and the system of state-sanctioned erudites (boshi) that took shape under the Han. (4) A recent monograph on the topic pronounces: "The political regime in Qi under the Tians energetically initiated the Jixia Academy (Jixia xuegong) and attracted numerous scholars from the other states to come and give lectures, so that the academy quickly turned into a scholarly and cultural center that was famous everywhere, far and near, and into a place that was teeming with scholars from all different traditions."5 Famously, the men who came to Jixia "debated without being involved in government", (6) and several of them are said to have consistently declined official posts. (7)

It may be tempting to view Jixia as a place that saw the first sprouts of free and equal intellectual debate, and to search for parallels with Plato's Academy. (8) For a Mainland Chinese scholar, to do so is an eminently political act, and this may explain the tendency in recent publications to project ideals of free speech onto Jixia. Unfortunately, the surviving sources are "meager" and "often late." (9) They do not allow for more than educated guesses concerning the history and institutional arrangements of the place. An academy in the strict sense of the word it was probably not, as Nathan Sivin has convincingly argued on the basis of a careful analysis of the available textual evidence. As he points out, a crucial Shiji passage on Qi patronage "fails to mention any organization," while some later, even less reliable sources "allude to buildings without occupants or formal organization." (10) He concludes that "Sinologues have wishfully imposed [a] medley of Chinese imperial and modern Western institutions on a chaotic, creative set of circumstances that prevailed shortly before the empire came into being"; they have, "as the buzzword puts it, socially constructed a Chi-hsia Academy out of a tiny subset of the Ch'i kings' decorative clients." (11) Given such uncertainties, it may not be coincidental that one of the earliest monographs on the issue defines the object of its investigation as a group of scholars collectively labeled the "Jixia school" (Jixia pai), whereas the term "academy" (xueyuan) appears only to have become more prominent in later publications. (12)

Despite the fragmentary state of the extant evidence, however, even such a decidedly cautious scholar as Nathan Sivin recognizes "the large role of Ch'i in forming institutions of patronage." (13) More recently, in an important study of intellectual patronage in the state of Qi, Andrew Meyer has reviewed Sivin's arguments and offered an alternative picture. Meyer demonstrates that while other retinues of clients usually comprise motley assemblies of men with a variety of talents, "only intellectuals are ever described as being associated with Jixia." (14) From a careful interpretation of a number of sources, among them anecdotal narratives, Meyer concludes "that the Jixia knights were not, in essence, the personal clients of the Qi king, but were instead the clients of the Qi state." (15) The same evidence indicates that "Jixia was a place populated by Warring States intellectuals, and one where their theoretical concerns were taken very seriously. The economic foundations of this micro-society were underwritten by the Qi kings, but its culture seems to have been a highly autonomous product of the 'scholar-knights' who enjoyed its largesse." (16)

Jixia may not have been an academy proper. But it is safe to conclude that Qi in the latter half of the fourth century B.C.E. was an important center of intellectual activity that attracted not so much the motley groups of retainers with practical and political skills characteristic of private retinues, but rather men who were eventually associated with some of the best known writings from the period. As a result of their presence, Qi must have been a place characterized by a lively exchange of ideas, by competition for recognition and patronage, and by a constant interplay of mutual influences between proponents of different political and philosophical convictions. (17)

A better understanding of such interactions is unlikely to emerge from imaginative reconstructions of how Jixia may have worked as a sanctuary of free speech, if it ever was one. But it may be fruitful to understand Jixia as a metonymic reference to fourth-century Qi as a locus of intellectual activity and to the social and political milieu that fostered this activity. As Meyer points out, the kings of the Tian clan "gathered intellectuals at their court in Linzi and set them to work on producing various cultural artifacts, among which were some of the most representative 'Masters' texts of the period." (18) In his analysis, Meyer focuses on Guanzi and Yanzi chunqiu, texts that "do not explicitly identify themselves as Tian patronage texts" but can be "persuasively read as products of such a social context." (19) The Guanzi in particular has been widely deemed a repository of Jixia thought. (20) Recent Chinese publications adhere to this paradigm, variously identifying the book as the product of a "Guanzi school of Jixia learning", (21) as the result of a process of textual accretion around a core of original writings by Guan Zhong, (22) or as the work of "a group of Legalist personalities" at Jixia. (23) The books Mengzi and Xunzi can likewise be understood as works that were at least partly influenced by the intellectual atmosphere in Jixia, though Meng Ke is never explicitly associated with Jixia, (24) and Xun's biography is surrounded by some uncertainties. (25)

Given the scarcity of detailed information on such fundamental questions as the concrete practical arrangements at Jixia as well as the time and circumstances of its establishment as a center of patronage, it appears unwise to give too much space to speculations on its institutional status. It may well be that there never was a formal institution with a precise founding date. An alternative way to approach Jixia as a locality that hosted intellectually active royal retainers is through relationships between texts, often scattered across different books, that can be grouped together on the basis of intertextual links, and through sources that depict persons explicitly associated with Jixia. (26) No direct testimony securely attributable to these men survives, since most of the writings ascribed to them in the bibliographic catalogue of the Hanshu are long lost. (27) Furthermore, portrayals of "Jixia gentlemen" suggest that they were at least as concerned with political counsel and oratory as with the production of writings. In fact, they are described as "scholars engaged in culture, learning, and peripatetic persuasion" and as "disputers of Jixia", (28) a fact which suggests to Jean Levi that Jixia "has a metonymic value and does not refer to membership in an institution, but simply connotes virtuosity in debating." (29) A number of narratives suggest "that participation in debates was a hallmark of Jixia affiliation." (30) Despite the scarcity of reliable information, one may assume that such portrayals to some extent reflect salient aspects of these men's teachings and attitudes as well as issues that informed their activities in the state of Qi.

The present study investigates a network of textual and thematic connections between writings which feature persons associated with Jixia and with Qi in order to gain a better understanding of the political ideas which circulated in this milieu and of their interrelatedness. The focus will fall on a body of dialogues from Mengzi and a number of related texts found mainly in Zhanguo ce and Yanzi chunqiu. None of these texts, it has to be added, will be treated as a historical source that speaks to the desire to acquire accurate knowledge about actual persons, events, or places. Rather, the dialogues under investigation will be treated as products of creative and ideologically motivated acts of reimagination, which tell us more about the concerns of their authors than about their protagonists and the events they represent. Nonetheless, it is assumed that they reflect, however dimly, some of the issues and debates of late fourth-century Qi.

In addition to illuminating discussions of princely wastefulness and the exploitation of the populace current in the milieu of Qi royal clients, the article also addresses the issue of textual stratification in Mengzi, particularly in chapter IB, "Liang Hui wang xia". In doing so, it attempts to demonstrate the usefulness of intertextual features as a method to reconstruct networks of debate across early Chinese writings, continuing and expanding upon previous work done in this area. (31)

In what follows, the article discusses dialogues between King Xuan of Qi (319-301 B.C.E.) and Master Meng in the book Mengzi, demonstrating how the entire body of such dialogues can be divided into hostile (section 2.1) and supportive ones that advocate the notion of "sharing pleasures" (2.2), each of these two groups reflecting opposing attitudes toward the king (2.3). The discussion is then...