A Micro-research Of Dong-lin School: Qian Yi-ben’s Life And Academic

Qian Yi-ben, one of the chief leaders of Dong-lin Academy in the Late Ming, is famous for his excellent research on Classic of Changes and Song-Ming Neo-Confucianism. Considering his important role in intellectual history, academic history, political history, as well as social history, it is very surprisingly that there has not ever been a deep research aimed at him.This paper will mainly consist of two parts. One is the main part which is to restore his lifetime and find out the course how his ideology and philosophy formed. On this basis, then we are able to clarify the important role he played in the academic history of the late Ming and the large influence on the Qing. The other is an appendix which is a detailed chronological biography of him, containing the important events during his lifetime, such as the establishment of Dong-lin Academy, the communication between him and other important scholars, such as Gu Xian-cheng and Gao Pan-long, who are his close friends holding the similar ideals and beliefs, and so on.The purpose and significance of the research as an academic history paper still has some special meanings. As is known, after Wang Yang-ming died, the leftists of Wang School exerted their influence on the field of academic and the society, which made the philosophy tend to be empty talks rather than a positivistic theory.Seeing the disadvantages, Dong-lin School attempted to rectify such situation by coming back to Cheng-Zhu Neo-Confucianism. However, when reviewing the teachers of the Dong-lin leaders containing Qian Yi-ben, it shows that they are almost the rightists or conservatives of Wang School. So there lies the point that the academic of Dong-lin School is the return of Cheng-Zhu Neo-Confucianism or the development of the right wing of Wang School, or if there is any relation between the two. And that will be my focus during the research of Qian Yi-ben.