Dai Kui 戴逵

Dai Kui 戴逵 (c. 331-396), courtesy name Andao 安道, was a writer, philosopher and painter of the Eastern Jin period 東晉 (317-420). He hailed from Zhi 銍 in the commandery of Qiaojun 譙郡 (today's Suxian 宿縣, Anhui). His most famous paintings are Nandufu tu 南都賦圖, Zhulin qixian tu 竹林七賢圖 and Gaoshi tu 高士圖.

Although summoned many times by the imperial court and local governments, he consistently refused and never held any official position throughout his life. He once engaged in a debate on the issue of karma and retribution with the renowned Buddhist monk Huiyuan 慧遠 (334-416). Dai Kui felt disillusioned by the Buddhist concept of karma and retribution as well as the Confucian idea that accumulated virtue brought blessings, while accumulated evil brought misfortune (ji shan oyu qing, ji bushan you yang 積善有慶，積不善有殃), and wrote a treatise titled Shiyilun 釋疑論 "Dispelling doubts". This work argued that the doctrine of karma and retribution was unfounded.

Dai Kui proposed the theory of "natural destiny" ( 自然分命) to refute the idea that one's wisdom or foolishness, virtue or vice, longevity or early death, high status or lowly station were the result of karmic retribution. He argued that the concept of cause and effect promoted by Buddhist theology was, in reality, merely a tool for moral instruction and social governance. He held that longevity and premature death, wealth and poverty all had their predetermined allotments, and talk of accumulating virtue or committing evil was nothing more than a means of encouraging ethical behavior. However, in his assertion that one's destiny was fixed from the very beginning of the cosmos, Dai proposed that all aspects of human life were predetermined and unchangeable.

Dai Kui inherited Wang Chong's 王充 (27-97 CE) theory of primordial energy (yuanqi 元氣) and naturalism, using a materialistic framework to explain phenomena such as life and death, fortune and status. These were like fixed laws of nature, and could not be altered. In his "Response to Scholar Zhou's objections to 'On dispelling doubts" (Da Zhou Chushi nan Shiyilun 答周處士難釋疑論), Dai writes that the presence or absence of fortune and misfortune, good and evil, may occasionally appear to correspond, but this was due merely to circumstance and coincidence, and not a true evidence of judgment by some netherworld authority. However, in interpreting social phenomena strictly through the laws of nature, Dai Kui fell into a form of determinism, ascribing social and material circumstances to pre-determined fate.

In his "Rhapsody on the dying flame" (Liuhuo fu 流火賦), Dai Kui criticises the notion of the immortality of the soul (shen bu mie lun 神不滅論), comparing souls to a flame. His metaphor asks if fire depends on fuel to continue burning, and human life relies on vital energy (qi) to endure, if the fuel or the qi is exhausted, how can the flame or life continue without end.

Dai's Shiyulun and Da Zhou Chushi nan Shiyilun are preserved in the collection Guang hongmingji 廣弘明集. Other works of his are Fang da wei fei dao lun 放達為非道論 and Zhulin qixian lun 竹林七賢論 (lost).