A Study On Confucian Enlightenment Ideology

The first part of this paper puts emphasis on vertical presentation of origin and development of Confucian enlightenment thought and divides its development history into four stages, namely the beginning, development, improvement and crisis. The theory came into being in the pre-Qin period. Confucius, Mencius and Xuncius focused on theoretical construction. Confucius was the first to advocate safeguard universal peace and order and great harmony by folk education and restoration of the ritual and music, culture and education system of the Zhou dynasty in society at large, cultivation of gentlemen with noble characters such as loyalty, faithfulness, filial piety and righteousness. Mencius and Xuncius proposed theory of the original goodness of human nature and theory of the original evil of human nature respectively in terms of improving human’s virtue. Although, the two theories are different from each other, they both aim at human’s spiritual growth with the former emphasizing self-restraint conscience and expansion of the " four beginnings ":benevolence, righteousness, courtesy, wisdom and the latter emphasizing "prospering etiquettes and respecting laws" and transforming human’s nature by etiquettes and laws.Confucian enlightenment ideology developed and perfected from Qin and Han Dynasties to the middle period of Qing dynasty. Developments of Confucian enlightenment ideology are as follows:firstly, gradually perfection of related system, which laid a foundation for advancement of ideological system. For example, reverence of only the Confucian (idiom) ideology established the dominant position in state ideological education of enlightenment ideology. The nine-rank system and the imperial examination system also provide assurance for strengthening the mainstream position. Secondly, Confucian scholars represented by Dong Zhongshu continued to enrich related enlightenment system and conducted enlightenment at society, family and personal level. The public followed the examples of the filial and incorrupt and the candidate, the atmosphere of making ritual and music of the whole society gradually got stronger. The multi-ethnic interactions outspread via Confucian enlightenment ideology and thus it became the main tools kneading ideology and culture of all ethics. Perfection of Confucian enlightenment ideology lies in firstly, learned confucians such as Chang Tsai, Cheng Hao, Zhu Xi, Wang Yangming came one after another, who provided the intellectual foundation for advancement of the theories. They wrote books and set up theories, made lectures and established conventions thus laid foundations for perfection of Confucian enlightenment ideology. Secondly, system support was strengthened continually, thus the Confucian enlightenment ideology penetrated into all aspects of social production and living:interactions among different ethics and cultural advancement in remote areas were all associated with the dominance of Confucian enlightenment ideology, by then the Confucian enlightenment ideology had been well built both in theory and practice.However, the Confucian enlightenment ideology had been reduced to crisis in the face of domestic strife and foreign aggression since1840. The intellectuals were forced to start to seek for cultural and ideological breakthrough. Under the influence of ideological trends of " learning merits from the foreign to conquer the foreign",(?)eaming merits from the foreign for self-strengthening" and the impact of the save the nation from subjugation and ensure its survival movements such as the Westernization Movement and Hundred Days’Reform, the imperial examination system was abolished, feudal monarchy was eliminated and the western system was established instead and thus the Confucian enlightenment ideology lost its dominance and eventually got discarded.The middle part of the paper is mainly on the theoretical horizontal analysis. As a sound moral education system, it is based on self-discipline and stabilizing others with four principles of loyalty, truthfulness, benevolence and righteousness and aimed at self-cultivation and achievement outside, which meant facilitating the world’s advancement by self-improvement of the individual. The balance and harmony among the whole world could be sought on the basis of individual moral enhancement, which was evaluated by the standard of coordinated relationship between people and the objective world and the relationship between others and oneself and eventually the realization and perfection of well-off society with great harmony on the basis of self-improvement. In order to achieve this goal, practices in the four aspects of courtesy, music, politics and penalty shall be carried out. Feudal courtesy were aimed at self-discipline and fulfilment of the rites, cultivation of people with lofty ideals, restriction influence on people with courtesy with the internal logic of cultivation of people with good manners. Music education was provided with the essence of the "harmony as nature of music" to enhance people’s moderation and promote self-civilization with the mechanism of moderation linkage and music promoting harmony. Political civilization was to cultivate people with high virtues for social model to realize people civilization by gentlemen. It is also an important part of political civilization to lead people into a society with great harmony by, adhering to the concept that people are the foundation of the state. Penalty education was to f suppress the evil and supporting the good and restrict the evil in human nature into a maximum extent and thus guarantee flourish of goodness and commendation of morals and remind the people of single-minded purity and self-study and self-introspection and completion of moral enhancement in accordance with civilized code of ethics.Under the guidance of courtesy, music, politics and penalty civilization, the specific practices adhered to the unity of knowing and doing and carried out sageliness within and kingliness without. For oneself, the good manners of gentlemen must be pursued; for others, transforming human’s nature via etiquettes and laws and carrying forward Tao of sages. To be specific, the two education systems of official school and private school brought out the best in each other and social education and family education supplemented each other, and the people combined the customs with etiquettes and restraint customers with etiquettes in daily life to ensure the people live in a civilized environment of Confucian courtesy, music, politics and penalty so as to facilitate the lifelization and popularization of Confucian ideology. Therefore, the civilization of the masses the growth of national spirit were satisfactorily achieved.The following part focuses on theoretical comparison, aiming at gaining a comprehensive understanding of Confucian enlightenment ideology through multiple perspectives. After comparing it with Chinese education, the paper finds out that the two are obviously different in terms of objectives, directions, natures, connotations and use methods. The contemporary Chinese education aims at cultivating socialist successors and focusing on creating new socialist morality and the learning and the innovating of problem-solving ability. In terms of practices, a series of specific educational practices and activities revolves more on professional training and technique cultivation so as to bring up talents contributing to the social development. Confucian enlightenment pursues the all-around development of humans, which relies on life practices in essence, attempting at the unity of human morality growth and social values. Due to differences of historical conditions, the various indoctrination methods finally create a ubiquitous edification and indoctrination environment. People’s morality cultivation has gained inadvertent nourishment in the broad environment, which is better as invisible than visible.Compared with the enlightenment ideology of ancient Greek philosopher Socrates, from the perspective of similarity, both of them put emphasis on moral cultivation to enhance human ethical accomplishment and promote social civilization. Nevertheless, Socrates didn’t propose many ideas on the specific approaches. In comparison with the modern western enlightenment ideology represented by Hans-Georg Gadamer, they share a common pursuit of spiritual growth with different starting points. The modern western enlightenment ideology intends to change the irrationalism restlessness for the purpose of preventing human becoming "mechanic man" or "tool man" and hoping the aesthetic education would bridge the split of human rationality and sensibility and thus restore the perfect human nature. It is mainly dependent on some abstract media such as aesthetic experience and knowledge rationality, which is similar to shaping good man with good ideology. The whole enlightenment was based on metaphysical discussion. The Confucian enlightenment ideology put into practice of the power of thoughts by various means in addition to the metaphysical base.On the whole, merits and advantages of the Confucian enlightenment ideology outweigh its demerits and disadvantages. It provided spiritual motivation and ideological guarantee for the advancement of civilizations in all sectors of the ancient Chinese society and certainly, its negative impacts cannot be neglected. After all, after being used as ideological education tools by the ruling class, it contributed to the sovereignty unity, territorial integrity and social stability but also imposed control and restriction on the thoughts of human, which was adverse to social innovation and ideological emancipation. As a cultural thought with the brand of feudal society, there is still a gap between the freedom, democracy, justice and the Confucian enlightenment ideology, which is the fundamental reason why it couldn’t adapt to the times and eventually got discarded.