The Research Of Zixia And His School

Zi Xia, also named Bu Shang, was born in Wen, Wei. He was one of the most superexcellent disciples in Confucius's late years. Zi Xia was the first one to initiate Confucian classics after Confucius, and he contributed a lot to the spread of Confucian literature and the development of its thoughts. He was honored as the originator of initiating classics. Despite his great achievements in Confucian thoughts, he had much to do with prophase legalists. Studies on him vary from different angles, but far from enough. This dissertation aims to make a systematic analysis of his contributions to Confucian and tries to present a clearer image of Zi Xia before pubic.This dissertation consists of six chapters.Chapter one introduces studies on Zi Xia till now, which is composed of three parts.Chapter two summarizes the main stories of Zi Xia on the basis of Chen Yushu's Year Lists of Buzi, which divides his life into four phases: childhood, following Confucius and study, staying in Lu after Confucius's death and teaching in West River in his late years. I also do some research concerning his birth place, and confirm the assumption that he was born in Wen Wei.Chapter three focuses on his characteristics and stresses his particular attitudes in politics and humanness. Zi Xia was active in political career in his youth but lost interest later. Yet in his fifties, he became the tutor of Wei Wenhou, and cultivated numbers of legists. This dissertation argues that the causes of his turning are due to the great changes of political institution and the evocable changes in his thought.Chapter four combs the relationship between Zi Xia and Confucian classics, and points out that Zi Xia was the first one to initiate classics systematically and comprehensively. Zi Xia not only initiated them, but interpreted some as well. As to the particular connection between them, there have been different ideas. On the basis of previous arguments, this dissertation makes a meticulous study on his relationship with each classics without ignoring others' contributions, hence adopt an impersonal and impartial position.Chapter five analyzes Zi Xia's School and divides it into two tributaries according to geological distributing and learning characteristics. Thus I can explain the phenomena why Xun Zi despised Zi Xia's School while Han Feizi excluded him in Confucian Eight Factions. Also in this chapter, I do some research on Zi Xia's important disciples.Chapter six sums up Zi Xia's contributions on the whole. Zi Xia also contributed a lot to the Confucian thoughts. Through comparison and analysis, I find that the apothegm brought forward by Zi Xia is much more acceptable and the sayings posed by him are far-reaching and still living today. Zixia also cultivated some legalist disciples, such as Li Ke and Wu Qi, so he could be called the transitional figure from Confucian to legalist.This dissertation employs the methods of comparison and historical material analysis. And in some chapters, psycho-historiography is used. Based on full and accurate materials, this article combs Zi Xia's whole life, characteristics, contributions on thoughts and the features of his school, therefore puts forward the originalities from the following aspects:First, I attribute Zi Xia's classical accomplishments to his distinctive characteristics. Zi Xia was a punctilious boy in Confucian, which offered him much more interest in studying and conning classics, and this determined that Zi Xia was the only one proficient in Confucian classics. So others couldn't be mentioned in the same breath with Zi Xia in classics initiating.Second, I comb the relationship between Zi Xia and Confucian classics, especially his relationship with the Book of music (《乐》) , which is seldom mentioned in ancient books and probed in previous research. I believe that the Book of Music that Zi Xia initiated was mainly the theories and thoughts of Confucian music. When he taught it, he paid much attention to the indoctrinization of Confucian thoughts. His ideas on music were mainly from Confucius, but he stressed the place and rank of people who enjoyed music, and called for people's attention on its teaching function in society. Zi Xia did much to retrieve traditional music, which had tremendous significances not only in his time but to the aftertime as well. The thoughts in Xunzi Yuelun were much influenced by Zi Xia.Third, Zi Xia also contributed a lot to the Confucian thoughts. He did much to develop and innovated Confucian thoughts, which was of vital importance for its diffusion. Confucian could be the dominant ideology for the past 2000 years, mainly due to Zi Xia's contributions. Most words advocated by Zi Xia had much impact on posterities, even till today. Such as "learn broadly and be sincere in ambition, consult intensively and ponder heedfully", "central morals grants no misstep while secondary morals permits some", and "study as excellent in official and be official as excellent in studying" etc. have influenced Chinese for thousands of years, and are still living today.Fourth, dividing Zi Xia's School into two factions is the new viewpoint claimed in this dissertation. The disciples in Lu were much different from those in West River, not only in learning manners but also in thoughts and deeds. The disciples in Lu such as Gongyang Gao, Guliang Chi and Zeng Shen mainly concentrated on classics studying while those in West River such as Li Ke, Wu Qi had more interest in political activities. Then the contradiction between Xun Zi and Han Feizi could be deciphered reasonably.Besides, some controversial issues are also under discussion in this article. For example, Zi Xia's birth place was full of disputations in the past time, from the time it was mentioned, the credibility and the vicissitude of the place, this article believes that the point of view that Zi Xia was born in Wen Wei is authentic. As to the relationship between Zi Xia and the Preliminary Remarks on the Book of Songs (《诗序》), there haven't had new evidence to prove their relevance, but the Confucius Remarks on the Book of Songs(《孔子诗论》) which was promulgated by Shanghai Museum can illuminate their close relationship to some extent. As for the Biography of Sang Fu(《丧服传》), although it has been regarded as the works of Zi Xia, if seen from the familiarity with funeral rites, we should also consider the probability of Zi You. Zi Xia got only one more evidence than Zi You that the Biography of Sang Fu had some similarity in style with the Gongyang's Biography(《公羊传》), which was recognized as initiated from Zi Xia's disciple. When we find new materials to prove the relationship with Zi You, or some analogical attestations that similar sentence style doesn't mean initiating from the same master, we should not ignore the probability that Zi You be the author of the Biography of Sang Fu. There are many such argumentations throughout the thesis.From the aspects of Zi Xia's whole story, his characteristics, academic accomplishment, thought contributions and the features of his school, I sum up all of Zi Xia's contributions. As to the disputable issues for a long time, I relevantly adopt the common points of view in academia on the basis of historic materials. Some new ideas put forward in the dissertation are innovative, and I hope they can shed some light on the further study of Confucian or Zi Xia.However, the subject I choose is very difficult in research, especially the relationship of Zi Xia with Confucian classics, about which there are lots of controversy and complicated factors. Due to the limitation of my knowledge and historical materials, I haven't made them much clear, and some issues still need even further research.