Political Thought And Practice Of "the Five Confucianists"of The Northern Song Dynasty

Supplementing with the basic national policy of treating the scholar-bureaucrat with great courtesy of Song dynasty, the scholar-bureaucrat group all have high degree of awareness of being the political master of taking the world as their own duty. Chou Tun-i, Shao Yung, Chang Tsai and Cheng Brothers, the five Confucianists as representative of this group, taking internal sage and external kings as goal, developed Confucianism to a new philosophical stage and made it realized historic revival and at the same time holding the banner of restoring The Three Dynasties-The Xia, Shang and Zhou they eagerly looked forwarded to practice political thought of Neo-Confucianism and serve their court.Although removed from officialdom for life, Shao Yung enjoyed high reputation in the court and the commonalty and was respected and affected by the citizens of Loyang because of his noble knowledge and conduct. Wherever he went, the people cluster together. He gave lectures and immersed himself among the masses to solve neighborhood contradiction on this advantage to realize societal proposition of changing customs and traditions gradually.Chou Tun-i was an official all his life, and in this time he fulfilled his trust all along and was good at solving criminal cases for people. He built schools in precinct and value education, took which to change folkway.Chang Tsai advanced a political plan that resumed the well-field system, the feudal system and the patriarchal system of restoring The Three Dynasties-The Xia, Shang and Zhou, and he committed himself to attaching importance to agriculture and custom and made The Central Shanxi Plain develop a habit of using etiquette and put a new face on local society and economy.Cheng Hao had political achievements at his post and he reorganized custom, set up schools, propagated moral and solved lots of practicalities for people. He once participated in reforms of Wang An-shih in order to realize ideal and the peace reigns under heaven. Although they each had split up soon after, he only disapproved the concrete measures of that reform but not the change itself. Cheng Yi focused on academic research yet, and wasn’t strive and rejected to be an official repeatedly, but he took persuading and instructing the monarch’s holiness as the key of achieving ideal, which was why he placed great emphasis on effect of Jingyan and was willing to accept and take up the lower post of telling in the Chong Zhengdian hall as a commoner. In the process of telling, explaining Confucian Classics he affected the monarch with every word and action as an adviser. In this capacity, he in fact took active part in faction of that time relatively and became the leader of the namable Luo Party.The five Confucianists’methods and form of working on political practice were different, but the learning both sound in theory and practice and practical reason of making use of what they learned. Generally speaking, because of material objective cause of politics, they gave lectures and served as a local official crucially, and reposing hope of achievement of political ideal in local governance and reform, the political subjectivity and consciousness were embodied most vividly at their posts with distinguished achievements and priority of construction of Confucian ethics and cultural education. Even lectures, they also played positive and practical influence with local society frequently. That was the valuable point and worth of their political thought and practice.