Author ｜
Yuxiao Feng
Abstract ｜
Youlan Feng (1895-1990) divided the idea of “heaven” in Chinese classical philosophy into five meanings, among which the distinction between “material heaven” and “natural heaven” has been regarded as a duplication by some scholars. In fact, Feng’s background of distinction is based on classical and modern meanings of these terms. The “material heaven” refers to the tangible “heaven” in Chinese classical cosmology, whilst the “natural heaven” refers to the natural world which is independent of human beings and has its own laws of motion. The scholars did not carefully consider the principles of Feng’s distinction, but directly regarded Feng’s distinction of “material” and “natural” in the sense of modern science and thus misunderstood his original meaning. This article is a theoretical effort contributing to clarify the transformation of the two concepts of “material” and “natural” under the change of cosmology. In this way, the reason why Youlan Feng made this distinction can be revealed.
keywords ｜
Youlan Feng, matter, nature, natural heaven, material heaven