Abstract:

The author believes that there were three newly developed trends in Confucian "pragmatic philosophy" (Jingshi Zhexue) in the late Ming dynasty: First, a number of Confucian scholars became more and more interested in the natural sciences.Second, a few Confucian scholars, such as Huang Zongxi, were against the view of seeing the relationship between ruler and minister as something similar to the relationship between father and son, or seeing the relationship between ruler and minister as something similar to the relationship between lord and servant.They insisted on the separation of the ideal political system from the traditional Confucian ethics of consanguinity and the ethical norms that governed the lord-servant relationship.Third, some Confucian scholars, such as Dai Zhen, believed that morality should not go over its boundary to take the place of law.The idea of just law should not be confused with the ethical norms of respecting elders.These three newly developed trends in Confucianism indicate that there was an inner motivation for the new philosophical problematics in modern Chinese philosophy.

Key words: Late Ming Confucianism, pragmatic philosophy [Jingshi Zhexue], Modern Chinese philosophy, Modernity