Legal Discourse and Explanations (Vol. 1-2)

Author: Wang Rongbao
Publisher:
Publishing Date: 1997-10-01
Features: Fayan is one of the representative philosophical works of Yang Xiong (53 BC–18 AD). The Biography of Yang Xiong in the Book of Han states in his preface that he saw how the various schools of thought ran in different directions with their knowledge, mostly criticizing the sages and resorting to strange, convoluted arguments and sophistries to disrupt the affairs of the time. Even small debates ultimately broke the great principles and misled the masses, causing them to drown in what they heard 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 ends with the Year of the Auspicious Deer, it did not align with the judgments of the sages and was somewhat at odds with the classics. Therefore, when people asked Yang Xiong, he often used Fayan to respond, compiling it into thirteen volumes modeled after the Analects, 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, an outstanding materialist philosopher of the Eastern Han Dynasty. It should be affirmed that Fayan holds a certain position in the history of the development of ancient Chinese materialism and is an essential and indispensable book for those studying this topic.