王夫之의 詩廣傳·唐风十论 분석과 经世 사상적 의미 = Analysis of Wang Fuzhi's ‘Ten Discourses on the Airs of Tang’ in the Elaborations on the Book of Poetry and Its Implications for Statecraft Thought

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

This study examines the practical response of Wang Fuzhi, who sought to uphold the legitimacy of Huaxia civilization during the civilizational crisis of the Ming-Qing transition, focusing on his Elaborations on the Book of Poetry: Ten Discourses on the Airs of Tang. This paper pays particular attention to the core logic of Wang Fuzhi's statecraft thought—"the stability of people's livelihood is the precondition for all political and moral order"—and systematizes it within a three-layered analytical framework of “individual-society-state.” First, this study identifies Wang Fuzhi's diagnosis of the crisis from the textual structure of the Ten Discourses on the Airs of Tang. Wang Fuzhi perceived that the corruption of individual mind-nature (self-interest and lethargy), the breakdown of social trust (mutual deprivation and distrust), and the incapacity of state governance (secret plotting and exploitation) constituted the essence of “the collapse of the world” (wang tianxia) that was destroying Huaxia civilization. Notably, his declaration regarding a power that had abandoned people's livelihood—“the Son of Heaven may also be dispensed with”—reveals his radical statecraft recognition that places the legitimacy of political power in the existential well-being of the people.
Furthermore, this study derives concrete statecraft alternatives for overcoming this crisis. Wang Fuzhi overturned the existing “inner sageliness first” logic, which relied solely on moral self-discipline, and established a pathway consisting of “settling the self” (anshen), which guarantees the people's right to survival; “integrating emotions” (rongqing), which restores trust through the sharing of hardships; and “stabilizing the people” (anmin), which elevates this to the publicness of the state system. This goes beyond mere poetic interpretation to represent a concrete realization of Wang Fuzhi's outer-kingness-centered statecraft thought, which seeks to restore the cohesive power of community through the recovery of human emotions (qing).
In conclusion, the statecraft thought manifested in the Ten Discourses on the Airs of Tang serves as a practical blueprint for overcoming the crisis of a civilizational transition, offering new principles of co-governance to address the contemporary crises of community and the loss of publicness in governance.