Study On The Modern Value Of Zeng Guofan's Family Ethical Ideas

Zeng Guofan was an prominent scholar and statesman in Chinese contemporary history. Someone praise and someone criticize on his evaluation, especially on his political part. The ideas about his family ethical education have been winning the high and unanimous approval. His most admirable virtue is that he wrote, in his short life, thousands of diaries as well as letters to his family members, instructing and educating his brothers and their sons and daughters to help, as much as they can, their needy neighbors. As a result, his fine family tradition and family motto was handed down in succession for generations.Zeng Guofan's education of family ethics was very successful because he was well known about the cause of those bereautical and landlord family's ups and downs in the history. He was quite aware that the important influence of the success and failure of those volatile political causes on their family's prosperity and decadence. He regarded it very important for the sustaining of his clan's prosperity. The thought's origin: traditional ConfucianismN Chinese traditional warning, Zeng clan's own principle.Zeng Guofan's family ethics ideas showed a tender feeling of family ethics centered on the blood relationship than the former. The essence and content of Zeng's ideas of family ethics lies in the following four points: Firstly, the base on which a family is built up-filial and fraternal. Secondly, the way of running a family-industrious and thrifty. Thirdly, policy of thriving family-enlightenment and influence. Fourthly, method of family harmony-good- neighbor.Nevertheless, the dissertation does not confine itself to the expounding and argumentation of Zeng Guofan's ideas of family ethics, but lay emphasis on the deepening of its modern value or significance. The author evaluated Zeng's family ethics ideas in the third content. Various phenomena and problems do exist in modern family, such as "the lowering of the center of ethics; irreasonable consumption; serious problems of family education and indifferent and loose neighboring relationship. Facing these problems and phenomena, we can not deny that most contents in Zeng's ideas of family ethics will contribute a lot to the construction of modern family morals, such thoughts as: respect the old and love the young, share hardships and happinese; diligence is the key to wealth and morality, thrift is helpful to be moral, but not to be mean; parents should value family education, moral education is first and morality and intelligence are equal. But the essence of his family ethics is centered on upholding, extendingand developing the feudal ethical code. However, with the development of Chinese modernization and marketing, great changes have taken place in the aspect of modern family structure, family function and the relationship and family ethical ideas. In this particular situation, some ideas of Zeng Guofan's family ethics are surely invalid and unsuitable to some extent. We should taken criticizing and inheriting attitude towards Zeng Guofan's thoughts of family ethics and tap modern value in his thoughts, which is helpful to tackling some emerging problems and negative influences in modern family.