Xiong Shili 熊十力

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Xióng Shílì 熊十力 (1885-1968)

Names 名: Duànzhì 斷智, Shēnghéng 升恒 Born 1885 (Guāngxù 光緒 11) in Huánggāng Province 黃岡省, Húběi 湖北 Died 1968 in Shànghǎi 上海

Notable Associates: Liáng Shùmíng 梁漱溟 Lǚ Chéng 呂澂 Ōuyáng Jiàn 歐陽漸 Wáng Ēnyáng 王恩洋

Article editor: Erik Hammerstrom

Xióng Shílì 熊十力 (1885-1968)

Author of the controversial Xīn wéishì lùn 新唯識論 (A New Treatise on Consciousness-Only), Xióng was a philosopher and revolutionary of the late Qing and Republican periods. His thinking combined Confucianism and Buddhism.

Biography

Xióng's father was a teacher in private academies and the whole family was fairly poor when he was young. His father started Xióng's education, but died when he was still young. Xióng went to study in a school in another town, but due to his poverty he was forced to abandon his studies.

Xióng became very pro-Hàn after reading Wáng Chuánshān yíjí 王船山遺集 (The Collected Writings of Wáng Chuánshān), and at age 18 suì 歲 (ca. 1902), he and some other youths from his town went to Wǔchāng 武昌 to join the army. While in the army, the things he saw led him to become a supporter of revolution. To this end, in 1904 he and some friends started the Science Night School (Kēxué bǔxí suǒ 科學補習所), which was dedicated to promoting the idea of revolution. Xióng continued to work for revolution, organizing among the soldiers and participating in a group of people from his hometown who supported revolution. He returned to Huánggāng to agitate for revolution, but returned to Wǔchāng in 1911 when the revolution began. After the revolution, he served in Wǔchāng's new government, then traveled to Guǎngzhōu 廣州 to assist Sun Yat-sen's nascent Nationalist government in 1916. Xióng retired from the army in 1917 and taught at a middle school in Jiāngsū 江蘇 until 1920.

In August of 1920, Xióng became a student at the nascent Chinese Inner Studies Institute 支那內學院 run by Ōuyáng Jiàn 歐陽漸 in Nánjīng 南京 (though the school did not officially open until 1922). There, he studied Consciousness-Only under Ōuyáng with Lǚ Chéng 呂澂, Wáng Ēnyáng 王恩洋, and others.

In 1922, Xióng was invited by Cài Yuánpéi 蔡元培 to come to Běijīng University to give a lecture series, which Xióng titled "Wéishì gàilùn 唯識概論 (An Outline of Consciousness-Only)." The following year he burned the notes for this lecture series and wrote Xīn wéishì lùn 新唯識論 (A New Treatise on Consciousness-Only), which would eventually become one of the most debated modern Chinese works on Consciousness-Only.

Xióng taught briefly at a private academy in his hometown in 1924 before accepting a teaching position at the newly-renamed Wǔchāng University in the spring of the following year. This appointment did not last, however, and by that fall he had taken a teaching position at Běijīng University. There he became friends with Liáng Shùmíng 梁漱溟.

In 1930, Xióng got into a written debate with Wáng Ēnyáng and others over his Xīn wéishì lùn, which the others felt was too Confucian. The two sides wrote tens of thousands of characters' worth of polemics. This disagreement only appeared to heighten the work's popularity and in 1932 Xīn wéishì lùn was finally published in classical Chinese. Xióng's work eventually attracted the attention of Ōuyáng Jiàn, Tàixū 太虛, Yìnshùn 印順, and others, who write their own criticisms of Xióng's synthesis of Buddhist and Confucian thought.

Between 1934 and 1937, Xióng published two volumes of his Shílì yǔyào 十力語要, as well as his Fójiā míngxiāng tōngshì 佛家名相通釋. In 1937, Xióng fled the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War, first in his hometown, and then, in following year, to Sìchuān 四川. There, he completed two more volumes of his Shílì yǔyào, and revised the Xīn wéishì lùn into vernacular Chinese. The first and second volumes of this latter work came out in print in 1940, with the last volume coming out in 1944. That same year, he and several others worked to established the Chinese Philosophy Institute 中國哲學研究所, for which Xióng served as director. Du to the war, the Institute ultimately did not get off the ground.

After the end of the war, Xióng taught at several schools, including in the Philosophy Department at Zhèjiāng University 浙江大學. After the establishment of the PRC in [1949]], he returned to Běijīng University to teach in the Philosophy Department. There he completed his Yuán rú 原儒, before retiring in 1954. After retirement he went to live with his son in Shànghǎi 上海, where he died in 1968 at the age of 84.

Important Works

• Dújīng shìyào 讀經示要
• Dú zhìlùn chāo 讀智論鈔
• Fójiā míngxiāng tōngshì 佛家名相通釋
• Jìngxiāng zhāng 境相章
• Míngxīn piān 明心篇
• Tǐyòng lùn 體用論
• Shílì yǔyào 十力語要
• Xīn wéishì lùn 新唯識論 (A New Treatise on Consciousness-Only)
• Yīnmíng dàshūzhù 因明大疏註
• Yuán rú 原儒

Notable Students

Notes

References

• Shì Dōngchū 釋東初. Zhōngguó Fójiào jìndài shǐ 中國佛教近代史 (A History of Early Contemporary Chinese Buddhism), in Dōngchū lǎorén quánjí 東初老人全集 (Complete Collection of Old Man Dongchu), vols. 1-2. Taipei: Dongchu, 1974 Pp. 2.599-604.
• Yú Língbō 于凌波, ed. Xiàndài Fójiào rénwù cídiǎn 現代佛教人物辭典 (A Dictionary of Modern Buddhist Persons), 2 vols. Taipei: Foguang, 2004. Pp. 2.1442a-1444c.