The Noble Personality and the Immortal Academics: In Commemoration of the 400th Anniversary of Gu Yanwu’s Birthday   

Chen Zuwu

Abstract:As a giant figure generated in the wild social changes between the Ming and Qing Dynasties, Gu Yanwu is a great master linking between past and future in the history of Chinese academics. About Confucius’ words of “extensively studying all learning” and “he who in his conduct of himself maintains a sense of shame”, Gu cited extensively and made a realistic interpretation with deep zeitgeist. Regarding shame as the first, and merging personality with scholarship, that was not only the lifelong pursuit of Gu, but also set an eternal example for Chinese scholars at that time and later. In the historical process from Neo-Confucianism during the Song and Yuan Dynasties to philology during the reign of Emperor Qianlong and Jiaqing, Gu also made an incomparable contribution. He proposed that “the Neo-Confucianism was exactly the studies of Confucian classics,” bringing the Neo-Confucianism into the field of the studies of Confucian classics. He was a pioneer in the history of the studies of Confucian classics, establishing the basis of the revival in the studies of Confucian classics from the academic source, and then teasing the sequence of evolution, as well as grasping similarities and differences, and separation and reunion. He advocated that “starting to read The Nine Classics from textual criticism, and doing textual criticism from learning phonology,” demonstrating the methodology of studying the Confucian classics through exegetics. Moreover, his consistent high sense of social responsibility, which was concluded as “rise and fall of a nation resting with every one of its citizens” by later scholars, is of eternal value.