Jia Yi’s 賈誼 Research on the Theory of the Sages

Abstract

Jia Yi was a Confucian scholar active during the early Han dynasty, whose philosophy appears in compressed form in his investigation of the concept of shengren. He exhibits the qualities of Confucianism in his analysis of the fall of the Qin dynasty while also clearly showing the political ideals that he was pursuing in his essay on the sages. First, Jia Yi considers people able to learn the Dao and make appropriate use of it to be sages, and believes that the sages’ outstanding abilities were rooted in their study of the Dao. In his discussion of the sages Jia Yi inherits the view of previous Confucian scholars, while also deepening it from an original perspective. In addition, he argues that the sages are able to achieve minbenzhuyi and keep the people are the centre of their attention, not contradicting the people’s sentiment.