Hu Xu on Human: Examining Hu’s Theorization of Yuan in Zhou-Yi

• Main Authors: Shu-Yuan Yang, 楊舒淵
• Other Authors: Yih-Jing Lin
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2013
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/44905484885261905891

碩士 === 國立臺灣大學 === 哲學研究所 === 101 === In Hu Xu’s philosophy of Zhou-Yi, yuan (元) refers to the transcendant source of everything and gives all creatures in the universe their properties, functions and positions; yuan is the core idea of his substance-function theory as well. In my master thesis I shall investigate Hu Xu’s philosophical anthropology through his interpretation of yuan, try to elucidate Hu Xu’s own theory in details, and indicate that his theory can shed lights on the debate about knowledge, human nature and value realization of life. To achieve these tasks, I mainly focus on Hu Xu’s representative work: Zhou-Yi-Han-Shu (周易函書). According to Hu Xu, our knowledge comes from three different sources: Sensibility, rationality and visual understanding. By the empirical approach, he developed three related claims. First, we can know the ability and limit of human beings through examining how sensibility, rationality and visual understanding functions and their effects. Second, when these sources of knowledge work, their processes and effects could be used to justify the metaphysical beliefs about the transcendence. Third, based on the above claims, we can offer a clear and practical guideline for human’s living activities. The work of sensibility and rationality is conditioned on all kinds of intrinsic and extrinsic variables, which is the reason that the product of transcendence could not completely be recognized and even more might be misunderstood. However, this indicates that the transcendence itself is unlimited and cannot be conditioned by anything. As for the visual understanding, it occurs only if people confront themselves and everything sincerely and selflessly; accordingly, by visual understanding we can have an insight into the transcendence. Theoretically, the agents under the same conditions will have the same motives and acts as well as the transcendence on the same level. Though the visual understanding is personal and not shared, with the help of the legendary Hetu and Luoshu, we can communicate our visual understanding and lead to some kinds of consensus, by which the problem of dogmatism can be partly avoided. About the gifts of human beings, as Hu Xu put it, some of them are limited, but others are beyond the limit. Considerating all possibilities of human beings, he concluded that people could fulfill the highest value of life by the willing of giving and the effort of keeping the vitalities of all creatures.