| Wang Yangming’s philosophical theory is just like a pearlshining brilliantly in the history of Chinese classicalphilosophy. Being contrast to that of the Neo-confucianis, thedoctrine of Wang Yangming’s philosophy derived from LuJiuyuan’s philosophy of the Mind and further advanced it to anew height. This thesis offers a fresh interpretation on Wang’sphilosophy with the theory of traditional Chinese dream cultureby analyzing a series of dreams relevant to Wang Yang ming. Sincethe Chinese dream culture doesn’t follow the western approachof psychoanalytical interpretation of dreams from the aspects ofphysiology or pathology, this paper mainly discusses theinfluence of these dreams on Wang’s philosophical ideas from aperspective of cultural anthropology by applying to the Chinesedream culture. This paper is composed of five chapters. Chapterone introduces the existing studies on Wang Yangming’sphilosophy, the general theory and research methods applied toin this paper and sources of material referred. Chapter twoanalyzes the inappropriateness of interpreting the dreamsrelevant to Wang Yangming with western religious theory as aregenerally used in the existed studies. The author then proposesin this chapter the central viewpoint of this paper, i.e.interpreting these dreams with local Chinese theories. Chapterfour comprehensively analyzes the source, reason and influence of each of these dreams with the general theory of Chinese dreamculture. In this chapter, the author further discusses thedeviations that might occur in studying local Chinese culture withthe western theories. In Chapter five, the author discusses therelationship between these dreams and Wang Yangming’sphilosophical ideas with an emphasis on the influence of the dream“Enlightenment at Longchang” on his philosophy, aiming toanswer questions such as the relevance of the central idea inChinese philosophy on “the relationship between heaven and man”to the dream culture as well as how it was accounted for in Wang’sdoctrine. |
PDF Full Text Request