Talentless Sovereigns: On Meritocracy and Its Limits in Early China

• In Event: Conceptualizing Sovereignty in Comparative Political Thought

Abstract

This paper reads the classic Documents chapter “The Metal Coffer” (Jinteng) as a foundational text in articulating the theoretical divide between an incompetent, meritless sovereign and competent, meritorious advisors/officials in early China. There is a tendency in the scholarship on this text, in particular, and on notions of the so-called “Heavenly Mandate” (tianming or ming), in general, to read claims of merit and competence as claims to the mandate and to read the mandate as an endorsement of sovereign merit. By a close reading of the “Metal Coffer” text and related texts and commentary in the early empires, however, I show that one of the main features of the rhetoric of the “Heavenly mandate” is to set sovereign rule beyond the reach of the considerations of meritocracy. This theoretical divide between the ruler who reigns with the mandate and advisor-officials who rule on the basis of talent, competence, and/or merit was productive of a limited notion of sovereign rule in early Chinese political thought.

Author

• Trenton Wilson