An Analysis Of Qiu Jun's Thinking From "Supplement To The Exposition Of The Great Learning

As a well-known political figure and a vanguard thinker in the middle period of the Ming Dynasty, Qiu Jun (1421 ~ 1495) was at the same time a fruitful writer with a lot of influential works, whose masterpiece, "Supplement to the Exposition of the Great Learning", substantial in content, is a book of guidance for empires to rule over their states.The present article is to undertake a systematic and comprehensive analysis of the original source and background settings of the incarnation of Qiu Jun's thinking and his propositions on politics, economy, culture, education, law, military and the likes. The writer of this paper is in the belief that Qiu Jun's thinking bears no little signs of the historical background of his days, his family origin, his life as an official, his personal character and temperament, and his learning and self-restrain. His thinking comes mainly from "The Great Learning" and "The Exposition of the Great Learning", filled with the ideologies of pre-Qin Confucian canon, and those of Confucian scholars in the Han, Tang and Song Dynasties, as well as the priori of recovering from fall and enforcing law-and-order in the historical records. The essence of Qiu Jun's thinking is that people are the foundation of the state; its main feature is the application to practice and further expounding of Confucian morality; and the ultimate purpose of this people-based thinking is to consolidate the landlord feudalist ruling system and ensure peace and stability in the Min Dynasty. Qiu Jun's thinking summarizes and expounds, inherits and develops the Confucian ideologies in state-ruling before the Min Dynasty. His thinking even exceeds the range of the traditional Confucian ideology in certain aspects, so that the bourgeois ideological thinking can be recognized in it. "Supplement to the Exposition of the Great Learning", a comprehensive expression of Qiu Jun's thinking, proves to be an inclusive encyclopedia of state-ruling ideologies in ancient China. Owing to the historical limitations and class prejudice, Qiu Jun's thinking has its drawbacks; we should discard its dross and select the essential and, carry forward the excellent Chinese traditional culture and make it play its part in the construction of our modernizations.