In fact, as long as we know the age, author and cultural background of this ancient book, many problems can be reasonably explained.
In the mid-Warring States period, the King of Heaven and Qi established Jixia Academy, which recruited talents from all over the world and soon attracted a large number of scholars from all over the world. The monarch of Qi built a great hall for them, treating them as "doctors" and letting them "talk about state affairs without holding office" here, giving lectures with peace of mind and writing books. These measures made Xia Ji and Gong Xue quickly become the academic and cultural center of various countries and the main stage for a hundred schools of thought to contend. These foreign scholars come from all directions and bring the knowledge and culture of other countries. They are very active in Jixia Academy, forming a huge force. They promoted the ideological and cultural exchanges between Qi and other countries, enriched and prospered Qi's culture, and at the same time, they inevitably had a great impact on Qi's inherent ideology and culture. Faced with the proliferation of foreign ideas and cultures, some local scholars in Qi are unwilling to pretend to be masters. Therefore, how to accept the challenge of foreign ideology and culture, carry forward the inherent ideology and culture of Qi State, make it always maintain the characteristics of Qi State, and compete with foreign ideology and culture for the dominant position and discourse right of Jixia Academy has become an urgent task before them. Among these local scholars of Qi, except Tian Pian and other famous figures, most of them are nobody. Their fame, influence and influence are not as good as those of Tian Pian and Yin Wen. They need a spiritual banner to call on and unite those Qi people whose responsibility is to inherit and carry forward local ideology and culture. So they naturally turned their attention to Guan Zhong, the great hero of Qi Huangong's "Nine in One Weather, One Sign of the World", and * * * jointly created the book Guanzi, which is the crystallization of Qi. They not only collected, memorized and sorted out Guan Zhong's anecdotes, but also collected the characteristic ideology and culture of Qi State's emergence, spread and development. At the same time, in the name of Guan Zhong, combined with the reality at that time, they expounded their academic thoughts. Their academic thoughts have their own strengths, forming the characteristics of different schools of Guanzi and the complexity of Guanzi. In short, the main body of Guanzi is the collective creation of a group of nameless Qi people who respected Guan Zhong during the Warring States period, and it is the collection and crystallization of the local ideology and culture of Qi. These collections and creations may have been going on before Liu Xiang proofreads the books. According to Liu Xiang's Guan Zi Xu Lu, Liu Xiang collected "564 kinds of Chinese and foreign books" when sorting out this book, which inevitably mixed with works from the Warring States and even after the Han Dynasty, such as Light and Heavy. Sixteen articles are about economic theory and financial management thought, which are recognized by academic circles as works of Han Dynasty. Ye Shi, a scholar in the Southern Song Dynasty, believes that Guanzi is "not written by one person, nor is it a temporary book", which is accurate.
With this understanding, we can better sort out the contents of Guanzi and better explain some questions and disputes about this book.
Although Guan Zi was written by Guan Zhong rather than Guan Zhong, it did retain some legacy and anecdotes of Guan Zhong, which has been circulated in Qi for a long time. After collecting and sorting out, I compiled chapters tracing the deeds of Qi Huangong's appointment of Guan Zhong, such as Dakuang, Zhongkuang, Xiaokuang, Herdsmen, Quanxiu, and the situation.
Although the content of Guanzi is complicated, it is not a hash, but has its own central idea or leading idea, that is, the rule of law, with Ren Fa, Fa Ming, Fa Fa, Jun Chen (up and down), Qi Fa, Ban Fa and heavy sentence as the main body. These chapters account for the largest proportion in the book. During the Warring States period, the reform of powerful countries was the main theme on the political stage of various countries, and the rule of law was the most popular. Guanzi takes the rule of law as the central idea and reflects the mainstream trend of thought of the times. In addition, the strong thought of the rule of law in Guanzi is also related to the tradition of attaching importance to the rule of law in Qi culture represented by Jiang Taigong and Guan Zhong. "Five Topics of Han Feizi" says: "Today, all people in China speak of governance, including Tibetan businessmen and people who manage it." It also shows that Guanzi takes the rule of law as the central idea. For Guanzi's thought of rule of law, we should especially emphasize several points. First of all, Guanzi's thought of rule of law is different from that of the three Jin legalists represented by Shu and Han Feizi, who advocate full-time criminal law and refuse moral education. Instead, we should adhere to the rule of law while absorbing the moral education advocated by Confucianism. This is probably related to the close relationship between Qi and Lu, and its culture has long been influenced by Confucian culture originating from Zou Lu. Because of this, the thoughts of Qi legalists represented by Guan Zi are not as grim and cruel as those of the Three Jin legalists, but rather mild, and are usually called "Qi legalists" in academic circles. Second, the thought of rule of law in Guanzi is not as lacking in theoretical depth as the early legalists represented by Shang Jun. It focuses on metaphysical philosophical argumentation of the rule of law, especially on the rationality, necessity, authority and feasibility of the rule of law with Taoist philosophy, so the thought of rule of law in Guanzi appears to have theoretical depth and ideological height. This is obviously due to the influence of Taoist philosophy prevailing in Xia Ji and Gong Xue. Because of this, the thought of rule of law in Guanzi, which combines Tao and law, is also called "Tao" by scholars. Thirdly, from the perspective of the development of Taoist theory, the theoretical model of combining Taoism with Taoism is a major development of Taoist theory, which avoids the marginalization of Taoism in the debate of "all for the rule of law" because it only talks about abstract philosophy. Han Shu's Records of Literature and Art classifies Guanzi into Taoist category, and focuses on its great contribution to Taoist theory. Guanzi has made the most exploration and contribution in the theoretical mode of combining Taoism with law and discussing law with Taoism. This theoretical model represents the general direction of the development of academic thought in the middle and late Warring States period.
Guanzi's four works, Internal Strength, White Heart, Heart on Heart and Heart on Heart, have long been the focus of academic research because of their distinctive essence. Guo Moruo and others have suggested that these four works are works of Song Yin School. Later, Zhang Dainian and other scholars put forward different opinions, arguing that the ideas in these four articles were different from those in the Song and Yin Dynasties recorded in Zhuangzi Tianxia and other documents. , Yin Wen's idea. Now it seems that the ideas of Song and Yin are quite different and should belong to different schools. Zhu Bo and others suggested that these four articles were the works of Shen Dao, and Zhang Dainian also put forward different opinions. The authors of four articles, such as Internal Strength, believe that essence is the origin of all things in the universe, popular between heaven and earth, and the source of human life, thinking and wisdom. When people get rid of unclean things such as selfish desires and reach a specific state of being positive, calm, empty and quiet, they will attract and accumulate essence and eventually become the most intelligent person. Guanzi discusses Tao by quality, which enriches and deepens the theory of Tao and is a new development of Taoist thought in Qi Di. The emergence of the theory of essence and qi has a great relationship with the Qi cultural tradition of attaching importance to promoting qi and keeping in good health. Qi people have noticed the close relationship between "heart" and "qi" for a long time, and discussed the methods of promoting qi to preserve health, such as breathing and guiding qi, so as to realize health and longevity and improve wisdom through treating qi. During the Warring States Period, the authors of Internal Strength and other articles combined the tradition of Qi theory inherent in Qi culture with Lao Zi's theory of Tao, which was popular at that time, and formed a theory of essence with strong characteristics of Qi, which not only enriched the philosophy of Tao, but also developed China's ancient theory of Qi to a new height and had a far-reaching impact on later generations.
There is also a group of articles in Guanzi that have had a far-reaching impact on China's traditional culture, namely, the four seasons, young officials, five elements, and severity. These four articles have a special position in the development history of ancient yin-yang and five elements thought. Yin-yang and Five Elements were originally two theoretical systems that originated from different regions and developed independently. Later, they merged, and the original evidence of the merger was kept in Pipe. Obviously, the theory of Yin-Yang with four seasons laws as the main content is an even series, while the theory of Five Elements with Jin Mu's fire, water and soil as the main content is an odd series. In order to realize the confluence of these two theories, we must solve the problem of how to combine odd-numbered sequences and even-numbered sequences. This problem is extremely difficult to solve and must be solved. Juvenile Official, Four Seasons and Five Elements, and Light and Heavy truthfully record several schemes that Yin and Yang and Five Elements have racked their brains to solve this problem. They use five behavioral frameworks and the dynamics of Yin and Yang to form different cosmic schemata, and put all kinds of observable things and phenomena into these frameworks according to the classification of Yin and Yang and five elements, so as to explain the nature and movement of everything in the world and guide human social life, especially political activities. These cosmic schemata mark the initial realization of the confluence of Yin-Yang and Five Elements, and also mark the formal emergence of Yin-Yang and Five Elements as an independent school.
The reason why Guanzi combines the theory of Yin-Yang and Five Elements is also due to the historical opportunity brought by Xia Ji and Gong Xue. After the founding of Gong Xue, Xia Ji, scholars from all directions gathered here, bringing ideas and cultures from different regions. The theory of yin and yang in the south and the theory of five elements in the north also meet here. They were originally philosophical theories trying to explain the nature of the world, the generation of all things and explore the laws of the change and development of all things in the universe, and there is the possibility of blending and integration. The confluence of yin and yang and five elements is the result of our ancestors' more comprehensive and accurate understanding and grasp of the world. The long-term existence of Gong Xue in Xia Ji provides rare opportunities and good conditions for this integration. The integration of yin-yang theory and five elements theory in Guanzi has its special political background. There are hundreds of schools in Xia Ji, which has promoted the prosperity of Qi. The monarchs of the two great countries, Qi and Qin, once considered calling them "Eastern Emperor" and "Western Emperor", which also stimulated scholars. In order to cooperate with the imperial movement of Qi, they tried to create an all-encompassing world and explain all phenomena, so as to be worthy of the "Western Emperor". It is Qi people who are most keen on the imperial movement of Qi State and create public opinion for it. Therefore, the authors of the two articles, Xiao Guan and Four Seasons, are probably a group of unknown scholars of Qi who were active in Jixia Academy at that time.
The following three versions are recommended for reference: Guanzi Correction, (Qing) Dai Wang, The Scholars Integration by Zhonghua Book Company;
Guan Jiao, Guo Moruo, Wen Yiduo, Xu Wei? Published by Science Press1956;
Interpretation of Guanzi, Zhao Shouzheng, published by Guangxi People's Publishing House 1987.