THE INTELLECTUAL WORLD OF CHIAO HUNG REVISITED

Chiao Hung (1540–1620) was an important figure in late Ming intellectual history. In his own day he was praised for his accomplishments in prose-writing as much as for his active interest in Neo-Confucian and Buddhist metaphysics. Since the eighteenth century, however, he has been remembered as a bibliophile and as a pioneer of “evidential research” (k'ao-cheng). He lived in an age of transition which witnesses many new developments in Chinese society, religion, and in elite as well as popular culture, but he was by no means merely a passive product of this transition. On the contrary, through his many-sided intellectual activities, he contributed significantly to the transition. On the one hand, his active participation in the movement known as “Oneness of the Three Teachings” (San-chiao ho-i) precipitated the decline, if not demise, of Ming Neo-Confucianism as a philosophical enterprise. On the other hand, his promotion of a philological approach to ancient texts paved the way for the rise of classical and historical scholarship which dominated Ch'ing intellectual history. There can be no question that a man holding such a strategic position in the Ming-Ch'ing intellectual transition deserves to be studied thoroughly. Edward T. Ch'ien's CHIAO HUNG AND THE RESTRUCTURING OF NEO-CONFUCIANISM IN THE LATE MING is therefore a welcome addition to the growing literature on Ming thought in the West.