A Study On Yang Xiong’s Fa Yan

Yang Xiong, the famous scholar, thinker and litterateur of the lastyears of the Western Han Dynasty, made great achievements in many aspectslike the study Confucian classics, literature, linguistics, astronomy.He went through his entire life in seclusion and loneliness. He finishedhis famous masterpiece of philosophical thought Fa Yan by imitating theAnalects of Confucius in his later years,which was connected with theAnalects of Confucius while kept its own features. Fa Yan has exertedimportant influence on literature and philosophy of later generations onphilosophical thought, outlooks on politics, literature view, conceptionof history.Fa Yan combined Confucianism and Taoism, but not as the only criterion.Yang Xiong also made judgment of gains and losses on the thoughts oflegalism and orators, which has showed the variability and complexity ofhis thought during his entire life. On the basis of the predecessors’thoughts, Yang Xiong developed the theory of human nature, relationbetween heaven and man, action and inaction theory, the theory ofself-cultivation and conception of history, all of which possess thedistinct characteristics of times and speculativity.Han dynasty is the embryonic stage of consciousness literature, andduring this period Yang Xiong developed the literary view of confucianismon the combination of appearance and essence, on one hand to highlightthe great social function of the Great Fu, on the other hand to focus onthe characteristic “gorgeousness”. On the basis of chuang tzu and thedialectic of word and its meaning in Yi Chuan copulative, he got uniqueand in-depth understanding. He made change on the question of Confucius’s“only elaborate the theories of the predecessors and do not have originalideas of one’s own”and emphasized on the both. Fa Yan is the imitating work of “like The Analects of Confucius”,not only in content come down in one continuous line, but also inheritedquotation form of prose during the pre-Qin period, which both inheritedand developed the form of quotation of The Analects of Confucius.Fa Yan has the simplest words but the deepest meaning, and it isdifficult to articulate, using various rhetorical devices to express hisarguments, such as analogical reasoning and deductive reasoning, makingthe theory incisive and vivid, with literariness as well. Yang Xiongcombined the language and rhythm, making Fa Yan kept distinctcharacteristics of the times.Yang Xiong with his thought of illuminating the doctrine, verifyingthe sage, honouring classics, denounced other philosophers and defendedthe pure status of Confucianism, which exerted profounding influence onthe revival and development of Tang and Song Dynasty. He criticizeddivination superstitions, calamities and abnormal phenomena of yin andyang, and advocated materialism rational spirit,exerting a grearinfluence on the followers like Huan Tan, Wang Yun, Zhang Heng, startingthe materialism of the rational spirit of the Eastern Han Dynasty.