From The Similarities And Differences Between Lu Zhu To Zhu Wang Similarities And Differences

This paper tries to clarify the lineage of the historical development of the Neo-Confucianism in the period from the late Song Dynasty to the mid Ming Dynasty by comparing the theories of Zhu Xi, Lu Jiu-yuan and Wang Shou-ren. This paper pivots around views of four categories:Principle, Nature, Mind and Knowledge.The essence of Principle is the moral creed including Human-heartedness, Righteousness, Rite and Wisdom. Principle in the ideas of either Zhu Xi or Lu Jiu-yuan has double characteristics:the objectivity in the natural world which was dominant and the subjectivity in the human world which was recessive. Such is the inherent contradiction of Principle. The most important difference, however, is Zhu xi believed that Principle existed in the natural world, not the mind, thus he had rich view of cosmology and attributed this to indispensable learning process. By contrast, Lu believed that Principle existed congenitally in human’s mind, not the natural world, so there was no need to search for the outside world or concentrate on learning process, although he believed that Principle is objective.Moreover, from Zhu’s point of view, Nature was an important intermediate category between Principle and Mind because of his theoretical framework of metaphysics. As a comparison, Nature was a useless category because there wasn’t a metaphysical framework in the system of Lu and Innate Mind had replaced Nature as the moral noumenon.The theory of Wang Shou-ren inherited the thought resources of Zhu and Lu, continued the trend of compromising their theory since Yuan Dynasty. Wang Shou-ren’s significant contribution was that in a certain extent, he resolved the problem of the duality’s contradiction through emphasizing subjectivity and weakening objectivity of Principle. Wang Shou-ren considered that Principle is the outcome of Mind. In other words, the most important function of Mind is not recognizing but generating Principle.As similar as theory of Lu, there was not a framework of metaphysics in Wang’s system, and Nature was not a necessary category and the Intuitive Knowledge was as moral noumenon instead of it. The category of Knowledge in Wang’s theory was different from Zhu and Lu’s that the latter was rational but the former was intuitional. So Zhu Xi considered that Knowledge is prevenient and Action is more important, and Wang Shou-ren considered knowing and doing to be in one. Conclusions as a result, the characteristics in development of Neo-Confucianism in the period from the late Song Dynasty to the mid Ming Dynasty was obviously:the subjectivity of Principle was more and more obvious, the lines of Nature were becoming increasingly blurred, the function of Mind evolved from learning Principle to creating Principle, and the character of Knowledge changed from rational to intuitional activity. In brief, the informativity of Neo-Confucianism was gradually weakened meanwhile the practice was strengthened.This made it possible that the Neo-Confucianism would be popularized gradually, from the realm of scholar-bureaucrat towards the realm of public.