A Research Of Social Honesty In Tang Dynasty

Honesty is one of the most important elements in Chinese culture, as well as the foundation of Chinese traditional morality. It is involved in every idealistic domain of Chinese traditional culture, an essential cultural pivot for politics, society, ethic, and economy. The Tang Dynasty is a flourishing epoch of the belief in, and creed of, the honesty, and also an important stage for the development of such ideology in Chinese tradition.Politicians of Tang advocated that honesty was the root of the State."It is honesty that secures the Empire","Honesty, as the root of nation, holds the people","The way of instructing, is firstly to be honest","A dishonest mandate cannot be followed by the people","The personal honour relies on honesty and manners, and the state's one on honesty and righteousness.", which are developed from the traditional faith of honesty. The ideologists of Tang had also analytical interpreted the Confucianist honesty in many other perspectives, such as honesty in politics, mutual honesty between monarch and subjects, and honesty of behaviour. Liu Zongyuan held that"Honesty should be likened to four seasons eternal and perpetual". LuZhi carried on with this Confucianist theory that honest supports personality, and also proposed that"Be honest, and the others wound not be puzzled; be honest, and you might teach others to be honest. Honesty will lessen only if not add, there is no trustworthy without honesty.", all of which has thus evolved into a political theorem on Honesty. Statesmen and literati in Tang inherited and developed the belief of honesty from the Pre-Qin Confucianism. HanYu considered honesty as the human nature; and Li'Ao developed Confucianist theory of honesty and put further forward into the harmony of Nature and Mankind.Tang dynasty was also a time when political honesty could be smmothly exercised. The social honesty in Tang and the moral politics of this kind were interlaced so closely as to constitute, an essential part of Tang's moral politics. This is related to the honest practices of the principal part of Tang's political activities, owing to the efforts of both the monarch and court mandarins. From LiYuan, the first Emperor of Tang, who paid attention to the implantation of public honesty, to Emperor Li Shimin, who held the belief"Be honest to all people under the sun", and further on to Empress Wu Zetian, who believed that dishonesty between emperor and ministers would endanger the whole nation, the honesty politics had become a tradition, and it also made honesty a political belief by moral standards. The supervision and judicial system of Tang guaranteed the execution of such a belief. Among the supervision system, especially it is the expostulation system which mattered greatly to honesty: if the emperor took suggestions by the people, it showed the honesty of the emperor, and on the other hand, if a minister dared to advise the emperor, it also showed his honesty and integrity. Differing from the supervision system, the judicial system of Tang was the mechanism punishin the unlawful as well as the dishonesty. The Reign of Zhen'guan, and The Flourish of Kai Yuan, was inseparable from the honesty belief of Emperor Tang Taizong and Xuanzong and their ministers.The rapid growth of economy in the Tang dynasty is closely related to the belief of the honesty in the economic relationship which played an essential part in the economic life at that time. This belief mainly existed in the economic laws and commercial area as conception of ethic, mercantile morality and also the ethic order of the economic system. This kind of honesty, on the one hand, depended on obedience of the people out of their will; on the other hand, it was kept by the system. Contractual Writ of Tang dynasty was both the evidence to deal with the dissension under the law and a formative way to show the honesty of the two sides in the business out of long termed practice. This contract system was a kind of honesty system to some extent. The plentiful Contractual Writs proved that the contract relationship had concentrated into all sides of life in the Tang, and also honesty-restricted system for the entire buyer and seller to rely on was a pervasive phenomenon. The pledge system was also over-developed. The establishment of the pledge action must base on honesty. If not, this action could not happen and it was impossible for the both sides to keep the contract relationship. Feiqian in Tang dynasty was the outcome of the merchandise economy development. Its existence relied on the honesty, especially the honesty of the government as far as it came into being. In essence Feiqian was a kind of credit system. There were also Ji Fu Pu helping to post people's fortune and Gui Fang keeping the money for the people, both of them working on the moral foundation of honesty. In addition, the marriage contract was also a representation of honesty. And also in the commercial area, the principle of honesty was embodied in the requests to the quality of the goods, the rules of the law against the cheats in the production and sales, the justice in evaluation and price-setting and so on. The government of Tang dynasty played as a supervisor to carry through this relationship. The honesty principle which the businessmen were able to obey was an important one in the run of the commerce in the Tang dynasty.The scholar-bureaucrats in Tang dynasty, a group of intellectuals considering the inheritance and innovation to the culture and thoughts as their duty, succeeded to the interpretation to honesty by the scholars in the Pre-Qin and then developed it. They regarded it not only as the essential moral standard for all the scholar-bureaucrats but also the basic principle to behave. It was very popular for them to demand themselves to be a government official with honesty, to make a friend with honesty. Honesty had become a kind of affirmation and praise to the officials who made achievement in the posts and had this quality. On contrast, the others without this quality were laughed at. By their attention and performance to the honesty, these people set good examples to the public in the establishment of the honesty ethos.Tang dynasty applied the honesty principle to the relationship with other ethnic-nations."To control the enemy with honesty"had become consciousness of the people. To send the faithful liegeman to guard the frontier had become an important policy to handle the relationship with other nations. To show the trust by marriage and alignment was the main form to deal with this relationship. It was the further development to honesty using it as an important principle in the relationship of nations. It was a crucial trump for the harmonious relationship between nations and a typical example available to reference to dispose the similar questions afterward.The practice of the belief of honesty in Tang is a key factor of its social stability and political justness, and the assuring force for the rapid economical renewal, development and prosperity. The development of the social honesty in Tang had its profound historical and social reasons. It is connected with the Chinese traditional governing belief, the demand of the age, and the personal quality of the emperors of Tang. Thus, it creates its uniqueness of honesty at that time: profound honesty belief, prominent political honesty, evident economical honesty, apparent national honesty, and dense social honesty. The appearance of honesty in Tang is not only the result of advocate of the time and society but also the reanimation of kindness in nature of man.The social honesty in Tang plays an important role in classical Chinese ideological history. People of Tang had chosen the traditional honesty-morality, and this choice has its significant enlightening significance to moral and cultural constructions at present.