The Erqi "I Thought Research

Zhang Er-qi(from 1612 A.D. to 1678 A.D.),living in Shandong province, was an prominent scholar learned in Confucianism in the period between the Ming and Tsing Dynasty. His views on Tao-te Ching, especially expressed in A Brief Explanation of Tao-te Ching, represented those of the Confucians who tried to wipe out the influence of the metaphisic theory what was used widely to interpret this old book. His views also represented the efforts made by those men of letters to discover the political value of the book. These points of view were something new and should be researched more.Three chapters constitute the thesis.The first chapter is mainly a brief introduction and evaluation of Zhang Er-qi's life and academic ideas.Zhang Er-qi lived in the important historical period between the Ming and Tsing Dynasty. Both the character of his academic ideas and himself were influenced by his sufferings of losing family and country. He not only refused to serve the Tsing Dynasty but also tried to answer why the Ming Dynasty had perished. He criticized against the metaphisic theory which was very popular in the dying time of the Ming Dynasty. On the contrary he turned back to Cheng and Zhu's neo-confucianism but didn't confined by it. He was one of the earliest scholars of the textual criticism and hated absolute monarchy.The second chapter is about the Tao-te Ching's researching situation in the period between the Ming and Tsing Dynasty and young Zhang Er-qi's thought of Tao-te Ching.Companied with the Ming Dynasty's perishing, there came a movement carried on by Chinese political thinkers, represented by the Confucians, to reflect the interpretative history of Tao-te Ching, which was contrary to the earlier tradition. The Confucians changed their views on the relations of Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism. They once believed that there was more the same of the three philosophies than their difference. But now they emphasized the difference and believed in the superiority of Confucianism. They thought the Song and Ming Dynasty's tradition of using the Xing and Ming theory too much was wrong. This was new in the interpretative history of...