VOLUME IV, CHAPTER 14, SECTION 2
Centralized Authority Across Domains, and the Method of Laying Out Both Sides
Last section gave China's institutions an objective account. This section gathers together the two most important things in this book. One is the distinctive angle of cross-domain centralized authority. The other is the root method that runs through the whole book, laying out both sides. The first is this book's tool for seeing the world. The second is this book's posture for writing about the world. Once both are made clear, this Part is near its close.
One. Cross-domain centralized authority, a distinctive angle
The earlier Part on centralized authority used five angles to extend it from the category of politics to every organized group: enterprise type against enfeoffment type, the form of the center's position, the five powers, the division of function, and the forms of failure across domains. These five angles turn centralized authority from a law of political science into a tool of understanding the reader can apply to any organization they are in. This section sets this angle firm as an independent claim, and sets it beside the great thinkers' study of centralized authority over five hundred years.
Why did the great thinkers of five hundred years basically confine centralized authority to the category of politics? There are a few reasons. The division of disciplines: the modern division of human knowledge into disciplines scattered this law of centralized authority across political science, management, military science, and sociology, each discipline studying it within its own category, and few crossed the disciplines to take it as one unified law. The focus of study: the great thinkers basically focused on the state, the government, and the political institution, treating the family as the private domain, handing the enterprise to management and the army to military science, and no one systematically took centralized authority as one unified law crossing every domain.
Two. Public and private kept apart, family and state of one structure, the difference between two ways of thinking
A deeper reason is the difference between two traditions of thought. The Western political tradition, especially the liberal tradition, has a root assumption that public and private are separate. The public domain can be studied with political science. The private domain should not be studied with the tools of political science. This separation means that applying centralized authority to the family and other private domains is seen in the Western tradition as crossing the line, so the great thinkers of five hundred years basically did not bring the family or private organizations into the study of political institutions.
Set against the Western separation of public and private, the Chinese tradition thinks of family and state as the same structure: cultivate yourself, order the family, govern the state, bring peace to all under heaven, taking the person, the family, the state, and all under heaven as different levels of the same law. The family is a small state, the state is a large family, the same logic of governing, only the scale different. This work inherits China's thinking of family and state as one structure, so taking centralized authority as one unified law crossing every organized group is, for this book, carrying on what the ancestors said twenty-two hundred years ago, a present-day extension of China's political wisdom. For the Western tradition this is crossing the line, and so the great thinkers of five hundred years basically did not do it. In recent years there have been cross-domain attempts in the West too. Some scholars have studied the centralized authority of governments, churches, large enterprises, and transnational bodies, important forerunners in this direction, and that must be honestly acknowledged. But this is still confined to large organizations. It did not bring the family and other small organizations in, and it did not set firm distinctive frames like enterprise type against enfeoffment type, or the five powers.
Three. The system of the five angles, and how the reader applies it
The five angles of this work make up a complete frame of understanding for cross-domain centralized authority. Enterprise type against enfeoffment type is a concept unique to this book. No scholar within five hundred years set it firm this way. The five powers, decision, appointment, finance, information, and arbitration, are a research tool unique to this book, making centralized authority concrete as five dimensions of power that can be identified and analyzed. The cross-domain reasoning on the forms of failure is a cross-domain summary unique to this book. The varied forms of the center and the division of function have some common-sense content, but they do their work as part of the whole frame. This systematic integration is work no scholar within five hundred years has done in this way.
The reader can take this tool back and apply it to any organization of their own. Apply it to a company. First ask whether it is enterprise type or enfeoffment type, then ask where the center is, then ask to whom each of the five powers belongs, then ask what irreplaceable function it carries, and last, watch for the five laws of failure. Apply it to a family, and walk the same five steps. Apply it to a country, and the one step of asking to whom each of the five powers belongs lets the reader see clearly how power actually runs in their own country, instead of being led along by the simplified descriptions of the media and of discourse. This tool turns the reader from passively accepting a discourse's description into actively analyzing the actual running. Start from the organization you know best, widen step by step, and see clearly how each organization actually runs. This is a root skill for people today, as citizens, as family members, as employees, as members of associations.
Four. Laying out both sides, the deepest method of this book
Having covered the cross-domain angle, now the deepest root posture of this book, laying out both sides. This method is not one concrete claim. It is the research posture this book holds from beginning to end. Covering the six kinds of enfeoffment, it does not judge which is good and which is bad. Covering the brilliance and the hardening of the thirteen centuries of the examination, it does not judge which dynasty did best. Covering the two samples of China and America, it states them objectively and does not judge which is better. Covering America, it approaches every seeming problem from America's own logic, and leaves the reader to think.
What is laying out both sides? Judge no side. Understand every institution, culture, and thought from its own logic. See the advantage of anything, and see its cost too. Let the facts and the laws show themselves. Do not reach the verdict for the reader. Set your own standpoint down, and let the reader make their own judgment by their own position and values. Its core spirit is not that both views are right, and not muddling things together. It is that every view has its logic, has its cost, has its reason and its limits, and this understanding is handed to the reader.
Five. The standpoints of the great thinkers of five hundred years, and the cost of a sharp standpoint
Set against laying out both sides, almost every one of the great thinkers within five hundred years had a standpoint of his own and defended it through his works. Machiavelli defended the unification of Italy, Hobbes defended absolute monarchy, Locke defended limited government, Rousseau defended popular sovereignty, Marx defended proletarian transformation, Mill defended liberalism. These great thinkers' standpoints all differ, some even oppose each other, but they share one thing: study and advocacy are often one. This is the root posture of works of political thought within five hundred years. This book respects all these standpoints alike, because behind each one is a thinker's most sincere response to his own time.
A research posture with a sharp standpoint has its costs. Cost one, the reader is led along by the author's standpoint, and the room to think for oneself is squeezed. Cost two, some facts that do not fit the standpoint may be hidden without the author knowing it. This is not a moral problem, it is a problem in the mechanism of understanding, and no one can wholly avoid it. Cost three, it falls easily into ideological opposition. Study becomes camps, rational discussion becomes declaring a side. Cost four, a work with a sharp standpoint often loses part of its value as the age it defended passes, while an objective statement of the facts stays valid across the ages.
Six. Why choose to lay out both sides, and its inner challenges
Why does this book choose to lay out both sides? First, to carry on China's twenty-two-hundred-year tradition of study. Traditional Chinese historiography has the tradition of writing the record straight: defend no side, record the facts, let later generations judge. Sima Qian kept an objective record of both Xiang Yu and Liu Bang, strengths and flaws side by side, and this work inherits that. Second, a reflection on today's ideological opposition. Works with a sharp standpoint often deepen opposition, and laying out both sides hopes to offer a way of study that does not deepen it. Third, to give the reader the greatest respect for their understanding. A sharp standpoint reaches the verdict for the reader. Laying out both sides lets the reader judge for themselves. Fourth, to seek lasting value. An objective statement of facts and laws can stay valid across the ages.
This method has its inner challenges too, and this book honestly acknowledges them. Challenge one, the reader may find it lukewarm, and it asks for more active thinking. Challenge two, it may leave every side dissatisfied. Those who back this side feel it is too positive about that side, and those who back that side feel it says too much about this side's costs. Challenge three, it may be misread as fence-sitting or muddling things together. But this is not having no standpoint. It is consciously letting the standpoint give way to the facts. Challenge four, it is hard to carry out. Every researcher has hidden preferences of his own, and pressing them down so the facts speak for themselves takes continual self-examination. This book may also have places where it has not done well enough, and wherever the reader finds anything unbalanced, they are welcome to point it out.
Seven. The position this section lays down
This section sets firm the thirty-fourth layer. Cross-domain centralized authority is a distinctive angle of this book. The great thinkers of five hundred years basically confined centralized authority to the category of politics. This book inherits China's tradition of family and state as one structure and extends it to every organized group, and the five angles make centralized authority a tool of understanding the reader can apply to any organization. Laying out both sides is the deepest method of this book. Almost every one of the great thinkers of five hundred years had a sharp standpoint and defended it. This book chooses to judge no side and only let the facts and the laws show themselves, carrying on China's tradition of writing the record straight, and giving the reader the greatest respect for their understanding.
The real thing for the reader is a few questions to think through for themselves. A research posture is itself a claim. What standpoint did the authors of the works you have read hold, and how did that standpoint shape their content and their judgments? Whatever view you read, can you tell the author's standpoint apart from the objective facts, and can you keep room for your own independent judgment after being moved by it? This independence of understanding is one of the most important skills of a reader in today's age of information explosion. And one thing matters most. This book does not want the reader to accept all its claims without condition. Read this book itself critically too. This book hopes that after reading, the reader can use the tools it offers to analyze the real world they are in and form their own independent judgment. Laying out both sides is not only a research posture, it is also an attitude to life: toward any view, any person, any thing, see both sides and do not rush to judge. This attitude lets a person keep a steadier judgment in a complex world. The next section is the close of this Part, and of the whole volume, covering where this book actually stands and to whom it hands the word. See you in the next section.
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.
Section Three. What this work is, to the reader five hundred years from now