Confucian Forgiveness Thought

As the founder of Confucianism and the master of Chinese culture, Confucius gives the civilization of Chinese and world a profound contribution.During 2000 years, we have been accustomed to focus on Confucius and Confucianism, whose fate encounter ups and downs, however, respected or attacked, they always insist on developments. All of this lies in that there are a lot of eternal and universal values in Confucius and Confucianism, which important one of them is Shu.Confronting with the actuality that the falling down of the ceremony and propriety, Confucius inherited the ethics such as tolerant, forgiveness, humility and so on which preserved in the culture of Xia-Shang-Zhou dynasties, hoped that the world can be saved by the transformation of human beings. So, he upgraded Shu to the height of one expression that can be acted upon until the end of one's days. This idea is also the consistent of his ethical ideology, political ideology and educational ideology.However, later scholars tend to believe that in the ideology of Confucius, the way of ZhongShu is much more inferior than authoritative conduct, ritual propriety and the doctrine of mean thought, therefore, they disbelieve that the way of the master is "Doing one's utmost and putting oneself in the other's place, nothing more" which was originally established by Master Zeng. In fact, some famous ancient Confucian scholars including Wang Bi, Huang Kan, Xing Bing, Kong Yingda, Zhu Xi and others have explained this issue and they shared the same views on this question, which is that the theory of ZhongShu(or Loyalty and Forgiveness) is Shu, and the meaning of it is that one should treat others devotedly and impartially, do your best to speculate others from your own. On the other hand, there are some phrase for example faithfully advice, respect, love and so on in books of Kong Cong Zi, Confucius Homely Talks and Analecs, which have the same structure with Zhongshu. Wherefore, the explanation is Consistent with Confucius.The issue to create conditions for human development is the utmost concern of Confucius. No matter the education theory that teaching all comers without discrimination, the pursuit of gentleman personality, or moral governing, the political ideal of Great Harmony in perfect society, this motive has never changed. As a result, he stressed that the rulers must Shu to the lowers, which is the measure to handle interpersonal relationships and mediate social conflicts, whose target is to maintain the orderly structure of the hierarchy society. Furthermore, in the days of Confucius, the authoritarian rule is not much stronger than later that the practice of Shu is much more liable. Therefore, we can say that the pursuit of Confucius in his whole life is just Shu, by which can convert the upper class and reverse the social chaos. Supposing that if there is no Shu, how all of them to be true. Clearly, Shu is just the one continuous strand with which Confucius bound his thought together.After Confucius died, the famous shoolars such as Master Zeng, Zisi, Mencius and Xunzi developed the theory of shu which is very important to Confucius. For instance, The Great Learning brought forward a way of devotion and forgiveness, which breakthrough the two-dimensional relationship and expanded it to three-dimensional one; Master Zeng is famous for his filial conducts, he advanced the thought of shu by means of advocating the method that correlating one's conduct with those near at hand.He expected to realize orderly relations among man by the extrapolation of filial conduct. Some newly unearthed materials such as the Bamboo-books in Guodian, show us the thought hold by the school of Zisi that governing in morality, understanding yourself before acknowledging others which provide a theoretical and practical feasibility for the implementation of Shu. The purpose of Mencius's theory for instance original good of human nature, four good hearts, policy of benevolence and benefits to give others is trying to seek out the foundation and support both in human nature and politics to carry out Shu. Xunzi believe that human nature is bad and the way to change them is education. So as to achieve an orderly society, he proposed that the thing you regard as evil is also other one's vice, therefore everyone should Considerate others.Obviously, the contribution to development and improvement for the theory of Shu is not only Confucianism, but also other schools'. The ideal put by Mozi that all people in the world should love each other made more persons affected by Shu, the viewpoint that standing for the unifying of concurrently love and interest, gave a conscious motivation to practice Shu. The thought encouraged by Laois that rulers should govern the country by doing nothing and the freedom advance by Zhuangzi are just the desire of virtuous governing. Legalist aware that pursuit of interests is human nature, but they also recognize that satisfy people before get their support. Especially the saying put forward by Guanzhong that do not impose upon others what you yourself do not want, do not impose things that disturb yourself upon others pionts out that only realize the nature of running after profit and avoiding evils can the ruler govern people well. Considering this, we can say that under various companies as which Confucianism the mainstream to work together, the theory of Shu reached its pinnacle of development in pre-Qin dynasty.Confucianism has turned into mainstream in thought kingdom since autocratism country established except in Qin dynasty, although it has encountered interrogation coming from Buddhism and Taoism. Integrating with politics, Confucianism emphasized the hierarchical structure by means of continuously raising the status of Zhong to meet the requirements of despotism, which led to that Shu became the vassal of Zhong and the relationship between Zhong and Shu overturned. The reason that the status of Shu became lower and lower in feudal society is the inevitable result that ideology and ethics must adapt to political system. With the culmination of the sovereign rights, Shu finally dropped to the bottom.With the exposion of feudal autocracy and the exacerbation of national crisis, all of this is broken down. More and more ideological trend of Social Criticism, more in-depth movements of saving nation provide peole living in different period and representing different class interests for the impetus to fight against Confucianism and the autocratic monarchy. Meanwhile, the publicity about freedom, democracy, equality and fraternity gradually raise the status of Shu. It's well known that, now we are confronted with five major crises and conflict, the problem that how to make Shu be to the important force to builde spiritual home, promote harmonious relationships and stable world order by measures of standing on the the high of People-Oriented, eliminating the inherent dross of Shu, drawing its reasonable essence and giving it a new interpretation increasingly attracted the world's attention. Fortunately, having experienced a "V" shape in more than two thousand years, Shu should be the Conscious pursuit of social ethics in contemporary China.Nowdays, the people's requirements on developments and freedom are much strongly than any era. The practice of people to addict in physical pursuit causes the damage of ethics such as conscience, do one's best to think about others, authoritative conduct and love, credit and honesty, etc, which leads to the alienation of man and the relationship between man and nature. In this case, human beings are looking forward to harmony. The way of regarding others as oneself, doing not impose on others what you yourself do not want, which is advocated by Confucius, is not only the lowest minimum code of ethics to friendly human relations, but the psychological security of harmonious development of man and nature. The intent to analyse and summarize the theory of Shu is to make people understand it better and serve for modern society. Accordingly, we should pay close attention to the disharmony things in our society and give good analysis of their roots. Only find reasons, can we possibly succeed in Solution. By means of a number of real examples, we conclude that the main reason that causes social problems is the poverty of ZhongShu. Moreover, the serious deficiencies in construction of culture, economy and system together contributed to the reduction of Shu. Therefore, it is necessary and urgent to summarize the developmentwe of Shu, demonstrate its huge value, play its strong educational use, strengthen the system construction of it, by which we can make the way of Shu become the highest inner virtue that human could reach and maintain. We expect that with the interaction of moral self-disciplines and restrictions of external standards, Shu can be turn into the must important cultural power source of coordinating interpersonal relationships, building a harmonious society and conducting dialogue among civilizations.It's sure that different period destines different habitude and content of Shu, which makes it impossible for us to recover and promote Shu that originated in classical times. The new Shu we need is the one that rejects the evil of hierarchy and focuses on a more equality, individual interests so as community-based, also it is the one with essentially different from ancient society that with real equality of modern civilization which respects for human nature, human rights, human dignity greatly.