Late Ming Donglin College Multidimensional Perspective (1604-1626)

Donglin Academy(1604-1632), which was reconstructed by Ku Hsien-Ch'eng, Kao Pan-lung and their companions took a remarkable role in the late Ming Dynasty. But because of the interferential conception of Donglin Party and some others, the understanding and research of Donglin Academy are insufficiency.In this thesis, I try to review Donglin Academy in several perspectives.Firstly, I will describe the daily lives of Donglin Academy and make a simple conclusion about the main action of people in the academy so as to clarify some previous misapprehensions about Donglin Academy.Secondly, I will analyze the developing trend of Donglin Academy through comparing the changes of situations outside the Academy and the reaction of the Academy to encounter the changes. In this way, I can conclude that the conception of "Donglin " and Donglin Academy are associated yet asunder gradually. Actually, while the Academy was standing at a nonplus, Donglin Lecture intended to be academic furthermore. This thesis tries to make a comparatively rational explanation of the two trends.Thirdly, I choose Gu Xiancheng, Gu Yuncheng, Gao Panlong, Qian Yiben, Wu Guisen as examples of Academy's chief figures in different period, and tries to expound the situation of their vacillation between "politic" and "academic" in order to enrich the understandings about the living state of the people in Academy.Fourthly, I will discuss that when the view of "no good and no evil" were all over, Buddhism became widely dispersed, flunkey got the superiority over the gentleman, how the people in Academy devote themselves to academic disputes identically and firmly.Finally, I will expatiate on the relation between Donglin Academy and the continued development of I Ching learning. I will pay attention to main figures' state of the study on I Ching learning , then make the process of combining philosophical connotations and image-number clear, which reflects that the people in Academy also had the capacity of accommodating different academic oppions.After integrating five aspects hereinbefore, maybe we can get a new look of Donglin Academy.