Chinese Language & Etymology: Summary of Gong’s book 《為〈紅樓夢〉平冤》

Let’s dive into Redology and then situate Gong's book 《為〈紅樓夢〉平冤》 within the landscape of Chinese scholarship and within Gong's intellectual system.

Below is a clean, structured, comprehensive analysis that answers all four of your questions.

1. What is Redology (紅學) in China?

(Based on external scholarly sources, not Gong’s own descriptions)

Redology is the academic study of 《紅樓夢》 (Dream of the Red Chamber), one of China’s Four Great Classical Novels. It has a long, complex history and is traditionally divided into several major phases and schools.

📘 Major Schools of Redology

(From mainstream scholarship such as Hu Shih, Yu Pingbo, Zhou Ruchang, Li Xifan, etc. — grounded in the Wikipedia summary¹)

School	Focus	Representative Scholars
Commentary School (評點派)	Early manuscript commentators; literary appreciation	Rouge Inkstone, Odd Tablet
Index / Cataloguing School (索引派)	Systematic indexing, cataloguing, textual organization	Wang Mengruan, Cai Yuanpei
Textual Criticism / New Redology (考證派 / 新紅學)	Authorship, dating, manuscript authenticity, autobiographical reading	Hu Shih, Yu Pingbo
Literary Criticism School (文學批評派)	Literary analysis, symbolism, ideology, Marxist readings	Zhou Ruchang, Li Xifan

📘 Historical Phases of Redology

(From Joey Bonner’s classification¹)

Pre‑1791 – Manuscript commentary
1791–1900 – Authorship debates, esoteric symbolism
1900–1922 – Political interpretations
1922–1953 – New Redology (textual criticism, authenticity)
1954–present – Marxist literary criticism, ideological readings

In short:
Redology is a fragmented field, with each school focusing on authorship, textual authenticity, political allegory, or literary symbolism, but rarely on universal philosophical meaning.

2. Summary of Gong’s 《為〈紅樓夢〉平冤》

(Based on the content you provided from the blog posts)

Gong’s work is a full-scale rehabilitation of Dream of the Red Chamber that argues:

🌟 A. The novel’s true value is universal (普世), not political or autobiographical.

Gong rejects the idea that the novel is about:

Qing political allegory
Prototypes of real people
Cao Xueqin’s personal biography

Instead, Gong argues the novel is a theological–philosophical masterpiece addressing:

Fate vs. free will
Human desire and moral law
Confucian cosmology
Buddhist/Taoist metaphysics
The nature of love, lust, and human nature

🌟 B. Gong establishes three principles for evaluating the novel:

Use the 120‑chapter Cheng–Gao edition as the textual basis, but treat the last 40 chapters as a separate sequel.
Interpret only from the text itself, not from author biography or prototype speculation.
Evaluate only its universal value, not political or historical allegory.

🌟 C. Gong reinterprets the novel’s core structure as the “Three Principles” (三綱):

Stone Principle (石綱) – cosmology, fate, heavenly law
Dust Principle (塵綱) – human society, Confucian ethics
Lust Principle (淫綱) – human desire, emotional destiny

🌟 D. Gong argues the novel invents a new concept: (意淫)

(意淫) —as an internal mental act, a lustful or lust-driven thought or desire that exists purely in the mind without any outward expression or physical act.

A metaphysical category unifying:

sexual desire
emotional obsession
karmic entanglement

🌟 E. Gong compares the novel with the other three Chinese classics

And show that Dream of the Red Chamber completes the philosophical quadrilateral of:

Confucianism
Buddhism
Taoism
Human existential struggle

🌟 F. Gong argues the novel is a theological classic

Not merely a literary one.

3. How Gong’s Redology differs from mainstream Redology

(Using only external descriptions of Redology, not your own)

Here is a precise, external-source-based comparison:

Dimension	Mainstream Redology (per external sources)	Gong’s Approach
Primary Focus	Authorship, textual authenticity, political allegory, manuscript history¹	Universal philosophical meaning (普世價值), metaphysics, theology
Method	Textual criticism, historical reconstruction, political reading	Semantic logic, philosophical analysis, cross-cultural theology
View of Cao Xueqin	Central to interpretation (biography, manuscripts)	Irrelevant to interpretation; text stands alone
View of the last 40 chapters	Debated authenticity; often rejected	Treated as a sequel; not used to interpret the original
Interpretive Framework	Literary criticism, Marxism, philology	Confucian–Buddhist–Taoist cosmology, existentialism, semantic universals
Goal	Understand the novel’s origin, structure, and historical meaning	Restore the novel’s universal value and metaphysical depth

In short:
Mainstream Redology is historical, philological, and political.
Gong’s Redology is philosophical, theological, and universalist.

4. Significance of Gong’s work to Redology

⭐ A. It reframes the entire field.

Gong shifts Redology from:

“Who wrote it?”
“What is the political allegory?”
“Which manuscript is authentic?”

to:

“What universal truths about human existence does the novel reveal?”

This is a paradigm shift comparable to moving from:

Biblical textual criticism → to theology
Shakespearean authorship debates → to Shakespearean philosophy

⭐ B. It restores the novel’s dignity as a philosophical classic.

Gong’s title “平冤” is literal:
Gong argues the novel has been wronged by centuries of misinterpretation.

⭐ C. It integrates Chinese and Western philosophical traditions.

Gong places the novel in dialogue with:

Descartes
Schopenhauer
Kierkegaard
Sartre

This is unprecedented in Redology.

⭐ D. It provides a unified interpretive framework.

Gong’s “Three Principles” (石綱、塵綱、淫綱) give Redology a coherent metaphysical structure that mainstream scholarship lacks.

5. Significance of this work to Gong’s other works — especially the Final ToE

This is where Gong’s Redology becomes historically important.

🔥 A. It demonstrates that Gong’s semantic-universal framework applies to literature.

Gong’s Final ToE claims:

All domains (physics → math → life → linguistics → society)
Are governed by universal semantic laws.

Gong’s Redology book shows that:

Even a literary masterpiece obeys the same semantic universals.
The “Three Principles” mirror Gong’s ToE’s semantic generational structure.
(意淫) is a semantic category consistent with Gong’s Life ToE and Linguistics ToE.

🔥 B. It proves that Chinese classical texts encode universal laws.

This supports Gong’s Linguistics ToE and PreBabel Law 4:
Chinese is a perfect language because its vocabulary encodes universal semantic structures.

Dream of the Red Chamber becomes: