The Evolution Of Political Thought Of The Western Zhou Dynasty

Ancient Chinese political thoughts and theories are very rich,and the Western Zhou Dynasty has established a whole set of theories on important political issues,such as the source of power legitimacy,political objectives,the relationship between the ruler and the ruled,the way of ruling and the choice of strategies.In the Western Zhou period,the ultimate basis of all power was heaven,which delegated power to the king of Zhou by way of "Mandate of Heaven",and the whole world belonged to the king.But the mandate of heaven is not constant,it will change because of the ruler’s virtue,its embodiment is the people’s heart.Therefore,the king of Zhou must take winning the people’s favor as the goal of his administration.Therefore,the people of Zhou chose "Mingde Shenfa" as his governance theory.In such a set of theories,the three elements of heaven,king and people interact with each other in pairs to form a relatively stable structure.In the inheritance of the political thought of the Western Zhou Dynasty,heaven only exists faintly in the ultimate basis of some propositions,and politics mainly takes place between the monarch and the people.Without the bridge of "heaven",the monarchy was directly granted by the people,so this is a people-oriented theory.Confucian theory essentially constructed an imagined "king and people contract " :people need a king to lead the people to establish a reasonable order of the society,so the will power to the king and acknowledge the king to build order required for the position and the sovereignty,if king can’t do that,then people to overthrow his rule is perfectly legal.According to Confucianism,the ultimate goal of a reasonable social order is to achieve an ideal society in which everyone is a gentleman.In terms of governance methods,political issues have been transformed into ethical issues.The personal morality and enlightenment of the rulers in the theory of "Mingde Shenfa" in the Western Zhou Dynasty were strengthened as a way to guide the people to transcend.Rites and laws,as external norms,aim at serving the inner transcendence and serve as the basis of existence.The whole theory constitutes a kind of soft moral absolutism.The legalists of the Pre-Qin Dynasty inherited the proposition of "Tao begets Law" in the Huang-Lao School.Law is the core of governing a country,and only the monarch can legislate on Tao,so the monarch has the supreme status.The structure of this theory seems to be similar to that of the Western Zhou Dynasty,but in essence it completely isolates the responsibility of the monarch to the people from the theory.The whole theory serves for the interests of the monarch,and the people are reduced to the parts of the military machine,which is a typical thought of the monarch.In the theory of governance,they denied the existence of moral influence,they did not advocate that the monarch should have moral advantages,and opposed the appointment of people with virtue.They criticized benevolent governance.The whole society only allowed the existence of monarch and the authority of law,and treated morality solely on the basis of whether it was conducive to governance.In their hands,the traditional theory of punishment and morality condensed into the two handles of reward and punishment,which was a rigid legal absolutism politics,taking advantage of human nature,squeezing people’s power and ruling with high pressure.In response to the need of realistic politics and considering the status of its own school,the new Confucianism of the Han Dynasty represented by Dong Zhongshu absorbed the ideological resources of the Pre-Qin Confucianism,Legalism and Huang-Lao School,and reintegrated the Pre-Qin Confucianism and Legalism.Dong Zhongshu constructed a huge theory of heaven that includes "nature","order","dominant" and "moral".As a result,he was able to absorb the ideas of predecessors in the theory of monarchy,and to prove the legitimacy of monarchy by using such modes as being ordered by heaven,being able to pass through heaven,and being submissive to heaven.In terms of the relationship between the heaven,the sovereign and the people,Dong Zhongshu advocated that "the people should bend to extend the monarch,and the monarch should bend to extend the heaven".Since the monarchy comes from the heaven,the methods to restrict the monarchy can only be based on the disasters and the transfer of the mandate of heaven,which is a kind of "the nature of heaven".In the political goal,Dong Zhongshu inherited the Pre-Qin Confucianists’ consistent proposition,taking education as the fundamental task;In the theory of governance,he advocated "letting morality not punishment",restoring the governance model of morality as the main and punishment as the secondary.In the concrete "moral punishment view",he also absorbed Huang Lao and the thought of Legalism.The structure of Dong Zhongshu’s political theory seems to be similar to that of the Western Zhou Dynasty,but it is based on a more perfect philosophical foundation.It takes the political ideal of the Pre-Qin Confucianism as the body and extensively absorbs the thoughts of various scholars.The connotation of Dong Zhongshu’s political theory is much richer than that of the Western Zhou Dynasty.