ancient texts as legitimation for radical revision of accepted principles. “The
Way” consists in human norms only, not in laws governing the natural world.
Although valid norms are taught by sages, there have been no sages since
ancient times (a direct slap at Ansai’s Neo-Confucianism, in which every
gentleman meditates to become a sage). This being the case, ethical beliefs are
a purely private matter. The only norms that can be generalized are those of
social ethics, which boil down to propriety and obedience to government. From
this Sorai drew radical consequences for current social policy. He suggested
eliminating social ranks, the fourfold order of samurai, farmer, artisan, and
merchant which had been justified as corresponding to the Confucian social
order. Instead, he said, “All the people of the world are officials who assist
the ruling prince, who is the parent of the people” (quoted in Maruyama,
1974: 92).
The military samurai appeared to Sorai an outmoded group, whose troubles
were to be understood in terms of the mundane realities of modern economics.
The samurai were becoming an impoverished class because they did not work,
but lived on fixed stipends in the midst of a market economy.^36 More generally,
demand for goods was unlimited but supply was limited. The result was
increasing prices, while the circulation of gold and silver pieces diminished
because of heavy debts. Sorai thought like an analytical economist, recognizing
that long-run adjustments were necessary. His proposal was to give samurai
fiefs and make them live on the land, while fixing supply and demand by
regulation and restoring frugality through sumptuary legislation. The entire
economy was to be put into stasis; people’s movements were to be controlled
by a registration system. Sorai’s view of economics led him to profoundly
conservative, even reactionary policies. But it was in keeping with his analytical
style that society should be regarded under the aspect of naturalistic order,
with explicit recognition that the market, if allowed to operate, has principles
of its own. Solutions must be economically feasible ones, not merely edicts of
moral exhortation or threats of military coercion. In Sorai’s own school his
chief disciple, Dazai Shundai, a year after Sorai’s death (1728) reversed his
master’s position to favor an economy based on trade rather than agriculture.
With Dazai, the acceptance of an inevitable social order broke through into
the instrumental consideration of policy options. Although it was mercantilism
rather than free trade which he favored, the intellectual basis was an analyti-
cally independent economics.
Sorai and his school raised philological scholarship to a value in its own
right. The break came under cover of ideological continuities from the past.
Confucian legitimation continued to be claimed. The pathway was already
opened by previous scholars who had maneuvered their own positions into an
orthodox light by selective attention to their favorite classics. For Chu Hsi
360 • (^) Intellectual Communities: Asian Paths