This paper discusses how to treat the moral tradition of the Chinese nation correctly.

Morality, as its name implies, is a social ideology, a norm and criterion of people's life and behavior, and has five functions: cognition, regulation, education, evaluation and balance. Morality is determined by the economic foundation of a certain society and serves a certain social and economic foundation. Different times and different classes have different moral concepts. Morality often represents the positive value orientation of society and plays a role in judging whether behavior is justified or not. However, its moral concept will change in different times and different classes. The moral concept of human beings is gradually formed under the influence of acquired certain production relations and public opinion. As far as human nature is concerned, morality is the principle of being responsible for things and not hurting others. And Chinese traditional virtues are exactly what our Chinese sons and daughters inherit and carry forward.

The sense of social responsibility and mission of "self-denial", the principle of interpersonal harmony of benevolence and mutual benefit, the vigorous spirit of self-improvement and the broad-minded principle of "respecting morality and carrying things", self-cultivation and self-discipline, Confucianism not only summed up the complete system of moral cultivation, but also affirmed its extreme importance. At the same time, in order to guide people's moral cultivation, many concrete and feasible moral cultivation methods are put forward, such as "determination", "learning", "self-denial", "self-examination" and "cautious independence". They attach great importance to the cultivation of "status" and think that "determination" is the beginning and foundation of being a man. "The third class can win the handsome, but the ordinary man can't win the ambition" (The Analects of Confucius, Zi Han), and the core of ambition is "aiming at the Tao", that is, "learning the Tao and dying in the evening", and "a scholar's ambition is in the Tao, and those who are ashamed of his poor food and clothing will not discuss it" (The Analects of Confucius, Li Ren). "Self-denial" means that in order to achieve a lofty moral realm, one must restrain one's own selfish desires and subjective prejudices and make one's psychological feelings and behaviors conform to moral requirements. "Learning" is the basic means of moral cultivation. In ancient Confucian classics, "learning" is mainly the study and understanding of moral theory and moral norms. The opening words of The Analects of Confucius are Confucius' understanding of moral learning. "It is not pleasant to study from time to time." Confucius summarized moral learning into five stages: learning, asking, thinking, distinguishing and doing, namely, learning, asking, thinking, distinguishing and persevering. We should not only learn classics, but also learn advanced moral models, such as "A threesome must have a teacher" and "Seeing the sage Si Qi, but also introspection without seeing the sage" (The Analects of Confucius). "Introspection" means constantly reflecting on yourself, noticing your mistakes and faults, and immediately finding and correcting them. Zeng Shen said: "I saved three times a day and was unfaithful to others." Don't believe in making friends? Can't you learn? "(ibid.). Wang Yangming, a scholar in Ming Dynasty, summed up the method of cultivating goodness by "inspecting and treating", which enriched and developed Zeng Shen's "introspection". He advocates that everyone should always carefully check their own selfish desires such as good things and goods in their spare time, and severely criticize and eliminate them according to the moral theory of sages. " If you go to find a thief, don't give him a way out, don't give him convenience, be sure to sweep it away "; Another example is the cat catching mice. If you stare at it with one eye, you must destroy it completely. Only when you are grand can you be swift (Biography, Part II). "Being cautious and independent" is an important method of moral cultivation, and it is also a lofty realm that moral cultivation should reach. "Book of Rites" points out: "It is probably unheard of for a gentleman to be cautious and not block his actions. If you don't see it, don't show it, so the gentleman is cautious. "This means that a noble person should stick to his moral beliefs, be cautious about his words and deeds, and never do anything immoral even when he is alone and unsupervised. Because a person's moral level can be better reflected in a place where no one knows or pays attention, we must consciously and actively safeguard our moral beliefs. The method and realm of "cautious independence" is the embodiment of one's words and deeds, and it is an excellent moral quality.