Ch'iu Chun (1421-1495) and his views on government and history
Abstract
The biographical approach to the study of Chinese history is a
particularly rewarding and at tractive one, especially in the field of
history of thought, where the distinctive characteristics of
individual thinkers, no matter how important they may be, are all too
easily lost under hasty classifications and generalizations. The
usefulness of the biographical approach in the study of Confucianism
and the Chinese intellectual tradition was acknowledged by Professor
Arthur F. Wright more than two decades ago. In his article "Values,
Rules, and Personalities", he made the following observations: "What
one says in abstractions about 'a tradition* finds its ultimate proof
or disproof in the lives of men; the study of men's lives guards
against the idolization of abstractions and at the same time calls
attention to the rich texture of a life in time, the multiple forces
that bear in upon it, and the vagaries of chance and choice that give
it its final pattern." Certainly biographical study is an effective
means of tracing the political and intellectual developments of
certain periods, and the unfolding of facets of Chinese history which
were often impelled by official-scholars of vision. It is also an
economical means, as Professor Denis Twitchett points out, of
exploring periods which at this stage of writing Chinese history
provide little more than a chronological skeleton.- On the one
hand, a rounded portrait of a personality and his thought in the
context of his time and milieu may add new dimensions for understanding
the subject and his times, and, on the other hand, a single
biographical study may bring into focus the critical problems and the a tmosphere of an age, and thus help to close the gaps in our
understanding of the Chinese tradition.