| As a sensitive and conscientious philosopher, Tang Chun-i diagnoses the problem of his times as "the lost of self", and further considers" the reconstruction of ideal self" to be the core of his works. For Tang, the existence of self always involves some relations (e.g., man and nature, body and soul, self and others, gods and men). Ideal self, mainly characterized freedom, would be the self that can deal with some various relations with reasonable ways.Firstly, the self would be aware of itself, and then forms the "humanized nature" ("yu zhou") through the sense between man and the outer world. The order and value of humanized nature mainly depends on spirit action, called "cosmos idealism" in Tang’s sense, which pays attention to the activity of human being in dealing with the relation between men and nature. Corresponding to the "cosmos idealism", Tang views the science, the main way human being deals with nature, as a mental attitude, and analyzes its value and limits, deeply and objectively. For the relation between body and mind, Tang believes the former is a "negative existence", and the source of passive value such as pain and evil, even though it can play a mediating role in the activities of cognition and communication. Ideal and virtue of self all will come from the mental action in the practice of turning ideal into reality. Tang is also aware of that intelligence and will play an important role in concrete practical action. Not only does Tang actually talk about the relation between body and mind, but also he proposes many significant viewpoints about it. According to the relation between the self and the others, Tang tries to establish the existence of the other from the perspective of epistemology and ethics and further lays the foundation of a moral and political life. Regarding the former, ideal self actually is just a saint, whose realization needs an endeavor of "establishing foundation" and "refreshing nature". In the political life, ideal self should be achieved to the unification of authority and virtue, and makes the country, the society and the individual be united. Tang uses the concept of religious consciousness embodied a structure of transcendence to explain the root of religion. Furthermore he also analyzes the relation between religious consciousness and other culture’s, and estimates their value of different religious consciousness. Meanwhile Tang constructs an ideal religious consciousness based on Confucianism. Tang believes that ideal self can’t be realized without a religious faith; meanwhile he tells us that we should be faithful in transcendence and believe its existence. Therefore Tang’s discussion deepens our understanding on religious questions and his tolerance for religion would also be rather reasonable.By analyzing, self is surrounded by various relations; While synthetically self always situates in a certain context. According to Tang, the freedom would be devoted to the later, namely self in ideal state. He also tries to demonstrate the existence of free will in order to provide the choice of freedom with possibility. For Tang, if you want to be a free man, firstly, you must get true knowledge and then practice it. Meanwhile you would be realized that the process will be the combination of knowledge and action, which has in our eyes important or positive significance.Moreover, Tang’s works have a special influence on the modern development of Confucianism, for it strengthens an inside turn of Confucianism and makes Confucianism more religious, meanwhile Tang deepens the dialogue between Confucianism and modernity.Surely, Tang’s thought about the reconstruction of ideal self has some deficiencies, such as pursuing saint, overemphasizing the principle of consciousness, depreciating man’s reasonable needs and individuality. Overall, Tang views the reconstruction of ideal self as its theme, which touches the problem of his times. Furthermore, his discussion on the essence of self, the characteristics of ideal self and the way to reconstruction also contributes many meaningful viewpoints, even though it has some imperfections. It is still an opening topic how we can reconstruct the ideal self that can meet the requirements of the time as well as that of the human nature. |
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