Zhang Zai "mean" Studies

Zhangzai begin his academicals life with reading Zhong yong as following Fan zhongyan's advice. He even said "I have reading Zhong yong twenty years. And benefit from every reading of it." From his word we can say that Zhangzai great value Zhong yong. And from the content of Zhangzai'book, we can find that Zhong yong have a great important impact on Zhangzai'thought. For this reason History of song- biography of Zhangzai said that Zhangzai as Zhong yong for structure of his thinking.Zhang zai's idea about Thongyong mainly contian in three aspects.First.Zhangzai take Taixu as his ontological category, universe is the result and performance of Taixu's movement. From this base, Zhangzai restructured the word"heaven"-which is the absolute category of Confucian-in "body" and "movement" two aspects. In his thought, Taixu is ultimate initiative, it just show why heaven is the producer or mover of all things in the world, and from this view he provide a ontology for cosmology that Yi zhuan constructed and make his theory become an Ontological cosmology. Based on Ontological cosmology, Zhangzai thought that the nature of human involve two parts, human nature and selfhood. Humanity is the ontology of human which is from Taixu, and selfhood includes personality and nature desire. We should change our personality and limited our nature desire, and then we can make humanity realize itself. On this way, Zhangzai illustrated that humanity is from heaven, theoretically demonstrated the principle of Confucian that "What heaven imparts to man is called human nature".Second.Based on the "What heaven imparts to man is called human nature", Zhong yong bring forward some concepts such as"realize humanity","honesty" and "know", those concepts be interpreted on ontology level in Zhangzai's thought. See from Zhangzai's view, "realize humanity' means human being though deny his or her selfish thoughts, make sure his or her humanity is always presence, on this condition, humanity or ontology of human being realize itself necessarily and objectively though human being's purely subjective good sense. The subjective condition that humanity-presenting is named "honesty" and "know"Third.For reach this state, there are two way, one is "from know to honesty", another is "from honesty to know". The first way had been interpreted as research principle and then realize humanity. It mean though study and think, one can recognize the fundamental principle of the universe running, and then understand that Taixu is the ultimate reason of universe and humanity is ultimate reason of human being. Under this knowledge premise, human being should deny his or her selfish, make his or her humanity presenting. The second way had been interpreted as realize humanity first and then research principle. It means human being should improve his or her moral first. But this process is accomplished in the interaction between people and the world, so it needs the knowledge about the word as premise. According to the above reasons, we think that the different between the way "from know to honesty" and the way "from honesty to know" is not in their opposition of direction, but their different aspect and level which human being take for interring self-cultivation process, the first way is from the "movement" and the second is from the "body".