| Su Shi is a great master of essay writing in the history of Chinese literature. He has been a diligent prose-writer throughout his life, and left with us more than 4200 essays. Among them, his argumentative essays take a very prominent position and were also well received at his age. In his time, a contemporary of his Wang Pizhi said:"Su's essay is characterized with incomparable argumentation and noble style, and he is indeed as penetrating and lofty as an immortal in human's world."Within his argumentative essays, the argumentations are the perfect representatives. However, in contemporary academic circle, emphasis devoted to the study on Su's argumentations is still inadequate, and the study was also restricted to several famous essays and a few historical argumentations. There is no overall exploration to his argumentations, especially to the philosophical connotation of the essays and the development and changes in his essay-writing. Therefore, started with different features at different stages of his essay-writing and following the main line of his essaying writing, this thesis aims to examine the philosophical connotation of his earlier argumentations, the weak stage of essaying writing in his the middle of his life and the features of his historical argumentations in his senior years.This thesis is composed of four chapters:The first chapter covers two sections. The first section is devoted to provide a definition for the term"argumentation". In the thesis, argumentations are divides into broad and narrow senses. Argumentation in a broad sense refers to argumentative essays of many kinds, and it is a general term for all those argumentative and reasoning articles. While in a narrow sense, argumentation is a sub-type of argumentative essays, that is, the argumentative sub-type. This is because the ancients had considered the title and the writer's perspective in dividing different categories of essays. Therefore, argumentation is viewed as a part of the entire category of argumentative essays. The argumentation in this thesis refers to the argumentation in the narrow sense. By comparing argumentations with other similar style of writing, this thesis provides such a definition for argumentation: argumentation refers to a single piece of essay which is independent as a complete essay, clear in argument and adequate in demonstration. The second section presents a general introduction to Su Shi's argumentation writing, in which a simple chronicle for his argumentation writing is formulated which displays directly different stages of his essay writing. That is, his argumentations were mainly written at earlier period of his life when he had not worked as a government official and in her senior years when he had been retired from public service.The second and third chapters illustrate the philosophical connotation reflected in his earlier argumentations.The second chapter which analyzes his thinking at earlier stage of his life is also made up of two sections. The first section focuses on his benevolence and honesty, which is a significant part of his political philosophy. When he was young, Su was heavily influenced by the Confucius philosophy--"governing by virtue". And his benevolence and honesty was an inheritance and development of such a philosophy, which is usually reflected on two aspects: to be benevolent on policies and to be polite on morality. These philosophical ideas were indicated in his exams essays, and therefore the focus of the analysis is on his exams essays. The second section of this chapter investigates the philosophical ideas and extension of his argumentations On Mean. The three essays On Mean developed the connotation of the original The Book of Mean, and to some extent expanded its philosophical extension by integrating with his own understanding. It is a concentrated illustration of his earlier philosophical ideas and marks the maturity his philosophical thinking.The third chapter focuses on his"view on how to be a subject to the emperor"in his earlier year. According to him, as a subject to the emperor, one does not only need to have both talent and morality, also needs to have nobility in his personality. His view on how to be a subject is not at the abstract level, but on how to apply it in his public service activities. Therefore, his view on how to be a subject to the emperor is consisted of two aspects: the relationship between the minister and the emperor, and the relationship between an honorable man and the villains in the government.The fourth chapter includes two sections: the first section explores causes for the weakening of essaying writing which is mainly triggered by factors of two aspects including politics and literature at the middle of his life by summarizing his life experience. In the aspect of politics, when his government official career was smooth, the writing of official documents and practical articles replaces the function of argumentation; while, when his career as an official was unfavorable, the political pressure and fear for argumentative essays made him stop writing argumentations. The development of contemporary literature influences his essay writing from two aspects: in the first place, his dedication to the creation of poetry and other aesthetic literary works took up his time which could have been spent on essaying writing; in the second place, his poetry on the praise of history and reflection of the reality also narrows the space for argumentation writing. The second section analyzes the features of his historical argumentations in his senior years. A contrastive method is taken to examine the difference between"argument in the first place"in his younger year and"historical events in the first place"in his senior year. There are three differences in the historical argumentation writing between the two different stages which include differences in structure, style and focus. Therefore, Su Shi has his own unique style in historical argumentation writing, and there are also changes in different stages of writing which are worth our attention.
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