Liu An

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LIU AN

LIU AN (c. 180–122 bce), second king of Huainan, also known as Huainanzi; Chinese philosopher, poet, and essayist. Liu An was the grandson of Liu Pang (d. 194 bce), founder of the Han dynasty. Shortly after the birth of An's father, Liu Chang (b. 199 bce), the woman who bore him committed suicide when denied formal recognition by the emperor. The seventh of eight sons of the emperor by different women, Liu Chang was twice passed over in the imperial succession, which left him bitter and resentful. In 172 bce Liu Chang, then king of the vassal state of Huainan, was banished to a remote corner of the empire for insulting his half brother, the emperor Wen. He died en route, leaving Liu An and his two younger brothers. In 164 bce Liu Chang's fief of Huainan was divided among his three sons, with the eldest, Liu An, receiving the title of King of Huainan. He also inherited his father's disdain for the imperial line; twice he plotted rebellion.

Center of Culture and Learning at Huainan

The biographies of Liu An all speak of him as a youth who eschewed martial pursuits in favor of literature, music, and philosophy. He quickly developed his literary talent and at the age of twenty-two is said to have written, upon imperial command, a brilliant essay on the famous Chu poem the Li Sao in the few hours between dawn and breakfast. In 154 bce, Liu An almost took part in the unsuccessful rebellion of Liu Pi but changed his mind at the last moment. Some time later he decided to establish his court as a center of learning. He opened his court in Shouchun to philosophers, poets, and masters of esoteric techniques (fangshi). History speaks of a major center developing there, a focal point for the last flourishing of the ancient culture of Chu, a region renowned for its mysticism and shamanism. In the great tradition of King Xuan of Qi (c. 310 bce), the founder of the Jixia Academy at which the Guanzi was probably written, and Lü Buwei (c. 240 bce), sponsor of the Lüshi chunqiu, Liu An was patron to many of the finest religious and philosophical minds of his time. However, unlike these earlier patrons, An took an active part in philosophical discussions and the writing of essays and poems. He also collected an extensive library that contained all the major pre-Han philosophical texts, including his favorite, the Zhuangzi.

The center of culture and learning founded by Liu An was distinctly oriented toward Daoism and rivaled the largely Confucian center at the imperial court in Chang'an. It lasted for almost three decades and toward its end became a target of powerful officials in the imperial court. In 122 bce Liu An was convicted of plotting rebellion, and imperial representatives were sent to Huainan to punish him. Before they arrived, Liu An took his own life. Despite the conviction, the challenge presented by the rival Daoist-based intellectual center in Huainan was undoubtedly a more powerful motivation for the successful prosecution of Liu An than his hopeless plans for rebellion. Whatever the reason, Liu An and his family perished, and the vibrant center he established came to a tragic and untimely end.

Writing the Huainanzi

Today all that remains of this last flourishing of Chu culture is one book, the Huainanzi, and an extensive list of others that attest to the vibrancy of the Huainan court. Among the writings produced are a number in which Liu An was directly involved. Two essays on the Zhuangzi and a collection of eighty-two poems, all now lost, are credited to him. Also listed under his name are three treatises identified simply as the "Inner Book," which discussed the Dao; the "Outer Book," which discussed miscellaneous doctrines; and the "Middle Book," which dealt with esoteric alchemical techniques. Of the three, only the "Inner Book," which Liu An presented to Emperor Wu in 139 bce, has survived intact. This is the work that has come down to us under the name of Huainanzi. It stands as his major contribution to Chinese thought.

Of the reportedly several thousand philosophers and adepts at the court of Liu An, eight are named with him in the authorship of the Huainanzi. Liu An probably established the scope and format of the work, wrote some of the essays, and then edited the essays and wrote the final summary and overview. The resulting text consists of twenty-one essays on topics ranging from cosmology, astronomy, and geography to self-cultivation, human relations, and government. It was clearly intended to be a compendium of knowledge about the nature of the universe and the human role within it. Its extensive use of pre-Han philosophical and religious sources indicates not the mere repetition of earlier ideas, as some have maintained, but rather a bold and innovative attempt at their synthesis and an application to contemporary concerns.

The topics considered and the viewpoints represented in the essays of the Huainanzi occur in the context of a consistent cosmology that is best described as a blend of the Daoism of the Laozi and Zhuangzi and the Naturalist philosophy of yin and yang and the Five Phases (wuxing) of energy (qi), first systematized by Zou Yan (c. 340–270 bce). Some scholars identify this synthesis as the syncretic Daoist philosophy associated with the long-lost intellectual lineage that historical sources call "The Way of the Yellow Emperor and Lao Tzu" (Huang-Lao zhi Dao). This synthesis remains faithful to the earlier Daoist cosmology of an organismic universe of totally interrelated phenomena, which spontaneously tend toward harmony and are interfused by the unifying and creative power of the Dao. However, the Huainanzi provides a more detailed explanation of the actual mechanisms of this universe in terms of yin and yang and the Five Phases. Because human beings are an integral part of this universe and are thus subject to its laws, all human activity, from politics to warfare to spiritual self-realization, must take these universal forces into account. The Huainanzi balances both cosmological and social-political perspectives in its thorough emphasis on the universal context of human nature and human activity. In so doing, it has made a significant contribution to the evolution of the unique Chinese worldview.

The Huainanzi and Inner Cultivation

As might be expected in light of the number of religious adepts at the court of Liu An, the Huainanzi has left its mark in the area of spiritual self-cultivation as well. A number of passages stress the importance and provide examples of meditative techniques of "nourishing one's inherent nature" (yangxing) and "nourishing the spirit" (yangshen), such as controlled breathing and calming the mind. An important contribution of the Huainanzi lies in its elaboration of how these techniques function in terms of Five-Phases philosophy. This elaboration places the Huainanzi firmly within the meditative tradition of "inner cultivation" that reaches back to the fourth century bce "Inward Training" (Neiye) text in the Guanzi and ahead to the physiological alchemy that was later developed and expanded in the Daoist religion. There were undoubtedly adepts who followed these practices at the court of Liu An, perhaps the fangshi, and it was the spiritual descendants of such people who were involved in the early organization of the Daoist church some three centuries later. It is no surprise that the Huainanzi was later included in the comprehensive collection of Daoist canonical works, the Daozang. Another contributing factor must be the legend that Liu An did not die, but attained immortality after consuming an elixir given him by the fangshi.

While most of the works written by Liu An and his associates have regrettably been lost, their contribution to the development of Chinese religion and philosophy has survived in the form of the Huainanzi.

Bibliography

The most complete Western source on the life of Liu An is Benjamin E. Wallacker's "Liu An, Second King of Huai-nan," Journal of the American Oriental Society 92 (January–March 1972): 36–49. The Shiji biographies of Liu An and his father have been translated in Burton Watson's Records of the Grand Historian of China, vol. 2 (New York, 1963), pp. 359–381. In The Huainanzi and Liu An's Claim to Moral Authority (Albany, N.Y., 2001), Griet Vankeerberghen has written an insightful study of the philosophy of the Huainanzi in the historical context of the events of 123–22 bce that led to Liu An's suicide and the destruction of his intellectual center. The most thorough textual study of the Huainanzi is The Textual History of the Huai-nan Tzu (Ann Arbor, Mich., 1993) by Harold D. Roth. A summary of this history can be found in Charles LeBlanc's article in Early Chinese Texts: A Bibliographical Guide (Berkeley, Calif., 1993), edited by Michael Loewe. There is one complete French translation of the Huainanzi made by a team of eight scholars under the direction of Charles LeBlanc and Rémi Mathieu: Philosophes taoïstes, tome 2: Huainan zi (Paris, 2003). There are also a number of partial translations; Evan Morgan's Tao, the Great Luminant: Essays from Huai-nan tzu (1935; reprint, New York, 1969) is a translation of eight of the twenty-one essays in the text but suffers from poor scholarly methodology and antiquated renderings of key terms. Nonetheless, it is superior to the idiosyncratic mishmash of unidentified Huainanzi fragments, from a variety of chapters, assembled and translated by Thomas Cleary in The Book of Leadership and Strategy: Lessons of the Chinese Masters (Boston and London, 1990). Three scholars, Claude Larre, Isabelle Robinet, and Elisabeth Rochat de la Vallée, provide a lucid French translation of chapters 1, 7, 11, 13, and 18 in Les Grand Traités du Huainan zi (Paris, 1993). Eva Kraft's "Zum Huai-nan-tzu: Einführung, Übersetzung (Kapitel 1 und 2) und Interpretation," Monumenta Serica 16 (1957): 191–286; 17 (1958): 128–207, uses the questionable method of basing her translation on parallel passages in the Wenzi. John S. Major's Heaven and Earth in Early Han Thought (Albany, N.Y., 1993) translates the three most challenging essays in the text, 3–5, which deal with astronomy, geography, and calendrics, and renders them intelligible to a modern reader through meticulous explanatory notes. There are also a number of studies of individual essays that contain translations: chapter 1: D.C. Lau and Roger T. Ames, Yuan Dao: Tracing Dao to its Source (Albany, N.Y., 1998); chapter 6: Charles LeBlanc, Philosophical Synthesis in Early Han Thought. The Idea of Resonance (Kan-Ying) (Hong Kong, 1986); chapter 7: Claude Larre, Le Traité VII du Houai nan tseu. Les esprit légers et subtils animateurs de l'essence (Taipei, 1982); chapter 9: Roger T. Ames, The Art of Rulership: A Study in Ancient Chinese Political Thought (Honolulu, 1983; reprint Albany, N.Y., 1994); chapter 11: Benjamin E. Wallacker, The Huai-nan Tzu, Book Eleven: Behavior, Culture, and the Cosmos, "American Oriental Series," vol. 48 (New Haven, Conn., 1962). There are translations of short passages from the Huainanzi in A Sourcebook in Chinese Philosophy, translated and compiled by Wing-tsit Chan (Princeton, N.J., 1963); in Fung Yu-lan's The Period of the Philosophers, vol. 1 of A History of Chinese Philosophy, 2d ed., translated by Derk Bodde (Princeton, N.J., 1952); in Chinese Philosophy in Classical Times, edited and translated by E. R. Hughes (New York, 1942); and by Harold D. Roth in the second edition of Sources of Chinese Tradition, vol. 1, edited by W.T. DeBary and Irene Bloom (New York, 1999).