Literati And Scientists - Xu Guangqi Educational Thought

Xu Guangqi is famous as a scientist, mathematician and astronomer for his preaching western culture and then having important impact upon Chinese traditional culture. He had translated a lot of foreign works into Chinese, and at the same time achieved quite a lot in education. However, his educational achievements has always been at the edge of sight, although it is of great significance to exploring it to understand him and his story better and enlighten us more today. This paper is in the right way to focus on his educational efforts and contributions.Having reviewed a great deal of literatures, including quite a few original works, I concluded Xu's thoughts into three parts, namely on education of science, on moral cultivation, and on religion civilization.Xu Guangqi held that the value of knowledge of science was "exceeding", or knowledge ought to beyond its text and be applied as much as possible. Based on his activities Xu put forward his research principles and attitudes, namely the real educating science was educating an ability to apply knowledge of science. As for moral cultivation, Xu began his presentation from his viewpoints on human. He divided man roughly into newborn-baby, mortal and saint. And a man who pursues to improve his morals is to sublime himself to be a saint or regress to be a newborn-baby, with rigorously demanding himself and chasing honesty and loyalty. With compared Xu's thought of moral cultivation with Chen Xianzhang's and Wang Yangming's, it was concluded that Xu was more a continuator and then it seemed that his thoughts was thin in theory, Xu was open to Christianity as wide as to western culture. With the help of Christianity, Xu attempted to induce human nature into the way to goodness that is of human originally. Moreover, he stressed that Christianity was of assistance to Confucianism and Buddhism, i.e., it had the capacity to reinforce feudality's governing.Making a comprehensive view, what constructed Xu Guangqi's historical status is his thought of education not his teaching activity, and his impact upon his contemporary education and subsequent is underlying not immediate accordingly.