On Dai Dongyuan's New Neo

Dai Zhen was a final eminent representative of China materialists in the eighteenth century. In China's academic history, the Neo-Confucian of Song Dynasty Was "pay attention to logos, but lose philology"and the Confucian of Qian-jia Dynasty was "pay attention to philology, but lose logos". Dai Zhen was dissatisfied that the two academies each attached undue importance to one thing to the neglect of the other. So he combined the logos with the philology and set up his own "New Neo-Confucianism" philosophy system.On the one hand, he inherited and developed Zhan Zai's gas essence theory of materialism directed at logos essence theory of Song and Ming dynasties'Neo-Confucianism and on the other hand, he creatively set forth the political philosophy of "meet the normal needs of the people"directed at "keep logos, eliminate desire"of Song and Ming dynasties'Neo-confucianism. On the same time, Dai Zhen applied the philosophy research methodology of "probing logos through philology" to his philosophy system and set up his own "New Neo-Confucianism". I Pay attention to that Dai Zhen's philosophy research methodology is one which attaches importance to the verification and the tight reasoning from logic scientific research approach with enlightenment meaning of modern times. In the course of constructing the system of philosophy of "New Neo-Confucianism ",Dai Zhen had reanalyzed and redefined a series of traditional Confucian philosophy categories in the three fields of nature, human nature and humanity through using his own methodology in a flexible way and he had criticized Song and Ming dynasties'Neo-Confucianism of absurdity in theory and harmfulness in practice deeply, which had advanced the progressive struggle against Neo-Confucianism of feudal society of our country greatly. As far as Dai Zhen's philosophy research methodology is concerned, it has three representative meanings. First, it has represented...