The Ethical Thought Research Of Disciples Of Confucius In “The Analects”

The studies of the original Confucianism mostly focus on thoughts of Confucius himself, but rarely on thoughts of his disciples, ever since The Analects becomes the object of study.With the deepening research on thoughts of Confucius and his disciples since China’s reform and opening-up, some valuable results have been achieved by scholars in China and abroad. However, the depth and breadth of these researches are inadequate. Especially, the comparative research of “the extrication theory”, “the realm theory” and “the creative evolution theory” in Confucianism has been little investigated.The author conscientiously analyzed and investigated the ethical thought categories mainly raised by disciples of Confucius in The Analects, "the intellectuals", "the master", "the words", "the officials", "the integrity" and "the morality and justice". The disciples of Confucius deem that an “intellectual" should be a competent intellectual; a "master" should be a competent master; people should be circumspect in words and taciturn while earnestly practicing what they advocates. The disciples advocate that “not to take office is not righteous” and “a man of noble character who takes office is just to fulfill the righteousness between the monarch and his ministers”. They also point out that "the integrity" and "the morality and justice" both have certain levels. Therefore, these two categories should be treated with a view of dialectics.The theoretical contributions of this thesis are: first, analyzing and investigating the thought categories of some certain disciples of Confucius, revealing the deep connotations underlying these thought categories; second, indicating the realistic limitation of the inheritance and dissemination of Confucianism; third, promoting the new ethical spirits of Confucius and his disciples like “respect people and help others”, “not to take office is not righteous”.The innovations of this thesis are: enriching the ideological contents of Confucianism research and widening research paths on thoughts of Confucius’ disciples.The theoretic and practical significance of this thesis are: first, it helps Chinese people update the scientific value idea and viewpoint of practice; second, it helps people to distinguish and prevent being tempted by those massive profitable “fads”, and further strengthen and practice the core values of socialism; third, it helps people to realize that the progress of society relies not only on thoughts of “the extrication theory” and “the realm theory”, but also on those of realism and “the creative evolution theory”; fourth, it reminds people to recognize the importance of paying attention to the realistic needs of the people and the peaceful and stable development of society, on the basis of recognizing the important role of different cultures on exploring the significance and value of life, freeing people from suffering the fetters of depression and establishing the stable social order.It is not on the author’s intention, and meanwhile, in no event should let the ancients be responsible for our contemporaries. However, it has certain necessity to envisage the deficiencies of these thoughts of certain disciples of Confucius. We cannot let the valuable good things(many valuable good things haven’t form into people’s values yet) become invisible, nor the unhealthy bad things pass down. There is no inevitable and logical lead to the association between things which can be widespread or have been spreading for thousands of years and real valuable good ones. Besides, there are limitations of sociality, historicity and epochal character. The author earnestly feels that there is a long way to go on the study of the deep connotation underlying Chinese classical cultural thoughts.