Jia Yi’s Political Philosophy Toughts

As a prominent ideologist and politician of early Western Han Dynasty, the thinking of Jia Yi is extensive and in-depth. Though much of his thoughts have been explored by scholars in history, which contributes valuable treasure to the descendant, it is still like inexhaustible treasure. It generates new idea each time when people read it. Thus, it is of great value to further study the thinking of Jia Yi from different angles, widening the value of his thoughts.Based on the text of Jia Yi’s thinking, I reconstruct the system of his thoughts and discover that there is always a main idea driving his political ethics. This idea is his political philosophy ethic guided by Tao ontology. Jia Yi’s political philosophy thoughts mainly include People oriented,’Unification’, Ritual thoughts which combination with Rite, Justice and Humaneness, and cultivating all the people in society, which all guided by Tao ontology.He considered the metaphysics of Tao as consistent basis of constructing his whole ideological system and held the idea that ’the origin of nature is called Tao, and Tao generates Te, Te is based on Tao.’Then, he thoughts that there are six theories in Tao, and they are Tao, Te, Life, Spirit, Wisdom and Destiny. Meanwhile, there are six virtues in Te, they are Tao, Humaneness, Justice, Loyalty, Integrity and Elegance. Because of having these six theories and six virtues, Te can generates Yin and Yang, nature, human and everything, and can be the base of everythig. All the things will be perfect if they have the Te’s care. It requires people’s behavior respecting, representing and in accordance with Tao. If it is leads to the important problem of Emperor how to govern the country, thus, not only the problems between external and internal contradiction of different classes, but also the problems of ethnic minorities relationships and monarch-subject relationships, and even to economic development and educate all the people in society, should base on the prerequisite of’respecting, representing and in accordance with Too’ when settling them. This helps to realize the state of harmony, unification in whole country and even in the whole world in the end, which is the final destination of Jia Yi’s political philosophy thoughts guided by Tao ontology. This is a logical process about mutual relation between Jia Yi’s political philosophy thoughts guided by Tao ontology and its institutional practice. It is also a kind of relations between ontology and practical theory.Guided by Jia Yi’s political philosophy toughts which based on Tao ontology,Jia Yi raised a series of constructive institutional practice strategies to Wen Di of Han Dynasty, concerning how to revive the empire. The strategies include’construct more vassal states so as to less their powers’, which helps stabilizing social orders; emperor conquering with virtue instead of force when dealing with Xiong nu, competing for supports from common people and showing friendship by the means of’san biao’and ’wu er’ to people in Xiong nu. He even held the idea that the soldiers could demobilize and live common life. This presents the idea of unity of cosmology. His ritual thoughts which combination with Rite, Justice and Humaneness, show the status of Humaneness based concept. His unique thought of people oriented and people benefited concept, which brings rich and stable life to people, in largely balance the benefits of the ruler and the ruled. It is of great value under the social background at that time. His creative education thinking highly emphasizes the relation between education and politics. His focus on princes’ education so as to educate the society with virtue shows his best wishs to construct an ideal society.Looking on all the specific practices raised by Jia Yi, we will find that he is pursuing a status of obeying Tao in all his thoughts. Comprehensively understanding his political philosophy thoughts based on Tao ontology will greatly benefits the descendant thinkers and politicians. It is of significant importance to integrate the concept of Tao ontology and complying with Tao and Te into policy making. In current society, if this can be used as a standard in dealing with social issues or international relationships, it will largely encourage the construction of harmonious society.It is a great try of this paper by taking unique research angle to view Jia Yi’s political philosophy thoughts based on Tao ontology and trying to enlarge the value of his thoughts. Moreover, it theoretically develops some valuable ideas of Jia Yi’s work, such as the concept of competing for supports from common people in Xiong nu and soldiers could demobilize and live common life, and they are made use as the reference of current society.