The Research Of The Four Books Studies In The Period From The Late Qing Dynasty To The Republic Of China

The period from the late Qing Dynasty to the Republic of China was a big change in China in near three thousand years,and the sudden disintegration of the study of Confucian classics was one of the main changes.Chinese traditional academic no matter literature,historiography,or philosophy,has a tradition of quoting the classic.But during the late Qing Dynasty to the Republic of China,the tradition had gone.All the ideological trends appeared actively.And the Four Books has been the main part of the study of Confucian classics from Song dynasty,whose position is above the Five classics.It was taken as imperial examination subjects and legal exoteric study in Ming and Qing dynasty.Therefore,the study of the Four Books during the late Qing Dynasty to the Republic of China concerns the soul of all the ideological and cultural transformation in Chinese literature,historiography,and philosophy.But the study of it brings out numbers of unknown questions,which academia nowadays has not considered.Though the writer of this thesis is not knowledgeable enough,initiates a little.The Four Books Studies,as Orthodoxy ideas,had been disintegrated and declined gradually in the late Qing Dynasty when Stereotyped writing was canceled in Wu Hsu Reform,and been criticized and sneered during New Culture Movement.As the impact of Occidental Learning,the invasion of the other nations,and the Consciousness of states,the four books were absent from the textbooks of imperial examinations,becoming the national ones,being the basic books which was the living way for ordinary people in special times,and being the spirit of national independence and self-reliance.That energized the suffering and faithful people,which had not been receded during the unrested period of the late Qing Dynasty to the Republic of China.It is obvious that anyone studies the reference of it.The rediscovery and the reconstruction of its value,especially the Western compounding which plays a crucial role in the reference and the participation of its development is the main topic in the late Qing Dynasty to the Republic of China.The western compounding of the Four Books started from Kang Youwei who favored compounding laws and institutions,whereas,it was studied in worldwide academic sight by Wang Guowei who took the western metaphysics as a reference.They both were focused on comparison and blending of the Four Books and the western learning.And some other people such as Qian Jibo and Ma Yifu were focused on the compounding way in methodology.They immitted Book of Filial Piety,which attempted to meet the short of the Four Books in practice,and blended the western learning,which rebuilt the methodology system of it in methods of modern discipline construction.And Ma Yifu made a great verve learning system,Six Arts intaken to the Four Books and Book of Filial Piety,Sinology to Six Arts,and western learning to Six Arts.Therefore,oriental learning has been the backbone of the reconstruction of the Four Books,and western learning has been participating in it.Except the above,there were some other people off the beaten track such as Gu Hongming,Yang Wenhui and Ouyang Jian.English translation was taken to output the Four Books by Gu Hongming,and Buddhism was taken to save people by Yang Wenhui and Ouyang Jian,especially Ouyang Jian,who subsumed oriental and western knowledge by the thought of Buddhism.All of the above pioneers have made a great contribution to the transition of the Four Books during the modern and contemporary times,thus,what we should do nowadays is taking their steps to continue the study,and renew its soul in national cultural renaissance.