A Study On Kang Youwei’s Theory Of Human Nature

Theories of Human Nature have been existing for over 2000 years in the system of Chinese traditional philosophy, which began from Shang and Zhou Dynasties and developed during the Pre-Qin Period. In Song Dynasty, the ideological trend of Qi Binary and the thought that man is born good became the main stream. However, Kang Youwei’s theory of human nature is quite different from the main stream.This problem should have been thought deeply and generated ideas. But it is a pity that either the studies of human nature theories or explorations about the Kang’s ideological system seldom focused on the study of the Kang’s theory of human nature and much less study of its modernistic significance, which is the object of this article.First, this article tries to find the origins of Kang’s theory of the human nature. The author found that the Confucianism, the Buddhism as well as western modern natural science had had great influences upon Kang’s theory.Second, the article mainly analyses the basic content and characters of Kang’s theory and path to the "supreme goodness". Kang absorbed what is good and rejected what is bad from the classics of Chinese traditional philosophy and established his main concept of Unary, which believes that human natures are equal and no good or evil. On that basis, Kang thought by learning with effort and temperament variation, people could develop the human nature to goodness, even to supreme goodness.Study in the phylogeny of human nature, Kang’s theory inherited, developed and surpassed the theories of his predecessors, and introduced individual concepts, such as equality, freedom, right, etc, as well as civil society, the schema of the relationship between collective and individual. The concepts of Kang’s theory are of great significance for China to comprehend and face the modernistic challenges.However, we can not deny that there are deficiencies in his theory. The idea of human nature being no good or evil was without further thinking, and did not make clear of the source of the goodness, which made his theory less persuasive. Besides, although Kang introduced individual concepts to his theory, he himself failed to develop his human nature to the goodness.