Ming Dynasty middle and late late learning movement (1522-1626)

Author: Chen Shilong
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-12-01
Features: This book consists of an introduction, six main chapters, a conclusion, and an appendix, primarily exploring the approximately one hundred-year development of lectures from Wang Yangming's teachings to the Donglin School during the middle and late Ming Dynasty, as well as the relationship between lectures and issues such as politics, academia, and social morality. The lecture movement in the Ming Dynasty was a relatively unique cultural phenomenon of the Ming Dynasty, reflecting the development of the economy and the popularization of culture, and also a demand that emerged in the construction of the Wang Yangming school. During the five dynasties of Jiajing, Longqing, Wanli, Taichang, and Tianqi, the lecture movement spread across the Jiangnan region, relying on academies, guild halls, study halls, private rooms, ancestral halls, examination halls, temples, Taoist temples, and beautiful natural landscapes, particularly in southern Jiangsu, Jiangxi, and Zhejiang. In his later years, Wang Yangming devoted most of his energy to lecture activities, establishing the earliest lecture clubs—the Jishan Academy Lecture Club and the Zhongtian Pavilion Lecture Club—and encouraging the development of regional lecture clubs like the Xiyin Club. After Wang Yangming's death, the unfair treatment he received from the court inspired his disciples to promote his teachings through lectures and to establish academies to honor their master. Regional lecture clubs began to flourish, and the sense of camaraderie among disciples strengthened. Scholars not only lectured in their hometowns but also held the Jiang-Zhe Conference with fellow disciples, even those who held official positions continued to lecture. However, the drawbacks of the rapidly developing lecture movement, along with the excesses of Wang Yangming's later followers, led to its peak in the late Jiajing period and subsequent suppression by Gao Gong and Zhang Juzheng in the Longqing and early Wanli years. Although the suppression of lectures could not be separated from political backgrounds, after the year 1582, some scholars began to reflect on the problems of the lecture movement itself and assigned it the responsibility of maintaining or rebuilding social morality. Representative figures include Geng Dingxiang and the Donglin School. While the Donglin School sought to revitalize social morality, it also advocated for studying the works of Cheng and Zhu, gradually distancing itself from Wang Yangming's teachings in terms of purpose, thus marking the beginning of the revival of Zhu Xi's thought in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties. During this process, the intertwined issues of politics, academia, and morality made the external environment of lectures increasingly hostile, eventually leading to the large-scale suppression of academies in the sixth year of the Tianqi reign, with the destruction of the Shoushan Academy symbolizing the end of the lecture movement in the Ming Dynasty. Therefore, reviewing the more than one hundred years of the lecture movement in the middle and late Ming Dynasty reveals a clear trend from openness to introspection. This seems to differ from the general characterization of late Ming thought as vibrant and enlightenment-oriented in intellectual history. The author also argues that the lecture movement originated from Wang Yangming and Wang Gen, dividing into two branches: academic-style lectures and popular-style lectures. When the two branches largely overlapped and supported each other during the Jiajing period, the lecture movement was open, active, and radical. However, political setbacks and the concern of orthodox scholars for social morality led to increasingly harsh conditions for popular-style lectures, while academic-style lectures became more conservative, gradually drifting apart. Supported by political and economic power, academic-style lectures continuously squeezed the space for popular-style lectures, ultimately driving the thinkers of popular-style lectures out of the mainstream of the lecture movement. By then, the introspective and defensive characteristics of late Ming lectures had largely taken shape, and were later inherited by the lecture movement in the early Qing Dynasty.