Dai Zhen

Dai Zhen (19 January 1724 to 1 July 1777), also romanized Tai Chen, was a Chinese philosopher of the Qing dynasty from Xiuning in Anhui. A versatile scholar, he contributed to mathematics, geography, phonology and philosophy, and he was recruited as one of the editors of the official collection of books known as the Siku Quanshu. He took part in the Han Learning school of Evidential Learning, which criticized the Song Learning school of Neo-Confucianism. He argued that truth is found by investigating the external world rather than by introspective self-examination, and he opposed the Neo-Confucian drive to eliminate human desire, holding that desire is a good and integral part of human experience and that removing it from philosophy makes it harder to understand emotions and to feel empathy with others. His best known works include the Evidential Commentary on the Meaning of the Words of Mencius and Tracing the Origin of Goodness.