Confucian Official Ideology And Its Contemporary Enlightment

Since the creation of public power systems in human society,the corrupt phenomena have been caused and have always been difficult to be rooted out.Corruption,being a cancer in society which violates the public interest and pollutes the political ecology,is abhorrent to the public.Since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China(CPC),the central government has intensified its efforts to combat corruption and build a clean government,putting forward the ideas of creating a good political ecology and political environment which basically require cadres to be honest,the government to be incorruptible and politics to be clear and bright.For this purpose,the central government strengthens party discipline and promotes the construction of legal system on one hand,striving to prevent corruption from the system.And on the other hand,it also strengthens the ideals and beliefs of Party members and cadres and enhances the construction of official morality,seeking to lay a solid ideological foundation for "governing for the people" and enhance the political immunity and combat effectiveness of officials at all levels.In the process of anti-corruption,the leading comrades of the central government propose attaching great importance to the absorption of Chinese historical and cultural resources.The thought of being an upright official which contains rich essence of Confucianism has been passed down from generation to generation and has always been a ruling principle for ancient officials and it used to play an indelible role in the historical periods.Today,in order to combat corruption and build a clean government,it is necessary for us to sort out this traditional ideology effectively and extract and learn from its useful resources which are suitable for China’s cultural construction of a clean government.This paper consists of four parts:The first part analyzes the social,historical and cultural causes of the formation of Confucian thought of being an upright official and demonstrates its political basis,economic foundation and cultural origin.The second part sorts out and summarizes the main contents of Confucian thought of being an upright official and sums up the characteristics of this thought on this basis.The third part analyzes the role of Confucian thought of being an upright official that has played in history based on the previous two parts as well as makes a detailed analysis of the limitations for this thought.The fourth part analyzes Confucian thought of being an upright official in contemporary society based on the third part and illustrates its positive and negative inspirations for modern society,seeking to take the essence and discard the dregs,thus providing beneficial ideological resources for the construction of political civilization with Chinese characteristics as well as the construction of combating corruption and building a clean government.