Tsiaang Puzun
The Honorable Tsiaang Puzun Count of Esoteric Wisdom | |
|---|---|
將堡秦 | |
| File:TsangZinpaw.JPG | |
| Born | April 17, 1817 |
| Died | October 12, 1927 (aged 110) |
| Cause of death | Brain cancer |
| Nationality | Akai |
| Other names | Count Ftiatshia |
| Alma mater | Imperial University |
Notable work | On Lahuborean Affairs Lamentations |
| Spouse(s) | Lady Siau Sanhe Lady Liau Puzun |
| Era | 20th century philosophy |
| Region | East Borean Philosophy |
| School | |
Main interests | |
Notable ideas | Organic civilisational historiography, Great Man Theory, Geopolitic |
Tsiaang Puzun, (Phadongmen: 將堡秦, Semrökvom:ꡒꡨꡃꡎꡓꡐꡞꡋ, Dangat: Sang Puzun, Akainese: Tsiaang Ftautshiaön, April 17, 1817 – October 12, 1927), Count of Esoteric Enlightenment (Phadongmen: 祕智伯, Dangat: Pust'L'etpak, Akainese: Ftiatshiaftaia) also widely known in the West as Count Ftiatshia was an Akai philosopher, cultural critic, poet, historian, satirical writer, essayist, philologist, and teacher. His work has exerted a profound influence on Neolegalist and other Akai philosophy. He began his career as a classical philologist before turning to philosophy. He became the youngest ever to hold the Chair of Classical Cultural Studies at the Imperial University of the Lazin Kingdom in 1841 at the age of 24. He became increasingly more aloof in 1860 due to the health problems that he faced most of his life, and he completed much of his core writing in the following decade. In 1861, at age 44, he suffered a mental collapse and became noticeably unhinged. He after a decade of increasingly schizophrenic writings and experimental medical techniques eventually recovered and made a prestigious return to public life in 1871 and returning to his old position at the university. It was here where his works on geopolitics and neolegalism began to be raised. He was eventually elevated by Emperor Gangslu to Court Historian in which he was able to compile the Lazin Annals in which he expressed his theories of organic civilisation and their interactions with great men. He after the country was unified began a new work called the Palingenesis of the Thearchy which he died before completing, for it to be published posthumously.
Puzun’s body of work touched a wide range of topics, including art, philology, history, religion, culture, and science. His writing ranges from philosophical polemics, poetry, cultural criticism, and fiction while displaying a fondness for metaphor and irony. Major aspects of his philosophy include his radical critique of truth in favor of perspectivism; his genealogical critique of religion and Nordanian morality, the organic nature of civilisation, the transcendence of great men, his critique of egalitarianism and related defense of hierarchy, and his characterization of the human subject as the expression of competing wills, collectively understood as the will to power. In his later work, he became increasingly preoccupied with geopolitical theories, Realism and monarchism.
Life
Early life and influences
Tsiaang Puzun born Tsiaang Puzun was born in the Lazinatoese capital of Singqan in the sixth son of the Duke Chu Puzun and was a consequence a member of the Lshinkug class within the Kug'seghgkshegtdag system. The birth of Tsiaang was well regarded by his grandfather, the future Emperor Mangtö, then known as Prince Thaulia, with more than usual pleasure, as his two previous grandsons had both died in infancy. With the death of his father in 1836, his elder brother Shang Puzun became Duke, thus making the young Tsiaang the third in line to the throne as several of his siblings had died in infancy. The new Duke wished for his sons and daughters to be educated not like the rest of the court and instead wanted an innovative education to strengthen his position in the court’s clergy.
Shang Puzun, popularly dubbed as the Iron Duke or Thiaakung, had created a large and powerful army led by his famous "Puzun Giants", carefully managed his treasury finances and helped put down the Chartists at the behest of Mangtö. He was well known for his ability to manage logistical concerns as well as to create fiercely loyal troops for his monarch. However, Shang also possessed a vicious temper and ruled his estates with absolute authority. As Tsiaang grew, his preference for music, literature and Tuthinan culture clashed with his brother's militarism, resulting in Tsiaang frequently beating and humiliating him. In contrast, Frederick's mother figure was known to be polite, charismatic and learned.
Tsiaang was brought up by Xiaodongese governesses and tutors and learned Literary Tuthinan, Xiaodongese and Classical Acanic simultaneously. In spite of his father's desire that his education be entirely religious and classical, the young lord, with the assistance of his tutor procured for himself a two thousand volume secret library of poetry, Akai and Tuthinan classics, and Continental Akai philosophy to supplement his official lessons. Although Tsiaang was raised to be a clergyman of Thinsaw, he feared he was not of the elect and contemplated suicide several times. His main saviour was his father’s page Tsu Khuu who was a lifelong partner. It is frequently debated whether this was a sexual or platonic relationship.
University Professor
In part because of Emperor Mangtö’s support and his excellent series of essays he produced through his imperial examinations, Tsiaang received a remarkable offer in 1841 to become Professor of Classical Philology at the Imperial University of the Lazin Kingdom. He was only 24 years old and had neither completed his doctorate and had done very little lecturing at this point. Despite the fact that the offer came at a time when he was considering giving up philology for the study of mathematics which he had considerable proficiency in, he accepted. To this day, Puzun is still among the youngest of the tenured Classics professors on record.
Puzun in 1843 completed his Priestly thesis, ‘’’On the study of the Ancient Texts of the Legalist Shang’’’ examined the origins of the ideas of several Philosopher from the Legalist Lengzen. It was well received by fellow scholars but it was a major point of development for Puzun’s philosophy as it was his first major exposure to many Legalist ideas and marched his first advances towards his latter pan-Akai philosophy.
Puzun served in the Lazinatoese forces during the Lazinatoese-Satft'a War (1850) as a Staff Officer to his elder brother who then held the Rank of Generalissimus in the Court of their cousin Emperor Gangslu. In his short time in the military, he experienced much and witnessed the traumatic effects of battle. The war strengthened his increasingly ultra-nationalist and irredentist views, and he campaigned widely for Akai to become a first-rate power. He saw the poverty of the Satft’a’s lands as symbolic of the spiritual decline of much of Akai and saw the return of the thearchy necessary for the prosperity of Akai civilisation and to prevent Lazinato from descending into the same trap. It is also speculated that he began to have series of increasingly violent nightmares, given his allusions to apocalyptic dreams in his private writings to his brother. His inaugural lecture at the university was “The First Thearch and his Writings". Tsiaang also met Uang Kiaanwniaon, a bishop and professor of theology who remained his close friend throughout his life. Tsiaang began to accumulate a small circle of friends and students who he further refined his thought with. Many of its members came to serve as some of the major associates of the neolegalist movement.
With the publication in 1859 of Man Afar (a book of aphorisms with contents ranging from metaphysics to morality to religion to gender studies) an increased interest with the metaphysical and pessimism began to emerge. In 1862, after a significant decline in health, Puzun had to resign his position at the university. Since his childhood, he has had various disruptive illnesses had plagued him, including moments of sensory overload, migraine headaches, and violent indigestion.
Mental lapse
On 3 January 1863, Puzun suffered a major mental breakdown. There is an anecdote which states that he was trying to drown himself in the palace ponds when saved by his elder brother. In the following few days, Puzun sent short writings—known as the Madness notes — to a number of friends such as Uang Kiaawniaon. Each was signed with various pseudonyms unique to the letter, often relying upon Saturnist themes. Most of the notes he wrote during this period were burned at the Duke Puzun’s insistence in order to avoid the threat of lese majeste for his brother.
This madness is speculated to have been undiagnosed post-traumatic stress disorder and the consequential stress it placed on the philosopher. Evidence to suggest this is contained in the surviving writings from this period in which war and violence is a major future albeit with a classical bent. This furthermore matches the description of some of his noted dreams from the period. Others suggest his long-standing illnesses may have been exacerbated by other stresses which in turn caused the sanity slippage.
Resumption of sanity
Eventually in early 1871 Puzun began to recover from his then much-lamented madness, with the Emperor Gangslu personally intervening to provide funds to support the scholar and slowly began circulating his works. The news of his recovery was largely celebrated although Puzun was an increasingly disturbed and radical figure as he moved out of his madness. He began to fetishise violence and power, to the extent of arguing for the total undivided power of the monarch to be possessed by the sovereign alone. He furthermore argued increasingly radically against the feudal order of his day, saying that the nobles of his day were “decadent whores of power unable to realise its true divinity”. Too lacking in terms of a purity of vision with regards to force and without the divine spark of wisdom.
He dubbed himself the Warlock, and offered himself as a new sort of Renaissance man, espousing a gospel of violence that encouraged what was then the most disastrous war of all time. Along the way, it is said by scholars that “he gave Neolegalism a style and an approach to politics that helped bring on an even more destructive oblivion.”
His return to the university began a series of great lectures and debates which were all the more controversial. He began to emphasise the role of the divine and heroic in history. Like the opinions of many deep thinkers of the time, his ideas were influential on the development and rise of both latter syndicalist and neolegalist thinking. Puzun moved towards his later thinking during the 1870s, leading to a break with many old friends and allies. His belief in the importance of heroic leadership was compiled in the form of the book Immortals Degraded, in which he was seen to compare a wide range of different types of heroes, including the First Emperor Chung'yo, Muhammad, Juozapas Kairys, among others. These lectures of Puzun are regarded as an early and powerful formulation of the Great Man theory.
Puzun was one of the very few philosophers of his day who observed the industrial revolution but still yet maintained a non-materialistic view of the world, an increasingly unusual thing among the Akai clergy at the time. The book included lectures discussing people ranging from the field of religion through to literature and politics. The figures chosen for each lecture were presented by Puzun as archetypes and illustrations of characters who, in their respective fields of endeavour, have made major influences, for good or ill. For example, Muhammad himself found a place in the book in the lecture titled "The Hero as Prophet".
Puzun held "That divine men should rule from above and those below should revere them," a view that for him was supported by a complex faith in history and evolutionary progress. Societies, like organisms, evolve throughout history, thrive for a time, but inevitably become weak and die out, giving place to a stronger, superior breed. Heroes are those who affirm this life process, accepting its cruelty as necessary and therefore good. For Puzun courage is of greater value virtue than love; leading to the idea that heroes are noblemen, not saints. The hero functions first as a pattern for others to imitate, and second as a creator, moving history forwards in its cycle backwards. Puzun was among the first of his age to recognize that the death of spirituality and God was nothing to be happy about unless man steps in and creates new values to reinforce the old. For Puzun the hero should become the object of worship, the centre of a new religion proclaiming humanity as "the miracle of miracles... the only divinity we can know." Incorporating Kamist ideas on apotheosis, Puzun argued that the Thearch should take his place as the highest of all these New Gods - a major influence on the growth of Imperial Hagiarchy. For Puzun's creed, contemporary scholar Lu Thianuang proposes the name Heroic Vitalism, a term embracing both the political theory of Aristocratic Radicalism, and a metaphysic, Supernatural Naturalism - which came to dominate Akai political theory for centuries afterwards. The Heroic Vitalists feared that the recent trends towards populism would hand over power to the ill-bred, uneducated, and immoral. Whereas their belief in a transcendent force in nature directing itself onward and upward gave some hope that this overarching force would overrule in favour of the strong, intelligent, and noble who should rise to power.
Other men agreed with much of Puzun's hero worship, transferring many qualities of the hero to his concept of the superman. He believed that the hero should be revered, not for the good he has done for the people, but simply out of admiration for the marvellous and true power. The hero justifies himself as a man chosen by destiny itself to be great. In the life struggle, he is a conqueror, growing stronger through continuous conflict. The hero does not constrain power through the humility; instead of the clerical virtues of meekness, humility and compassion. He instead abides by the beatitudes of Heroic Vitalism: courage, nobility, pride, and the right to rule. His slogan: "The good old rule, the simple plan, that he should keep who has the power, and he should take who can.”
For Puzun, the divine hero was somewhat similar to Tiatshia’s "Magnanimous" man – a person who flourished in the fullest sense. However, the main point of distinction between Puzun and, Tiatshia was that the world was filled with contradictions with which the hero had to deal. All heroes will be flawed. Their heroism lay in their creative energy in the face of these difficulties, not in their moral perfection. To sneer at such a person for their failings is the philosophy of those who seek comfort in the conventional. Puzun called this 'valetism', from the expression 'no man is a hero to his valet.'
Royal patronage
Eventually, in 1881 Emperor Gangslu began to take an increased personal interest in the works of Tsiaang Puzun and named him Court Historian, to further develop his new version of philosophy and to sanction his reforms. Puzun leaped at the opportunity and was named Count of Esoteric Enlightenment and granted his own estate within the Imperial Palace.
It was during this latter period Puzun began to refine and incorporate Heroic Vitalism into his Neolegalist doctrines and began to also take an interest in Geopolitics. One example of such advocacy is his extensive memorial to the throne which would later evolve into his letter text, On Lahuborean Affairs. It placed great emphasis on the need for Akai’s unification and stressed it in geopolitical terms. It’s argument went along the lines that Lazinato, in order to remain competitive, should instead of looking to colonies which it has little ties to it should embrace irredentism and unify the resource-rich and culturally similar Akai so that it can reassert itself in the coming century as a centre of stability and power — a home for the divine Tiatu and his subjects. It also was pointed out as well that Akai should not become the dominion of another power as it would be a geopolitical disaster for the Lazin dynasty. Its themes ranged from the long-term nature of civilisations, core states and asserted that the Heavenly Xiaodongese Empire would be unable assert itself as a Monic core state due to is cultural and civilisation separation and the entrenchment of Tuthina as a pseudo-core state which will due to its internal turmoil due to its internal issues.
However, after the Revolutions of Violent Century began to start and political agitations in the Lazinato, Puzun published a collection of essays entitled "Latter than the present" (1886) in which he attacked democracy as an absurd social ideal, while equally condemning hereditary aristocratic leadership. His anti-feudalism intensified, advocating at certain points for the complete liquidation of existing aristocracy and its replacement with a new system. Two of these essays. Puzun criticised hereditary aristocratic leadership as "deadening"; while also, he criticised democracy as nonsensical, decrying that the idea that objective truth could be discovered by weighing up the votes for it. For him, the government should come from those ablest to lead and those who retained the divine characteristics. This to him suggested the maxim of “Monarchy and Hagiarchy” (𢂇制聖政) should be the overriding principle of the state with the clergy serving as the bureaucratic core of the new Thearchy with the military enforcing their will. He desired a legalism in which stability could be innate. Clerical and Military discipline, therefore, came readily to his mind as the best method of curing the disorders of democracy and plutocracy and of promoting the national interest efficiently and energetically. According to Puzun’s scheme, which was hazy, yet darkly suggestive, a universal "system of Drill" should be introduced for all men between sixteen and sixty, having both military and civil purposes. Regimentation was, to begin with the paupers, who were to be put to work in labour battalions; then it was to be applied to all classes, up to the highest ranks of society in which they were ordered for the Thearch. This would all be encapsulated in the law which would enforce such a system, reviving many of the institutions of the Legalist Lengzun period.
His essay "Occasional Discourse on the Slave Question" (1887) suggested that slavery should have continued and been mechanised, or else replaced with some variant of serfdom. The institution had preserved order, he argued, and forced work from people who would otherwise have been lazy and feckless:
”Their fields would meet and coalesce, "and there will be no unregimented worker, or such only as are fit to remain unregimented, any more. ' Hitherto, the mill-lords had lacked the military iron and divine light necessary to create a "noble just Industrialism and Government by the Wisest.”
— Tsiaang Puzun, translation by Bendiktas Volframaitis
Puzun used his position to push forwards members of his Black Orchid Society and further the extent and was served as a major propagandist during the Akai war of unification. He served as a major creator of war propaganda and as an advisor and chaplain to Emperor Lunkian’s regent - his former student Margrave Giaaka Shang. He was not satisfied with the unification of Akai however, finding Lunkian’s measures to be “half-hearted” and “facile”. He came to quietly denounce the new Thearch and articulated in his last series of essays the necessity for central control of Akai was to ever have peace. His last essay was one of support for the Heavenly Xiaodongese Empire, advocating his support for their “righteous spirits” and that the Tuthinans should meet their “first humbling in far too long”.
Upon Puzun’s death on 5 February 1927 in Qung, interment in the throne room was offered but rejected due to his explicit wish to be buried beside his parents. His final words were, "So, this is death. All’s well!”
Marriage
Puzun had a number of would-be romances before he married his first wife Lady Siau Sanhe, important as a literary figure in her own right. The most notable were with Lady Muia Kiaawniaon, a sister of his friend Uang Kiaawniaon. Even after he met Jane, he became enamoured with the daughter of an Akai officer and a Yaosaiese princess. Puzun would have 8 children with Siau and eventually came to wed his daughter Lady Liau Puzun in order to honour his wife’s memory and in turn had five more children with her. Puzun married Siau Sanhe in 1839. Their marriage proved to be one of the most famous, well documented, and unhappy of literary unions. Over 9000 letters between Puzun and his wife have been published showing the couple had an affection for each other marred by frequent and angry quarrels.
Ancestry
Puzun was a member of the Kungkiaa, a bureaucratic line of aristocracy focused around the court clergy in Akai society. He was considered to be of fairly high status, given his family’s descent from both the Lazins and several older and more ancient families. This close relation to power often served him well and he benefited begrudgingly from substantial nepotism.
Relationships and sexuality
There is considerable argument among biographers on the sexuality of Puzinas much is made of his lifelong and deeply intimate relationship with Tsu Khuu. Several scholars argue it was homosexual in nature and that he merely performs the duty of love to his wives while others argue that he was bisexual. Official historiography claims that he was heterosexual and denies any notions of homosexuality or bisexuality.
Writings and Philosophy
Works
- The Signs of the Times (1840)
- Man Afar (1859)
- The Origins of Sovereignity (1861)
- The Isolation of Systems (1872)
- Spirits Erased (1873)
- Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Late Lengzun (1873)
- Untimely Meditations (1876)
- Human, All Too Human (1878)
- The Dawn (1881)
- Lamentations (1882)
- On Lahuborean Affairs (1883)
- Latter than the present (1886)
- On the Genealogy of Order (1887)
- Occasional Discourse on the Slave Question (1887)
- Twilight of Fate (1888)