the influence of nietzsche in wang guowei's essay -on the dream of the red chamber- zong-qi cai

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Philosophy East and West, Volume 54, Number 2, April 2004, pp. 171-193(Article)

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THE INFLUENCE OF NIETZSCHE IN WANG GUOWEI’S

ESSAY ‘‘ON THE DREAM OF THE RED CHAMBER’’

Zong-qi Cai

Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, University of Illinois at

Urbana-Champaign

Wang Guowei (1877–1927), one of the foremost twentieth-century Chinese

scholars of Western aesthetics as well as Chinese archaeology, philology, and his-

tory, was the first to introduce to China the works of Friedrich Nietzsche, along with

those of Schopenhauer and Kant, and initiate the comparative study of Chinese and

Western aesthetics.1 Despite his pioneering role in the study of Nietzsche in China,

Wang’s assimilation of Nietzsche’s ideas has not received serious attention by

scholars.2 In tracing the Western influences on Wang’s literary thought, scholars

have focused their attention on Schopenhauer and, to a lesser extent, Kant. In most

cases, only in conjunction with their discussion of Wang’s study of Schopenhauer do

they mention his exposure to Nietzsche.3

Now more than ever it seems opportune to redress the long neglect of Wang’s

debt to Nietzsche.4 Recently a number of unsigned essays on Nietzsche and other

Western philosophers have been discovered and positively identified as authored or

translated by Wang.5 Particularly noteworthy among these essays are two, ‘‘Nietz-

sche’s Views on Education’’ (‘‘Nicai zhi jiaoyu guan’’ ) and ‘‘Nietz-

sche’s Theories’’ (‘‘Nicai shi zhi xueshuo’’ ).6 Both essays appeared in

1904 issues of The World of Education ( Jiaoyu shijie ),7 a journal in which

Wang published his other essays on Schopenhauer, Kant, and Nietzsche in the same

year and the editorship of which he was deeply involved from its inception in 1901

to its closure in 1907.8 Making use of these newly discovered materials as well as

Wang’s established writings, I propose to reassess Wang’s debt to Nietzsche’s ideas

in his essay ‘‘On the Dream of the Red Chamber ’’ (‘‘Honglong meng pinglun’’

; hereafter ‘‘On the Dream’’), the most original and influential of his writ-

ings on literature and aesthetics, produced in the early years of his scholarly career.

In particular, I shall seek to demonstrate how Wang quietly and deftly appropriated

Nietzschean ideas to establish a broad conceptual framework for questioning the

philosophy of Schopenhauer, reevaluating the character of the protagonist Bao Yu,

and determining the functions of tragedy.

Questioning Schopenhauer’s Ultimate Deliverance

The widely accepted opinion of ‘‘On the Dream’’ is that it is a complete Scho-

penhauerian reinterpretation of the Dream of the Red Chamber, arguably the finest

Chinese novel.9 The influence of Schopenhauer on Wang’s article has so engaged

the attention of scholars that they have taken little note of the ideas of Nietzsche that

Philosophy East & West Volume 54, Number 2 April 2004 171–193 171> 2004 by University of Hawai‘i Press

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unmistakably lie beneath its surface. This neglect of Nietzsche’s influence is truly

remarkable because Wang himself, in the preface to volume 3 of his Collected

Works, hints at an important Nietzsche connection in this article:

The period from the summer of 1903 to the winter of 1904 is one when I kept the works

of Schopenhauer as my companion. What particularly delighted me in his works was his

epistemology, through which I could see Kant’s theory in a better light. With regard to his

philosophy of human life ( ), the acuteness of his observation and the sharpness of

his comments did not fail to delight my heart and liberate my spirit. However, later I

gradually found in it instances of contradiction. Although ‘‘On the Dream,’’ written last

summer, was grounded in Schopenhauer, I raised huge questions about it in the fourth

section. I also came to the realization that his ideas were born of his own subjective

temperaments but had little to do with objective knowledge. I did not begin to give an

exhaustive expression of this view until I wrote the article ‘‘Schopenhauer and Nietz-

sche.’’10

To see how Wang criticizes Schopenhauer’s ethics from a Nietzschean perspective,

let us turn to the fourth section of ‘‘On the Dream.’’ Titled ‘‘The Ethical Value of the

Dream of the Red Chamber,’’ this section pairs off with the previous one, titled ‘‘The

Aesthetic Value of the Dream of the Red Chamber.’’ The pairing of these two sec-

tions is apparently inspired by the trajectory from aesthetics to ethics in Schopen-

hauer’s thought. However, the ethical implications Wang draws from the tragic

aesthetics of the Dream of the Red Chamber are anything but Schopenhauerian. To

understand this, let us first see what Schopenhauer said about the ethical value of

tragedy:

It sees through the form of phenomenon, the principium individuationis. The egoism

which rests on this perishes with it, so that now the motives that were so powerful before

have lost their might, and instead of them the complete knowledge of the nature of the

world, which has a quieting effect on the will, produces resignation, the surrender not

merely of life, but of the very will to live. Thus we see in tragedies [that] the noblest men,

after long conflict and suffering, at last renounce the ends they have so keenly followed,

and all the pleasures of life for ever, or else freely and joyfully surrender life itself.11

This Schopenhauerian view of tragedy is exactly what Wang takes issue with in the

fourth section. It is true that Wang does write about the power of tragedy to pierce

the illusions of the phenomenal world and release us from the bondage of the

‘‘desires of life’’ (shenghuo zhi yu ). However, he does not agree with

Schopenhauer that, through tragedy in life or art, one can ‘‘freely and joyfully sur-

render life itself.’’ To Wang, the value of tragedy does not lie in the ultimate ‘‘deliv-

erance’’ ( jietuo ) from life itself. To challenge Schopenhauer’s view of ultimate

deliverance, Wang begins by conceding that Schopenhauer’s philosophy of deliv-

erance supersedes other philosophies of life on account of its rejection of myth and

its rigorous reasoning. Then, Wang proceeds to raise ‘‘huge questions’’ about it.12 As

long as a single person retains its or his will, Wang contends, deliverance from life is

impossible. ‘‘Having denied one’s own will, one self-contentedly calls it ‘deliver-

ance.’ How is this different from using the water collected in a footprint to fill a

172 Philosophy East & West

gully?’’13 To emphasize that the deliverance of one individual has no impact what-

ever on humankind, Wang writes: ‘‘I beg to ask: since the Buddha passed away and

Christ died on the cross, what has happened to the desire for life among mankind

and the myriad things? And what about their suffering? I know that they are no dif-

ferent from what they were before.’’14

All these ‘‘huge questions’’ raised in the fourth section are apparently inspired by

Nietzsche’s criticism of Schopenhauer’s ethical ideal of ‘‘deliverance.’’ In his essay

‘‘Schopenhauer and Nietzsche,’’ Wang gives a perceptive account of Nietzsche’s

rejection of this notion of Schopenhauer’s:

Schopenhauer uses his penetrating perception and in-depth research to prove that the

nature of man is will. The ideal of his ethics is the elimination of will. But whether or not

will can be eliminated is an unanswerable question (for a critique of this ideal, see the

fourth section of ‘‘On the Dream of the Red Chamber ’’). Nietzsche also regards will as

the nature of man, but has doubts about Schopenhauer’s ethical theory of the elimination

[of the will]. He says that the desire to eliminate this will is also a will.15

The parenthetical note given here by Wang himself firmly establishes Nietzschean

origin of Wang’s questioning of Schopenhauer’s ideal of deliverance in ‘‘On the

Dream.’’16

Bao Yu and the Overman: Will, Suffering, and the Defiance of Conventional

Morality

The influence of Nietzsche in ‘‘On the Dream’’ is by no means limited to Wang’s

overt repudiation of Schopenhauer’s ethical ideal of deliverance. It may also be

observed in Wang’s portrayal of Bao Yu, the protagonist of the Dream. In portraying

Bao Yu, Wang foregrounds his knowledge of the nature of life, his forbearance of

suffering, and his defiance of conventional morality. As we shall see presently, these

qualities of Bao Yu are essentially identifiable with the character traits of the Nietz-

schean overman. To demonstrate clearly how Wang portrays Bao Yu in the image of

the overman, I shall examine some remarkable parallels between what Wang has

said about Bao Yu and what Nietzsche has said about the overman, along with

Wang’s account of Nietzsche’s notion of the overman in his essay ‘‘Schopenhauer

and Nietzsche’’.

The Nature of Human Existence: Will Negated and Affirmed

When he first introduces Bao Yu, Wang calls our attention to his extraordinary in-

sight into the nature of his own existence as well as that of all humankind. Through a

rather enigmatic conversation with a Buddhist monk who came to return a lost piece

of jade to him, Bao Yu hit upon the truth of the origin and nature of his life. He

learned that the piece of jade (yu ) he had kept as his talisman was actually the

odd piece left behind from 3,501 pieces of stone used by the mythical figure Nu Wa

to mend heaven, which had become broken. As Wang points out, this repre-

sents not only Bao Yu’s knowledge of his own identity (his name Bao Yu liter-

Zong-qi Cai 173

ally means ‘‘Precious Stone’’) but also the nature of human existence (yu is a

homonym of yu , desire, and is consciously used as a metaphor for desire in the

Dream). It seems at this point that Wang intends to present Bao Yu as a Scho-

penhauerian genius who through direct perception (zhiguan ) penetrates the

nature of human life as will. However, judging by what Wang tells us next, this is not

the case. Bao Yu’s knowledge of yu or desire did not lead him to strive to become

will-less and to forsake life altogether. Instead, it aroused in him a strong will to

overcome all desires stemming from principium individuationis and binding us to

the illusory phenomenal world. Commenting on the two different kinds of will sym-

bolized by the Precious Stone, Wang writes:

The so-called Stone (yu ) is merely the representation of the desires of life. It is not the

action of two celestial figures but the inordinate Stone itself that [has] led [Bao Yu] into

the World of Red Dust. By the same token, it is not the efforts of the two figures but the

inordinate Stone itself that [has] led [Bao Yu] to reach the other shore. How can this be

true of Bao Yu alone? The fall and deliverance of mankind is also dependent on nothing

but the will.17

In attributing to the Stone not only the desires of mundane life but also the will to

overcome them, Wang shows that Bao Yu’s attitude toward human life is quite

opposite to that of Schopenhauer.

In the opening paragraph of his essay ‘‘Schopenhauer and Nietzsche,’’ Wang

brings our attention to the opposite views concerning will held by Schopenhauer

and Nietzsche: ‘‘One regards the elimination of will as the ideal of his ethics, the

other argues the opposite.’’18 Indeed, thanks to his heroic willingness to overcome

the desires of life and ‘‘reach the other shore,’’ Bao Yu strongly evokes the image of

the Nietzschean overman (Ubermensch), who ‘‘realizes the meaninglessness of

things and who rebels against that frightful vision, who refuses to resign himself and

sets his will against the blind will that lies at the heart of all phenomena.’’19 Indeed,

Bao Yu’s heroic will to affirm life despite its frightful suffering measures up to what

Nietzsche has said of Zarathustra, the embodiment of the overman: ‘‘he that has the

hardest, most terrible insight into reality, that has thought the ‘most abysmal idea,’

nevertheless does not consider it an objection to existence, not even to its eternal

recurrence—but rather one reason more for being himself the eternal Yes to all

things, ‘the tremendous, unbounded saying Yes and Amen.’ ’’20

The Magnitude of Suffering and the Greatness of Character

After depicting Bao Yu’s knowledge of yu or desire, Wang goes on to depict his

forbearance of suffering as a means of deliverance. For Wang, what distinguishes

Bao Yu’s struggle from that of the other characters in the novel is that it arises not

only from his own suffering but also from his observation of other people’s suffering.

While ordinary people may strive for deliverance from their personal suffering,

Wang contends that ‘‘only extraordinary people can use their extraordinary power of

understanding to look deeply into the nature of the universe and human life and

come to realize that life and suffering are inseparable and seek to end their desires of


life and find a path to deliverance.’’21 To demonstrate that the suffering of genius,

born of the knowledge of the nature of human life, is more intense than the suffering

of ordinary people, Wang mentions the lifelong suffering of Bao Yu alongside that of

Faust.22 Even though he acknowledges a more worldly touch in Bao Yu’s suffering

than Faust’s, Wang regards Bao Yu’s suffering as that of a genius and hence finds his

self-deliverance to be of consummate ethical value for all Chinese people. Wang’s

depiction of Bao Yu’s suffering bears a remarkable resemblance to Nietzsche’s view

of the suffering genius or overman as summarized by Wang in ‘‘Schopenhauer and

Nietzsche’’:

As for a genius, his handicaps are the same as those of ordinary people. The difference is

that he alone can clearly see these handicaps. . . . His intellect is constrained by the law of

causality and forms of space and time outside. Inside, his will is oppressed by countless

motives and the morality of his race. But aren’t his intellect and his will unlike those of

ordinary people? He knows what ordinary people cannot know and desires what ordi-

nary people dare not desire, but he is subjected to the same bondage and oppression as

ordinary people. Therefore, the greatness of a genius is in proportion to the greatness of

his intellect and his will; the magnitude of suffering is in proportion to the greatness of a

genius.23

After reading this account of Nietzsche’s notion of a suffering genius, few would

doubt a Nietzschean inspiration for Wang’s efforts to distinguish Bao Yu’s suffering

from that of the other characters and treat it as exemplifying the tragic sublime.

Conventional Morality and Iconoclastic Challenge

Having pointed to the uniqueness of Bao Yu’s suffering, Wang discusses its ethical

value in relation to conventional morality: ‘‘To reach the state of emancipation,’’

Wang argues, ‘‘one cannot but endure the woes (youhuan ) of the human world.

We set store by these woes because they serve as a means of deliverance, not be-

cause we emphasize the value of these woes themselves.’’24 For Wang, the value of

the woes of life lies precisely in the fact that they evoke a courageous will to rebel

against the entire system of conventional morality that legitimizes the desires of

life, and thereby help one to achieve true deliverance from these desires. To dem-

onstrate this positive aspect of human suffering, he examines the case of Bao Yu’s

rebellion. ‘‘Can deliverance be regarded as the highest ideal of ethics?’’ Wang writes,

‘‘Seeing it from the perspective of conventional morality, people know it cannot. Bao

Yu is therefore what the mundane world calls a culprit, who severs the bond be-

tween father and son, abandons all human relationships, and has neither loyalty nor

filial piety.’’25 In pitting Bao Yu’s self-deliverance against conventional morality,

Wang aims at once to denounce conventional morality and to glorify Bao Yu’s re-

bellious act of self-deliverance. Drawing evidence from both the aforementioned

tale of yu (jade/desire) and the Judeo-Christian account of original sin,26 Wang

exposes the dark origins of human life and thereby invalidates the entire system of

conventional morality founded upon it. Once the foundation of conventional mo-

rality is toppled, Wang argues that we can see Bao Yu’s self-deliverance from a new,

Zong-qi Cai 175

transcendent perspective, or, in Wang’s words, we can ‘‘open a heavenly eye to see

it’’ (kai tianyan er guan zhi ).27 If seen through such a ‘‘heavenly eye,’’

Wang holds, Bao Yu will emerge as a great hero who redeems the sins of all hu-

mankind, including those of our ancestors.

This portrayal of Bao Yu strongly reminds us of the Nietzschean overman taking

on ‘‘Values, thousands of years old,’’28 shining on the scales of the mighty dragon

(a metaphor for conventional morality): ‘‘Behold the good and the just! Whom do

they hate most? The man who breaks their tables of values, the breaker, the law-

breaker; yet he is the creator.’’29 About this iconoclastic trait of the overman, Wang

Guowei, too, writes:

Nietzsche applies it [Schopenhauer’s aesthetics] to practical life. What is the law of mo-

rality to his overman is the law of sufficient reason [to Schopenhauer’s genius]. According

to Schopenhauer, the law of sufficient reason is not merely of no use to a genius. A genius

can be called such only because he departs from it in his perception of things. According

to Nietzsche, the law of morality is not merely of no use to the overman. The character-

istic of the overman is that he transcends morality in his actions. According to Scho-

penhauer, the greatest knowledge lies in the transcendence of the law of knowledge.

According to Nietzsche, the greatest morality lies in the transcendence of the law of

morality. A genius exists because his knowledge cannot be bounded. An overman exists

because his will cannot be restricted.30

Reading this passage alongside Wang’s remarks on Bao Yu, few can fail to see that

Wang conceives Bao Yu in the image of the Nietzschean overman rather than the

Schopenhauerian genius, notwithstanding his overt use of Schopenhauerian ideas in

his essay. In addition to the resemblance between Bao Yu and the Nietzschean

overman just observed, I must also point out that Wang praises Bao Yu as effusively

as he does the Nietzschean overman for the creation of a new transcendent ethics.

While he speaks admiringly of the overman’s destruction of old culture and his cre-

ation of a new culture in ‘‘Schopenhauer and Nietzsche,’’ here he expresses his

profound gratitude to the story of Bao Yu for raising a spirit that ‘‘resolutely goes

against the disposition of our people and our people’s indulgence in the desires of

life.’’31

The Outward Appearances of Bao Yu and the Overman

Despite the remarkable parallels between Bao Yu and the overman discussed above,

some might still hesitate to agree that the former is cast in the image of the latter.

Such hesitation is quite understandable: according to the popular (mis)perception,

the outward appearances of Bao Yu and the overman are worlds apart from each

other. One is widely seen as a somewhat effeminate figure, if not a downright

weakling, who lives a cloistered, luxurious life surrounded by female cousins and

maids. The other is often misconstrued as, in the words of Walter Kaufmann, ‘‘a

super-brute’’32 that exhibits extraordinary muscularity. However, contrary to the

common perception, Wang Guowei convincingly shows that Bao Yu is anything but

soft: he single-handedly takes on the entire moral system. His gentle, even womanly


appearance only belies his inward firmness of character. Conversely, the overman

is anything but a brawny ‘‘super-brute,’’ but rather, as Zarathustra says, a ‘‘preying

lion’’ turned child, who ‘‘is innocence and forgetting, a new beginning, a game, a

self-propelled wheel, a first movement, a sacred ‘Yes.’ ’’33 On the metamorphosis of

brutish power into inward strength, of the sublime into the beautiful, Zarathustra

says:

You shall strive after the virtue of the column: it grows more and more beautiful and

gentle, but internally harder and more enduring as it ascends. Indeed, you that are sub-

lime shall yet become beautiful one day and hold up a mirror to your own beauty. . . . For

this is the soul’s secret: only when the hero has abandoned her is she approached in a

dream by the overhero.34

Thus, as long as we see Bao Yu and the overman as they are seen by Wang and

Nietzsche, respectively, their kinship with each other becomes quite evident. In fact,

their outward appearance seems to be a good match as well.

Tragedy and the Salvation of Humankind: Wang’s Appropriation of Kantian,

Aristotelian, and Schopenhauerian Theories of Tragedy

In concluding the fourth section of the essay, Wang states that there are two alternate

means of achieving deliverance from the desires of life: through practical action and

through the arts. Believing that ‘‘the Dream alone provides us both of these two

means of deliverance,’’35 Wang calls it ‘‘the grand work of the universe’’ (yuzhou zhi

da zhushu ).36 While the life of Bao Yu represents the course of practi-

cal action leading to deliverance, Wang maintains, the presentation of his life story

in the art form of tragedy makes it possible for the reader to undergo an internal

purgatory and achieve deliverance in the course of reading. To demonstrate this

redeeming power of tragedy, Wang launches into a lengthy discussion of the func-

tions of tragedy.

First, he uses the Kantian notion of disinterested aesthetic contemplation to show

how tragedy enables us to forget our interested relationships with the outer world.37

‘‘The nature of art,’’ writes Wang, ‘‘is such that who have desires [e.g., for posses-

sions] do not contemplate it and those who contemplate it do not have desires. The

reason the beauty of art is superior to the beauty of nature lies in [the fact] that the

former makes it easier for us to forget our relationships with physical things and

ourselves.’’38 Just as Wang himself admits, in the preface cited above, he was striv-

ing to understand Kant’s ideas in the light of Schopenhauer’s. So, we should not be

surprised that he elucidates the Kantian notion of disinterested aesthetics in much

the same light as did Schopenhauer, attaching great importance to tragedy as a re-

lease from the desires of life. Indeed, he devotes almost the entire first section of ‘‘On

the Dream’’ to a paraphrase of Schopenhauer’s view of disinterested aesthetics

summed up in a key passage of The World as Will and Idea.39

Next, following Schopenhauer’s moralistic reconstruction of Kantian aesthetics,

Wang seeks to distinguish two major kinds of aesthetic experience, the beautiful and

Zong-qi Cai 177

the sublime, in the light of their impact on our desires of life. He describes the

‘‘feeling of the beautiful’’ (youmei zhi qing ) as a tranquil state of mind

reached after we become oblivious to the desires of life.40 As for the ‘‘feeling of the

sublime’’ (zhuangmei zhi qing ), he characterizes it as an intense state of

mind reached after a grand aesthetic object has overwhelmed us and destroyed all

our desires of life.41 Antithetical to the beautiful and the sublime is what Wang calls

‘‘delirious bewitchment’’ (xuan huo ), an interested, delirious pleasure that lures

us back into the entrapment of the desires of life. For Wang, as for Schopenhauer,

the sublime represents the finest aesthetic experience because it most effectively

cleanses the audience of the desires of life and renders them impervious to any

‘‘delirious bewitchment.’’ Paraphrasing Schopenhauer’s comments on tragedy,

Wang rates tragedy as the finest form of literature on the ground of its sublimity:

‘‘Schopenhauer places poetry at the apex of art, and tragedy at the apex of poetry.

Among [the three kinds of] tragedy, he attaches importance to the third kind and

uses it to reveal the real nature of human life and to show deliverance as an inevi-

table outcome.’’42

The third kind of tragedy referred to by Schopenhauer is one in which the pro-

tagonist achieves deliverance through his aesthetic contemplation of the suffering of

others. For Wang, the Dream is an example par excellence of this superior kind of

tragedy as Bao Yu’s self-deliverance results mostly from his keen observation of the

suffering of the people around him. Detached from the acts of suffering themselves,

Bao Yu could transcend his own egotistic concerns and clearly perceive the roots of

the suffering of all people. For this reason, Wang maintains ‘‘the suffering of Bao Yu

is none other than the suffering experienced by all people. Because his suffering is

rooted in the very base of human life, his hope of saving others is particularly sin-

cere.’’43

Wang argues that while Bao Yu, by contemplating the suffering of others, not

only achieved self-deliverance but also aroused in himself a will to save all other

people, the reader of the Dream can accomplish the same by contemplating Bao

Yu’s contemplation of the suffering of others. To explain this transforming effect of

aesthetic contemplation, Wang avails himself of Aristotle’s view of catharsis:44 ‘‘In

the past Aristotle in his Poetics said that tragedy is what arouses people’s feelings for

the purpose of sublimating them. For example, fear and pity are two things inherent

in tragedy. As people are aroused by them, their spirit undergoes a purification.

Therefore, the purpose of tragedy is a moral one.’’45 It is important to note that Wang

interprets catharsis as a process of purifying emotions, not a process of purging them

as probably meant by Aristotle.46 By virtue of such a catharsis, Wang believes that

our fear and pity as well as other emotions turn into a life-affirming aesthetic plea-

sure. To support this view, he cites two poetic lines by Goethe: ‘‘What in life doth

only grieve us, / That in art we gladly see.’’47

For Wang, the aesthetic pleasure derived from a tragedy does not lead to a

Schopenhauerian ‘‘surrender not merely of life, but of the very will to live.’’ Rather, it

gives rise to a transcendent will to overcome all the desires of life and bring about

the deliverance of all people. Only because the Dream possesses this redeeming


power of a great tragedy does Wang call it ‘‘a grand book of this universe’’ and says

‘‘how can we best express our feelings of complete satisfaction and gratitude to it?’’

Wang’s salvational view of tragedy is completely consistent with his questioning of

what he calls the ‘‘no-life-ism’’ (wusheng zhuyi ) championed by Scho-

penhauer, and with his conditional endorsement of what he calls ‘‘live-life-ism’’

(shengsheng zhuyi ), a doctrine of universal salvation, to be discussed

below.

Tragedy and the Affirmation of Life: Nietzsche’s Critiques of the Kantian,

Aristotelian, and Schopenhauerian Theories of Tragedy

Wang’s appropriation of Kant’s, Aristotle’s, and Schopenhauer’s views of tragedy

reminds us of Nietzsche’s critiques on these three great critics in The Birth of Trag-

edy. First, what Wang has said about Kantian aesthetics echoes what Nietzsche has

said about its disinterested nature. Nietzsche praises Kant for having ‘‘succeeded in

gaining the most difficult victory, the victory over the optimism concealed in the

science of logic—an optimism that is the basis of our culture.’’48 According to

Nietzsche, the greatest value of Kantian aesthetics and epistemology is to ‘‘point out

the limits and the relativity of knowledge generally, and thus to deny decisively the

claim of science to universal validity and universal aims.’’49 However, there is an

important difference between Nietzsche’s and Schopenhauer’s interpretation of

Kantian aesthetics. Nietzsche vehemently objects to Schopenhauer’s reformulation

of Kantian aesthetics as a means of overcoming the desires of life.50 In Genealogy of

Morals, Nietzsche writes:

Schopenhauer described one effect of the beautiful, its calming effect on the will—but is

this a regular effect? . . . And could one not finally urge against Schopenhauer himself that

he was quite wrong in thinking himself a Kantian in this manner, that he by no means

understood the Kantian definition of the beautiful in a Kantian sense—that he, too, was

pleased by the beautiful from an ‘‘interested’’ viewpoint, even from the very strongest,

most personal interest: that of a tortured man who gains release from his torture?51

The ‘‘huge questions’’ raised by Wang about the Schopenhauerian ultimate deliver-

ance seem to echo this remark by Nietzsche.

Second, Wang’s view of Aristotelian catharsis corresponds in some ways with

Nietzsche’s view of it. If Wang implies his reservation about Aristotelian catharsis by

taking it as a process of purification rather than of discharge, Nietzsche openly ridi-

cules it as ‘‘the pathological discharge . . . of which philologists are not sure whether

it should be included among medical or moral phenomena.’’52 For Nietzsche, ‘‘the

experience of tragedy as a supreme art ’’ consists in the ‘‘aesthetic listener . . . [being]

reborn with the rebirth of tragedy.’’53 For Nietzsche, this simultaneous rebirth of the

aesthetic listener and tragedy can take place only if the listener has achieved a total

sympathy with ‘‘the tragic artist himself as he creates his figures like a fecund divinity

of individuation . . . and as his vast Dionysian impulse then devours his entire world

of phenomena, in order to let us sense beyond it, and through its destruction, the

Zong-qi Cai 179

highest artistic primal joy, in the bosom of the primordially One.’’54 Wang has this

kind of pure, transcendental joy in mind when he talks about the end result of ca-

tharsis. For him, the joy to be derived from the Dream is none other than the ‘‘primal

joy, in the bosom of the primordially One,’’ the joy that arises from an annihilation of

the entire phenomenal world along with all its moralistic values and laws. If not for

the promise of this primal joy Wang would not have called the Dream ‘‘a grand book

of this universe.’’55

Third, Wang’s rejection of Schopenhauer’s life-negating notion of tragedy recalls

a harsh critique of Schopenhauer by Nietzsche. In ‘‘Attempt at a Self-Criticism,’’ a

short essay placed at the beginning of the 1886 edition of The Birth of Tragedy,

Nietzsche describes in no uncertain terms his rejection of Schopenhauer’s view of

the end of tragedy:

What, after all, did Schopenhauer think of tragedy? ‘‘That which bestows on everything

tragic is its peculiar elevating force’’—he says in the World as Will and Representations,

volume II, p. 495—‘‘is the discovery that the world, that life, can never give real satis-

faction and hence is not worthy of our affection: this constitutes the tragic spirit—it leads

to resignation.’’ How differently Dionysus spoke to me! How far removed I was from all

this resignationism!56

If we place Wang’s questions about ‘‘no-life-ism’’ next to this passage, we can see

how closely Wang stands alongside Nietzsche in opposing the life-negating view of

tragedy held by their mutual teacher Schopenhauer.

Fourth, Wang’s belief in the salvational power of the Dream strikes us as quite

similar to Nietzsche’s view of the life-saving role of the Dionysian tragedy. For

Wang, the Dream is capable of saving all of us for two reasons. First, it reveals to us

the abhorrent nature of the mundane world and thereby annihilates all our desires of

life. Second, it also leaves us with a pure, life-sustaining, aesthetic joy that not only

prevents us from turning self-destructive and nihilistic but also strengthens our will

to ‘‘reach the other shore.’’ This assessment of the Dream’s ultimate ethical value

readily lends itself to a comparison with Nietzsche’s comments on the effects of the

Dionysian tragedy:

I believe the Greek man of culture felt himself nullified in the presence of the satyric

chorus; and this is the most immediate effect of the Dionysian tragedy, that the state and

society and, quite generally, the gulf between man and man gives way to an over-

whelming feeling of unity leading back to the very heart of nature. The metaphysical

comfort—with which, I am suggesting even now, every true tragedy leaves us—that life

is at the bottom of things, despite all the changes of appearances, indestructibly powerful

and pleasurable—this comfort appears in incarnate clarity in the chorus of satyrs. . . .

With this chorus the profound Hellene, uniquely susceptible to the tenderest and deepest

suffering, comforts himself, having looked boldly into the terrible destructiveness of so-

called world history as well as the cruelty of nature, and being in danger of longing for a

Buddhist negation of the will. Art saves him, and through art—life.57

In a note to the penultimate sentence, ending with ‘‘a Buddhist negation of the

will,’’ Walter Kaufmann writes:


Here Nietzsche’s emancipation from Schopenhauer becomes evident, and their differ-

ence from each other relates to the central subject of the whole book: the significance of

tragedy. Nietzsche writes about tragedy as the great life-affirming alternative to Scho-

penhauer’s negation of the will. One can be as honest and free of optimistic illusions as

Schopenhauer was, but still celebrate life as fundamentally powerful and pleasurable as

the Greeks did.58

Analogous to the difference between Nietzsche and Schopenhauer that is noted by

Kaufmann is the difference between Wang and Schopenhauer. Although Wang ad-

mittedly bases his essay ‘‘On the Dream’’ on Schopenhauer’s theory of tragedy, he

does raise ‘‘huge questions’’ about Schopenhauer’s negation of will, as has been

shown above. Moreover, he writes about the Dream as what Kaufmann calls the

‘‘great life-affirming alternative to Schopenhauer’s negation of will’’ or Schopen-

hauer’s ‘‘no-life-ism.’’ In the concluding paragraph of the fourth section, Wang

argues that it is ‘‘through art’’ as well as ‘‘concrete practice’’ as exemplified in the

Dream that the Chinese people can hope to achieve deliverance from the desires of

life. His view of the significance of tragedy is indeed remarkably Nietzschean, even

though he does not openly and enthusiastically celebrate life as does Nietzsche.

Although it is not known whether Wang read and consciously drew ideas from

The Birth of Tragedy, he was unquestionably familiar with its basic contents. In

‘‘Nietzsche and Schopenhauer’’ and ‘‘Nietzsche’s Theories,’’ an essay based on a

booklet by Kuwaki Genyoku (1874–1946) titled Essentials of Nietzsche’s

Ethics (Niiche-shi rinrisetsu ippan ),59 Wang not only mentions

The Birth of Tragedy but also provides a general description of both its contents and

its pivotal significance for our understanding of the evolution of Nietzsche’s

thought.60 Considering this, the correspondence shown above between Wang’s and

Nietzsche’s views of tragedy cannot possibly be dismissed as sheer coincidence.61

Wang’s Misreading of Nietzsche: A Critique of the Master-Slave Bifurcation

of Humanity

The influence of Nietzsche may be seen not only where Wang embraces Nietzsche’s

ideas but also where Wang takes issue with ideas and doctrines that are generally

(mis)perceived as Nietzschean. A case in point is his discussion on ‘‘live-life-ism.’’

As we shall see presently, the shadow of Nietzsche looms large throughout his

discussion.

Immediately after he raises ‘‘huge questions’’ about Schopenhauer’s ‘‘no-life-

im,’’ Wang goes on to consider its nominal opposite, ‘‘live-life-ism.’’ By this neolo-

gism Wang intends to mean all ethical, educational, and sociological theories that

champion the ideal of equality.62 Wang has mixed views of ‘‘live-life-ism’’ as he at

once criticizes and endorses it.

Wang begins by questioning the rationale of ‘‘live-life-ism.’’ Conceiving the life

of all as an entity measurable in relational terms of quality and quantity, he argues

that ‘‘live-life-ism’’ means to maximize the quantity of life—to enable as many peo-

Zong-qi Cai 181

ple as possible to live a good life. To Wang, the ideal of maximum happiness for the

maximum number of people is nothing but the dream of scholars of ethics. To

practice ‘‘live-life-ism,’’ Wang asserts, is to force all to sacrifice or reduce the quality

of their life to an absolute minimum. This reduction of the quality of life constitutes a

form of ‘‘no-life-ism’’ of its own.63 In this critique of ‘‘live-life-ism’’ we can certainly

hear an echo of this Nietzschean denunciation of the notion of equality:

Thus I speak to you in a parable—you who make souls whirl, you preachers of equality.

To me you are tarantulas, and secretly vengeful. But I shall bring your secrets to light; . . .

. . . ‘‘We shall wreak vengeance and abuse on all whose equals we are not’’—thus do

the tarantula hearts vow. ‘‘And ‘will to equality’ shall henceforth be the name of virtue;

and against all that has power we want to raise our clamor!’’

You preachers of equality, the tyrannomania of impotence clamors thus out of you for

equality: your most secret ambitions to be tyrants thus shroud themselves in words of

virtue.64

At the time of writing ‘‘On the Dream,’’ Wang was keenly aware of Nietzsche’s

anti-equality stand. In his essay ‘‘Nietzsche’s Views of Education,’’ written in the

same year as ‘‘On the Dream,’’ Wang sets forth Nietzsche’s anti-equality views

through a comparison with Rousseau’s advocacy of equality:

What Nietzsche calls the natural state is just the opposite of Rousseau[’s view]. Rousseau

loathes the evils of the class society and has sympathy for the misery of the oppressed. So

he often cherishes in his mind the propositions of equality, liberty, and freedom from

persecution. He believes that in their natural state all men were equal and had freedom.

There was no difference between the noble and the humble and no distinction between

the rich and the poor. Therefore, his doctrine of education centers on the return to nature.

What Nietzsche calls the natural state is absolute inequality. He contends that there are

only a small minority of masters (Herren) and a great majority of slaves (Knechte) living

here on earth. The fundamental difference between these two groups cannot be bridged

like a deep gulf. This difference is not merely the difference of classes, but also the dif-

ference of human kinds.65

Although Wang is influenced, consciously or unconsciously, by Nietzsche’s

anti-equality stance in his questioning of ‘‘live-life-ism,’’ he is far from rejecting its

ideal of equality. As a matter of fact, immediately after his critique of ‘‘live-life-ism,’’

he wrote:

Without such an ideal [of equality], the meat of the weak becomes the food of the strong

in this world. If we let everything be ruled by the laws of nature, how can we have ethics?

However, although people of our time talk about ‘‘live-life-ism’’ every day, it still cannot

be known when this ideal can be realized. An ideal to strive for seems near, but cannot

be reached and has remained as an ideal since the time of antiquity.66

From this passage, we can tell that it is out of his fear of the Darwinian society that

Wang endorses ‘‘live-life-ism’’ despite his doubts about its rationale and its feasibil-

ity. For Wang, ‘‘live-life-ism’’ can at least serve as a useful counterforce against the

onset of a Darwinian society. In speaking of Darwinian society, Wang was very


likely to have Nietzsche’s educational and social views in the front of his mind. In

fact, in ‘‘Nietzsche’s Theories,’’ Wang explicitly identifies Nietzsche’s doctrines with

Darwin’s:

What Rousseau calls nature is very different in meaning from what Nietzsche calls in-

stinct. What Rousseau calls a natural man cherishes the feeling of peace and harmony.

What Nietzsche calls the instinctive mankind (i.e., natural man) is tough, cold, and fero-

cious. Considering this, Nietzsche’s theory is close to, not Rousseau’s, but Darwin’s. It is

quite consistent with Darwin’s theory of evolution. . . . As for Nietzsche, he says that the

majority of the masses exist for the sake of the small number of great men; that is to say,

the masses are but the preparation for great men. According to Nietzsche, the goal of

mankind is to produce geniuses, whom he regards as the supreme model of mankind.

The reason for man’s existence and the purposes of all civilizations lies in this goal.67

In other writings by Wang, we can find the same reservation and unease with

what Wang considers the Darwinian strains in Nietzsche’s thought. While he ad-

mittedly is enthralled with Nietzsche’s idea of artist-genius, and he admires or even

idolizes Nietzsche as a genius greater than Schopenhauer,68 he does not fail to point

out what he calls the flip side of Nietzsche’s unbridled spirit. As Nietzsche wishes

‘‘to break loose from all bridles and heroically charge forward,’’ Wang notes, ‘‘he

cannot stop until he reaches an extreme. Therefore his thought often falls into ex-

treme radicalism.’’69 In Wang’s eyes, Nietzsche’s contempt for the common people

is the worst of his radical Darwinian tendencies. In any event, Wang himself takes

great care to avoid such a tendency when he adopts Nietzsche’s idea of genius in his

discussion of education.

In a series of articles on educational reforms written during the period 1903–

1907, Wang is anything but antithetical to various programs of general education

even though he tends to argue for more resources and attention to the higher edu-

cation of elites.70 To him, the nurturing of geniuses is not necessarily at odds with the

education of the citizenry (guomin ). Apparently, Wang’s balanced view of ed-

ucation, like his conditional endorsement of ‘‘live-life-ism,’’ attests to his strong dis-

agreement with the perceived Darwinian thrust of Nietzsche’s thought. Of course,

there are deep cultural reasons for Wang’s resistance to the extreme anti-equality

stance he sees in Nietzsche. This stance runs against the values and beliefs held dear

by the Chinese over the millennia: the Confucian belief in education for all (youjiao

wulei ), the Confucian (especially Mencius’) concern for the underprivi-

leged, and above all the Bodhisattva ideal of compassion and salvation for all.

Wang’s emphasis on the salvational power of the Dream aptly reflects his unwaver-

ing adherence to these values and beliefs.

The Nietzschean Darwinism that was perceived and criticized by Wang, how-

ever, is largely a construct of evolutionist misreading by the likes of Kuwaki Gen-

yoku, on whom Wang depends for his understanding of Nietzsche. It is true that

there is the undeniable influence of Darwinian ideas in Nietzsche. His anti-equality

remarks, like those cited above, his discussion of master morality and slave morality,

and his contempt for the all-too-human masses all sound rather Darwinian and

Zong-qi Cai 183

cannot be easily disassociated from Darwinian elitism. Nonetheless, one should re-

member that, in denouncing equality, slave morality, and the all-too-human masses,

Nietzsche does not seek to set up a radical master-slave bifurcation of humanity, as

Kuwaki Genyoku and Wang assume. Rather, he mainly aims to shock people into

the realization that they must destroy their bondage to morality and faiths and to

show people ‘‘the rainbow and all the steps to the overman’’—the great emanci-

pated individual.71 It is one thing for Nietzsche to castigate the values and attitudes

of the all-too-human masses for the sake of bringing forth more individuals of free

will. It would be an entirely different thing, however, if he were to believe, as Wang

wrongly presumes, that ‘‘the majority of the masses exist for the sake of the small

number of great men; that is to say, the masses are but the preparation for great

men.’’ Instead of being the kind of social Darwinian that Wang labels him, Nietzsche

actually criticizes Darwinism in an equivocal fashion. He takes great pains to dis-

tinguish his overman from the ‘‘last man’’72—‘‘an ‘idealistic’ type of a higher kind of

man, half ‘saint,’ half ‘genius,’ ’’ born of evolution:

The word ‘‘overman,’’ as the designation of a type of supreme achievement, as opposed

to ‘‘modern’’ men, to ‘‘good’’ men, to Christians and other nihilists—a word that in the

mouth of a Zarathustra, the annihilator of morality, becomes a very pensive word—has

been understood almost everywhere with the utmost innocence in the sense of those very

values whose opposite Zarathustra was meant to represent—that is, as an ‘‘idealistic’’

type of a higher kind of man, half ‘‘saint,’’ half ‘‘genius.’’

Other scholarly oxen have suspected me of Darwinism on that account. Even the ‘‘hero

worship’’ of that unconscious and involuntary counterfeiter, Carlyle, which I have repu-

diated so maliciously, has been read into it.73

There is ample evidence in Nietzsche’s writings to support this self-defense. In

Thus Spoke Zarathustra, for instance, Zarathustra resolutely rejects the counsel of the

old man in the woods to abandon the hopeless men. He declares, ‘‘I love man’’;

‘‘I bring men a gift.’’74 Throughout the book, Zarathustra tirelessly speaks to vari-

ous peoples and seeks spiritual companions in their midst:

Fellow creators, the creator seeks—those who write new values on new tables. . . . Fellow

creators, Zarathustra seeks, fellow harvesters and fellow celebrants: what are herds and

shepherds and corpses to him? . . . I shall join the creators, the harvesters, the celebrants:

I shall show them the rainbow and all the steps to the overman.75

Judging by both the contents and the tone of his speech, Zarathustra appears to be a

salvational figure. For instance, we clearly observe his salvational intent in this re-

mark by him:

You that are lonely today, you that are withdrawing, you shall one day be the people: out

of you, who have chosen yourselves, there shall grow a chosen people—and out of them,

the overman. Verily, the earth shall yet become a site of recovery. And even now a new

fragrance surrounds it, bringing salvation—and a new hope.76

Reading these remarks, one cannot but think of Wang’s portrayal of Bao Yu as one


capable of ‘‘bringing salvation—and a new hope’’ to the Chinese people. If Wang’s

portrayal of Bao Yu as a salvational figure is inspired by Nietzsche’s Zarathustra, we

can assume that Wang was at least aware of the non-Darwinian, if not compassion-

ate, nature of the Nietzschean overman. If so, we then have an intriguing question:

why did Wang still follow Kuwaki Genyoku and fault Nietzsche for his alleged

master-slave bifurcation of humanity?

Conclusion

I have found numerous traces of Nietzsche’s influence in ‘‘On the Dream’’ even

though there is not a single mention of Nietzsche’s name in that seminal essay. As a

rule, we tend to find Nietzschean thought looming large where Wang openly dis-

agrees with or quietly departs from the views of Schopenhauer and, to a lesser ex-

tent, those of Kant and Aristotle. His questioning of Schopenhauer’s ‘‘no-life-ism’’

harks back to Nietzsche’s challenge to Schopenhauer’s life-negating ethics. His

portrayal of Bao Yu reveals three distinctive character traits of the Nietzschean

overman. In particular, his praise of Bao Yu’s rebellious character betrays his pref-

erence for the iconoclastic Nietzschean overman over the passive Schopenhauerian

saint.77 The strong influence of Nietzche’s views of tragedy may also be observed in

Wang’s discussion of the tragic form. His modification of Aristotle’s catharsis seems

to have been made in the spirit of Nietzsche’s criticism of its ‘‘pathological dis-

charge.’’ His stress on the ultimate salvational function of the Dream strongly

reminds us of what Nietzsche says about the life-saving role of the Dionysian tragedy

in The Birth of Tragedy. Finally, in his conditional endorsement of ‘‘live-life-ism’’ we

can see a thinly disguised repudiation of the extreme Darwinian tendency he mis-

takenly reads into Nietzsche’s works.

It should not be surprising that we can hear so many echoes of Nietzschean

thought in ‘‘On the Dream.’’ At the time of writing this essay Wang was deeply

occupied with the study of Nietzsche’s aesthetic and ethical theories through com-

parisons with Schopenhauer’s. It is in 1904, the year he wrote ‘‘On the Dream,’’ that

he published his signed essay ‘‘Nietzsche and Schopenhauer,’’ and his unsigned

essays ‘‘Nietzsche’s Theories’’ and ‘‘Nietzsche’s Views on Education.’’ So it was only

too natural that in ‘‘On the Dream’’ he would, consciously or otherwise, introduce

a Nietzschean perspective where he felt the need to go beyond Schopenhauer’s

views. The remarkable correspondence shown above between Nietzsche’s aesthetic

and ethical ideas discussed in these essays and the Nietzschean perspective found in

‘‘On the Dream’’ offers further testimony to the influence of Nietzsche in the latter

work. If this influence of Nietzsche can be established on the basis of the evidence

given above, there is then a need to reassess Nietzschean thought as a catalyst more

important than hitherto thought for the rethinking of traditional Chinese literature

through comparisons with Western traditions—a broad twentieth-century critical

and intellectual trend initiated by none other than ‘‘On the Dream of the Red

Chamber.’’

Zong-qi Cai 185

Notes

This essay was originally written for the International Symposium on Nietzsche and

East Asian Thought organized by Dr. Raoul David Findeisen. I wish to thank Dr.

Findeisen for providing me with valuable information and material for the writing of

this essay. I also would like to thank the two anonymous readers and Professor Roger

T. Ames for their perceptive and constructive comments and suggestions.

1 – For a comprehensive English-language study of Wang Guowei’s life and

thought, see Joey Bonner, Wang Kuo-wei: An Intellectual Biography, Harvard

East Asian Series, 101 (Cambridge, MA: The Council on East Asian Studies,

Harvard University Press, 1986). For major studies of Wang’s writings on liter-

ature and aesthetics, see Nie Zhenbin , Wang Guowei meixue sixiang

shuping (Liaoning: Liaoning Daxue Chubanshe, 1986); Ye

Jiaying , Wang Guowei ji qi wenxue piping (Hong

Kong: Zhonghua Shuju, 1980); Ye Chengyi , Wang Guowei cilun yanjiu

(Taibei: Wenshizhe Chubanshe, 1991); Zhang Bennan ,

Wang Guowei meixue sixiang yanjiu (Taibei: Wenjin

Chubanshe, 1992); and Zhao Qinglin , Rongtong zhongxi zhexue de

Wang Guowei (Shanghai: Shanghai Shehui Kexueyuan

Chubanshe, 1992).

2 – For studies of Nietzsche’s influence in China, see Marian von Galik, ‘‘Nietz-

sche in China (1918–1925),’’ Zeitschrift fur Kultur und Geschichte Ost-und

Sudostasiens 110 (1971): 5–47; Raoul David Findeisen, ‘‘Die Last der Kultur:

Vier Fallstudien zur chinesischen Nietzsche-reczeption,’’ minma sinica, 1989,

pp. 1–41, and 1990, pp. 1–40; and David A. Kelly, ‘‘The Highest Chinadom:

Nietzsche and the Chinese Mind,’’ in Nietzsche and Asian Thought, ed. Gra-

ham Parkes (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991). For a broader study

of Nietzsche and Asian thought, see Parkes, Nietzsche and Asian Thought.

3 – See, for instance, this remark by David A. Kelly: ‘‘Wang Guowei saw Nietzsche

as little more than a disciple of Schopenhauer, whose philosophical pessimism

briefly influenced Wang’s search for an aesthetic worldview—a search which

notoriously ended in suicide’’ (David A. Kelly, ‘‘The Highest Chinadom:

Nietzsche and the Chinese Mind,’’ in Nietzsche and Asian Thought, ed. Gra-

ham Parkes [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991], p. 153).

4 – The discussion of Nietzsche’s influence on Wang is traditionally limited to a

few scattered references to Nietzsche in Wang’s writings on literature and

aesthetics. Of these references, two are most frequently discussed. The first is

Wang’s use of the term shili zhi yu , a rough translation of ‘‘will-to-

power’’ (see Fo Chu , Wang Guowei shixue yanjiu [Beijing:

Beijing Daxue Chubanshe, 1987], and Zhao Qinglin , Rongtong zhongxi

zhexue de Wang Guowei , pp. 216–218). The second is

his use of the expression xueshu (book written with blood) based on a


passage in Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra (see Fo Chu, Wang Guowei

shixue yanjiu, pp. 298–300, and Ye Chengyi, Wang Guowei cilun yanjiu, pp.

378–379).

5 – For a collection of most of these newly discovered essays, see Fo Chu ,

Wang Guowei zhexue meixue lunwen jiyi (Shanghai:

Huadong Shifan Daxue Chubanshe, 1993). In the preface and the postscript to

his book, Fo Chu makes a thorough and convincing argument for identifying

these essays as Wang’s works; see pp. 1–27 and 431–439.

6 – Wang’s authorship of these two essays has been presumed mainly on account

of five considerations: (1) Wang’s mentor Luo Zhengyu (1866–1940)

acknowledged the existence of Wang’s uncollected essays on Nietzsche; (2)

in 1932 Li Changzhi (1910–1978) gave an account of his reading of

Wang’s uncollected writings on Nietzsche and other Western philosophers

originally published in The World of Education; (3) the two essays are consis-

tent in theme and style with Wang’s signed works, especially the essay ‘‘Scho-

penhauer and Nietzsche’’ (‘‘Shubenhua yu Nicai’’ ), published in

the World of Education; (4) no one else involved with The World of Education

knew enough about Nietzsche to author the two essays; and (5) the two essays

predate ‘‘Schopenhauer and Nietzsche’’ by several months and logically seem

to be the basis for the writing of the latter work. See Wang Deyi , Wang

Guowei nianpu (Taibei: Zhongguo Xueshu Zhuzuo Jiangzhu Wei-

yuanhui, 1967), pp. 32–33, and Chen Hongxiang , Wang Guowei

nianpu (Shandong: Qilu Shushe, 1991).

7 – Wang Guowei , ‘‘Nicai shi zhi xueshuo’’ , Jiaoyu shijie

78 (1904): 9–20, and 79 (1904): 9–21.

8 – By the account of Luo Zhengyu, Wang assisted Luo in editing the first three

volumes (1901–1903) and edited by himself the remaining four volumes

(1904–1907) of The World of Education (see Chen Hongxiang, Wang Guowei

nianpu, pp. 51, 64, and Bonner, Wang Kuo-wei: An Intellectual Biography,

p. 29). After Wang took over the editorship of the World of Education in 1904,

he introduced major changes to its editorial principles and transformed it from

a journal devoted solely to pedagogy into a comprehensive journal of the

humanities with an emphasis on the introduction of Western philosophical,

aesthetic, ethical, psychological, and pedagogical theories (see Chen Hongi-

xang, Wang Guowei nianpu, pp. 51, 64). For a study of Wang’s editorial role in

the World of Education, see Fo Chu, Wang Guowei zhexue meixue lunwen

jiyi, pp. 2–4, 431–433.

9 – For instance, see Ye Jiaying, Wang Guowei ji qi wenxue piping, pp. 174–211.

10 –

Zong-qi Cai 187

(Wang

Guowei , Wang Guowei wenji , ed. Yao Ganming

and Wang Yan , 4 vols. [Beijing: Wenshi Chubanshe, 1997], vol. 3,

p. 469.

11 – Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Idea, trans. R. B. Haldane and

J. Kemp (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1907–1909), p. 327.

12 – On Wang’s criticism of Schopenhauer’s doctrine of the denial of the will, see

Bonner, Wang Kuo-wei: An Intellectual Biography, pp. 78–80.

13 –

(Wang Guowei wenji, 1 : 16–17).

14 –

(Wang Guowei wenji, 1 : 18).

15 –


16 – Zhang Bennan and Zhang Songnan have taken note, but furnished no detailed

analysis, of the Nietzschean character of the ‘‘huge questions’’ raised by Wang

(Zhang Bennan, Wang Guowei meixue sixiang yanjiu, p. 182; Zhang Songnan

, ‘‘Wang Guowei meixue sixiang yu wailai wenhua guannian,’’ in Zhe-

jiang mingren yu shijie wenhua , ed. Li Shoufu et al.

[Hangzhou: Hangzhou Daxue Chubanshe, 1991], pp. 48–49).

17 –


18 – (Wang Guowei wenji, 3 : 343).

19 – Frederick Copleston, ‘‘Schopenhauer and Nietzsche,’’ in Schopenhauer: His

Philosophical Achievement, ed. Michael Fox (Sussex, England: Harvester,

1980), p. 224.

20 – Ecce Homo, ‘‘Thus Spoke Zarathustra,’’ sec. 6, in Walter Kaufmann, trans.

and ed., Basic Writings of Nietzsche (New York: Modern Library, 1966),

p. 762.

21 –


22 – Wang Guowei wenji, 1 : 9.


23 –


24 –


25 –

(Wang Guowei wenji,

1 : 15).


27 – Ibid.

28 – ‘‘Zarathustra’s Speeches,’’ in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, pt. 1, in Walter Kauf-

mann, trans. and ed., The Portable Nietzsche (New York: Penguin, 1959),

p. 139.

29 – ‘‘Zarathustra’s Prologue,’’ sec. 9, in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, pt. 1, in Kaufmann,

The Portable Nietzsche, pp. 135–136.

30 –



32 – See Kaufmann, The Portable Nietzsche, p. 115.

33 – ‘‘Zarathustra’s Speeches,’’ in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, pt. 1, in Kaufmann, The

Portable Nietzsche, p. 139.

34 – ‘‘On Those Who Are Sublime,’’ in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, pt. 2, in Kaufmann,

The Portable Nietzsche, pp. 230–231. See also the description of the tri-stage

metamorphosis of spirit in ‘‘Zarathustra’s Speeches,’’ in Thus Spoke Zarathustra,

pt. 1, in Kaufmann, The Portable Nietzsche, pp. 137–140.


36 – Ibid.

37 – By his own account, Wang first learned about Kant’s and Schopenhauer’s

philosophies as early as 1899 when he was studying in Japan. Subsequently, he

made serious efforts to read and understand Kant at four different times—1902,

1905, 1906, and 1907 (see Chen Hongxiang, Wang Guowei nianpu, pp. 43,

56, 77, 89, 98).

Zong-qi Cai 189


39 – Compare the first section of ‘‘On the Dream’’ with this passage:

If, raised by the power of the mind, a man relinquishes the common way of looking at

things . . . if he thus ceases to consider the where, the when, the why, and the whither of

things, and looks simply and solely at the what; if further, he does not allow abstract

thought, the concepts of the reason, to take possession of his consciousness, but, instead

of all this, gives the whole power of his mind to perception, sinks himself entirely in this,

and lets his whole consciousness be filled with the quiet contemplation of the natural

object actually present, whether a landscape, a tree, a mountain, a building, or what-

ever it may be . . . if thus the object has to such an extent passed out of all relation to

something outside it, and the subject out of all relation to the will, then that which is so

known is no longer the particular thing as such; but it is the Idea, the eternal form, the

immediate objectivity of the will at this grade; and therefore, he who is sunk in this

perception is no longer individual, for in such perception the individual has lost himself;

but he is [the] pure, will-less, painless, timeless subject of knowledge. (Schopenhauer,

The World as Will and Idea, p. 231).

For a succinct introduction to Kant’s and Schopenhauer’s aesthetic theories,

see Israel Knox, The Aesthetic Theories of Kant, Hegel, and Schopenhauer

(New York: Humanities Press, 1958).


41 – Ibid.

42 –

(Wang Guowei wenji, 1 : 13–14).

43 –


44 – On the application of Aristotle’s catharsis to the interpretation of the Dream,

see Zhou Fomin , ‘‘Zhi Yan Zhai yu Yalisiduode de ‘jietuo’ shuo’’

Gudai wenxue lilun yanjiu 14

(1989): 87–96.

45 –


46 – Although Aristotle uses the term ‘‘catharsis’’ in a conspicuous fashion, he does

not clearly define it. As a result, it has ever since been subjected to many dif-

ferent interpretations. For a study of changing interpretations of catharsis, see

Adnan K. Abdulla, Catharsis in Literature (Bloomington: Indiana University

Press, 1985).

47 – These two lines are cited in English in Wang Guowei wenji, 1 : 4.

48 – See Walter Kaufmann, The Birth of Tragedy, sec. 18, in Kaufmann, Basic Writ-

ings of Nietzsche, p. 112.


49 – Ibid.

50 – Wang Guowei wenji, 1 : 3–4.

51 – The Birth of Tragedy, sec. 7, in Kaufmann, Basic Writings of Nietzsche, p. 543.

52 – See The Birth of Tragedy, sec. 22, in Kaufmann, Basic Writings of Nietzsche,

p. 132. In the course of revising this essay, I discovered that Fo Chu also cites

this passage in his discussion of Wang’s view of catharsis. However, Fo holds

the opposite view that Wang is closer to Aristotle than Nietzsche in his under-

standing of catharsis (Fo Chu, Wang Guowei shixue yanjiu, pp. 302–303).

53 – The Birth of Tragedy, sec. 22, in Kaufmann, Basic Writings of Nietzsche, pp.

132–133.

54 – Ibid., p. 132. In the section ‘‘The Birth of Tragedy’’ of Ecce Homo, Nietzsche

draws this distinction between Aristotle’s catharsis and his concept of sub-

limation:

Saying Yes to life even in its strangest and hardest problems; the will to life rejoicing

over its own inexhaustibility even in the very sacrifice of its highest types—that is what I

called Dionysian, that is what I understood as the bridge to the psychology of the tragic

poet. Not in order to get rid of terror and pity, not in order to purge oneself of a dan-

gerous effect by its vehement discharge—Aristotle misunderstood it that way—but in

order to be oneself the eternal joy of becoming, beyond all terror and pity—that joy

which includes even joy in destroying. (Kaufmann, Basic Writings of Nietzsche, p. 729).

55 – Bonner has taken notice of a Nietzschean element in Wang’s use of catharsis.

He notes that in an interesting account of literary creation Wang ‘‘seems to in-

corporate Nietzsche’s concept of sublimation, according to which passions, or

instinctual energies, are discharged not as passions but as something else into

which they have evolved in order to become socially acceptable’’ (Bonner,

Wang Kuo-wei: An Intellectual Biography, p. 101).

56 – Kaufmann, Basic Writings of Nietzsche, p. 24.

57 – The Birth of Tragedy, sec. 7, in Kaufmann, Basic Writings of Nietzsche, p. 59.

58 – Ibid.

59 – For a study of this important introductory booklet on Nietzsche, see H. J.

Becker, Nietzsche in Japan: Ein Beitrag zur Individualismus (Wiesbaden: Har-

rassowitz, 1983), pp. 151–171.

60 – See Wang Guowei wenji, 3 : 352–353, and ‘‘Nicai shi zhi xueshuo,’’ Jiaoyu

shijie 78 (1904): 10–11.

61 – Fo Chu asserts that Wang not only was familiar with The Birth of Tragedy but

actually read it. He traces the influence of this work in Wang’s view of catharsis

and his application of Nietzsche’s analysis of Dionysian rites to his study of the

Zhaji (Year-End Sacrifice to the Eight Spirits) as the origin of Chinese

Zong-qi Cai 191

drama (Fo Chu, Wang Guowei shixue yanjiu, pp. 305–313). In demonstrating

the influence on Wang of The Birth of Tragedy, Zhang Bennan examines the

central importance of the Apollonian and Dionysian polarity in various new

critical categories introduced by Wang in his study of the ci poetry or lyric

songs (Zhang Bennan, Wang Guowei meixue sixiang yanjiu, pp. 179–239).

62 – Wang’s pair of ‘‘no-life-ism’’ and ‘‘live-life-ism’’ reminds us of Nietzsche’s fa-

vorite paired phrases ‘‘No-saying’’ and ‘‘Yes-saying.’’ One may wonder if Wang

was inspired to some degree by Nietzsche’s phrasing, even though his pair

differs from Nietzsche’s phrases in meaning.


64 – ‘‘On the Tarantulas,’’ in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, pt. 2, in Kaufmann, The Por-

table Nietzsche, pp. 211–212.

65 –



67 –

(Wang Guowei, ‘‘Nicai shi zhi xueshuo,’’ Jiaoyu shijie 79 [1904]: 15).

68 – Wang Guowei wenji, 3 : 353–355, 368.

69 – ( Jiaoyu shijie 71 [1904]: 13).

70 – For a discussion of Wang’s views on education, see Bonner, Wang Kuo-wei:

An Intellectual Biography, pp. 21–44.

71 – ‘‘On the Gift-Giving Virtue,’’ in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, pt. 1, in Kaufmann,

The Portable Nietzsche, p. 189.

72 – ‘‘Zarathustra’s Prologue,’’ sections 3–5, in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, pt. 1, in

Kaufmann, The Portable Nietzsche, pp. 124–130.

73 – Ecce Homo, ‘‘Why I Write Such Good Books,’’ sec. 1, in Kaufmann, Basic

Writings of Nietzsche, p. 717.






76 – ‘‘On the Gift-Giving Virtue,’’ in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, pt. 1, in Kaufmann,


77 – See this terse comparison of the two: ‘‘The Schopenhauerian ‘saint’ reaches his

position of superiority by asceticism and renunciation, by saying ‘no’ to life:

the Nietzschean superman realizes himself by affirmation, by saying ‘yes’ to

life. . . . [T]he negative ideal of Schopenhauer became abhorrent to him: the

ideal is affirmation, is positive and not negative . . .’’ (Copleston, ‘‘Schopen-

hauer and Nietzsche,’’ p. 222).

Zong-qi Cai 193

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