英文经典_儒家思想

Confucius, 551 B.C.E-479B.C.E

No other philosopher in the world has had more enduring influence than Confucius. For over two thousand years his concept of government, and his ideas about personal conduct and morality, permeated Chinese life and culture. Even today, his thoughts remain influential.

There was little in his childhood background to predict the remarkable prestige that Confucius eventually achieved. He was born in a small principality in northeastern China, was reared in poverty, and had no formal education. Through diligent study, however, he educated himself and became a learned man. For a while he held a minor government post; but he soon resigned that position and spent most of his life as a teacher. Eventually, his most important teachings were gathered into a book, the analects which was compiled by his disciples.

The two cornerstones of his system of personal conduct were Jen and Li. Jen might be defined as “benevolent concern for one’s fellow men” Li is term less easily translated: it combines the notions of etiquette, good manners, and due concern for rituals and customs. Confucius believed that a man should strive after truth and virtue rather than wealth (and in his personal life he seems to have acted on that principle). In addition, he was the first major philosopher to state the Golden Rule, which he phrased as “Do not do unto others that which you would not have them to do unto you.”

Confucius believed that respect and obedience are owed by children to their parents, by wives to their husbands, and by subjects to their rulers. But he was never a defender to tyranny. On the contrary, the starting point of his political outlook is that the state exists for the benefit of the people, not the rulers. Another of his key political ideas is that a leader should govern primarily by moral example, rather than by force. Confucius did not claim to be an innovator, but always said that he was merely urging a return to the moral standards of former times. In fact, however, the reforms which he urged represented a change from- and a great improvement over- the government practices of earlier days.

At the time of his death, Confucius was a respected, but not yet greatly influential, teacher and philosopher. Gradually, though, his ideas became widely accepted

throughout China. Then, in the third century B.C. Shih Huang Ti united all of China under his rule, and decided to reform the country entirely and make a complete break with the past. Shih Huang Ti therefore decided to suppress Confucian teachings, and he ordered the burning of all copies of Confucius’ work..(He also ordered the destruction of most other philosophical works.)

Most Confucian books were indeed destroyed, but some copies survived the holocaust, and a few years later, after the dynasty founded by the “First Emperor” had fallen, Confucianism re-emerged. Under the next dynasty, the Han, Confucianism became the official state philosophy, a position it maintained throughout most of the next two millennia.

Indeed, for much of that period, the civil service examinations in China were based primarily on knowledge of Confucian classics. Since those examinations were the main rout by which commoners could enter the administration and achieve political power, the governing class of the largest nation on Earth was largely composed of men who had carefully studied the works of Confucius and absorbed his principles.