Is there a Chinese metaphysics?

A Metaphysics in Ancient ChinaThe term "metaphysics" first appeared in the early Tang Dynasty in the collation of some of the history of the previous dynasty and some of the interpretation of Yang Xiong's "Taixuan" in the journal, then called "metaphysics", mainly refers to three aspects: G

One. It refers to the study and application of the "three mysteries". Since the Han Dynasty, China's official and civil society has been specializing in "Zhuangzi, Laozi, Yi" the three knowledge of the crowd, slowly, it produced around the "three Xuan" and the formation of the "Xuanxue" knowledge. "Knowledge and learning. $

What needs to be hinted here is that there have actually been two Zhuangzi's in Chinese history, one of which was Zhuang Zhou, a native of Song during the Warring States period, who authored the inner part of Zhuangzi that we now see. The other Zhuangzi was Zhuang Zun, or Yan Junping, a native of Shu at the end of the Western Han Dynasty, who authored the Dao De Zhen Jing Zhi Gui Gui (also known as the Laozi Zhi Gui Gui). Moreover, according to Zhang Xingcheng of the Song Dynasty, in his "Derivation of the Outer Part of the Emperor's Ultimate Classic of Worldly Observations," "Mr. Zhang's poem reads: If there were no Yangzi's study of the heavens and the human race, there would have been no internal and external chapters of Zhuang Sheng. In this way, we know that the external chapter is also Mr. Wen's disciples cover the compilation." The statement, we can know that now we see the "Zhuangzi" of the inner chapter, in fact, is Shao Yong's disciples according to Yang Xiong's doctrine of transformation, "Zhuangzi" outer chapter is Shao Yong's disciples according to Yang Xiong's doctrine of the principle of direct fabrication. W9O

Two, it refers to the intellectual learning of the mixture of Taoism, Confucianism and Sanxuan. At the end of the Western Han Dynasty, due to social development and change, Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty adopted the implementation of Dong Zhongshu's "sole respect for Confucianism" national cultural system, has been shaky. During the Northern and Southern Dynasties of China, a large number of northern peoples and Western Buddhists came to dominate the Central Plains, which led to the collapse of the "national education" (the "university" headed by rituals, music, archery, and imperialism, and the "elementary school" headed by books and mathematics), which had been established since the Shang and Zhou Dynasties, in the capital city. (the "university" headed by rituals, music, archery and imperialism, and the "elementary school" headed by books and mathematics), which had been established since the beginning of time, was also greatly affected. However, after all, traditional Chinese culture has a strong vitality, in the North and South Dynasties era of the intellectual class of the countries, some wise people to "three Xuan" as the main combined and integrated the knowledge of various schools of thought, thus forming a unique form of knowledge "Xuanxue", and this form of knowledge into the official school. And this form of knowledge into the official education knowledge system. For example, in the Song Book - He Shangzhi Biography written by Shen Yao (441--513) of the Liang Dynasty, it is recorded that in the 13th year of Emperor Wen of the Song Dynasty (437 A.D.), "the King of Pengcheng wanted to take Liu Bin, the left chief historian of the Situ, as the Yin of Danyang, and was not allowed to do so, and then he took Shang to be the Yin, set up a residence in Nanguo, set up a metaphysical study, and gathered the disciples of the students, such as Xu Xu of the East China Sea, He Blu of Lujiang, and Huang Hu, Gou ZiHua of Yingchuan, Sun Zongchang, Wang Tingxiu of Taiyuan, and Sun Zongchang, and Wang Tingxiu, and so on. Sun Zongchang, Wang Tingxiu, Lu County Kong Huiyi and catechized to travel. Called the South School". Liang dynasty people Xiao Zixian (489 - 537 years) written by the "Qi book - the hundred officials," there are: "Tai Shi six years (AD 456 - 471 years), to the abolition of the national school, the initial set of the General bright view, Xuan, Confucianism, literature and history of the four sections. Section set bachelor each ten people." This is the earliest record of "Xuanxue" being officially incorporated into the official school.

Three, referring to the intellectual doctrines of Shu scholars Yan Junping and Yang Xiong. Tang Dynasty, the rulers saw the growing popularity of foreign Buddhism, out of the need for balance in the cultural landscape, has been highly respected China's indigenous Taoism and Taoist culture. In the twenty-first year of the reign, Emperor Li Longji of the Tang Xuanzong (唐玄宗李隆基) personally compiled and edited the "Dao De Zhen Jing Shuo - Extradition" (道德真經疏-外传), which promoted Laozi (老子) and the "Dao De Zhen Jing Guidelines" (道德真經指归) by Yan Junping (严君平) of Shu. "In the 29th year of the reign of Emperor Kaiyuan, the Chongxuan Pavilion was established in the capital. The difference in the number of students of the Taoist school was called the Taoist Expedition." (Tongdian - Election III) The "Daoju" mentioned here is the same title as "Mingjing, Jinshi, and Tongsheng" in the imperial examinations at that time. "In the 13th year of Tianbao, Emperor Xuanzong, at the Qinzheng building, tested the candidates who were well versed in the graveyard code, well versed in the Xuanjing, had a magnificent rhetoric, and had outstanding military strategies." (Old Tang Book - Yang ò biography) The Xuanjing mentioned here, refers to the old Zhuang Yi and Yan Junping and Yang Xiong's doctrine. It can be seen that, due to the official efforts of the Tang Dynasty to promote the "XuanXue" at that time the status is very high, and, such learning is also officially included in the national science and technology exams to raise the program. P

China's history, note and read Yang Xiong's "Taixuan" article a lot of Tang Dynasty Wang Ya's "said Xuan" is his reading of Yang Xiong's "Taixuan scripture" notes, he wrote: "Therefore, the exploration of Xuan into the study of the more ...... explained stop in the first praise, and Xuan measured and listed, and the image of its class, know that the Easy to know, then the Xuanxue not labor and self-awareness." Wang Ya here said "metaphysics", refers to the "Taixuan Jing", but also refers to the state of knowledge of those who study the "Taixuan" in the dissection of the metaphysical analysis of the emblem. $'^2

In summary, it can be seen that before the Qing Dynasty, the main texts of what the Chinese called "metaphysics" referred to the Laozi, Zhuangzi, and Yi, as well as Yan Junping's Dao De Zhen Jing Zhi Gui Gui (The Guide to the Tao Te Ching), and Yang Xiong's Taixuan and Fa Yan. According to such intellectual characteristics and lines of knowledge, the later academic knowledge of researching, applying and developing these studies should also be considered as "metaphysics", so Yan Junping and Yang Xiong were followed by Zheng Xuan, Zhang Heng, Wang Bi, He Yan, Guo Xiang, Peng Xiao, Chen Tuan, Tan Cliff, Zhou Dunyi, Shao Yong, Zhang Xingcheng... ...and others should also be considered "metaphysics". The formation and intellectual characteristics of Chinese metaphysics d The essence of science is discovery, and the task of science is to seek the truth. The essence of technology is invention, and the task of technology is innovation. Truth-seeking, that is, the scientists maximize the exclusion of subjective and objective interference factors, the study of the return to the original state of motion to restore its original existence to faithfully reflect; innovation, that is, according to the reality of the actual needs of the technology and the scientific principles of the technology to combine the new forms of technology. Science and technology are a set of mutually fundamental and interactive relationship, scientific discovery and truth-seeking need to use technology innovation as a means to continue to explore the problem, technology innovation depends on the principles and principles derived from scientific discovery and truth-seeking to develop themselves. However, no matter technology invention innovation or scientific discovery truth-seeking, essentially is the research party in the external world at the same time of knowledge reform, in fact, is the subject of their own knowledge of self-knowledge, self-breakthrough and self-control of the process, so, cognitive science is the basis of all science and technology. ?j;VS

However, the human cognitive science itself is not unrestricted, because, human beings are fundamentally dependent on nature to survive, so the harmony of human-nature relations is the premise of human knowledge activities, but also the ultimate limit of human knowledge activities, human beings, once more than the premise and the limit of the human knowledge and behavior is not only disordered and messy, but also, the nature will be mercilessly punish human beings. That is to say, the starting point and destination of correct human intellectual activities should be the same and the only one, which is that human beings should take the initiative to live in harmony with nature and interact with each other. The knowledge system of Chinese metaphysics is such a knowledge system that unifies and homogenizes the starting point and destination of human knowledge and action in the harmony between human beings and nature. Laozi's "the same is called metaphysics" and "Taoism is the law of nature" refers to this meaning. It can be seen that, as early as in the era of Laozi, Chinese wisdom will be "Xuan" as a kind of harmony between man and nature, the same state of knowledge and behavior. u>/h

Before the Qing Dynasty, the words "xuan" and "yuan" had been commonly used, so "metaphysics" is actually also " Yuanxue". In Xu Shen's "Shuowen", "Xuan" has the three meanings of "deep, black and red, and return". The word "yuan" has the meanings of "the beginning, the first, and the wood". Yang Xiong said: "Xuan is, the hidden away from all kinds of people and not see the shape of the person also, the capital Tao nothingness and ascending to the rules, the spirit of the Ming set copy, through the same ancient and modern in order to open up the class, the wording of the yin and yang and the development of the gas. A judgment and a combination of heaven and earth are also ready. The day back to the line, just and soft to carry on. When the sun returns to its place, the end and the beginning are finalized. A life and a death, the life of Ying is carried out. Look up to see the image, look down to see the feelings, to know the life, the original see the end. The three instruments are the same, and the thickness is whittled away. Won is a kind of Accommodation, square is stingy. The hush is fluid, and the chanting is suspicious of the shape. Therefore, the whole sky is called Yu, and the splitting of the universe is called Zeus." ("Taixuan - Xuan攡") It can be seen that the Han Dynasty and the Han Dynasty before the metaphysics, in fact, is a Chinese wisdom of the universe, the sun, the moon and the stars and the agricultural seasons and their human life in the relationship between the three movement of the unity and the same cyclical law of change to analyze and summarize the study of the three, that is, the Tao of Heaven, the Tao of the Earth and the Tao of mankind, the three Tao of the unity of the system of knowledge.

Chinese metaphysics is accompanied by the gradual formation of China's agricultural society and the emergence of, because, agricultural society, especially water conservancy agricultural society, must require people to astronomy and geography, plant and animal growth, the division of labor calculations and its people's old age, sickness, death, and health and other knowledge of a deep understanding, slowly, the ancient Chinese wise man learned to use the unity of the dialectical thinking to understand the world and the human being themselves, and summarize from the interrelationship between body and mind. Physical and mental interrelationships, and summarized the yin and yang, five elements and hexagrams arranged in a simple and the same form of knowledge. The emergence of Yi marks the beginning of China's entry into the mathematical mode to express the unity of heaven and earth and man's unity and the same cyclical pattern of change in knowledge, which means that the early metaphysical knowledge has been formed. C

But the real systematization of metaphysics should be regarded as the Shu scholars Yan Junping and Yang Xiong, because Yan Junping in the history of China will be Lao Zi's debate on the nature of the universe and the "Yi" of the trigrams and lines of the mathematical thinking of the distillation and unity of the generalization of the history of mankind, so that first of all, in his "Taoist true classic of the reference to the" put forward in the subject of human knowledge and the object relationship between the problem, that is, "I", the "I", the "I" and "I". In his "Guidelines to the Tao Te Ching", he proposed the relationship between the subject and the object of human knowledge, splitting the "I" into two parts, the "physical I" and the "spiritual I", and argued that, since human beings are the products of heaven and earth, their spiritual I is governed by the "Tao". "He believed that since man is the product of heaven and earth, his spiritual self is governed by the Tao, and therefore man can know the Tao, and can recognize and control his own destiny, just as he said: "Morality is invisible, but the king of all heavens. The mind of the mindless exists. Heaven and earth do nothing, and all kinds of people to comply with it. The mind that is free from anxiety is also the one that is in motion. From this point of view: the heart of mindlessness, the heart of the Lord also; not use the use, use the mother also. How to make it clear, Zhuangzi said: the reason why I am me, not me. I am not the body of the body, the body of the reason why the self, to me to survive. And I so for me, to have God also. The reason why God stays with me is that the Tao makes it so." (The Treatise on the Directions of Virtue, Siku Quanshu. (Note: The Zhuangzi mentioned here refers to Yan Junping.) XeeC

Yan Junping and Yang Xiong's ideas both came from the Dujiangyan artesian water conservancy agricultural irrigation area, which was the most developed area in China at that time, and Yang Xiong received from his teacher, Yan Junping, the scholarly idea of placing the subject of human knowledge at the center of human intellectual behavior, so the theoretical model of Taixuan created by him, although it also discusses the relationship between heaven, earth, and human beings as does the I Ch'i, is completely different from the I Ch'i'i'i'i which puts the way of heaven The logic of thought that places Heaven above all things is completely different, or even the opposite, but instead, from the perspective of the existence of human life and the principle of survival of life, he constructed another model of the relationship between the movement of Heaven and Earth and human beings. In this way, "Taixuan" sees everything as a pattern of won-type cyclical movements and interactions, but human beings and human lives are the center of the universe, while he believes that what links the relationship between heaven and earth and human beings is qi, and he says, "The heavenly zu-ran shows that human beings are divine, and the earthly he-ran shows that human beings are bright. Tian he laid the position, God through the gas, there is a, there are two, there are three, the position of each of the different generations, back to the line of nine districts, the end of the beginning and even belonging to the top and bottom of the corner" ("Taixuan - Xuan 攡") S

Yang Xiong Yan Junping's metaphysics of the system of knowledge, which is rich in ideological resources, is a variety of ancient Chinese thought and cultural achievements of the collection of the great, at the same time, they have the "easy" and Confucianism, the heavenly respect At the same time, they challenged the ideological logic of Yi and Confucianism's Heavenly Respect and Humanity Respect, and established a brand-new theoretical model centering on the intellectual behavior of human beings and human hearts, freeing human thought. It can be said that through the creative work of Yan Junping and Yang Xiong, who carried on the work of the past and the future, "the unity of heaven and man" was completely transformed from an academic proposition into a systematic knowledge system of "the unity of heaven and earth and human beings," which made XuanXuanXue the fundamental study of China, and significantly influenced and changed the later Chinese studies. This has significantly influenced and changed the cultural structure of Chinese civilization. If it is said that the Chinese people have no knowledge of "Yi" in their daily life, similarly, the knowledge system of Chinese metaphysics pioneered by Yan Junping Yangxiong is also used by the Chinese people in their daily life. After the Eastern Han Dynasty, the emergence of Chinese Taoism, the Zen form of knowledge in Buddhism, the ethereal Chinese art of writing, qigong, martial arts and other forms of knowledge, have been profoundly influenced by the metaphysical role. F\ci

Ancient Chinese esotericism is divided into the so-called "Elephant Art School" and the "School of Righteousness", which emphasizes the interrelationships between heaven and earth and human beings and their intrinsic laws from the perspectives of physics, biology, and mathematics, while the School of Righteousness favors abstract philosophical reasoning, political ethics, and literature. While the Yili School emphasized on exploring the interrelationship between heaven and earth and human beings and their essential laws from the perspectives of abstract philosophy, political ethics, literature and art, therefore, although the knowledge of the Xuan scholars of the Elephantine School and the Yili School was intertwined and borrowed from each other, there was often a great difference between their knowledge methods and the final results of the academic work. However, both the Elephantine School and the School of Righteousness have two basic points of convergence, one is that these scholars use the same text of "metaphysical" knowledge, and the other is that they have their own life cultivation in them, that is, the scholars have to develop and explore the world of their own knowledge subject to self-knowledge, and then use their own knowledge of the subject's body and mind and "qi" to develop their knowledge. That is to say, the final expression of their knowledge is often very much related to this unique academic frame of reference, and is the result of the interaction between the two vivid worlds of the subject and the object of knowledge. The combination of rationality and sensibility, the human-centered dual discursive cognition of subject and object inside and outside, is a significant intellectual feature of Chinese metaphysics, and one that does not characterize any other learning in the world. kM_zK

"Metaphysics" is an important academic feature: the study of heaven and earth and human beings, astronomy and geography, mathematics, physics, agriculture and water conservancy, plant and animal growth, music, calendar, health and other knowledge as a means of research, to ultimately explore the peaceful development of the heaven and earth and human functioning of the laws of the inner ecosystem of a systematic knowledge. knowledge. The "metaphysics" in Chinese history is characterized by "fundamental" learning, its academic research resources come from all fields of human society, but it generally does not involve specific political, economic, ethical, scientific and technological issues, but rather focuses on researching the underlying and essential homogeneity of these knowledge. Rather, it focuses on studying the same operating law behind and essential to such knowledge, so the academic results of "metaphysics" are often not directly applicable to the world, but are the basis of all kinds of knowledge in ancient Chinese society. nO

If we compare the knowledge characteristics of ancient Chinese metaphysics with those of modern natural sciences and humanities and social sciences from the West, we can find that the ancient Chinese "metaphysics" is in fact the scientific knowledge system in the culture of China's indigenous civilization, only that it mixes the connotations of natural sciences and humanities and social sciences in the same way as natural sciences and humanities. It is only that it is a scientific knowledge system that mixes the connotations of natural sciences and humanities and social sciences together, ecological systematic, and has its own distinctive features in terms of the reference system of academic research and the method of knowledge expression. Finally, it should be reminded that from the moment when Yang Xiong and others established the main theoretical and practical building of metaphysics, there is a clear difference between metaphysics and prophecy and weft, folk religion, and folk magic, etc. Metaphysics and these forms of knowledge may be of the same origin in the ancient times, but later on they branched off and entered into their own operational channels and ecological development areas. This point should be fully noted by present-day people. However, metaphysics and Chinese health care, qigong, elephant arts, medicine, literature and art, folk science and technology, and their Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism have a much closer connection, and they grow together, just as the relationship between science and technology does. Or rather, metaphysics is the basic knowledge form of these studies, which, too, should be fully noticed by the present generation. 0^