Lü Nan (1479-1542), also known as Master Jingye, was a prominent Neo-Confucian philosopher from the Guanzhong region who spent much of his official career in Nanjing. He was a follower of Xue Xuan’s (1389-1464) Hedong (Shanxi) School of Neo-Confucianism and an opponent of Wang Yangming, though Wang’s influence was far greater in the long run. The Jingyezi neipian is a collection of Lü Nan’s oral teachings, compiled by his disciples.

The first passage below comes from a chapter of dialogues between Lü Nan and Wang Chongqing (1483-1565), an official and scholar also known as Master Duanxi. Wang suggests that the moral inferiority of the barbarians and their conflicts with the Chinese are merely a result of the lack of a sage-ruler in the Central Lands capable of civilizing them, rather than being determined by geography. Lü Nan’s reply is tactfully ambiguous, but implies that he thinks a strong frontier defense is still necessary even when a sage-king rules the Central Lands. In the second passage, Lü Nan blames diplomatic relations and trade with the barbarians for inflaming their desires and causing them to invade the Central Lands throughout imperial history, from the Xiongnu to the Mongols. The logical conclusion is that isolationism, not the extension of civilizing influence, would be the best policy for the Chinese civilization-state.

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[Master Duanxi] asked, “Although the Central Lands and the barbarians of the four quarters are separated by differences in environment (‘winds and qi’), this is a natural result of geographical distance. It is the same as the provincial capitals being inferior [in customs] to the imperial capital, the prefectural and county capitals being inferior to the provincial capitals, and the villages being inferior to the cities! Therefore, when there is a sage in the Central Lands, then the world is at peace and the barbarians of the four quarters turn to his civilizing influence. That is just like how heaven and earth transform all things regardless of distance; what difference does geography make?”

[Master Jingye] replied, “‘Cultivating civility and learning’ while ‘strengthening military defense’; that, too, is worth pondering.”¹

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When the Han succeeded to the Zhou and Qin, the hearts of the barbarians were not yet like those of later barbarians in knowing everything about the Central Lands. But after Liu Jing (Lou Jing) proposed the “peace and kinship” (heqin) policy, we sent them gifts of gold thread and colored silk every year and also opened up border markets for trade. Thus the barbarians’ desire to acquire the beautiful things of the Central Lands burned more intensely in their hearts by the day. This trend could only culminate in the Yuan (Mongol) [conquest of the Central Lands]. If only the Central Lands could mind their own business, and the barbarians could mind theirs, then the frontier regions would be at peace and a single prefect would be enough to manage them.

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1. This is an allusion to the description of the peaceful zone of submission in the “Yugong” (see source 2.2). Lü Nan’s point seems to be that even Yu, a sage-king whose “reputation and civilizing influence spread to the far north and the far south and to the four seas beyond,” needed military defenses against the barbarians in the outer zones. ↩︎