Yan yuan

Born April 27, 1635 in the village of Lutsun, Zhili Province (modern Hebei Province).

Until 1673, he bore the name Zhu Banyan , since his father, Yan Chang, becoming the adopted son of a petty official, Zhu Jiuzo, adopted the surname Zhu, passing it to his son. Zhu Jiuzo brought up the young Yuan, since in 1638, Chang, the father of Yuan, was forcibly taken to Manchuria , from where he had not returned to his homeland.

In 1653 he went to prison instead of hiding from the prosecution of Zhu Jiuzo.

In 1656 he began to study medicine , and after two years he began to practice.

Having written in 1658 the treatise "Judgments on the path of the sovereign", later renamed the "Composition on the maintenance of order" (published in 1705 ), continues to develop philosophical thought and write new works.

In 1679, Li Gong, the main follower and interpreter of Yan Yuan philosophy, as well as the author of his biography, became his student.

The last work of his life, Yan Yuan was written in 1682 , it was the treatise “Hailing the Lost”, published in 1705 under the title “Composition on the maintenance of man.”

In 1696, he headed the South Zhang Academy in Feixiang County, but a few months later the Academy building was destroyed by floods . Therefore, Yan Yuan returned to Boe's native county, where he died in the village of Beiyantsun on September 30, 1704. ^[2]

Yan Yuan, along with other representatives of his generation (for example, Wang Fuji , Huang Zongxi ); He saw the reason for the catastrophe that had befallen China in contemplation, a commitment to barren book scholarship and isolation from the life of the Confucians of the Ming era ( 1368 - 1644 ) - the followers of Zhu Xi and Wang Yangming . Their views, according to Yan Yuan, developed under the influence of Buddhism and Taoism and therefore cannot be considered true Confucianism, the essence of which is a call to action to implement the "right path of the Celestial Empire." Criticizing Zhu Xi for dualism, which was expressed in the theory of the latter about the principle (s) and material principle ( qi ), Yan Yuan argued that both of these principles form a single continuum and therefore it cannot be assumed that all evil and imperfection come from "qi", while "whether" remains an unsullied model of perfection. The negative attitude towards the Sunian neoconfucianism was combined with the demand for radical political changes (equitable distribution of land, management reform, etc.).

The teachings of Yan Yuan acted as the opposite of the Sun's neoconfucianism, urging us to turn from metaphysical theorizing to practical knowledge. As such, it has become the support of Changzhou Intellectual School (Eng.) , Etc. influenced the intellectual atmosphere of China 18-19 centuries.

• Fung Yu-lan, A history of Chinese philosophy, v. 2, Princeton, 1953
• Creel HG. Chinese thought from Confucius to Mao Tse-tung, L., 1962.
• THE LIFE AND THOUGHT OF YEN HSI-CHAI (1635-1704).