Li Yousheng
The Tang Dynasty writer Liu Zongyuan wrote a short essay titled “Admonition Against the Enemy,” which is easy to read aloud and quite melodious. I have quoted it below for your enjoyment:
Everyone knows the enemy’s enmity, but not the greatest benefit; everyone knows the enemy’s harm, but not the greatest advantage. Qin, having conquered six states, was cautious and diligent…
Strong; after the six states were eliminated, Yi Yi perished. Jin defeated Chu at Yan, and Fan Wen became a threat; Li was not anticipated, and the whole country harbored resentment.
Mengsun hated Zang, and when Mengsun died, Zang mourned him, saying, “Medicine is gone, my death is imminent.” Even the wise, knowing this, still faced danger; how much more so should people today, who have never considered this? Fearing the enemy when they live, dancing when they leave, abandoning preparations and becoming complacent only leads to more harm. The existence of the enemy brings calamity, their departure invites transgression. Those who understand this will have great virtue and widespread fame. Punishing illness prolongs life, boasting of youth leads to a violent death; indulging in desires without restraint is not foolishness but senility and confusion. I composed this admonitory poem; those who ponder it will be without blame.
(Translation: Everyone knows the enemy’s wickedness, but few know its advantages; everyone knows the enemy’s harm, but few know its benefits. The Qin state, with six states as its enemies, diligently worked to strengthen its nation; after the six states were destroyed, the Qin dynasty became arrogant and quickly perished. The Jin army decisively defeated the Chu army at Yanling.) Fan Wenzi, a high-ranking official of the Jin state, was worried. Duke Li of Jin, ignoring Fan Wenzi’s warning, became increasingly arrogant, causing widespread resentment throughout the country, and ultimately leading to his assassination. Mengsun Su, a high-ranking official of the Lu state, hated Zangsun He. After Mengsun Su’s death, Zangsun He went to Mengsun Su’s house to offer condolences, weeping and saying, “The good medicine that could help me cure my illness, Mengsun Su, is dead, and I…” “I won’t live long.” Wise people understand this principle, yet they still encounter harm; how much more so modern people who don’t even consider it! They fear the existence of an enemy, and rejoice when it’s gone, lowering their guard and becoming complacent, thus creating even greater calamities. The existence of an enemy can avert disaster; the loss of an enemy leads to mistakes. Those who understand this principle have great virtue and widespread fame. Those who can prevent disease live long; those who rely on their strength are prone to sudden death from illness; those who indulge in desires and are wary are either foolish or muddleheaded. I wrote this poem, “Admonition Against Enemies,” hoping that those who reflect on its principles can avoid mistakes and disasters.
In this short essay, Liu Zongyuan discusses three pairs of enemies: Qin and the six other states, Jin and Chu, and the bureaucratic nobles of the two states of Lu.
Clan: Mengsun Su and Zangsun He.
The author once divided all human societies into genetically encoded primitive societies and artificial secondary societies and found that Chinese civilization originated in primitive societies, while the birthplace of Western civilization, Mediterranean civilization, originated in artificial secondary societies. The life order of primitive societies is based on natural human nature and is a broad aesthetic order, including emotional and psychological communication; the social order of secondary societies is based on rational value systems and corresponding social structures. [1,2] This different beginning influenced the war cultures of the East and the West [3] and also caused the difference in their concepts of friend and foe. This article is a supplement to the author’s long article on the war cultures of the East and the West. [3]
When discussing the primitiveness of Chinese religious culture, the author noted that the religious culture of primitive society can be summarized by animism. [4] Two- or three-year-old children would put their small pillows together with their large pillows and say, “The pillow wants to find its mother!” That is, they see the large pillow as the mother of the small pillow. This is how children infer the world around them from their own experience, and recognize themselves from their observation of the world around them, which is the unity of heaven and man. Animism means that members of primitive society regard the things around them as having thoughts and wills, just like themselves. Bound by this idea, they also understand their society in a similar way to the feudal states that appeared later. Liu Zongyuan’s short essay “Enemy Warning” puts the feudal states on the same level as individuals and treats them as equals. It is important to emphasize here that while both primitive and secondary societies have individuals, they are fundamentally different: Individuals in secondary societies are artificial beings, products of social culture and personal choices, and there are countless types; individuals in primitive societies are natural beings, and although they differ, there is only one type in contrast to artificial beings. Another point the author needs to emphasize is that stating there are countless types of artificial beings and only one type of natural being is necessary for the discussion in this article, and also to present the issue from the perspective of those living in secondary societies, thus adapting it to the reader’s viewpoint. Even the primitive tribes living in the rainforests of South America, isolated from the world, lead incredibly diverse lives, unknown and incomprehensible to us.
In Liu Zongyuan’s view, not only are feudal states and individuals the same, but so are mutually hostile individuals and mutually hostile feudal states. The beneficial effect of hostile individuals and feudal states on our side lies solely in their hostility, which compels us to be cautious and strive for strength. They are merely an external force that motivates us not to be lazy. This external force itself is the same as ourselves as individuals—the same thoughts, the same behaviors—and we need not concern ourselves with their differences. This is the meaning of the statement in this article that there is only one kind of natural person in primitive society. A somewhat inappropriate analogy: In the eyes of humans, billions of crows are all the same; in the eyes of crows, seven billion people are all the same. The author once argued that the left and right hemispheres of the human brain and their connections may be the neurological basis for the construction of secondary society by humankind. That is, the two hemispheres of the brain each represent the primary society and the secondary society, which strongly suggests that the primary society and the secondary society are equally complex and subtle, but the directions of complexity and subtlety are different, so we cannot make a comparison. [5]
During the Warring States period, China entered a secondary society. However, due to the long-standing influence of a primary, superpowered society, the progress of both individuals and society towards different types of man-made societies was minimal, a stark contrast to the vast and diverse world of contemporary Mediterranean civilization. According to Aristotle, the small region of Greece had over 150 city-states with distinct political systems worthy of description. In the view of Plato and Aristotle, all the states of China during the Warring States period could be categorized into one type: monarchies.
For over two hundred years during the Warring States period, seven powerful states—Qi, Chu, Yan, Han, Zhao, Wei, and Qin—coexisted with a dozen or so smaller states. Although all these states were monarchies, their political systems were not entirely the same. Taking the three most powerful states—Qin, Chu, and Qi—as examples, Qin’s politics were closer to Legalism, Chu’s closer to Daoism, and Qi and Lu’s politics were most deeply influenced by Confucianism. Qi had the famous Jixia Academy, Chu produced the great poet Qu Yuan, while Qin used officials as teachers and burned books. Qin’s Legalist politics were advantageous in warfare, and after unifying China for over a decade, it was destroyed by Xiang Yu and Liu Bang, both from Chu. Within a century, it returned to the Confucianism of Qi and Lu. This shift in ancient Chinese political thought was at least related to the different political tendencies of the three vassal states of Qin, Chu, and Qi. Rereading Liu Zongyuan’s “Admonitions Against Enemies,” one feels that Liu Zongyuan’s approach of treating all the vassal states together without considering their distinct political leanings during the Warring States period is somewhat biased. To the author’s knowledge, not only Liu Zongyuan, but throughout Chinese history, there has been little in-depth discussion of the different political directions of the various vassal states during the Warring States period, and even less attention has been paid to the drastically different directions and paths pointed out by the various schools of thought, as well as their respective advantages and disadvantages. In other words, the intellectual circles in Chinese history were not only influenced by the animism of primitive society, stubbornly judging others by their own standards, but also blind to the vast world of secondary society. They viewed the free individuals and political designs of secondary society from the perspective of the natural people of primitive society, believing that all the millions of crows in the world were the same. The knowledge and debating abilities of the philosophers of the Warring States period, such as Mozi, Mencius, Zhuangzi, and Han Feizi, were quite remarkable. As Liu Zongyuan said, although they attacked each other and secretly absorbed some of the other’s views to strengthen themselves, they lacked the open-mindedness to regard multiple doctrines as equal and to have a pluralistic value system. It is precisely because of this that, before they had a chance to fully appreciate the colorful cultural landscape of this land of China, Zhuangzi retreated from the world and wandered in a dreamlike realm, while Mencius, in a grand and bold manner, embraced the philosophy of self-transcendence.
The *Great Learning*, one of the Four Books, is generally attributed to Zeng Shen of the early Warring States period, who proposed the principles of self-cultivation, family management, governing the state, and bringing peace to the world. Using the experience of self-cultivation and family management to govern the state and bring peace to the world blatantly ignores the essential difference between primary and secondary societies. If the vast world of a secondary society has a thousand possible directions, there should be at least a thousand different ways to deal with it. Confucianism’s disregard for the complexity of the world, insisting on treating everything with the moral practices of self-cultivation and family management, is tantamount to using Leonardo da Vinci’s masterpieces to deflect artillery fire.
Western civilization originates from ancient Greek and Hebrew civilizations. The Hebrew Jewish tradition, known as monotheism, believes there is only one God; the great ancient Greek philosopher Plato proposed a singular ideal state, both illustrating a similar lack of understanding of the diversity of secondary societies in the West. However, their monotheism and ideal state were based on the reality of secondary societies, serving as a belief and ideal within such societies. In other words, they pursued unity behind the surface of the world, not focusing on daily life. Liu Zongyuan’s “The Enemy’s Admonition” and Zengzi’s “The Great Learning” aim to guide people’s daily lives. Plato’s ideal state views various existing political systems as degenerate forms of this ideal state. As a great Athenian philosopher, Plato’s ideal state drew more inspiration from Sparta, his rival to Athens, than from Athenian democracy. It is evident that Plato’s Republic represents a kind of purely rational thinking by philosophers that transcends the concept of self and enemy in reality, a transcendent perspective lacking in ancient China. From the Bible, we can see that Jews initially believed God Jehovah was the God of the Jews, while Christianity began to present God as the only God of mankind, thus forming the concept of equality before God, meaning that God himself transcends self and enemy.
In writing this article, I consulted the Baidu Baike and Wikipedia entries for the word “enemy.” Baidu Baike, written by Chinese people, provides a concise and clear definition and description of “enemy.” Wikipedia, however, offers numerous different interpretations and social contexts for the word “enemy,” leaving Chinese readers bewildered and unable to grasp the meaning. This clearly demonstrates that the differing concepts of friend and foe between the East and West have persisted for thousands of years, even to this day.
Like other religions, Hebrew Judaism advocates for tolerance towards enemies. Mahatma Gandhi said, “For those who follow the principle of ahimsa (not to harm or kill), there are no enemies in the world.” The principle of not harming or killing originates from an ancient Hindu tradition. The Jewish Encyclopedia states, “When a person finds that a friend and an enemy are both in need of help, he should help his enemy first, in order to restrain his inner evil tendencies.” Jesus said, “You have heard that you should love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” (Matthew 5:43-44) This adversarial attitude comes from an ancient Jewish tradition. As the Bible says, “If you find your enemy’s ox or donkey wandering the way, bring it back to him. And if you see your enemy’s donkey lying under a heavy load, do not leave it; lift the load with the donkey’s owner.” (Exodus 23:4-5) The Bible’s Proverbs says, “Do not rejoice when your enemy stumbles, lest the Lord sees and be displeased, and turn his anger from your enemy to you.” “If your enemy is hungry, give him food; if he is thirsty, give him drink. For in doing this you heap burning coals on his head, and the Lord will reward you.” (24:17, 25:21-22)
These words in the Bible can be seen as a further extension of the theme of Liu Zongyuan’s essay “On Enemies”: Since the existence of enemies is beneficial, and one cannot live after the enemy’s demise, why not help the enemy while one is still alive? Only by being enemies with one another can one live a long life and ensure the eternal stability of the nation. This is also what the Bible says: God rewards those who help their enemies. However, after the Warring States period in China, there was a tradition of unified cultural autocracy. Thus, Zhuge Liang stated in his “Later Memorial on the Expedition,” “The Han and the traitors cannot coexist, and the royal cause cannot be confined to a corner,” meaning that the enemy and the traitors could not coexist; it was a matter of life and death. Therefore, Liu Zongyuan’s essay “Admonition Against Enemies” abruptly ends when discussing the benefits of the enemy’s existence, without mentioning how to help the enemy to ensure their long-term existence. The original social superpowers of the Xia, Shang, and Zhou dynasties were not like this.
Early societies exhibited tolerance and forbearance towards others, but this differed from the biblical and Platonic concept of transcending self and enemy. Confucius said, “Do not do to others what you would not have them do to you.” The *Guoyu* (Discourses of the States) records that when the Zhou dynasty historian Shi Bo answered a question from Duke Huan of Zheng, he criticized King You of Zhou for his “abandoning harmony and embracing uniformity,” saying: “Harmony truly produces things, while uniformity leads to stagnation. Using one thing to balance another is called harmony, thus enabling abundance and attracting all things; but if uniformity is used to enhance uniformity, everything will be discarded. Therefore, the ancient kings mixed earth with metal, wood, water, and fire to create all things. Thus, they harmonized the five flavors to please the palate, adjusted the four limbs to protect the body, harmonized the six musical pitches to sharpen the ears, and rectified the seven bodily functions.” “To govern the mind, to pacify the eight categories to cultivate adulthood, to establish the nine principles to establish pure virtue, to combine the ten numbers to train the hundred bodies. To produce a thousand kinds, to possess ten thousand methods, to calculate countless affairs, to gather countless materials, to collect the classics and income, to act with utmost rigor. Therefore, the king dwells in the fields of the nine provinces, collects the classics and income to feed the millions of people, thoroughly trains and enables them to use it, and harmony and joy are as one. This is the ultimate harmony.” Shi Bo’s words clearly possess the elaborate and dramatic style of later Han dynasty prose, and like music, rely on the repetition of melodies to create a unique state of mind and emotion.
The combined length of the Five Classics and Four Books of ancient China is far shorter than that of the Bible. In the Bible, the aforementioned attitude towards hostility is repeatedly stated, albeit with different wording, but with precise meaning, serving as a guideline for the behavior of members of a secondary religious community. The Analects, with just over 10,000 characters divided into 20 chapters, is often considered a book of proverbs and maxims. The Chinese version of the Bible, containing both the Old and New Testaments, comprises 1189 chapters and over 960,000 characters. The author has noted the different functions of language in primitive and secondary societies. In primitive societies, language was primarily used for psychological and emotional communication, representing the holistic expression of the deep-seated consciousness of the primitive society; in secondary societies, language was mainly used for exchanging information and creating a unified social ideology. [5] The Analects does not use the word “enemy”. In the early society, there was no real concept of friend or foe. Their concept of friend or foe was at most a decoration of the aesthetic order of the early society.
China entered a secondary society during the Warring States period, but influenced by long-term experiences of primitive social life, the Chinese intellectual community lagged far behind the West in developing secondary society, establishing personal activity space, and constructing corresponding social rules. The works of Chinese philosophers such as Mencius, Xunzi, and Zhuangzi consisted of only tens of thousands of words, incomparable to the multi-volume masterpieces of Plato and Aristotle: influenced by primitive society, the Chinese had not yet reached that level of depth in their discourse.
The author notes that before the Spring and Autumn Period, China largely maintained the status quo of a primitive superpower, where the defeated side had to submit to others. In contrast, within the Mediterranean civilization sphere, including ancient Greece, the defeated side typically became slaves. Chinese history lacks a typical slave society stage, resulting in a lack of concrete understanding of what slaves were. For example, in the Athenian city-state, the police were slaves; slaves cultivated the land for their masters while the masters participated in wars, whereas the slaves generally did not. During the Western Zhou Dynasty, Chinese citizens served as soldiers, while “wild people” did not. These “wild people” were actually non-Han people not controlled by the Western Zhou ruling class, so they likely also did not pay taxes. During the Warring States period, the military strength of the various states reached a level that allowed them to control entire territories for the first time. These “wild men” or ordinary farmers lost their ability to migrate freely and became a source of soldiers, leading to a significant increase in the army’s personnel and a shift from chariot warfare in the Spring and Autumn period to infantry warfare. In contrast, Greek slaves and their masters were members of the same economic entity, while Chinese farmers (“wild men”) had their own independent economy. This difference between East and West persisted throughout pre-modern history. The ancient Greek slave system was inherited by the Roman Empire, and in the Middle Ages, it transformed into a system of plantation owners and serfs dependent on those plantations, with the plantations employing knights for warfare. This largely similar system in the West led to the inheritance of Judaism and Plato’s ideal state by later generations, becoming the foundation of Christian civilization.
The social model of China since the Qin and Han dynasties is as follows:
The quasi-primitive society (Huang-Lao Legalism) that transformed the imperial court and its family.
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The bureaucratic and reserve intellectual group constitutes a secondary society (Confucianism).
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Village families (citizens) Quasi-primitive society (Taoism)
Huang Renyu is a famous professor and historian who teaches Chinese history in the United States and has a perspective that integrates East and West. He believes that Chinese history is politically mature, and a bureaucratic system and corresponding social structure that only modern countries have formed in the Qin and Han dynasties, namely the bureaucrats and reserve literati group in the above model diagram. The author notes that Chinese history can be seen as a process of political Confucianization. This process only went as far as the middle class. The court and emperors who did not reach the top of Confucianization did not establish a mechanism for the emperor to be produced by the imperial examination system. [6] As a result, the emperor could only “take turns, and it will be my turn next year”, with no room for compromise. That is, the so-called “Han and traitors cannot coexist” or “there can be no two masters under heaven”, which formed Liu Zongyuan’s limitation: he could not see the possible prospect of compromise and win-win between the enemy and himself. This shows us that Chiang Kai-shek and Mao Zedong, colleagues during the Kuomintang-Communist cooperation in Guangzhou, both came from the middle class as depicted in the above model, each leading their own peasant-led teams in a fierce competition. After Japan’s surrender, the Soviet Union, the United States, and the world’s public opinion urged the Kuomintang and the Communist Party to cooperate to form a coalition government. More than sixty years later, however, a coalition government is still nowhere in sight.
The difference between Eastern and Western concepts of friend and foe is related to their different views on freedom: Influenced by Taoist thought, especially Zhuangzi, ancient Chinese people regarded true freedom as detaching from worldly affairs and returning to the natural state of being in primordial society; while Western thinkers, including ancient Greece and Marxism, believed that only by transcending natural human desires and entering a state of pure rational thought could a person achieve true freedom. Marx viewed human nature (Gattungswesen, or species-being) as the sum total of human social relations. He argued that a person must recognize their alienation by existing social relations of production in order to develop true subjectivity, grasp life and the objective world, and become the true master of labor—all of which could only be realized in communist society. From the perspective of the natural beings of primitive society, everything in secondary society is an enemy, thus rendering further analysis and differentiation unnecessary. The so-called freedom of pure rational thought in the West is purely man-made, representing different social directions, inherently irreconcilable and a matter of life and death. Only by respecting the rights of the other side can compromise and a win-win situation be possible. As for the natural beings of primitive society, before entering postmodernity, the West viewed them as barbaric and backward.
Documents
[1]You-Sheng Li (2005): A New Interpretation of Chinese Taoist
Philosophy.London, Canada: Taoist Recovery Centre.
[2] Li Yousheng (2009): Looking at life and the world from a different perspective: Chinese Taoism in the 21st century. Beijing: Thread-bound Book Bureau. pp. 253-56; pp. 189-194.
[3] Yu Sheng (2012): The difference between the war cultures of the East and West can be seen from the fact that Duke Xiang of Song was defeated by Chu because he adhered to the rules of war.
(From *Learning Lamp*, Issue 24) (http://confucius2000.com/writer/yousheng.htm)
[4] You Sheng (2011): The Primitive Nature of Chinese Religious Culture as Seen from Confucius’s Attitude Towards Ghosts and Gods. (Xue Deng, Chapter 18)
(Issue) (http://confucius2000.com/writer/yousheng.htm)
[5] You-Sheng Li (2010): The Ancient Chinese Super State of Primary
Societies: Taoist Philosophy for the 21st Century. Bloomington, USA: Author House.
[6] Li Yousheng (2012): The Imperial Examination System and Plato’s Republic: The Historical Success of the Confucianization of Chinese Politics and
Analysis of potential prospects. From the author’s website (http://taoism21cen.com).
author By Dr. You-Sheng Li
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