Huang Zongxi

Works

• 1663Waiting for the Dawn (Mingyi daifang lu)

  A plan for a dynasty yet to come: the ruler exists for the people, law must serve all under Heaven, and schools should judge right and wrong.

Position

“Waiting for the Dawn” is the sharpest premodern Chinese critique of autocracy. In antiquity, Huang argued, rulers laboured for all under Heaven; later rulers treated the empire as their private property, so that the ruler became the great harm to the world. Ministers serve the people, not one family; laws protecting a dynasty are “unlawful laws”. Schools should be forums where scholars judge right and wrong, even against the emperor, and a chief minister should check the throne. He drew on Mencius and, via Liu Zongzhou, on Wang Yangming’s school. Late Qing reformers reprinted it as a native case for constitutional government, though it stops short of popular sovereignty.

Life & context

Huang Zongxi was born in 1610 in Yuyao (Zhejiang). His father, an official of the reformist Donglin faction, died in prison in 1626 after persecution by the eunuch Wei Zhongxian; Huang later studied with the philosopher Liu Zongzhou. After the Manchu conquest of 1644 he fought for some years in the Ming resistance. He then lived as a scholar, refused office under the Qing and died in 1695.

Further main works

• Records of Ming Scholars (Mingru xue’an, 1676)
• Records of Song and Yuan Scholars (Song Yuan xue’an, begun by Huang, completed by others, printed in the 19th century)