Between Worship And Criticism Of Confucius: Self-lost Of Academic Research

As a great thinker, educator and founder of Confucianism during our history, Confucius was concerned by people from empire to grass-roots, and never left the stage of history for thousands of years. The people who admired him regard him as "a great sage" and "a model of virtue", pay homage to him; the people who hated him treat him as "hypocritical devil", and gave too much condemnation and slander. Confucius became one of the highly controversial figure during Chinese history, with different comments of worship and criticism. The image of Confucius had been become indistinguish in different voice of praise and debasement. This thesis intended to disclose the non-scientific nature of culture viewpoint which based in Chinese society steadily, and defined the responsibilities of intellectuals, basing on reviewing the variational image of Confucius, analyzing the means and methods which the intellectuals used to reshape the image of Confucius, so that we can set scientific culture outlook. This thesis used abundant materials and previous researches. By putting the variational image of Confucius in the background of china's evolution of ideology and culture, we can find the self-lost phenomena which exist in Chinese academic research process. By doing so, we tried to recover the truth of history and care the reality of our society. This thesis has three chapters, the content as follows:The first chapter: the historical change of Confucius image. This chapter mainly analyzes the historical change of the image of Confucius, adequately display the specific process in which each dynasty's intellectuals reshape the image of Confucius. This chapter includes three sections. The first section discusses from pre-Qin dynasty to the Qing dynasty, the image of Confucius is from ordinary people to saint. The second section discusses from late Qing to the eve of new republic of china, the Confucius' status was up and down influenced by the theme of the times. The third section discusses from the founding new republic of china to today, with the changing of the theme of the times, changing of the image of Confucius has new tendency.The second chapter: traditional means and methods which the intellectuals used to reshape the image of Confucius. This chapter analyses how the intellectuals in different dynasties to reshape the image of Confucius. The emergence of the false Confucius in history has some relationship with the non-scientific methods which intellectuals used to reshape the image of Confucius. The methods which intellectuals used result in constant distorting of the image of Confucius, and misleading the academic research. The author discusses from four aspects: fictitious gain; deify Confucius; out of context, the increase ideas of Confucius and the intentional misreading.The third chapter: fortune and misfortune: the back of the symbolist Confucius. This chapter is on the basis of previous two chapters, mainly analyses the bad quality of Chinese intellectuals which reflected from the process of change of the image of Confucius. It is the long existence of bad quality of Chinese intellectuals that leaded to self-lost of the real worthiness of academic research. The author discusses from three aspects: first, Confucius and power has institutional relationship; second, there were interest groups between intellectuals and rulers; third, from the intellectuals themselves, the intellectuals who often drop into trouble in the dilemma of development Dao and dependence on power.