The Dai Zhen's View Of Reasonation And Appetency

Dai, Zhen (1724-1777), whose first name is Shenxiu, also named Dongyuan, birthed in Xiu Ning County, Anhui province, is a famous scholar and thinker of empire Qianlong and Jiajing. In order to regulate the human beings'behavior, rescue the custom and benefit the political affairs, Zhen Dai make a new theory named "reasonation depending on appetency", which is the united of reasonation and appetency, responding to the theory of reasonation of Ying Cheng and Xi Zhu, who thought one should "extinguish the human's appetency, keep the nature and reasonation only", which makes the opposition of reasonation and appetency. The Dai's theory make great effect on history and become an important weapon of the social revolution in the beginning of twentieth century.From the respect of Cheng& Zhu's theory to criticizing their theory, many scholars have maken many paritcular discussion about the reason why Dai's thought is against Reasonation Theory, but most of them analyze it from the academic or the orignation of his thought, such as Qichao Liang, Shi Hu, who thought the reason is that Dai's theory is related to school of Yan and Li; Mu Qian thought that it affected by Huidong. Dai is a thinker, however, who concern the real world and the difficult livings of people, which means the social environment and living settings also have important effect on his thought and impossible to ignore. Before he went to capital in thirties, he lived in Hui county, and such an important life experience of his youth age can not have no impact on his thought and realization in rest of his life. First of all, the special geography of the area of Hui county and the trial living condition tempered Dai's heart and mind, making him having the thought of religious academic attitute and the modesty thought of concerning of people's lives. Secondly, Hui county have profound accumulation of civilization and culture and it makes Dai have firm grounding of the study of Ching. Dai finally became the representative of textology of school of Wan (a short abbreviatory of Anhui Province), and built his own academic system. Thirdly, the dark reality of background of Reasonation Theory is an important reason which make Dai go to the opposite road.In the category of the view of Reasonation and Appetency, Dai rectified the perspectives of appetency and pointed out that appetency, itself, is not evil. It is just the important content of the nature of human beings origned from sexual which is neutrality, and is devil only if it can not be reasonably constrainted. For Reasonation, it is the consecution and regulation of human and objects themselves. It depends on the objects and not hollow or inane. But the so-called "Reasonation" of Cheng and Zhu is only in mind, and it actually considers the idea in one's heart as the "Reasonation" of the outside world, imposing one's own subjective thought on other people and objects, which resulted the disaster of "killing people by Reasonation". Therefore, Dai thought that it was wrong to say the relationship between Reasonation and Appetency are "extinguishing the human's appetency, keeping the nature and reasonation only", and the reasonation and nature are embodied by human's appetency, no appetency no reasonation, which is that "reasonation depending on appetency". However, at the same time, it is also important to note that one should "constraint one's appetency by reasonation", if not, it will bring a serious aftermath of "outflow of appetency". The view of Dai is also involed his political ideal, which is the political proposition of "gauging public sentiments and satisfying their needs". In his opinion, only if the most people can be satisfied, then it can be called the real government of Sage and meets the intrinsic of the reasonation.Based on the foundation of humanity, Dai developed the theory of united reasonation and appetency, which is reasonation depending on appetency, constrainting the appetency by reasonality, gauging public sentiments and satisfying their needs. It does not exist before the middle age of Qing Dynasty. The discussion of reasonation and appetency make Dai have important status in China ideology history. Although Dai is affected by the social and histrical condition in his own period, which means there still are the shortcomings of his explanation of the view of reasonation and appetency, we can not deny that his theory has great contribution and is significance in history.