The Study Of The Thoughts Of Confucius' "Li

The original "Li" came from the understanding of life-world; it was the unity of the form and the connotation of the "Li". Till the time of Confucius, the severance of the form and the connotation came into being. The original "Li" confronted the fate of oblivion deformed and disordered, and became extinct.Confucius took up the historical mission to rescue the original "Li". He spent all his time to rescue the dispersed "Li" to be extirpating and tried his best to collect the materials of it. In addition, he combined the original "Li" what he had learned with his life, and the essential spirits of "Li" had been brought to light by his personality. The original "Li" which was collected and rebuilt by Confucius was not the "Li" of ancient time originally, but the "Li" of Confucius in the true meaning.The tune of Confucian "Li" was iterating, not restructuring, which doomed basically that Confucius' work was interpreting, not restructuring. This kind of explanation enabled the original "Li", which was full of the meanings, not to lose its original latent meanings, but also had not promised to explain the latent meanings of the original "Li" exactly and completely. Just as so, in one side, it determined the absolute supreme status of the classics, once the classics became the bigoted text, there was not possibility to change or correct it at ease. In the other side, which also make it possible to start to explain it from scratch.In general, we think the important development of the original "Li" what Confucius had done was to use "Benevolence" explaining the meaning of "Li". But we are able to do so only in the dynamic way, not in the rigid one. In fact, "Benevolence" and "Li" explained each other. The understanding and grasp of "Li" completely what Confucius had became deeper and deeper together with the same way of "Benevolence". On the contrary, it was also true. The more Confucius understood the meaning of "Li", the more he understood the meaning of "Benevolence" and the more he took it for granted. This was a course, which had no termination.The ancient original "Li" lived with the human's life, which must be self-sufficiency of all things. All the problems of society and life were included in it. Confucius' "Li" herited the original "Li". So, it also included the whole problem aboutthe society and life. This great scope made it supreme to any other classics.The original "Li" via three dynasties-Xia, Shang^ Zhou- converge in Confucius, which made Confucius become the only person who represented the Chinese traditional culture. This was the unique pageant in the history of the world culture.As the representative of the Chinese traditional culture, Confucius once was criticized severely. It was obvious that this Confucius, which was criticized by the others, was not the one who was in the ancient China.Those accusations that asked Confucius to answer for the matters, which took place in the later time, were unfair to him. Those skeptics conjecture that Confucius had the vicious intentions to pose the religion of "Li" which ate man obviously had no harm to the great honors of Confucius, except making those doubters to become ridiculous themselves.In this building time, we believe that it is necessary to re-acknowledge Confucius.