Tseng Kuo-fan Official Morality And Its Inspiration

Traditional Chinese culture, abundant in brilliant accounts on morals for officials, plays a very important role in moral building for officials. Zheng Guofan, a famous minister in late Qing Dynasty, absorbed the essence in the thoughts of Confucianism, Taoist and Mohist widely, therefore, it is renowned for his thoughts and practice in moral building for officials. This paper has generalized Zheng's moral system for officials from four aspects: first, official moral principles of "Public duties are greater than personal needs"; second, official moral norms of "sheer loyalty", "fury restraint", "honesty', "diligence" and "prudence"; third, the means about official moral cultivation of "seeing through the matters clearly", "detaching from worldly things", "self-examination", "doing everything by himself"; forth, ideal personality of saint.Throughout his life, Zheng Guofan regulated and guided his conducts by the principle of "sheer loyalty", "fury restraint", "honesty", "diligence" and "prudence", through the means about cultivation of "the combination of learning and pondering" and "doing everything by himself, so as to become as a saint. His ideas served as a wonderful link for the transition of traditional culture to contemporary one. His typical thoughts and practice on self-cultivation of moral character, cultivation of others, and self-restraint, he himself was regarded by his followers as a perfect example of official with noble morals, witty remarks and great achievements. For leaders and officials, Zheng Guofan attach importance to social responsibility and moral obligation, and emphasis is laid on the self-cultivation and self-regulation and its inner momentum, breakthrough the barrier of "personality cultivation", "ideal personality" is introduced to guide, stimulate, improve the moral level. So it is of profound enlightenment to modem officials for their moral self-possessing and building of a clean and honest government. However, there are inevitably some demerits of feudalism in Zheng's thoughts. We must therefore analyze his ideas with Maxism, develop what is positive and discard what is negative, so to dig out it rational components, try to promote the moral building for officials.