The Official Group's Study Of The Laozi In The Ming Dynasty

In the history of the Laozi study in China,every dynasty had officials to comment on the Laozi,However,there was a unique phenomenon in the Laozi study of Ming dynasty,that was,the annotation of the Laozi's officials formed a group,officials became the main force of the Laozi study.This article takes the official group's study of the Laozi in Ming Dynasty as research object,annotation texts of the Lao zi as the research center,taking into account the views of officials who had no special attention to the Lao zi,It was hoped that,the thought of official's study the Lao zi in the Ming dynasty would be displayed as soon as possible.The interpretation of texst is the first level of this paper,the second level is to study the interaction between the official groups study of the Lao zi and the society and ideology at that time,and reveal the reasons,main contents and influence of it.This paper is divided into the following three parts:The first part is the first chapter of the paper,it comprehensively explores the texts about the Laozi study in the Ming dynasty.Yan Lingfeng,Wang Zhongmin and other scholars have done a lot of work to finish the basic literature and textual criticism of the Laozi in the Ming Dynasty.Because of the data,technical limitations,there are inevitably omissions and errors.According to the author statistics,there were 160 people of studying the Laozi in the Ming Dynasty,of which 109 were officials,they accounted for 68.13%of the total number.On this basis,the paper makes an overview of the existing literature and the purpose of interpretation of the Laozi in Ming dynasty,and then,the paper analyzes the phenomenon of "infringement" of the citation and the change of others' works in the Laozi study of the Ming Dynasty,and observes on the text of uncertain authorship.Through the above analysis,it is to analyze the special phenomena in the texts about the Laozi study in the Ming dynasty.The second part is the second chapter,it analyses the causes of the formation and characteristics of the official group's study of the Laozi in the Ming Dynasty.The formation of it was closely related to politics,culture and ideology.This paper will combine intellectual history and social history,in order to achieve the objective of Zhi Ren Lun Shi.The formation and development of the official group's study of the Laozi in Ming dynasty was caused by many factors such as Imperial examination system,Confucianism,Taoism and Buddhism coexistence,and Secularization of Taoism.The official group's study of the Laozi in the Ming Dynasty had the following three characteristics:First,the development of it showed a rising momentum of development.At the before of Zhengde,as the orthodox position of Chen Zhu New-Confucianism was gradually established,Lao zi was regarded as heterodoxy,this led to the quite period of the Laozi study.at ZhengdeJiajingLongqing period,under the influence of the ancient trend of thought,the philosophers writings before Qin Dynasty began to be paid more attention.The darkness of politics had strengthened the centrifugal force of officials to the government,the authority of Chen Zhu New-Confucianism was challenged by new ideas.The Laozi participated in the creation of new ideas,especially Yangming xin xue.Under the impetus of Yangming xin xue,the official group's study of the Laozi began to revive.After Wanli,officials were caught in a dilemma by the increasingly social conflicts.Wanting to go out the societ but can not put down the secular life and statecraft of Confucian,Wanting to go into the societ would inevitably suffer from the calamity,the thought of Lao zi provided a way to balance them for officials.While facing the social crisis,To dig the salvation way of the Laozi was an important part of the thought of salvation in the late Ming dynasty.The above reasons contributed to the prosperity of the official group's study of the Laozi in the late Ming dynasty.Second,the researchers of the Laozi showed a very obvious geographical distribution feature.Most of them were distributed in Zhejiang,Jiangsu,Fujian,Anhui and Jiangxi.Since the Southern Song Dynasty,economic and cultural center of the China transferred to the south,these five provinces were the cultural center of the south,naturally became the focus of talent.Third,in the middle and later period of the Ming Dynasty,there appeared a tendency of secularization,the specific performance was the prosperity of comment on the Laozi.This phenomenon reflected that in the case of the gradual prosperous of the official group's study of the Laozi,the Laozi was beyond the scope of the literati,began to be accepted by the general publicThe third part is from the third chapter to the fifth chapter,it discusses the purpose and content of the official group's study of the Laozi in different periods of Ming Dynasty.In this paper,the research of the Laozi is incorporated into the content of intellectual history in order to show the changes of the official group's study of it in the Ming Dynasty,and reveal the status of it in the intellectual history.Officials in the Ming Dynasty had dual identities of literati and officials,which led to a close relationship between the official group's study of the Laozi and the ideological and cultural of the Ming Dynasty.The development and evolution of the official group's study of the Laozi in the Ming Dynasty can be divided into the following three periods:During this period,the researchers of the Laozi were rare,but this period was of great significance to the development of the official group's study of the Laozi.Because Zhu Yuanzhang personally annotated the Laozi,excavated the thought of cultivating the moral self and maintaining the state rightly,and evaluated the Laozi with teacherr of Kings,the treasures of the ministers and people,non Taoist elixir.This annotation laid down the purpose of interpretation for the official group's study of the Laozi in the Ming Dynasty.In the mid-Ming Dynasty,with the rise of Yangming xin xue,a group of Yangming's disciples entered into court and used political power to expand Yangming's influence.As one of the theoretical sources of Yangming xin xue,the Laozi also received their attention.Officials who annotated Laozi in that time therefore were mostly Yangming believers or opponents.Yangming's disciples explained the Laozi by Yangming's theory and elucidated Yangming's thought and his statecraft ideology.However,the criticism of Lao zi from the opposition party focused on "the disadvantages of nothingness".To sum up,the main driving force for the growth of the official group's study of the Laozi in the Ming Dynasty is Yangming xin xue.In the late Ming Dynasty,the salvation and syncretism became the main theme of the official group's study of the Laozi,between which the syncretism advocated "doing things with the heart of inaction" to balance inaction and promising.However,there was a tendency of nothingness for emphasizing too much "wu" in the syncretism.Salvation developed the Laozi inaction thought out of their own views.During this period,the study of the Laozi also appeared in Taoist inner alchemy to explain it,but very few,and its ultimate purpose was still on the implementation of cultivating the moral self and maintaining the state rightly.Only Peng Haogu annotate the Laozi with the thought of lives simultaneous of Taoism.The theme of the official group's study of the Laozi in the Ming Dynasty was to cultivate the moral self and maintain the state rightly.After the Wei and Jin Dynasties,the mainstream of thestudies of the Laozi was philosophical analysis.So the study of the Laozi in the Ming Dynasty was a return to the thought of governing the state.And the diversity of its interpretation method was not only the summary of the previous generations' interpretation methods,but also the opening of statecraft ideology and textology of the Qing's studied of the Laozi.