The Research On The Concept Of "the Celestial Will" In Jinwenshangshu

The central issue this thesis is to discuss is in which sense the concept of "celestial will" is used in jinwenshangshu.The literal meaning of the word "celestial will" is the will from the holy heaven as the supreme being, but it is not used in this sense in jinwenshangshu as it is used in the old testaments. When the ancient sages talked about "celestial will ",they didn't consider heaven or god as a being who existed in the historic time and could engage direct communion with human beings. We can appreciate that in the contrast of jinwenshangshu and the old testaments.There are many direct accounts about human's communion with god existing in the old testaments. And when the communicators delivered god's will to somebody else, he needed to prove that the communion did have happened and god did have told him so by miracles. But in jinwenshangshu, there are not any direct accounts about human's communion with the holy heaven. And it was not necessary for ancient sages to administer miracles to convince people. Those two points account for that the ancient sages didn't consider heaven as a being existing in the historic time, and they didn't need to communicate with it to know the celestial will.On this basis, I figured out by further analysis that the acts which were demanded by the name of " celestial will" in jinwenshangshu were always ought to be done according to morality too, and the sages were aware of that. So I turned my discuss to the issue on the accordance between the celestial will and morality. There are two possible paths:the celestial will to morality or morality to the celestial will. And by the analysis of jinwenshangshu,I concluded that the accordance acturalized through the second path.The oughtness of morality is objective. So when a man make a moral judgement or choice, he can not consider it as a will of his own or a subjective feeling, otherwise the judgement or choice will lose its meaning and utility as a moral judgement or choice. So he must consider the thing he should do as a demand he must obey which is not made by himself. This is how a man will consider the relationship between the morality and himself. It is in order to express this appreciation that the ancient sages use the concept "celestial will" to refer to what morality asks him to do. After the above-mentioned discuss, I turned my attention to an accessory issue:the accordance between virtue and happiness. Since people express the oughtness of morality by the concept of celestial will, the being heaven gets a double identity as the highest commander of the actural world and the highest origin of morality. This fact assures the accordance between virtue and happiness.This is the main content of this thesis, I look forward to your guidance and corrections sincerely.