Dai Zhen's naturalistic ethics

Abstract

This thesis interprets the key concepts of Dai Zhen’s ethical philosophy, such as ziran自然, biran必然, li理, quan權, yu欲, qing情, and zhi知. It argues that Dai Zhen’s normative naturalism is grounded in the value of health, which is a balanced state of one’s bodily qi氣. This state is empirically discoverable. Dai Zhen believes it is self-so (ziran) to satisfy one’s qing and yu and act according to li, because humans have inherited motivational attitudes to achieve both of these. Failure to actualize either of these attitudes will cause mental and physical distress. Dai Zhen believes that it is a complete self-fulfillment (ziran) and a must-so (biran) that priority is given to the motivational attitude to act according to li when there is a conflict between them, because, based on my hypothesis, one can achieve a healthy state only when both attitudes are fulfilled, and acting according to li, for him, does not prohibit but only restrain the satisfaction of qing and yu. Health also plays a role in Dai Zhen’s account of li. This thesis defends the interpretation that li, for him, are norms which, if followed by the people (min民), can regularly promote their health in a given normal situation. As whether the people are healthy is an empirical issue, li, despite being normative, are empirically discoverable. Based on this interpretation, the thesis argues that Dai Zhen’s theory of zhi知 differs from that of Zhu Xi and Wang Yangming in holding that common norms, which they believe can be discovered by inference based on one’s innate ethical knowledge, have to be discovered empirically. The thesis suggests that Dai Zhen addresses the knowledge of rulers (jun君). In contrast, Zhu Xi and Wang Yangming address that of educated elites (shi士) and the people (min民) respectively. Because li have to be discovered empirically depending on the beneficence of the norms, Dai Zhen thinks that a ruler cannot confirm that a norm is li via his own ethical practice. Therefore, Dai Zhen, unlike Zhu Xi and Wang Yangming, separates knowing and practice as two independent tasks. Finally, this thesis explains how Dai Zhen’s conservative tendency to respect the Zhou institutions is incoherent with his own ethical theory, and how later scholars Zhang Xuecheng and Jiao Xun reacted to this conservatism by becoming more contextualist. Their contextualism, nonetheless, was developed from Dai Zhen’s account of li. Dai Zhen’s ethical philosophy was the starting point of this trend of contextualist thought.