Confucius' Hermeneutic Approach to Zhouyi and the Change of His Orientation by the Silk Manuscript of Yi Zhuan

Through interpreting the silk manuscript of Yi Zhuan (Commentaries on Zhouyi), this paper elaborates on Confucius' hermeneutics based on Yi (the Book of Change), holding that in his earlier years, Confucius regarded Zhouyi as a book of divination, whereas in his later years when he was fond of Yi he found that Zhouyi conceives moral thought and admitted that Zhouyi was more a moral book than a book of divination. To change the quality of the text of Zhouyi in order to meet his own interpretation, Confucius established a hermeneutic principle that different persons hold different interpretations for the same text, and set forth a hermeneutic method on Yi that “virtue is prior to divination”. Departing from this point, owing to the change of orientation on Yi from divination to virtue, he finally attained to an interpretative goal that moral conducts will destine to fortune and benevolence righteousness to auspiciousness. At last, the author points out that Confucius's interpretation on Zhouyi had had some taste of Western hermeneutics except that Confucius did not abandon traditional Chinese exegetical, image-numerical and historical approach yet as his philosophical hermeneutic approach. By and large, Confucius and his followers' hermeneutics is a cyclic hermeneutics.