More Norm Harmony With Nature

Disorder and romance characterized the Wei-Jin epoch in which the society was uncontrolled and immoral. Various solutions were proposed from different angles by many scholars. For example, the idea "transcend the social doctrines and follow one's own nature" advanced by JiKang was one of them. However, the explanations to it remain disputed because of either lack of relative texts and documents or different understanding.This paper puts forward my own view on the basis of those previous researches in which regard "social doctrines" as the external social rules including regulations and customs and "nature" as internal moral faith. "Transcend the social doctrines and follow one's own nature" means to start from one's "real mind" and through breaking the external social rules to reach a state of "not judging what is right and what is wrong" and yet "not violating the 'Dao'". The "real mind" actually refers to JiKang's ideal moral faith that was contrary to the reality. JiKang's "transcend the social doctrines and follow one's own nature" was in succession of WangBi's idea "social doctrines" are from "one's own nature". According to WangBi's methodology of "stressing the ultimate truth and ignoring the trivia", nature is prior to the social doctrines both logically and timely. If they are in contradiction with each other, what should we do is to transcend the social doctrines and follow one's own nature. Later on, GuoXiang tried to conciliate the conflict by proposing that "social doctrines are actually identical with human nature". It reflected an attempt at trying to find a stable society after collision.JiKang's idea denied false morality out of charity which aimed at individual interest based on the observation of the social reality which existed in name only, it stressed morality itself and required action judgment based on examining one's motivation and spontaneous moral action resulted from the bottom of one's mind. But the intention of the "mind" has not been strictly defined by JiKang, and this may lead to take "follow one's own nature" for indulgence. He couldn't find approaches to realize his dreams in the reality because of his backward history view. His theory has such limitations as he thought the immortal and the saint were doomed to be endowed with a kind of supernatural power which was beyond the common people's reach. Thus it lacks attraction of guiding people to establish ideal personality because the immortal and the saint were merely admirable, they were not practical objectives. The Buddhism theory eliminated these limitationsby holding that everyone could be cultivated as a Buddha. According to its theory even the "one with vice" has seed of Buddha. "Turn into a Buddha after satori" and "turn into a Buddha soon after putting down butcher knife" have established a foundation for moral self-discipline, and have solved the problem of moral heteronomousness and have also drawed the last line of defence for morality in the light of the theory of comeuppance in which the retribution would occur after death or in the eternity which could never be testified.Kant thought that the ideal state of morality was "extreme perfection" which meant the unification of "morality" and "happiness". However, there always exists in real life a conflict between pursuing wealth being accepted by community and practicing morality to embody humanity, that is to say, morality would not necessarily result in happiness. JiKang expressed his choice for "humanity" and ideal moral faith. On the execution ground, before his death three thousands students made a petition inviting him to be their teacher, the calmness he showed in looking around the world under the sunshine and playing the musical instrument manifested his perseverance in his ideal morality.We can get some enlightenment from Jikang's idea: rules alone can not maintain the peace and harmony of the society. We must pay attention to the education of individuals as well as the construction of all kinds of systems, so we can urge people to form interna...