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scholarship. Jiang and his associates had long observed that mainstream schol-
arship of the Qing was categorically different from the Neo Confucianism of the
Song and Ming dynasties, and was thus a worthy topic for discussing their
respective merits and demerits. In From Philosophy to Philology: Intellectual and
Social Aspects of Change in Late Imperial China (1984), and the articles—“The
Unraveling of Neo-Confucianism: From Philosophy to Philology in Late Imperial
China” (Elman, 1983) “Criticism as Philosophy: Conceptual Change in Qing
Dynasty Evidential Research” (Elman, 1985a, 1985b), of which the latter two are
included in Selected Work. Elman tries to explore how philology in the Qing
Dynasty was very different from Neo Confucianism in the Song and the Ming,
which can also be regarded as a further study of the Han–Song controversy.
However, Elman does not care about the comparative merits of “Han Learning
versus Song Learning” as debated by Jiang Fan and Fang Dongshu. He is more
concerned with the conceptual shift and cultural transition that occurred while
Neo Confucianism as the mainstream Qing scholarship gave way to philological
and textology.
Jiang Fan in his genealogy, Record of Sinology Masters in the Qing Dynasty
(《国朝汉学师承记》) (Jiang, 1983), classified the Qing-dynasty philologists from
Wu (present-day Suzhou of Jiangsu Province) and those from Wan (present-day
Anhui Provinces) as successors to Sinology. The textology of the Qing Dynasty
during the Qianlong (乾隆 1736–1796) and Jiaqing (嘉庆 1796–1820) reigns seemed
to be an academic form as a study of exactitude in the fashion of the Han-dynasty
masters, while textual research on ancient documents, and relevant etymological
studies are regarded as the hallmark of the Qing version of Sinology. Such a
narrative has continued to enjoy a general consensus to this day by scholars of
Qing classical studies. Therefore, such philological research was also known as the
“plain learning” (朴学) of the Qing, which was often denigrated as text-based
history not much concerned with moral philosophy or ethics (义理). It was seldom
recognized to be of any value for philosophical thought.
If the more profound concerns of Qing philologists are given adequate
attention, however, it will be found that their evidential research is by no means for
the purpose of mere knowledge devoid of thought. Elman points out, “The writings
of Dai Zhen demonstrate that the Chinese language, with its locale conceptuali-
zations and organizational strategy, could be exploited to develop systematic
stances of philosophy” (Elman, 2010, p. 60). Philologists such as Dai Zhen (戴震
1723–1777), who apparently focused on etymological scrutiny, eventually con-
structed a system of theories on human nature and the cosmos through etymo-
logical analyses of such key Chinese concepts as Qi (气) and Li (理), a system
distinct from that of Song-dynasty Neo Confucians.