New Trends In The Development Of Early Western Han Dynasty Confucianism

Confucianism, as the ruling thought of the long feudalistic history of China, has influenced us Chinese greatly in terms of cultural psychology and way of behavior, and we can say that the influence even exists now. However, before emperor Han wu's praising it highly, the road of the development of the Confucian school was not smooth at all. During the Spring and Autumn period and the Warring States period, although it was named "well-known school", it did not attract much attention from the ruling class owing to its ill-timed doctrines under the circumstances of the contending for hegemony among the kingdoms. Qin Shihuang's extremely autocratic cultural policy made the development of the Confucian school almost impossible. However, in Western Han dynasty, it was chosen as the ruling thought by the ruling class. Why? What on earth changed its fate? It's a very complicated question to answer, but the self-development and the self-reformation, as the internal course, was obviously the main reason. Compared with other schools, the new Confucianism was the most suitable one for the ruling class. Meanwhile, many Confucian scholar's teaching and studying the Confucianism, emperor Wen^ Jing's increasing the number of doctors and the spread of local Confucian education, all these provided the sound social base for the development of Confucian school. At the same time, the scholars' yielding to the pressure from the emperor helped to bring about the combination of knowledge and authority which indicated the end of the free academic atmosphere of pre-Qin period.