The Philosophy Research Of Lieh-tzu

Since Liu Zongyuan doubted Lieh-tzu of his time as "not real", there were many scholars putting forward various views and opinions on its identity. Scholars like Yang Bojun, Ji XianLin have found out a lot of persuasive evidences which have identified that today’s Lieh-tzu has large amount of content after Han and Wei dynasties, not the ancient Lieh-tzu revised by Liu Xiang. This paper, based on the predecessors’research results, discusses the ideological and cultural value of Lieh-tzu which is ignored by most scholars, not laying the emphasis on identity. The whole paper is divided into five chapters.The first chapter, based on the predecessors’ rese arch results, holds the idea that although today’s Lieh-tzu has reserved several articles of the ancient Lieh-tzu, most contents were made up by later generations. The Academia currently thinks that Lieh-tzu was written in Jin dynasty. This paper has analyzed the relation of theory inheritance between Lieh-tzu and Chuang-tzu, Huai Nanzi and Laozi Zhigui, as well as Lieh-tzu’s Philosophy thinking level in the fame and fruit, and in the basis and trifle. It also investigated the Wangs at Shan Yang who were closely connected with Lieh-tzu, thinking that today’s Lieh-tzu was not written by one person at a time. Its body was completed during Han and Wei dynasties, and its author was the Wangs at Shan Yang. Another small part was written at Western Jin dynasty, with its author uneducable, but as the circulation of Lieh-tzu was among the Wangs, it can be inferred that the author had a close relation with the Wangs. The Romantic and Uncontrolled enjoy attitude to life was not Yang Chu’s thought of Prehistorical time, but another author’s thoughts inherited and developed from Zhan He and Zihua who followed Yang Chu and who had the thoughts of doing as one wishes and moral character cultivating overweighting state affairs management.The second chapter discusses the theory on Universe of Lieh-tzu. Lieh-tzu laid the mortal and unconvertible Tao independence of the concrete living things and convertible things, that is, above all things, and makes it become an abstract noumenon without provision, dividing the universe into two parts:the world of Tao and the world of substance. Then it absorbed the Han dynasty’s thought Qi, led Qi into the world of substance, and divided Qi’s evolution process into four stages:TaiYi, TaiChu, TaiShi and TaiSu. This makes Tao in Lieh-tzu’s noumenon with strong colour of Preformation theory. Lieh-tzu put forward a way of "self-creation and self-conversion of Tao", creating all things to resolve conflicts. But its key point lies in how to create and convert all creatures, not all things originating from "nothing". This idea belonged to philosophy Morphology of Han, not metaphysic of Wei and Jin dynasties. Tao of Lieh-tzu is the highest noumenon that beyond all provisions, reflecting the transitional trend from Han’s cosmogony to Wei Jin’s metaphysic.The third chapter studies Lieh-tzu tyriya view. Dream is not only a philosophical problem, but also a medical and psychological problem. Lieh-tzu discussed the connotation of dream and probed theoretically into the nature, the traits of dream, the difference between dream and sleep and the reason why dream happens, making efforts to distinguish his own view and Han’s prevailing view of dream and soul. Lieh-tzu made some contribution to the development of Chinese ancient dream theory by explaining the cause and fantasy of dream with Chinese special philosophical concept like Spiritual traval, Feeling change, Spiritual encounter and Shape etc. Lieh-tzu also led the problem of the basis and trivial into his trivial view, regarding Tao as the basis and those complicated and unpredictable interest relations among all creatures as the trivial. So not all of what is seen in the dream is illusion and what is heard in sleep is reality. So there is no need to be too perseverant whether it’s dream or sleep, and reality or illusion. Then here advocates "forget" to abandon the concept of right and wrong, interest, survival and perish as well as gains and losses, meditating with a heart of emptiness and realizing the independence and detachment of the spirit.The fourth chapter studies Lieh-tzu’s outlook on life. This chapter includes three contents:the first one is Lieh-tzu’s view and attitudes to life. The second one is Lieh-tzu’s philosophical thinking about death. The third one is his view on the theory of life force. Judging from the book, Lieh-tzu’s outlook on life has dual characteristics. From his attitude towards life, the article TianRui regards life as the flowing process of general principle; the article of life force holds that the natural destiny without otherwise is of no mystery, just the natural performance of flowing principle, so it advocates meditating the principle with an empty and tranquil heart, enjoying the pleasure of life. The Yang Chu Article considered life as a painful process of more bitterness but less pleasure, and advocated seizing the present and seeking pleasure. In the attitude toward the ultimate problem of death, Lieh-tzu thoroughly thought that death was inevitable and it was not evil and fearsome. But in the Tianrui Article, the author showed strong moral consciousness of death. For the same death, the gentlemen’s death was described as rests in peace while the villain as prostrating on the ground. However, the Yang Chu Article advocated equal death:there were no difference between Yao Shun and Jie Zhou, because all of their bones were rotted after they died. Therefore, there is no need to keep busy with pursuing reputation, but to grasp every opportunity to enjoy the life. Such attitude seems to be indulgent; actually it’s extremely pessimistic in essence. The conflicts between Yang Chu Article and the rest articles on life corroborate the previous assumption that Lieh-tzu was written at the second stage. Lieh-tzu’s theory of life and force was influenced by Chuang-tzu, Mo-tzu, Huainanzi and Wang Ch’ung. Although destiny is an abstract. necessity detached from substance and can decide people’s survival, perish, blessing and misfortune, the author did not completely exclude human action. The critique of absolute no action made by the story of The foolish old man who removed the mountains and by the Zhongni Article, the two different appraisals on life circumstances of venerable moral but short life and long life but moral loss, both proved that Lieh-tzu holds that obey the destiny but also not abandon the force while such view of life and force comply with the historical background that heroes came forth in large numbers at the transition between Han and Wei, only robust and capable persons can be successful.The fifth chapter studies Lieh-tzu’s political thought. The distinguishing feature in Lieh-tzu’s political thought is that he designed to build an utopia without sovereigns and officials. Witnessed the malpractice in the study of Confucian classics, the author, based on the theory of nature, tranquility and no action of Taoism, constructed his own utopia after drawing lessons from Miaoguyes Mountain and building an extreme moral world. For instance, the Liegusheshan with no evil man and mo flawed objects, the Huaxu country with no masters and no desire-addicted subjects and the Zhongbei country with no senium and sorrow, all expressed Tao’s political thought of eliminating king’s world and live freely in accordance with one’s nature. But in reality, Confucian classics was disgusted of its absurd the ological thought and complicated writing methods, but its status of tradition didn’t experience any fundamental change and its humanity, justice, propriety and wisdom are noble and irreplaceable in gentlemen’s hearts. Not like He Yan and Wang Pi, the author of Lieh-tzu didn’t find a new way to corroborate the justifiability of the famous school, so he combined simply the humanity and justice, loyalty and honesty of Confucianism together with naturalism and no action of Taoism, hoping to restrain the sovereign with Tao and tranquility by designing a series of theory and methods to govern people gently in order to realize conscientious reign. This trend of unifying Confucianism with Taoism made Lieh-tzu’s political thought confused and disordered. However, it is the beginning of theoretical voice of traditional metaphysics which explains the Confucianism with Taoism.The conclusion part has summarized the written situation and its thought value. As a masterpiece of Han Wei dynasties which has reserved the articles of ancient Lieh-tzu, it inevitably shows a heterogeneous characteristic with three reasons. Firstly, the thought of ancient. Lieh-tzu cannot be combined into that of today’s Lieh-tzu. Secondly, today’s Lieh-tzu has a small part that was written in two Jin dynasties. The most important point is that Han Wei dynasties were the transitional period between the failure of Confucian classics and the emergence of metaphysics, during which there was a process of theory exploration before new philosophy morphology. In this process, the new and old thoughts collide with each other. As a transitional phase from Han’s classics to Wei Jin’s metaphysics, though not satisfactory enough, Lieh-tzu’s philosophy system has showed the changing process from classics to metaphysics. Today in retrospection to and researching this special classic Lieh-tzu, we are still deeply touched by its awakening consciousness and efforts to transcend real troubles.