Zeng Guofan 's Ethical Thought And Its Contemporary Value

Home letter culture, inherited by generation, is an important part of Chinese traditional culture. Home letter always generates and plays an important role to Chinese traditional ethical ideas with its special cultural features. The ethical ideas implied in the home letters of Tsceng Kuo-fan, a politician in Qing Dynasty, represent essence of home letter culture, which also push this culture to a brand-new height and produce far-reaching influences.Tsceng Kuo-fan’s home letters were free but precise in style and form which implied many wise ideas and thoughts in daily affairs and fully reflected his ethical ideas in personalities and behaviors, family management and country governing as well as his extraordinary life course. The ethical ideas in Tsceng Kuo-fan’s home letter took Confucianism as origin, Neo-Confucianism as basis and Huxiang culture as primary, ancestors’ doctrine as source and good teacher and friends as approach which learned widely from others’ strong points and were inclusive to show an intact ethical view.This paper mainly extracted essence of ethical ideas in Tsceng Kuo-fan’s home letters and then gave a profound analysis and summary in the hope of providing guidance and reference to current society. This paper is mainly composed of the following parts:Part One mainly discussed personal growth background and social and historical background of the formation of these ethical ideas in his home letters. This is the origin and start point of his ethical ideas including influences of his school life and army life on his thoughts as well as social, economic and cultural background of the formation of his thought. Part Two is the main part which extracted main ethical ideas from his home letters including personal ethical ideas, family ethical ideas and social ethical ideas. This part gave an overall and detailed summary of his ethical ideas to further show his intact ethical ideas system. The last part gave conclusion and comments on Tsceng Kuo-fan’s ethical ideas from pros and cons and stated its significance and value in detail in modern society.Therefore, we can dig out a large amount of valuable ethical ideas through studying Tsceng Kuofan’s home letters which will definitely provide beneficial enlightenment and guidance in implementing ideological education, maintaining social ethical orders, realizing self-development, promoting incorruptible government construction and further accelerating all-round and harmonious social development.