孔子對社會和諧的人格訴求及其啓示

Abstract

Confucius, who lived in the Spring and Autumn Period, advocates that “Revival of Rites” is of fundamental importance and that by that means the shaping of harmonious personal consummation and behavior is pivotal to “salvation”, national stability, and the redeeming of social crisis. It is actually a fallacy against the reality by using `Revival of Rites` as a remedy to reconcile class contradictions and to realize social harmony. Therefore, he had to introduce “Benevolence” to supplement “Rites”. The introducing of `Benevolence` provides a new approach to achieve the social target of “Zhi Zhong” (keeping average position, the doctrine of mean) and “He Wei Gui” (Peace is precious), which is the way of shaping harmonious character. As far as the harmonious character is concerned, “the doctrine of mean” is conformable with “benevolence”: harmonious character manifests itself as “the doctrine of mean” in behavior, and is expressed as `benevolence` in psychology, i.e. “the doctrine of mean” and “benevolence” are interdependent. In the situation where the social system failed, the measure of shaping the harmonious personal consummation and behavior could be a feasible option to “salvation” and the national political stability. With the aim to “salvation” and national stability, Confucius dedicated himself to the political measures of shaping harmonious personal consummation and behavior. Although these measures failed, he left us the invaluable resource of thoughts and concepts that can be used for the later generation, which presents two important characters in Chinese culture: `practice benevolence` and `undertake responsibility`. It is these two concepts that ensured the stability and survival of Chinese feudal society for thousands of years. Therefore, Confucius` thought on harmonious character is considered as the valuable historical resource of building the harmonious society nowadays.