On what criteria are traditional Chinese values based?

With the modernization of human society, the study of culture

has aroused increasing interest among scientists and humanists. China's traditional culture, with a history of several thousand years, was once glorious, but in recent times

it has been eclipsed. In order to make Chinese culture flourish again, it is necessary to conduct an in-depth inquiry into

it. Starting from the core of culture, i.e. the value system,

by analyzing the influence of the value system on traditional politics, economy, law, society

and people's daily life, the essence of traditional culture can be unearthed, and at the same time, aspects of traditional culture that are not conducive to the development of the society can be found and discarded.

One, the social and historical roots of traditional Chinese values

Traditional Chinese values have always sought harmony and unity between human beings and nature and society

as the main theme of the ideal of life, opposing the independence of human beings

ideas and enterprising, and cultivating a sense of group consciousness, obedience, sincerity and respect

and so on. Such values are very inert. What it seeks is a middle-of-the-road, harmonizing approach that fits in with traditional Chinese ethics and morality. In other words, beauty is always connected with goodness; only the good is beautiful. It can be said that an important feature of Chinese

traditional values is the principle of ethics and morality as the

absolute scale of value, that is, the subject of the object (including personnel, social life

live, nature and other objects into the field of human understanding) of the evaluation of

value are based on the principle of morality as a criterion. What is ethical and moral is valuable, and what is not is considered worthless. The Western thinker Montesquieu once said, "The Chinese spend their entire youth in learning this

culture and their whole life in practicing it." [ 1 ] Hegel

also pointed out: "In the Chinese, the moral obligation is itself a provision of law

law, law, command? This morality consists in the obligations of the minister to the ruler, of the son to the father, of the father to the son, and of the brothers and sisters." [ 2 ] These discussions show the position of ethics and morality

in traditional Chinese culture.

Why can the concept of ethics and morality, which belongs to the mediation of interpersonal relations, be

an important feature of traditional Chinese values?

This question can be examined from different perspectives. The ethics of Confucianism and Mencius were initially only a means to maintain family harmony, but in the elaboration of the Confucian scholars, this initial concept of ethics and morality underwent a qualitative change: ethics and morality were superimposed on the nature of the universe and the political system, constituting the nature-society-humanity concept. Yi - the preface to the trigrams of the cloud: "There is heaven and earth and then there are all things, there are things

and then there are men and women, there are men and women and then there are couples, there are couples and then there are fathers

children, there are fathers and children and then there are rulers and ministers, there are rulers and ministers and then there are up and down, there are up and down

and then there is a measure of propriety and righteousness." This trinity framework makes everything in the universe

an organic part of human spiritual life and social history,

which is integrated with human life. Human morality embodies the spirit of universal life,

and the universe is also imprinted with human morality,

the two

relying on the stream of living life---"qi" to be connected,

which is what Zhuang Zi called "the passage of life"

and "the passage of life",

which is what Zhuang Zi called "the passage of life"

.

The two

are connected by the stream of living life --- "qi", which is Zhuangzi's so-called "through

the world of one qi. In a way, the description of the cosmic phenomenon is

an indication of the perfection of social history and human morality.

The concept of ethics and morality not only preserves the ethical and moral characteristics, but also "externalizes" and "transcends" its own

content, thus assuming the function of legal constraints.

The "rites" are the most important elements in the concept of ethics and morality. "Rites" is a general term for the ethics and morals of feudal society and feudal hierarchy

. In China, people are often accustomed to "rites", "law" together,

advocating the "rites and respect for the law", the fundamental reason lies in the ancient Chinese law

law, has always had a strong and important role to play in the development of China.

The fundamental reason for this is that ancient Chinese law has always had a strong ethical coloring. Against etiquette and morality also

is a violation of the law. The New Book of Tang Dynasty - Criminal Law Zhi: "The order, the rank of honor and inferiority

noble and low, the system of the state also." This makes ethics and morality from

internal orientation to external norms, becoming the dominant spiritual force of traditional Chinese values

.

Of course, the social and political structure of ancient China was also one of the reasons for the formation of the ethical and moral principles of traditional Chinese values. The Chinese

nation has been an agricultural nation since ancient times. The special nature of agricultural farming makes people settle in a certain area for a long time; within the same spatial area

, in order to achieve the purpose of long-term ****existence, it is especially important to maintain the relationship between the families and family members in a certain area

. The social structure of Chinese feudal society is built on the ties of blood and patriarchal relations. Within the family, the father's absolute

status must first be established. With the father as the center, the order of superiority, superiority, inferiority, superiority, superiority and inferiority is established and cannot be exceeded at any level. The state is an extension of the family. The ruler

as the head of a nation is the embodiment and symbol of power. In order to achieve the goal of eternal heirship, the ruler tried his best to inculcate feudal morality

into the people, and moral principles were further nationalized.

China's political structure is, in essence, a variant of China's feudal social

structure. The specific social structure shaped the corresponding political

structure, resulting in mutual subordination and dependence among people.

A person's deposition, relegation and promotion is not based on his actual talent, but on his moral behavior; politics and morality are closely linked, and the decline of morality means the death of political life.

The basic features of traditional Chinese values

The basic features of traditional Chinese values can be examined from three

aspects: the relationship between human beings, the relationship between human beings and the nature, and the relationship between human beings and the self

. In terms of the relationship between man and man, human relationship is the starting point of Chinese traditional

ethical values; in terms of the relationship between man and society,

the traditional Chinese ethical values emphasize the spirit of humanity and the spirit of the group; and in terms of the relationship between man

and the self, the traditional Chinese values emphasize the way of cultivation.

The concept of "human ethics" was first proposed by Mencius. He pointed out that the concept of "human ethics" is "the relationship between father and son, between ruler and subject, between husband and wife, between young and old, and between friends and friends" [3]. The "human relationships" are the five kinds of relationships between people. Each of these relationships has two opposing aspects, and each of them has a supreme criterion for dealing with the relationship between the two

. Meng Zi explicitly regarded "clarifying human relationships" as

the major law for "new people" and "king of the world". He said: "Humanity is clear at the

upper level, the people are close to the lower level, and when the king rises, he will come to take the law, which is the teacher of the king." [4 ]That is to say, "Humanity is clear at the

upper level, the people are close to the lower level, and when the king rises, he will come to take the law, which is the teacher of the king." [4 ]That is to say, the ruler to the people to teach human ethics, is the ruler

one of the most important methods of rule. In the pre-Qin period, humanism was a generalization of five kinds of human

interpersonal relations, without the meaning of inferiority or superiority, nobility or inferiority, and absolute obedience.

"Zhongyong" human ethics as five da Dao, that: "the world's da Dao five, the

to do the three, said: the ruler and the ministers, father and son, husband and wife, Kun Di also, friends

friends also. Five, the world of the road also." By Xunzi, his idea of "human

lun" emphasized in particular the importance of equality between the noble and the lowly, and the difference between the young and the old, believing that the unequal relationship defined by "human relations"

is the condition for social stability and unity

. "Therefore, the case of the first king for the system of rites and righteousness in order to divide, so that there are noble and lowly,

the difference between the eldest and youngest, know the difference between the fools and can not be, all so that the people to carry their own things and each get their

appropriate. Therefore, it is said that the chopping and difference, inaccurate and obedient, different and one, this is what is called

human nature." [5] Dong Zhongshu regarded "human relationships" as the same eternal

norms as those of heaven and earth, and emphasized the inequality of various human relationships, especially the strong

emphasis on the two major relationships of ruler and subject and father and son. He thought: "Therefore, the size is not more than equal,

the noble and the lowly are like their own, and the righteousness is correct." [6] The Analects of Yan Yuan (论语-颜渊), a collection of essays, argues that "Jun (君)

君臣臣, 父父子子" is an interpersonal relationship to which special attention must be paid in political rule, and that honoring the relationship between Jun (君臣) and Ministers (臣) is a moral concept of "loyalty," while the relationship between Father and Son (父子) is one of "filial piety," and the relationship between Father and Son is one of "filial piety.

International relations, honoring the moral concept of "loyalty" for the relationship between ruler and minister, and "filial piety" for the relationship between father and son; believing that the king must treat his minister with certain

courtesy, and the minister must be loyal to the king. A father must be charitable and strict to his son, and a son must be filial to his father. This

hierarchical relationship of honor and inferiority between the king and the minister was continuously reinforced by Confucians and rulers in later times, so that the concept of honor and inferiority was y rooted in all aspects of the society

and became the core of moral education in the feudal society.

The core of traditional Chinese values and ethical principles is a kind of benevolence and love with national

characteristics. In the traditional Chinese moral code system,

"benevolence" is the highest principle of morality. This principle is to give up oneself for the benefit of

people, to give up oneself for the love of others, and to emphasize that such love should start from selfless motives

. In the words of Confucius, ", 仁" contains three meanings: one is

love for the members of the family, such as parents and brothers. Filial piety and fraternal duty, kissing one another, and so on

are a special manifestation of "benevolence". The second is love for members of the ruling class, of which loyalty and forgiveness, honor and respect, and observance of etiquette are all manifestations. Thirdly, it is the love for the subordinate ruled class, which is manifested in the benevolent policies of leniency, favor, wealth, and education

. "These three aspects of benevolence are most fundamental to the love within the family, such as kinship, filial piety and fraternal duty, which is why Yuruo said, "filial piety and fraternal duty are also the foundation of a human being"[7]. After Confucius, Mozi did not build the idea of "loving others" on purely altruistic motives as Confucius did,

but from the idea of utilitarianism,

proposed the concepts of "loving one another" and "sharing benefits"[7]. Instead, from utilitarianism, he proposed the concepts of "mutual love" and "mutual benefit", and the idea of "those who love others will love them, and those who benefit others will benefit them"

in order to make his theories more acceptable to the people. Mozi

thinks that people should not only love others, but also be able to "love others as if they love their

bodies", that is to say, when loving others, they should be able to love others as if they love themselves

. Since the Western Han Dynasty, the Confucian idea of humanity (which also includes

the absorption of the Mohist idea of humanity) has occupied a very important position in the traditional Chinese ethical value thinking

thinking.

The emphasis on community spirit is the backbone of traditional Chinese values and ethics.

In China's long-standing feudal society, the so-called group, that is, the society and the

state, was called the "public" and the "public interest". Therefore, this group spirit is often associated with the debate of right and wrong or public and private. In traditional Chinese

value philosophy, Confucian values of righteousness and profitability were initiated by Confucius, inherited and developed by Meng and

Xun, and set by Dong Zhongshu, and then integrated by Cheng Zhu, throughout the 2,000 years of Chinese history, and its basic value orientation is to emphasize righteousness and emphasize profitability.

The "righteousness" mentioned here refers to the hierarchical order of feudal society and its national

family interests and family interests, which is a certain nature of public interest, refers to the supreme morality and righteousness that embodies human

dignity and value, and is the internal

attributes of human beings. This is basically a moral value. "Profit", on the other hand, refers to private

profit, which is the profit of the minister and the father, the profit of the individual, and refers to the material needs of human beings, and the material benefits that make human beings happy, which belong to the material values. Confucius strongly advocates

glory "righteousness" and "profit" is very light, he believes that "a gentleman is a metaphor for righteousness, a small

man is a metaphor for profit"[8], the righteousness and profit as a distinction between a gentleman and a small man. He believed that "the gentleman is compared to righteousness, and the small man is compared to profit"[8] , taking righteousness and profit as the criteria for distinguishing between the gentleman and the small man. Mencius inherited Confucius' view of righteousness and profit and developed it to the extreme, proposing: "Why say profit? There is also benevolence and righteousness only." [ 9 ] Xunzi synthesized the doctrine of the pre-Qin

sons, that "righteousness and profit, people's two also", but he

claimed that "righteousness before profit" in order to "righteousness and benefit both!

But he advocated "righteousness before profit" in order to "obtain both righteousness and profit". Dong Zhongshu puts forward the idea of "righting

its friendship without seeking its benefits, and clarifying the way without counting its achievements"[10], which emphasizes the importance of righteousness and lightness of

benefits; he starts from the overall interests of the landlord class, and takes "righteousness" as

the "Three Principles and Five Rules". The "Three Principles and Five Constants" were used as a general term for the moral code of the landowning class, which emphasized on the lightness of people's

wanting for private interests and the strong desire for abstinence. Dong Zhongshu's value of being right in one's friendship but not in one's interests

has become the main value guide of Chinese feudal society.

Emphasizing inner values and focusing on one's own cultivation has always been a characteristic of the Chinese people

. Cultivation here mainly refers to the individual moral cultivation,

is the individual morality as a starting point, emphasizing the individual's heart, sincerity, emphasizing

"Since the son of heaven to the common people, one is to cultivate the body as the basis of the individual cultivation;

highlighting the initiative of the individual for the sake of good, "I want to be benevolent, I want to be good. "I want to benevolence, Siren to carry on", emphasizing

in the development of personal moral initiative to improve personality, to enjoy the highest

high spiritual happiness, so as to achieve the most human, sage, real people, perfect people

purpose. Traditional Chinese values emphasize that values originate from one's own heart,

and are communicated to people and all things in heaven and earth, thus attaching great importance to one's

self-cultivation. "Only the world's sincerity to be able to exhaust its nature, can exhaust its nature, then

can exhaust the nature of people; can exhaust the nature of people, then can exhaust the nature of things; can exhaust the nature of things

nature, then can praise the fertilization of heaven and earth; can praise the fertilization of heaven and earth, then can be

to heaven and earth to participate in carry on." [11 ]The long history of China's self-cultivation of the heart,

by himself and through the people and all things in heaven and earth, and therefore attaches great importance to personal

self-cultivation. [11] In China's long feudal history, the reason why feudal

moral norms have played such an important role is inseparable from the strengthening of

their own cultivation and cultivation of sentiments.

Third, the influence of traditional Chinese values

The basic quality of traditional Chinese values is a contradictory unity that shows

two characteristics and two effects everywhere. This paradoxical unity is

y rooted in the contradictions of feudal society. So what impact has it had on the psychological structure and specific value judgment of the Chinese people

?

First, traditional Chinese values of human relationships have created a deep-rooted

concept of moral inequality. In traditional Chinese ethics, the concept of "ethics" has become a concept that denotes

nobility and inferiority. Dong Zhongshu said: "Therefore, the size is not more than equal, noble and lowly as its

Lun, in order to be correct." [12 ]Human relationships are not the same as those of other people. [12] Human relations are divided into the ethical relations of patriarchy

, the ethical relations of politics, and the ethical relations of free interaction between individuals

of friends and passers-by. Of these, the first two are the most

important. In the patriarchal ethical relationships, the father is superior to the son and the brother is inferior to the brother; in the

political ethical relationships, the ruler is superior to the minister and the title is greater than the title and the title is inferior to the lower one, and the official

respects the inferiority of the people, etc. In the patriarchal hierarchical relationships, the father is superior to the son and the brother is inferior to the brother. Under the patriarchal hierarchy, the inequality between people

has led to the moral inequality between people. The traditional human relationship,

is not one that the whole society must abide by, but one that some must abide by and some need not; those who abide by it do their duty and those who don't enjoy their rights

: those who are honored enjoy their rights and those who are humbled do their duty. This concept of moral inequality

is closely related to the long-standing feudal hierarchy.

Secondly, although the humane spirit of traditional Chinese values mainly

maintains the inequality of the patriarchal hierarchy, it also promotes the civilization of social relations, i.e., treating people with courtesy and carrying things in a virtuous manner. The core of treating people with courtesy is "respect". "Respect" means respect for the person with whom one is dealing.

The Book of Rites - Qu Li reads: "The man who honors himself honors others. Although the negative peddlers must

have respect, not to mention the rich and noble?" To honor and respect others, and to put others before oneself, is the inherent requirement of 禮

. Virtue refers to the practice of benevolence, that is, to be loyal to

do one's best for oneself and to be forgiving to others, i.e., to do one's best for others and not to do what one does not want to be done to

add to others. Practicing "benevolence" and "propriety" implies that one should be generous to oneself but not to others, and that one should love the people without seeking self-interest. This moral concept, along with Confucianism's "benevolence" and "propriety," has profoundly influenced the moral concepts of the Chinese people.

Thirdly, the traditional Chinese community spirit of emphasizing righteousness over profit

has a one-sided value orientation. In the traditional morality of seeking justice and not seeking profit

value-oriented, people in words and deeds from the development of contempt for self-interest to despise

look at all normal profit-making, financial management. So the more talk about benevolence and righteousness is

honored, the more practical the more depreciated. This trend, in the Song Dynasty, Ming Dynasty

to the highest degree. In the secular world, a tradition has been formed that "refers to the dry

government as a rough and vulgar official, and refers to the economy and the people as utilitarian and miscellaneous

hegemony" [ 13 ]. Yan Yuan painfully pointed out that, emphasizing righteousness rather than profit, reading poor

reasoning, understanding the morality of the road without regard to the merits, "more than a thousand years, leading the world into the old paper

in the exhaustion of physical and mental energy, as a weak, sick, useless people" [14].

The impact

was so serious that the old Chinese readers did not go to make money.

But the traditional Chinese understanding of the group spirit cannot be

simply dismissed. By group we mean righteousness

and justice, i.e., benevolence, righteousness, and the state. The emphasis on the group can also lead to the formation of a moral sense of justice

and patriotism. The morality of justice, righteousness and patriotism

has also played a positive role in history. Under its influence, great statesmen have emerged in history who

asked for the people's lives

, and who

preferred the world's sorrows to the world's joys

and enjoyed the world's pleasures after them.

Fourthly, although the moral cultivation of traditional values can improve people's

moral behavior, this mode of thinking and mental state constrained the sustainable development of ancient Chinese

natural science. The traditional values of ancient China pursued the blending of the subject and the object, which also formed the way of thinking

of people pursuing unity. In the eyes of ancient Chinese philosophers, the nature of all things in the universe is

ethical and can be explained by human moral principles. Zhang Zai of the Northern Song Dynasty believes

that the universe does not have the slightest sense of alienation from man: "Qian said father, Kun into mother, I

this appearance, is mixed in the middle of the place, so the celestial body of the Sai my body, heaven and earth's division of my

the nature of the people and I run, things I and also." [ 15 ] This concept of the universe and people and society

not distinguishing between inside and outside, in fact, denies that the object is the object of the subject, and leads

to give up the exploration and transformation of nature. As a result, people's exploration of the external world

reverted to the study of their own internal nature, the understanding of the laws of nature and society

turned into self-realization of moral and ethical principles, and the practical activity of transforming the

world turned into the individual's ethical practice.