In an ideological atmosphere that attaches great importance to the study of Yuan Dian and calls for a return to the "Axial Age" to understand Chinese culture, the study of early Confucianism has received great attention from the academic community.

However, the research on early Confucianism has not yet broken through the Japanese research paradigm as a whole. The traditional method of using characters to bring ideas and ideas to tie history still has a dominant influence. In view of the new research needs on the type attribution, background observation, and spiritual prominence of early Confucianism, it is objectively necessary to break out of the old pattern and construct new ideas. The research results produced along this general idea are the starting point and solid foundation of this article. Such achievements are embodied in an academic orientation that interprets early Confucianism in a cultural spirit. This orientation not only ensures that the research advantages related to "characters, ideas, and history" continue to exist, but also promotes people to comprehensively grasp the typological characteristics and spiritual intentions of early Confucianism in the context of macro history, and highlight its characteristics. Modernity provides sufficient spiritual resources for the modern transformation of Chinese culture.

This article takes the thoughts of Confucius, Mencius, Xun and Dong as the basis to analyze the typological characteristics of early Confucianism. Mental intention, analysis. Four people were selected to analyze Confucianism during the dry period. First, because history chose four people to interpret the spirit of Confucianism from four different but logically connected perspectives. The lack of any one of them will constitute an obstacle to understanding early Confucianism; secondly, because the composition of early Confucianism is relatively complex, the Six Classics ("Poetry", "Book", "Li", "Music", "Music", "Yi" and "Spring and Autumn") are the spiritual basis of early Confucianism. As a practical form of politics in the Zhou Dynasty, the historical changes from division to unification from the Warring States Period to the Western Han Dynasty were the social background for early Confucian theory. As "Taoism will divide the world, and hundreds of schools of thought will never return", the "Hundred Schools of Thought" contends, which is the intellectual history pattern in which early Confucianism positioned its own school spiritually. The mutual influence of these multiple backgrounds prompted us to select the above four people as the main representatives to examine Confucianism. Because the four people have clear Confucian stances and are quite able to refute other schools of thought. At the same time, they draw on ideological resources that are of great value to the construction of Confucian theory. Their ideological context is clear and they never stop at a general overview. Therefore, the four people not only interacted with history at that time and perfected Confucian theory; their influence has been far-reaching to this day. As a result, the reflection on its modernity constitutes a major landscape of modern academic circles.

In order to make the discussion in this article easier to grasp intuitively, let’s do a simple analysis of the above argument.

1. Defining the type of early Confucian thought

Using modern academic language, that is, the analytical and constructive academic discourse formed after Western academics were wedged into China (the spread of Western learning to the east) , studying early Confucianism has become a new academic tradition in modern times. In other words, the study of modern Confucianism has been around for a long time.

The first problem encountered in the modern academic study of early Confucianism is the issue of the type of Confucianism. This problem does not exist within the scope of traditional academic circles. This is because traditional scholarship is classified according to classics, histories, chapters, and collections, but not according to the problems that a certain thinker or school of thought strives to solve, the type consistency of the problems, and the theoretical tendency to solve the problems. However, since the introduction of Western learning, specialized methods in disciplines such as philosophy, history, literature, and science have had a fundamental impact on traditional academic research. Under this circumstance, it has become a new trend in academic development to re-decompose and study the traditional academic classifications of Jing, Shi, Zi and Ji according to modern academic categories. The classification of Western learning has a particularly profound impact on the internal differentiation of a discipline, which is also very detailed. Documents such as the Classics and Classics in traditional scholarship have no such discipline as philosophy. Nowadays, under the impact of Western learning, traditional academic knowledge that is dedicated to reflecting on the "metaphysical" "Tao" is roughly similar to philosophy, so it has been classified as a philosophical discipline for re-evaluation and interpretation. However, metaphysical knowledge in traditional academic circles is roughly a matter of melting heaven, earth and man into one furnace, abstracted as a question of "mysterious and mysterious". Unlike Western philosophy, which is divided into metaphysics (ontology, cosmology), theory of knowledge, philosophy of life, moral philosophy, political philosophy, etc., each has its own specialized subject of research.

This creates a difficult problem in using modern academic discourse to interpret classic documents and early Confucianism. On the one hand, this problem manifests itself in the fact that Western academic language has become a universally recognized discourse for academic reflection, and traditional academic discourse has been placed in an "ethnic" position of being read and understood. If traditional scholarship is not translated and read by modern academic discourse, it is difficult for people to understand it and it is difficult to gain modern vitality. On the other hand, this problem manifests itself in the fact that large disciplines are defined based on Western learning, but small classifications are difficult to frame within the Western learning framework, which often makes academic interpretations fall into a dilemma of inaccurate positioning.

Comparatively speaking, Taoism is easier to obtain a modern disciplinary position than Confucianism. There will be no fundamental differences if Taoism, which says "Tao can be Tao, is not Tao", is included in metaphysics. However, early Confucianism was quite sparse about metaphysics, except for its statement on metaphysics in the Book of Changes, which is its classic basis. In this way, it is inevitable to use the secondary disciplines of philosophy to analyze and interpret early Confucianism. But here a major disagreement occurred.

The issues that early Confucianism focused on can be broken down into three types. One is ethics, which is the reflection on human relations, such as benevolence, justice, etiquette, wisdom, and trust. However, it does not focus on morality, that is, the basic value or ultimate concern of ethics. , and has been relatively ignored because it does not speak about God, but only about humans. The second is politics, which is the social and political way of the family and the country, such as the righteousness of the king and his ministers, the way of the saints and the people, and the choice of virtue and punishment. However, it relatively despises the design of the political system, and only treats ethics as an integral part of politics. For example, an intolerable heart can be extrapolated into an intolerant government (benevolent government). The third is to be a human being, that is, how to rectify oneself and others, and how to succeed in oneself and achieve things, such as the choice of righteousness and interests, the character of a gentleman, the example of sages, and personal cultivation. However, it is relatively ignorant of the actual conditions of life, talking more about realm and less about circumstances. Life is born with a pragmatic attitude.

Faced with this structural state of early Confucianism, and interpreting it in modern academic language, it is divided into two discipline types. Look at Confucianism from an ethical perspective and judge it as moral philosophy. This judgment has been applied to Confucianism from the time when Cai Yuanpei wrote "History of Chinese Ethics" in the early part of this century to the recently published works on the history of Chinese ethics. Even the Confucian theme of inner sage and outer king is to dissolve the outer king to enter the inner sage, and to dissolve politics to reveal ethics. (See Chen Shaofeng: Introduction to "History of Chinese Ethics", Peking University Press, 1996 edition) Obviously, this conclusion is based on the premise of ignoring or reducing the value of Confucian political thinking. When looking at Confucianism from a political perspective, it is judged as political philosophy. Moreover, since Confucianism achieved the status of official ideology after the Han Dynasty, that is, Confucianism became official academic scholarship and exerted its powerful political function, this positioning has been widely recognized. In this conclusion, ethics took a back seat, politics was promoted to the main term, and Confucianism became the theory of political ethics, that is, the theory of ethical norms in political activities. (See Pang Pu: Research on Confucian Dialectics), Zhonghua Book Company 1984 edition, page 14) However, this conclusion relatively ignores the fact that ethics in early Confucianism was on the same level as politics. Looking at Confucianism from a humanistic perspective, we regard it as a philosophy of life that solves the problem of adulthood. (See Zhang Dainian: "Outline of Chinese Philosophy", China Social Sciences Press, 1982 edition, page 165) This judgment attributes the early Confucian ethical thinking to the review of interpersonal problems and the review of human positioning; it also " The political concern of "doing the job of being a ruler" boils down to the life course or goal statement from the inner sage to the outer king. This conclusion obviously also ignores the shortcomings of Confucianism's characteristic of examining life from the dual dimensions of politics and ethics.

It can be said that the above three discipline positionings are reasonable, but they all have shortcomings. Strictly speaking, early Confucianism cannot be accommodated by the above three disciplines. Therefore, some modern scholars have determined the morphological characteristics of early Confucian theoretical types on the margins of the discipline. In the early part of this century, Liang Qichao wrote "History of Political Thought in Pre-Qin", which pointed out the characteristics of combining ethics and politics in classical political thought (see Liang Qichao: History of Political Thought in Pre-Qin), Shanghai Bookstore, 1986 edition, page 36). Confucianism established the spiritual direction. Some contemporary political scientists and ethics scholars have even more clearly pointed out that early Confucian thought was "a mixture of ethical principles and political principles, which can be called ethical politics" (Liu Zehua, editor-in-chief: "History of Ancient Chinese Political Thought", Nankai University Publishing House, 1992 edition, page 50), early Confucianism showed an "ethical and political spirit" (Fan Hao: "Historical Construction of Chinese Ethical Spirit", Jiangsu People's Publishing House, 1992 edition, page 8). Moreover, some scholars classify Chinese culture as an ethical-political culture by examining the history of interaction between Confucianism and classical social and political culture. (See Feng Tianyu et al.: "Chinese Cultural History", Volume 1, Shanghai People's Publishing House, 1990 edition, page 254)

These conclusions have positive significance in accurately positioning the subject attribution and type characteristics of early Confucianism. On the one hand, this positioning avoids the danger of severing early Confucian ethical-political thinking, or dismembering Confucianism into scattered concepts; on the other hand, it also points out a reliable way to examine Confucianism, which is neither rigid nor rigid. For specialized subjects, it is marginal related analysis. This will more accurately highlight the characteristics of Confucianism on the basis of the discipline demarcation of ethics and politics.

Ethical politics is an accurate positioning of early Confucianism. Because, first, in terms of the way early Confucianism thought, it examined issues in the context of the correlation between ethics and politics. Use the former to calm people's hearts, and use the latter to maintain order. Use the isomorphism and assimilation of the two to solve life and social and political problems. To abstract and treat one aspect alone is to dismember it. Second, from the perspective of the content selection of early Confucian thought, Confucianism is based on the ideal personality of a gentleman who becomes a virtuous person and becomes a sage. The content of ethics that is in line with the needs of people and life is also based on the political ideal personality of a sage king. It takes the meaning of praying for benevolent government and virtuous governance in politics. Early Confucianism did not have purely metaphysical thinking. It is more appropriate to understand early Confucianism on the fringes of secondary disciplines in the modern sense such as ethics and politics. Third, early Confucianism is completely compatible with the historical structure of China. The social type at the beginning of Chinese history is the result of the assimilation of ethics and politics. This determines that early Confucian thinking can only be carried out in an ethical and political atmosphere, and can only achieve an ethical and political theory that theoretically refines the practice of ethics and politics.

However, the previous analysis of ethical and political theory as an early Confucian ideological type was only in principle, that is, it stayed at its basic theoretical prayer-"politicization of ethics, ethicalization of politics." In terms of direct expression, it stays at the respective analysis of the respective thoughts of early Confucian representatives. Moreover, some important theoretical presuppositions, such as what to call ethical politics, whether it can be called political ethics, or the rule of virtue, rule of man, and authoritarian thought, have yet to be sorted out. This article agrees to use ethical and political theories to define the type of early Confucianism, but emphasizes the cultural significance of early Confucianism as a type of ethical and political theory, without reducing it to a specific political governance method (whether it is called rule of virtue, rule of entry, or rule of law). Absolutism) should not be confused with the ethical rules in the political process, that is, political ethics. Instead, we should determine the type characteristics based on the isomorphism and assimilation of ethics and politics, and conduct genetic discussions in the historical process to identify ethics and politics. It is a type of social culture promoted by Chinese history and culture, praying for stability, appealing to virtue, suitable for agricultural society, and cultivating simple subjects. It not only contains elements of moral philosophy, but also exhibits the characteristics of political philosophy and philosophy of life, but it can never be attributed to any one of these three specific philosophies.

2. Reflection in multiple contexts

The ethical and political theoretical construction of early Confucianism is not the product of the hard thinking of four thinkers. It is more appropriate to understand early Confucianism from at least three levels . Historically established relationships constrained the philosophical thinking of early Confucianism: first, the material production mode in the early period of ancient Chinese history; second, the corresponding social-political relationship structure formed during this period; third, the thinking trends, values, and Ideology.

Let’s look at the first aspect first. The mainstream of ancient Chinese civilization was located in the Yellow River Basin. River culture has the characteristics of following nature, fully controlling water, highly organized, strong internal control, dominated by agriculture, and limited output. These characteristics have left a distinct social imprint on the Chinese nation's early struggle for survival: clans and tribes were the mainstay. The basic kinship organization required to adapt to the objective situation constitutes the organizational principle that emerged in the civilized state. Therefore, the question is moved to the second aspect. The evolution of the political history of the Xia, Shang and Zhou dynasties has a very important historical relevance to the early Confucian ethics and politics. This is because early Confucianism took the historical approach as its thinking direction. Whether it is the "Father King" or the "Father King", they all cast their ideal political gaze on the saints and ministers of the three generations and even the legendary era.

Therefore, the political operation of the three generations, especially the first comprehensive implementation of ethical politics in the Zhou Dynasty, became the historical premise for the construction of early Confucian ethical and political theory. In historical tracing, it can be found that the ritual system as the axis of the three generations of history had a fundamental impact on early Confucianism. Xia Li cannot yet make a comprehensive historical statement, because Xia history still belongs to the era of archaeology collecting historical materials. However, from archaeological excavations and historical document analysis, the political pattern of the Xia Dynasty can be roughly understood. On the one hand, the Xia Dynasty "implemented the surname and clan rule of 'family world'" (Chen Shenyong: "The Rise of China's First Dynasty - Deciphering the Mystery of the Origin of Chinese Civilization and Country", Hunan Publishing House, 1994 edition, page 371) . On the other hand, Xia Li, the tool of governance that maintained the "family world", played a social adjustment function. Xia rites are divided into auspicious rites, seal rites, Binhe rites, sacrificial rites, etc. Moreover, the role of the ritual system has been clearly divided into two aspects. One is to show the hierarchical system of enjoyment of utensils, and the other is that ritual has roughly become a multi-social function that combines political and criminal laws, moral norms, and codes of conduct. complex system. (See the first letter, pages 411-412)

However, based on current data, the degree of social differentiation in the Xia Dynasty was not very high. Ethics and politics, as well as their combination in social operations, are still in their infancy. Only the historical changes of Yin Kexia enabled the political function of ethics to be fully brought into play. On the one hand, this is because Yin Kexia's defense is that Xiafan's actions are morally reprehensible; on the other hand, it is because Yin Shang has understood "Qi Yan Qi Man Min" and governs the world in a way that combines ethics and politics. This move of the Yin and Shang Dynasties was greatly exploited by the rulers of the Zhou Dynasty and laid out an ethical and political governance system.

There are two driving forces for the Zhou Dynasty to move toward the systematization of ethics and politics. First, because of the rise of the Shang Dynasty in the Zhou Dynasty, it was necessary to defend the legitimacy of its own rule. Therefore, the destiny of ruling must be changed into "matching heaven with virtue". Rather, ethical reasons are more closely integrated with governing power. Second, the development of the Xia and Shang etiquette systems provided the Zhou rulers with a blueprint for a perfect political-ethical governance style, allowing the Zhou rulers to more comprehensively design the operational methods of ethics and politics. Several major features of the Zhou rites, such as strict hierarchy, patriarchal system, elaborate rituals, regulation of ritual vessels, ancestor reverence, ancestral temple system, ceremonial procedures, and the setting of ceremonial officials, etc., indicate that the Zhou rites are quite complete and systematic. Judging from the structural characteristics of the Zhou rites, patriarchal system is its social foundation, hierarchy is its mode of construction, distant heaven and earth are its basic orientation, institutionalization (stylization) is its formal feature, and the political requirements of strong control and weak The ethical integration of control is its basic spirit. It is precisely because of the completeness of the ritual system in the Zhou Dynasty that the thinkers of the Zhou Dynasty gave a rough explanation of the basic spirit of ethics and politics on the basis of designing the ritual system of ethics and politics. The Duke of Zhou, who made rituals and made music, exerted a profound influence on the ethical and political thinking of early Confucianism with his two-point elucidation of the spirit of rituals.

The first is "respecting virtues and protecting the people", which established the early Confucian idea of ??taking ethics and morality as the basis for the legitimacy of rule and taking people-centeredness as the guide for ruling policies; the second is the "cultivation of oneself in order to respect" that Confucius admired , "Cultivation of oneself to bring peace to others", "Cultivation of oneself to bring peace of mind to the people", this concept laid the foundation for the ideal political thinking of early Confucianism.

Of course, the derivation of the ritual system in the Xia, Shang and Zhou dynasties was only a purely historical background for the construction of early Confucian ethical and political ideals: it caused the four early Confucian thinkers, Confucius, Mencius, Xun and Dong, to have a respectful attitude towards ethics and politics ("Yu Yu" "Hu Wen Zai, I Cong Zhou"); it gave their theoretical thinking a general historical paradigm. However, from the perspective of intellectual history, the ethical and political practices of the three dynasties, especially the Zhou Dynasty, had far less profound influence on early Confucianism than the classical basis, which is the direct source of Confucianism. As a document of early thoughts in Chinese history, the "Six Classics" exerted a restrictive effect on early Confucianism from various dimensions. This is not only because Confucius, Mencius, Xun and Dong all attached great importance to these six kinds of intellectual history documents, but also because these six kinds of documents were the inevitable ideological basis for thinking about ethical and political issues from the pre-Qin to the early Han Dynasty. This is because the "Li" provides a normative model that integrates ethics and politics, the "Book" and "Spring and Autumn" provide ideas for incorporating ethics into the praise and criticism of historical figures and events, and the "Poetry" provides a view of the future. "Music" provides a basic way of observing public sentiment and expressing volunteers' grievances. "Music" provides emotional control strategies that incorporate education into regulated music. "Yi" provides a dialectical reflection on ethics and politics of "easy" and "difficult" thinking framework.

However, comparatively speaking, the significance of the Six Classics to the construction of early Confucian thought is based on the "Li" and "Spring and Autumn" which contain rich historical resources, and the "Li" which contains the ethical and political practical rules. " and the "Poetry" written by the people in Zhou Dynasty are the most important. Although "Yi" is valued by Confucians, it does not play a great direct role in ideological construction. By the time of Confucius, "Yue" was no longer available in detail. There was only "Yue Ji", which expressed Confucius's optimistic view on education. The Five Classics were all compiled by Confucius, so there is no doubt that early Confucianism classified the Five Classics into priority, accepted and used the ideological resources in them. After Confucius, Mencius talked about the nature of the heart, so he emphasized the subjective content in "Poems" and "Books"; Xunzi talked about evil nature, so he emphasized the normative content of "Li". According to the political needs of the unification of the Western Han Dynasty, Dong Zhongshu constructed the systematic thought of the unity of nature and man, and greatly explored the historical wisdom of "Spring and Autumn". This is the intellectual history material directly used in the construction of early Confucian ethical and political theory.

Naturally, the three chapters that are most meaningful to the construction of ethical and political theory are the "Great Learning", "The Doctrine of the Mean" and "Liyun" in the "Book of Rites". The author of these three articles is quite controversial. The era when the three articles were written is also uncertain. This article believes that these three works reflect the practical principles of ethics and politics in the Zhou Dynasty, and the three works also provide an excellent summary and refinement of them. Therefore, there should be no problem in considering it as the ideological background for the construction of early Confucian ethical and political theory. The entire text of "The Great Learning" expounds the theoretical program of ethics and politics around the "Three Cardinal Guidelines" and the "Eight Eyes". The "three cardinal principles" are "to be clear about virtue, to be close to the people, to stop doing the best", and the "eight eyes" are to "investigate things, to gain knowledge, to be sincere, to be righteous, to cultivate oneself, to organize the family, to govern the country, and to bring peace to the world." The "Three Guidelines" can be regarded as the theoretical essentials of ethical politics, and the "Eight Eyes" can be recognized as the action model of ethical politics. The former lays the foundation for the elucidation of bright virtues, uses the transformation of people's morality as an intermediary, and aims to achieve a perfect state, thereby organically combining ethical pursuits with political governance; the latter uses a two-way derivation process to connect ethics and politics. On the one hand, it expresses the prerequisites for entering the ideal realm of ethics and politics based on the purposeful counter-evidence that the country must be governed first, the family must be in order, the body must be cultivated, the mind must be correct, the sincerity must be sincere, the knowledge must be learned first, and the investigation of things must be first. On the one hand, the causal reasoning from the investigation of things will inevitably lead to knowledge, sincerity, upright heart, personal cultivation, family harmony, national governance, and world peace, which expresses the approach to the highest realm of ethics and politics. Therefore, ethics and politics can be regarded as two entities that can be isomorphically and assimilated.

The theory of "The Doctrine of the Mean" can be invented by "The Great Learning". The spirit of "The Doctrine of the Mean" is to "achieve neutrality, maintain the status of heaven, and cultivate all things." However, when this spirit is projected into ethical and political operations, it is based on "governing by people, taking people for their bodies, cultivating one's self with Tao, and cultivating Tao with benevolence." The most positive effect is that it unifies normative ethics and political governance methods in human activities. "The Doctrine of the Mean" provides a good ideal model for ethics and politics with its concept of "Great Harmony". "The world is for the common good" is not only an ideal political realm, but also an ideal ethical realm in which everyone has noble sentiments. This is the best state of the assimilation of ethics and politics that early Confucianism was enamored of.

3. Interpretation: Between History and Logic

As a historical background, the history of the Xia, Shang and Zhou dynasties provided rich ideological resources for the construction of early Confucian ethics and politics: the ritual system of the three dynasties It provides the original style of ethical politics; the idea of ??virtue and government in the three generations, especially Zhou's idea of ??"respecting virtue and protecting the people", provides the general idea of ??ethics and politics. However, the ethical and political construction of early Confucianism is not a mechanical repetition of the history of the Xia, Shang and Zhou dynasties. Moreover, when early Confucianism thought about ethics and politics, the historical changes of "the gains and losses can be known" also made the early Confucian theory think. Become a product of their history at the time. This constitutes the dual framework of the historical background of early Confucianism, that is, in the historical operation of the Spring and Autumn Period, the Warring States, and the Western Han Dynasty, we examine the history of Xia, Shang, Zhou, and the legendary era, and use it as the historical support for ethics and politics.

At the same time, by the time of Confucius, the situation of "learning from royal officials" had completely changed, and private lectures flourished. This pattern, driven by major political changes, created an ideological situation in which "Taoism will tear the world apart" and "hundred schools of thought will never return" ("Zhuangzi: The World"). Therefore, it was impossible for early Confucianism to establish its own ideological system by repeating the political discourse of Zhou Gong or the sages of Yao, Shun, Yu, Tang, Wen and Wu. This made it necessary for early Confucianism to absorb the ideological nourishment from early history that was beneficial to its own theoretical construction in the ideological confrontation of "a hundred schools of thought." This was another dual framework faced by the construction of early Confucian thought.

Therefore, when today’s scholars look at the ethical and political construction of early Confucianism, they must first enter the dual history-ideological framework faced by early Confucianism, and strive to enter Confucianism, grasp its spirit, and understand its essence. In this way, on the one hand, we must penetrate into the thoughts of the four early Confucian thinkers and clarify their logical progressive relationships, thereby highlighting their ethical and political theoretical system; on the other hand, we must also discover the origins of early Confucianism from the historical background. The reason why Confucius came to Dong Zhongshu and systematized his thoughts. Therefore, when understanding and interpreting early Confucian ethics and politics, the principle of consistency between logical methods and historical methods, which philosophers have repeatedly emphasized as interpretive methods, has very important guiding significance.

The method of consistency between logic and history first emphasizes the decisive influence of history on logic. In other words, logic is not a subjective construction of social activity subjects, but is determined by history. In terms of interpreting the ethical and political theoretical construction of early Confucianism, this means that the interpreter must first have an in-depth understanding of the historical situation of early Confucianism. The aforementioned historical situation is two-fold. It is one of the legendary era and the history of the Xia, Shang and Zhou dynasties that are far away and restricted early Confucian thinking. This has been stated in the previous section. Another historical background of more direct significance, from the Spring and Autumn Period to the Western Han Dynasty, must be outlined here. The Spring and Autumn Period was an era of "the collapse of rituals and the destruction of music" and "the world was without moral principles." After the Zhou emperor lost his ethical appeal and political control, princes emerged in droves and various countries were established, competing for land and cities to strengthen their strength. Under this circumstance, reestablishing order has become the prerequisite concept for all idealists to think about. Just like this, Confucius used benevolence to control people's hearts, reestablished order with propriety, and tried to restore the orderly state of society by coordinating the order of people's hearts and social order. The chaotic situation pushed Confucius to form the idea of ??the inherent relationship between ethics and politics, and laid the prototype of the theory of ethics and politics. By the middle of the Warring States Period, wars involving large countries annexing small countries became increasingly frequent, gradually forming a pattern in which hegemonic politics prevailed. Countries are competing for reforms to become stronger, and the separatist princes are gradually establishing institutions, conferring official positions, and establishing capitals and counties on the territory. On the surface, the divided political situation seems irreversible. Under such circumstances, it is no longer possible to manage both the order of people's hearts and the political order. Therefore, Mencius' thinking turned to the inner study of mind, relying entirely on ethical and political thinking on the choices made by the human heart, in an attempt to use the subject's self-made good choices to correct the political dilemma that was already difficult to deal with. But after all, this idea is "far-reaching and broader than the matter." The history of the Warring States Period is still extending according to its own logic. The war is still writing the history of the late Warring States period with a strong hand. At this time, the situation of the seven heroes dividing the world had been roughly formed, and the power of hegemonic politics was also demonstrated by the strength of Qin. A picture of a society that has moved toward governance due to political reforms has inspired thinkers to revise their political thinking and turn inward to look to political norms for the magic weapon to rebuild order. Therefore, Gou Kuang was able to pay more practical attention to the ritual system and its functions while retaining the thoughts of Kong Yu, the founder of early Confucianism. However, history up to the time of Xunzi has not completed the road of unification, that is, the road of rebuilding political authority and restoring social order, nor has it completed the road of thought, that is, the road of theoretical completion of the construction of ethical and political theories. On the one hand, the war of the Warring States Period was still going on, and Qin finally completed its unification by winning the war and taking over the world. However, the ruling method of "violent Qin" clearly showed that the political order had not been effectively restored. How to effectively maintain social order in the long term is still an urgent issue that needs to be highlighted in political operations. On the other hand, although Mencius and Xunzi strengthened the ideological leadership of Confucianism by rejecting and accepting other pre-Qin schools of thought, the theory of Confucian ethics and politics has not yet been fully formed, and its effective connection with social politics is still being developed. middle. In particular, Han Feizi, as a student of Xunzi, was not polite in his ideas; Li Si, as a student of Xunzi, was willing to accept punishment but not morality. This completely separates the inherent relationship between Confucian ethics and politics, causing Confucian theory to fall into a crisis of self-dissolution. In this situation, Dong Zhongshu creatively made the ethical and political theory not only comprehensively interpreted theoretically, but also politically applicable in the "upgrading" discussion atmosphere of the early Han Dynasty that "we can get it immediately, and An Neng can cure it immediately" function.

As can be seen from above. The gestalt construction of early Confucian ethical and political theory came first from the power of historical operations, which enabled it to successfully shape a comprehensive and systematic theoretical structure. However, on the other hand, the various ideological elements of the ideological system that reflect the historical situation have independence relative to the objective process of history. The progressive logical relationship of Lu Qing's thoughts is of great help in understanding the historical process more accurately. In early Confucianism, the progressive relationship between the thoughts of Confucius, Mencius, Xundong and Dong was determined by history and was an obvious historical fact.

But how relevant are the ideas of the Four Questions? Does it form an ideological system that is interconnected and supports each other? If this system exists, what is its theme? How do they illuminate these themes? Obviously it is not something that the operation of history reveals in a superficial way. This requires logical judgment and reasoning to connect the scattered thoughts presented in history, so that the implicit ideological consistency and logical correlation can be highlighted.

Logically, the four thoughts of Confucius, Mencius, Xun and Dong that emerged from the great changes in history from the Spring and Autumn Period to the Western Han Dynasty have a common theme and form an interrelated and mutually supportive theoretical model. Stated. This theoretical type centers on the isomorphism of ethics and politics as the thinking center of the four people. It can be called an ethical and political theory. Here, ethics and politics not only modify each other, but also work in equal measure, and thus merge into one. This thinking is reflected in the structure of the theory, which is reflected in the simultaneous elaboration of four levels of thinking themes with different depths. The first is the issue of the relationship between heaven and man, which involves the origin of the value of ethical politics; the second is the issue of the good and evil of human nature, which involves the subject power and objective control of ethical politics; the third is the ideal of inner sage and outer king, which involves the creation of ethical politics. The logic of production and promotion; the fourth is the arrangement of virtue, punishment and auxiliary, which involves the institutional spirit and institutional configuration of ethics and politics. It can be said that only by combing through and integrating the ideas provided by Confucius, Mencius, Xun and Dong along the historical process can the theoretical system of ethics and politics be presented to us.

Of course, history has not been interrupted, and logic has evolved accordingly. Looking at the ethical and political construction of early Confucianism from today's perspective, we still have to choose between history and logic, objectivity and subjectivity. Without distorting pre-Qin history and intellectual history, it is naturally most desirable to combine the ideological connections of early Confucianism. However, "all history is contemporary history." Therefore, all understandings generated by understanding history can only be the understanding of contemporary people. This has to make people choose a hermeneutic attitude towards reading history. Despite this situation, it should also be emphasized that historical texts, that is, the "original appearance" of early Confucian ethics and politics should be maintained as much as possible, and the influence of "foresights" who interpret historical texts should be weakened as much as possible.