The Study Of Yang Xiong's New Thoughts And Its Impact To Tao Yuanming

Tao Yuanming is an excellent poet in the Eastern Jin Dynasty,and also the founder of Chinese pastoral poetry.In his poems,he depicted a great deal of pastoral life and pastoral scenery for the first time.And he gave labor a poetic beauty and opened up a new realm for our classical poetry.Iin addition to the achievements of poetry,Tao Yuanming's personality which is independence and noble,simple and unadorned,broad-minded and transcendent has also been respected by later generations.Writers do not exist in isolation,each writer is in a certain cultural and artistic traditions,intentionally or unintentionally affected by their predecessors.In the ideological sense,Yang Xiong has an extremely far-reaching impact on Tao Yuanming.In the current academia,study on Yang Xiong's philosophy viewpoint is relatively weak.The article focuses on the study of Yang Xiong's political and philosophical thought through the two works called Tai Xuan and Fa Yan,and studied the new-confucianism represented by Dong Zhongshu,and then explored the direct influence on Tao Yuanming which is exerted by Yang Xiong.Four chapters are included in this dissertation.In the introduction part,there's a brief introduction of research background,significance,summary of the study,innovation and development space of this subject.The first chapter introduces the life and writings of Yang Xiong.The first section gives a brief introduction of Yang Xiong's life,highlighting the spirit of indifferent to fame and wealth and the spirit of scholarship.The focus of Yang Xiong's scholarship lies not in the field of speech and language,but in the field of politics and philosophy.He read a variety of books and didn't adhere to the words and sentences.Instead,he grasped the essence of the books and adopted and discarded with a critical eye.Fa Yan and Tai Xuan are two masterpieces which exhausted Yang Xiong's whole life.They embodies Yang Xiong's political and philosophical viewpoint,which is a contradiction of the new Confucianism in the Han Dynasty.The second chapter focuses on how Yang Xiong is opposed to the new Confucianism represented by Dong Zhongshu.This is mainly manifested in two aspects.First of all,Yang Xiong broke the "fate","God" added to people,emphasizing the subjective initiative,denied divine right of kings,heaven-man unity which make absolute power of kings,literated human nature.Second,Yang Xiong encouraged scholars to pursue their own independent personality,denied Dong Zhongshu's "The Lord is the chief",on the issue of entering politics or retreat,Yang Xiong was in favor of keeping out of troubles,and against the ignorance of loyalty to the monarch.From the Western Han Dynasty to the Wei-jin period,Yang Xiong was the first one to open the new atmosphere.The third chapter focuses on Yang Xiong's exploration of the value of life.It can be divided into three parts.Firstly,Yang Xiong regarded that life and death have their own law,immortal and spirits can not continue life,so we should treasure our own body,do not be too obsessed with remembrance in the history.Secondly,Yang Xiong paid attention to improve themselves and self-cultivation to the good,against the kind of life which indulge in creature comforts because of the short life.And he set a model for future generations.Finally,Yang Xiong thought one should develop his or her own hobbies.He looked down upon the material pleasure,stressed the spiritual pleasure.That gave a strong impact to the scholars in Wei-jin period.Yang Xiong's viewpoint advocation influenced Tao Yuanming profoundly.The fourth chapter focuses on Tao Yuanming's cognition and acceptance of Yang Xiong' s viewpoint.Tao Yuanming not only directly accepted Yang Xiong's political philosophy,but also accepted his values.It is divided into four sections.The first section focuses on the possibility of Tao's acceptance to Yang Xiong.The second section focuses on how Tao Yuanming accepted the impact of Yang Xiong in the concept of life and death.Tao Yuanming accepted Yang Xiong's viewpoint that life moves on its own law.His understanding of death is more profound than Yang Xiong.The third section focuses on how Tao Yuanming was influenced by Yang Xiong on the issue of entering politics or retreat.Whether Tao Yuanming decided to enter politics or not depended on two points,one is "opportunity" which was said by Yang Xiong.The other is the love of pastoral life,which is living in freedom which is depicted by Yang Xiong.The last section analyzes how Yang Xiong's viewpoint of stressing the importance of spiritual contentment impacted Tao Yuanming.Tao gained happiness by labouring himself.