Traditional Chinese Tadanori Concept Diachronic Investigation

Taking the Chinese traditional concept of loyalty(zhong 忠) as the idiographic object, and the thoughts of the thinkers and classics of all times as the basis, the thesis give the traditional idea of loyalty a historical special research. Then, a rational and impersonal analysis and description about it would be given.The historical research on the Chinese traditional idea of loyalty would deploy from several special topics in the order of status, origination, connotation, subject, object and value.The first part, demonstrate that loyalty is an important concept of Chinese traditional morality from four aspects. First, loyalty is one of the most important ethic concepts regarded by Chinese thinkers of all times. Second, loyalty is an important member of the ethic concepts in ancient China. Third, loyalty was endowed with great ethic status. Fourth, loyalty is an important criterion to judge people in ancient China.The second part, discusse the origin of loyalty mainly. There are seven viewpoints about it, which insists that the idea of loyalty originated from the Spring and Autumn period, from the early Spring and Autumn period, from the Western Zhou period, from the period of Xia, Shang and Zhou, from the Xia Dynasty, from the clannish community period or from the primordial society period. According to the thesis, it originated from the time of Yao 尧 and Shun 舜. First, there was definite recordation of advocating the loyalty and punishing the ones who destroyed the loyalty in the literature such as "biaoji"表记 chapter of Liji 礼记, "wudide"五帝德 chapter of Dadailiji大戴礼记, "wengong shiba nian"文公十八年 chapter of Zuozhuan 左传. Second, Yao and Shun demonstrated to their people what real loyalty was through actions and made the original meaning of loyalty clearly. The loyal actions of Yao and Shun were appreciated by people of all ages widely, so it is logical to regard them as the symbol of the appearance of loyalty.The third part, induce to describe the in the past representative's standpoint...