Meaning: Learning will lead to wisdom, not learning will lead to dullness; learning will lead to order, not learning will lead to chaos. From ancient times to the present, there are no virtuous and great people who have achieved success without learning.
Source: "The Case of Confucianism in the Ming Dynasty", which is an academic history work that systematically summarizes and records the development and evolution of traditional academic thought and its schools in the Ming Dynasty. The whole book has 62 volumes. "The Case of Confucianism in the Ming Dynasty" takes the origin and development of Wang Shouren's philosophy as the main line, and the first "Shi Shuo" outlines the whole book.
The book records 210 scholars of the Ming Dynasty in one chapter. After the general outline of "Shi Shuo", seventeen academic cases are listed respectively, roughly based on the order of time and the inheritance relationship of academic schools.
Each academic case has a relatively fixed structure, with a preface, biography and quotations; the preface summarizes the basic situation of the school, such as the main academic views and main representatives of the school, The relationship with other schools of thought, etc. A biography is a biography of a scholar, and a quotation is a collection of famous sayings from that school with comments.
Extended information:
Creative background:
The author served as Doctor of the Four Gates of the Imperial Academy in Beijing from the 17th to the 18th year of Zhenyuan (801-802) Made at the time. In the seventeenth year of Zhenyuan (801), the author resigned from his official position in Xuzhou and lived in Luoyang to preach and teach. After two trips to Beijing for selection, he was awarded the post of Doctor of the Fourth Gate of the Imperial College in October of that year. At this time, the author was determined to use the platform of the Imperial College to revitalize Confucianism and reform the literary world, so as to realize his ambition to serve the country.
However, after he came to the Imperial College and took office, he found that the examination room was dark, the government was corrupt, and the official system was full of shortcomings. As a result, many students lost confidence in the imperial examination and became officials, so they relaxed their studies. The upper class at that time looked down upon teaching. person. Among the scholar-bureaucrats, there was a concept that they were neither willing to seek teachers but were "ashamed to be teachers", which directly affected the teaching and management of the Imperial College.
The author is deeply saddened by this and wrote this article in response to Li Pan's question to clarify people's vague understanding of "seeking a teacher" and "being a teacher".
Huang Zongxi's "The Case of Confucianism in the Ming Dynasty" accurately grasps the trajectory of the brewing, formation, prosperity and differentiation of mental studies in the Ming Dynasty, and reveals the main line of academic development in the Ming Dynasty.
"The Case of Confucianism in the Ming Dynasty" is the first complete academic history work in ancient my country, creating the genre of academic history books in history. The more famous historical book genres in ancient Chinese historiography are the chronological genre pioneered by "Spring and Autumn" and "Zuo Zhuan", the biographical genre pioneered by "Historical Records" and "Han Shu", the dian system genre pioneered by "Tongdian" and the "Tongjian Chronicles". 》The chronicle genre created by this book.
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