The Study On Lu Jia’s Political Ideal

Given rapid demise of Qin dynasty and the realistic questions that the social economy remained deep in recession and people had nothing to depend on for their living, the politicians and the thinkers had made a profound reflection that how to develop productivity, to ease the class contradiction and to consolidate the new regime. In terms of these, Lu Jia put forward the appropriate statecraft which conformed to the social reality and had a far-reaching influence on politics in the early Han dynasty. On these basis, Lu Jia who was the first person to sum up the lesson of Qin dynasty, painted a picture of an ideal political blueprint——“the world of kindness and virtue”. He was mainly from three aspects including inactive politics, rule of kindheartedness and the moral education to construct his ideal politics. Among of them, rule of kindheartedness was the core elements, and moral education was an effective way to realize the inactive politics. All of these were indispensable and inseparable. They were results which was redesigned by Lu Jia. On the basis of analyzing the social reality of the early Han dynasty, Lu Jia reformed the traditional political theory, combining with the advantages of every academic school’s thought in the Pre-Qin period, under the guidance of “judging according to the reality”. Although the ideal political model Lu Jia proposing was still not enough perfect, containing some chimerical elements, it laid the theoretical and ideological foundations for the recovery of the economy, the stabilization of the social order and the strengthening of the state power in the early Han dynasty, and had an important influence on the later generations.Compared with the later Han thinker Jia Yi, the political ideal of Lu Jia shared the inheritance relationship, but there was also great adjustment and innovation according to changes of early Han’s social environment. Affected by the drawbacks of Qin system, the social economy was dilapidated.What’s more, the whole country was fallen into a state of poverty at the beginning of the Western Han dynasty. With the development over twenty years, the economy had gradually recovered and the regime was increasingly consolidated by the time of Emperor Wen of Han. At the same time, there were some new social contradictions. Changes in the political situation resulted in the difference of the political ideal between Lu Jia and Jia Yi. From Lu Jia’s “the world of kindness and virtue” to Jia Yi’s “the kingdom of etiquette”, it was the objective reflection that inaction gradually transitioned to promising politics.