On The Origins Of The Proposition Of "Transforming Social Traditions"

In all the available literatures about the pre-Qin Dynasty, "wind" is the first word that means custom. The evolutions from "wind" to custom behaviored as a culturalizing course as follows: In the Shang Dynasty, Zhou Dynasty, and the earlier stage of the Spring and Autumn Period, "Wind" was apotheosized, which was characterized of the combination of natural rules with culturalization. From the earlier stage to the intermediary and later stage of the Spring and Autumn Period, influenced by the Yin and Yang Cosmism, especially as well as the analogue thinking, and so on, in the pre-Qin Dynasty, "wind" meant the allurement between male and female, ethos, collection, and folk music, etc. in turns, presenting a group character of culturalization. In the last stage of the Spring and Autumn Period, the meanings of "moralise" came into being with the government's abstraction of the moralization's functions of the ex-monarch's music, which was opposed to the meanings of folk music. Consequently, the government not only continued to generalize the ex-monarch's political tradition of collecting folk songs, but also combined the moralization's functions of the ex-monarch's music and the group cultures, and presented the proposition of "a Son of Heaven melodizes according to custom". The meaning of custom was divorced from folk songs and possessed ideology characters finally. All of this course revealed the background of the official culture policies in the pre-Qin Dynasty and the hidden . essential intentions of "transforming social traditions".Intimately related to the musical introduction, the tenet of the ritual introduction in the pre-Qin Dynasty was also to civilize the masses, namely custom. The developments of the relationship between rites and music and their status of the political education in the pre-Qin Dynasty showed as follows: In the time immemorial, rites and music came out of the rites of sacrifice of primitive societies, behaviored as a kind of original unitive culture. In Yao, Shun and Yu Dynasty, rites and music were still unitive. At the same time, with the incomplete theory consciousness, musicbecame a tool of the political education by primitive clans, which ideological functions in civilizing the custom were more prominent than rites. In the Xia Dynasty and Shang Dynasty, rites became a national system definitely and possesed the political significance. The status of the political education of rites and music at that time should inherit that of the past time. In the Xi-zhou Dynasty, Zhou Gong created the rites and music based on the rites in the Xia Dynasty, Shang Dynasty. He introduced music to rites, and combined the rites with music to civilize the custom. In the Spring and Autumn Period, music preserved its faint ideological status of transforming social traditions. Rites deviated from ideology, and closed up to law. As a result, rites and music tended to separate.From the later stage of the Spring and Autumn Period to the Zhan-guo Dynasty, the scholars in the pre-Qin Dynasty brought forward their theory of civilizing custom around promoting or abolishing rites and music, which might be classified into three philosophical schools: Taoism, Confucianism and Mo. Lao Zi created the principles of naturalism. He put forward the theory of natural humanity to argue against the political education of rites and music, and sparkpluged inaction and self-improvement. Following Lao Zi, Zhuang Zi developed the purer naturalism to oppose to the political education of rites and music more stoutly and drastically. Confucius set up the principles of moralism. He praised for the traditions of the political education of rites and music in the Xi-zhou Dynasty, and regarded rites and music as the necessary way to cultivate the mind. The earliest prentices of Confucius developed the view of human nature and sensibility proposed by their teacher, and took rites and music as important tools for civilizing the masses. Mencius claimed that human nature was good and called for beneficent politics. He considered that the king's policies should comply with the human nature, thereby, there was no the problem of "transforming social traditions" in his theory. Mo-tse thought that the styles of pursuing unnecessary and overelaborate formalities unduly could only corrupt custom, and the purpose of his discussion about custom was to state his kingcraft of universal love without a battle, and he didn't actually concern the problem of "transforming social traditions". To summarize, all of the above conceptions related to civilizing custom with some creationary theoretic merit, but on the other hand, most of them hadn't been accepted by the government because of their excessive idealization.In the later stage of the Zhan-guo Dynasty, faced with the unitive history tide, Xun Zi paid enough attention to the character of mass cultures of custom, and thoughtthat it was absolutely important to keep the state stability and longinquity of the unification. In view of this, he based himself on the Confucian moralism, summarized the traditions of the political education of rites and music in the pre-Qin Dynasty, and repudiated the theory of human nature and the viewpoint of civilizing custom by the ealier scholars in the pre-Qin Dynasty directly or indirectly. And then, he claimed that human nature is evil, but rites can civilize the masses not only by making clear mass difference, but also by adjusting and supporting mass desire. With the ritual introduction, the rational mass come into being. But the obvious limitation that the ritual introduction laid special stress on changing humanity by compulsion wasn't able to stabilize the mass moral. Therefore, Xun Zi inherited the official theory of rites and music in the Spring and Autumn Period, and further investigated intrinsic relations and essential difference of the political education of rites and music. At the same time, he summarized and exerted musical aesthetics in the pre-Qin Dynasty, especially the theory that music had feelings with flying colors. Whereafter, he proposed that music such as Ya and Song could make most of its harmonious feelings to civilize the masses naturally, which could avoid the limitation of the ritual introduction. In this way, music and rites might form a unitive ideology to civilize the masses. Thus, Xun Zi gave prominence to the aesthetic characteristic of the musical introduction, and paid equal attention to music and rites finally. He integrated the beauty with kindness in an ideological sense, and made rites and music become the means for civilizing and uniforming the masses mutually. As a result, the proposition of "transforming social traditions" came forth. Xun Zi's aesthetic theory reversed the separate tendency of rites and music in the Spring and Autumn Period, and avoided the ideological deflection because of special stress which the government laid on the ritual introduction. To sum up, he designed a mighty practical proposition of the aesthetic ideology for the forthcoming feodal unification.