On the Decisive Beginning of Chinese Philosophy Starting from Deletion and Correction of Six Classics

Abstract: As for the spiritual breakthrough of the nations in the axis time, the key of a decisive significance lies not only on "philosophy at beginning", but also on "classics as source". Although the philosophy at beginning of various nations is quite different as their relations with their classics, only when the work of the philosophers as the beginners could penetrate into the classics or, rather, could become the classics, can it be a decisive beginning of philosophy. If we say that Laozi and Confucius together laid the foundation of philosophy at beginning for China, then, the more important is that Confucius entered the realm of the classics as the source by taking his creation of philosophy at beginning, resulting in fulfilling the "philosophy as it is", i. e., the so-called "deletion and correction of the Six Classics", Since the Chinese philosophy at beginning is based on dao-de("道-德"), i. e., taking dao-de as the highest principles of everything between the heaven and the earth, and move away the ghost and deity decisively on this criteria, therefore, the "philosophy as it is" developed through deletion and correction of the Six Classics also means "dao-de as it is". The real significance of deletion and correction of the Six Classics is that it makes the old Six Classics to reconstruct along the direction of the philosophy at beginning, thus to make them as the classics of source in the whole Chinese cultural tradition.