Research Of Functionaries Abdicating In Song Dynasty

The awareness of official standard was deep-rooted in Chinese ancientsociety which the officers’ higher and ordinary people lower. The idea so calledthat once being an officer, rich in lifetime and happy in every place. Beingpositive to enter official status were ordinary people striving for. Officialpromotion into the Grand was officers’ unlimited expectations. Especially sincethe end of Tang and WuDai dynasties, literati ethos was corrupted. The officerstook every resource for official promotion. Easy in and hard out was become anofficial standard. The literators which possessed a political ideal being positivepromotion and pleading for ordinary people could be cautious to move in andmove out. They could stay if it fitted to the morality and justice, and they couldresign if it betrayed the morality and justice. Revering reputation and moralintegrity, attaching importance to sense of honor and shame based on inheritingmodesty tradition. It enriched and developed the connotation of abdication.Functionaries’ abdication as literati scholar-bureaucrat representative, it moreshowed functionaries’ resolutions and will on the types and ways of abdication.And the saying no was become the most important reason of all abdicating reasonsof relations and old, diseases, and avoidance and so on. Facing the phenomenonof functionaries’ abdication, the government had taken the correspondingmeasures in time, in order to make it balance in the whole. Emperors andfunctionaries, the two main body of the court, had their clear attitudes. It showedtolerance in the whole. Functionaries’ resolute abdication was opposite to ethics,especially in Song Dynasty of rich in densely Confucian culture. So I put thephenomenon of abdication into the river of history to analyze it. The true reason ofabdication was social vogues of bureaucratic literati creating, with traditionalabdicating culture and accompanied by complicated domestic policies and diplomatic policies. Functionaries’ abdication in Song had its unique characteristic.The frequency and initiative of abdication overthrew the traditional officialstandard thinking. The choice of that real abdication was primary and the virtualabdication was assistant was to inherit and develop the tradition. They used a wayof withdrawing to show their behaviors in the process of moving forward onofficial career, which was according with moral requirement of traditional societyrequired functionaries on humbleness. Moving forward or withdraw were allconcerned the world, which it exhibited political characteristics of bureaucraticliterati. They couldn’t abdicate and give away, which showed their responsibilityand human aspect in political system. But undeniably, the hugeness of abdicationgroup made some degree of repetition and disturbing in national affairs operation.It betrayed the duty of bureaucratic system.