Transmission And Transformation: Research On Social Edification Towards Life World In The Song Dynasty

The fundamentally meaning and function of edification is protecting and promoting human moral sense.The sense of morality lying in the human nature is as fragile as other emotions,and it is just the edification that extends and strengthens social meaning and function in human moral nature. The idea of "Form Chinese traditional moral customs through teaching and affecting in a long time" infinitely extends the potential of the subjective morality, endowing more social values to human moral instinct instead of confining itself into enclosed self-emotion. The publicity and convergence of human moral instinct make the traditional society a moral magnetic "concentric circles" field, and edification expands the field orderly. The edification played an important role on spiritual life in Chinese traditional society. After the end of Tang Dynasty and Five Dynasties, people were fully awared that spiritual construction and harmonious interpersonal relationship played an important role in the comprehensive society. The Song Dynasty thus ushered into a new era concerning on human spiritual life and special edification features.Social edification in the Song Dynasty was carried out downwards the society and people's daily life gradually. Based on people's daily behavior and family structure, the edification movement named "Family Regulation" was firstly launched in the early time of the Song Dynasty. With the "Ban on Family Break-up" Law, people were led into the spiritual course of "Family Regulation", which gave rise to the social changes on family values conception, thus family motto became an important way and access of social edificational transmission. With the further adjustment of political reforms and social class upside down rapidly, people came to realize that family was still lack of a steady external environment form and mechanism. Meanwhile, edification power had to seek an appropriate organization form to approach the daily life beyond government and school, and social elitegroup were also eager to obtain more power in the life world. Thus the reform was inevitable. In the ancestral idea, "Fan Shi Yi Zhuang" ---a new kind of educational organization founded by Fan Zhong-yan gave rise to a new vigorous move to social edification. In the mid-term of the Northern Song Dynasty,political reform initiated by Wang An-shi pushed the social reform to a high level, and the inner society reacted on many aspects. " LanTianLvShi Township" brought forth in this context.The initiation of "Lv-township" was a symbol that non-political organization had transcended the families and clans'visions and ideas to the public field. Those movements such as "Family Regulation", "Ban on Family Break-up", "Lv-township" caused a fundamental improvement in the social outlook. However the social morality custom was still behind times. The following political movement named "The Same Morality, The Same Custom" led a new crisis in society because of its retro-tendency. "Secret Religion" spread rapidly due to people's spiritual needs suppressed and political edification hardly affected.In the Southern Song Dynasty, the edification needs in people's daily life world was more urgent and stronger than that in the Northern Song Dynasty. Not only the universal spreading of printed books make folk culture risen, but also the increasing rate of social class upside down did promote the religionization reform of the Confucianism. The new characteristics that the religionization of the Confucianism and its spreading into folk life world appeared at that time.Zhu-xi's edification world comprehensively demonstrated that the religionization of the Confucianism and the new trend of opening-up public field. The new character promoted edification into life world. The transmission of folk school education with new features and the edificational raps in the life world perfected the social edification framework.Chinese traditional social edification has always been the background and supporting point of school education, while people are indifferent to it nowadays. If the situation goes on, we can hardly apprehend the true meaning of Chinese traditional school education development. History has proved that social edification is the basic conference on education research.Social edification and school education were a dialectic whole in people's spirit control.The Song Dynasty was a transition era with frequent social class upside down, rapid development in economy and culture, increasingly personal ambition and social edificational revival. In that context, the arguments of "Keeping Gracious Principles and Deleting Human Ambition" by Neo-Confucianist is not pure innovation in academic theory but the urgent and common needs of reality.Therefore, the experiences on traditional social edification are valuable and meaningful for our society becoming a harmonious one,and it is still valuable nowadays. People's mind and behavior which are always controlled by self-desire in our daily life, inflating ambition and pre-mature consumption make people push the ethics aside.The idea of "Keeping Gracious Principles and Deleting Human Ambition" is not appropriate to practise in modern society. But only can we give up the unreasonable and feudal elements in old ideas, it is worth researching on the dialectic relationships between "Keeping Gracious Principles" and "Deleting Human Ambition ".