Continuing Chung-ying Cheng’s Pioneering Scholarship on Dai Zhen (1724–1777)

Chung-ying Cheng was one of the first Anglophone interpreters of Dai Zhen’s thought who pointed to Dai’s philosophical subversion of the Cheng-Zhu li -based metaphysical scheme by privileging the existential manifestations of qing 情 (sentiments and emotion) and yu 欲 (desires) in the ontological realm of qi 氣 (psycho-physical force), such that his philosophy may be characterized as an architectonic vitalist worldview that features the dynamic creativity of humanity’s rationality and intellection in relation to its natural and biological constitutions of blood and breath ( xueqi xinzhi 血氣心知 ), whose workings find instantiations and expressions in the socio-cultural domain of “human relations and daily practice” ( renlun riyong 人倫日用 ). My paper, inspired by Cheng’s pioneer study of Dai’s philosophy, ponders whether the Qing thinker’s rejection of the priority of li in ethical construal and his appeal to qing and qi may be read as an agent-driven moral sentimentalist ethics – what I call qing- ism – in which the test and criterion of right action is its leaning toward enhancing the welfare and care of oneself and fellow human beings. It may be argued that Dai conceives of emotions and desires as the basic premise of ren 仁 (humaneness) as well as the point of reference for moral terms (good-and-bad/right-and-wrong), adjudicated by affective and conative attitudes.