«Сумма мудрости» Фэн Мэнлуна как источник исследования китайской стратагемной мысли

Abstract

Studies of Chinese stratagem thinking in Russia still do not take into account works created in line with the Confucian philosophical tradition. “A Complete Book of Wisdom” by Feng Menglong (1574–1646) can be regarded as a collection of stratagems. The grounds for this assessment may be found in traditional bibliographic descriptions and the modern research and publishing tradition. The fi rst edition was published in 1626, the supplemented edition – in 1634. Formally, “A Complete Book of Wisdom” can be referred to encyclopediasleishu. The text is not a continuous narrative, but consists of individual short stories; the number depends on the edition, from 1061 to 1236. Each story describes a precedent for the application of a stratagem. The period of the narration covers years from ancient times to the Ming Dynasty. Feng Menglong selected proper stories, edited them, and added his own comments. Typologically, similar stories are organized into separate sections (28 in total), which, in turn, are organized into chapters (10 in total). One chapter contains from two to four sections. “A Complete Book of Wisdom” retains the features of the “A New Account of Tales of the World” by Liu Yiqing (403–444), which are characterized by a value classifi cation of people’s deeds. All the stories are arranged according to the principle of “from the best to the worst”. Feng Menglong wrote a large preface to the entire work, and provided extended prefaces to each chapter. Each section is preceded by a brief explanation. Feng Manlong’s own ideological views can be discovered as the paratextual elements: prefaces and commentaries. The article consists of two parts. The fi rst part is devoted to the description of the peculiarities of the narrative language of “A Complete Book of Wisdom”, as well as the analysis of the socio-philosophical issues that stimulated the creation of this work. On the basis of quotation from classics in Feng Menglong’s works two types of author’s meaning formation are revealed. The author of the paper shows transformation of ethical models of Sung neo-Confucianism and the changing status of the category ‘wisdom’ in Feng Menglong’s ideological program. The second part of the article offers the author’s commented translation of Feng Menglong’s general preface to “A Complete Book of Wisdom” and ten prefaces to each chapter.