A Research On The Philosophical Thought Of Chen Que

The neo-confucianism thought of Chen Que is discussed systematically in this dissertation:On ontology, I discuss that Chen Que takes"mind being principle"as the first principle of his thought, the heart-mind is an essence and intuitive knowledge, which can cognize and comprehend experience. About human nature, Chen Que believes the theory of good human nature, but he thinks the person's inborn nature is not imperfect and complete, the person has to enlarge and then can attain perfect nature state, so-called succeeding goodness into nature. Setting out from nature-monism, he discusses that the view of the unity of reason and desire, thinking that"human desire according with normal regulations is namely law". He objects the parlance of extinguishing desire ,which can't be extinguished . But he doesn't put the human desire in the first place, he still insists suppressing human desire by regulations. Chen has new opinions of the righteousness-benefit view, he affirms that the person's selfishness is rational , for everyone is selfish besides the Sage, and the selfishness is the person's creative power. Because of selfishness, the Sage then can have achievement.He has no objection to scholars to pursue benefit, because a person has to feed on his parents and wife, who can't be feeded on by others, the scholar should put attention to making living, as for the scholar, making living comes the first.On theory of knowing and doing, Chen Que emphasizes that doing outweighs knowing, he opposes the standpoint of Chen-Zhu:"knowing knowledge goes before action", and insists"the unity of knowledge and action".However his comprehension is different from Wang Yangming's: Wang Yangming unites knowing and doing by knowing, namely knowing is doing, on the contrary , Chen Que unites knowing and doing by doing, in a word , doing is knowing .Particularly Chen Que refutes the standpoints in"Great Learning": one is"knowing when to stop", which will cause that the scholar stress knowing more than doing and stay in the level of saying and knowing, and the other is"attaining perfection",which he thinks is unending, because today we have today's kindness, and tomorrow we contain others, as a result ,there is no destination of getting kindness, as well as doing. In the argueing of academic theories, he aclaims that"Great Learning"is non-Holy Book, which is a drastic measure to deal with the basic book of Chen-Zhu. therefor, the dispute of different theories in neo-confucianism becomes the argument of the classical books , which means that returning to classical books has been put on the agenda day by day. So Chen Que's"On Great Learning"has a meaning of connecting link between the preceding and the following academic studies.In a word, Chen Que is still a neo-confucianist, the purpose of his academic thought is the development of"perfect person", so he also has a strict method of cultivation. He believes cautiousness can suffocate selfish desire,and to suffocate selfish desire is to self-reform. His theoretical premise is still the heart-mind's intuitive knowledge. He says:"If the heart-mind feels ill at ease, you should not do."We can say Chen Que is still a thinker of heart-mind theory. Certainly some thoughts such as human nature theory, the righteousness-benefit view, which are different from the tradtional neo-confucianism thought, having the meaning of innovation and enlightenment.