Paradigm Shift through Different Interpretations of Classics
in the Transitional Period of Late Ming and Early Ch’ing

Shu-hsien Liu
Academia Sinica

In my study of Huang Tsung-hsi, I maintained that Huang was the last in the line of Sung-Ming Neo-Confucian philosophy. He intended to promote his teacher Liu Tsung-chou’s philosophy without any success, but inadvertently helped to promote the new trend of Classical Studies in the early Ch’ing period. Through different interpretations of Classics a paradigm shift, understood in a loose sense, can be fond within the Confucian tradition, which put an end to Sung-Ming Neo-Confucian philosophy. The new trend of thought put emphasis on feelings, emotions, and desires, cut off the linkage with transcendence symbolized by Heaven as emphasized by Neo-Confucian philosophy. Instead it taught an immanent monistic philosophy that deconstructed the idea of li (principle). Ironically, this new trend of thought found its first expressions in Ch’en Ch’üeh, another disciple of Liu Tsung-chou. But he was little known in his own time, the prominent figure in the trend was of course Tai Chen, whose interpretation of Mencius marked the advent of the new paradigm. From then on, philosophy was replaced by philology and became almost invisible, until it is revived by Contemporary Neo-Confucian philosophers in the twentieth century. This article intends to study the implications of the paradigm shift from an hermeneutical perspective.