Yang Chu is believed to be the earliest proponent and expounder of Taoist thought. Although none of his ideas are known to be first-hand accounts, either written or dialectically, he is the first thinker of ancient Chinese philosophy to be attributed with ideas that are Taoist in nature. His thoughts are the obvious formal roots of the later famous thinkers Lao-Tzu and Chuang-Tzu, who borrowed from Chu in order to develop their own distinct formulations of Taoist philosophy.
Chu's Place in Chinese Intellectual History
The years of his life are not certain (370?-319? B.C.), but scholars believe he lived sometime between the lives of the philosophers Mo Tzu (479-381 B.C.) and Mencius (371-289 B.C.). The evidence for this hypothesis lies in the fact that in none of Mo Tzu’s writings is there commentary on either Yang Chu or his ideas, yet in the Mencius there is direct commentary that says: “The words of Yang Chu and Mo Ti fill the world.” (IIIb,9). What is quite certain, then, is that by the time of Mencius’ important writings there existed in the minds of Chinese philosophers the influential figure of Yang Chu.
The Principles of Yang Chu’s Thought
Most, if not all, accounts of Yang Chu’s ideas are secondhand in nature and occasionally fail to present consistency. But, in a concise book A Short History of Chinese Philosophy, Fung Yu-Lan deduces two core principles of Chu’s from the sources available: (1) Each one for himself; and (2) Despising things and valuing life.
Yu-Lan quotes from the Mencius: “The principle of Yang Chu is: ‘Each one for himself.’ From the Lu-shih Ch’un-cu’iu, a third century B.C. text, Yu-Lan also presents this quote: “Yang Sheng valued the self.” This ‘Yang Sheng’ figure, Yu-Lan argues, is now almost universally agreed upon by Chinese scholars to be Yang Chu. So, from these two sources it is easy to deduce, as Yu-Lan does, that Yang Chu was an exponent of valuing the self as an individual. But not just the self as an object or thing, but of the purity of the self, uninhibited by the “things” of typical human interactions.
This idea is not entirely selfish in nature, though, as it represents Yang Chu’s insistence that life should be valued. And when viewed within the domain of his other principle of “despising things” it should be understood that Chu formulated a system of thought that encouraged individual freedom by separating the self from the “things” of the world. In reality this was nothing more than expressing the tangible effects of the reclusive life that he did in fact choose to live--the reclusitivity that is often the life of sages, seers, and thinkers.
Freedom and Self-Awareness
Another important reference supplied by Yu-Lan is from a second century B.C. text entitled Huai-nan-tzu, from which he borrows a simple and direct quote: “Preserving life and maintaining what is genuine in it, not allowing things to entangle one’s person: this is what Yang Chu established.”
Thus, the importance of an individual relying on himself is again rooted in the fact that Yang Chu did not want the “things” of life to prevent people from obtaining a sense of liberation. It is not so much an act of disparagement, but a declaration that aims to convey that the “things” of the world are not necessarily the sole objects in which to consume ourselves with. That, free from the turmoil of our typical everyday-ness, a life of calm and understanding can be had through the self, and self-awareness.
Reference
Fung Yu-Lan, A Short History of Chinese Philosophy, pp. 61-67. (The Free Press: New York: 1948). The notion that Yang Chu is the first of the three classical Taoists (Chu, Lao Tzu, and Chuang Tzu) is directly attributed to the timeline given in Yu-Lan’s book.
