The Research On The Enlightenment Of Confucius And Yanhui's Contentment To The Construction Of Modern Spiritual Civilization In China

Confucius and Yanhui's Contentment roots in two chapters of the Analects of Confucius. One is Chapter Shu'er, the other is Chapter Yongye. Zhou Dunyi who was a Neo-Confucian in the initial stages of Song Dynasty call it as Confucius and Yanhui's Contentment, and it was always canonized and taken delight in talking about by the scholars after Zhou Dunyi, but there is not a unified understanding about its meaning and spiritual realm to this day. This thesis annotated four representational viewpoints of the scholars were the Neo-Confucians in Song Dynasty and Ming Dynasty, and addressed my opinion, in fact, Confucius and Yanhui's Contentment represents the uppermost realm of Confucianism, and it have a dual character, one is the viewpoint of righteousness and benefit that righteousness is the unity with benefit, the other is the happiness observes that one should find contentment in poverty and joy in one's principle. Confucius ascertained that it was only human nature to love wealth and power, and to loathe the poor and the lowly. He argued that one should think about all moral principles at the sight of profits, and opposed chasing benefit by all lengths or forgetting all moral principles at the sight of profits. Besides this, Confucius addressed that righteousness is more important than benefit and benefit is from righteousness, and moral ideality is more important than material benefits, so one must follow righteousness if he want to get more material benefits. But Confucius and Yanhui's Contentment is such a contentment which take root in the spiritual satisfaction more than in the material satisfaction, and this "contentment" is not changeable because of the lack of material or the poverty-stricken of life.In our modern society, one important problem is the imbalance of the material life and the spiritual life, people are experiencing an accelerated enriching material life, but meanwhile an increasingly emptying spiritual life, and loss of spiritually, true happiness. Based on the research of the thoughtfulness and spiritual realm of Confucius and Yanhui's Contentment, this thesis conferred the enlightenment of Confucius and Yanhui's Contentment to the construction of modern spiritual civilization in China, those values concretely reveals:the viewpoint of righteousness and benefit which righteousness is the unity with benefit is propitious to restrain people's full of material desires, atone for the lack of social ethics and construct new market economy order; the viewpoint of happiness observes which one should find contentment in poverty and joy in one's principle provide us with a mirror to how to deal with the relation of the material luxury and the spiritual bewilderment, and we should keep our countenance and find our inner peace, regardless of riches, honors, poverty, humbleness, fortune, misfortune, long life or short life.