Zhang Mao’s Neo-Confucianism Ideology And His Contribution To The Wuzhou Academic

Zhang Mao was the Wuzhou Neo-Confucianist in the mid-Ming Dynasty. On the position of Zhu Xi’s theory, he agreed with Zhu’s method to cognize the world and found it futile to correct social malpractice in the way of the school of mind and the school of utilitarianism. So he inherited Zhu Xi’s Neo-Confucianism to realize its revival after thrice thought-transforming and effected lots of scholars.Based on the noumenon of Dao, Zhang Mao straightened out a venation of Confucian orthodoxy admitted by the Neo-Confucianism in Jinhua, so that his theory aimed at pursuing the whole Dao and returning to the state of real Confucians. Zhang Mao demonstrated the way of nature, mind and nature, as well as self-cultivation, which involved many classical propositions in Neo-Confucianism, such as the same source of substance and faction, universality and particularity, the cultivation combining Jing and Yi and so on. In addition to the idea-inheriting, Zhang Mao also blended in statecraft ideology in the Wuzhou academic in order to solve social problems which led to ethos fickleness and academic declining. Zhang Mao’s Neo-Confucianism stood out human’s subjectivity by combing the principle of nature to the rule of society. Such way of caring human’s existence had aroused Zhu Xi’s life-concerning consciousness. So Zhang Mao regarded man as an unique individual in the world where kinds of living beings lived. According to Zhang Mao’s theory, human’s uniqueness was due to his mind which had the ability of thinking and could direct both inside and outside cultivation to recover the whole Dao. As a result, Zhang Mao emphasized the effect of Confucianism and applied his thought in the aspects of politics, education and history.His political thought dialectically analyzed the impact of governor and policies, which aimed at ensuring the livelihood of the people. His educational thought proposed the learning for oneself so as to correct impetuous atmosphere for fame and wealth. By practicing Zhu Xi’s cultivation methods, Zhang Mao paid great attention to both knowledge accumulation and moral experience, and opposed sitting meditation promoted by the school of mind. In the historical view, Zhang Mao held the way of nature throughout the historical progress and advocated objective historical evaluation.There are two points that show the vitality of Zhang Mao’s theory. The first one is that Zhang Mao broke the bottleneck of Zhu’s Neo-Confucianism imitation by absorbing the essence of Zhu’s Neo-Confucianism and the Wuzhou academic according to the demand of current social situation. The second one is that he defended the social influence of Zhu’s Neo-Confucianism by the debate with the scholars of mind and utilitarianism. In the mid-Ming Dynasty, the academic transition became increasingly intensive. But the following thought such as the school of Qi and Yangming’ philosophy also contained the element of Zhu’s Neo-Confucianism. So Zhu’s thought never interrupted its development and always had a high-impact. As a successor of Zhu’s Neo-Confucianism during the academic transition period, Zhang Mao constructed an ideology which had comprehensiveness and contemporaneity. He revitalized the Neo-Confucianism in Ming Dynasty, and inspired the latter philosophers, so his theory is worth of further study and more objective evaluation.