From Heaven, Ethics To Politics

"As Heaven's movement is ever vigorous, so must a gentleman ceaselessly strive along; As Earth's movement is very generous, so must a gentleman take actions with good virtues." This is the most outstanding thought of the nature of law reflected in "Book of Changes". The Chinese traditional thought of the natural law has a deep effect on Chinese traditional culture, which is taught and developed simultaneously with Confucianism, shism, and Taoism, regarding Confucianism as the mainstream.When we define Chinese traditional culture, we should emphasize its function rather than its contents. To culture, although it is the content and structure of culture that stipulate the choice of cultural issues and its function, the function decides the format and the content of culture. So, the function of culture is determining its essence more deeply than its content. From the formulation of culture and its gradual progress, the culture is formed, evolved and constructed with the construction of social life. And this produced its essence. So we can say that it is the function that culture meets mankind's needs has determined the essence of culture. On the other hand, a culture, especially a kind of whole culture will have many kinds of different functions. But it is the basic nature that has determined its main function, and such main function is influencing the nature of other functions deeply, making other functions subordinate to and serve such main function. And the above-mentioned logic is exactly the basic proof that we judge cultural nature. We think Confucianism is the political and philosophical and ideological system of structuring politics with ethics. The reason why we determine the nature in that way lies in that the function to politics of Confucian culture is showing hugely, other functions being subordinated to it relatively. From the above point of view, Chinese culture at large, especially the essence of Confucian culture, is a kind of political philosophy or political culture, whose content and soul are the ethics. It is exactlythe ultimate purpose of the Confucians' philosophy to build the politics through constructing ethics and to make politics become political culture with ethics as the soul. This kind of nature and logic is reflected in the basic frame system of Confucianism's natural law, humanities' law (benevolence) and political law. So, it is more apropos to determine the nature of the Confucians' political theory by the theory of natural law and humanity. As to the relationship between the natural law, ethics and politics, these three, inherently as the whole political philosophy thought of the Confucians, become three basic links of such political philosophy thought: the natural law is a starting point, ethics is an intermediary, or the bridge and its terminal point, is the politics. So such political philosophy thought reflects the logical system from the natural law of Confucians to their ethics culture and finally to its political purpose.When the Chinese sages were talking and preaching in history, they would say ethics all the time, while the ethics serving politics. The natural law is humanity, which is the benevolence, and benevolence is the policy. Starting from the natural law, it is long-standing to probe into the combination of the natural law and humanity. From the thinker Zi Chan to Confucius and Mencius, from Dong Zhongshu to Han Yu and Liu Zongyuan, from Zhang Zai to such Confucians as the two Chengs (Cheng Yi and Cheng Hao) and Zhu Xi, etc., there is an ascending course of a spiral type in its understanding. This course has finished the transformation from the natural law to humanity ethics and finally to the policy. The traditional ethics in China bases the theory of the natural law, which is on the other hand the basis of metaphysics or the theory of noumenon. It is particularly obvious in Confucians' behaviors. Speaking from its function, the essence of Confucian culture is the tool that the politics ruled, the noumenon is the natural law, the entity is the political culture, and the core is the ethics culture. This has determined that the final use of Confucian culture is the politics. So, we say, Confucian culture is a kind of political culture fundamentally, whereas such political culture has significance in which ethics guides at the same time. The...