Confucius is a scholar. The average scholar studies hard at a cold window, with a goal hanging in his heart, that is, to become a professional in a certain field one day, so as to mix a stable career in society. It is taboo to say that a person is worthless, which means that he is worthless. Confucius said frankly that a real person is undeserving. It is true that some people ridiculed him for his erudition and lack of expertise. He laughed at himself and said, then I will specialize in driving carriages.
Actually, Confucius has his own views on reading. He advocates that reading should be based on interest, and disapproves of the purely academic attitude of seeking knowledge for the sake of seeking knowledge ("those who know are not as good as those who are good, and those who are good are not as happy as those who are happy"). He also advocates that reading is for self-improvement, and despises the vulgar literati ("the ancient scholars are themselves, and today's scholars are human beings"). He has repeatedly stressed that it is important for a person to have genuine talent and practical learning, regardless of external fame and experience, similar to the saying "Don't worry about knowing yourself, but seek for knowing", which was repeated at least four times in The Analects of Confucius.
The phrase "a gentleman is useless" not only expresses Confucius' outlook on learning, but also his outlook on life. Once, Confucius chatted with his four students and asked them to talk about their ambitions. Three of them said they wanted to be military strategists, economists and diplomats. Only Ceng Dian said that his ideal is to set out lightly in March of next spring, make some friends, swim in the river, enjoy the cool in the forest and sing all the way back. Confucius listened and sighed, "I think the same as Ceng Dian." The saint's sigh gave a lively sigh of his unspoiled spirit, which greatly moved one of the most important literary critics two thousand years later and changed his name to "Saint's Sigh" to commemorate it. Life is alive, why not be a tool and a home? As long as you live leisurely, isn't it better than a slice?
Generally speaking, the academic circles think that "benevolence" is the core of Confucius' thought. As for what "benevolence" is, there are different opinions, but none of them can reach the scope of ethics. It is a fact that Confucius values human relations, but he is a wise man after all, and as long as a person is smart enough, he will never see through the relative nature of all ethical norms. Therefore, the phrase "a gentleman without benevolence has a husband" came from Confucius, and it is not surprising that he did not regard "benevolence" as a necessary condition for an ideal personality. Some people attribute benevolence to loyalty and forgiveness, but in fact, Confucius never advocates foolish loyalty and excessive forgiveness. He always distinguishes between "the state has a way" and "the state has no way". When "the state has no way", he can escape ("floating on the sea by riding a fork"), and if he can't escape, it is better to talk less ("talking about the sun"), and it is better to play the fool (the idiom "stupid" comes from The Analects of Confucius, and its original meaning is not to describe utter stupidity. He doesn't like Christ, when your left face is beaten, he wants you to send your right face up. Someone asked him if he should "repay good for evil", and he asked: Then what should be used to repay good? Then he said, it should be to repay resentment with justice and repay kindness with kindness.
Confucius is really a very reasonable person. He has common sense, knows the limits, and has no paranoia. "Faithfulness" is one of the connotations of "benevolence" stipulated by him personally. However, he clearly said that "words must be kept and deeds must be fruitful", which is the behavior of a rigid villain ("I am a villain"). The key point is that the two words "must" have no room for flexibility, which angered the old gentleman. He also objected to being too cautious. We often say "think twice before you act", which is also from the Analects of Confucius, but Confucius didn't agree. He said that it is ok to think again.
Maybe Confucius is not free and easy, but I only mentioned one side. After all, it's pleasant to have this side, which makes me feel at ease to admit that Confucius is a qualified philosopher, because philosophers are wise people, and how can wise people be free and easy?
2. The structure of Confucius' humanistic thought
Qian Yongsen
[ Abstract]: Confucius is the founder of Confucianism, not the full receiver of Zhou Culture. The reason why he "follows Zhou" is related to his pursuit of the highest ideal of order. Much of what we understand about Zhou culture is the result of Confucius and his later studies, and "Ziwuyu" is just a way for Confucius to change his thoughts under the premise of "from Zhou". There is no core concept in the functional system of Confucius' sociology. The gentleman's personality system, the benevolence system as a cultural value and the etiquette system composed of social structure and rules are mutually stipulated and conditioned. They are all subsystems with timeliness and history in the process of constant transformation, and * * * together constitute a broader balanced and orderly civilization structure.
I
The history of China's philosophical thoughts was written by Confucius. For more than two thousand years since the Spring and Autumn Period, Confucius thought has been a classic text studied, interpreted, even criticized and refuted by scholars and scholars. It can be said that as many people think about Confucius' thoughts, there are many Confucius with different faces. Scholars in different times have different knowledge backgrounds and talents. Influenced by the academic fashion of the times, they interpret Confucius from different logical starting points and angles for different motives. preconception and even prejudice are inevitable. In the interpretation of traditional texts, there is constant communication and dialogue between the interpreter and the interpreted, individual details and the overall structure of the text, and both sides of the interaction contain creativity and initiative at the same time. Just as Confucius' prescient interpretation of the ritual and music culture in the Zhou Dynasty constructed his own ideological system, which stimulated the vitality of Zhou Wenhua's memory and brought it into full play, it is an inevitable requirement of the new era to interpret Confucius' thoughts as a classic text at a new logical starting point, which will further clarify Confucius' thoughts and stimulate the creativity of thinkers.
There are usually two schools of research methods about Confucius' thoughts: one is diachronic research, that is, trying to restore the historical truth of Confucius' thoughts from the aspects of Confucius' living time and life, the ideological, cultural and social roots and the influence on later studies; The second is the study of temporality, that is, the philosophical method, which cares more about the essential significance of Confucius' thought to the development and evolution of human society than the "original meaning", and discusses the thinking system from which his words and deeds originated and the possibility of logical evolution. Hirsch distinguishes "meaning" from "significance". Meaning refers to the only thing that the author holds, but the meaning of the work is varied, depending on people's reading of the work. Post-scholars' understanding of classics is historic and uncertain, especially in terms of meaning. I'm here to discuss the significance of Confucius' thought.
It's not what I want to discuss and care about whether Confucius thought cries out for saving slave society or for the construction of feudal society. There is no doubt that in the existing information about Confucius' thoughts, there are young Confucius and old Confucius; There are Confucius as a teacher and Confucius as an independent thinker. There are thoughts that are understood by disciples and thoughts that are completely misunderstood. It is an impossible task to clarify its clues one by one. Thinkers like Confucius are usually inspired by their thoughts suddenly, but they must have their relevant theoretical background. I am concerned about how Confucius constructed his ideological system, or in what theoretical background he expressed his ideas, attitudes and behaviors.
2
Hegel's view of Confucius is only a practical wise man in the world, not a philosopher. "In his view, there is no speculative philosophy at all-only some kind, sophisticated and moral lessons, from which we can't get anything special." He even thinks that "in order to maintain Confucius' reputation, if his books have never been translated, then. Hegel's Confucius thought that "nothing special can be gained from it" is of great significance to China culture and even the whole East Asian culture. Hegel's understanding of Confucius is not only based on a few imprecise translations, but also only sees the scattered moral lessons, without touching the overall structure of Confucius' thought, and can't deepen the grasp of some details from the overall perspective. Because Hegel built a unique philosophical development history of "world spirit" based on the road of western civilization development. The late Professor Fu Weixun, who studied Buddhism intensively, also denied that Confucius was a philosopher. "But Mencius was a philosopher, and Confucius only told you the conclusion, not how it came about ...". But even so, the conclusion must have its philosophical basis and the way of deduction. Fu Weixun's premise is that he can't be considered a philosopher if he doesn't explain the source of his thoughts in clear words. Based on this inference, neither the Zen monk who paid attention to the way of doing things without writing, nor Yan He of Taizhou School in the next season were philosophers, and Sakyamuni was probably not a philosopher when he was alive.
Of course, more and more people regard Confucius as one of the pioneers of oriental philosophy. They must first try to seek the core of thinking and logic in their scattered quotations, hoping to reconstruct a philosophical theoretical system for it. "Benevolence" is often regarded as the core concept of Confucius' ideological system. Du Weiming thought that the original form of Confucianism was developed around Confucius' benevolence, and borrowed the famous words from European and American academic circles to define benevolence as a kind of "philosophical anthropology". Kuang Yaming's Biography of Confucius and Guo Moruo's Ten Criticism Books also regard benevolence as the core of Confucius' thought. Therefore, Mr. Yang Guorong said: "It is an accepted view that benevolence is the core of Confucius' thought." In fact, "recognition" is just an overconfident wishful thinking, and there are still many people with different views. Cai Shangsi has undergone a transformation from "benevolence" as the core of Confucius' ideological system to "ceremony" as the core. He believes that the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period are just about Confucian etiquette. As for the ideological trend of criticizing Confucius, which reached its climax from the May 4th Movement to the Cultural Revolution, it was mostly criticized from the perspective of "courtesy".
In fact, in the pre-Qin period, the understanding of Confucius' thoughts by Confucius disciples was ambiguous. After the death of Confucius, his disciples wandered around various vassal countries, gathered disciples to give lectures or engage in economic and political activities, and publicized and practiced Confucius' theory. Because the disciples' knowledge background and personal temperament are different, they also have different choices and interests in Confucius' theory, so there are different factions and divisions within Confucianism. Ceng Zi respected filial piety, Mencius showed benevolence, and Xunzi pushed the ceremony. In the history of philosophy, great philosophers' post-learning is often "how to learn is close to each other's nature, and it has a long history and benefits at the end". The debate today is just a continuation of the division between Mencius and Xunzi. In fact, the so-called core is often the initial concept of narration, and different choices of core are the prerequisite for ideological innovation.
In modern times, different attitudes to discuss Confucius' thought from the perspective of academic thought mostly imply a premise: a thinker must also have a speculative philosophy as the foundation, and a talented ideological giant should be able to build a theoretical framework with a strict logical thinking system. In fact, suppose there is a static closed body with a certain structure or center. In different philosophers, this center is named by different names, such as entity, idea, God and "benevolence" in Confucius' philosophy. Although many scholars advocate that the spirit and path of eastern and western philosophy are different, they are still trying to find the core of the philosophical foundation and system behind Confucius' quotations. Due to the loss and confusion of ancient books, we have no direct and exact evidence to prove whether Confucius really wrote Yi Zhuan and founded his philosophical system. But on the other hand, there is ample evidence to prove that Confucius did know, read and even carefully studied Zhouyi, and perhaps some speculative achievements in his later years are unknown. Hegel obviously didn't know the relationship between Confucius and The Book of Changes, and he also admitted that "China people also noticed abstract thoughts and pure categories, and the ancient Book of Changes was the basis of such thoughts". The Analects of Confucius rarely has speculative and pure categories, and some important theoretical terms often still point to the concrete experience world. It can be seen that Confucius did not regard Zhouyi's thought as the inevitable philosophical basis for creating his ideological system. This may be related to Confucius' rejection attitude because of his misunderstanding of Zhouyi when he was young, but more importantly, it depends on Confucius' lifelong ambition and cultural choice. The greatness of ideological giants is the same, but they are always endowed with their own unique cultural choices.
During the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, Confucius, as the successor of Zhou Culture, took it as his duty to rule the world. Therefore, it is not important to build a speculative philosophy system, but to focus on the current situation and think about the ways of social integration and order, coordinated development between individuals and society, and people's living and working in peace and contentment. This is a continuation of the ideological humanitarianism since the Shang and Zhou Dynasties, and it is also an important issue that the collective composed of many tribes in such a vast area as China has paid attention to for generations. Therefore, there is not necessarily a unique logical starting point and ideological core in Confucius' ideological system. What matters is not the logic and speculative nature of theoretical deduction, but its worldliness and practical reliability, which can accommodate individuals and society, undertake tradition and change, and combine ideals, beliefs and life here. Therefore, Confucius established a functional system of sociology. In this system, Confucius focused on the specific behavior orientation and social significance of the concepts of gentleman, benevolence and propriety, thus forming three interrelated subsystems, namely, the personal personality system, the cultural value system of benevolence, righteousness, wisdom and trust, and the social control system of etiquette.
3
If you find a more important concept as the beginning of the narrative, then "adult" is the key concept that runs through the whole ideological system. Because people are actors and undertakers to realize value and guide society. "The Analects of Confucius Xian Wen" contained Zi Lu's question to adults, and Confucius said, "If Zang Wuzhong's knowledge, the public doesn't want it, Bian Zhuangzi's courage, Ran Qiu's art, and his writing with courtesy and music can also be an adult." Yue: "What is the necessity of being an adult today? "It's easy to see what is right. You can be an adult if you don't forget your life's words for a long time." Liu Xiang also wrote in Shuo Yuan: Yan Yuan asked Zhong Ni, "What about the trip to adulthood?" Confucius said, "The trip to adulthood depends on the principle of temperament, the change of things, the understanding of the mystery and the source of wandering qi. If this is the case, it can be called an adult. Knowing the heaven, you should bow with benevolence and righteousness, and lick your body with ceremony and music. Husband's benevolence, righteousness, propriety and music, the trip to adulthood is also. If you are ignorant, your virtue will flourish ... " (Volume XVIII of Shuo Yuan) The behavior of "adults" should conform to the values of benevolence and righteousness and the norms of etiquette. To be an adult is to be humane, to complete one's personality, and to be benevolent and courteous.
Confucius put forward the word "gentleman" as a model of life. Gentleman originally refers to the aristocratic class under the feudal system. Confucius said that the meaning of gentleman has changed, and it is often used to refer to people with noble character, but people with morality and humanity. The basis of this transformation is that the gentleman is a respected person with a high social status and assumes the leading responsibility of society. In the Spring and Autumn Period, with the gradual disintegration of aristocratic society and the change of social structure, the connotation of gentleman has also changed. There are many statements about gentlemen in the Analects of Confucius, which are general and have no clear classification. This may be