The Research On Guo Songtao’s Thought Of Zhuang Zi(《庄子》)

Guo Songtao was a famous statesman,diplomat,reformer,thinker in modern China,who is one of the most important historical figures in the late Qing Dynasty.In addition,Guo Songtao is profound scholar,he wrote many books during his life,with the study of classics,history,subset.Academia pays more attention on his achievements in Confucianism for Guo Songtao’s academic achievements,and pays insufficient attention on his achievements in various aspects of Ziology.In fact,Guo Songtao has deep research on Mohism,Taoism and other schools of thought besides Confucianism,especially Zhuangzi of Taoism.He once specialized in writing Commentary on Zhuangzi.Its content is plentiful,original insight,but because of being scattered and lost,part of the content is only seen in his nephew Guo Qingfan’s book Zhuangzi Collection and Interpretation.So it was ignored by the academic world.The formation of Guo Songtao ZhuangXue thought is influenced by the times and personal encounters.He was in the late Qing Dynasty.Academically,the traditional study of the scriptures gradually declined.The style of textual criticism no longer flourished.The trend of thought of practical application to the world has come back to the stage of history.Various schools of learning also show the trend of Renaissance.The academic circle began to heat up the research on Zhuangzi.Guo Songtao took the initiative to accept Zhuangzi and did a deep research under the impact of this social and cultural background,personal academic origin and bumpy life circumstances.Under this dual influence,Zhuangxue thought of Guo Songtao has the distinct time mark and the individual characteristic.Among them,because of his wto feelings,political elucidation is common.For example,the political thoughts of "controlling the officials with strictness","soothing the people with leniency" and "adapting to the current situation".Because of its bumpy life experience,it is also common to discuss the Taoist way of keeping fit and the way of thinking in life.For example,the method of "nourishing qi" and the philosophy of "keeping things together".In general,Guo Songtao’s interpretation of Zhuangzi has a strong Confucian color and political purpose,and integrates the ideological resources of the two schools of Confucianism and Taoism,and has the ideological characteristics of applying the world to practice.At the level of "Zhuang" method,Guo Songtao broke down the family view,and adopted the Han and Song Dynasties,Not only pay attention to the elucidation ofthe theory of justice,but also carefully examine the text of "Zhuangzi",with a lot of original ideas.This annotation method is closely related to his personal academic origin.In a word,in the process of annotating zhuang,he mainly stood on the standpoint of Confucianism and showed the tendency of interpreting Zhuangzi with Confucianism.Zhuangzi’s research results of Guo Songtao has a deep impact on Zhuangzi scholar of the same period in the late Qing Dynasty,for example,Ma Qichang,Guo Qingfan and Wang Xianqian and so on.They quoted a large number of the commentary on Guo Songtao in their own Zhuangzi literature,and were deeply influenced by Guo Songtao notes the method of Zhuang.In addition,Guo Songtao’ZhuangXue results has been recognized by modern scholars,For example,Mr.Chen guying,a famous contemporary scholar of Zhuangzi,cited Guo Songtao’s notes in his book Zhuangzi’s notes today and translations today.Therefore,it can be seen that the academic value of Guo Songtao’s achievements in Zhuangzi studies is very high,which deserves more attention in the history of Zhuangzi studies.