Ding Chashan’s Four Books Study—From The Perspective Of Nature,Emotion And Desire

The concepts of nature,emotion and desire have appeared many times in the pre-Qin classics,with both differences and overlap.Based on the Four Books and the Five Classics,the concept of "nature" covers life,body instinct,morality and habits;"Emotion" is truth,feeling,and moodiness;"Desire" means pursuit,emotional desire,sometimes it is similar to ambition.Since the Song and Ming dynasties,in order to explain the evil of human nature and reconcile the thinking of Mencius and Xunzi,Neo-confucianism has explained temperament,and spirit with air.Emotions belong to gases,Human nature belongs to reason..This judgment still has a deep impact on the study of the Four books in the academic circle today,but the original text of the four Books and the notes of Zheng Xuan,Kong Yingda and others do not explain their temperament.As we talk above,the Korean scholar Ding Chashan opposed Zhu Xi’s nature and temperament duality.He gave us new ideas of explaining nature,emotion and desire on the three concepts of nature,emotion,desire and the original texts of the pre-Qin period.Ding Chashan divides the heart into the ethic heart and the body heart.The invisible spirit has a nature to the good hobby,this hobby is nature.The heart is the body,which has the pursuit of external material is called desire.Born with the ability to respond,heart stimulated by external things,this is called emotion.Ding Chashan believes that the Nature and emotion are unified in the heart.Although nature is endowed in the heaven,and emotion is made by people,the two are integrated in the heart;Emotion and desire are passive and active;Nature and desire both have the preference mean,but there is a depth of distinction:mature is more profound.In the theory of practice,Ding Chashan emphasizes the independence to do charity to verify the kindness of human nature.It can enrich the "good" thoughts;The gentleman is cautious before he has feelings,and make the feelings in line with the ethic,so the feelings are naturally concordant.Temperance of emotion is to be cautious in one thing;Abstinence is to conquer the heart with the Tao heart,which makes the Tao heart as the master.Based on this,in the interpretation process of the Four books,through the redefinition of nature,emotion and desire,Ding Chashan criticized the theory that the good and evil are determined by the innate temperament.And he took nature as the tendency to be good.He emphasized the trade-off function of the heart,believing that the good and evil are the result of people’s choice,which increases people’s moral consciousness and subjective initiative.The example of the evil who like good names proves that people admire good and love good things,and also shows that people are more willing to obey the social consensus of good.Ding Chashan’s discussion provides us with a different idea from the concept of the Neo-Confucianism,but its criticism of the Neo-Confucianism of Song and Ming Dynasty is suspected of over correcting,and its compromise on the dualism of destiny and temperament.