Review Of Confucius, Mencius And Elite Political Thought

This paper, by taking the Meritocratic Theory of Confucius, Mencius, and Xuncius as the object of study, designes to explain the development and value of the Meritocratic Theory represented by early Confucian thinkers of Confucius, Mencius, and Xuncius.The introduction sorts out the skeleton of the formation and development of the Meritocratic Theory, and introduces the research status of academic community towards Meritocratic politics and the research approach and methods of this paper. Chapter One mainly introduces Confucius’s Meritocratic Theory as "Benevolence" being the core, and elaborates his inheritance and development of the Meritocratic Theory. Chapter Two introduces Mencius’s Meritocratic Theory as "benevolence government" being the main content. Chapter Three mainly discusses Xuncius’s Meritocratic Theory to explain its substantial connotation of "Advocating Rites and Emphasizing Law". Based on the social situation of the present world and China, Chapter Four, aiming at the deficiency of Realpolitik, discusses the function of the Meritocratic Theory of pre-Qin Confucian by the comparison with Eastern democratic politics. This paper argues that, although nowadays democratic politics is the mainstream of real world politics, its disadvantages are increasingly highlighting. Thus the Meritocratic Theory System of Confucianism, with its subject of morality, its family-based starting point, and its focus on ethics and humanistic care, can be taken as an extremely valuable complement and reference to better play its role in amending the disadvantages of democratic politics.