Confucius "respect" Concept Study

In the philosophical discourse of Confucianism, jing should be regarded as a very important concept. The word jing, appeared very early in the pre-Qin documents or earlier. Absolutely, jing originated from the primitive religious activities as a kind of emotion, and it is firstly shown in the "fear" of supernatural objects as religious emotion; secondly, Jing also represented the "fear" of the man who has higher political status. This fear is a kind of political ethics emotion; finally, jing also expressed the respect to the virtue and the elders as moral sense. Three kinds of jing may also exist in the same time, but like social culture, we think that jing has also experienced a gradual process of rationalization. The form of the jing we tried to discuss is the last one which we think is the active form of respect and the eternal form.Primitive religious activities is the main background of the jing which had many primitive characteristics and also did not have the characteristics of politics and ethics. Later along with the development of the witchcraft activities to worship,jing also had a certain feature of politics and ethics following with the standardization of worship. Later, with the "development of tian ren he yi.(human life being in a highly harmony with nature), the human’s political ethics and the rational activity is beginning to affect the supreme beings’ will and the tianming(destiny).At the same time, along with the establishment of some political and ethics systems, jing also began as the "fear" of the man who has higher political status and appeared some regular characteristics. For these forms of jing we thinks are not positive ones. Then with the collapse of the ritual and music and the separation of the Confucian orthodoxy and politics, human who has moral characters would not has the political situation, as a result the respect to the human who had political status had transformed to the people who had moral status,so the forms of the jing had added another important one which is the respect to the moral men which represented the man’s consciousness and got its finally rational form.Jing marks the humans’ free will and also the person’s subjective consciousness as self-control and self-straighten abilities,and then a person who has these abilities is a free one and his personality stands up.Jing as a symbol of free will is the root of morality and as a result we say,you can get your moralities if you have respects to others.We also say that it has a big gaps between the stand-up of yourself which jing marks and the self-collapse which wei (fear) marks. At the same time, a person who has ren (Benevolent)would respect others.(Xunzi:the art of being a follow).Ren and jing are inherent in us all and mark the basic state of our life.We open ourselves in the society and the contacts with others with ren and jing which thus form the basic properties of ourselves together with li and fa(ritual and law). The inside must open itself into outside which keep itself in inside and the interaction between the inside and outside is also the significant character of Chinese culture and philosophy,as a result a person who can keep his respects will obey the ritual and laws,which is our psychological roots of modern law and order lies we fear.