The Historical Vicissitude Of Chinese Traditional Loyalty

In the traditional moral system of Chinese nation, loyalty has been the most important virtue, and was obeyed and respected as the primary political moral for a long period.Scholars now generally agree that loyalty appeared in the Spring & Autumn Period as a moral consciousness, and it could be traced back to the late primitive society, it was a positive attitude to each other then. Till the Warring States Period, the role of loyalty evolved along with the breakup of the patriarchal clan system and social transformation, the bidirectional loyalty to each other turned gradually to an unidirectional loyalty to the emperors.Since Qin and Han Dynasties, with the system of prefectures-counties and the monarch centralization strengthened, the "three Cardinal Guides" turned to be the national ideology, and loyalty became the primary moral. The moral supremacy of loyalty had never been wavered from then on. Although the long chaos from Three Kingdoms period, Jin, the Northern and Southern Dynasties, Sui and Tang Dynasties to the Five Generation impacted on the practice of loyalty to the emperors, the basic principal of loyalty didn’t change. In the Song Dynasty, Neo Confucianism demonstrated the sacredness and superiority of the three Cardinal Guides, especially Jun Chen Gang, and loyalty toward the emperors turned into unchangeable "justice" and the most important political moral principles. After the enhancement of monarchy in Song, Yuan, Ming and Qing Dynasties, people were bound up in fetters of loyalty.Moved into the modern era, the Three Cardinal Guides were criticized severely by both the bourgeois reformists and revolutionaries, and were repudiated finally during the May 4th New Culture Movement.Although loyalty imprisoned people’s thinking for thousands of years, it’s the other way a traditional virtue. It makes sense to study the evolution of traditional loyalty and convert it into contemporary loyalty. The rational core of traditional loyalty is not only the morality gene of Chinese nation spirit, but also the traditional culture roots of practice the core socialist value.