The Dissimilation Of Scholars During Ming And Qing Dynasties

There are four ranks in ancient China: scholars,peasants,industrialists and businessmen. People in all ranks follow their own rules, do their own jobs. Scholars are the head of the four ranks, having the responsibilities of"cultivating themselves, thriving their families, ruling their country and making the world peaceful"; and they believe that"there must be golden houses in books, and also there must be beauties in books". In the middle and late period of Ming dynasty, with the development of commodity economy, general mood of Ming society has changed a lot. People at that time advocated extravagance and flashy. At this time traditional ZHU Xi's Confucian ideology was influenced greatly, and Xinxue and other thoughts were gradually accepted by most people; in this situation, scholars at the end of Ming Dynasty showed their differences from the traditional scholars. This change did not happen in one night, but it experienced long time's development, and finally break out completely at the end of Ming Dynasty.The period between Ming and Qing Dynasties was one in which utilitarianisms soared. At that time, a current of pursuing wealth spread all over the society; unprecedentedly were publicized the secular utility value. Utility was considered to be the only standard of value among businessmen and in the areas where commodity economy was developed. Money worship is the extreme presentation of the secular utility values. The upsurge of money worship of that period was the hallmark of awakening and liberation of people's utility consciousness. People at that time did not completely fall into non-moralism, but they paid attention to moral utilitarianism. The change of general mood of society caused the change of scholars'value, moral and philosophy, i.e. the dissimilation of scholars mentioned in this thesis. They escaped to Dhyana and longed for hermits; gave up Confucianism and were engaged in business; addicted themselves to pleasure, which showed that the feudal sequence was lashed and the scholars were re - choosing their own lives.The resources in Ming and Qing Dynasty are numerous, while in the period between Ming and Qing Dynasty, because of the weaker controlling of feudalistic country, and of the tradition of scholars that they liked debating since a long time ago, either official history books, unofficial history books or secular readings such as novel, jokes all included rich resources, and had great study values. In historical field, the research achievements on the scholars at the end of Ming Dynasty are rich. Only relevant historical papers are no less than one hundred, and there are many relevant books having be published one by one. They all provide much convenience for my writing this thesis.This thesis can be divided into three parts: introduction, body and ending. The introduction mainly explains"scholars"in details. The body can also be divided into three parts. The first part is the formation of scholars'characters in Ming Dynasty, and aims to show that this dissimilation of scholars at the end of Ming Dynasty did not happen in one night, but experienced long time's development since the beginning of Ming Dynasty. The second part states the dissimilation of scholars in details. The third part analyzes the reasons for appearance of this phenomenon. The ending is the solution of the whole thesis. However, there are some limitations in this thesis, which needs to be studied further.