Huang Tsung-hsi was a Chinese scholar and political philosopher who, with other Chinese intellectuals, sought to provide a philosophical framework that would open up new vistas of scholarship and restore morality and equity to Chinese politics.
Background
Huang Tsung-hsi was born on September 24, 1610 in Yuyao, China.
Huang Tsung-hsi was the son of Huang Tsun-su, a prominent official in Peking and a member of the Eastern Grove Society (Tung-lin), which opposed the rapacious activities of Wei Chung-hsien, a powerful and unscrupulous eunuch, who managed to dominate the young emperor and thus rose to almost absolute control in the court.
Career
In 1625 Huang Tsung-hsi set forth for Beijing, determined to avenge his father's death by killing the officials involved. But before he could carry out his planned revenge, a new emperor was enthroned who purged the eunuch faction, and Wei Chung-hsien committed suicide.
In the 1630s he had joined the Fu-she, a society similar to that in which his father had participated, and once he was almost arrested for signing a petition deploring corruption in the court of the late Ming dynasty. Fight against the Manchu In spite of his forthright criticisms, however, Huang remained loyal to the Ming dynasty and was outraged by the Manchu conquest of China in 1644.
Like many other talented scholars of his day, Huang spent much of the 1640s engaged in anti-Manchu resistance movements which centered on various descendants of the Ming imperial house in South China. Huang attained very high political office in the administration of one of these claimants to the throne of the fallen Ming dynasty. But the cause was hopeless, and Huang Tsung-hsi retired from his political and military activities in 1649.
From 1649 Huang refused to accept service under the Manchus, the Ch'ing dynasty, and instead followed the path of several of his associates in choosing to dedicate his life to scholarship. Even in 1679, when the emperor, K'ang-hsi, offered him a chance to compete in a special examination and to help compile the official history of Huang's beloved Ming dynasty, Huang refused to accept.
Huang's writings are characterized by their breadth of interest and their systematic and factual content. Huang had a deep interest in the Chinese classics and wrote many critical analyses dealing with earlier periods in Chinese philosophy. Among his several works of criticism was his Ming-ju hsüeh-an (Records of Confucian Thought in the Ming Period), a monumental multi-volume accomplishment, which was one of the first comprehensive attempts at a systematic analysis of a period in intellectual history.
He wrote several works of history and spent considerable effort on histories of the Southern Ming loyalist regimes which sprouted up after the Manchu conquest. Huang was also interested in literature and compiled several anthologies, as well as writing his own prose and poetry. Huang Tsung-hsi's most famous work was his Ming-i tai-fang lu (1662; A Plan for a Prince). In this volume he developed his political philosophy by making not only a number of general premises but also suggesting practical reforms.
Huang argued that government must promote the happiness of the people. Feeling that the imperial government had become too autocratic, Huang urged emperors to place more responsibility in the hands of their ministers and to revise the law codes in the interests of the common people.
Huang was certainly not suggesting a democratic government, he was attempting to provide more equitable guidelines for imperial China.
Connections
Huang Zongxi was married to Ye Baolin, the daughter of a well-known writer and playwright.