Knowledge And Life: The Two-pronged Development Of Modern Neo-Confucianism And Its Homecoming

The sixteenth century of Renaissance can be viewed as marking the beginning of modernity in the West. From tradition to modernity, and then to post-modernity, values created centering around cognitive subjectivity include: reason, individuality, liberty, justice, democracy, science, etc. These values and ideas have enabled the West to advance by leaps and bounds in the past five hundred years with remarkable achievements. However, many noble, idealistic values have begun to degenerate. We are only left with utilitarian rationality. Idealisms are regarded as false hopes after the renunciation of human holiness. Values are viewed as subjective choices of an individual of which no one else could interfere. Liberty is a human right rather than being an intrinsic value in itself. It is a means instead of an end, extrinsic instead of intrinsic to life. The spiritual world of humankind is in a state of nihilism with every individual enclosing itself in its own egoistic world. With the innumerous rules and regulations, one has diminishing freedom and has an ever-increasing sense of insecurity. Irrationality and biological instincts are advocated in post-modernity as a form of rebellion to the external world bounded by reason. In a certain sense, the western route of modernity has led us through a big circle and we all returned to the original state with barely biological instincts and sensuous desires.Modernity since the late Qing dynasty was a reaction to the invasion of the West. The Chinese intellectuals, in the name of salvation, placed modernization and Chineseness as mutually exclusive forces. All unanimously reached the conclusionthat modernity is westernization. In the subsequent hundred-and-sixty years of development, China has closely followed the footsteps of the West, trying to absorb values of western modernity. In this process, misunderstandings of both the western and oriental cultures were abundant, leading to numerous iconoclastic attacks on the Chinese tradition, especially the mainstream Confucianism. The diminution of Confucianism from the Chinese history is a logical consequence. As an attempt to safeguard the traditional culture, modern Neo-Confucian scholars devoted their full attention to reflect upon the past limitations and the significance of Confucianism. As a response to the challenge of the knowledge-centered tradition of the West, new Confucian scholarship has been developed, which is able to withstand the rigorous test of reason. This is the knowledge-centered development of Confucianism. With knowledge being the mainstream value of modernity, this knowledge-centered development has become the prominent school of study currently. The traditional teaching, which emphasized on self-cultivation by moral conduct, has been marginalized. Has the so-called life-centered school of Confucianism become "archaic"? This thesis claimed that such a development is in a dormant, yet continuing state of development. The thesis has also provided a detailed account of the historical development of the two-pronged schools of modern Neo-Confucianism in Chapter two.The thesis pointed out that the knowledge-centered development of Confucianism met the requirement of certainty of modernity. It enabled academic discussions and exchanges of Confucianism with other world religions, philosophies and cultures. However, the scope of activities and the sphere of influence of such a school are confined within academic institutions. There is no influence at all to the society. At the same thing, there is a danger of degeneration. First, from the writings of the third generation scholars such as Liu Shu Xian and Li Ming Hui, it wasdiscovered that they have given up virtue-practice to theoretical articulation, as well as replacing self-conviction by reason. Second, from the writings of Feng You Lan and Liu Shu Xian, it was discovered that incorrect understandings existed. Due to the disappearance of the historical stage for the life-centered Confucianism, there were only a few individuals who put themselves on t...