A Cultural Interpretation Of The Gong'an School

With multiple perspectives and in the eye of speculative philosophy, this book is intended to give a detailed cultural and historical picture of the Gong'an School, and to present a novel yet trustworthy interpretation of the rich academic sources of these intellectual elite, and to demonstrate the profound impact of their scholarly pursuits and social activities.The main points of this book are as follows:1. Self-discipline, or a moderate view of world and life, which serves as the essence of the existentialism of the Yauans (Yuan Hong dao, etc.) and their Gong'an contemporaries, holds up a mirror to the mentality of the scholars in the late Ming Dynasty.2. Fundamentally, the comprehensive study of individual disposition through Buddhism, Confucianism and Taoism is some sort of self-cultivation and self-improvement by means of meditation, the aim of which is to produce a harmony of the inner world.3. The literary theories set forth by the Gong'an scholars are the extension and embodiment of their metaphysical research on individual disposition, And the highlight of these theories is that literature is basically a self-contained system.4. The Gong'an scholars practise their theories in the literary creation, and their works can best illustrate the motive and intention.5. The abrupt rise and fall of the Gong'an school is of typical cultural interest. Probing into this event, we can have a better understanding of the character and tendency of traditional Chinese culture in the specific age of late of late Ming Dynasty, when Buddhism is quite popular among Chinese intellectuals. Complete negation, the Buddhist mode of thought, is also applied in other fields such as philosophy and literature, which leads to the decline of Confucianism, the loss of nature-oriented canon of Taoism and the deconstruction of aesthetic ideals in literature. Furthermore, the consequent mental transitions of Chinese scholars give rise to a degeneration of the traditional humanism.