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Title:: “Uninhibited” and “Insouciant”: The Image of Deng HuoquConstructed by Huang Zongxi in his Mingru Xue an

Abstract:: By comparing Mingru Xuean明儒学案(Intellectual Biographies of Ming Confucians )with other biographies of Deng Huoqu like those included in Nanxun Lu南询录(The Record of a Quest in the South)and Lizhong Sanyi Zhuan里中三异传(Biographies of Three Eccentrics in Lizhong), we found that Huang Zongxi created a wild image of Deng Huoqu by making some modifications to the records of his deeds and thoughts. For example, he chose the documents which relates that Deng Huoqu broke up with his teacher Zhao Dazhou because of their differences in thought, but ignored the view offered in Baisuzhai Leiji白苏斋类集(Classified Anthology of Baisuzhai)which records that they broke up their relationship for personal rather than academic reasons. At the same time, several words were found to have been deleted deliberately from Nanxun Lu by Huang Zongxi. Putting Deng Huoqu, who was not valued by his contemporaries, into Taizhou School, Huang Zongxi built an “uninhibited” and “insouciant” image for Deng. This suggests that in Huang s eyes Deng Huoqu was not a successor of Wang Yangming, so the scholars from Yangming School did not need to account for the mistakes made by Deng Huoqu and the Taizhou School.