| Confucius is the real pioneer of Confucianism. After Confucius, the works about researching Confucius’thought can be described as numerous. These works have researched either the content of Confucianism, or Confucius’thought on the impact of future generations. But there are few people researching Confucius’thought through the comparison between Confucius and his predecessors. In a sense, the reason why after Qin Dynasty, Confucius’thought occupies the dominant status is it inherited the tradition of thinking since Zhou Dynasty. Through the literature we can find the main idea of Confucius’ thought is not only how to govern but also how to improve themselves; not only existing social ethics but also have personal morality; not only existing social norms, but also personal standards; even discussion about emotional, gods and fate. We can also find that what constitute the main content of Confucius’thought mostly can be found its origin in his predecessors’ideas.Because of this, to comb the relationship between Confucianism and his predecessors is extremely important. This paper points out Confucianism has its source and also makes the progress, not conjuring up by Confucius but from inheritance and development of his predecessors, through combing the main ideas and concepts of his predecessors. Due to lack of background, many Confucius’remarks are difficult to understand its true meaning, but the remarks of Confucius’ predecessors all most all have their background conversations. So, it can also promote further understanding of Confucius’ thought through combing the sources of Confucius’thought.The contents mentioned above can be summed up three aspects:First, the source of Confucianism, second, what is the difference between Confucian and his predecessors, third, to promote the understanding of Confucianism through combing his thought.To simple concepts that lack background, it is difficult to grasp the specific meaning of them. Take the concept’De’ for example, it’s difficult to judge what is’De" if it is isolated or lack of specific reference. Normally, we always interpret this concept under our own knowledge background, so the wrong understanding tends to occur. Also take’De’for example, by today’s semantic context, it is always being understood as’moral’, and it is commendatory, but in ancient times’De’is not necessarily commendatory, not necessarily means’morality’, the specific meaning of’De’in ancient times depending on the specific circumstances and require specific analysis. So this literature has drawn more attention to the speeches that have background information, or to the records that have specific meaning about the contents of the concepts. In this way we can accurately grasp the specific meaning of concepts and ideas. The author uses comparison and analysis of the context to solve the three problems mentioned above. |
