The Exploration For The Sublime Words With Deep Meaning Of Confucian Ethical Thought--A Reading Of The Analects Of Confucius In Contextualization Of Modern Life

This dissertation makes a study of the following eight essential categories in Confucius ethical thoughts in eight chapters respectively: Humanity (ren in Chinese), Filial peity (xiao in Chinese), Learning (xue in Chinese), Speech (yan in Chinese), Self-reflection ( xingshen in Chinese), Harmony ( he in Chinese), Thinking ( si in Chinese) and The way ( dao in Chinese).As to Humanity, the author takes "human" in the definition of "Ren is human" as the universality of human nature. Confucius greatly advocates Humanity aiming to rectify the life and the society with it. Humanity deserves to be the foundation of elementary values which are of universal significance in modern society and should be advocated greatly. The essential of Humanity is the embodiment of all the conducts of developing what is good and discarding what is evil. Adherence to the idea of Humanity is just to uphold the humanity and to eliminate all the inhumanity. Filial is the basic practice of Confucius Humanity. The exact meaning of Filial is "The father passes to the son, and the son inherits from his father.", that is , the handing-down from generation to generation. The piety is driven by the humanity, not by anything else. Learning is the important means to rectify the thoughts and behaviors of people with humanity. One can expand one's energy and develop the humanity through Learning. What is important of Learning is to set up the right outlook of life and choose the right way of life. Learning is the mighty power for people to gain more freedom, for the human society to develop into the realm of freedom. Speech is the representation of humanity. "Ingenuous speech" is truly the human speech and the existence of "cunning speech" is the consequence of certain developing stage of society, due to the conflict of interest among people. Choosing "ingenuous speech" while discarding "cunning speech" depends on developing the social productivity and constructing the highly civilized society. Self-reflection is the internal adjusting mechanism for the prevalence of humanity. The virtue of self-reflection should be acquired through day to day practice. One indeed should reflect one's defect. One, especially, should reflect one's merit to boost the spirit and gain the confidence. Harmony is the concrete state of humanity. The harmony of human society has the externally historical inevitability. Harmony comes from the process of eradicating the evil and changing various unjustnesses.Thinking, as the function of brain, firstly manifests certain quality, i.e., the just and the evil. As in " One thinks the moment one gains the benefit", the "thinking" here is of great practical significance in helping people to get what they should right and moderately. The way is a kind of substantial, moving and enormous energy in the universe. Among The Five Ethics, The way is only inferior to "the nature", and superior to " the human being", "the earth" and the "heaven", to which the Confucius thoughts on human beings convert.