Dai Zhen

Life and Intellectual Context

Dai Zhen (戴震, courtesy name Dongyuan 東原) was born in 1724 in Xiuning, in the Huizhou region of Anhui, an area noted for commercial vitality and strong scholarly traditions. Orphaned at a young age and raised in modest circumstances, he relied heavily on local patronage and his own precocious talent to gain access to classical texts and scholarly circles.

Though he never attained the highest level of the imperial examinations, Dai’s reputation as a scholar of extraordinary philological skill brought him to the attention of leading Qing officials. He was eventually summoned to Beijing, where he assisted in major state-sponsored scholarly projects, most notably the compilation of the vast imperial encyclopedia Siku quanshu (Complete Library of the Four Treasuries). These positions brought him into contact with the core of the kaozheng (evidential research) movement, which emphasized empirical, text-critical, and historical methods in the study of the classics.

Dai’s intellectual life unfolded against the backdrop of debates between Song–Ming Neo-Confucianism, grounded in moral metaphysics and introspective self-cultivation, and the emergent Qing evidential scholarship, which sought to recover earlier, “Han learning” interpretations of the classics through rigorous textual study. Dai became one of the movement’s most philosophically ambitious figures, aiming not only to correct textual errors but also to reshape moral theory itself. He died in Beijing in 1777, reportedly overworked and in fragile health, leaving behind a body of philological and philosophical writings that would be influential well into the modern period.

Evidential Scholarship and Method

Dai Zhen is widely regarded as a paradigmatic kaozheng thinker. The evidential research movement stressed meticulous attention to philology, etymology, phonology, and historical context in order to establish the authentic wording and meaning of classical texts. Dai argued that any sound moral or political philosophy must rest on accurate understanding of the transmitted classics; speculative theorizing detached from textual and historical evidence, he contended, was inherently unreliable.

Among his many scholarly contributions were studies in phonology, textual criticism of ancient ritual and canonical works, and research into historical institutions. He sought to distinguish genuinely ancient usages from later accretions, insisting that words in the classics be read in light of the concrete social and ritual practices of their time. This approach aligned him with the Han learning school, which favored early commentaries and historical reconstruction over the metaphysical frameworks developed by Song and Ming thinkers.

Dai’s commitment to evidential methods, however, was not purely antiquarian. He explicitly linked philology to ethics, maintaining that only by clarifying the original meanings of key terms such as li (pattern, principle), qing (feelings), and yu (desire) could Confucians avoid moral errors. In his view, careless readings had fostered doctrines that encouraged self-denial to the point of harming human life and social relationships. Thus, philological precision served a normative function: it was a tool for correcting what he saw as misguided moral teachings and restoring a humane orientation in Confucian ethics.

Moral Psychology and Critique of Neo-Confucianism

Dai Zhen’s most significant philosophical legacy lies in his reinterpretation of moral psychology and his sharp critique of dominant forms of Neo-Confucianism, particularly those influenced by Zhu Xi and the Cheng brothers. He articulated these positions most clearly in works such as Mengzi ziyi shuzheng (Textual Evidences on the Meaning of Terms in the Mencius) and in his commentary on Zhang Zai’s Correcting Ignorance.

Song–Ming Neo-Confucians had placed great emphasis on li as a cosmic and moral principle and often contrasted it with qi (material force), which encompassed concrete human emotions and desires. Some influential strands of this tradition stressed the need to restrain or purify desire in order to accord with lofty principle. Dai argued that this dualistic structure risked demonizing ordinary human feelings and undercutting the Confucian commitment to ren (humaneness).

Dai’s counterproposal re-evaluated desire (yu) and feeling (qing). He held that:

• Human desires are natural responses to needs and circumstances, not inherently selfish or morally corrupt.
• Moral error arises not from the mere presence of desire, but from misguided or excessive desires that conflict with the broader patterns of proper relationships and social harmony.
• Properly understood, li is not a disembodied metaphysical entity standing above desires; it is the orderly pattern discerned within the network of human relations, needs, and feelings.

On this view, an adequate ethical theory must begin with careful attention to concrete human situations and to the ways in which people actually experience joy, anger, sorrow, and satisfaction. Dai interpreted classical Confucian virtues as guiding and coordinating these feelings rather than suppressing them. Thus, for him, ren entails sympathetic responsiveness grounded in shared human needs and emotions, while yi (rightness) involves the judicious adjustment of one’s desires in light of the broader social context.

Dai’s reconstruction was also epistemological. He rejected the idea that moral knowledge arises simply from inward introspection of an abstract moral mind. Instead, he claimed that moral understanding depends on investigating things (gewu) in a broad sense: studying human affairs, historical precedent, and the actual consequences of actions, all informed by philologically accurate readings of the classics. His approach blended empirical attention to facts with a normative concern for human flourishing, arguing that knowledge and feeling are mutually implicated in ethical judgment.

Later interpreters have offered contrasting assessments of Dai Zhen. Some modern scholars see him as a forerunner of more naturalistic or human-centered approaches in Chinese philosophy, noting his emphasis on concrete needs and empirical evidence. Others caution against viewing him as a simple rationalist or proto-modern thinker, stressing his continuing commitment to classical virtues and ritual order. Within Chinese intellectual history, he is frequently credited with softening or correcting what critics considered the overly ascetic tendencies of Neo-Confucian self-cultivation, while remaining firmly within the Confucian tradition.

Dai’s synthesis of evidential scholarship and moral reflection influenced subsequent Qing thinkers and continues to attract contemporary interest. His work exemplifies an attempt to reconcile textual and historical rigor with a nuanced account of human motivation, positioning him as a key figure in the evolution of Confucian thought from the early modern period into present-day philosophical debates.