The Existential Consciousness In The Great Learning And The Central Harmony: The Debate Of Spiritual Status And Starting Point

In terms of methodology, the study proposes the idea of "the game of text study by the tripe interaction of'Text—the researcher—other readers.The Confucian orthodoxy in Song and Ming Dynasties regarded the original meaning of orthodoxy as "the best meaning-patter", which resulted in the confusion of "the best meaning-patter in the individual understanding of diverse schools" and "the original meaning of the text". The confusion had given absolute stubbornness to various school, and had not only hindered the interaction between the researcher himself and other readers, but also terminated the researcher's own researching on the text. At last, what remained was the self-repetition and passive confrontation of the sectarian views. So in order to break off the dilemma, the text research must give up the premise of "original meaning of orthodoxy" and "original meaning of the text".Contrary to the Song and Ming scholars who emphasized the philosophical meaning-patter in their study, the scholars in Qing Dynasty had taken the system of naming and description of things as the standard. Qing Confucian scholars held the faith of "original meaning of orthodoxy", aiming to expel the Great Learning and The Central Harmony off the canon. So, the Qing studies had quitted from the study of the Great Learning and The Central Harmony. The fact showed that the faith of the original meaning of orthodoxy in traditional academic study was so deep-rooted, meanwhile, reflected that Fragment textual criticism, which leaded to the termination of the game of the triple interaction, was not suitable for the study of the Great Learning and The Central Harmony. As the basic principle of the methodology, the study suggested that the premise of original meaning should be replaced by the concept of "the reality of the text" and "the understandability of the text". it is the key link to show the reality of the text by the interaction between the researcher self and other readers, but all these should be text-centered.In terms of content, the study had developed around the debate of Spiritual Status and the starting points which is the original dynamic force for the Confucian philosophy.The theory Spiritual Status has close relationship with the concept of moralization. in the Great Learning,"to illustrate the illustrious virtue" refers to the highest Spiritual Status of human thought reached also by human themselves; the text of the Great Learning, aimed to teacher the basic principles and criteria by man-made, thus, it is the exact meaning of moralization. However, under the given circumstances of given criteria which has been set by the theory Spiritual Status-moralization, it is the man-made key points whether the criteria can be firmly executed. So, the Great Learning paid special attention to the weak will, not to knowledge.However, based on Confucius's remarks, such as "to go beyond is as wrong as to fall short","men all say'we are wise'", but when driven forward and taken in a net, a trap or a pit-fall, there is not one who knows how to find a way of escape. Men all say, we are wise but in finding the true central clue and balance in their moral being and fowllowing the line of conduct which is in accordance with it, they are not able to keep it for a round month," The Central Harmony points out:the true key to the problem does not lie in the fact that to know but to be unable to conduct, but in that there is no true knowledge. On the other hand, the phenomena of "the wise going beyond" has made an obvious occurrence to the question "how to gain the true knowledge". So, as a plan to solve the problem, The Central Harmony has to reuse the concepts of Xing(our being or our characters) and "heavenly ordinance", and put forward "The ordinance of Heaven is what we call the law of our being. To fulfill the law of our being,But in the deep conciousness of the theory Spiritual Status or the ending points, The Central Harmony had unavoidably put forward such questions as "what is true Sincerity","how to reach the true Sincerity." By making such a detailed inquiry and discussion,"Sincerity/to fulfill the law of our being" has not been the starting point. Thus, the debate of Spiritual Status and Starting points, in The Central Harmony's argumentation to Sincerity, had protruding performance.In the history, To the Confucian scholars, Neither Spiritual Status nor starting point can be lacked. But the debate between the two seemed that they could not be gained at the same time. The study, then, tries to borrow the views of comparison from western philosophy. The terms to discuss Truth in western philosophy and the language of argumentation to argue were borrowed, by which the debate was more deeply deliberated. I mainly consulted two aspects:one is Kant's concept of "original evil(original sin)", another is Kierkegaard's existential analysis of truth Epistemology between Socratic way of truth-seeking and truth teachers'way of truth-teaching. At last, we point out that the debate between Spiritual Status and starting point includes the debate of truth Epistemology. That we reveal this fact not only leads us to a deeper exploration of the debate of Spiritual Status and starting point, but also provides referential significance for Chinese people at present to understand our own existence.