Analysis Of The Confucian Conception Of Death

Respecting and cherishing life was the Confucian's basic attitude to life during pre-qin Dynasty. In contrast to the Taoist's cherishing of ego-life, The Confucian loved human lives from the angle and gentleman's position, not only pay attention to the human's right of life, but also caring for the human's right of existence . On which the Confucian school based the theory of humanity politics . This attitude was the result of the evolution of ancient Chinese. God-man conception, and it marked the progress of the social civilization, too.As far as Confucian's value of life, Social order is the point of departure and the final destination is. For Confucians, the purpose of cherishing life and paying much attention to death was to realize the value of life. The Confucian's main idea was to lay down one's life for a just cause, but they were serious about the choice between life and death, and they opposed blind sacrifice. Their basic attitude for death and how to surpass it is to pursue the immortality of spirit and to look for a proper reason for death. They thought that only those who had "worth" "work" "word" were immortal. This is a great progress in the history of thought and culture .The immortal theory become the core of the Confucianism value system.It is a widespread belief that there did exist ghosts and the word after death during pre-qin period. The Confucianism school was not deny the existence of the world after death, but what they emphasized was handling the funeral reasonably and the importance of this world. Confucian's attitude to the ritual of death demonstrated that they mad a point of its ethical effect and its social meaning.