Legal Discourse and Explanations (Volume 1 and 2)

Author: Wang Rongbao
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-03-01
Features: The Fayan is one of Yang Xiong's (53 BC–18 AD) representative philosophical works. The Biography of Yang Xiong in the Book of Han records his self-introduction, which states: "Xiong saw the various schools of thought each pursuing their knowledge in conflicting ways, mostly criticizing the sages and resorting to strange, convoluted arguments and sophistries to disrupt the affairs of the world. Even minor debates ultimately broke the great principles and misled the masses, causing them to drown in their hearsay without realizing their own errors. As for Sima Qian's Records of the Grand Historian, which covers the six states, the Chu-Han period, and concludes with the Mark of the Unicorn, it often differs from the sages' judgments and deviates significantly from the classics. Therefore, when people asked Xiong, he would often respond using the Fayan, which he compiled into thirteen volumes, modeled after the Analects, and titled Fayan." This shows that the main purpose of this book was to defend and promote Confucianism. However, at the same time, he also criticized the religious superstitions of the time, such as the theory of divine-human interaction and the identification of spirits and deities, to some extent based on materialist viewpoints. He was highly praised by the contemporary materialist thinker Huan Tan and had a significant influence on Wang Chong, a distinguished materialist philosopher of the Eastern Han Dynasty. It should be affirmed that the Fayan holds a certain position in the history of materialist development in ancient China and is a crucial and indispensable work for those studying this topic.