On The Benevolence Thought Of Xie Liangzuo

Xie Liangzuo was one of the four disciples of the Chen Brothers, and one of the two outstanding students of the Chen Brothers. he mainly discussed the theory of benevolence by inheriting Mingdao's unification ideas of ontology and corresponding efforts. This article mainly analyses, narrates and evaluates the contents and characters of Xie Liangzuo's benevolence theory, and its influence to Neo-Confucianism in Song and Ming dynasty.The contents of Xie Liangzuo's benevolent theory includes the opinion to show the perfection, honesty and natural vitality character of Benevolence, the opinion to consider respectfulness as"chang - xing - xing", and the efforts to seek truth. These contents show characters as follows: pay high attention to intuition and savvy, the unification ideas of ontology and corresponding efforts, and the idea of using Zen to validate Confucianism. The ontology of Xie Liangzuo's benevolence theory came from his teacher Mingdao, therefore it mentioned much to"perfection"and"vitality", the sentience to tendon and humanity. Meanwhile, it mentioned much to the honesty character of Benevolence, and even considered Honesty to be the ontology. In practice effort, Xie Liangzuo held that people should not only comprehend Benevolence by intuition (Mou Zongsan called it"feeling"), but also exploring thoroughly the ontology. But he mainly meant to emphasize the shang - da but not the xia - xue effort, and this was obviously different from the traditional Confucianism.After the Tang and Song dynasties, in the face of the decline of Confucianism and the prevailing situation of Buddhism and Taoism, the revitalization of Confucianism urgently need to improve their theoretical system, thus, the attitude of Confucians to Buddhism, Taoism should be changed. Xie Liangzuo borrowed Buddhist's concepts of"feeling"and"Chang - xing - xing", to prove the importance of intuition and the shang - da effort, and make the"seek truth"effort aim at shang - da. This meant that he took a"Confucianism assistant to the Buddhism"road, but not meant that he confused Confucianism to Buddhism, because he still had a unique set of "production Buddha" ideas.In the inheritance of Luo Theory and the"Mingdao– Shangcai– Xiangshan"and"Yichuan - Guishan - Yuanhui"development of Neo-Confucianism, Xie Liangzuo's Benevolence thought, especially his emphasize of"heart"and"feeling", started form Cheng Mingdao, and was inherited by Lu Jiuyuan and Wang Yangming. So it played an important role, and we should not ignore it. In addition, many of Xie Liangzuo's ideas, such as the theory to consider Li as Honesty, and to consider Chang - xing - xing as respectfulness, had great impact to the Neo-Confucianism. Therefore, we should assess his philosophy of Benevolence and its characteristics objectively, not always be negative.