| Abstract |
Little research has been done on Pro. Chung, Shr-Li’s Neo-Wei-Hsu- Lun because to understand, and not less than to write such a book like Neo-Wei-Hsu-Lun requests a capacity to grasp the meaning of the classical scriptures of pre-Chin China, a well-built backdrop of Buddhism, especially Wei-Hsu Cult, and a good acquaintance with the essential issues concerned by the western and eastern philosophies. So it is well justified that Neo-Wei-Hsu-Lun has been one of the most overwhelming and systematically presented books in the field of Chinese philosophy since the establishment of R.O.C., and a successful Confucian response to Buddhism from a scholastic view point since Buddhism was transported into China. While gaining some insights into Wei-Hsu, the ancient scholars failed to elucidate the knowledge of Wei-Hsu. Neo-Wei-Hsu-Lun can just make up this kind of want. In the first section of this paper, the biography of Pro. Chung, Shr-Li, his situation of writing the book, the edition of the book, and the philosophical character of the book are briefly introduced. A discussion on Pro. Chung as an ultimate positivist and a mystic is also given here. In the second section the philosophical framework, the summary of each chapter, and the theoretical contexts of the book are presented, which serves as a background for introducing the psychosomatic conceptions of Chung. In the third section Chung’s psychosomatic conceptions are positively evaluated on the base of the theoretical framework introduced in section two. In section four individual reincarnation is particularly selected as a starting point to explore Chung’s creative use of the indistinctness between being and becoming, and between ontology and function, which is able to go beyond the psychosomatic conceptions of Buddhist cause-effect and reincarnation principles. Chung has been seen as an orthodox Confucian, so it is impossible to suspect him of ‘stealing’ some ideas from Buddhism. The homogeneity of body and mind bridges ontology (body) and mysticism (mind), which extinguishes the discrimination between ethics and ontology, and this is a creative breakthrough in the field of philosophy. Neo-Wei-Hsu-Lun elegantly resolves the disagreement between the theories of materialism and spiritualism, and brightly shines the light of wisdom.
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