| Righteousness and benefit are important conception of Confucianism. Thinkers of the pre-Qin Confucian like Confucius, Mencius, Xuncius and some other scholars all raised their own assertions. In Confucianism, the description of the relationship between righteousness and benefit is to distinguish different fields, and contrapose different targets, as well as to raise respectively different concrete opinions of righteousness and benefit under some specific situations, instead of talking about them in an absolutely abstract sense. In the realistic experiences level, righteousness is the ethical measurement of people’s behavior; In the final care level, righteousness is the perfectly supreme good in a sense of absolute ethical meaning. Benefit mainly means the neutral category that related with fortune, that are advantage and interest, which itself does not have the nature of the ethical good and evil, and material benefits satisfy the normal demand of people’s daily life. The pre-Qin Confucian scholars make concrete requirements about different people now to pursue benefits in different fields. The Confucian scholars do not think it is immoral to reasonably acquire profits, instead, they oppose to unreasonably acquire them.The benefit and righteousness conceptions of pre-Qin Confucianism are very specific, conditional and targeted. They usually talk about different benefits to interest parties of different levels and raise different ethical and beneficial requirements to them, other than using one benefit and righteousness standard to rule all the people of different fields and levels. However, in the very beginning of creating its thoughts and theories, the pre-Qin Confucian scholars do not make it very rigorous of its system, and the boundary of each field is not very clear, and so does its benefit and righteousness conception. Circumstances change with the passage of time, when the scholars after pre-Qin period interpret its meaning again, they may make different analysis under different circumstances in the realistic society, and this may have a different understanding of its theories with the pre-Qin Confucian scholars. It’s true that this kind of change seems to replenish and develop the pre-Qin Confucianism to some extent. However, once the theories occurred given sociocultural circumstances and special text interpreter, the benefit and righteousness conception of pre-Qin Confucianism can hardly get rid of the obviously twisted fate of its original meaning of the text. That way, the changed benefit and righteousness conception of Confucianism may cause immeasurable negative effects to the siciocultural thought of the present and future generations. That way, the changed Confucian benefit and righteousness conception exists great difference with the righteousness and ritual thoughts of the pre-Qin Confucianism. Thus, to clarify the real meaning and concrete stand of pre-Qin Confucianism has crucial theoretical and realistic sense to establish reasonable benefit and righteousness conception. |
