Abstract

Ji Kang was a noted thinker, man of letters, and musician of the period of the Three Kingdoms and of the state of Cao-Wei. His thought possessed very salient characteristics of the spirit of those times. Since the decline of the Han dynasty, owing to the turmoil of the society and internal developments within Chinese thought, the classical scholarship [jing xue] of the earlier and latter Han dynasties had gradually but steadily begun to lose its role and ability to maintain orthodox dominance over thought. In the period after the Eastern Han, some keen-thinking people started afresh and began to explore once again and reevaluate the real value and meaning of humanity and that of the world as a whole. This kind of exploration led to an intellectual return to the world itself , or, a return to "nature." One might say that the exaltation of "nature" was the spirit of the age for the Wei-Jin period—its zeitgeist, if you will. One could also go on to say that this spirit reached its peak of development in the ideas of Ruan Ji and Ji Kang. Ruan Ji and Ji Kang both considered nature [ziran] to be the supreme existence and the highest law and principle. They believed that: "Heaven and Earth [tiandi] are born of nature [ziran], then all things [wanwu] are born of Heaven and Earth."