Work · East Asian Philosophy
Balanced Inquiries (Lunheng)
Eighty-five essays, one of them lost, that test the beliefs of the Han age – portents, ghosts, the omniscience of the sages – against observation and argument: Heaven acts spontaneously and without purpose, and even Confucius, Mencius and Han Fei are criticised.
Introduction
The “Lunheng” – the title means roughly “discourses weighed in the balance” – is a collection of 85 essays, one of them lost, that Wang Chong wrote over many years in the second half of the first century. He summed up its aim in a phrase: to hate falsehood. Chapter after chapter takes up beliefs of his time – that Heaven sends portents and disasters in response to rulers’ conduct, that the dead become ghosts, that sages know things without learning – and tests them against observation, analogy and the consistency of the texts themselves. Chapters 28 to 30 apply the same method to Confucius, Han Fei and Mencius. The book circulated little at first and was later censured for its attacks on the sages; Alfred Forke’s English translation (1907–11) made it known in Europe, and twentieth-century Chinese scholars read it as an early example of a critical, evidence-based attitude.
Read the full text
Free full text, often an older edition or translation
Connections
Criticizes
- Analects (Lunyu)c. 450 BCE · Confucius
- Mengzic. 300 BCE · Mengzi (Mencius)
- Han Feizic. 235 BCE · Han Feizi
As of November 2026 · Improve this page · How Agora is made