Moral Entity Relieved Against “Nature” and “God”: Rereading Dong Zhongshu's Philosophy of Heaven

In order to solve the political and ecomomic problems in Western Han Dynasty, Dong Zhongshu borrowed the thought of from all the schools during Pre-qin period, absorbed the mysterious theory of God's will during Yin and Zhou Dynasties, synthesized the natural knowledge acquired by the people who lived in Qin and Han Dynasties to form the unique philosophy of heaven. Heaven, which not only governs Dong Zhongshu's theory of and human but also runs through his thoughts, possesses extremely important position in his philosophical system. In his philosophical theory, in order to solve the problem of how to combine the Confucian thought of ruling by morality in Pre-qin period with centralized system that Confucianists came up against in the development of Western Han Dynasty, heaven is given many connotations, among which, the most important is that Dong Zhongshu gave heaven Confucian ethic morality and held that benevolence was the standard to judge what was right and what was wrong., that the monarch was required to model their words and deeds and adopt the policy of benevolence according to the natural law.