Lecture 06 Human Nature and Ethics: Cheng Hao (程顥 1032-1085) and Cheng Yi (程頤 1033-1107)

  • You are not what you are: the dualism of human nature (xing 性)
    • The perfect original point
    • the contradiction to reality
    • Japanese scholar's coinage
  • The metaphor of the spring
    • The history of the development of human nature
    • The belief
    • "Human nature is qiI and qi is human nature."
  • "Understanding humanity" (shiren 識仁) and "Stabilizing human nature" (dingxing 定性)
    • The vital phenomenon of the multitude things (wanwu shengyi 萬物生意)
    • To feel within the same body with the other
    • How not to be disturbed by external objects
      • The answer to moving away from the original status
  • "Human nature is Principle" （xing ji li 性即理)
    • The external and internal aspects of achieving ethical personality
    • "Cultivating [oneself] by innate attentiveness and advancing one's learning by acualizing the understanding"
    • "Straighten the internal and use righteousness to measure the external [affairs]"
  • Investigating things to actualizing the understanding (gewu zhizhi 格物致知)
    • Xunzi: the capacity to know and the principles within things to be known
    • The mind
    • The ambiguity between objects and affairs: the concept of wu (物 things）
    • The revolutionary implication and the conservative return