The topic of this paper is “Vitality” and “Substance and Function”--A comparative study of Ng Yu-Kwan’s “Vitality” and Hsiung Shih-li's “Substance and Function”. The research found that Ng Yu-Kwan’s “Vitality” and Hsiung Shih-li’s “Substance and Function” indeed share similarities and connection in basic thinking structure, as well as obvious or implicit thinking differences. Theoretical dialogue exists between the two philosophies; furthermore, Ng Yu-Kwan’s “Vitality” is directly related to Hsiung Shih-li’s “no difference of substance and function”. In conclusion, this paper holds that the references and comparison of Hsiung’s and Ng’s philosophies can not only make the two philosophies perfect each other, but also help to accurately evaluate the contribution of the two philosophies, especially for “Vitality”, as it is still less studied so far.
The paper consists of five chapters. The first chapter is “Introduction”, including “research background” and “literature review”. The second chapter mainly analyzes Ng Yu-Kwan’s “Vitality” in five sections: the first section, Ng Yu-Kwan’s problem consciousness of creating “Vitality”; the second section, Ng Yu-Kwan’s physical conception of “Vitality”, the third section, Ng Yu-Kwan’s detailed description of “Vitality Theory of the Universe”, the fourth section, Ng Yu-Kwan’s transformation of “emptiness” in Buddhism and “thing-in-itself” in Western philosophy, the fifth section, Ng Yu-Kwan's conception of “Act Field(Akt Feld)”. The third chapter analyzes Hsiung Shih-li’s “Substance and Function” in four sections: the first section, Hsiung Shih-li’s entity conception of “universe noumenon”, the second section, Hsiung Shih-li's cosmology construction of “Substance and Function”, the third section, Hsiung Shih-li’s conception of the subject's mind and the real world on the basis of his “Substance and Function”, the fourth section, how Hsiung Shih-li explained the relationship of “substance and function” via “Substance and Function”. The fourth chapter compares the overall construction of Hsiung and Ng’s philosophy on the basis of the previous two chapters in five sections: the first section compares the physical construction of the “ultimate principle” between the two philosophies, the second section compared the cosmological construction of the two philosophies; the third section compares the two layers of hearts and the action meaning of “thing-in-itself” in the two philosophies, the fourth section compares the two philosophies’ concepts of the real world, the fifth section compares the two philosophies’ views on “Substance and Function”. The fifth chapter is “conclusion”, summing up firstly the similarities between “Vitality” and “Substance and Function”, and then further explains thinking differences in their similarities. The paper holds on the basis of research that Ng Yu-Kwan indeed explored deeply Hsiung Shih-li’s “Substance and Function”, which exerts influence on him in terms of thinking. This is the similarity between “Vitality” and “Substance and Function”, Yet Ng Yu-Kwan was born late, and his academic experience is also involved in oriental and western religions, as well as philosophical theories. In other word, he drew on many aspects discussion, which together with discussions on Hsiung Shih-li’s philosophy, will generally present the fundamental difference between the two said philosophies. Finally, this paper puts forward five academic achievements of Ng Yu-Kwan’s “Vitality”, and four points of discussion on Ng Yu-Kwan’s existing theoretical achievements, as well as the expectation that his theoretical construction can improve further in the future.