On The Neo-Confucianism Of The Anthology Of Four Books

As the late Southern Song Dynasty Neo-Confucian philosopher,Zhen Dexiu has made important contributions to the development of Neo-Confucianism.And one of his main representative,the Anthology of Four books,valuing the study of his theory.This paper is based on the text of that book,starting from the academic background and writing process,which makes a specific analysis in three aspects:the theory of Li and Qi,the theory of human nature and the theory of effort(Gongfu).In the theory of Li and Qi,Zhen Dexiu thought the inherent meaning of Li was morality,Li and Qi could not be separated by each other,put forward the idea of “Li was pure,but Qi was in a mess” and paid more attention to the application and order of “particularity of Li”.In the theory of human nature,he thought the main difference in human beings and animal was that human beings had benevolence,righteousness,courtesy,wisdom and honesty;thought that the meaning of Mencius’ theory of original goodness of human nature had two: one was the human nature was the heaven nature,the other was that physical nature could be back to the heaven nature;he also thought that the human affection was good in original.In the theory of effort(Gongfu),the Anthology of Four books keep “jing” which focused on Li and still as central effort,regarded “zhi zhi” and “cheng yi” as the basis,regarded the relationship of theory and practice as the internal structure.