Modernity Concepts In Dai Zhen’s Thought

Dai Zhen lived in the eighteenth century which witnessed the second great social transformation in Chinese history. Dai Zhen’s thought was the typical reflection of this transformation in academic theory. Among the great social transformation, there were some renewals of modernity concepts within Confucianism, called "inherent modernity". Dai Zhen’s ideas of modernity can only be understood in the perspective of inherent modernity.Perceived from the previous studies on Dai Zhen’s thought, there were several research perspectives:epistemology, ethics, and metaphysics. Although considerable achievements were obtained in these perspectives, but the following problems were unavoidable:(1) Dai Zhen’s thought was studied within the horizon of epistemology merely. Either Dai Zhen’s philosophical connotations were ignored by Qian-Jia sinologists, or Dai Zhen’s textology and philosophical connotations were studied separately by Yu Yingshi, or regarding Dai Zhen’s thought as an analogy for modern western scientific knowledge by Hu Shi. (2) In the horizon of ethics, there are two branches, either standing against Dai Zhen like Song scholars, or imposing the western ethics of "freedom" and "democracy" on Dai Zhen’s ethics. Actually, both epistemology and ethics belong to concrete science. To interpret Dai Zhen’s thought merely from the perspectives epistemology and ethics, the dimension of metaphysics among his thought was ignored. (3) Moreover, studied within a western metaphysics horizon such as philosophy, materialism, idealism, linguistic philosophy and so on, for one thing, there exists the risk of the West-regulate-China; for another, Dai Zhen’s source horizon of thought behind his break of "above form/within form" can never be revealed.In our opinion, it is because of the missing of the source horizon that makes it difficult to conclude the studies of Dai Zhen’s thought so far. As to the source horizon, Dai Zhen regarded it as "human relations and daily life" in his own terms, which is also the Life horizon revealed by Life Confucianism (one of the contemporary branches of Confucianism). This paper is to consciously trace back to the source of Life in order to understand the modernity concepts among Dai Zhen’s thought. Thus,the paper proceeds as follows:Firstly, the paper clarifies the historical course of Confucianism modernization and the context of modernity concepts so as to explain the historical and academic circumstances in which Dai Zhen’s thoughts were generated.The general characteristic of "modern society transformation" was conversion of the pre-modern "family society" to the modern "civil society"; The inherent modernity factors it contained were shown as follows:the conversion of self-sufficient peasant economy to the commodity economy dominated by the market; the conversion of village life linked with blood relationship to the citizen life mostly consisting of strangers in terms of lifestyle; and the conversion of noble scholar-bureaucrat culture to a secular civic culture. Then, Dai Zhen’s own life experiences were imprinted with mark of the times.The modernity factors embodied in the academic field were shown as the following:in the period of late Ming dynasty guided by the Yangmingism, a modernity trend of "feeling respect and principle restrain" was raised; in Ming&Qing dynasties under the "statecraft spirit", the modernity transformation of Confucian political philosophy was unlocked; and in Qianlong&Jiaqing period, a Chinese renaissance movement was formed during a textological study of "seeking truth from facts". Based on the above, Dai Zhen’s thought, originated from the modernity lifestyle,and excelling the past modernity concepts, is inevitably a kind of modernity philosophical construction.Secondly, to interpret Dai Zhen’s own expression of the source horizon, it is about the methodology premise of expanding his modernity concepts.In the progress of the Confucianism modernization, those types of Confucianism with the color of modernity invariably had a strong attention to real life. For instances, Wang Gen advocated "an invention of conscience in common people’s daily life", referring to the individual’s subjectivity given by the same common people’s daily life; Li Zhi proposed the idea that "dressing and dining were human relations and physics", which suggested all the knowledge(physics) and ethics (human relations) were totally originated from the daily life(dressing and dining); the "Statecraft spirit" by Gu Yanwu, Huang Zongxi, and Wang Fuzhi reflected the urgent need of concrete learning in life for academic research; Yan Yuan’s thought of "practicing" also expounded that usefulness or uselessness of an ideology can only be proven by practice in life. However, all the academic constructs of scholars above mentioned were still trapped in the Neo-Confucianism. It is Dai Zhen’s statement that " Tao is human relations and daily life" that consciously expressed the idea that life was the source of concepts.In Dai Zhen’s source horizon, he opposed the separation of metaphysical Tao from physical daily life by the Song Confucians. He believed that only by insisting on seeking Tao through daily life, could the metaphysical false of idea above the life be avoided. Based on the source of "human relations and daily life ", the specific academic construct of Dai Zhen’s thought embodied the access of "seeking truth from facts". In Dai Zhen’s view, "facts" in Confucian classics were not the "document facts" in a sense of exegesis textology, but a combination of the life style and life ideas in the era of Confucius, Mencius and any other sages. And it required Dai Zhen to understand Yili concepts which those sages wanted to express in the classics. Furthermore, Dai Zhen’s Yili concepts turned back to his own life, to construct the modernity concepts by doing the textual research of its modernity life styles.Thirdly, based on previous research, according to the divisions of modern academics, this paper studies into Dai Zhen’s modernity concepts including metaphysics (cosmology), the theory of human nature and the physics (including epistemology and ethics)respectively.On metaphysics, Dai Zhen criticized Song Confucian "dichotomy of Li and Qi" inspired by "Shen and Qi difference" in Buddhism&Taoism’s. Furthermore, through a literal meaning annotation on "that which exists above form is the Way, and that which exists within material form is determinate" and " the successive movement of the yin and yang constitutes what is called the Way" in YI Zhuan, he deconstructed the universe ontology held by Neo-Confucianism. In Dai Zhen’s view, the universe is a whole form in which "Qi’s movement and transformation equals Tao", and there does not exist a transcendence of the metaphysical ontology; the universe is generated in running movement; by continuous movement, the universe’s feature of "the creative activity of the Heaven and Earth" is embodied; by regular movement, the universe’s inherent value of " the creative activity of the Heaven and Earth" in accordance with the all of the order and the intrinsic value of the reason is given. Through the deconstruction of the Song Confucian’s ontology and the reconstruction of his own cosmology, Dai Zhen laid the theoretical foundation for the theory of human nature, epistemology, ethics of modernity.On the theory of human nature, Dai Zhen criticized Song Confucian dichotomy of "the nature of temperament" and "the nature of Heaven". Different from"discussion of nature by Li", Dai Zhen’s "discussion of nature by Qi" faced the existence of human body directly to discuss human nature. After picking up the traditional concept "discussing nature by vitality" before the Song dynasty, Dai Zhen pointed out that human nature was a generative process from "natural" to "necessity". In Dai Zhen’s view, in terms of the specific content of human nature, it is a unity of "blood-breath &mind-intelligence"; in terms of the overall structure of the human nature, it includes three aspects:"desires", "feelings" and "wisdom". Then, concerning Goodness, Dai Zhen inherited the "human nature goodness" by Mencius on the one hand, and derived the physics connotation of "ethics goodness" by Xun Zi on the other hand. Through the concept of "mind-intelligence", Dai Zhen united the above dual meanings. He not only critically inherited the traditional theory of human nature, but also made innovation based on the theories of human nature held by the two schools of Mencius and Xun Zi. To Dai Zhen, the values of human nature is embodied in man’s natural life; the values of human is embodied in man’s survival activity; the individuality of human value is prior to the universality of human value.On epistemology, Dai Zhen criticized Song Confucian"focusing on respectfulness rather than on learning" which would lead to a conclusion of "hardly waiting for learning" or even "no learning". Thus, it reversed the relationship between knowledge and morality, and the independent value status of knowledge itself is not endowed. In Dai Zhen’s view, in terms of the relationship between the cognitive object and the cognitive subject, the objective existing knowledge can be necessarily recognized by the main body; In terms of the cognitive object, knowledge is the inherent law of things, the "differentiated principle", "the principle of the order and reason"of things themselves, and the "Li-Yi" reconstructed by the main body based on the previous principles; In terms of cognitive subject, there is a expansion process of cognitive competence from "knowing well" to "deity wisdom". Dai Zhen’s epistemology not only provides theoretical foundation for Qian-Jia sinology, but also has its significance as a universal theoretical construction, which is profound even today.On ethics, Dai Zhen criticized Song Confucian "saving heavenly principle while extinguishing human desires". In Dai Zhen’s view, the social tragedy of "killing people with heavenly principle" happened, because the normal relationship between "feeling-desire" and "Li" in the theoretical root of Neo-Confucianism was reversed and the so-called "Li" was only the reasonable mode of "feeling-desire". In terms of the fundamental principle of ethical construction, Dai Zhen emphasized that morality was not a metaphysical virtue above the feeling-desire, but that "everyone’s feeling-desire were all expressed"; In terms of the mechanism of morality generation, Dai Zhen carried out the "weighing" cognitive methods throughout all ethical practice according to the requirements by "measuring one’s feeling-desire by another’s" and "balancing & weighing facts"; In terms of the structure of ethical practice, Dai Zhen constructed a sequence of concepts:benevolenceâ†'righteousnessâ†'propriety, and in the subjectivity’s morality level he constructed another sequence of concepts: wisdomâ†'benevolenceâ†'courage. In Dai Zhen’s ethics, Song Confucian metaphysics morality presuppose is abandoned, morality is likely to be deeply rooted in the reality of daily life.Through our research, we can find out that Dai Zhen’s thought is not only a rebellion to traditional Confucianism represented by the Neo-Confucianism, but also an improvement of the original Confucianism represented by Confucius, Mencius and Xun Zi to some degrees. Most importantly, it is a construction of modernity philosophy based on assimilation and innovation.