The Trace Of Rationality:the Process Of Thought Evolvement From Confucius To Mencius

The paper conducts a dynamic research on the dividing generation and development of Confucianism from the perspective of academic history in an omni-directional pattern. During this process, we pay special attention to three aspects: firstly, we concentrate our efforts on lumping the social contexts, the political system, the profound history and culture, which have the great effect on the generation of Confucianism. Secondly, we highlight the intellectual content and logical structure in the Confucian doctrine. Thirdly, we discuss with most of the paper the fidelity and variation of Confucianism in the spreading process in the pre-Qin era and try to reveal the underlying reason behind the variation, in order to make exact representations of evolvement trajectory of Confucianism in pre-Qin era. The main chapters are arranged as follows:Chapter one, the historical and cultural background for the generation of Confucianism. This chapter is mainly divided into three parts to introduce. Part one is the ideological and cultural background of Confucianism. Based on the differentiating Li, Yue, De these three core conceptions and mainly revealing the relationship among the three we provide a comprehensive ideological and cultural background for better understanding Confucianism. Part two is the social and historical background. Based on the process from formation to collapse of the feudal patriarchal clan system, the distorted prosperity of LiYue culture, the life choices of intellectuals and the three major social thoughts of that times etc several aspects, we try to completely provide the social and cultural conditions of the times in which the Confucius lived. Part three gives a brief review of Confucius’character, ancestry and antecedents in order to detect the logical clues to explain the formation characteristics of Confucianism.The second chapter mainly talks about the major content of Confucianism. The first one is the harmony theory. The Confucius carried forward the thinking pattern beginning with the Duke Zhou for the relationship between human and heaven, abandoning the theological and religious ideas from which, and turned to imbibe the thoughts of humanism in the Spring and Autumn Period. By this way he brought more humanistic meaning and rational content to the relationship. The new concept emphasizes that the rational spirit of human can absorb wisdom from the law of Heaven, and then guide the real life to be orderly, rationalized, and to be social harmony ultimately. The second one discusses the relationship between Ren and De. Based on the carefully disentangling the relationship between Ren and De from Confucius’thought, we discriminate the fit between the concept of exercising perfect self-cultivation and benevolent governance and Confucianism in order to build a complete expression of Confucian ideology. The third topic is about education and aesthetics. The thought of amusing in the arts includes plenty of education theory and aesthetic ideas, which illustrates that Confucian attitude to education is objective, rigorous and subjective aesthetic.The third chapter mainly discusses the development and evolvement of the Confucian doctrine before the ascendancy of Mencius. Confucius’death, his disciples, as the point, his second and third disciples, as the wings, those who were the backbone power of the development of Confucianism in the early Warring States before Mencius rising for the inheritance of Confucianism. First, regarding the fact that the academic features of the seventy disciples are characterized by ambiguity, we just give a outline of the overall academic character of the Seventy Disciples’ scholarship in theory so that we can describe the development track of Confucianism on a complete academic chain. Second, Zisi scholarship is the climax in the history of Confucianism, so we concentrate on research into The Mean and its pivot roles in the development history of Confucianism after the simple differentiation of his writings. The third, we mainly discuss the Yueji and the GuodianChujian, which are the center of the scholarship of the younger disciples, and focus on their important accelerated action to Confucianism in the study of heart and mind. The content of chapter four develops the discussion mainly in the comparison of Confucius and Mencius thoughts. As the most outstanding successor of Confucianism, the thought and doctrine of Mencius are enough to become a historical monumental in the Pre-Qin academic history. The first reason is that Mencius worked out a package of framework for social system and sketched the social blueprint guided by the theory to the details, and so he changed the intertwined situation between morality and politics in Confucian doctrine. The second one is that Mencius clearly advocates the human beings are primarily altruistic. During the pursuit of the human nature the real perfection is not only to be oneself, but also to be all themselves even more. Mencius emphasizes the unity between humanity and morality, the oneness of morality and the heavenly in his theory of human nature. The utmost glorious point is the legislating for the human nature in morality and in the heaven’s name, which is also generally accepted by the people.