Looking Beyond Dichotomies: Hidden Diversity of Voices in the Yantielun 鹽鐵論

Abstract

This study investigates the Yantielun 鹽鐵論, a text that recreates the 81 BCE court debate during which government officials clashed with “literary scholars” (wenxue 文學) and “worthy and good persons” (xianliang 賢良) over multiple policy issues. I show that a careful look at the Yantielun allows us to distinguish between the voices of the two subgroups of critics, who hitherto have been viewed almost ubiquitously as a uniform camp. The “worthy and good persons” appear as a “third voice” attempting to bridge the gap between the polar standpoints of the officials and the literary scholars. I argue that this hidden diversity is proof of the reliability of the Yantielun as an account of the debate and a testimony to the complexity of the intellectual and political environment of the mid- to late Former Han.