Research On The Function Of Moral Education Of Chinese Excellent Traditional Political Culture

Chinese traditional political culture refers to the culture with Confucianism as the backbone,moralization as the core and “virtue and etiquette” as its distinguishing characteristic,supported by rulers in successive dynasties,founded and inherited by scholars,and featuring the content of “political belief”,“governing the country” and “making the world peaceful”.As the mainstream ideology in ancient time,it is different from traditional folk culture originated from farmers,workers,and merchants.The moral education function of traditional political culture means rulers,taking the scriptures as the text,apply moral education to “governing the country and making the world peaceful”,and take cultural ethics nurture as the fundamental way of governance.Excellent officials are commended,and neighboring countries are all in good relations to make everyone well cultured,the society in good order,and the world stable.Its essence is ancient ideological and moral education,which is “political education” expressed in Confucian discourse.The “political education” is nothing but persuasion and influence,so that people can consciously implement it.“Practicing one’s belief is called education”,so the belief,namely the traditional values,is the foundation of education as well as the principle for “self-improvement” and “governance”.Political educators,including kings,scholars,and patriarchs,disseminate traditional values as their own duty and shoulder the dual responsibilities of governance and education.The texts of political education developed from “Six Arts” and “Five Classics” to “Thirteen Classics”.The moral education function of traditional political culture has five distinct characteristics:nationality,practicality,inheritance,ritual,and kinship.Its mission lies in shaping gentleman’s personality,achieving political stability,pursuing ideological unity,and cultivating mellow customs.“Virtue and etiquette are the foundation of political education”.Virtue and etiquette are the theoretical origin of political education and its basic contents.The political cultural implication of “virtue” lies in: emphasizing the virtue of “benevolence” to the ruling class,the virtue of “filial piety” to the ruled class,and “harmony” to neighboring ethnic groups.“Etiquette” is the appearance of “virtue”,so that abstract ethics can be materialized,and its spirit is to respect the nature,the elders,the emperors and teachers.Its political implication lies in the fact that it is a hierarchical social status system.“Etiquette determines the social order”,i.e.,relationships like that between the emperor and his subordinates are thereby fixed.Etiquette being a political symbol,the emperor implements the national policy and enhance his authority through this very symbol.It is the “constitution” that restrains the imperial power.It is legitimate only if the emperor ascends the throne according to necessary etiquette,and the exercise of power is constrained by etiquette to respect the heaven and follow practices of his ancestors.The people-oriented concept emphasizes that “the way to govern the people” is based on “education”,and “educating the people” is an important means to“win the hearts of the people”,which has become a better way of governing the country than“politics” and “punishment”,thus constituting the theoretical cornerstone of political education.Regarding “nurturing people with culture”,“culture” refers to acquired moral cultivation,and “nurturing” is the main mechanism of “education” characterized by making people “unaware of daily practices” through means of learning and nurturing.Through means of “nurturing” in a gradual and unintentional way,gentleman’s personality can be shaped,social custom influenced,and national spirit inherited,which constitute theoretical dimension of political education.The function-practicing path of traditional political culture for moral education is to infiltrate morality and propriety into the deep heart of the people and promote the moral and political recognition of “scholars” and “people” about them through national policies such as cultivating customs,learning and excelling to be an official,correcting oneself before correcting others,practicing punishment to facilitate education,and educating distant peoples with morality.These national policies are the concrete application of virtue and etiquette in political education.Through environmental immersion,promoting good and suppressing evil are always practiced and transformation in people’s personality can be finally achieved.Customs influence the rise and fall of the nation,and its positive function can only materialize through gradual accumulation with senior officials taking the lead.Etiquette plays a fundamental role in changing existing customs.“Learning” refers to the study of Confucian classics.“Government official” refers to the civilian official group.The school is to “cultivate scholars”,and the recommendation and imperial examination systems are to “seek talents”.“Learning and excelling to be an official” connects “cultivating scholars” and “seeking talents”.Since learning is the precondition to become an official,the worship of literature and study is advocated to promote consensus in social thought.“Correcting oneself before correcting others” highlights the logic of political education,i.e.,oneself should be educated before others and senior officials must take the lead.The key to correct oneself is to educate the emperor through classics lectures so that he will be a merciful leader.The center of gravity of correcting oneself is to educate all officials with their due morality of “incorrupt,diligent,prudent,thrifty” in the form of the official rules and precepts.“Correcting others” refers to supervision and correction by seniors.“Practicing punishment to facilitate education” refers to application of strict punishment,so that the people know and fear the law,to achieve the purpose of moral education.Education is based on morality,which shows the priority of“virtue” over “punishment”.“Educating distant peoples with morality” refers to the use of benevolence to appease distant ethnic minorities,and the use of cultural cohesion of etiquette and righteousness rather than force,in order to achieve the belief that “all under the heaven are of one family”.The origin of moral education function of traditional political culture can be divided into four stages: Pre-Qin Era,Qin and Han dynasties belong to the initial stage;from Wei and Jin dynasties to Song Dynasty,it is the stage of ripeness and prosperity;the period from Yuan Dynasty to Republic of China witnessed its stereotype and collapse;from the founding of the People’s Republic of China onwards,it is the stage of nirvana and rebirth.In the long history of thousands of years,the continuity of traditional political culture is reflected in its transcendence of the rise and fall of dynasties in the time dimension,and the expansion of cultural circle from the Central Plains to the “Four Seas” in the space dimension.During this long historical evolution,the traditional political culture has collected water from various tributaries with the Duke Zhou and Confucius as its origin,and achieved three historical leaps,i.e.,Han Dynasty Learning,Song Dynasty Learning,and the Reform Thoughts of the late Qing Dynasty,on the basis of accommodating and digesting other theories including ancient philosophers,Buddhism and western thoughts.The first two historical leaps were successful,which is closely related to the positive interaction between the rulers and scholars in Han and Song dynasties,reflecting the powerful practical explanatory power and cultural integration capability of traditional political culture.The failure of the Reform Thoughts in the late Qing Dynasty lies in the ruler’s lack of historical initiative.Although the traditional political culture fluctuates along with the fate of the Chinese nation,it has its inherent tenacious vitality,namely the historical spirit.The historical spirit is as important to the rise and fall of a nation as the vigor is to human health.In detail,it includes the spirit of educating people with history,the consciousness of self-examination and the belief of “all under the heaven are of one family”.Lessons learned from history: the premise of moral education is “people’s trust”;the key point is the ruler taking the lead;the crux is to differentiate glory from shame;and the method is to pay equal attention to learning and thinking.Under the background of “Two Overall Situations”,ideological infiltration,national separatism and historical nihilism have brought challenges to our cultural security.To meet the challenge,improving the soft power of culture needs to go through the creative transformation and innovative development of excellent traditional political culture by keeping the valuable and rejecting the worthless,guided by historical materialism and Xi Jinping’s traditional cultural view.Although the function of moral education function of traditional political culture is essentially different from that of ideological and political work,they are both undertaking the mission of ideological construction with its emphasis on“influencing people”.Besides the instrumental value of maintaining the ruling order,both have the objective value of cultivating morality and perfecting personality.Therefore,the two should interpret each other in a “heterogeneous” dialogue.The former provides the latter with cultural identity and spiritual nourishment,and the latter offers the modern channel and target direction for the former in its transformation and development.Traditional political culture is hidden in people’s hearts and constitutes a “foresight” for understanding reality.People’s identification is not only affected by reasoned judgments,but also unconsciously dominated by “foresight”.Ideological and political work should squarely face the positive significance of“foresight” and use the “words of the old ancestors” to interpret current reality,to strengthen political identification by establishing historical self-confidence and keep on opening new realm in adapting Marxism to conditions in China with historical consciousness.The traditional moral education of political culture should take ideological and political work as the channel to explore in two directions: governing the party and governing the country.The exploring path is to interpret the major policies of governing the party and the country in the new era through cultural interpretation methods and reveal the hidden cultural connections between ancient and modern times,to find the code of “China’s successful governance”.In terms of the direction of governing the Communist Party of China,the Party’s self-revolution is a self-correction and the modern interpretation of awareness of potential risks.It emphasizes self-supervision but does not exclude external supervision,which goes beyond self-correction.Both etiquette and discipline are stricter than law.They play a role in crime prevention and need the protection of law.From “punishment for a breach of etiquette”to “integration of discipline and law” reflects inheritance.However,different from the one-way guarantee of “punishment” to “etiquette”,the integration of discipline and law embodies the complementarity of discipline and law,surpassing “punishment for a breach of etiquette”.The spirit of the CPC Central Committee’s Eight-point Provisions draws lessons from the experience of “cultivating customs” and focuses on minor issues to win the hearts and minds of the people through the senior officials taking the lead in implementation.It illustrates the inheritance of “disciplining oneself with etiquette” in eliminating the Four Undesirable Work Styles(formalism,bureaucratism,hedonism and extravagance).“The nurture of etiquette and righteousness”,“the rule of law” and “the prohibition by punishment”respectively reflect that “do not want”,“cannot”,“dare not” and the integration of the “three nots” is consistent with the “diversity and systematicness of ways”.In the direction of governing the country,the combination of law and morality inherits the “combined governance” from “practicing punishment to facilitate education”,but the former is superior to the latter by preferring law to morality.People-centered thought is based on the traditional people-oriented culture,but the former is far superior in terms of fundamental objective,test criterion,value pursuit and institutional system.“Universal Harmony” is a description of the ideal to make the world peaceful.Prosperity,democracy,civilization,and harmony are inherited from the blueprint of “Universal Harmony”,but they have contemporary connotation at the same time.“Educating distant peoples with morality” emphasizes that the world is a multi-ethnic cultural community with etiquette as the shared symbol.Enlightenment can be gained that the cultural outlook constitutes the solid foundation for the sense of community of the Chinese nation.Therefore,the role of Chinese cultural symbols shared by all ethnic groups must be highlighted.