Liao Ping And The Reform Of Interpretation Of Classics

The paper focuses on the real intentions of Liao Ping's writings which were finished before1912. I tried to decipher Liao Ping's pursuits in different phases, holding the view that writing is doingLiao encountered the popular discipline named Han Study after he was enrolled to Zun Jing College in1876. But since1880, he had lost the interest of textual criticism of Confucian classics and liked to cerebrate the main ideas in the classics. He sought for the great systems in classics just for the ambition of Tong Jing Zhi Yong. Only if we find the ideal political systems in classics, he thought, we can reform the realistic one. In the second phase of his study, he announced that he had found Wang Zhi is the essential text in the whole classics in which there is an ideal political system created by Confucius. This system is far better than the one in Zhou Li which is the consultant of the present government.But since the late1897, Liao had felt the repression for his radical interpretations of classics. The political movement in1898also made him realize that it was the time to change the interpretations. He began to view his new study as a battle for the defense from the western religions and its classics. In one hand, he reconstructed the canon list. On the other hand, he reinterpreted the old knowledge in the light of the new. He was confident to believe that classics as the core of the common stock of knowledge would never be the historic books, but offer suitable knowledge and revelation for ever.