Governance And Enlightenment

Unlike the previous dynasty of Song, the local government of Song Dynasty issued a large number of advisory proclamations related to all aspects of people's daily life and thoughts. The Song government wanted to control the thoughts of the people to consolidate its position by persuading people to develop nongsang and refine their behaviors by every levels of its government officials.This thesis tries to analyze the management of the central government and explore the management of the local government and its officials'political philosophy and study the people's reaction to the proclamations issued by their government on the foundation of the advisory proclamations. The whole thesis is divided into three parts:The first part studies the changes of the political management of the Song Dynasty. At the beginning of the Song Dynasty, the government set up the nong master to manage the farming stuff, but later it was cancelled and the idea of sharing the management of the country by nong master and san lao and li xu was dashed to the ground.Then the Song government turned to use the national power to civilize the villagers by issuing proclamations by the local governments.The second part analysis the educational function of the school in Song Daynasty.The Song government hoped to get to the maximum control of the people's thoughts by building a large number of schools. On the one hand, the local government officials took every kind of policy to encourage the people to go to school; on the other hand, the scholars who were not government officials traveled everywhere to take public lectures and disseminate ethical values in order to let more people accept the ideology of the ruling class.The third part explores the political philosophy of"preventive measures"in Song Dynasty."Prevention"is the core of the government policy in Song Dynasty. The government tried to indoctrinate the people to be shun-min, who would comply with the government unconditionally by propagandizing exemplary examples and tempering justice with mercy.Howere, because of the local officials were perfunctory with the instructions, the proclamations were always to be dead letters, and the advisory effect was greatly reduced.