On Confucious's Thought Of Speech Relating To The Rhetoric

Confucius, who lived in the last years of Chun-Chiu, is considered the greatest of the ancient Chinese sages, and his thought is very rich. On the basis of Confucius's words and deeds recorded by the Analects, this article will select "speech" as the point of penetration, in order to discourse his attitude and request in the term of speech, and make a further analysis of some literary or rhetoric problems concerning that; Meanwhile, the thoughts of other thinkers in the same period will be also referred to as a reference and comparison. Through all of this, this article tries to manifest one aspect of the scene in the period of Spring and Autumn and Warring States, of its speech, grace and characters.The article will be divided into three parts to discuss this problem:The first chapter will illustrate Confucius's attitude towards speech and analyze the reason of that; and at the same time, a comparison between Confucius and other thinkers, such as Mo-tse, Mencius, Hsun Tzu, Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu, is also provided. Starting from the first chapter, the second and third one will discourse speech as an activity and a kind of rhetoric respectively. As an activity, Confucius has put forward many principles and requests for speech, which based on his idea of moral cultivation. As a kind of rhetoric, speech is connected with the old literary topic-the relationship between form and content. Chapter three will firstly analyze Confucius's thought of the word Wen, and then show his practice on rhetoric through the analysis of his daily words.