黄宗羲

作品

• 1663明夷待访录

  为一个尚未到来的王朝所作的方案：君主为人民而存在，法必须服务于天下所有人，学校应当裁断是非。

立场

“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.

生平与背景

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.

其他主要作品

• Waiting for the Dawn (Mingyi daifang lu, 1663)
• 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)