Abstract: Regarding Dai Zhen's "View of Principle and Desire", traditional research has carried out a rich and detailedanalysis from three dimensions of academic criticism and political criticism, moral philosophy and political philosophy, and emotionalism and intellectualism, but there are still some problems that need to be further explored. Through the dimension of self-cultivation and governingpeople contained in Dai Zhen's thought, which re-examines Dai Zhen's view of principle and desire and makes a new interpretation of the difficult problems revealed by traditional research. First of all, Dai Zhen not only transforms Cheng Zhu's subjective and transcendent "principle" into the "principle" of objectivity and publicity, but also transforms Cheng Zhu's individuality and internality into the "desire" of sociality and objectivity. Secondly, Dai Zhen, in terms of self-cultivation, criticizes the moral standard of "preserving the principle and eliminating the desire", and puts forward "YongDe" as all people's moral standards for daily life. Thirdly, Dai Zhen does not take the moral standard as the distinction between the normal and the scholars, and criticizes the social governance hazard brought about by "one-man opinion". Then hestartsthe distinction standard with knowledge as the normal and the scholars, showing modern consciousness which is different from traditional consciousness.