Mo-tse And His Times Two Samples Of The Mo-tse's Thoughts Study

There was one tendentious problem in the study of Chinese thoughts history in the twentieth century. It ignored the society circumstances and the times backgrounds, explained the thoughts of the ancients by the subjective imaginations, guess and the metaphysical preconceived ideas. This tendency resulted in the phenomena that different people gave different opinions, and conflicted with each other in the study of thoughts history. The study of thoughts history lacked basic reliability, and deviated from the scientific study. Furthermore , the study of thoughts history always ignored the pertinence of the issue that the thinker put forward , failed to grasp the essences and the main points of the ancient thoughts .The thoughts is a manifestations and part of human culture ,and relates to the other parts of culture deeply. If we did not pay importance to the other tightly related factors, we can riot understand the thinkers and the thoughts history correctly and completely. This dissertation try to understand the thoughts of Mo-tse from the new point of view, by adopting the study methods of society history, reviewing the society conditions of the times that Mo-tse lived, emphasizing the pertinence of his thought, combining with the times backgrounds.This dissertation has four parts:The first part mainly reconsiders the understandings on the thoughts of Mo-tse by discussing the reasons of criticism each other between Confucianist and Mohist, many of the past research are based on the subjective imaginations or the metaphysical preconceived ideas, ignoring the characters of times which the thoughts emerge and its pertinent significance .Although some scholars have point out that the study of thoughts history should pay attention to the relation between the thoughts and society conditions, it is difficult to practice. So this dissertation attempts to grasp the essence and times sense of the thoughts of Mo-tse by analyzing the society and times conditions.The second part analyses the thoughts of Jie yong Jie zang(节用节葬).At that time, the society is of poverty, the increase of the society wealth is very difficult, the upper classes of society are luxurious and wasteful, there is the characters of thosebelow follow the example of those above in the Chinese culture. These phenomena of society and culture make Mo-tse realize the important significance to call for frugality. Mo-tse put forward this idea, which is not determined by the class status of small producer, which is the outcome of the society circumstance, having intense pertinence and the character of times.The third part discuss the social roots of Mo-tse's thoughts of Tian zhi Ming gui (天志明鬼). At the times Mo-tse lived, the aristocrats' behaviors were dissolute because of the indifferent to the religion and the laxity of the moral restrictions. At the same time, the society lacked the equitable and effective reward and punishment mechanism, furthermore in the early periods of China the legal system' was imperfect. It seemed impossible to manage society by the power of man, so people placed the hope of reward punishment and social management on the power of the God and ghost again. The Chinese original religion serve for the politics in nature, which make Mo-tse utilize the supreme authority of the God and ghost to realize the management of society again. This thought is not the counteraction to the trends of times, or the retrogression of the human rationality, but the manage plans which Mo-tse put forward aimed at the society actuality.The fourth part summarizes some tendencies in the study of thoughts history, emphasize the importance to pay attention to the times backgrounds and the socialconditions in which the thoughts emerge. The thoughts are the offspring of the times and society, so the study of thoughts should combine the thoughts with the times backgrounds and the social conditions, understand the pertinence of the thoughts, grasp the essence and main aspect of thoughts. The study of thoughts should be based on the social circ...