An Investigation Of The Political History Of The Western Han Dynasty "Governing The World With Filial Piety"

The ethics of filial piety became a universal value in the Western Zhou Dynasty,people acted with filial piety as the criterion.The social structure of the Spring and Autumn Warring States changed drastically,filial piety of the Western Zhou Dynasty was no longer the direction of people's actions.People acted with realistic political and economic interests as the criterion.Confucianism advocated "filial piety" in this context,emphasized the unity of loyalty and filial piety to provide a good prescription for the troubled time.After the unification of the Qin Dynasty,filial piety of Pre-Qin Dynasty was brought into the administration of state affairs,realized the transformation of filial piety from theory to practice.After the establishment of the Han Dynasty,Liu Bang set up many same surname kingdoms,but worried that the vassal kings became powerful and could not restrict.So he emphasized that "the same surname is a family",hoped that the vassal kings followed the "filial piety" and "no rebellion".The Emperor Hui inherited Liu Bang's advocacy of filial piety to strengthen the authority of the central government.In order to control the power of the heroic group,the Emperor Wen used the "filial piety" as a link to unite the vassal kings,but the power of the vassal kings gradually increased.The situation of rebellion was more evident,the Emperor Wen hoped to avoided their rebellion in a moral appeal way,but it backfired.The Emperor Jing struck first to gain the initiative,appointed ChaoCuo to weak kingdoms,which triggered the "Rebellion of the Seven States",after the rebellion failed,the problem of separatism had been solved preliminarily.The Emperor Wu hoped to continue the Emperor Jing's unfinished business and realize the"Da Yi Tong" of the country.Dong Zhongshu explained "Da Yi Tong" with "filial piety"properly,which provided an ideological weapon to solve the problem of the vassal kingdoms.On this basis,ZhuFu Yan proposed to implement "Tui En Ling",which weakened the strength of the vassal kingdoms on the premise of not violating "Governing the World With Filial Piety",then the Emperor Wu took the opportunity to cut off half of the princes by "Zhou Jin Duo Jue" and the vassal kingdom problem was solved completely.