On The Thought Of Ji Pengshan

Ji Ben(1485-1563),born in Kuaiji County,Shaoxing City,Zhejiang Province,was one of the representatives of Wang School of Zhe-zhong.He had immersed himself in Chu Hsi’s philosophy until he met Wang Yangming and was attracted by Yangming’s Philosophy which took its rise but differentiates from Chu Hsi’s theories.He soon became a disciple of Yangming and was influenced by the thought of Middle-aged Yangming,that is,Learning needs a Head and Mind is Principle.At first,Ji Ben could not understand Yangming’s thoughts well because they gather from the number of less,he frequently consulted with many scholars including Yangming through letters.He gradually constructed his own thought and ideological understanding of Yangming,that is,emphasizing the dominance of mind and interpreting Innate Knowledge with Cautiousness.Because Yangming’s thought had an evolutionary process,his students have different understandings of their teacher’s theory,then they had a debate about how to understand the concept of Conscience.Ji Ben put forward his theory of Longti in order to oppose the theory of emphasizing spontaneity only.In his opinion,there is a drawback of taking desire as reason when scholars merely emphasize spontaneity instead of cultivating themselves.Therefore,he did not agree with the metaphor that mirror as heart.Because he supposed that a mirror only reflected things passively,not actively guided them,he advocated using the dragon as a metaphor for heart which was a living thing and could be alert and active at any time.In a word,the purpose of this theory was to stress the self-cultivation and the domination of mind.It could be seen that Ji Ben put dominance of mind in priority over spontaneity,in other words,spontaneity was subordinate to the principle of the domination of mind.Correspondingly,he also understood domination and spontaneity from the relationship between the hard and the soft,the yin and the yang;Furthermore,he also grasped the good and the evil from this perspective.Ji Ben’s theory of Longti caused dissatisfaction among other students,For example,Wang Ji hold that spontaneity was prior to domination,and Zou Shouyi believed that spontaneity and dominance were closely related and cannot be separated from each other.Zou also opposed the understanding of good and evil from Ji Ben’s perspective and he interpreted Ji Ben’s theory of Longti from a political point of view.On the other hand,Nie Bao and Xu Wei wrote articles to explain Ji Ben’s theory of Longti,and Zhang Yuanbian pointed out the significance of the theory of Ji Ben,which emphasized the importance of self-cultivation.It should also be noted that Limo criticized Ji Ben’s theory from the perspective of Chu Hsi’s studies.All in all,Ji Ben’s theory of Longti triggered the first academic debate among scholars after Yangming’s death.The theory of Longti promoted Ji Ben’s thinking on the issues of the problem of Li and Qi,mind and human nature.He draw relevant resources from the academic history in order to understand these problems,such as,the theory of Li and Qi of Chu Hsi and Wang Yangming,the doctrine of mind and human nature of Chu and Wang,and also the idea of self-cultivating of Chu and Wang.These behaviors made Ji Ben’s thought had the characteristics of reconciling the theory of Chu and Wang.In fact,this absorption was based on the standpoint of philosophy of the mind,because Ji Ben recognized the activity meaning of Li and he also considers that the heart and human nature were consistent in essence.He made Chu Hsi’s theory only had cognitive significance,in other words,Ji Ben was close to Yangming in essence and Chu Hsi in form.On the other hand,these thoughts in turn justified his theory of Longti.Ji Ben understood good and evil and their roots from the domination of Mind perspective,which contained the thinking of racil evil.Ji Ben used his theory of Shen Du to solve problems of self-deception and evil.The essence of Shen Du was consciousness of heart,therefore,these concepts,such as Cheng,Jing and Si,had the same meaning.This was close to Yangming’s theory claiming that there was only one kind of cultivation,which was the domination of mind.Consequently,the doctrine of Longti was integrated into the theory of “Cautiousness”.Confucianism is the Way of inner saint and outer king,Ji Ben had his political idea based on the Way of inner saint.He put forward the theory of mind-politics,which was rooted in Mencius’ theory of benevolent government.Ji Ben regarded the Benevolence as the driving force and basis of politics,aiming to arouse the good nature of the people.He treated the benevolence and the good nature of the people as the foundation of governance,and the proper order of governance,that is,raising before teaching as the system of governance.He actively carried out the activities of measuring land,promoting the village conventions and running schools at the local level,which show the way of inspiring people to understand the Tao.It didn’t mean that he gave up educating the monarch to understand the Tao.It’s just because there were so few opportunities.Compared with other students of Yang Ming,Ji Ben had a strong interest in annotating classics and he left behind a lot of works about the interpretation of the Four Books and other classics.Ji Ben believed that his interpretative work can well defend and explain Yangming’s thoughts.Although he treated his books as the representative of Yangming’s thought,Ji Ben’s thoughts constituted the pre-understanding of these interpretative works.As we can see,he especially emphasized the domination of mind and the theory of “Cautiousness”.But it was clear that his annotation had some characteristics of Yangming school,and he also attached great importance to the context of the text itself.Ji Ben’s interpretative works provided us with samples to understand the relationship between Yangming school and classics.Scholars haven’t paid enough attention to Ji Ben because of the lacking of the Book of Longti and Humble Views on The Four Books.With the rediscovery of these works,we could study his theory systematically nowadays.Ji Ben’s theory is compatible with Chu Hsi and Yangming,which is a unique existence among Yangming disciples.Through the research on him,we could better understand the complex process of the transformation from Chu Hsi to Yangming’s studies.