王船山對宋儒朱子主張‘告子認氣爲性’之反省—─孟告之辯的詮釋

Abstract

The debate between Gaozi and Mencius on humanity has been an important issue in the intellectual history of Chinese Philosophy. Zhu Xi understands that Mencius correctly treated nature as li, whereas Gaozi incorrectly regarded qi as nature because he did not understand nature properly. On the other hand, the thought of Wang Chuan-shan belongs to the school of thought based on the theory of qi. Wang also understands that Mencius’s idea is correct, though he offers different understanding of the debate from the perspective of the theory of qi and questions Zhu Xi’s understanding. On the one hand, Wang thinks that Zhu Xi incorrectly understands that Gaozi regarded qi as nature, for he thinks that proper understanding of qi leads to proper understanding of nature. However, Wang also points out that Gaozi merely understood the function of qi, but he did not properly understand the underlying substance of qi. On the other hand, for Wang, Zhu Xi misunderstands that Gaozi understood nature metaphorically in terms of concrete objects in the world, so that he did not understand nature at all. However, Mencius in fact also understood nature metaphorically in terms of concrete objects in the actual world. For this reason, the question raised in this paper is on what basis Wang can think that Mencius’s metaphor is correct, whereas Gaozi’s metaphor is wrong. Finally, Wang suggests that Gaozi regarded affection as nature, and therefore he did not understand nature and could not suggest the highest goodness of nature. This paper suggests that Wang Chuan-shan and Zhu Xi define qi differently.