On Wang Yangming’s Moral Educational Thought And Its Modern Values

The traditional Chinese cultural is broad and profound and the three majorschools of thought-Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism-exert great influence onthe soul of Chinese people. Wang Yangming, the great educator and philosopher ofMing Dynasty absorbed the best of Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism andsummarized the Mind-philosophy thought system, which gained great popularityamong the ruling class and then developed into the philosophy of the authority. SoYangming’s philosophy should be the high point of the development of Confucianismthought in the late period of Chinese feudal society. Interpreting Yanfming’sphilosophy from the perspective of ideological and political education to excavate itsmodern values has not only the theoretical significance, but also the practicalfunction.This dissertation selects Wang Yangming’s moral education thought as theresearch object and analyzes the implications contained in his thought from theperspectives of formation conditions, basic components and operation mechanism toextract its modern values. This dissertation is divided into four parts:The first part mainly introduces the special forming background of WangYangming’s moral educational thought. Wang Yangming adhered to the “Reason” ofCheng Zhu Neo-Confucianism. Under the social, economic and cultural backgroundof Ming Dynasty, Wang Yangming extracted his own Ming Studies fromConfucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism and developed his theory of idealism, whichwas highly praised by the ruling class of Ming Dynasty. This dissertation analyzes theforming conditions of Wang Yangming’s moral educational thoughts form theperspectives of politics, economic, culture and society.The second part analyzes and summarizes the theoretical framework of WangYangming’s moral educational thoughts. This part analyzes the philosophicalfoundation of Wang Yangming’s moral educational thoughts in terms of “dragonenlightenment”,“Extension of Intuitive Knowledge” and “Unity of knowledge andaction” and divides the objects of his moral educational thoughts into “individualobjects” and “social objects” according to the differences among the ranges ofinfluence. Furthermore, on the principle of “being determined”,“hard working”, “correcting one’s mistake” and “being kind”, this dissertation also systematically andcomprehensively generalizes the main contents of Wang Yangming’s moraleducational thoughts, such as “teaching others teaches yourself”,“moral education isthe main way in the Sage-forming”,“tailoring teaching methods” and “remorse andreform”.The third part mainly concludes the theoretical framework of Wang Yangming’smoral educational thoughts and emphasizes the function and status of each part,including target mechanism of “broken heart thief”, the safeguard mechanism of“Unity of knowledge and action”, the operating mechanism of “main bodyinteraction”, the restriction mechanism of “supervision and exhortation”, the practicemechanism of “SheXue conventions”.The main point of the fourth part is to analyze the enlightenment of WangYangming’s moral educational thoughts to the modern values and the modernideological and political education. This part sets forth its modern values form theperspectives of the enlightenment to the citizen moral construction and the referenceto the modern school moral education.This dissertation not only affirms the academic achievement and historicalinfluence of Wang Yangming’s moral educational thoughts, but also believes that histhoughts have great significance and important reference value to the current socialmorality construction and ideological and political education.