On Political Thought Of The Ta-hsueh Yen-i

In the late Southern Song Dynasty,the country was beset with internal and external troubles and the mass were living in misery.In court,the officials with power managed the state affairs and there were fierce struggles among different factions.Meanwhile,outside the court,the national crisis become unprecedented serious.In the aspect of academic,Neo-Confucianism in the Southern Song Dynasty acquired vigorous development and the way to run a country which was one of the theories in The CGreat Learning got a lot of attention at that time.Under this kind of circumstance,after absorbing all the truths from sages and ancient and modern experiences of suppressing instability and unrest,Chen Te-hsiu advocated thoughts in The Great Learning.By the use of ancient sages and emperors's self-discipline for governing others and the doctrine of sagely within and kingly without,he taught the emperors to learn ways of doing things,so that the emperors can became the outside king and the inside saint.Chen Te-hsiu believed that governors should take morality cultivation as the basis and the way of achieving morality cultivation is pursuing studies.The core of pursuing studies was uprighting the mind and the way to upright the mind was to be respectful.Governors could get the knowledge of running a country from Confucian classics and history books.In addition,they also need to keep a wary eye on the possibility of selfish initiation and wanton depravity.Concerning the relationship between emperors and subjects,Chen Te-hsiu pointed out that righteousness between emperors and subjects lie in the fact that they were like-minded,with the hope that this could make emperors and subjects manage the country with the same mind.Governors should know the difference between the gentlemen and the villain,picked virtuous and talented persons very carefully and entrusted them with important posts.Besides,it was also of great importance for governors to pay attention to persons who achieves high position by unscrupulous scheming and for this kind of persons governors were obliged to take precautions.There were plenty of people-based thoughts in Ta-hsueh Yen-I,by the use of which Chen Te-hsiu hoped governors could know how people suffered at that time,such as heavy taxes,corvee as well as cultivation for the governments and implemented policies that truly benefited the mass.In the debate between morality and punishment,Chen Te-hsiu agreed on the affect of the Criminal Law but it was demonstrated by him that the most important thing was to civilize the mass.Governors ought to take the Confucianism as the national main thought and recognized the disadvantage of heresy academics.After the Southern Song Dynasty,Ta-hueh Yen-I become quite popular among emperors and was taken as a must to run the counrty by them,which also made great contributions to the Cheng-Zhu Confucian School's becoming the official ruling thought.In the Ming Dynasty,Qiu Jun's University Spread Meaning Supplement added the knowledge of governing the country and harnessing the state,which made the theory of monarchy a completed theory system.Based on the above aspects,this paper discussed the following 3 parts:in the first part this the background of Ta-hsueh Yen-I was demonstracted;political thoughts including the theory of the monarch's morality cultivation and Monarch-minister&Monarch-people Standpoint in Ta-hsueh Yen-I were discussed in the second part;in the third part impact of Ta-hsueh Yen-I was showed.