Research On Tang Zheng's Social Controllable Idea

This article, with the approach of history, politics, sociaology, interprets the social controllable idea of Tang Zheng's , a thinker at the end of Ming dynasty and the early of Qing dynasty, and thinks that Tang Zheng's idea can be divided into following parts: seeing people as foundation, the control of ruling class in federal society, social controllable means of primary morals and secondary torture and the social controllable mode of combining the public, privacy and morals. Seeing people as foundation is a requirement for ruling class, so it can included in the social controllable idea for federal ruling class. The social controllable mode of combining the public, privacy and the morals is, in nature, an idea of moral control, thus it can be included in the social controllable idea of primary morals and secondary torture. In sum, Tang Zheng's social controllable idea includes two parts: the social controllable idea for federal ruling class and the social controllable mode of primary morals and secondary torture, while the latter is for common people. That is to say, Tang's social controllable idea can be divided into the social control for ruling class and ruled class. As a federal scholar, Tang Zheng's Social Controllable System is based on the essential benefits of federal landlord class among whom monarch is their representative. Thus it wasn't free from the limitation of federal politics, history and culture although it has the nature of enlightenment. However, what's important is that, in the situation that upheaval was just put down at the end of Ming dynasty and early Qing dynasty, he can put himself in common people's place and speak for them and put forward to his own idea about social control with the hope that he can bring benefits for common people by implementing his idea. So it has strong flavor of seeing people as foundation, which influences and dominates other components of Tang Zheng's social controllable idea. In a word, the whole system of Tang Zheng's Social Controllable idea is based on the idea of seeing people as foundation and reorganizing federal ruling class; Its main content is social controllable means of primary moral and secondary torture and the combining of collective, privacy and moral. Those aspects of the system influence and complement each other aiming at bringing peace to the country and making the country more stronger and people more richer. Although there is much in Tang Zheng's Social Controllable Idea from which we can draw lessons, such as, the thought of the rich and the poor subsidizing each other, the thought of social harmony, the idea of combining morals and torture, etc. and nowadays those thoughts are still useful in administering a country. Similar thoughts have ever played very important roles in Chinese history. However, comparing with the social controllable idea in western countries that people should keep themselves within the bounds of laws and regulations, the social controllable idea that overemphasizes the regulatory role of morals obviously lags behind the times and can't adapt to social development and change. Thus in general Tang Zheng's social controllable idea is a historical and spiritual phenomenon that we should develop its useful thought and discard what is obsolete.