Confucius' political thoughts include: ruling by virtue and benevolent governance, and proposing "ruling the country by virtue" ("ruling the country by politics"). Rule of Rites and Rites of Zhou are the social and political norms advocated by Confucius, who requires the rulers to "self-denial and return to courtesy" and "rule the country with morality and treat the people with courtesy" (politics). Respecting the monarch and valuing the people, Confucius emphasized that "the conquest of rites and music comes from the emperor" (Ji Shi), not from the governors and accompanying ministers. Confucius warned Ji Kangzi of Lu that "politicians are righteous, handsome boys are righteous, who dares to be dishonest" (Yan Yuan), and warned that "politicians are righteous, and monarchs are righteous, so people go into politics (? ) "("Book of Rites? Mourn for the public "). Confucius advocated the idea of rule by man, emphasized Shang Xian's empowerment, and advocated "promoting talents" and "correcting mistakes" (for politics). Advocate great unification; Confucius yearned for a civil and military life and missed the national unity at the beginning of the Zhou Dynasty, and put forward the political ideal of a "great harmony" society and a "well-off" society. Confucius' political thoughts are mainly included in The Analects of Confucius, which is a collection of speeches made by him and his disciples. In addition, the six classics compiled by Confucius (Poetry, Calligraphy, Rites, Music, Book of Changes, Spring and Autumn) also reflect the basic political thoughts of Confucius.
Confucius' political thought is a complex and complete system. After Confucius, Monk and Xun Kuang respectively inherited and carried forward Confucius' thoughts of benevolent governance, moral governance and courtesy governance, and formed a huge pre-Qin Confucian political thought system. Confucius' political thought was inherited and developed by later generations, and became the orthodox thought of China feudal society, which profoundly influenced the politics, economy and culture of China feudal society and the political concept of the Chinese nation, and also had an impact on East Asia, Southeast Asia and Europe.
Confucius was the first great educator in the history of China. He started a private school and recruited disciples, claiming that there were 3000 disciples and 72 disciples, which made outstanding contributions to the inheritance, development and dissemination of ancient culture. His educational thoughts, educational purposes, educational methods and research methods still shine with the brilliance of his thoughts until today.
Educational proposition
As an educator who has been engaged in education all his life, Confucius has accumulated rich educational experience in his long-term educational work. After deep thinking, he put forward many educational ideas, which have always been valued by people. These ideas have penetrated into all aspects of the educational process and formed a complete and independent educational system.
(1) Confucius, the object of education, advocates "education without class" (Wei Linggong), and categories should be interpreted as categories, races and categories. The original intention of Confucius' sentence is that the object of education, regardless of rank, species and race, "should be the same as education." Confucius also practiced this idea in his life-long education. Among Confucius' 3000 disciples, there are both powerful and wealthy aristocratic children and ordinary people from poor families. There are businessmen, laborers, and some even used to be thieves, so Xunzi also said that there are many Confucius (Xunzi Air France). "Lu's Spring and Autumn Annals Persuades Learning" says: "Therefore, the teaching of a teacher does not dispute the importance of the rich and the poor, but it is impossible to do it for the Tao", which is also the true meaning of "teaching without division".
(2) Confucius, the subject of education, was the first person in China who took education as his profession. Before him, we didn't know anyone who only made a living by giving lectures. In his early years, Confucius "tasted to make things happen" and "tasted to take advantage of the field", but since he enrolled medical students, he has made a living by giving lectures. Confucius defined the social class of teachers for the first time in the history of China. From the perspective of education, Confucius explicitly advocated teacher professionalization for the first time, which is an important milestone in the history of education.
Educational purpose
The fundamental purpose of Confucius education is to cultivate people with lofty ideals and benevolence. Throughout his life, he pursued Taoism with the spirit of "hearing Taoism early and dying late" ("cultivating people") and tried his best to find opportunities to spread Taoism. But Confucius was frustrated all his life and pinned all his hopes on his disciples. He taught his students, "People can realize by Tao, but not by Tao" (Wei Linggong), "Those who talk about Tao are not enough, but are ashamed of their poor food and clothing" (Li Ren), "I believe in learning, and I am good at saving my life" (Taibo), "People with lofty ideals, benevolent people, harm people without survival, and die with death. Isn't it important to think that benevolence is your responsibility? Death is not far away! " (Taber) Xia Zi said: "A house of hundreds of workers can do anything, and a gentleman's way is also" (Zhang Zi). It can be seen that teaching and learning Tao are the common goals of Confucius teachers and students, and Confucius' educational purpose has been transformed into students' learning purpose. It is precisely because of this unity of subjectivity and objectivity that Confucius can produce many talented students.
Xia Zi said: "Learning to be excellent is to be an official", which theoretically summarizes another important aspect of Confucius' educational purpose. "Learning to be an official is excellent" contains many meanings: learning is the way to be an official, training officials is the main political purpose of education, and good academic performance is an important condition for being an official. If you don't study, or study but don't get good grades, you are not qualified to be an official. Confucius' attitude towards advocating "learning to be an excellent official" is very clear. He said: "Rites and music are advanced, and savages are also; Finally, the gentleman also. If we use it, we will learn from the advanced. " It is civilians who learn etiquette and music before they become officials. It is the children of nobles who have official positions first and then learn etiquette and music. If you want to choose talents, Confucius advocates choosing people who learn etiquette and music first. Learning is closely related to being an official. He encouraged students to say, "If you don't lose money and have no position, you will stand firm." Don't worry about not being an official What you need to worry about is whether you can learn the knowledge and skills you need to be an official. Instilled by this idea, disciples generally have the idea of learning officials. Now that they have learned to be gentlemen, it makes no sense not to be officials. Lutz bluntly said "not to be an official", which is very representative. Confucius actively recommended talented students to those in power for politics, but he also insisted on some principles when sending talents: first, you can't be an official if you don't study hard; Secondly, only when the country is politically enlightened can it become an official, otherwise it would rather retire. Most of the disciples trained by Confucius took part in political activities sooner or later. They "wandered around the princes, the eldest was the master Qing Xiang, and the younger brother was a friend of the scholar-officials".
"Learning to be an excellent official" is consistent with the "promoting talents" advocated by Confucius, which determines the educational purpose of cultivating ruling talents and is of great significance in the history of education. Linking academic Excellence with official Excellence and ensuring official Excellence with academic Excellence is conducive to promoting saint politics and improving social politics. It reflected the social needs of the rise of feudalism, opposed the hereditary system of being an official without learning, opened up the road for ordinary people to enter politics, and became a great driving force for activists to actively learn at that time.
Educational content
The Analects of Confucius? In fact, it is not accurate enough to say that "Confucius teaches four religions, writing, acting, loyalty and faith". He said, "Harmony and prosperity are two different things. As for faithfulness, why not two religions! " It is correct to point out that letter and letter are one. For the purpose of Confucius' education, he wants to cultivate a gentleman with harmonious internal quality and external performance. Therefore, the content of his education is to pay equal attention to both ability and political integrity.
(1) Moral cultivation Moral cultivation is the most basic educational content of Confucius, which is the so-called moral education. The main content of Confucius' moral education is "benevolence" Confucius has many explanations for "benevolence", but it is nothing more than the general principle of "love". At the same time, he also put forward a series of specific concepts such as filial piety, loyalty, faithfulness, diligence, righteousness, courage, respect, sincerity, forgiveness, softness, courtesy, frugality, concession, modesty, harmony, tolerance, sensitivity and benefit, which enriched and developed the content of moral education.
Confucius paid great attention to practice in the way of moral education, emphasizing "listening to his words and observing his actions". When studying Confucius' moral education, Mr. Kuang Yaming said: "Moral behavior is the touchstone to test whether moral understanding is sober, moral sentiment is noble and moral concept is firm, and it is the most important link for moral cultivation to enter practice." (The first great educator in the history of China)
(2) Literary knowledge In terms of literary knowledge, Confucius mainly taught students the six arts of poetry, calligraphy, ceremony, music, Yi and Spring and Autumn. For the educational significance and value of "Six Arts", Book of Rites? "Jing Jie" quoted Confucius as saying: "He is also a human being, gentle and sincere, and Poetry teaches him; Dredge Zhiyuan, "Book" teaches also; Broad and easy to be good, "music" teaches also; Clean and subtle, "Yi" teaches also; Zhuang Jing and Li also teach; It is a matter of rhetoric, and it is taught in the Spring and Autumn Period. "
The Book of Songs consists of 305 articles, which are divided into three parts: style, elegance and ode. At that time, it was mainly used for ceremonies, responses, poems and expressions. Confucius believes that learning poetry can exercise language expression ability, "without learning poetry, there is nothing to say" (that is, "Poetry"), and regards poetry teaching as the main means of self-cultivation, temperament cultivation and achievements, and points out that "poetry can be used for arousing, observing, gathering and complaining. You are in the service of your father, and you are far away from being a gentleman, and you know more about birds, animals and plants. " (Yang Huo)
Music is an important teaching material in Confucius' education, including basic knowledge of music, music theory, music aesthetics, music function and so on, and it is an important content of Confucius' aesthetic education.
This book is also called Shangshu or Shu Jing. The history books we see now are a combination of modern literature books and ancient literature books, with a total of 29 articles. This book is a political textbook for cultivating political talents in Confucius' education system.
The Book of Rites is an existing book of Rites. Zheng Xuan in the Eastern Han Dynasty merged the "ancient" and "modern" schools, namely Zhou Li, Yi Li and Li Ji, and formed three types. Zhou Li talks about various official systems, while Yili talks about various ceremonies. The Nature, Significance and Function of Rites in The Book of Rites.
Yi, also known as Zhouyi, explains the changes of things. Zhouyi takes gossip as the key link and forms its own system. The basic symbols are "-"(Yin) and "-"(Yang), which are combined into eight categories and then into sixty-four doors. As for Yi, the traditional saying is: Fuxi wrote eight diagrams, hexagrams and poems, and Confucius made wings, but they are not necessarily reliable. Confucius studied the Book of Changes in his later years and taught his disciples the Book of Changes.
Spring and Autumn Annals is the first chronicle of China, which began in the year of Lu Yin (722 BC) and ended in the fourteenth year of Lu Aigong (4865438 BC+0 BC), and recorded the history of the Spring and Autumn Period for 242 years. Later generations have the Spring and Autumn Ram Biography, Spring and Autumn Beam Biography and Spring and Autumn Zuozhuan to explain it. In his later years, Confucius focused on the revision of Chunqiu. He once lamented: "Who knows me, only the spring and autumn?" Only Chunqiu offended me? "Spring and Autumn Annals contains Confucius' social and political theory and is a textbook for Confucius to educate students in politics and history.
(3) Physical exercise Confucius not only taught textbooks, but also taught some skills. Among the "six arts" of ceremony, music, shooting, imperial, calligraphy and mathematics, "shooting" and "imperial" belong to this category. "Shooting" means archery, and "guarding" means driving, which was one of the requirements of the upper class for the gentry at that time.
teaching method
As a great educator, Confucius summed up a set of flexible and effective teaching methods in his excellent teaching process. These teaching methods are of great enlightening significance in the past and today, and they are the most essential part of Confucius' educational thought.
(1) Learning and thinking combined with Confucius said: "Learning without thinking is useless, and thinking without learning is dangerous." "Learning" means having knowledge materials, and "thinking" means analyzing and thinking about the knowledge materials you see. Confucius believes that to make a person successful, he must be trained to be good at possessing materials and thinking independently. Only in this way can students be taught fundamentally.
Regarding the teaching method of combining Confucianism with thinking, Wang Fuzhi once said: "There are two ways to know: learning and thinking ... learning is not an obstacle to thinking, but the more you learn, the farther you go, and thinking is helpful to learning." (The Four Books of Benevolence and Righteousness, Volume 6)
(2) Teaching students in accordance with their aptitude is different from general production activities, and its education targets are different people with independent consciousness, which determines that it is impossible to educate all the educated in the same way and method at the same time. Confucius noticed this very early and creatively implemented the teaching method of teaching students in accordance with their aptitude.
Confucius said: "Above the middle, it can also be discussed; China people are below, not verbally "(Ode to Leaves), which does not mean that Confucius wants to divide people into three or six classes, but that Confucius can face up to the differences in students' qualifications and selectively give different education according to students' own interests, wisdom and ability. The Analects of Confucius? It is recorded in Advanced that Ran Qiu is good at retiring and timid. Confucius taught him to be decisive in everything, and to do it immediately when he thought of it; Zhong You is bold and rash. Confucius was afraid that he would make trouble rashly, so he taught him to take a step back when something happened. This is the method used by Confucius to improve the moral cultivation of his disciples.
(3) Confucius, who was good at inspiring and persuasive, was the first educator who adopted heuristic teaching methods in ancient China. The Analects of Confucius? According to Shure, Confucius advocated: "Don't be angry, don't worry, don't make points, don't take three corners, and don't do it again." It means educating students not simply by indoctrination, but by taking students as the center, enlightening them when they still can't get to the point after thinking, and inspiring them to say it when they want to express their ideas but are struggling to say it. In addition, if students just stay in the understanding of knowledge and cannot internalize it into their own abilities, don't force them to continue teaching. This general spirit embodies Confucius' teaching style of being pragmatic and taking every student seriously, which has important practical significance.
(4) Confucius is a teacher by example. He said, "It's terrible to be born late. How do you know that the newcomer is not now? " (Zi Han) "Different people have different opinions" (Wei Linggong). It can be said that an Analects of Confucius is actually a book that records the discussions and answers of Confucius teachers and students. The most important thing for teachers to learn from each other is to put down their airs, face up to their own shortcomings, admit their own shortcomings, learn from people who are better than themselves, and apply what they have learned to future teaching. "Never tire of learning, never tire of teaching" (Schur), in fact, "never tire of teaching" is based on "never tire of learning". In addition, what is more commendable is the concept of equality between teachers and students embodied in the teaching method of "learning from each other's strengths to make up for each other's shortcomings", which still has direct guiding significance for today's education and teaching.
learning method
Confucius believes that learning can make people acquire knowledge, develop intelligence and cultivate ability. The learning process can be roughly divided into seven stages: determination, erudition, interrogation, deliberation, debate, constant learning and perseverance. In these learning stages, many learning methods have been summarized, which still play a very important guiding role today.
(1) Being good at summarizing learning is a process of transforming external knowledge into internal ability. This process is long and complicated. Therefore, it is impossible to internalize all the knowledge into your own ability at once, but to review and summarize the knowledge you have learned after a long period of continuous accumulation. Confucius said: "Learn while learning" ("learn while learning"), review the past and learn new things ("for politics"), and learn from teaching. Obviously, Confucius believes that continuous review and summary is a very important aspect of learning. Of course, this review cannot be a mechanical repetition, nor is it just a simple repetition of memory. Every review and summary should have different angles, different emphases and different purposes, so that every re-study will have different feelings and experiences and a deeper understanding every time. It is in this constant repetition that knowledge learning and ability improvement are sublimated.
(2) Combination of learning and thinking Confucius said: "Learning without thinking is useless, thinking without learning is dangerous" ("Politics") Only reading without thinking will be deceived; Dreaming without studying will lead to a lack of self-confidence. Confucius made a very incisive exposition on the dialectical relationship between "learning" and "thinking" here. "Learning" is the basis of "thinking". Only by constantly enriching new knowledge can thinking have a foundation and avoid falling into unfounded assumptions; Thinking is the soul of learning. In learning, knowledge is important, but it is more important to control the knowledge mind. If a person can't think, he can only be a slave to knowledge. No amount of knowledge is useless, and it is impossible to really learn good knowledge and produce new ideas and new knowledge.
(3) A learning method of deductive analogy proposed by Confucius. The Analects of Confucius: "Don't be angry, don't get up, don't worry, don't raise a corner, and there will be no more" and "Know ten by smelling" (Gongye Chang) belong to the same category comparison method, which is more clearly limited to the similar analogy from the known to the unknown. Confucius believes that only by mastering this learning method can we learn knowledge effectively and achieve "a gentleman cannot be rude".
(4) Modesty and Honesty Confucius believes that "three people must have a teacher" ("Syria"), "Knowing is knowing, not knowing is not knowing, and knowing is also knowing" ("Being a government"). In learning, we should be good at learning from people who are worse than ourselves, constantly improve ourselves, treat knowledge realistically and cultivate the quality of modesty and honesty.