| As a generation of Confucianists competing with Zhu Xi and Zhang Shi,Lv Zuqian has long been obscure in the study of Neo-Confucianism,which is unreasonable.The key to making Lv Zuqian’s image come out is to reveal that he is a Neo-Confucianist with independent views and unique opinions on some critical issues.Although Lv Zuqian himself died young,he has already formed a relatively complete and systematic theory in Neo-Confucianism.His personal academic practice,political experience,modest and generous but no lack of critical academic communication and his own style of writings all prove that he is a very distinctive and important Neo-Confucianist.Lv Zuqian is one of the inheritors of the Cheng brothers’ Neo-Confucianism.He himself attaches great importance to the contributions of the Cheng brothers,Zhang Zai and others to Changming Confucianism.At the same time,Lv Zuqian’s inheritance of Neo-Confucianism is largely realized through the inheritance of family learning.Lv’s family study has the honor of "Inheritance of Central Plains Literature",and it integrates many political and institutional knowledge in the content.Comparatively speaking,Lv Zuqian is a Neo-Confucianist who pays more attention to the way of governance.This also prompted him to go deep into the field of history to understand the law of the rise and fall of chaos.Compared with Zhu Xi,Lu Jiuyuan and others,Lv Zuqian is more interested in the historical evolution and the external effects of Confucianism,and is more able to integrate with the meritorious school:His scholarship can be seen as the inheritance and development of the new Confucianism that has evolved around governance since the Northern Song Dynasty,and a deeper integration of the principle of nature and the governance of Confucianism.The core of Lv’s scholarship is to achieve the grasp of the necessary and universal laws of doing things through understand the truth,so as to obtain the effect of building a realistic order.Understanding the truth should be based on moral practice,and the construction of realistic order should also rely on moral practice.Therefore,in Lv Zuqian’s academic,moral practice is the most basic hub connecting the inner sage and the outer king.However,understanding the truth is ultimately implemented in the subjective mind,so "know the mind thoroughly to govern things"is the main line of Lv Zuqian’s whole ideological system.Although after his death,he was criticized by Zhu Zi for his extensive and humble scholarship,in fact,Lv Zuqian’s Neo-Confucianism has its inherent consistent logic.From the perspective of know the mind thoroughly to govern things,Lv Zuqian is not blindly pursuing practical utility and superficial effects,nor is he only focused on building an academic system about inner sages,with the purpose of insight and realm on spiritual cultivation,but on the basis of spiritual cultivation to obtain the source of moral value,he uses his original conscience to guide people’s practical orientation and control or program everything.Therefore,Lv Zuqian not only pays attention to the cultivation of inner mind,but also devotes himself to improving the moral practice of political governance and social order,showing a certain degree of extroversion.Of course,Lv Zuqian believes that principle is the ultimate source of all values.He believes that the world is made of one principle,and principle is also the origin of morality.Principle is the only entity of creation and the ultimate master of human affairs and even history.Principle creates and dominates things through endless activities and popularity.But principle is not just an abstract and transcendent being behind,but the basis for the existence and manifestation of things at present.As the essence of things,principle is completely integrated with concrete and realistic things.He opposed Zhu Zi’s excessive abstraction and transcendence of principles,and opposed Zhu Zi’s division of the middle,right,benevolence and righteousness into body and use,movement and stillness.As a result,Lv Zuqian and Zhu Zi had different understandings on ontology.This also reflects their differences in the theory of cultivation,that is,Zhu Zi paid more attention to the maintenance of inactivity in tracing the origin,while Lv Zuqian believed that maintenance and observation should not be neglected.In addition,Lv Zuqian also developed the idea of the integration of all things of Cheng Hao and others.From one principle of view,he believed that all things are different views of the same nature,and that quiet and bright,things and me,life and death,ancient and modern are all connected.Under Lv Zuqian’s interpretation,the world is a harmonious world filled with benevolence and courtesy.When people are lured by things and have selfish desires,they will cover up the heavenly principle.However,in essence,human desire is just unreal.As long as it is clarified again under the enlightenment of Confucianism,it can follow the original principle and act by benevolence and righteousness.Lv Zuqian believes that mind,nature and heaven are the same principle.There is no truth outside the mind,and there is no mind outside the truth.The mind is the truth.He regards the mind as the principle of objective existence,which appears on the subjective side of human beings.Thus,the mind has the meaning of entity and whole.People know their own mind and take the original mind as the master,which is the return of the heavenly principle.In this way,the clarity of the principle is implemented in knowing the mind thoroughly to govern things.In Lv Zuqian’s view,the presentation of the mind in the subject is only part of the mind.But we can connect the existence by the activity of the subject and the whole by the part through the manifestation of conscience.From this,we can understand the whole structure of the mind and realize the whole source.Lv Zuqian’s path to ontology has something in common with Hu Hong’s view that he attaches great importance to observing to understand benevolence.Zhu Zi opposed this path when reviewing Hu Hong’s Zhiyan.He believed that the heart cannot recognize the heart,and people cannot understand the nature of abstraction and transcendence from the clues of concrete and realistic goodness,while Lv Zuqian supported the view that Hu Hong’s observation can recognize the essence.It can be seen that there are obvious differences between Zhu and Lv in the path of cultivation.The reason why Lv Zuqian believes that the origin can be recognized by observation is that his cultivation integrate the path of making efforts according to the noumenon.He pointed out that the mind has its essence state and falls into the ambiguous state of human desire.People can clearly distinguish which is the original state of the mind and which is the ambiguous state,so as to recognize the existence of the original mind and continue its natural state of activity.However,Zhu Zi believed that the mind could not reflect on itself.He opposed that observation could penetrate the source,and opposed the Buddhist practice of observing the mind and insight,and went to the path of gradual and accumulated effort.Lv Zuqian,Lu Jiuyuan and others can accept the form of insight,which is different from Zhu Zi.At the same time,Lv Zuqian also attached great importance to the role of respect in transforming the psychological state of the subject and regarded it as a necessary foundation effort.In Lv Zuqian’s theory of cultivation,both maintenance and observation are important.Moreover,he affirmed the positive role of lectures and expositions,and distinguished the human disease and methodological disease in cultivation,which was more complete in teaching method than Lu Jiuyuan.Lv Zuqian has his own independent Neo-Confucian viewpoint,and is the epitome of traditional cultivation theory.He should be clearly distinguished from Zhu and Lu and should not be confused.Among the Confucians in the period of Qian and Chun,Lv Zuqian not only had a strong desire to save the world,a mature Neo-Confucianism,but also had a certain sense of overall situation and political vision.While promoting the refinement of Neo-Confucianism,he also spared no effort to cultivate future generations of Neo-Confucianism,strengthen the Neo-Confucianism community,develop the practicality of Neo-Confucianism,and strive for the Taoist status for Neo-Confucianists.In short,he made important contributions to the prosperity of the Southern Song culture. |
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