Philosopher
Chen Liang
1143–1194
Also known as Ch’en Liang
Southern Song Confucian of the Yongjia school, who judged policies and practices by their contribution to public welfare, and argued against treating the Way as a timeless abstraction.
Chen Liang was one of the most distinguished Confucians of the Yongjia school, a once-influential, now neglected group of Song dynasty thinkers named after the county where several of them lived and taught. The school grew out of the Cheng brothers’ teaching, but its leading figures turned against that tradition, losing patience with speculative metaphysics and caring more for the practical work of government.
Chen and his fellow Yongjia thinker Ye Shi were contemporaries of Zhu Xi, and sometimes his interlocutors.
Key ideas
- Judged by public benefit
- Policies and moral practices should be judged by how much they benefit society as a whole (li 利), which has led some modern historians to call Chen a “utilitarian” thinker.
- Consequences, not motives
- Whether a practice is right and desirable depends on what it brings about, and only indirectly, if at all, on the motives and character of those who do it.
- The Way in concrete affairs
- Against accounts of the Way (Dao) as a timeless, abstract entity, Chen held that it cannot be separated from concrete affairs and circumstances.
- Tradition
- Chinese
- Region
- China
- Period
- Song–Ming
- Themes
- How to govern
Terms on this page
- dao
- The Way (道). In the Laozi it is the nameless, formless source of all things, which can only be called dark or profound; Confucians spoke of the gentleman’s way, and Neo-Confucians identified the Dao with principle.
Sources
- Justin Tiwald, Song-Ming Confucianism, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy