Brief Probe Into Confucius’ Timing Destiny

In the Confucian system of thought," timing destiny " can be expressed as " the history of the will of Heaven " or " destiny in the unfolding of the history of time ". Confucius inherits the conception of destiny in Shang-Zhou dynasty, especially Zhou’s " Impermanence of destiny" and "matching Heaven with virtue" concept. By connecting it with the "one-dimensional" and "changeable" features of time which extracted from "Shi" and "Yi" skillfully, he tries to grasp the destiny in the time dimensions. Time is the circumstances of beings, as "destiny is the unfolding of the history of time","timing fate" owing to its emphasis on time, accompanies "Heaven" with the feature of historical."God’s great virtue lies in creation, and endless creation means changing". As destiny unfolding itself, history follows simultaneously. In the Confucian’s history view of destiny-morality, history is the embodiment of destiny."Destiny is changing", so history is uncertain."Heaven is far, but humanity is at arm’s length". What is heaven? The answer to this question seems not as urgent as it was previously. Faced with uncertain destiny, and what people should do is the positive response relying on their own innate moral abilities and value judgements. In this sense, destiny is the moral mission, and history turns to be a showing process of moral ability and ethical spirit. On this basis, Confucius constructs his moral-conscience system, with "Ren" or Benevolence as the core and "Xingming" or human’nature as the ultimate origin, this system tries to achieve the ideal realm of Supreme goodness by the way of living among non-home.