On The Change Of Kong Guang - Sen 's Academic Thought

As one Qing dynasty’s famous scholar, KONG Guang-sen was the seventieth generationgrandson of Confucius. He died at the age of thirty-five years, but he had a lot of masterpieces inrelation to textual criticism, Confucian classics, literature, phonology, mathematics and otherknowledge. His times was the period Qing dynasty’s academia turned textual criticism to NewText Confucianism. Therefore, his academic thought showed the evident change. We could seethe contemporary academic developing change from his academic thought. Through analyzingKONG Guang-sen life and masterpieces, this paper focused on studying his academic thought’schange depending on Recharging of Da-dai-li-ji and General Meaning on Jing and Zhuan ofGong-yang-chun-qiu and exactly assess his status and influences in Qing dynasty’s academichistory, which provided important reference value to the development of modern academia.The first part mainly studied KONG Guang-sen’s life, the succession of teachings from amaster to his disciples, friends and academic masterpieces with the view of “comment the manand the world”. The first subsection plainly described his chronicle and showed his life andfamily situation through introducing excellences of KONG Guang-se’s ancestors andcontemporaries. The second subsection mainly referred to DAI Zhen, YAO Nai, ZHUANGCun-yu, WANG Nian-sun and SUN Xing-yan who were largely influenced his academic thought.The third subsection simply introduced his academic masterpieces. KONG Guang-sen’sacademic achievement and the change of academic thought could not separable from his family,teachers and life.The first part was the key point of the paper. Through choosing two representativemasterpieces—Recharging of Da-dai-li-ji and General Meaning on Jing and Zhuan ofGong-yang-chun-qiu which could show KONG Guang-sen’s thought of textual criticism andNew Text Confucianism, this part deeply analyzed his thought of textual criticism and New TextConfucianism and then pointed out his change of academic thought. KONG Guang-sen’s thoughtof textual criticism showed the characters—all kinds of methods, uses of some books andadoptions of Han dynasty and Song dynasty. His Gong-yang School crated “Nine purposes inthree sections”, reconciled theories of Jin-wen and Gu-wen, fused learning styles of Handynasty and Song dynasty and began the new thoughts of philosophical connotations in the laterperiods of QIAN Long and JIA Qing. We can made a conclusion of his academic thought: hestudied textual criticism in the first instance, then studied Gong-yang School, began to fuselearning styles of Han dynasty and Song dynasty and turned old meaning’s research of chapter and verse to the way of “general studies” of new philosophical connotations’s explanation.The third part mainly explained the change of the classics of Jin-wen and Gu-wen afterKONG Guang-sen and academic assesses the descendants made to him. Through that, we knewhis academic status and influences. This part made the process of development of Jin-wen andGu-wen after KONG Guang-sen clear in the first side, narrated quotes or refutations themasterpieces of in-wen and Gu-wen made to his masterpieces in the second side，and talkedabout the assesses the descendants made to his academia in the third side.Under the circumstances of complex and successive development of Jin-wen and Gu-wen inQing dynasty of QIAN Long and JIA Qing, KONG Guang-sen’s academic thought had to change.His learning style of “general studies” may be the creative way of new academic situation underthe academic background of textual criticism and one development of Qing dynasty’s Gong-yangSchool which was on the decline.