Abstract

Huang Zongxi's Mingyi daifang lu was written against the background of the decline and fall of the Ming Dynasty. The book is meant as a criticism of the political and social developments which led to these events, and contains Confucian proposals for a political and social system designed to prevent such consequences in the future. The implied future order, however, is not entirely new but rather draws on certain ideas of early Confucianism like the universal model function of an idealized antiquity and its paradigmatic rulers whose restoration Huang Zongxi envisages. At the same time, his propositions in Mingyi daifang lu are strongly influenced by the philosophical concepts of Neo-Confucianism that had emerged since the Song period, such as the theory of cosmic cycles, and follow the idea of a cyclical development of time. His objective for the future is the realization of a state and society in conformity with cosmic processes, which he believed had once existed.