Cultural Interpretation of TANG Zhen’s Theory concerning Yue

The TANG Zhen’s work A Book of Latency contains many cultural words and “yue” is one of them. For a long time, there have been a lot of interpretations of TANG’s theory of “yue” which was proposed in his late years in the academic circle. These have directly exerted influence on people’s understanding and judgment of the scholar and his thoughts. From the semantic analysis of the work, we can find that TANG’s “yue” is not the movement to self-comfort and self-indulgence, but the individual comfort which surmounts the realistic predicament and the scholars’ feelings, which include the cultural connotations as his broad-minded and calm life attitude, understanding of life above all things, and willingness to suffer and bowing to his fate. Such theory of “yue ” is not contradicted with his tradition of experiencing life and critic spirit, but an issue on another level which shows his different life pursuit.