| Abstract |
The focus of ethics of Dai Zhen was how one could realize “Goodness?” He believed that man could practically achieve “goodness” in terms of experiences as long as one could make use of hard work and effort to cultivate intelligence and sentiment as “using learning to nurture intelligence” and “using sentiment to scour emotion.” However, the reason that “goodness” of experiential behavior was learnable would have, tracing back to its very origin, to base on the fact of goodness of humanity; in other words, it had to base on the idea that humanity was good as its origin, and it was why that the grand premise of Da Zhen’s theory would have to find on the stance that humanity was good from Mencius. Though Dai Zhen found no doubt towards “goodness of humanity”, it explicated that he did not elaborate much on the dialectics on “goodness of humanity.” On the other hand, what he had deliberated was all well interlocked with “How goodness could be realized in the world of phenomena?” Therefore, though the theory of humanity by Da Zhen had closely bonded to effort of cultivation for “Focus on Intelligence and Effort for Learning” it was quite similar to the stance that by Xunzi who focused on learning and also adhered to “Essence of temperament is nature”; Da Zhen’s theory was practically found with fundamental difference in terms of “With/Without” meaning of moral creation towards the theory of humanity, while such theory by Xunzi was not equipped with any source of value. The criticism of Neo-Confucianism was by Dai Zhen, in fact, not in opposition to the theory of “Goodness of Humanity” with his theory of human nature that would work to cultivate the nature of human quality, and the greatest difference of his theory to Neo-Confucianism was of the experiential path of cultivation. In other words, the model of argumentation for both parties was found different in terms of “metaphysics/a physics.” In reality, the theory of cultivation by Da Zhen was most opposed to introvert and subjective cultivation of Neo-Confucianism, and he would like to stand out the realization of experience and objective fact based on experience horizon. Therefore, the arena of academics had mostly, as of his criticism Neo-Confucianism and his insistence upon stance of chi and sentiment towards theory of human nature, classified him into the similar category of Xunzi for “Evilness of Humanity.” But, they had, in fact, fallen short to appreciate his grand premise for affirmation of chi and sentiment in terms of “Goodness of Humanity.” The reason that he wrote “Dialectics On Mencius Analects” was mainly because he was proud to say that Mencius knew humanity well. As such, the major motif of Da Zhen’s rationale of argumentation was that he would like to set up “Non-Metaphysics” rather than making focus for the ideology of moral creativity.
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