A Study Of Yan Yuan 's Theory

At the beginning of Ch’ing dynasty, scholars focused on real learning and opposed virtual learning, humanistic pragmatism emerged. So scholars in this time start to reflect Neo-Confucianism’s doctrines, focus on original Confucianism and get tired of subjection and meditation. So provocation of objection and practice became the mainstream in that time. Scholars in the beginning of Ch’ing dynasty, including Gu yanwu, Huang Zongxi, Wang Fuzhi and Yan Yuan responsed to this phenomenon. Gu Yanwu returned to Confucianism’s classics. Huang Zongxi studied history and the Study of Confucianism’s classics. They all pursued truth, studied history and criticized the current situation, which formed a new style of study. However, Gu Yanwu and Huang Zongxi focused on classics and led to down-to-earth learning. Their studies also had some links with Chen’s and Zhu’s thoughts. Among them, Yan Yuan alone get rid of meditation and reading classics, criticizing Cheng, Zhu, Lu and Wang, in the name of Kong and Meng, provocated real learning and practice.The value of Yan’s thoughts is that he reversed the way of Ontology in studying Confucianism. By returning to Confucian that humanity is inside and propriety is outside, he reversed the Ontology of Neo-Confucianism which thought that Ontology begins from outside to inside. Yan Yuan’s philosophy became a key role in the study of Qi. His thoughts developed into Qing’s style of study. Since then, Confucianism’s study begins to get into moral practice instead of Heavenly Principles. His thoughts went into real life and close to civil people’s life.This paper focuses on the thought of Qi, and is based on Qi, reveals the whole thoughts of Yan Yuan. It illustrates Yan Yuan’s thoughts by using philosophical methods, revealing the importance of Yan Yuan’s thoughts in the Chinese philosophical history.