Chén Tiānxiáng 陳天祥 (1230–1316)
A Yuan-period official-scholar; native of Níngjìn 寧晉 (Héběi); later relocated to Yǎnshī 偃師 (Hénán) when his elder brother Chén Yòu 陳祐 took office as governor of Hénán. Held court office in Khubilai Khan’s administration; biography in Yuánshǐ Rúlín zhuàn.
His Sìshū biànyí 四書辨疑 (KR1h0032) — 15 juàn, originally circulating without author-name — is identified as his work in Sū Tiānjué’s 蘇天爵 Ān Xī xíngzhuàng 安熙行狀, which records: “in early Yuán, a transmitter brought Zhūzǐ’s Sìshū jízhù to the North; Wáng Ruòxū 王若虛 (the Húnán Lǎorén) of the Jīn dynasty had been a notable polemicist; Chén of Zhào commune (Zhàojùn 趙郡 / Níngjìn) particularly esteemed his arguments and amplified them — the result is the Sìshū biànyí.”
Chén Tiānxiáng’s relocation to Yǎnshī (after his brother’s posting) explains his attribution by Zhū Yízūn’s Jīngyì kǎo as “Yǎnshī Chénshì”. The connection to Wáng Ruòxū’s Húnánlǎorén jí 滹南老人集 Lúnyǔ biànhuò / Mèngzǐ biànhuò — both critical of Zhū Xī’s Sìshū readings — gives Chén Tiānxiáng’s position: a North-China late-Jīn / early-Yuán Confucian engaging the new Cheng-Zhu Sìshū orthodoxy with critical, sometimes polemical, scholarship.
Sū Tiānjué reports that the disciple Ān Xī 安熙 wrote in defence of Zhū Xī against Chén Tiānxiáng’s book; that Chén Tiānxiáng later regretted his arguments and burned his manuscript. The Sìkù editors are sceptical of this, noting that the book has in fact survived complete; they suggest Sū Tiānjué may have wished to magnify his master’s [Ān Xī’s] rebuttal. The 4-piece structure of the surviving Sìshū biànyí — 15 Dàxué entries, 173 Lúnyǔ entries, 174 Mèngzǐ entries, 13 Zhōngyōng entries — gives the work a particularly LùnMèng-heavy weight, consistent with where Wáng Ruòxū’s anti-orthodox arguments had concentrated.
(CBDB id 108131; dates 1230–1316 derived from Sū Tiānjué’s record and the Yuánshǐ notice.)