Zhang Zai, Zhengmeng

El Zhengmeng es la obra más importante e influyente de Zhang Zai y representa la plena madurez de su pensamiento. Aun cuando el pasaje más famoso y comentado del Zhengmeng sea la primera parte del capítulo 17 (el “Ximing”), tradicionalmente se considera que el primer capítulo es el esqueleto de la obra. Este artículo presenta la primera traducción al español de este capítulo: el “Taihe pian”.

An Extension of Chung-ying Cheng’s Onto-Generative Hermeneutics

Chung-ying Cheng’s onto-generative hermeneutical studies of the foundational philosophical texts of China and the Western philosophical traditions expand the horizon of comparative interpretative analyses. The origin of onto-generative hermeneutics is multifaceted, ranging from the Yijing 《易經》(the Book of Changes) and the Neo-Confucian text of Zhang Zai, Ximing《西銘》 (the Western Inscription) to the phenomenology of Husserl and Merleau-Ponty, and to the hermeneutics of Gadamer. Building on Cheng’s examination of the relation between phenomenology, hermeneutics, and the classical texts of Chinese philosophy, the present discussion begins with an exploration of the origin and the continuation of phenomenology and hermeneutics in a comparative frame of reference of Chinese and Greek texts.

Zhu Xi

Zhu Xi (1130–1200) was the most influential Chinese Neo-Confucian (Daoxue) scholar of imperial China (220 bce–1908 ce). He is ranked the foremost philosopher of China since Mencius and Zhuangzi of Antiquity. His influence spread throughout East Asia, particularly to Korea, Japan, and Vietnam, and it persists to this day. Zhu was a master interpreter of the Confucian classics and the teachings of Confucius and Mencius and their earlier followers. He was such exuberant interpreter of the Confucian classics that he ventured not just to edit and rearrange many of them, but in the case of the Daxue (Great Learning) he interpolated a long paragraph that he himself wrote into the text. He also absorbed the philosophical concepts of the 11th-century Northern Song masters, such as Zhou Dunyi, Zhang Zai, Cheng Hao, and Cheng Yi, and integrated them into a comprehensive system by serious analytic and synthetic thinking. Zhu Xi’s system influenced his interpretive work, while the classics and thinkers he studied afforded him issues, topics, and examples for reflection and developing his system. Zhu had a probing, reflective mind, an analytic and synthetic acumen, and his philosophical inquiries led in every direction: ontology, cosmology, philosophical anthropology, natural philosophy, ethics, politics, epistemology, education, the transmission or succession of the Confucian Way, and so forth, making him the most well-rounded of traditional Chinese philosophers. In his philosophic thinking, Zhu Xi is distinguished for his arguing for determinate, well-defined views based on his system, categories, methodology, and place in the Confucian succession. He was at once a classical interpreter who sought deeper meanings as well as textual mastery and a philosophical thinker who discussed and debated a range of issues with his contemporaries. Many of Zhu’s writings and dialogues have been translated into English and other Western languages. And the body of research on Zhu’s scholarship, classical studies, and philosophical thought East and West is growing apace. The scholarship has evolved from general and philosophical to contextualized and historical. Issues have evolved from his comparability with Plato, Aristotle, and Whitehead to specific characteristics of his thought as transcendental versus immanental, conceptual, or formal versus process. Moreover, his ethical thought is compared with parallel Western approaches and brought to bear on a range of ethical issues.

La crítica de la metafísica budista en el sistema filosófico de Zhang Zai

Una de las ideas principales que caracteriza el movimiento de renovación confuciana del siglo XI es la necesidad de eliminar la influencia que las doctrinas heterodoxas ejercen sobre los intelectuales. La mayoría de los filósofos confucianos tratan de volver al pensamiento original de Confucio rechazando directamente las teorías daoístas y sobre todo budistas. En este contexto, el filósofo Song Zhang Zai representa uno de los ejemplos más significativos. En este ensayo mostraré como el rechazo de la doctrina budista no sólo es un aspecto importante en el pensamiento de Zhang Zai, sino que representa el fundamento de sus teorías metafísicas y éticas. One of the main ideas of the Neo-confucian movement of the eleventh-century is the necessity to remove the heterodox doctrines influence on Chinese intellectuals. The majority of Confucian philosophers strongly believe on the necessity to restore Confucius original thought to go against Daoist and Buddhist theories. The Song philosopher Zhang Zai represents one of the main examples of this attempt. In this paper I will show that Zhang Zai’s rejection of Buddhism not only occupies an important position in his philosophy, but it can be also understood as the core of his metaphysical and ethical system.

Zhang Zai (1020–77)

Zhang Zai was a seminal neo-Confucian cosmologist and ethical thinker. Like Zhou Dunyi and Shao Yong, he was inspired by the Yijing (Book of Changes) and its commentaries; unlike them, he worked out a conception based solely on the concept of qi (cosmic vapour). He espoused an ethical vision, global in spirit, that greatly enhanced the moral significance of Confucianism.

Zhu Xi (1130–1200)

The Chinese neo-Confucian philosopher Zhu Xi was a consummate scholar and classicist as well as a superb critical and synthetic thinker. He fused the ideas of the seminal eleventh-century thinkers Shao Yong, Zhou Tunyi, Zhang Zai, Cheng Hao and Cheng Yi into a grand philosophical synthesis. In addition, by effectively editing and annotating the essential classical Confucian texts – the Analects of Confucius – the Mengzi of Mencius, the Daxue (Great Learning) and the Zhongyong (Doctrine of the Mean) – as the Four Books, Zhu worked out a lasting renewal of the Confucian project.

ZHANG ZAI'S (1020–1077) CRITIQUE OF THE SENSES

Often termed aswenjian zhizhi聞見之知 (knowing from hearing and seeing), sensory knowing was a prominent topic in Song (960–1279) writings. Zhang Zai 張載 (1020–1077) developed a systematic critique of sense perception in the broad context of learning. While endorsing its utility, Zhang considered this way of knowing to be partial, superficial, and prone to error. He located the source of sensory errors inside the human body, arguing that the sense organs’ vulnerability to pathological changes constituted the cause for perceptual fallibility. This line of argument had solid corroborating evidence in contemporaneous medical knowledge, a field of study Zhang was interested in pursuing. In sum, Zhang's critique demonstrated the importance of the senses and the different ways in which middle-period Chinese literati conceptualized the problem of perception in comparison with Western epistemological traditions.