The political philosophy in general often assumes that order, once achieved, confers legitimacy. In early medieval China, similar assumptions shaped both governance and thought. Jiahao Shen, an independent history researcher under the the Postgraduate Programme in World History and Philosophy at King’s College London, revisits the philosophy of Guo Xiang, the third-century thinker whose commentary on the Zhuangzi has long been read as an intellectual resolution of Daoist spontaneity and political order. Shen’s conclusion is more unsettling: Guo Xiang’s system does not solve the problem of unity between the individual and the state, but instead exposes why such unity was never sustainable.
Guo Xiang occupies a distinctive position in the canon of Wei–Jin thought. His philosophy is often praised for its conceptual elegance: the world, in his account, is a self-generating totality in which all beings realise themselves by occupying their proper place. Hierarchy, discipline and political obligation are not imposed from above but arise naturally from the structure of existence itself. This reading has proven attractive to scholars seeking coherence in a period otherwise marked by fragmentation and instability.
Shen challenges this interpretive tradition by re-situating Guo Xiang within the political realities of the Western Jin dynasty, whose dramatic collapse in the early fourth century brought an end to a fragile experiment in imperial reunification. Rather than treating Guo’s metaphysics as politically neutral, Shen argues that it reflects — and reinforces — the expanding demands of centralised power placed upon the aristocratic elite.
At the core of Guo Xiang’s philosophy lies the pursuit of unity: between the inner disposition of the individual and the external structures of order. In this framework, obedience ceases to be a political concession and becomes an ontological necessity. To be disciplined is simply to be fully oneself. Shen notes that such reasoning collapses the distinction between moral autonomy and institutional compliance, leaving little conceptual room for resistance.
The implications of this move become clearer when read against the historical record. The Western Jin state, despite its claims to universal order, proved unable to contain factional conflict, regional militarisation and aristocratic rivalry. Its collapse was sudden, violent and comprehensive. For Shen, this event should not be dismissed as an unfortunate interruption to an otherwise coherent philosophical vision. Rather, it reveals the internal contradiction of Guo Xiang’s project.
A system that demands total unity between the individual’s inner world and an external order assumes that the external order itself is stable, legitimate and morally defensible. Once that assumption fails, the philosophy built upon it fails as well. Shen argues that Guo Xiang’s insistence on unity left the subject structurally bound to a political system that was already decaying. When that system collapsed, no alternative ethical or metaphysical stance remained available within Guo’s framework.
In this sense, the failure of Guo Xiang’s philosophy was not contingent but predestined. By naturalising political authority, it rendered itself incapable of responding to political breakdown. Unity, pursued as an absolute principle, became indistinguishable from ideological submission.
Shen contrasts this position with other intellectual responses emerging from the same historical context. Thinkers such as Ruan Ji and Ji Kang, often portrayed as marginal or eccentric figures, adopted a markedly different stance. Rather than seeking reconciliation with the political order, they turned inward, prioritising the preservation of an internal idealised world insulated from institutional corruption.
This retreat has frequently been interpreted as withdrawal or escapism. Shen offers a different reading. Under conditions where political participation required full ideological compliance, disengagement became a means of preserving moral and intellectual autonomy. The defining characteristic of the medieval Chinese aristocracy, Shen suggests, was not its administrative role but its insistence on maintaining an inner sphere beyond the reach of coercive systems.
Seen from this perspective, the Wei–Jin period does not represent a failed attempt at unity, but a historical moment in which the pursuit of unity itself was exposed as untenable. Guo Xiang’s philosophy, far from offering a solution, clarified the limits of system-oriented metaphysics under conditions of political decay.
Shen also gestures toward broader questions that extend beyond early medieval China. Shen’s analysis illustrates how philosophical systems can transform historically contingent forms of power into expressions of natural order. Once this transformation occurs, critique becomes difficult, if not impossible. Compliance is no longer a choice but a condition of existence itself.
Written from the position of an independent history researcher, Shen’s work reflects a wider scholarly effort to reassess classical texts without imposing retrospective narratives of harmony or inevitability. His affiliation with King’s College London situates the research within contemporary debates in world history and philosophy, while his independence allows for a critical distance from inherited interpretive frameworks.
The significance of Guo Xiang, in Shen’s account, lies not in the success of his philosophy but in its failure. It demonstrates how the demand for total unity between inner conviction and external order can leave individuals defenseless when institutions collapse. The legacy of Wei–Jin thought, Shen argues, is therefore not a lesson in harmony, but a cautionary account of the dangers inherent in philosophical systems that deny the legitimacy of separation.
In times of political uncertainty, the desire for unity often intensifies. Shen reminds us that such desires, when absolutised, can obscure rather than resolve the fundamental tensions between power, autonomy and historical change.
