| Virtue is not only closely related to personal happiness,but also the basis of a good and harmonious society.If we want to realize the Chinese dream in contemporary China,attention should be paid to the issue of morality.China has always been a country that attaches great importance to virtue since ancient times.Moral culture is an important component of traditional Chinese culture,thus the study on traditional Chinese moral culture can provide theoretical sources for the construction of contemporary moral civilization.The Chinese concept of virtue has a long history,as early as the Xia,Shang and Western Zhou dynasties,a clear concept of "virtue" was produced,and thoughts of virtue came into being.If we say that western philosophy is annotating Plato’s teachings,then we can unceremoniously say that most of the traditional Chinese ideas of virtue are the inheritance and extension of the concept of virtue in the Xia,Shang and Western Zhou dynasties.The Ancient Chinese people attached great importance to tradition,and all of their doctrines and ideas are based on the ideas of their predecessors.The Chinese Xia,Shang and Western Zhou Dynasties,as the first era after China entered the era of civilization,its ideological concepts are undoubtedly the source of those in later generations.Today,when vigorously carrying forward the excellent traditional Chinese culture,the moral thinking of the Xia,Shang and Western Zhou Dynasties,which laid the genes for the excellent Chinese culture,deserves great attention.People’s thoughts about the issue of virtue began with the pursuit of a good life.When the ancients of the Xia,Shang,and Western Zhou dynasties began to think about how to obtain a better life,the concept of virtue gradually emerged.For people at that time,a good life meant abundant food and clothing,and the harmony and stability of the family and society.However,in an era with low productivity and resource shortages,it was not easy for them to achieve this.Faced with harsh living environment,the ancients went to religion in an attempt to obtain a good life by seeking the protection of the gods.Virtue which was realized by people from the will of the gods was used to please the gods,seek blessings and avoid disasters,stabilize the family and society.It reflected the people’s cognition of the will of the gods,social relations and the entire natural world during the Xia,Shang and Western Zhou dynasties.And it also reflected the life wisdom of the ancients.Therefore,the study of the virtue thoughts of the Xia,Shang and Western Zhou dynasties should include two aspects.The first aspect is the study of religious beliefs in this period,including their belief systems,religious views,and the analysis of the deep meaning of religious views.The second aspect is the study of virtue thoughts under the religious views of this period,including the purpose of virtue,the virtue entries,and the logical relationship between religious views and virtues.This paper mainly takes the law of the development of human rationality as the main line.And it also takes the development process of religion in the Xia Shang and Western Zhou periods as the starting point.It will deeply analyze the wisdom of the ancients in the Xia,Shang and Western Zhou periods,which is used to find the excellent genes of traditional Chinese culture in order to provide reference for the construction of spiritual civilization in contemporary society.In addition to the introduction,this article is divided into six chapters.The first two chapters mainly discuss the historical background of virtue thoughts in the Xia,Shang and Western Zhou dynasties,the specific connotations of virtue and the main concern of the virtue issues and virtue entries in that era from a general point of view.From the perspective of the modern academic understanding of virtue,virtue is the good quality that man cultivates through reason or wisdom,which uses mind-set to have an effect on human activities and makes human activities and their subject good,according to the requirements of man’s nature to seek to survive better and the aim for better lives.In the view of the ancients in the Xia,Shang and Western Zhou dynasties,virtue was the quality that people needed to obey in order to obtain a realistic and stable life,which conformed to the will of the gods,and it was man’s understanding and practice of the "destiny" which was obtained from the gods.In primitive societies,people had a limited knowledge of the world,so they were confused and frightened in the face of irresistible natural forces.In the eyes of the people of that era,those invincible forces were a great threat to their survival.they could not understand those invincible forces,so they mystified these forces and believed in them,hoping to avoid natural and man-made disasters and gain well-being.By the time of the Xia,Shang and Western Zhou Dynasties,the state of the social community(primitive state)of the "starry sky" was ended,and the rulers of the state urgently needed to unify social thoughts,explain the legitimacy of the new regime,and maintain social order.In this context,the rulers absorbed the previous ideas and concepts of mysterious power worship,ancestor worship,"moralization",and so on,and put forward the virtue thoughts of that period about issues such as religious belief,national politics,and the cultivation of human qualities.Thus,the gods became the criterion for judging the good and evil,and virtue was regarded as a symbol of the grace of the gods.The third chapter mainly explores the concept of virtue during the Xia Dynasty.From the development of the entire history of human thoughts,almost every ethnic group has traces of religious belief in its history,and the idea of virtue in Xia Dynasty was based on natural religious belief.Natural religious beliefs have their roots in witchcraft and are the product of public witchcraft replacing individual witchcraft.In the early days of mankind,due to the limited awareness of the world,people attributed the source of happiness and disaster to the gods,and they believed that only by maintaining reverence for the gods could disasters be avoided and happiness obtained.In order to communicate with the gods and thus obtain the blessings of the gods,people invented various kinds of witchcraft.With the development of the times,social power was gradually centralized.Individual witchcraft was suppressed,and gradually replaced by public witchcraft,so that a natural religion which believed in the spirit of all things was born.In the Xia Dynasty,individual witchcraft had basically withdrawn from the social stage,and natural gods became the belief of the entire society,including celestial gods,land gods,ghosts,monsters,etc.The people in Xia Dynasty believed that the gods were the criterion for judging all good and evil,right and wrong,and that happiness could only be attained by believing in the gods and obeying the commands of the gods.At the same time,the rulers of the Xia Dynasty also used religion as a weapon to maintain their royal power,and used gods to shock the princely states.From then on,the rulers of the Xia Dynasty established a hierarchical social order under the command of supreme king based on the kinship.In order to consolidate this order,the rulers of Xia Dynasty promoted the "virtue of the sages" and emphasized learning from the ancient sages because these ancient sages were the closest people to God,had the clearest understanding of gods’ will.The qualities of respect,loyalty,righteousness,filial piety,kindness,friendship,and courtesy embodied in them were necessary for social stability and the happiness of the people.The virtue thoughts of the Xia Dynasty,which not only stabilized the Xia Dynasty society and provided order for the society at that time,but also providing a source for the virtue thoughts of the Shang Dynasty and Zhou Dynasty,which was of far-reaching significance.The fourth chapter mainly explores the virtue thoughts of the Shang Dynasty.The legend of the Shang Dynasty began with "The Heavenly Bird Descended,and the Shang tribe was born."(Poetry Sutra,Shang Song,Divine Bird)The people in Shang Dynasty believed that they were descendants of the god,who was a bird that came down from heaven with the divine destiny,thus there was the Shang kingdom.After the fall of the Xia Dynasty,in order to explain the rationality of the regime,the rulers of the Shang Dynasty put forward the concept of the supreme god "Emperor of Heaven" on the basis of inheriting the ideological concepts of the Xia Dynasty,and formed the religious belief concept of "The orders of Emperor of Heaven are supreme".In their view,if there were dynasties in the world,and there should be also emperors in the kingdom of God,and the "emperor" was the ruler of the imperial court,who was in charge of everything in the world.Therefore,the will of the"Emperor of Heaven" was supreme.obeying the "emperor’s command" is good,which lays the basis for achieving happiness.On the contrary,disobeying the "imperial order" was evil and would bring disaster.The Shang kingdom was born in accordance with the imperial order" which grands the king’s ruling over the world forever,the Shang people was the emperor’s chosen people,so obeying the Shang king was also obeying the command of God.The rulers of the Shang dynasty believed that since the Shang people had received the"imperial order" and were the "messengers" of the Emperor of Heaven in the human world,as long as they pleased the Emperor of Heaven and the other gods,they could ensure the stability of the regime and society.Naturally,Shang people attached great importance to sacrifice,hoping to please the gods.In sacrificial system of Shang Dynasty,the sacrifice of ancestors was the most frequent ritual,which not only reflected the filial piety of people in Shang Dynasty,but also implied that ancestors were the bridge between them and God.They believed that after the ancestors ended their life on earth,they became gods who lived in the heavenly court,continued to protect them,and conveyed God’s will to the human world,and they could also convey the expectations of the human world to God.Therefore,in their view,only by inheriting the virtues of heroic ancestors and absolutely obeying the god,could people get stable and happy lives.The fifth chapter mainly explores the virtue thoughts of the Western Zhou Dynasty.At the end of the Shang Dynasty,emperor Zhou of the Shang Dynasty was unvirtuous,which led to the intensification of domestic contradiction and the sufferings of the people.As a subordinate vassal state of the Shang Dynasty,the State of Zhou continued to develop,accumulated strength,and eventually united various princes to overthrow the Shang Dynasty and established the Zhou Dynasty.The rulers of the Western Zhou Dynasty learned from the demise of the Shang Dynasty,and they realized that if the destiny was permanent,then the Shang Dynasty would not perish.Therefore,the rulers of the Zhou Dynasty put forward a different view of religious belief from that of Shang Dynasty,which was,"the destiny is supreme" and "destiny is constant".On the one hand,the rulers of the Western Zhou Dynasty claimed that the god was the lord of all things,and only by paying homage to the god could people of Zhou Dynasty gain the favor of the destiny and thus received the blessings of the god.On the other hand,in the eyes of the people of Western Zhou Dynasty,the supreme god"Tian" was a rational god,who was not as arbitrary and moody as the gods believed in by people in the Shang Dynasty,but a principled deity,which was mainly reflected in the fact that "Tian" took the stability of the people as the reason for the destiny.Therefore,the people of Western Zhou Dynasty believed that the destiny was not permanent,and in order to preserve the destiny forever,the ruler must respect virtue and protect the people,and others must also be matched with virtue.To solve the problem of virtue cultivation,Zhou Gong proposed to rule the country with liturgy and embed the concept of moral values in the liturgical system,thus playing the effect of moral indoctrination.In Chapter Six,in order to find solutions to social problems in modern society,we try to inherit genes which are beneficial to enhancement of our spiritual civilization based on conclusion and analysis of virtue thoughts in the Xia,Shang and the Western Zhou Dynasties.Generally speaking,although the virtue thoughts of the Xia,Shang and Western Zhou Dynasties are based on religious belief,their purpose was happiness in this world rather than happiness in the other world.Religious belief is only a means for the ancients to understand the world and seek practical happiness.Fundamentally speaking,the virtues of the Xia,Shang,and Western Zhou dynasties were rooted in the emotions of human beings,and their main form of embodiment was "love",mainly including love between people and gods,love between people,and love for the country.This virtue,which arises from private emotions,exhibits an emotionalism tendency.Unlike modern emotionalism,although it starts from human emotions,it never rejects reason and recognizes the logical necessity of virtue.The concept of virtue in the Xia,Shang,and Western Zhou Dynasties is the product of the germination and development of rationality in the ancients,and is full of the brilliance of reason.It provides important inspirations for the construction of the contemporary "human community of shared destiny",the establishment of social belief and the cultivation of moral education,which has important referential value. |
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