A Study Of Confucian Jinde In Pre - Qin Dynasty

“Yong”,“Ren” and “Zhi” were treated as “three eminent moralities” of Confucianism inChinese traditional culture.“Yong” was one of the important ideas of Confucian thought system.and showed the Confucian ideal personality. As one kind of noble moral quality and mental state,“Yong” represented spiritual power of the fortitude, courage and unswerving, which pursued theperfection. Though Confucius, the founder of the Confucian, did not give a clear definition of theconnotation of “Yong”, he put some ideas, such as “Knowing shameness was near Yong”,“Yongafter knowing shameness”,“Yong without manners was disorder”, and “Seeing justice withoutaction was not Yong”. Then “Yong” coupled with “Ren”,“Yi” and “Li” became one kind ofquality closely related to Confucian inner idea.“Yong” turned to be one important way to realize“Ren”. Pre-Qin Confucian scholars builded up a complete and rigorous personality theory in theprocess of pursuiting moral perfection and expect to achieve the gentleman state throughimproving perfect personality of “Zhi”,“Ren” and “Yong”. What’s more, we could make socitysteady and harmony. Thus, Confucian courage is not a simple, common sense and resolute strongand brave and bold, but with rich connotation and ethical significance. Therefore, Confucian“Yong” was not like courage and unswerving. It had abundant meaning and ethic implication.Academics payed more attention on moral category of “Ren”,“Yi”,“Li”and “Zhi”. However,“Yong” was studied little and stayed in the level of overall research. The scholars, who oncestudied “Yong”, mainly studied defined from the angle of Ethics and Psychology and confined totalk about its mental connotation. Its moral category was never discussed. Therefore, this articletryied to briefly expound “Yong”, one kind of Pre-Qin Confucianism’s thought and was sincerelytaught by scholars.This paper made research of “Yong”, one kind of the Pre-Qin Confucian thoughts, from theangle of intelectual history. The research based on widely collected data and the basis ofinheriting predecessors’ research results. The article was divided into six chapters. In the firstchapter, we briefly discussed the evolution process of word “Yong” and its connotation, tracedorigin of “Yong”, and explored its process of development and improvement. In the secondchapter, we emphatically probed into the construction of Confucius’s “Yong” thought, which wasinitially formed the thought based on “Ren”, guided by “Yi”, fixed by “Yi” and supported by“Zhi”.In the third chapter, we mainly discussed the viewpoint of Confucius’s students, such asYan-hui, Zi-lu and Zi-xia and vividly displayed “Yong” from three different angles. In the fourthand fifth chapters, we respectively discussed the Confucian scholars of the Zhan-guo period.They are Mencius and Xuncius, who developed and improved “Yong” thought. In the sixth chapter, we briefly evaluatedthe value of “Yong”.To sum up, the Confucian “Yong” constituted the Confucianism’s most powerful intrinsicmotivation and reflected one kind of spiritful trends of pursuit of goodness. It made deepinfluences on forming perfect personality and the Chinese national spirit.