Philosopher
Ye Shi
1150–1223
Song Confucian of the Yongjia school who, like Chen Liang, judged policies and practices by their public benefit and rejected a timeless, abstract Way.
Ye Shi was one of the most distinguished Confucians of the Yongjia school, named after the county where several of its leading thinkers lived and taught. The school grew out of the Cheng brothers’ teaching, but its later thinkers, impatient with speculative metaphysics and drawn to practical questions of government, ended up setting themselves against that tradition.
With Chen Liang, he was a contemporary and occasional interlocutor of Zhu Xi.
Key ideas
- Judged by public benefit
- Ye Shi measured public policies and moral practices by what they contributed to the general good (li 利), which has led some modern historians to call him a utilitarian.
- Consequences, not motives
- Whether a practice is right and desirable depends on its consequences, not, or not directly, on the motives and character of those who carry it out.
- No timeless Way
- He rejected any picture of the Way as something timeless and abstract, standing apart from actual affairs and situations.
- Tradition
- Chinese
- Region
- China
- Schools
- Confucianism
- Period
- Song–Ming
- Themes
- How to govern
Sources
- Justin Tiwald, Song-Ming Confucianism, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy