There is a widely popular saying in today's academic circles: Mr. Wang Yangming is one of the only two and a half saints in Chinese history, and he is a saint. The initiator of this thesis was Mr. Liang Qichao, a famous scholar in the late Qing Dynasty and early Ming Dynasty. Today we will take a look at whether Liang Qichao's thesis can be established.
In the Confucian classic "Twenty-four Years of Zuo Chuan Xianggong", Lu Guo's uncle Sun Bao (Uncle Mu) has a sentence: "Leopards hear it, there is merit in Taishang, followed by meritorious service, followed by liyan, although it has not been abolished for a long time, this is called three immortals." The "three immortals" in this sentence refer to "Lide, meritorious service, and speech."
In his evaluation of the ancient sages, Liang Qichao used the "three immortals" as the criterion for judging the saints. He proposed that there were only two and a half saints in Chinese history: one was Confucius, the other was Wang Yangming, and half was Zeng Guofan.
Liang Qichao
In the face of Liang Qichao's judgment, after a little thought, you can immediately find that there is a problem with it.
The Zuo Zhuan began in the year of Lu Yin (722 BC) and ended in the twenty-seventh year of the Duke of Lu 'ai (468 BC), based on the Spring and Autumn Period, and explained the outline of the Spring and Autumn Period by describing the specific historical facts of the Spring and Autumn Period.
The key to judging whether a Chinese sage is appropriate on the basis of a sentence from the Zuo Chuan may not be the uncle who "smelled" the sentence (the uncle sun leopard may only be paraphrasing others), but whether the person who originally said it (the person being retold) reached the status of a saint and whether he used the "three immortals" as the criterion for judging saints. If he himself did not attain the status of a saint, and at the same time he did not make it clear that the "three immortals" were the criteria for saints. Then, Liang Qichao's standard as a saint obviously lacks a basis.
The so-called "to do is to be holy, to be described is to be virtuous", Confucius claimed to be "to say but not to do" has the meaning of humility. It may be assumed that Confucius meets Liang Qichao's so-called "three immortals" criteria and is a saint. It is also advisable to first take the so-called "three immortals" as the criterion for judging saints. The question, then, is, before Confucius, were there any saints who met the criteria of "three immortals"?
"Zhongyong" Yun: "Zhongni Zushu Yao Shun, Charter Wenwu, when the law of heaven, attacked the water and soil." "Are Yao, Shun, King Wen, and King Wu mentioned in "Zhongyong" considered saints? If these people are not saints and are inferior to Confucius, then what is the meaning of Confucius's "Zushu Yao Shun" and "Charter Wenwu"? So much so that Confucius's own status as a saint would be shaken. How did Liang Qichao know that Yao, Shun, King Wen, and King Wu did not meet the so-called "three immortals" standard? On what basis?
Liang Qichao's words are completely groundless speculations, which cannot be established or credible.
As a scholar, how can Liang Qichao be willful and arrogant? In particular, it should be pointed out that the Ming Dynasty scholar Wang Yangming, who was crowned by Liang Qichao as a "sage", was judged by the theorist Zhang Luxiang in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties as one of the three major reasons for the demise of the Ming Dynasty (party strife, Liukou and Yangming xinxue).
Why is there only two half-saints in a great country that has been up and down for five thousand years?
One word to rejuvenate the country, one word to mourn the country! A person, an influential person, who says a baseless sentence, can actually affect many people, and many people regard this sentence as a fact, as truth. It was as if he did not have the ability to distinguish between right and wrong. Liang Qichao's statement that there were only two and a half saints in Chinese history has widely affected the ideological concepts and choices of ordinary people today, so that the dregs of Yangming Mind science have risen, seriously interfering with the cognition of learners and seriously polluting the minds of learners.
There are many well-known experts, scholars, and professors who should be the most speculative group in China, but they are blinded, silent, drifting with the tide without self-knowledge, and people are cloudy, without independent insight, and the so-called "Yangming Mind Science" with fragmented content and chiseled ideas has been pushed to the vast number of ordinary people! Pathetic!