A New Exploration Of Li Erqu ’s Thought

Li Erqu was a great scholar in the early Qing Dynasty.His ancestors were civilians,who had a rough understanding of literature.His father,Li Kecong,was slightly pleased to talk about military affairs from his ambition.He died in Xiangcheng,Henan Province at the end of the Ming Dynasty.Erqu was raised by his widowed mother Peng.In his early years,he was lonely and involved in hundreds of classics and history,and grasped the truth because of illness;Middle aged lecturers in Tongzhou,Puzhou,Yanta,Guanzhong academy and Jiangnan.He summoned the soul of their father in Xiangcheng and refused to recruit.In his later years,he was a recluse and wrote "Er Qu Ji"," Four Books Reflexive Record " and so on.He received the handwritten plaque of Emperor Kangxi "high ambition".There were two main aspects in Erqu’s thought: one was the theory of repenting and recommencing.It was put forward when Li Erqu was 30 years old.It was the way and way for Li Erqu to achieve sage personality or ideal personality.There were meditation repentance,cautious repentance and external repentance.Repenting and recommencing had the characteristics of paying attention to human subjectivity,no utilitarian color,emphasizing personal life and social order construction,and more strict self-cultivation morality.The second was moral ontology and practical theory.It was a rethinking of what people should be trained by Neo-Confucianism based on the reflection of Erqu on education in the Ming Dynasty.It involved the pursuit of human values,the meaning of life,and the expectation of an ideal society.It was the most valuable part of Li Erqu ’s theory and his goal of cultivating talents.The educational concept on moral ontology and practical theory integrated the thoughts of Zhu and Wang,inherited the thought of governing the world in the late Ming Dynasty,and had a distinct regional tendency.However,the "use" in moral ontology and practical theory focused on the aspect of the governance of country,tended to politics.This made the value orientation of "use" even and absolute,and made Confucianism tend to be single and boring.Li Erqu was not only a great Confucian in the early Qing Dynasty,but also the master general of Guan school.Guan school began with Zhang Zai and developed from Feng Congwu to regional Neo Confucianism under the influence of Hedong school and Yangming school in the Ming Dynasty.Feng Congwu merged with Zhu and Wang,compiled Guan Xue Bian,founded Guanzhong academy and became a master of Guan school in the Ming Dynasty.Erqu inherited Feng Congwu and became the core figure of Guanzhong in the early Qing Dynasty.In the latter half of the 17 th century,with the interaction of scholars from the north and the south,Guanzhong formed an academic circle centered on Erqu.Li Erqu and Huang Zongxi were both the afterpower of Wang.Although they didn’t met,they were well-known to each other,but they had academic differences in Yangming afterschool,Hedong school and Guan school.Teachers’ inheritance,region and social class were the main factors affecting their academic differences.Their academic differences provided different perspectives for future generations to understand and understood the history of Confucianism in the Ming Dynasty.Gu Tinglin and Li Erqu were raised by their widowed mother.They uphold their mother’s life and demonstrated their mother’s virtue.After the change of family and country,their academic orientation changed.Li Erqu self-immolation works,kept clean and self-discipline,and went to the road of independence and concealment;Tinglin turned to the world,but he wasn’t in the world,but in the later King.It could be said that he came to the same goal by different paths.In terms of teaching and attitude towards Wang school,Tinglin had a different attitude from Li Erqu.The former opposed teaching and the latter took teaching as his own responsibility;The former denied Wang school,while the latter reflected on Wang school and integrated Cheng Zhu.The academic differences between Tinglin and Li Erqu were mainly reflected in the debate between ontology and application.The former respected scriptures,believed in antiquity and focused on textual research,while the latter focused on cultivating morality.Both Tinglin and Li Erqu reflected and criticized the academic since the late Ming Dynasty.Although the academic orientation was different,they had an important impact on later generations.From the ninth year of Daoguang(1829)to the 24 th year of the Republic of China(1935),Erqu lost four times from sacrifice.The outcome of Erqu’s failure in sacrifice affected his historical position in the late Qing Dynasty and the Republic of China.Especially in the 34 th year of Guangxu(1908),Gu,Huang and Wang successfully worshipped Confucius Temple.Gu,Huang and Wang became the three Confucianism in the early Qing Dynasty,replacing sun,Li and Huang.They were accepted by the world and became a model history,affecting later generations.No matter Erqu in Liang Qichao,Qian Mu or Xu Shichang’s academic works was no longer the first-class historical figures among the adherents of the Ming Dynasty,retreated to a secondary position,no longer the role of the center of the historical stage,but was marginalized.In a word,the change of Erqu’s historical image was mixed with the evolution of temple political situation,the change of academic thought and the expectation of society for historical characters,which reflected the multifaceted,tortuous and complex nature of historical development.