Abstract

The human nature and fate are the nuclear concepts of Confucian philosophy. Wang An-hsih contributed a great deal of concern in this regard. He not only discussed them theoretically but also believed in them in reality. He was a knowledgeable and pragmatic philosopher who, at first, insisted in that the hsing has no good and evil but ch'ing does, and then emphasized that hsing and ch'ing are consistent and both have good and evil, and at last was convinced that hsing is good. The constant changes of his belief evidence his concerns on this subject. In regard to the question of ming or Fate, Wang An-hsih thought that the everything has its destination in the real world, including the richness or poverty, good or bad luck of each individual, the order or chaos of a nation, the rise and fall of certain things. In other words, everything in this world has its fate. This is truly a creative viewpoint. Although Wang An-shih admitted that everything has its fate, he did not fall into fatalism and became pessimistic, depraved and abandoned himself. On the contrary, he acted in reason and brought up the theory of "behaving oneself like a gentleman and waiting for one's destiny" and "a gentleman must use his tao to correct the fate of the world." Furthermore, he practiced his theory and stuck to his principles to the degree that we can say he is a real gentleman. As for the Confucian philosophers, he admired Confucius the most, but the admiration was based on psychological identification rather than on real knowledge. He considered Mencius his true friend of the past and held a critic attitude toward Hsun-tzu because of his criticism of Mencius and his evil-nature declaration. In addition to Mencius, Yang Hsiung is another philosopher whom he appreciated and idenitfied with. As for Han Yu and li Ao, because of their fundamental differences on the viewpoint of human nature, They were criticized by Wang An-shih as well.

KeyWords: Wang An-shih, human nature, fate, human nature and fate.