A Study On The Core Concept Of "Tian Fang Xing Li"

Liu Zhi was a master of Chinese Islamic thought, and he was famous as "Huiru" in early Qing dynasty. As one of his master works, Tianfangxingli structured a complete and grand ideology. This system following the theory of Manifestation in Islamic Sufi thought, begins with the Absolute Being, through Microcosm and Macrocosm, and eventually returned to the Absolute One. In this unique system, Liu described in detail about the rich thought of the Cosmos and Man in Islam, discussed ontology, cosmology and epistemology as a unified whole, which is rare in the western philosophy and Chinese philosophy history. More importantly, Liu in his book adopted many conceptual categories of Chinese philosophy especially the terms of Neo-Confucianism, to explicate Islamic thought. It reflects the very commonality between the two civilizations, and this is of very research significance to comparative philosophy. So researching some of the key concepts, is conducive to understand the Chinese Islamic philosophy from the aspects of Islamic tradition and Confucian tradition, to deepen the dialogue between these two civilizations and achieve fruitful understanding of philosophy, generate new insights in the field of comparative philosophy.The most important concepts in Tianfangxingli are "Xing" and "Li". Liu emphatically illustrates the context and different levels of them. Therefore, this paper analyzed each of the two concepts from the perspective of comparative philosophy. Here it will, on the one hand, explores its sources and embedded in the Islamic thought; on the other hand, points out its meaning expressed in Neo-Confucianism. And last, a comparative research about these two concepts in the Tianfangxingli will be performed.This paper consists of five parts. In introduction, we gave the purpose and significance of this topic, and analyzed the related research dynamic as well as the research method adopted in this paper. The first chapter gives a general introduction to the philosophy system of Tianfangxingli and a simple Islamic restoring of the thought it expressed, in order to have an intuitive knowledge to this unique system and the origin of its ideas and concepts, which is convenient for later comparison of the key concepts. The second and third chapters discussed Xing and Li in depth, explored the connotations of the two concepts in Islamic thought and in Confucianism, and dissertated to what extent Liu utilized these two concepts in Tianfangxingli to interpret Islam Thoughts. The part of Conclusion is on the basis of the former three chapters try to summarize of the traits of Islamic philosophy and understand between Islamic philosophy and Chinese philosophy.