Abstract:

Mencius, a great masterpiece, occupies an important position in the Confucian classics. As a master of Neo-Confucianism, the path of Chu Hsi's scholarship was also inevitably affected by this work. As one of the most representative works in the interpretation of Mencius, Collected Commentaries on the Mencius reflects the Neo-Confucianism system constructed by Chu Hsi in the process of interpreting Confucian classics.

In the past many years of philosophical research, a large number of scholars have carried out extensive and in-depth research on Chu Hsi himself and his Neo-Confucianism from the perspectives of philosophy, history, philology, exegesis, and so on. The research achievements are also impressive and brilliant. Nevertheless, research based on Chu Hsi's Commentaries on the Four Books has not attracted widespread attention from scholars until recent years, while research focusing on Collected Commentaries on the Mencius is relatively scarce.

Based on this, I intend to study Chu Hsi's Neo-Confucianism and its historical influence reflected in Collected Commentaries on the Mencius. My study will take this classic text as the breakthrough point, investigate three core propositions: Theory of Li and Qi, Theory of Mind and Human Nature, and Theory of Spiritual Cultivation, aiming to systematically and integrally grasp the Neo-Confucianism ideological system constructed by Chu Hsi through classical interpretation.