3. How should contemporary college students treat traditional Confucianism?

During the Spring and Autumn and Warring States Periods, Confucianism, founded by Confucius, was known as the "revealed science". After the Han Dynasty, Confucianism gained the legitimacy of "national consciousness". In the long historical development, Confucianism has had a great and far-reaching influence on the formation of the national character and national spirit of Chinese society. It can be said that Confucianism constitutes the most important part of Chinese culture. Nowadays, people's thoughts and behaviors are still y influenced by Confucianism. The fact that it has been able to exist for such a long time and is still the backbone of the Chinese nation shows that Confucianism has its value of existence. Because, any kind of thing that does not have the value of existence will gradually die out and be replaced by other things that are more vital. Nowadays, China is vigorously building Confucius Institutes in the world, which is more proof of the vitality of Confucianism and the value it contains.... If we college students want to strive for the goal of building socialism with Chinese characteristics and revitalizing China, we must understand China's history and reality, and we must organize and excavate China's traditional thought and culture. Therefore, we need to have an objective understanding and a general grasp of the basic spirit of Confucianism and its modern value, which is an important component of traditional Chinese culture. There are many positive aspects of Confucianism that we should understand: (1) Confucianism attaches importance to education and advocates that "there should be education for all", that is, there should not be any distinction between the noble and the lowly, the wise and the foolish, and that there should be equal opportunities for the recipients of education. This idea broke the hierarchical boundaries of education, expanded the target group of education, and extended education to the general public, which was undoubtedly of great progressive significance at that time. It was undoubtedly of great progressive significance at that time, and is now recognized and implemented by all. Confucianism also created "teaching according to the material" and other teaching methods, pay attention to personality differences in teaching, good at inspiring teaching. This has an important place in the history of education in China. In addition to purifying people's souls with benevolence, righteousness and propriety and coordinating people's social behaviors, the important purpose of Confucian education was to cultivate "gentlemen" and "gentlemen" with benevolence and righteousness, so as to serve the society of that time. The idea of education and the goal of training were in harmony with the social needs of the time, which reflected the social value of education. This is also very much in line with the aims of education today. (b) Confucianism attaches great importance to being a man, suggesting that a man should be upright and upright, that a man should emphasize "benevolence and virtue", and that a man should emphasize the all-round development of cultivation. With regard to the shaping of a gentleman's personality, Confucianism has put forward specific requirements: firstly, one should possess a wide range of talents; secondly, one should attach importance to self-cultivation and make more contributions to society during one's lifetime; thirdly, one should be rigorous in all respects and should always be mindful of the need to abstain from personal desires; fourthly, one should emphasize righteousness and avoid profit, pursue moral righteousness, be consistent in word and deed, and be consistent in one's appearance and in one's deeds; and fifthly, in social intercourse with others, one should be "circumspect but not comparable" and "harmonious but different". This was undoubtedly of great significance at that time. Even for contemporary people, it is also of great significance. (c) Confucianism also has something to offer in terms of ideas about learning. For example, it advocates that one should love and enjoy learning in pursuit of learning; one should have a down-to-earth spirit in learning, silently memorize what one has learned, and study hard without being satisfied; one should be dedicated to learning without being tired of the world, and dare to advance in the knowledge of the difficulties; one should be modest in learning, and not be ashamed of asking questions; and one should be willing to combine learning with thinking and be bold in practicing, and strive for excellence in learning. This is especially meaningful to us as university students. (d) Confucianism advocates that the country should be governed by "propriety" and that "governance should be based on virtue". It attaches importance not only to selecting outstanding talents, enriching the country and educating the people, but also to the role of the rule of law in the governance of the country. These ideas, which need not be neglected, are worthy of our reference. In addition, Confucianism was precocious and ruled powerfully throughout most of the period of the Chinese nation and played a great role in stabilizing the society. Of course, there are positive and negative aspects. There are many negative ideas in Confucianism that already existed, and there are also many that arose from deliberate distortion in the course of spreading. We should have a general understanding of the negative ideas: (1) Confucianism has developed from the initial idea of "if a minister is not loyal, he should die; if he speaks improperly, he should also die" to the later idea of "if the ruler wants the minister to die, the minister has to die". The emphasis on the subordination of the group to the individual has resulted in foolish loyalty and filial piety among the people, preventing the development of the human spirit, and ultimately making them ignorant and insensitive. (b) Confucianism emphasizes the solidification and absolutization of ethical relations, and puts forward the ideas of "Three Principles and Five Principles" and "patriarchal dictatorship", oppressing personal freedom and abusing the spirit of human freedom, restricting the way of thinking and the way of life of the whole nation, and ultimately impeding the advancement of the Chinese nation. (c) Confucianism used the concept of "paternalism" to suppress personal freedom and abuse the spirit of freedom. (c) Confucianism restrains the majority of women with the ideology of "Do not look, do not listen, do not speak, do not move", but they themselves are in violation of this ideology, and they have been doing all kinds of bad things without any sense of shame in their hearts. (d) Confucianism paralyzes the people with the idea of "hoping for a bright ruler", making them submit to the brutal rule and do not know how to resist. (e) Confucianism did not attach importance to the teaching of agricultural knowledge and the study of scientific knowledge. It only had a strong political agenda and belittled other classes of people, resulting in backwardness of the society and failure to keep up with the technological upgrading. (f) Confucianism did not attach importance to logical reasoning and emphasized past experience, resulting in the formation of "empirical rationality", which made it impossible for logical reasoning and theories that profoundly explained the laws of things to germinate, and society gradually fell behind, and ultimately caught up with other countries, and conservatives were beaten up. Although Confucianism has its negative aspects, on the whole, its positive influence on the Chinese people far outweighs its negative effects. While we know the positive and negative aspects of Confucianism, we should also be aware of how to treat them in order to better utilize them for our benefit of society. On the question of the attitude towards ancient Chinese traditional culture, there have been two opposing ideological tendencies since modern times: one is the nationalist school, which believes that everything is good in Chinese traditional culture, and even affirms the Twenty-four Filial Prayers uncritically; and the other is the Westernization school, which attributes all the roots of China's backwardness to its cultural traditions, and advocates abandoning China's traditional culture in favor of total Westernization. Both of these views are wrong. Our scientific attitude and approach to traditional culture should be to use the past for the present and inherit it critically. As we all know, a new type of society, especially when it steps into the normal development track, must rethink its national spirit and traditional culture, which is something no society can ignore in its own development process. What is national cannot be lost; only what is national is global; if we lose what is national, the nation is no longer national. We are now at this important stage. However, how should we "apply the past to the present and critically inherit it"? Thinking about this question is especially important for university students, who are responsible for the revitalization of the nation. With rational thinking, we should do the following: (1) We can transform the excellent value principles formed in the long-term historical practice into the spirit of the times to inherit them. For example, in the Zhou Yi, the spirit of "Heaven walks with health, and the gentleman is unceasing in self-improvement", the spirit of robustness and vigor; the Analects of Confucius advocates "sacrificing one's life for righteousness" and "thinking of righteousness at the sight of profit", The independent personality of "wealth and nobility cannot be obscene, poverty and lowliness cannot be shifted, and might and power cannot be subjugated", as well as the sense of anxiety of "joy to the world, worry to the world"; the idea of unity of the world emphasized in the Biography of the Spring and Autumn Period of the Gongyangs, and so on. All these valuable ideas should be inherited by us. (b) For some of the contents, we can extract their feudalistic ideological core and extract their useful spiritual factors, so that they can become useful ideological elements for the construction of a new culture today. For example, the idea of "people-oriented". From the "respect for heaven and protection of the people" of the early Western Zhou Dynasty, to Mencius' "the people are the most important thing, the gods of earth and grain come second, and the ruler is the least important thing", to Xunzi's "the ruler is a boat, and the common people are water. Water carries the boat, but water overturns the boat", the people-oriented thinking constitutes an important part of ancient Chinese political thought. Although the real connotation of the ancient "people's principle" is not and cannot be the interests of the people, it is meaningful for us to remove its feudal core and transform the ancient people's principle from the perspective of the people being the masters of their own house, and develop it into the socialist concept that the interests of the people are above all. Other ideas of Confucianism should also be able to be transformed in this way. (c) As for the dregs of traditional culture, we must reject and discard them, and must not be attached to them. For example, we must reject and discard the "three subordinates and four virtues" concept of femininity, the "unchanging heaven and unchanging Tao" concept of nature, and the feudal hierarchy concept of "differentiating between inferiority and superiority, and making clear the nobility and the inferiority of people", and so on. Despite the fact that Confucianism has existed in China for thousands of years and still has a great positive influence on various aspects of China's politics and economy, due to various reasons, many people have developed a great prejudice against Confucianism, and as a result, Confucianism is not accorded due respect and importance in mainland China. Today, there are still many people who think that Confucianism is a corrupt ideology that serves no purpose and needs to be eradicated. This is diametrically opposed to the attitude of Korea and Japan, which are committed to preserving the culture of the past and even Confucianism. We should seriously consider the embarrassing situation that Confucianism was formed and developed in China but flourished in Korea. However, due to the worsening of various social problems such as moral corruption, a small number of conscientious people have picked up this precious national heritage and seriously explored the value it contains. For example, scholars in mainland China are now working hard to compile the Confucian Collection in order to make up for the regret of history (among the three religions, Taoism has the Daoist Collection and Buddhism has the Great Collection, but Confucianism does not have its own collection of scriptures), and to vigorously pass on and promote Confucianism. We also see the hope that Confucianism will flourish in the new era. Note: This article also refers to a large number of documents, I personally think, is not completely original.