Study On The Religious Natural Of Zhang Zai’s Philosophy

The study of relationship of heaven and mankind is a basic problemin Chinese philosophy. There are two aspects of this problem, the firstis interaction between heaven and mankind,the other is that heaven andmankind is irrelevant. It is true that there were many records ofcatastrophe and warning form Heaven in The astronomical records andWu-Xing Zhi of Chinese history books of every dynasty. Many Confucianistsbelieved that the heaven has a will. It was that many Confucianists didn’tbelieve the heaven has a will.Xun Zi Wang Chong Liu Yuxi could representedthose Confucianists. They thought that the heaven is irrelevant to mankind,there was no catastrophe and warning from the heaven but nature. Thoughtheir thought on interaction or not between heaven and mankind wasopposite, they also can remain the same on that the heaven is the highestbeing. The aim of Zhang Zai’s philosophy was to know why and how of thisquestion clearly.It also means that why the heaven is the highest beingand how the heaven exists. So he constructed a large building of philosophy.Unfortunately his thought mislead us to regard him as a materialist. Itis a vital problem that this paper want to resolve.