| From Yingzong zhiping first year (1064) to Shenzong xining(1068-1077), the Song School had been developed unprecedentedly. Jinggong New Theory, Su School, Cheng Brothers Confucian School had produced gradually, and laid the foundation of the Ethical thoughts of Sung Dynasty. Su Shi's ethics is the important part of ethics of Shu School and Song Dynasty. For a long time, people paid much attention to Su Shi's literary and artistic thoughts, but ignored his ethical thoughts. In fact, Su Shi's ethics is abundant and profound. His theory not only existed in his poems, calligraphy and paintings, but also had special carriers of political theory and traditional classic commentary collections, therefore, had reached the organic unity of unique view and clear demonstration. His many poems directly revealed the ethical theme, even if those poems which described natural beauty and discussed historic figures could not cover the radiance of the moral thinking. In addition, for those writings which revealed philosophy of life, the criterion of life, moral imperative, ethical wisdom, are the rare texts of Ethics.The influence of Su Shi's ethics closely related to the influence of his literature writings, and has its special and profound moral meaning and the significance of life philosophy. It not only criticized and dialectically sublated the ethics of Confucianism, Buddhism, Taoism, but elaborate the Economic Ethics, Political Ethics, Literature Ethics and life philosophy. Therefore, it became the precious spiritual wealth in the history of Chinese Ethics. Qin Guan pointed out that "the most important Tao of Su Shi is to think and discuss the morality,'Xing-Ming', and so on.……His discussions and articles are the way of dealing with the world. When you only discussed Su Shi's articles, it seemed to respected him but belittled him(《Haihai ji》volume 30《Da Fu Bin Lao Jian》). As one of the famous four students of Su, Qin Guan understood and learned the essence of Su Shi's thoughts deeply. Although Su Shi had numerous writings, but he thought the best writings were《Shangshu Jie》,《Lunyu Zhu》,《Pilin Yizhuan》, and so on. Huan Zongxi and Quan Zuwang selected Su's father and sons as the leaders of Shu School in their book----《Song yuan xue an》, and recommended Su's academic purposes as an academic School theory. In《Song yuan xue an》, the theory of Shu School was selected as a chapter to explain that although academia saw Su School as the heresy of orthodox, but still saw it as an important branch of Song School. Zhu Xi pointed out that Su Shi's ethics paid much attention to pursing the metaphysics of morals, just likes Wang Bi's excavating the righteousness and reasons, and to life things, using reality and practical reason as the dimensions of thinking, and had rich awareness for human being and was full of spirit of humanism. It can be said that Zhu Xi's comments is some accurate because he pointed out the intrinsic quality and orientation of value. In some sense, Su Shi's Ethics reflects the academic quality and spirit of that honor the virtuous nature and follow the knowledge, result in a vast and make subtle, sophisticated and the doctrine of the mean. The ethical wisdom that Su Shi's Ethics demonstrated clearly has the universal meaning and value of suiting both refined and popular tastes.Su Shi's ethics was produced in the special conditions of real life, history and culture during Northern Song Dynasty. In the political life of Song Dynasty, there were basic features of Monarchy of centralization, internal and external problems, the struggle between partisans, scholars were in charge of politics. In economic field, agriculture, handicrafts industry, business made significant developments. Socio-Economic showed new prosperity. Song Dynasty is the zenith period of development of ancient Chinese culture. Song culture showed obvious historic characters:the parallel of Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism, flourish of Official and Private School, advocating Confucianism and elegant, many Schools coexist. Su Shi, this giant of culture, was produced by this essential power of ideological culture of Song Dynasty. Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism were the main theoretical source of Su Shi's ethics. The Confucianism thoughts of playing active role in life, Serving our community and loving people, making profits for people became the main content of Su Shi's political and economic thoughts of ethics. Taoism thoughts of governing by non-interference, wayward freedom, broad-mined and following the fate were the dominant side of his philosophy of life. Buddhism was the important resource of his political thoughts of ethics, and thinking of art and philosophy. Su Shi's ethics is an integration of three religions and use Confucianism as the fundamental theory.In his political ethics, he inherited the theory of "people-oriented" of traditional Confucianism, and use "To Yao and Shun" and "In success, commit oneself to the welfare of the society" as his official goal, and formed the idea of moral value of People-oriented principle. He advocated that people is the foundation in the world, loving the people and benevolent government is the basic of governance of country and national stability, and emperor and all officials should love people and make the people's life safe. No matter which situation he stayed, loving people was his purse of value in all his life. The political aspiration of respecting emperor and serving people was established in all his life. He always created the benefit for the local people no matter where he was as an official. He made every effort to realize his political ideals and moral practice. His exemplary conduct and nobility for establishing imperial court and independent personality excited the later generations of scholars for the world heart, for the living people ritsumeikan, for the sanity to the following, peace open for all ages.In his economic ethics, he emphasized the possession of wealth by the people. His views on the righteousness and utility showed the obvious character of valuing profit and righteousness with equal footing. The utility emphasized by him is not individual benefits but the people's public profits, and all individual needs and rights to life. He also paid attention to material interests, realized the importance of material wealth in the political life of a country. His viewpoint that material wealth is related to national survival and death is the ideological foundation of his political ideas of benevolent policy and loving people and the moral sense of stressing on people's right, people's benefit.In his ethics of literary and art, he advocated that "there are morality and art", "both skill and morality should be made progress", and so on. We can induce a proposition of "learn art and reach to morality" which revealed the essence of art and creation law. Su Shi's thoughts of relationship to "poverty" and "write poem" reflected in three levels: "poets are often poor", "good poetry is produced in the poor situation", "poets can be made poor by pomes". He added and developed the Ou Yangxiu's theory of "to write good poems during poverty". He also focused on combination of character of articles and personality, history and literature, reader and text. In his writings, arts is a way to express good, and truth, goodness and beauty had reached to the harmony and unity.In his philosophy of life, he considered the life and society deeply, and formed his new and special philosophy of life by absorption and integration of traditional philosophy such as Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism. This kind of philosophy not only was based on reality, faced to reality, and beyond reality, but there was a new transcendence based on inheritance of life philosophy of Confucianism that obey the fate after try one's best to do things, and there is full of optimism spirit during the suffering life. This kind philosophy of life took him more rational and more freely beyond the fame and fortune in mundane world, and made him happy no matter where he was.The great charm of Su Shi's ethics reflected in the following respects:he created the special "Su School" or "Shu School" by integrating to traditional ethics of Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism, and added the new constituents to the ethics in Song Dynasty; he also made many contributions, such as his philosophy of life, the theory of human nature of feeling-based, consideration of essence of honest, thoughts of relationship between good, evil and temperament. His keen intuition deepened his experience of life and thought of morality. His extraordinary wisdom made him reach a new height about thinking life and morality, and obtain extraordinary theories purport. His ethics, especially his philosophy of life, is more rich, profound, and comprehensive, and there were more typicality and attractiveness than other thinkers of the past. Therefore, it became the target of emulation of later Chinese scholars, and influenced the generations of successor to select life mode and design cultural character.
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