Classics: From Studies to History

The classics studies is the major body of Confucianism, and Confucianism is closely-related to classics studies. But the relationship is rather complicated, it can be divided into periods of “pre-classics time”, “classics time” and “post-classics time”, with various situation in each time. After the disintegration of the classics system, the Confucian discourse is basically off from classics studies in modern academics, and has become the forms, such as philosophical ideas, etc., while the historical data have scattered in the fields of historical studies and document studies, or been put into a narrow faculty of the historical studies of classics. Such a manner has been prolonged for a hundred years, and gradually became a “dead” learning. In fact, a broad meaning of the classic study includes hermeneutics and interpretation expounding of the meaning and truth, with the form of xiaoxue (“小学”), i.e., the study of script, pronunciation and explanation, and asking the metaphysical reason and logos as well. As a large system to include the two sides, a new classics studies is to be put into a wider perspective of the Chinese cultural history, and to be liberated from the sheer data by elucidating meaning and significance started from the hermeneutics of classical works.