Lee Two Neo-confucianist Studies

Li Er-qu(1627-1705),whose name is yong, also named Mr. Er-qu by the people, is a famous thinker in the early Qing Dynasty, together with Sun Qi-feng and Huang Zong-xi are called three famous confucianists. By reason of the prosperity of Confucian classics in Qing Dynasty and the influence of Western learning things in modern history, Er-qu's thought is paid less attention. Liang Qi-chao was the first scholar who introduced Er-qu's thought, he treated it as "xinxue aftereffect" in the book The Academic History of the Last Three Hundred Years and criticize Er-qu "strongly defensing old Confucianism". Therefore, on account of Liang Qi-chao's influence, people paid more attention to the thought of Gu, Huang, Wang and Yan while paid less attention to Er-qu. In consequence, most people still know little about Er-qu's thought today.Since the mid-20^th century, the research into Er-qu has become more and more and included in some works of the philosophic history and dissertations. On the whole, these researches either introduced Er-qu's thought briefly or discussed one aspect of his thought; the view of research mostly based on the practical learning or comparison to the western thought and treated it as the Enlightment Thought. Since 1980, there have been a few of research works but they were mainly in the view of history of thought or based on the view of practical learning while they don't discuss its philosophical thought systemly in the view of history of Neo-confucianism in Song-Ming Dynasty and history of Chinese Confucianism. All in all, so far, although there are many researches into Er-qu, we also need to research it more deeply. Starting from Er-qu's daily life, regarding his special historic background and researching the way of Er-qu's compromise between Cheng-Zhu school and Lu-Wang school including the adoption of thought of ruling the society with practicality in that times, the author of the thesis want to continue the research on the value of the traditional inner sageliness and outer kingliness and try to transcend it which is the weakness of today's researches.The preface of the thesis mainly discusses the times Er-qu lived in and his academy and expounded the problems of that times which he should confront with and resolve. As is known that late Ming Dynasty and early Qing Dynasty was the times when politics was...