A Study Of The Oneness Of Reason And Power In The Historical Conception Abhout The Neo-Confucianism System Of Fung Youlan

In the Chapter Ⅵ of Neo-Confucianism, Fung Youlan discussed in detail the interaction of reason and power during the process of real history and put forward the basic connotations of historical conception:(a) The reality of history is the combination of reason and power. Lacking either of them, it cannot become the real history.(b) The development of history is a living evolution process with the interaction between reason and power. The life of history is mainly embodied in two aspects: the purpose of the history and the ethics of history.(c) Human is the subject of history. Whether the interaction of reason and power or the presentation of the life of history, human’s awakening is the entire precondition.Under the help of the existing research results, this paper will make its analyses and arguments for the historical conception about the oneness of reason and power in the system of Fung Youlan’s Neo-Confucianism. The entire paper’s layout is roughly as follows:Chapter Ⅰ, from two levels of reality and ideology, investigates the historical circumstance when Fung created the philosophy system of Neo-Confucianism. Then it analyzes its profound impact to his historical conceptions.Chapter Ⅱ, introduces the basic structure of Fung’s philosophy system of Neo-Confucianism. Then in order to get Fung’s fundamental judgments about history and its philosophical significance, it analyzes the basic implication of the duality of history, the relation between “subjective history” and “objective history”, and the authenticity of “subjective history”.Chapter Ⅲ, from three aspects: Reason is being, power becomes fact, and power may not become fact, elucidates the fundamental connotation of Fung’s historical viewpoints and analyzes his understanding of historical inevitability, historical reality and historical contingency.Chapter Ⅳ discusses the effectiveness of the method to achieve reason and argues the validity of power as a philosophical concept. And based on that, it rethinks the possibility of Fung’s historical conception.Chapter Ⅴ analyzes the purpose and ethics of history which was revealed in his historical conception. On the one hand, it presents the life of history what he has understood. On the other hand, it reveals the features of his historical conception.In the conclusion part, in order to extend the life of his historical conception, this paper demonstrates the practical significance of his historical conception through “enlightenment” and “responses”, while its standpoint is the unification between value rationality and instrumental rationality.