Shao Yong

Shao Yong a philosopher and cosmologist of the Northern Song dynasty (1011-1077) whose numerical system of cosmic cycles and his speculative reconstruction of history made him one of the most distinctive thinkers of the Confucian revival.

Life and Background

Shao Yong was born in 1011 near Fan Yang in the north and moved with his family in childhood to Gongcheng in Henan, where he spent most of his life. His courtesy name was Yaofu and he was given the posthumous title Kangjie. As a young man he was a serious and solitary student, famous for the intensity of his application: he studied without a mat beneath him and without a warm hearth, disciplining his body in order to concentrate his mind.

He travelled in search of teachers and learning, visiting the great sites and scholars of his day, and he eventually settled in Luoyang, the old capital and a centre of learning in the north. There he made his home and gathered a circle of friends and disciples, among them the leading philosophers of the age. He refused the official posts repeatedly offered to him, choosing the freedom of the scholar and the teacher.

He was admired for his unworldly and cheerful character, his generosity and his freedom from ambition. The greatest figures of the age, including the two Cheng brothers, respected him and learned from him, though they did not accept all of his ideas. He died in 1077, leaving behind a body of writing on cosmology, history and the ordering of the world that stands apart from the work of his contemporaries.

The Numerology of the Cosmos

Shao Yong's philosophy was built upon number. He held that the world proceeds according to regular numerical patterns that can be discovered and expressed, and he developed an elaborate system in which the fundamental categories of the cosmos are multiplied and combined to yield the whole of its variety. His scheme was based on the doubling of the basic figures, producing a series that he understood as the generative matrix of all things.

He was especially concerned with time, and he set out a theory of vast recurring cycles. History, in his account, moves through immense periods of growth and decline, each with its phases of spring and autumn, summer and winter, so that the rise and fall of dynasties and civilisations follow a rhythm written into the nature of the cosmos. Events great and small find their place within this grand pattern.

He applied the principles of the classic of changes, the Yijing, to the arrangement of these cycles, reading its hexagrams as symbols of the successive conditions of the world and using them to map the course of history. His work gave the book of changes a cosmological and historical application of striking boldness and made it the key to a complete system of universal order.

History and the Cycles of Time

Shao Yong divided the history of the world into great epochs governed by numerical laws, each proceeding through the four stages of a cosmic year. From the earliest ages he traced the succession of ages of order and disorder, associating particular eras with the influence of the trigrams and hexagrams of the classic of changes. His purpose was not to predict particular events but to disclose the deep rhythm according to which the world rises and falls.

This vision gave Chinese historiography a distinctive speculative dimension. Where conventional histories concerned themselves with the deeds of rulers and the fortunes of dynasties, Shao Yong sought the pattern beneath the surface, the law that governed the succession of ages. His account presented historical change as the working of a cosmic order rather than as the mere play of human ambition and chance.

He also emphasised that the observer stands within the process he describes, and that true knowledge of the whole requires a view from a point beyond the passing moment. This idea, that wisdom consists in seeing things in their place within the vast cycle, gave his thought a contemplative and even a mystical quality, and it distinguished him from the more sober and ethical concerns of his philosophical contemporaries.

The Supreme Principle and Human Life

Behind the play of number Shao Yong affirmed a single principle, the supreme ultimate, from which all things proceed and to which all return. His cosmology was thus, like that of his fellow philosophers, ultimately monistic: the many arise from the one and express its nature. The numerical scheme was for him a means of displaying the intelligible order of the one in the world of the many.

In ethics he taught that the human being should align his life with the order of the cosmos, cultivating tranquillity and freeing himself from the agitation of desire. He praised the joy of the sage, the calm contentment of one who understands the pattern of things and rests in it, and his own cheerful temper was regarded by his friends as an example of the wisdom he taught.

He held that all things are in truth one and that the distinctions among them are the product of partial vision. From this he drew a generous and universal sympathy, embracing not only all people but all living creatures and the whole of nature. His teaching thus combined a rigorous cosmology with a compassionate and serene view of the moral life.

Influence and Legacy

Shao Yong's system was regarded with a mixture of admiration and reserve by later philosophers. His numerical speculations were widely studied, especially in relation to the classic of changes, and his scheme of cosmic cycles influenced astronomers, historians and diviners as well as philosophers. Yet the more sober thinkers of the tradition, while honouring him as a master, kept their distance from the bolder reaches of his numerology.

His reputation as a sage and a scholar was nonetheless secure. He was counted among the foremost figures of the Northern Song revival, honoured in the shrines of the tradition, and remembered for the purity of his life as much as for the subtlety of his thought. The image of the humble and cheerful recluse of Luoyang, deeply learned and utterly free of worldly ambition, became one of the treasured portraits of the movement.

He stands for the speculative and imaginative side of Chinese philosophy, its willingness to seek a comprehensive order in which nature, history and human life are joined. His cycles of time and his faith in the intelligibility of the cosmos left a permanent mark on the tradition, and his name is attached to one of its most ambitious attempts to grasp the whole of reality in a single vision.

See also

• Neo-Confucianism
• Yijing
• Taiji
• Song dynasty philosophy