Zhang Xuecheng's Historical Philosophy And Thought Of Text Interpretation

Zhang Xuecheng was a unique person in the history of thought of qing dynasty. On the one hand, his academic thought was so greatly contradict to the orthodox textual criticism school, to some degrees, those scholars even ignored his existence. But on the other hand, contemporary researchers consider him as the "spokesman of textual criticism movement of qing dynasty", an honor shared by Zhang Xuecheng and Daizheng. The information we can learn from Zhang Xuecheng thought's unusual fate, that is ,the positivism was gradually ebbed in contemporary Chinese academic circle, but again the importance of philosophical connotations attracted researcher's attention.Firstly this paper reviewed the process and development of the study of Zhang Xuecheng's thought, which was spanned around 100 years, and makes concrete comment on 5 most important and influential works among them. Based on previous scholar's achievements, this paper makes an overall examination into Zhang Xuecheng's thought. Zhang Xuecheng's academic thought was based on his "collation theory", Zhang Xuecheng took his "collation theory" as a weapon to against textual criticism school's "exegetical study", and constructed an complete thought system which was targeted at "illuminating Dao by historical study". If we take a close look and analyze this thought system as itself, no doubt it can be divided into three parts, that is "historical philosophy"," thought of text interpretation" and "critique of textual criticism school". The final purpose of Zhang Xuecheng's thought is to illuminate Dao on the basis of literature and history, and interpret Confucianism six classics in the sense of history, in short, to demolish the monopoly position of Confucian classics study.Zhang Xuecheng's "historical philosophy" describes the progress of Dao, it consider the ultimate cause of historical progress is "Lishi". From the point of "Lishi", there is no separation between past and present, the knowledge of history stress not only "learn the past" but also "understand the future". In this sense, the most important point of history knowledge lays on "understand the meaning of history", "meaning of history" is the core of Zhang Xuecheng's historical cognitive method. Finally Zhang Xuecheng discussed the development of "history recording style", and advocated to write history in a flexible style.Zhang Xuecheng's "thought of text interpretation" was derived from his "historical philosophy". Zhang Xuecheng held that the historical narration should show author's unique outstanding perspective. It should be the principle of any academic activities rather than only for historical studies. Zhang Xuecheng's "thought of text interpretation" based on the idea of "unique outstanding perspective", it laid importance on the comprehension of implication, and also considers that the knowledge of literature and history is somewhat subjective rather than objective. As to the concrete interpretation method, Zhang Xuecheng claimed that besides objective study and exploring author's mental world, the interpreter's subjective sense of existence should be consider as an indispensable mechanism in the process of interpretation. In the horizon of contemporary philosophical hermeneutics, Zhang Xuecheng's "thought of text interpretation " has a feature of"ontology".Zhang Xuecheng's "critique of textual criticism school" was started from two perspectives: one is "the comment of Daizhen"; another is "six classics were all history". In the part of "comment Daizhen", Zhang Xuecheng pointed out that Daizhen made great achievements in philosophical connotations, his academic achievements was based on exegetical study, but Daizhen never limited his study in the scope of exegesis and finally comprehended "the ultimate truth of universe". But Daizhen's moral defect drives him to excessively exaggerated the advantage of textual criticism skill, it resulted in the "narrowness" of textual criticism school of qing dynasty. In the part of "six classics were all history", Zhang Xuecheng closely examined the relations between classics and history, pointed out that" history is the source of classics, classics were the heritage of history". Six classics means to "illuminating Dao through things", if things changes, Dao also changes. To comprehend "Dao", one should stress the importance of history rather than six classics. The theory of "six classics were all history" criticize the thinking principle of textual criticism school of qing dynasty, paves a new academic road for "illuminating Dao through history study".Finally this paper examined the significance of Zhang Xuecheng's thoughts in the context of history of thought of Mid-qing dynasty. In the period of Mid-qing dynasty, the intellectual world was under a subtle change, the conflict between Han and Song school becomes intensified, ancient classics study subsided, modern script classical learning began to prosper, textual criticism school also summarized its gain and loss in theory and tried a "internal turn". The overall trend of intellectual world was changed from "study facts" to "explore thoughts". To a certain degrees, Zhang Xuecheng's thought precisely reflected this changing trend. Meanwhile, although Zhang Xuecheng was a well-known critic of textual criticism school of qing dynasty, but his way of thinking is the integration of textual criticism theory of qing dynasty. In this sense, Zhang Xuecheng was actually the person who inherit the past and usher in the future in the history of thought of Mid-qing dynasty.