The Study On CHENG Hao's Benevolence Thought

During the dynasties of Late-Han, Wei, Jin, South-North, Sui and Tang, Confucianism was gradually declining and its dominated status was challenged and even replaced by Buddhism and Taoism. The spirits and principles of sages were not prevailing. Faced with the challenges, Confucian in the early Song Dynasty started the revitalization of Confucianism, converting the Confucian Classics studies into the Song-Ming neo-Confucianism, advocating mind liberation and self-embodiment of value subject. CHENG Hao is one of the distinguished philosophers in this revitalization; his thought about benevolence (ren) is the concentrative expression of this revitalization. Benevolence (ren), as one of the classic themes in Confucianism, played an important role in neo-Confucianism and also has a profound impact on it. Cheng Hao creatively interpreted the benevolence thought and gave the ultimate significance to benevolence principles of traditional Confucianism both in cosmos and moral. Therefore, he combined cosmos ontology and ethic moral of Confucianism integrated. Based on the previous studies of forerunners, this thesis aims to explore benevolence thoughts of Cheng Hao with two approaches of cosmos ontology and ethic moral ontology, from three perspectives of cosmology, ontology of mind and human nature, effort theory to conductive the research of Neo-Confucianism in this periods.The thesis is composed of five parts.In the chapter of the introduction, besides the literature review, the author firstly gives a brief introduction of the different thoughts between Cheng Hao and Cheng Yi, and the reasons and significance of making a particular research on benevolence thoughts of Cheng Hao. Moreover, from the perspective of Cheng's life and academic study, the author makes a description of his challenges and problems needed to be solved. It is mentioned that Confucianism in the early Song Dynasty was in extremely low state because of their own decline and the challenges from Taoism and Buddhism, Cheng Hao, taking the burden of inheriting Confucianism, make efforts to explore and develop the traditional benevolence thoughts, accordingly set up a unique new system of benevolence.The first part of the thesis discusses the overall cosmology and the benevolence meaning of the cosmos. Inspired by Yi-ology, Cheng Hao established a living cosmic panorama full of the vigor and vitality, this cosmic'ultimate foundation is heavenly principle which makes everything in the universe produce,grow and be full of vigor and vitality, in this way, the heavenly principle is an ultimately absolute good. Therefore, heavenly principle and benevolence are integrated into one unity.In the second part, the thesis discusses Cheng Hao's ontology of mind and nature. Benevolence and heavenly principle are not only the ontology of cosmos, but also the original resources of social ethics and individual life value. Endowed with benevolence and heavenly principle, human are born with nature. Cheng Hao interprets'inborn nature'with'Heaven-endowed nature', and discusses the relationship between Mind and Qi, also the problems of good and evil. The paper further pointed out that Ming Dao had developed thoughts of Mencius, figuring out that everyone is born with the mind of benevolence based on the heavenly principle.In the third part, the thesis tells the meaning about life value pursuit of benevolence. Cheng Hao advocated that people should make efforts to perceive benevolence and stabilize his nature. From the view of Cheng Hao, people should treasure his intrinsic value and resource based on the benevolence and heavenly principle so as to make it fully unfolded and realized. Moreover, human also should regard everything in the universe as an organic part of my life and treasure their intrinsic value and resource and expect their value fully unfold and achieved. As a result, people can have a happy life and attain the heaven-earth realm.The final section summarizes the benevolence thoughts of Cheng Hao, described his outstanding contribution to the development of Neo-Confucianism, and profound impact to the renaissance and development of Confucianism. The benevolence thoughts of Cheng Hao have a profound influence and important enlightening on the development of later theories, especially of Yang Ming mind studies. Finally, the thesis points out that the strong spirit of humanism, as the founder of Confucianism, still has a great significance nowadays.