Early Qin Thinking Research

As the height of Chinese academic thoughts, works of Zhuzi of Pre-Qin Period have always been the focus of the studies, of which the majority of the achievements centered on the personalities or thoughts of Zhuzi within the last thousand years. However, the thinking of Zhuzi have recently attracted the attention of scholars, such as Wang Shuren, Meng Peiyuan, Li Zehou, An Lezhe, and they have achieved so much that Zhuzi's studies take on a new outlook. Therefore, the systematic study on Zhuzi's thinking becomes a topic of great realistic and academic value. This dissertation is a relatively systematic discussion on Zhuzi's thinking, adopting textual analysis, psychological analysis, and the method of combining history, logic and the science of thinking.The formation of Zhuzi's thinking has subjective and objective factors. Objectively, Zhuzi's thinking is greatly influenced by the current situation and academic atmosphere. Zhuzi lived in an era when economy, politics, culture and thoughts change, different thoughts and cultures clash with each other, and imagination and creation unprecedentedly flourish. As the elites of the society, Zhuzi are able to fully develop their thinking, so that the distinctive characters of Zhuzi's thinking form, such as original viewpoints, broad view, and extraordinary power of thinking and action. At a time, Zhuzi's knowledge accomplishment, emotional patterns, willpower qualities and social experience, also determine the direction, the internal paths and the distinctive characters of Zhuzi's thinking.Zhuzi's world of thinking is spectacular, which relates closely to their angle of view of observation and cognition, and the dimension of their thinking. Zhuzi have three angles of view: viewing nature through"I", viewing nature through itself, and standing aloof from both nature and"I". Zhuzi have five dimensions of thinking: philosophical dimensionality, to search the principle of nature; scientific dimensionality, to probe into the law of nature; moral dimensionality, to comprehend the morality of nature; economical dimensionality, to plan the usage of nature; and academic dimensionality, to differentiate the characters of nature.Generally speaking, Zhuzi's reflection of nature has the typical characters of Chinese traditional thinking, such as viewing-it-as-a-whole, pragmatic reason, dialectical thinking, historical thinking and critical thinking. Zhuzi are adept in understanding nature as a whole, and take pragmatism as the criteria for judging nature. They are skillful in dialectical analysis. They have a strong will to take example by history, and draw wisdom and experience from it. They also have a strong spirit of social criticism. The confliction between the reality and their thoughts, and the good wishes of changing the reality exist side by side in the bottom of their hearts.There are four presentations of the tuition of Zhuzi's thinking: happiness experience, self-centered complex, religious feelings and good-oriented ideas, which determine subconsciously the direction and characters of Zhuzi's thinking. Zhuzi are accustomed to replacing ration by perception, and establish their social criteria according to their own experience. They have a self-centered complex in some degree, so they think over human nature only because they are in need of self-discipline. At the same time, they find it hard to part with religious feelings. They have inherent respect for those outside the reality and their experience, such as God, fate and Ghost. They have good-oriented ideas. They worship ancient saints, and discipline themselves by following the example of them. They long for ideal personalities and pursue the morality and personality of a noble-minded person. Each of them creates a way of self-discipline for perfection in morality, such as Confucius'self-examination, Mencius'cultivating Noble Spirit, LAO Zi's non-action in face of Nature, Zhuangzi's mental freedom, and Mozi's uniting knowing with doing.Image thinking is the unique character of Zhuzi's thinking, as well as Chinese traditional thinking. Take their reflection of Water as an example: in Zhuzi's thinking, Water is a colorful image which including moral cognition, or containing life realizations, or reflecting universal wisdom, or concealing social laws. Zhuzi have plenty of imagination and association, the process of which also reflects the process of Zhuzi's image thinking.During Zhuzi's era, logic has been well developed. Zhuzi each has different characters of logic specific to each of them, which were exerted thoroughly in their argumentations and sophistries. Most of Zhuzi are skillful in adopting analogy in logical thinking.Ideal realm is Zhuzi's important spiritual pursuit, and the important direction of Zhuzi's thinking as well. Analysis of Zhuzi's spiritual realm is a crucial way of interpreting Zhuzi's thinking. There are four modes of building their spiritual realm: soul re-construction of the real realm, creation of ideal realm via thinking, building a relatively stable personal realm by self-discipline, and creating an art realm by artistic method. As a result, they create their own universal realm, social realm, and aesthetic realm, which construct a relatively self-sufficient spiritual realm in their lives.Zhuzi are great philosophers of both thoughts and thinking. Their thinking makes it possible their plenty of achievements of thoughts, and moreover constructs the structure of Chinese thinking. The advantages and disadvantages of Zhuzi's thinking give reference not only to the reform of our national thinking, but also to the improvement of the national qualities.