A Study Of "The Doctrine Of The Mean"

"The Golden Mean", originally one chapter from the "Book of Rites", is themaster work of Confucian Simeng school. There were not unprecedenteddevelopment to "The Golden Mean" until the Tang and Song dynasties, with therise of the theory of principles."The Golden Mean" was highly respected byChen Hao and Chen Yi during the Northern Song Dynastry. During theSouthern Song Dynasty, Zhu Xi composed “Zhang Ju on The Doctrine of theMean”. He put the same inportance to "The Golden Mean" and other threebooks, namely”,“The Great Learning”,"The Analects of Confucius" and"Mencius", and called them “The Four Books”. After the Song and YuanDynasties,"The Golden Mean" became the required book of the IimperialCompetitive Examinations, thus having a great impact on Chinese culture andeducation.In this paper, with a content and structural analysis of the "Golden Mean", theauthor thinks "The Golden Mean" has two parts from a macroscopic view: onepart dedicated to the account of the remarks of Confucius, the other part is thecomment of Zi Si. Part one is an inheritance of Confucian thoughts by the writerZi Si. Part two is Zi Si’s development of Confucianism. To be specific, Zi Si’s“The Golden Mean” is mainly about laws, discussing mainly the followingaspects: the law of the gentleman, the proper governance of a state, destiny, livesand laws, sincere ways.In view of this, the author bases the study of the golden mean on the remarks ofConfucius and discusses Confucian Ways described by ZiSi, on the other hand,the auhtor discusses Zi Si’s inheritance and development of Confucian Ways.