On the rational factors of Confucius' philosophical thought and its modern significance

Confucius' ethical thought belongs to a kind of "humanistic ethics", which has the following meanings: First, it attaches importance to historical traditions. Confucius' humanistic ethics regards social ethics as "literature", and the so-called "text" first attaches importance to the inheritance of history. In other words, the ethics of any era and society is the inheritance of the past historical ethics. This ethical view of attaching importance to historical traditions is typically reflected in this passage of Confucius: "Yin Yin, you know the gains and losses; Zhou's gains and losses are thus known. "The so-called' profit and loss' is first of all inheritance. If there is no inheritance of past rituals, then it can only be "creation". Confucius believes that without the existing ethics in the past history, it is impossible for any ethics to be created from scratch.

Secondly, it emphasizes the content of ritual significance. In the era of Confucius, "ceremony" was the basic form of social ethics. Confucius' thought is different from that of the previous generation, that is, he attaches great importance to the meaning of ceremony. In his view, if the ceremony leaves benevolence and does not rely on benevolence, it is difficult to call it "ceremony". So he said, "What a nice gift! It' s really beating drums! " ? Li Liyun, jade and silk are all clouds? "The so-called benevolence, in Confucius' view, its basic meaning is" love ". Moreover, this kind of "love" ethics is from the heart and conforms to human nature. Therefore, Confucius linked benevolence and humanity, that is, he not only attached importance to the form of ceremony, but also emphasized the consciousness of ceremony. This is an important content of Confucius' humanistic ethics, and it is also his transformation of traditional etiquette.

Third, the concept of "Wen" in a gentleman's personality. For Confucius, social ethics is just a display of personality. This emphasis on personality shows that Confucius' ethics belongs to a tradition of "virtue theory" The problem is that personality is equally emphasized, and virtue theory is equally emphasized. The difference between Confucius' and Aristotle's "theory of virtue" is that, for Aristotle's tradition of virtue theory, virtue shows people's practical ability for ethics, while Confucius believes that ethics is not only a moral practice, but also has the function of "decoration" or "modification". Ethics has the function of "decoration" or "modification" to human beings, which means that ethics is not only a social function, but also an ontological existence mode of human beings; This ontological existence of human beings has aesthetic function. In other words, Confucius believes that the performance of ethics is not only out of social responsibility and need, but also a social obligation and a way to show and prove the existence of human ontology. Confucius called this ontological ideal personality "gentleman".

In addition, pay attention to music education and cultural education. An important feature of Confucius' humanistic ethics thought is to emphasize the role of rites and music in human moral cultivation. Therefore, although Confucius opposed the ceremony with no benevolence as its content, he did not think that social ethics could be divorced from ceremony. This is not only because ceremony is the carrier and embodiment of social ethics, but also because it has the function of moral Zhi Tao. So Confucius emphasized "ceremony". He said: "Harmony is the most important thing, and ceremony is the most important thing. Wang Zhidao is the first beauty. Small and big. " This means that ceremony can cultivate social ethics with "harmony" as the value standard, which is the ultimate of social ethics. The subtle influence of rituals on people's morality is not achieved through preaching or coercion, but through music. Therefore, Confucius often mentioned ceremony and music together, thinking that ceremony and music are inseparable. He said: "It is more a ceremony than music, and it is more a music than a ceremony." It is worth noting that Confucius not only mentioned ceremony and joy, but also emphasized the role of mastering humanistic knowledge in the cultivation of moral personality. He said, "You can be a husband if you are knowledgeable in literature and meet with courtesy." In his view, a virtuous person must be a "gentleman" with extensive cultural knowledge. He said, "Boy, where are Moshev's poems?" Poetry can be appreciated, watched, grouped and resented. Your father is that thing, and your father is that thing in the distance. In fact, he thinks that reading poems such as The Book of Songs can improve a person's moral realm.

Above, we expounded the connotation of Confucius' humanistic ethics thought from four aspects. To sum up, this humanistic ethics embodies the following characteristics:

First, the unity of historicity and times, inheritance and foresight. Confucius' concept of propriety embodies the unity of historicity and times. Confucius thinks that the rites of Zhou Dynasty are the inheritance of the previous rites, but at the same time, it injects new contents into the rites of Zhou Dynasty, that is, the rites are based on benevolence.

Second, the unity of content and form. Any social ethics has its formal aspects and substantive contents. One of the basic viewpoints of Confucius' humanistic ethics centered on ceremony is to emphasize the unity of content and form of ceremony. In Confucius' eyes, ceremony is a social moral standard which combines content and form closely. Therefore, through the ceremony, not only can people cultivate noble social morality, but this noble social morality is also manifested in a set of manners and etiquette, which can give people a sense of beauty.

Third, the unity of external norms and internal requirements. For Confucius, the humanistic ethics with ceremony as the core is certainly a set of social ethics norms, which have specific provisions and requirements for all aspects of daily social life, but at the same time, he believes that such social ethics norms are not only the social life rules that people have to abide by, but also the behaviors that people are willing to perform consciously for self-improvement.

Fourth, the unity of theory and practice. Confucius' humanistic ethics is essentially an enlightenment. The so-called enlightenment is to attach importance to the rational understanding of ethics. Therefore, Confucius' ethical thoughts emphasize the importance of "knowledge", such as knowing etiquette, benevolence, destiny, morality, people and know life. But on the other hand, he also went back to work, so he said, "Those who know are not as good as those who are good, and those who are good are not as good as those who are happy." More importantly, for ethics, line and line are linked, inseparable and unified in the process of ceremony.

To sum up, we can see that a fundamental feature of Confucius' humanistic ethics is to pay equal attention to knowledge and learning. Moreover, he stressed that moral wisdom should be expanded from practical experience and historical classics, as well as by learning various cultural knowledge. For Confucius, the study of humanistic knowledge is not only the study of cultural knowledge, but also a kind of moral cultivation; Cultural literacy and moral literacy should and can be integrated.

Here, when we ask why the so-called humanistic ethics is possible, we are not asking why this humanistic ethics appeared in history, but asking its theoretical basis. That is to ask: Why do we have to have humanistic ethics? What is its significance? How is it different from other ethics, such as social ethics or religious ethics?

The questioning of humanistic ethics is actually related to the questioning of people. In other words, questioning it involves the understanding of human ontology. What is a person? This is a philosophical metaphysical question about the theory of human nature. Confucius-style humanists believe that man is a historical and cultural man. In other words, people live in historical traditions and cultures. In this sense, ethics is culture and ethics is the accumulation of history. Without history and culture, we can not only understand social ethics, but also fundamentally understand people. Therefore, history and culture provide ontological basis for social ethics.

Humanistic ethics not only emphasizes the ontological basis of social ethics, but also has a set of views different from social ethics, that is, ethics is not only instrumental, nor even axiological or teleological, but precedes the ontology of tools and axiology and is the ontological existence mode of human beings. Confucius said, "A benevolent person is also a benevolent person.". Therefore, the mission of ethics is to teach people to "be themselves" first; People can "be themselves" and then "become adults".

The possibility of humanistic ethics also involves the educational methods of ethics. On the one hand, humanistic ethics emphasizes personal experience (tacit knowledge), so it pays attention to personal experience and personal cultivation; On the other hand, it pays more attention to "learning" and "knowledge" and emphasizes the affinity of cultural education (humanistic education) with social morality and personal accomplishment. It is believed that the cultivation of personal personality must be experienced as an education and externalized into etiquette; The original meaning of education is that education aims at ethics. Therefore, all education has moral and ethical content.

In this way, the distinction between humanistic ethics and social ethics and religious ethics is clear at a glance: for social ethics, ethics is mainly just a set of ethical norms that society has to ask people to abide by in order to maintain its normal order. If social ethics also attaches importance to instilling moral consciousness into members of society, then its instilling method is "education" rather than "enlightenment". As for religious ethics, it regards ethical behavior as people's inner consciousness, as the awakening of conscience, or even the behavior of "knowing and doing things for heaven", or as the need of "loving God" in western Christian ethics. Of course, this kind of religious ethics emphasizes that ethics is out of self-awareness and voluntariness, in order to meet the individual's need to pursue transcendence or obtain God's "grace", so that ethics can be based on the need to provide individuals with a "safe life" and can solve the ethical problems of "whether happiness and welfare can be consistent" and how to be consistent. But if you think about it carefully, this so-called religious ethics can provide a shelter for individuals, which is only theoretical or explanatory. In real life, most members of society are difficult to popularize, only for a few people with religious feelings.

From this point of view, in society, most people should abide by social ethics. Although social ethics can be practiced in reality, it is difficult to provide a place for individual life to settle down. If we only advocate social ethics and religious ethics, we may indeed encounter the contradiction that Wang Guowei lamented, "Cute is not credible, credible is not cute", that is, social ethics is the most feasible in reality, but it is not cute (it cannot meet the needs of individual life to "settle down"); Religious ethics is lovely (it can provide a shelter), but in real life, most members of society are hard to practice after all. Therefore, this kind of ethical conflict and tension is inseparable from China and the West, and it is also inseparable from ancient and modern times.

Confucius' humanistic ethics seems to provide a "middle way" solution to this contradiction and conflict. This kind of humanistic ethics combines humanistic education with personality cultivation, and in the process of ceremony, it takes a subtle way to experience ethics and morality. In this way, the process of ethical and moral cultivation itself is entertaining or entertaining, and the process of ritual or humanistic knowledge itself is a kind of "joy": the practitioners or learners of humanistic knowledge are. It is in this sense that humanistic ethics provides a "shelter" for individual life. Moreover, the pleasure of individual life gained by learning music and etiquette or humanistic knowledge is not mysterious, and most people can appreciate and achieve it. Therefore, humanistic ethics can be used as a substitute for religious ethics to play its function of "settling down" and at the same time, it can also play its social function of maintaining a good social order like social ethics.

Finally, when we point out that there is a humanistic ethics through the analysis of Confucius' theory, we adopt the "typology" analysis method in the actual people's ethical behavior, and what we see is more the mixture of different types of ethics. In other words, in reality, it is sometimes difficult to distinguish which person's ethical behavior is determined by social ethics, religious ethics or humanistic ethics; As the motivation of ethical behavior, these ethical types may coexist in the same person; There is even a phenomenon that the same person's ethical behavior is determined by the motivation of this ethical type in different situations, and on another occasion, it is determined by the motivation of another ethical type. However, although there are so many complicated ethical situations in reality, this does not prevent us from studying various ethical behaviors of human beings from the perspective of ethical types. Perhaps it is precisely because of the diversity of human ethical behavior and its motives that it is necessary for us to introduce typological methods to study it. Among all these ethical types, humanistic ethics is undoubtedly one that we must attach importance to. Moreover, it is undeniable that, due to the Confucian tradition rooted in China, it will play an increasingly important role in the new round of ethical construction in China in the future.