Self-cultivation means self-cultivation and striving to improve one's ideological and moral cultivation. Taoism, Confucianism and Mohism all emphasize self-cultivation, but their contents are different. Since Confucius, Confucianism has attached great importance to self-cultivation and regarded it as one of the eight purposes of education. The Confucian standard of "self-cultivation" is mainly the principle of loyalty and forgiveness and the three cardinal principles and five permanents, which is essentially an idealistic method of self-cultivation divorced from social practice. They believe that the process of self-cultivation is: respecting things, knowing and doing, being sincere and being upright. Self-cultivation is the foundation, and family, country and the world are the goals. Therefore, through the method of "introspection", individual behavior is consistent with feudal morality, and talents are cultivated for the consolidation of its feudal rule and political power. Taoist self-cultivation requires conforming to nature; Mozi called for "unity of ambition and merit" to promote the benefits and eliminate the evils and level the world.
The former is materialism and the latter is idealism.