ABSTRACT
Janies Legge's self-conscious Nonconformist Protestant commitments, thought out through Biblical hermeneutics and the principles of Scottish Commonsense philosophy, pervades his interpretive interaction with these authoritative Chinese texts and their numerous indigenous commentators. Zhan Ruoshui's approach is significant not only as a mediating position that made Wang Yangming's radical claims more palatable to a larger group of Ruists, but also because he taught for one period of time in the Guangdong region not far from what 300 years later would become Hong Kong. Legge's own proclivities drove him to appreciate the more rationalized and grammatical-historical approach to words, passages, and whole texts. In the case of the deconstruction-reconstruction of the Great Learning, Legge found much fuel for thought not only in the work of Mao Qiling, but also in a contemporary juren scholar from Guangdong province, Luo Zhongfan.
