An Exploration Of The Values For Confucian Ritual Science

The researches of ritual science in China paid mostly close attention to domain of ceremonies and propriety, names and descriptions of things, examining and correcting of ritual books before the 1980s. Although after the nineties, a new exploration tendency for the rites at cultural angle arose and the conception of rites culture or rites-music culture had been advanced. But on the whole, the exploration of rites culture from various brands of learning is still rather undeveloped, and the special and systematic treatises on ancient Chinese rites is basically a gap. However first time, the dissertation systematically probes into the values of ancient Chinese rites. Ancient Rites in China is studied from three aspects as follow : first ,the dissertation summarizes the general principles of Confucius' rites sciences , analyses deeply these principles and values related to the tendency in Confucian thought . Second , the thesis explores the relations between ancient rites and outlook on life , and also it studies the importance of rites to develop philosophy of life , to mould human nature , human feelings and personality . Third , the dissertation discuses the social management function of the rites , expounds the influence of rites and ideas of rule by rites on social ideals, on administering a state and on political sense, etc.. in ancient times and its support function to the rule rights in ancient Chinese society.The dissertation discusses firstly general inclination of Confucian values and thinks the Confucius is a philosophy of life or life ethics in its character . the general issues in Confucian values relates to the relations between Heaven and Man , individuals and collective , reason and sensual desires , righteousness and interest, etc. which form the basis of Confucius values . Confucian key values such as Jen(Humanity) , Righteousness , Rites , etc. was came into being when the Confucian dealt with these problems , these ideas are deeply explored in the dissertation .The paper analyses the characteristics and spirit in the values for Confucian rites in patriarchal society and believes its general trait is humanity (Jen) , rationality(righteousness) and order (rites) , what improving life and good human nature is its basic thought. The thesis discusses the principles of patriarch, of respecting elders and betters , of enlightening by ritee-musie education , of balance between difference and harmonious , of repaying-granting , of profit and of rationality which are Confucian general values.Confucius , Xun Zi and the Others reformed ancient rites and made it new Confucian one along with Confucian value-system and in which took hierarchy order as key value , the value senses such as humanity , righteousness , loyal ,filial ,etc. was produced around the order .these senses expressed in rites is some concrete ceremonies concepts such as difference , harmonious , middle , respect , rational , order , timeliness , forms in ceremonies , etc., that instructed people ceremonious actions in society and life .Rites was also an attitude towards human life . So ancient people improved their life value and spirit state by regular ceremonies to express love and respect each other which helped they to form human relations , human nature and pursuing personality and to produce the driven -forces and goal for perfecting human value which differ from savage conditions. Human rites was expressions of life value by protocol which conveyed people's feelings as happiness , anger , grief and joy in life , normalized people's actions and mould human nature and feelings around the course of people's grown-up, marriage, life and death, etc. .with ceremoniesConfucian belived the West Zhou Dynasty was a typial society of ritual institution and it nurtured Confucian rites-rules thought which was an unique way of social management and rule rationality . In the way, it advocated keeping within bounds and ruling people by mild means . the best state for rites-rule was Great Harmonous society that is an publicly-owned and pub...