A Study Of Zeng Gong's Historical Thought

Zeng Gong(1019-1083),character Zi-gu,was born in Nanchang,Jianchang Army(now Nanfeng County,Jiangxi Province),and is known as "Mr.Nanfeng" in the world.With the great change of social role and knowledge structure of literati in the middle of the Northern Song Dynasty,Zeng Gong,a famous writer in the literary world of the Northern Song Dynasty,no longer confined his activities to the field of literature,but became a "generalist" integrating politics and learning,and a builder of academic culture at that time.As an important part of Zeng Gong's academic thoughts,his historical thoughts not only have a distinctive brand of the times,but also have a lot of personal characteristics.However,for many years,the academic circle has not paid enough attention to Zeng Gong's historiography thought,and the breadth and depth of the research still need to be further deepened.Therefore,this paper is divided into four chapters to sort out the formation of Zeng Gong's historiography thought,and summarize its specific connotation,characteristics and influence.The first chapter starts with Zeng Gong's farming and reading life and the way of official life,discusses the deep Confucian accumulation and the influence of the spirit of hard study on Zeng Gong in Nanfeng,and introduces Ouyang Xiu's guidance to Zeng Gong and the close communication between Zeng Gong and Wang Anshi,all of which stimulate Zeng Gong's propaganda of the sage's way and the exploration of Confucianism's justice.In addition,the special political and cultural environment and ideological characteristics in the middle of the Northern Song Dynasty also had a great impact on the formation and development of Zeng Gong's historical thought.The second chapter studies Zeng Gong's understanding of historical issues through his historical comments.In the Northern Song Dynasty,the literati and officials had a strong sense of political distress,and the learning history was further developed.The historians paid more attention to the times and reality.By examining the theme and specific content of Zeng Gong's historical comments,we can understand his own historical thoughts and views,find out his personal feelings and value ideals,and then analyze his historical learning thoughts and anxiety consciousness,and explain the characteristics of Zeng Gong's historical comments with "morality" as the core.The third chapter focuses on Zeng Gong's four requirements of "Ming","Dao","Zhin and "Wen",and analyzes Zeng Gong's "good view of history".This is Zeng Gong's recognition of "good history" again after Liu Zhiji of Tang Dynasty put forward the theory of "three long history talents".He gave a clear explanation of what kind of historical accomplishment an excellent historian should have.In addition,it discusses Zeng Gong's thought of historical compilation from three aspects:the rule of historical resources,the principle of collation,and the way of compilation,and judges Zeng Gong's principle of judging the quality of historical works.The fourth chapter aims to discuss Zeng Gong's historical characteristics of "using the world for the benefit of the country for the people" and "writing without losing the way,history without leaving Confucianism".Through Fang Bao,Liu Dakui,Chen Shidao and other people's evaluation of Zeng Gong and their inheritance of the positive and negative spirits of his direct books and the emphasis on enlightenment,it further tries to explain the influence of Zeng Gong's historical thoughts on later generations.