晚清老學與儒、佛會通

Abstract

This article investigates the cultural meaning of mutual convergence focusing on the “communication” (huitong 會通) between Yu Yue’s Laozi pingyi and Yu Chang’s Laozi jiaoshu that understand Laozi within the context of the traditional study of ancient documents, and Song Xiangfeng’s Laozi zhangyi and Yang Wenhui’s Laozi Daodejing fayin that emphasize the interpretation of philosophical meaning in pursuit of communication between Confucianism and Buddhism. Yu Yue analyzes phrases in each chapter of Laozi and corrects their meanings through the methods of collation and exegesis. Yu Yue inherits “Wanpai’s study of ancient documents” developed by Dai Zhen, Duan Yucai, Wang Niansun, and Wang Yinzhi; Yu has a strong tendency to pursue rationality rather than old material. Yu Chang pursues the original meaning of Laozi by extensively adopting inductive logic with a reliance on the methods of philology, phonology, and exegesis. Yu Chang’s research on the study of Laozi can be defined as a more advanced form of the Qianjia study of ancient documents; he extends research subjects of the Qianjia school to all philosophers. In the Song Xiangfeng’s Laozi zhangyi, he establishes Huangdi, the creator of culture, as the standard and fuses Confucius’s and Laozi’s thoughts mediated by Guizang. His method that merges Laozi’s ideas with Confucianism, both of which have the same origin and orientation in Song’s view, can be seen as one of the cultural hermeneutics. Yang Wenhui interprets Laozi from a Buddhist viewpoint and fuses Laozi’s notion of “being and nonbeing” and “life and death” with Buddhist metaphysics. Yang Wenhui’s interpretation of Laozi is noteworthy in that it discovers new aspects of Laozi’s metaphysical thinking through Buddhist tradition.