On The Historical Reasonability And Modern Enlightenment Of Pre-Qin Confucian Dispute Over Rationality And Desire

The dispute over rationality and desire is an important part in the history of Chinese philosophy and ethics. Over two thousand years, great philosophers and thinkers have conducted fierce dispute around the relationship between rationality and desire. Today, in the course of building harmonious society, this relationship is still an unavoidable problem which puzzles modern people. Under the circumstances of market economy, many people cannot cope with this relationship appropriately so that they lose their pursuit of spiritual value and their original belief, moral value and behavioral principle under the drive of desire. Therefore, a deep probe into Pre-Qin Confucian dispute over rationality and desire is of great theoretical value and practical significance to settling the relationship between rationality and desire in the modern society, and forming the correct view of rationality and desire.This thesis states the definition and relationship of rationality-desire made by Pre-Qin Confucian representatives as Confucius, Mencius, Xun Zi, discusses the problems about rationality-desire in belief, morals, and laws in the context of modern society and market economy, and furthermore advocates modern people should derive enlightenment from these Confucian representatives' thoughts about rationality-desire relationship so as to construct our modern view of rationality and desire.The first part of this thesis explores the original meaning of rationality and desire in Pre-Qin Confucianism: rationality means "management", "rules", and "order" or "justice", "courtesy"; desire has the meaning of "want to have", "want to get", "lust" and "greed". Part two mainly introduces Confucian representatives' viewpoints on rationality-desire relationship and how to abstain lust and makes some comments on their theories on this relationship. Part three discusses the problems about rationality-desire in modern society, when desire is fully respected to a degree beyond rationality while rationality is ignored. On this basis, this thesis puts forward that we can establish a harmonious modern view of rationality and desire.