Confucius' Thought And Its Modern Significance

This paper probes into the value and the development outlet in the future of Confucius's doctrine of goodness in the modern society thorough a profound analysis in reality. The author thinks that, starting from the natural affection of "filial piety", Confucius extended the affection to the rational morality of "showing affection toward his subjects in general", raised it to the level of "heaven morality" and completed his theory of moral metaphysics with the method of "putting oneself in the place of another". From .Confucius's doctrine, proper behaviour towards parents and elder brothers is the trunk of goodness, and uprightness which incarnates the real disposition is the main foundation of goodness, but "filial piety" and uprightness are not goodness itself and all. From "filial piety" to "showing affection toward his subjects in general", from "cultivating himself to "giving rest to others", "wishing to be established himself, he seeks also to establish others; wishing to be enlarged himself, he seeks also to enlarge others", "not to do to others as you would not wish done to yourself, from sensibilities to rationality, compose the commonly meaning of Confucius's doctrine of goodness. The ones that must be paid attention to is that goodness is a logic evolution of "putting oneself in the place of another", so as to there are differences between the "love of the kindred" and "showing affection toward his subjects in general", which is the extrapolating ring upon ring love concentric circle, from family to kindred, and to nation, in the end to all over the world.The humanism development before Confucius offered the condition for forming of Confucius's doctrine of goodness, Confucius "regarded the transmitting as the making" and the thought of Yi Zhuan afterwards offered the possibility and the basis for existence of Confucius moral metaphysics theory. Confucius's doctrine of an all-pervading unity is the mandate of heaven which creates it endlessly and is omnipresent, that is goodness, and goodness reflects a kind of spirit of making unremitting efforts to improve oneself of the universe rule, and is the real content of syncretizing of humanity and the mandate of heaven. Having the sentience, and nourishing everything, goodness is the human being's moral and ethical life, it is the true subject and true life of human being even more. Confucius accepted goodness as ritual in the menthod of practice of perfect virtue and found an intrinsic approach to establish a perfect world of personality from "being saint internally "to" being a king externally". In Confucius' thought system, goodness has having priority nature and decisive position to the ritual, and the ritual can only be to giving play to the role of norm, guide for practice of perfect virtue. Only through "the door" of the ritual, goodness could turn from internal morality into external morality, and could accomplish a really perfect personality too. Learning through his goodnessthought, Confucius found the basic principle of the human being are human being, and opened the internal world of personality, that was the discovery of "human being", the nature of which is a person's self-consciousness and his self-reflection. Confucius still regarded setting up the happiness ideal world as his own political ideal where "heaven and earth have a role to play", the person who excels in virtue govern the world, "the prince is prince; and the minister is minister; and the father is father; and the son is son", everything in perfect order, "an under heaven ascribe perfect virtue", discovered and practiced "the universal human world".The opening of Confucius' thought has offered the opportunity for it being applied in our modern society. In contemporary China, Confucianism and Confucius's doctrine of goodness has already changed into the form in which it is subconscious and cultural habit psychology from consciousness personal value system and consciousness of mainstream society, has nearly existed on compatriots' thought very naturally, most Chinese have to face the awk...