The Study About Wei Yuan's Political And Cultural Views

Wei Yuan was a coordinate figure in the beginning of China's modern history.He lived through the four dynasties of Qianlong?Jiaqing? Daoguang and Xianfeng.Throughout his life,he advocated the classical academic as the rule of ruling,focusing on the use of the classics.He advocated the national governance should be based on the classics.His works were prominent,most of which involve historical analysis and realistic investigation of political culture.The formation background of Wei Yuan's political and cultural views can be examined from two aspects: the ruling style of JiaDao emperor and his ministers and the political and cultural ecology of the group of scholars in JiaDao are the objective historical factors;Wei Yuan's family education,school education,reading history and communication with teachers and friends are the subjective historical factors to inspect the generation of his ideas.Wei Yuan's political and cultural views mainly includes the concept of heaven and the benevolent governmence,the concept of rule of law,the people-oriented thought,the outlook on talents and so on.He respected the heaven,believing that it was of great benefit to political governance to use the "Heaven" as a reference to human affairs and highlight the keynote of "Shinto teaching".At the same time,he also attached importance to the subjective and active role of human beings,and call o n the gentleman to "making destiny" or become "steadfastness" gentleman.He also advocated to strengthen our awareness of potential dangers to achieve the unity of man and nature.Wei Yuan proposed the rule of virtue and put forward that Wangdao is pure beyond morality.He advocated that politicians should be based on benevolence and virtue,and advocated "Filial Piety".He believed that "Filial Piety" was the foundation of learning,as well as the foundation of standing up for oneself and governing.Meanwhile,he urged us to study the ancient history and learn change.He also attached great importance to the rule of law.He explicitly advocated that "laws are the instrument of governance",and the rule by law in later generations is the inevitable development of the times.But he emphasized that both human and law could achieve good governance.He also further carried forward the people-centered thought,put forward the idea of equality between the emperor and the people,and paid attention to the people's participation and discussion of politics,the people's autonomous force and the people's join forces,etc.He also explicitly advocated the ideas of enriching the people with open source to increase income and profit.He considered both agriculture and business can get rich.Wei Yuan also put forward a systematic view of talents to deal with the increasingly serious problem of "deficiency of talents",advocated that not only the rulers should pay attention to talents,establish a good talent training mechanism,know how to recognize and employ people,but also called on the group of literati and officialdom to pay attention to the study of administer affairs,so that people can learn useful knowledge and to apply their knowledge.These reflect his concern and cognition about traditional political culture,including inheritance and affirmation,reflection and transcendence.Wei Yuan's political and cultural views not only involved profound theoretical thinking,but also had a concrete discussion on contemporary social reforms.With the development of the times and changes in his life experience,his focus on political culture was also different.In the early stage,he read a lot of classic books,and was deeply influenced by the traditional classics.He had already felt the overall trend of the country from prosperity to decline,so advocated the political view of "Wang Dao" from the whole,hoping to correct the deviation with the traditional ideal.This concept is concentrated in the book "Mo Gu".In the fifth year of Daoguang period,he began to compile the classics and records of the Qing dynasty.After that,he turned to reflect on the realities of the current political situation.In response to the drawbacks of " Ignorant people",he turned to the thinking of the real world politics,and pointed out the current situation of the Yellow River governance,the water transport,the salt administration and other urgent task,he proposed the view of the current situation reform and advocated partial reform.Only political maturity can seek treatment.After the Opium War,he advocated comprehensive reforms to deal with the real political crisis of internal and external troubles,emphasizing the idea of unity,proposing a new geographical world outlook,diplomatic views,and the theory of “learning from the advanced countries to compete with them”.These are Wei Yuan's series of proposals to reform the real society.Compared with his contemporaries,Wei Yuan's political and cultural views have obvious characteristics,which are mainly reflected in four aspects: people oriented spirit and value the ordinary people;emphasize the cause and contribution,rational suggestions;practical character and statecraft feelings;modern enlightenment and keep pace with The Times.Wei Yuan not only paid attention to people's livelihood,advocated valuing people and enriching people,but also realized the unive rsal significance and value of people.He emphasized that each person has his own ability and that each person makes the best use of his own ability,which reflected the essence of the humanistic spirit in modern times to some extent.He combined the Wang Dao with the contribution to enrich the people and strengthen the country,which highlighted the valuable rational spirit.Many of Wei Yuan's ideas came from his cognition of the traditional political culture,and he also paid attention to the actual political society.Some ideas were generated directly from the practical life,and could react on the realistic politics,making his ideas show obvious practical character and statecraft feelings.Wei Yuan was keenly aware of the development of The Times,and his thoughts could keep pace with The Times to a certain extent,that provided a good reference for the enlightenment of modern thoughts,such as the enlightenment of science,democracy,and the enlightenment of geographical world view and diplomatic view.The political and cultural views of Wei Yuan had a historical influence that could not be ignored.First,many of his works were popular at that time,and his ideas were recognized by his contemporaries to some extent.Second,his humanistic thought,new geographical world view,diplomatic view and the theory of “learning the technology from the advanced countries” had a profound effect on later generations.It not only directly became the guiding ideology of the westernization movement,but also inspired many thinkers of the WU Xu reform movement.In particular,the theory of “learning the technology from the advanced countries” has Influenced the course of modern China over the last hundred years.