Lv Zuqian's Study Of "The Four Books"

At present,the study of "the four books" is focusing on Cheng Hao,Cheng Yi,Zhu Xi and other Neo-Confucianists.The study of the thought of Lv Zuqian's "the Four Books”has not yet accomplished any complete achievement.This paper attempts to systematically summarize the thought of Lv Zuqian's "the Four Books",and carry out some theoretical analysis,hoping to make the study of "the four books" in Song Dynasty more thorough.Lv Zuqian's academic career started and ended in the Southern Song Dynasty,That was a period of time when the country was having domestic trouble and foreign invasion,so the politics,economy and social morality were tending to decline.Such a social background had a certain impact on Lv Zuqian's thought,and it stimulated him to ponder over certain realities.Lv Zuqian 's family had a long tradition of learning,Lv's predecessors valued "the four books" very seriously,which also sparked Lv Zuqian's strong interest in "the four books".Lv Zuqian mainly interpreted "the four books" from the Principle of Heaven,the study of humanity and cultivation theory.Lv Zuqian believed that there is only one Reason in this world,and this Reason is embodied in the natural and human world.Those two worlds are interlinked,absolute,and follow the principle of universality and particularity.People should take the initiative to know the Reason,and the understanding of Reason could not suffer a slight error.Lv Zu-qian explained the idea of humanity which is emphasized by Confucianism,that benevolence is the general principle of all morality,Moreover,he made a concrete interpretation of humanity.Lv Zuqian attached importance to the inherent cultivation,he had the idea that people should disclose the goodness in their hearts so as to improve their own cultivation.Lv Zuqian held that the principle of politics is virtue,instead of intellectual or fraud.And the official's quality is very important,Lv Zuqian analyzed "the four books”as a blueprint to indicate that the official should have self-respect,and should trust one another,they also need to pay attention to their words choice and other appropriate cultivation.Lv Zuqian also stressed that judging officials by their accomplished achievements,he suggested that officials should be given a second chance to revise their mistakes.Lv Zuqian's idea of the ideal personality is that people should worship the ancient sages to help themselves to develop a perseverance character.Compared with "the Four Books and Sentences" of Zhuxi,Lv Zuqian's research on the "the four books" is slightly thin and simple,there are even some ambiguous words.Lv Zuqian was good at using analogy argument as his way of interpretation,he made good use of people's daily life as the resource of his analogy.In respect of the problem of righteousness and interests,This paper compared Lv Zuqian's idea withZhang Shi's idea in "The Analects of Confucius","Mencius solution",Zhang Shi's put forward an insightful idea which was distinguishing the public and private interests,but Lv Zuqian emphasized righteousness over interests,and the officials should set up examples for people on this issue so that they could make efforts to guide the social atmosphere.LvZu-qian's research on the "the Four Books" focused on the analysis of reason and explanation with analogies from the perspectives of philosophy,politics,justice.However,Lv Zuqian's research on "the four books" failed to establish a rigorous systematic school thought of "the four books",and also there are contradictories in his interpretation.