A Study Of The Hermeneutic Thought Of Confucian Classics In The Northern Song Dynasty

This dissertation, which deals with "seeking meaning through li" from the perspectives of ontological hermeneutics and comparative classics, examines the hermeneutic transition in the Northern Song and reveals the existential prerequisites and ontological significance of li in breaking free the authoritative meaning established from Tang Dynasty and shaping new discourses of interpretating the Confucian Canons.In the introduction, I propose the idea of "regarding hermeneutics of Confucian Canons as the root of Chinese hermeneutics," and discuss the scholarship related to my topic. This work mainly has four chapters. Chapter one examines Ouyang Xiu(1007-1072)’s commentaries on the Canon of Odes-Fundamental Significance of Mao s Odes, one of the leading examples in the time of questioning the olden. Su Shi(1037-1101)’s Commentaries on the Canon of Documents "discovers and illuminates the lost teachings from the antiquity, which excels the scholars in the past". Therefore, the second chapter examines his hermeneutic thought and the ontological meaning of "virtue". In the third chapter, I explore Wang Anshi(1021-1086), the predominant scholar in the hermeneutic transition from reason to mind-nature, and his most important commentaries-Meaning of Rituals of Zhou. The fourth chapter centres on Cheng Yi(1033-1107)’s Commentaries of the Changes, which reconstructed the orthodox meaning of Confucian doctrine, and successfully elevated the indigenous Confucianism by adopting Daoism and Buddhism. In the conclusion, I summarize the hermeneutic characteristics of "seeking meaning through li."As a comparative poetics study, this dissertation not only employs the modern Western hermeneutics, especially Heidegger’s notion of truth as the main perspective, but also takes the long traditions in the Western hermeneutics especially a few predominant theologian and philosophical interpretative works, such as Martin Luther’s lectures on Genesis, Saint Augustine’s Confessions and On Christian Doctrine, Heraclitus’s Homeric Problems, etc., as a frame of reference. While taking the four representative interpretative works in the eleventh century as case study and exploring the significant hermeneutic propositions, this dissertation also looks at the various hermeneutic directions of Confucian Canons, and discusses the essential interplay between Classical studies and Confucian poetics in the Northern Song.