On The Zhongshu The Great Unified Political Thinking

Dong Zhongshu and his political thought holds an important position in Chinese ancient thoughts. As a famous political thinker and founder of apotheosized Confucianism, he is prestigious for 'the head of Confucians 'at that time. It is in Dong Zhongshu's thought that the development of Confucianism has underwent a great turn from prominent idea to official theory, which is symbolized by Emperor HanWu's solely reverencing Confucianism and rejecting the others. His initiation of 'unified whole' in political thought based on philosophical 'induction of heaven and mankind' has played an active role in retaining the formed unified whole political situation, also greatly affected the development of feudal political thoughts. 'Unified whole', the core of Dong Zhongshu's political thought, includes political unification, ideological unification and national unification, the three of which interact on each other. The feature of 'unified whole' lies in its' digest of different genres and embroidering the idea of YinYangWuXing into Confucian ideological frame. The Confucianism reformed by Dong Zhongshu fits the needs of Han Dynasty to maintain monarchic absolutism and realize the unified whole. Meanwhile it is immediately combined with political reality, which earns itself the dominant position in ideology. In history Dong Zhongshu has been the target of many praises as well as imputations because of his proposition of 'unified whole', which is the focus in evaluating Dong Zhongshu's political thought. This dissertation, resting on epoch character of XiHan, begins with the formation of Dong Zhongshu's 'unified whole', then expounds the 'TianRenSanCe' and relevant part of 'ChunQiu FanLu', aiming to finish a relatively systematic study of Dong Zhongshu's main idea and form reasonable comments on his political thought, which highlights its epoch spirit and historical significance in political thoughts.