On Jin Yuelin’s Doctrine Of The Relation Between Heaven And Human

In his Lun Dao(Treatise of Dao), Jin Yuelin constructs a cosmological system of the evolution of Dao, as a part of which human beings will definitely occur and extinct. To live in a valuable way in their limited time human beings have to fully develop human nature (jinxing) in dealing with the relations between human beings and their coexistence, which involves the relation between heaven and human.In discussing the relation between heaven and human, Jin Yuelin starts from the fact that a human being is a combination of purpose and knowledge. On the one hand, it is precisely because the emergence of human being that the nature in itself is divided into the objective nature and the subjective nature, or in other words, heaven and human. Human beings continue to use the power of knowledge to transform the objective nature to benefit themselves. Although it is reasonable when this transformation is only to meet the needs of the survival of human beings, it will lead to the alienation of separation between heaven and human when the power of knowledge is driven too much by desire so that human beings continue to conquer the object nature in order to meet the object of desire. This forms a view of life centering on hero. This view certainly has its own advantages, but it does not solve the problem of human happiness.On the other hand, precisely because the view of life centering on hero does not solve problems of human happiness, Jin Yuelin advocates another view of life, that is, a view of life centering on sage, which pursues the unity between heaven and human. Jin’s doctrine of life consists of two levels, namely, the metaphysical level as the ontological basis and the practical level as a view of life centering on sage, In Jin, the harmony between heaven and human doesn’t mean the sameness without discrimination. On the contrary, it is a unity based on an appropriate differentiation. This is Jin’s answer to the issue of his time.