REVEALING CONTINGENCY THROUGH SHUN'S 舜 ASCENSION TO THE THRONE

Abstract

Abstract This article examines the story of Shun's 舜 ascension to the throne. This story has drawn considerable attention throughout Chinese history because of its significance with regard to political succession. However, in this article, I shed light on a different dimension of the story: its relevance to the issue of contingency. I investigate four texts, two excavated and two transmitted: Qiongda yi shi 窮達以時 (Failure and Success Depend on Times), Tang Yu zhi dao 唐虞之道 (The Way of Yao and Shun), the Mengzi 孟子, and the Xunzi 荀子. At one extreme, Qiongda yi shi highlights that Shun became a king by pure chance, while at the other extreme, Xunzi interprets the event as a necessary one, emphasizing that Shun cannot but succeed Yao. The other two texts fall somewhere in between the two extremes. I use these four texts to showcase different ways of thinking about areas over which humans are believed to lack control. My claim is that these four texts offer different accounts of the same event—Shun's ascension—because they see the event from different perspectives: from a perspective of the chosen, from a perspective of the chooser, from a mise-en-scène, and from a perspective of not of this world, respectively. I argue that the diverse perspectives of these texts entail the different understandings of several related issues such as the degree of human control over the event, the important features of the event, and the content of the moral and political lessons that we draw from the event.