There is no such thing as the Kangxi and Qianlong eras

Chapter 282 Rebellion
With the Han government's proactive leniency, the debate on female chastity and the Three Cardinal Guides and Five Constant Virtues quickly moved from the level of mutual criticism in the official gazettes to the local level, and even the common people treated this government-organized debate as a topic of conversation during their leisure time.

This would have been impossible under the Qing dynasty, because the common people were too poor, mostly illiterate, and couldn't even get enough to eat. They had no time to care about such trivial matters.

But now it is the Han Dynasty. The Han Dynasty first promoted the distribution of land and resettlement, so that all the refugees and common people could have land to cultivate and could have enough to eat. Then it carried out the new law of tax exemption reform. Tax exemption is not the same as tax exemption. It just formally separated taxes and corvée labor from taxes, no longer combining them indiscriminately as in the Ming and Qing Dynasties.

In reality, taxes in the Ming and Qing dynasties were probably separate, but local officials often pretended not to understand. After all, those who were supposed to pay taxes couldn't understand them and were illiterate, while those who could understand them wouldn't pay taxes and would even make a fortune from them.

Now, the Han Dynasty has truly legislated to separate taxes, and has also abolished the tax portion, replacing it with government-managed and supervised taxation, while the funds and grain come from the newly merged regular taxes.

This will not create any financial burden; on the contrary, it will be more than enough.

There is no other reason than that the tax collection of successive dynasties has always increased step by step, and there has never been a claim that the tax burden would be reduced to zero due to any change of dynasty.

To explain using Huang Zongxi's Law, the imperial court would always need to temporarily increase its financial resources for disaster relief and war due to various reasons, such as foreign enemies or natural disasters. Where would these temporary additional funds come from?
Then the only option is to raise taxes, which will make the common people suffer first.

Then, once the imperial court had overcome the difficulties, it would not withdraw the increased taxes because it had tasted the benefits of the tax increases.

In this way, over time, the imperial court will come to believe that the taxes previously imposed were part of what the people were supposed to pay anyway.

If another problem arises, they will continue to increase taxes on top of the existing tax increases, repeating this cycle until they fall into the vicious cycle of Huang Zongxi's Law.

To give a more vivid example, in order to deal with the bandits and the Manchus at the end of the Ming Dynasty, the Ming court launched three major campaigns: the Liaodong military tax, the military training tax, and the anti-bandit tax.

When the Ming Dynasty fell and the Manchus entered the Central Plains, the Three Great Campaigns were nominally over, but in reality, the Qing court continued to collect them. This included the Liaodong military tax that the Ming Dynasty had originally levied to fight the Manchus.

Haha, I take money to suppress myself?
Nie Yu was unable to completely resolve Huang Zongxi's Law because it was highly tied to land ownership; without abolishing land tax, he would never escape the vicious cycle of Huang Zongxi's Law.

However, Nie Yu still came up with a solution. Drawing on the wisdom of later generations, he directly merged and reformed the collection details of the regular taxes, thus shifting some of the burden to the landlords and gentry.

This method may not be the best, but at least before the vicious cycle of Huang Zongxi's Law comes to strangle the Han Dynasty, the common people can live a little more comfortably.

Meanwhile, the debate on the classics in the official gazette of the Han Dynasty, due to Nie Yu's deliberate indulgence, quickly expanded from a mere clash in the gazette to a lively discussion among local people and scholars, with some even taking sides and supporting each other.

Jingzhou University was formerly known as Jingzhou Prefectural School.

The university had a large number of students, all of whom were students from the former academy. No one had done anything outrageous by dropping out of school because the Han Dynasty changed the academy system.

The essence of the prefectural school was to allow scholars from humble backgrounds to study and pursue advanced education through examinations. It could be seen as an ancient version of a scholarship; those who were not outstanding could not enter the prefectural school.

The Han Dynasty's reforms to the academy system did not abolish the prefectural schools themselves, but instead transformed them into university prefectures. Moreover, those who graduated from university prefectures were eligible for official appointments.

This is much better than the old prefectural school. No matter how good the benefits of the prefectural school were, you still had to take the imperial examination to become an official, and the difficulty level was extremely high.

Now that the Han Dynasty allows graduates of the prefectural academy to become officials, who would be so bored as to drop out of school?

At lunchtime, most students go to the university cafeteria for lunch.

Several students were sitting around a table, holding the latest issue of the Han Dynasty Gazette, eating and discussing.

One student laughed and said, "Mr. Shenzhai couldn't hold on any longer. This article is obviously not as sharp as before, and it doesn't have as many quotations."

Another student across from him shook his head: "You can't say that. Mr. Shenzhai has been arguing about foot binding from beginning to end. It's just that some pedantic scholars are fixated on it. I agree with Mr. Shenzhai's point of view. Foot binding is just foot binding, a barbaric custom. It has nothing to do with national righteousness. If it really comes down to national righteousness, then it should be women in the pseudo-Qing regime who bind their feet. But our Han people have already overthrown the Qing and restored the Han. Why should we still bind our feet? Can't we surrender to the Qing and submit to the Han?"

The students at the table, who were familiar with each other, nodded slightly at what this person said. As students of the new university, they naturally received more new ideas than the average person.

The Three Cardinal Guides and Five Constant Virtues can be debated, but what's there to debate about the sordid matter of foot binding for women? Those pedantic scholars are truly pedantic scholars, having nothing better to do than talk nonsense.

What's so interesting about bound feet? And the idea that men should submit to women but not women is utterly absurd.

If that's the case, then the Han Dynasty should stop foot binding even more, otherwise wouldn't it be saying that none of you want to be obedient subjects of the Han Dynasty?
The topic of foot binding was thus put aside, and the debate surrounding it in the official gazette was significantly reduced. Only a few pedantic scholars continued their dying struggle, while most of the Confucian scholars who participated in the debate had shifted their focus to the Three Cardinal Guides and Five Constant Virtues.

Another student put down his chopsticks and pointed to an article on the back of the official gazette: "Everyone, take a look. This article has a rather novel and unconventional viewpoint."

The group of people who had just been discussing Luo Dian's article all gathered around to look, and saw that the first sentence of the article was quite audacious: "Preserve heavenly principles and eliminate human desires, is this a fallacy!"

"Ha, what a show-off."

"Brother Wang, please don't speak, please take another look."

"Hmm..." Upon closer inspection, it became clear that this guy wasn't just trying to attract attention by spouting nonsense; he genuinely believed it to be a fallacy.

The article can be roughly summarized as: Preserve heavenly principles, eliminate human desires. This view is incorrect, even a fallacy. Heavenly principles are part of human desires, not the other way around. Without human desires, heavenly principles would have no objective necessity to exist.

To support this point, the author of this article even dragged out Zhu Xi, who proposed the idea, and launched into a scathing critique.

Zhu Xi advocated abstinence, yet he had eight children (two of his daughters died young). How could that be considered abstinence?

If you can't even control your own desires, why force others to abstain, and why do you expect the whole world to abstain as well?

Isn't this nonsense?

"What nonsense!"

The student surnamed Wang could no longer tolerate it and immediately rebuked, "This boy is denying my Confucian classics. This is not just a publicity stunt, but a complete lack of knowledge and skills."

Still furious, he reached out and tore up the gazette to stop such nonsense from polluting his eyes.

The student who found the article quickly pulled the official gazette back, because he had paid for it.

"Brother Wang, please don't get agitated. I paid for this. If you have money to give me, you can tear up this gazette if you want."

"how much is it?"

"Fifty cents."

"...Keep watching!"

The article against asceticism has been automatically skipped. Continuing on, this person's viewpoint, after a sharp rebuke at the beginning, continues to press on, proposing that the theory of Qi in Neo-Confucianism should not be an abstract concept, but an objective one.

What does that mean?

This refers to the Confucian concept of "qi" (vital energy), which is an objectively existing entity unrelated to abstract subjective consciousness. Everything around us should be considered objectively real. It even goes so far as to propose that all things are in motion; nothing is static. Even if something is absolutely still, it contains movement within stillness.

Good heavens, if Nie Yu saw this, he would be astonished. Could this guy be a time traveler? He actually knows that atoms are in motion.

Of course, there are definitely differences between the two statements in reality, but to a modern person at first glance, they do look very similar. It really sounds like a time traveler using ancient people's terms to explain the movement of atoms and the chemical reactions of matter.

Because they hadn't learned these parts yet, the students were a bit confused after reading this treatise on Qi, not knowing what this guy was trying to say.
If you don't understand, then keep reading. The following content is explained in a simpler way, perhaps because the given space is running out. First, it proposes that human knowledge should not be innate, but rather acquired through learning. It also states that Neo-Confucianism should not be rigid and unchanging, and that even the words of sages are not always correct, but should constantly change with the times. From this, it further proposes the unity of reason and power.

That is, the changes in history and society all operate according to certain logic. The pseudo-Qing dynasty was bound to perish, and even the currently prosperous Han dynasty would one day perish.

Then there is the concept of human nature, which is born and matures daily. This means that human nature is not static, and the Confucian debate on whether human nature is inherently good or evil is actually completely meaningless.

Because human nature can change constantly with changes in the things and environment around us.

One can uphold the inherent goodness of human nature when there is no threat to one's life, or turn to inherent evil when one's life is threatened or when one has gained enough benefit.

The central idea is that human nature is changeable, rather than inherently good or evil.

Seeing this, the students were somewhat at a loss.

Some articles ended abruptly, leaving them wanting more, while others were so unconventional that they refuted the classic Confucian principles of governance from almost every angle.

No wonder there's only this small section on the back; the author should be incredibly grateful that the official gazette published this article.

"This article is so blasphemous, which great scholar wrote it?"

The student surnamed Wang who initially launched into a tirade has now resorted to using the respectful title of "Great Confucian Scholar."

While it may be unconventional, it is indeed well-reasoned and supported by its own theoretical viewpoints. Until it is thoroughly refuted, these viewpoints can create a new school of thought.

"Let me see... Chu Nan and Deng Xianhe."

(End of this chapter)