Background
Xiong, Shill was born in 1885 in Huanggang, Hubei Province, China.
Xiong, Shill was born in 1885 in Huanggang, Hubei Province, China.
Studied Consciousness Only Buddhism with Ouyang Jian wu at the Institute of Buddhism, Nanjing.
Teacher of new Consciousness Only thought at University of Beijing. Fuxing Academy, Loshan. Teacher, National Zhejiang University.
Professor, University of Beijing.
Xiong was one of the most powerful and original Chinese metaphysical thinkers of this century. After early republican revolutionary activity, he turned to scholarship, studying Consciousness Only Buddhism with Ouyang Jianwu. His dissatisfaction with Consciousness Only doctrines led him to create his own system, expressed systematically in The New Theory of Consciousness Only (1932). His views drew on the Book of Changes and on the revival in China of Consciousness Only Buddhism and idealist neoConfucianism. He also showed the influence of Bergson and other Western philosophers. The central notion of Xiong's metaphysics is that of original substance: a perpetually evolving absolute, eternal reality, capable of instantaneous change in endless closing and opening, producing and reproducing. His original substance replaces the Consciousness Only school’s notion of consciousness as the most fundamental philosophical concept. Because there could be no original substance without movement and no movement without original substance, movement and original substance were identified. Evolving original substance is the only reality, but it is unknowable in itself. Xiong provides room for other entities, such as spirit, mind and matter, by seeing them as manifestations or functions of the underlying substance and by adopting the Confucian identification of substance and function. He saw spirit as more basic than matter, but considered them to be two aspects of a substantial whole. Spirit, as a manifestation of underlying reality, was the ground for both subjectivity and the objective world. Because Xiong did not allow individual identity to spirit, he thought that his system avoided idealism and materialism without embracing pantheism. We can provisionally see matter as resulting from the integration produced by the closing motion of substance, and mind as resulting from the self-determination produced by the opening motion, although both mind and matter lack the unqualified reality of original substance. Material force, as function, is seen as united with principle, as substance and function, thus underlining the unity of the material world and underlying substance. Individual minds are part of original mind, identified with the Confucian virtue of ren, and are capable of pure rational knowledge and love of goodness. The mind and the will refer to substance, while consciousness, the central notion of the Consciousness Only school, refers to function, thus meriting a less fundamental status in our philosophical thought. With great intellectual power, Xiong criticized Buddhist and idealist neo-Confucian thought, providing a new formulation of their themes and a new metaphysical basis for their doctrines. Aside from his ingenuity in adapting traditional views, Xiong displayed a broad vision and an admirable capacity for argument. Before Liberation, his work attracted a school of disciples.