Research On Xuncius' Thought Of The Doctrine Of Cultivation

The traditional confucianists attach great importance to the doctrine of cultivation. ie. one's understanding of morality and the practice of it . Confucius advocates the principle of the doctrine of cultivation is the one of self-cultivation. Xuncius, who claims himself to be the follower of Confucius, has the greatest esteem for him, and also lays stress on it. However, there's a great distinction between the two. First, Xuncius'thought of the doctrine initially does not aim at moral-forming or cultivation of whole man purely. He puts it forward as a means to realize objective, external goal. what's more, his magnificent and thorough social political ideal is based on the doctrine of cultivation for all the humans. Second, in order to stress the importance of the means, Xuncius has to presuppose evil of human nature in the aspects of experience and fact. As it were ,the so-called doctrine of self-cultivation can be fully explained by individuals, but as to Xuncius the next question is how the doctrine can be possible. Xuncius believes, first human's sensory organs and mind can be combined so as to understand the objective world exactly; second, with the help of his inborn materials, human can transfer the principles of the objects to the field of morality by way of reason within the same category. At the same time, Xuncius also regards an individual's innate judgement can not help to bring about the recognition and practice of humanity and righteousness, and regulations; the cultivation of morality must be supplemented with rigorous ceremonial rites and regulations, dignified monarch and masters, and legal, moral utility and other external reliances, which can make it possible. Although Xuncius also advocates the doctrine of self-cultivation, his way of thinking which gives equal weight to both morality and rules by law will unavoidably replace self-discipline with external restraint so that moral ethics will be replaced by regulative ethics; What's more, his fabrication of monarch and masters'morals and talents through his own wishful thinking gives theoretical backing to autocratic monarchy; besides, setting utility as the motivation for individual's doctrine of cultivation will lead to the prevailing of utilitarianism so that utility will give service to morality and morality will become the appendage of utility distribution .If so, self-discipline will become meaningless and its position will be gradually marginalized until it vanishes. When the society is in bad need of self-discipline, and people appeals for re-establishing the doctrine of self-cultivation, it is very necessary to take out Xuncius'thought of the doctrine of cultivation from Confucian morality thoughts, and analyze its negative influence.