Lu Xiang-Shan on Human Good and Evil by the Self of Two Minds in One

Author:Shih-Chen Chen

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In  this  paper  I  discuss  Xiangshan’s  unity  of  two  minds  in  order  to explore its ethical implications and the roots of its philosophical history. The two minds mean Dao mind and human mind, and the so-called one mind is the  unity  of  the  two.  And  this  unity  in  my  paper  is  regarded  as the one-mind’s rise or fall by the interpretation of Tang Junyi(唐君毅), and as a concept of self to combine two minds in according to Xiangshan’s text, the unity is a self who makes a decision for or against his original mind, thus it is two beginnings of the same mind. In a word, the mind rises when the self’s decision conforms with his original mind, and the same mind falls when his decision violates it. In according  to  the  concept  of  self  the  possibility  of human’s  moral  norm  and  responsibility  can  be  explained.  The  distinction between  the two  minds is established by  a  transcendental  analysis of  their respective  conceptual  content,  and  the  point  is  to  reveal  the  character  of original  mind.  But  the  concept  of  original  mind  doesn’t  demonstrate the whole but only a part of moral consciousness, because it doesn’t imply the possibility of evil and thus fails to explain the concept of evildoer and the possible responsibility for his evil. The concept of the self indicates the two beginnings of the human consciousness and as such constitute the whole of moral consciousness: the original mind is mine, and I am also the evildoer, thus the self is nothing but the ultimate subject for the possibility of good and evil. The above analysis is based on the Mencius text quoted by Xiangshan. That is, Xiangshan’s two minds in one, in both its ethical implications and philosophical history, is dependent on his interpretation of Mencius text.

Keywords: decision、human self、responsibility、two beginnings of one mind、unity of two minds