The Unity Of The Wise And The Mean

"Looking forward the excellent realm and getting on with their work" is the main tradition and first task as well as the ideal personality of Chinese philosophy. Feng Youlan adopts it into his study field as special essence of life philosophy.Started with the definition of the philosophy, Feng Youlan has the opinion that philosophy is the system thought of man and human beings' life. In the perspective of Feng Youlan, the task and purpose of philosophy are both to help people creating ideal life. Life philosophy is the begging and is also the end of his philosophy. Thus, it's the heart of "New Rational philosophy".Inheriting the Song -Ming Neo-Confucianism, On the one hand, Feng Youlan thinks that the ideal personality is the wise; On the other hand, the ideal personality has something done with ordinary work. Go ahead, Feng Youlan holds that the ideal personality should be the unity of the wise and the mean and the ideal attitude to life is to presume the state of this unity. With the achievement of western philosophy, Feng Youlan rebuilt the metaphysical with the concept of "Li", "Qi", "Daoti" and "Daquan". Based on the theory of personality, he applies the positive method and the negative method, and built the system of life philosophy which aimed with the unity and the universal sphere. Thus, Feng Youlan try his best to apply the western method upon Chinese philosophy, and to unite metaphysical theory and practice.Feng Youlan see the life itself as the purpose and the meaning. Different extent contributes to different meaning and life realm. He varied people into four realms: the natural sphere, the utilitarian sphere, the moral sphere and the universal sphere. Besides, he offers a series of method to maintain the sphere and puts the basically essence of moral behavior. As the same as the other Neo-Confucianism, Feng Youlan takes the task of the history and the count, emphasizes the reasonable spirit of traditional philosophy, insisted on the sense of duty and moral, guides people's behavior to reason, puts moral norm of life in detail, and also establishes a value system in order to provide spiritual norm for national life.