Confucius made outstanding contributions to education. His educational theory and method are creative. He put forward the educational theory and method of combining morality, intelligence and physique, inheritance and creative thinking, and generality and individuality, and carried out rich educational practice in this combination.

Confucius initiated the Confucian school. The so-called Confucian, in the late Spring and Autumn Period, refers to those who cultivated the etiquette culture of the Western Zhou Dynasty and were full of admiration. The rich and profound culture of rites and music in the Western Zhou Dynasty is not only reflected in some important classics, but also in all aspects of social system and social fashion. It is no accident that the ritual and music culture of the Western Zhou Dynasty became the source of contention among a hundred schools of thought during the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period. Confucianism initiated by Confucius not only inherited the culture of the Western Zhou Dynasty, but also made great progress. Confucius trained a large number of disciples, including more than 70 outstanding ones. These disciples comprehensively expounded Confucianism along the ideological direction established by Confucius. During the Warring States period, the most important representatives of Confucianism were Mencius and Lu, who enriched Confucius' ideological system from different angles, thus laying the basic characteristics of Confucianism. This feature is roughly manifested in three aspects:

1. Personality ideal that pays attention to honesty. In Confucius' view, one should have the lofty ideal of working for the welfare of most people. If a person's ideals and life conflict, he can only choose the former, and he can't drag out an ignoble existence. His famous saying is: "A benevolent person is not for survival, but for death." . This thought evolved into a noble spirit in Mencius. With this kind of meaning, we can achieve "wealth can't be lewd, poverty can't be moved, and powerful people can't bend." Tang called it moral exercise. He said: "Life depends on reason, and death depends on reason, which is called moral exercise. Integrity, integrity or integrity is the fundamental spirit of life and death. Without this spirit, you can't be a real person. With this kind of ethics, you can "take your positions", "people don't know what to do", give full play to your role according to your own position, you can "stand on the top of the world", you have the spirit of shouldering morality with iron shoulders, and you have the sense of social and historical mission of daring to resist evil customs.

2. Education-oriented social beliefs. The pre-Qin Confucianists discussed the origin of politics and thought that the difference between human beings and other animals was that human beings had social life, rationality and emotion. Social rules originate from human emotions and rationality. Therefore, they made a quite in-depth analysis of human emotions and rationality. Confucius once analyzed all kinds of qualities of people, and Mencius summed them up in theory and became the four ends of benevolence, righteousness, courtesy and wisdom. Confucianism believes that improving people's emotional quality and rational ability is the key to make society develop in a more perfect form. They believe that the highest goal of politics is the same. Confucianism put forward two social ideal goals: great harmony and well-off society. Both Datong and Xiaokang have a common feature, that is, they closely focus on the satisfaction of people's material life and the improvement of spiritual character. Confucianism believes that education is the most important way to realize social ideals.

3. The cultural proposition of "harmony but difference". Ancient thinkers in China preferred to talk about "harmony" and opposed "sameness". The so-called harmony is to recognize the unity of diversity; The so-called similarity is single, isolated and without contradiction. Confucius said: "A gentleman is harmonious but different, but a villain is not", which means that decent people take harmony as the principle, but refuse to follow blindly and dare to put forward their own opinions; Unscrupulous people blindly follow everywhere and dare not put forward their own opinions. It can be seen that Confucius is in favor of harmony but different. This is dialectical thinking. He also applied the principle of "harmony but difference" to the cognitive field and created a cognitive method of "knocking at both ends". "Harmony without difference" gradually became a concept of Confucianism in dealing with cultural issues in the pre-Qin period. During the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, Confucianism handled its contradiction with Taoism according to this view, thus digesting and absorbing the theoretical achievements of Taoism. Later, in the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties, Confucianism argued with Buddhism and Taoism on the one hand, and enriched and reformed the original theoretical system on the other hand, and finally founded Neo-Confucianism in Song and Ming Dynasties. It can be said that the integration and integration on the basis of "harmony but difference" is a distinctive feature of the development of Confucianism.

→ Mencius

Mencius believed that human nature is good. Every mortal has an unbearable heart, which is the beginning of compassion and benevolence. In addition, there are the purposes of righteousness, propriety and wisdom, all of which are good purposes. Mencius believes that everyone has the idea of being good, and the key is to have a good environment to cultivate it. Therefore, he attaches importance to people's consciousness in moral cultivation to resist the influence of bad environment. If a person can extend the kindness of taking care of his father and brother to other people's fathers and brothers, and extend the kindness of taking care of children at home to other people's children, this is king.

→ Xunzi

As far as the theory of human nature is concerned, Xunzi established a universal "theory of evil nature" and directly criticized Mencius' theory of good nature. How to establish his theory of evil nature is a subject to be discussed in future research, and the theoretical legitimacy and influence of such a theory should also be paid attention to in future research.

The establishment of Xunzi's theory of evil nature is divided into two steps. Firstly, the original meaning of sex is defined, and then the theoretical proposition of "human nature is evil" is established from many aspects of personnel situation. The following is the definition of sex. Xunzi believes that nature and man have their own functions. Heaven is objective in matter, and man is dynamic in society. People should play a dynamic role, master their destiny and make use of it. Xunzi's definition of sex is explained by the distinction between sex and falsehood. Xun Qing criticized Mencius' theory of goodness of human nature, saying that "evil human nature is false. Today's human nature, born with good and good, shun, so fight for life and give up death; Born with disease and evil, follow it, so thieves are born with loyalty; It is appropriate to have a natural desire for eyes and ears and a good sense of sound and beauty, so * * * is naturally polite and liberal arts. But in terms of human nature, obeying people's feelings will be divorced from competition, suitable for committing chaos and returning to violence. Therefore, there must be a way to learn the law, be polite and righteous, and then rule out resignation and be in line with the arts and sciences. However, from this perspective, it is obvious that human nature is evil. Its goodness is also illusory. " "Evil nature" means that people are born with evil nature.