Legal Commentary (Volumes 1 and 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 each pursued their knowledge in conflicting ways, mostly criticizing the sages and resorting to strange and convoluted arguments, using deceptive rhetoric to disrupt social affairs. Even minor debates ultimately broke the great principles and misled the masses, causing them to drown in their own knowledge without realizing their 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 diverged from the views of the sages and was somewhat at odds with the classics. Therefore, when people asked Yang Xiong, he would often respond using 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 acknowledged that Fayan holds a certain position in the history of materialist development in ancient China and is an essential and indispensable work for those studying this topic.