Two Kinds of Ch'i Philosophy, Two Kinds of Confucianism

Title

Two Kinds of Ch'i Philosophy, Two Kinds of Confucianism

Author

Rur-Bin Yang

Page

1-39

DOI

Abstract

It is an unsolved problem that whether there's an independent philosophy of Ch'i in the system of Lixue. This article tries to divide the Ch'i philosophy into two modes—one is pre-created (transcendental, 先天), and the other is post-created (empirical, 後天). Both of them disapproved Zhu Xi's dichotomic worldview of Li and Ch'i and the "void" and "non-being" worldviews of Buddhism and Taoism; but they had dissimilar philosophic bases. The concept of Ch'i in the pre-created mode was equal to the "function" of "the theory of substance and function" (e.g. Lo Ch'inshun, Chang Tsai); and these scholars advocated returning to the luminous realm of "Dong Jing Yi Ru" in order to obtain the dynamic energy from the source of Primordial Creation and to renew the individual and the world. They orientated the pre-created Ch'i either from the viewpoint of the doctrine of Mind (e.g. Liu Tsungchou) or from the aspect of onto-cosmology (e.g. Chang Tsai). The one of the postcreated mode can be defined as the narrow or standard Ch'i theory, which belonged to the usage of naturalism and objected to transcendence, therefore, it stressed the speciality and the earthly sympathy of Ch'i. By the unique quality of Ch'i spreading in everybody, everyone should develop his or her unique personality. By the sympathetic quality of Ch'i, everyone should cultivate the feeling of unity with others. The cultivation of the pre-created Ch'i theory still belonged to the mode of "the recovery of the Nature" of the tradition of Lixue; however, the cultivation of the post-created one had gone beyond the limit of Lixue. The former mode is vertical-regressive, and the later one is horizontal-progressive.

Keyword

Ch'i, spiritual exercise, pre-created, post-created, recovery of the Nature, creation

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