Ontological Optimism,Chaotic Cosmology and Progressive lnstability:Tan Sitong's Renxue and Zhang Taiyan's Response
In the eyes of Western scholars,Renxue is the earliest work in Chinese history to reinterpret modern Western philo-sophical and scientific frameworks in the light of classical Chinese texts,and in the eyes of Chinese scholars,it is a bold attempt to incorporate the neo-Confucian philosophical system of modern China into the globalism of modernity in order to be able to speak at the same latitude as the international discourse of the time.However,in Renxue,Tan Sitong,oriented by his optimistic ontology that evolution ultimately brings freedom,invokes the traditional solutions to finitude in Buddhism and Taoism to put forward a concept of absolute equality that transcends time,a notion that was refuted by Zhang Taiyan.In Zhang's view,evolu-tion does not ultimately transcend chaos;rather it originates in the temporal world and must be limited by law,i.e.,based on the equality and hierarchy of the law on the basis of which officials and the state attempt to rationalize contingency and chaos.The paper's compilation and comparison of the philosophical views formed from the different ontological perspectives of the two can clearly witness the attempts and debates of the scholars of that period to turn to the philosophical concepts of traditional Confu-cianism in modern China,which also has certain reference value and significance for the summarization of the philosophical con-cepts of traditional Confucianism in China.
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