Abstract:
In a postDaiZhen age, Duan Yucai deepened and refined Dai Zhen’s theory of linguistic philosophy by refining Dai’s general philosophic understanding of “attaining the meaning of an expression by exploring those of words and attaining the Tao by exploring the meanings of expressions” into a classiccontrolling theory of linguistic philosophy of “attaining the meaning of a word by examining its pronunciation and attaining the Tao by examining the meanings of words”. He contributed more accurate and more detailed humanistic reference works to properly interpreting the classics by exploiting the exegetical rules of classics and summarizing linguistic rules in the Han Dynasty. It was by systematically investigating Spring and Autumn Annals and Zuo Qiuming’s History of the State of Lu and thoroughly discussing the imperial propriety for succeeding the sovereignty that he emphatically expressed his theory of political ethics, representing his academic understanding of “exploring the law of things in order to attain the Tao”.
