What are the five constants of traditional Chinese morality?

The Five Constants: benevolence, righteousness, propriety, wisdom, and faith. After the fourth year of Emperor Zhangdi's reign, "benevolence, righteousness, propriety, wisdom, and trust" were recognized as the "five constants" of the overall purpose of morality. The Five Constants are not only the five fundamental "mother virtues" and "base virtues", but also form and highly summarize the core values and basic spirit of traditional Chinese morality.

Confucius regarded benevolence as the highest moral principle, moral standard and moral realm. He was the first to gather the overall moral norms into one, forming a structure of ethical thought centered on ren, including filial piety, fraternal duty, loyalty, forgiveness, propriety, knowledge, courage, respect, broad-mindedness, trustworthiness, sensitivity, and beneficence. Among them, filial piety and fraternal duty is the foundation of benevolence, one of the basic pillars of the ideological system of benevolence.

How to be benevolent? Confucius advocated that anyone should have a desire to be benevolent and should seek benevolence sincerely, and if this is done, then one will obtain benevolence. Reaching ren is rooted in how one does it, rather than being pushed by others, and only by one's own active pursuit is it possible to reach the ideal state of ren. This suggests that Confucius believed that ren is some kind of conscious inner emotional behavior that no one can replace, and that one can realize the requirements of ren as long as one has the right attitude.

The spiritual value of ren is embodied in the words "Do not do unto others what you would not have them do unto you." According to Confucius, benevolence means "loving others". From the theoretical source, Confucius' view of loving people comes from the early Zhou's idea of protecting and respecting the people. As an important spiritual connotation of ren, the concept of loving others has wide applicability.

Loving the people with a broad and generous mind is a kind of sublimation of self-cognition and an inner reflection of self-spiritual state. Only inwardly with the standard of benevolence to strictly require themselves, and with the realm of benevolence to examine their own thoughts, which is the prerequisite to reach the lofty realm of truth, goodness and beauty.

Confucius' doctrine of benevolence is not a purely discursive metaphysical theoretical system, but more of a combination of specific behavioral approaches to tell people what they should do, which is not a philosophical manifestation of practical rationality, but rather the ultimate concern for the sublimation of the personality of the general public and the emancipation of human nature.

Righteousness is a kind of moral category with extremely wide meaning in ancient China. Confucius first proposed righteousness. Mencius further elaborated on righteousness. Righteousness is the source of all life for settling down, cultivating one's body, aligning one's family, ruling the country, and calming the world. Righteousness embodies the intrinsic law that governs the development of all human civilizations resulting from the interaction between human beings and nature. Justice is more intuitively revealed in the essence of traditional Chinese dialectical philosophy, which has a broad and far-reaching significance.