Ge Hong - Style and Content of The Baopuzi

Style and Content of The Baopuzi

Ge states that the Baopuzi, taken as a whole, constitutes his attempt to establish a single school (yi jia) of thought. The division of the Baopuzi into "Inner" and "Outer Chapters" speaks to Ge’s interest in both esoteric studies and social philosophy. According to Ge’s own account, he wrote the "Inner Chapters" to argue for the reality and attainability of divine transcendence, while the "Outer Chapters" blends Confucian and Legalist rhetoric to propose solutions for the social and political problems of his era. For a long time, the two parts of the text circulated independently, and were almost always categorized under different headings in officially sanctioned bibliographies.

The two volumes of the Baopuzi differ in style, as well as in content. Both adopt the convention of a fictional, hostile interlocutor who poses questions to the author and challenges his claims, although the "Inner Chapters" employs this style to a more significant degree. Ge’s thesis in the "Inner Chapters" is extremely focused, pursuing a single argument with great discipline and rigor. In contrast, the "Outer Chapters" is more diffused, addressing a variety of issues ranging from eremitism and literature to the proper employment of punishments, and a pointed criticism of the process of political promotions. The style of the "Outer Chapters" is very dense, reflecting the richness of the Chinese literary tradition through frequent literary and historical allusions, and diction, that at times recalls the most obscure rhyme-prose of the Han era.

As a single work of philosophy, the two sections taken together reflect Ge’s desire to understand dao and ru, or Daoism and Confucianism, in terms of one another. In Ge’s terms, dao is the "root" and ru is the "branch". However, although he considered following the dao superior to the rules of social conduct associated with the Confucian tradition, Ge viewed each as appropriate within its proper sphere. According to his paradigm that is drawn from pre-Qin and Han sources, when the sage kings followed the dao, society was well ordered, and the natural world proceeded without calamities. As the dao declined, the ethical prescriptions of the ru arose to remedy the resulting social ills and natural disasters. Thus in Ge’s view, Daoism and Confucianism both possess an ethical and political dimension by bringing order to the human and natural world. However, because most people have difficulty following or understanding the dao, Confucianism (along with a healthy dose of Legalism) is necessary to enact social order.

On an individual level, Ge considered moral and ethical cultivation of the so-called Confucian virtues to be the basis of divine transcendence. His philosophy does not advocate a rejection of the material world on either an individual or a social level. Seekers of longevity must first rectify and bring order to their own person before achieving loftier ambitions. Ge appears to have made some effort to embody this ideal, simultaneously holding political office, while pursuing elixirs of transcendence.