Further Research on Liang Qichao's Theory of"Confucius before Laozi"
Liang Qichao's"Confucius before Laozi"was the trigger of the debate on Laozi during the Republic of China.Liang Qichao's discussions on various philosophers underwent three changes:during the late Qing Dynasty,his argument was"Confucius,Laozi,Mozi";in the early Republic of China period,it became"Laozi,Confucius,Mozi";and after his lectures at Peking University,it reverted to"Confucius,Laozi,Mozi".This fully reveals that Liang Qichao's theory of"Confucius before Laozi"during the May Fourth pe-riod had a certain continuity with his academic thoughts during the late Qing Dynasty.Hu Shi's"challenge"was merely the superficial reason for Liang to propose this theory,while the underlying motive was to af-firm Confucius as the symbol of Chinese civilization.Furthermore,Liang Qichao's theory of"Confucius be-fore Laozi"did not have a necessary academic connection with Saitō Setsudō.In terms of viewpoint,this theory directly originated from Kang Youwei;in terms of reasoning,the evidence for this theory mainly came from Cui Shu's Record of Telling the Authentic from the Fake(Kaoxin lu)and Wang Zhong's Writ-ing the Origin of Learnings(Shu xue).
万方数据
