Confucius (55 BC/KLOC-0 BC/-479 BC), a great thinker and educator, was born in Shandong.
Confucius was a great thinker. He founded the Confucian school. First of all, he put forward the theory of "benevolence", that is, he asked the rulers to understand the feelings of the people, cherish the strength of the people, and not oppress and exploit the people too much to ease class contradictions. Secondly, he advocated ruling the country by virtue and opposed tyranny and arbitrary execution. His theory later became the orthodoxy of China's feudal culture for more than two thousand years, which had a great influence on later generations.
Confucius was also a great educator. In slave society, only the children of nobles can receive education, and cultural education is monopolized by the government. Confucius set up private schools and recruited disciples, which broke through the monopoly of the government and expanded the scope of educational objects. It is said that Confucius advocated "teaching students in accordance with their aptitude" and conducted different education for different students. He teaches students to review their knowledge frequently, "review the past and learn new things", and be honest in learning attitude, "knowing is knowing, not knowing is not knowing"; We should combine learning with thinking.
According to legend, in his later years, Confucius compiled several ancient cultural classics, such as poems and books, and also compiled a book, Spring and Autumn Annals. This has played a positive role in the preservation and development of ancient culture.
Mencius
Mencius (about 372 ~ 289 BC) was a great thinker and one of the main representatives of Confucianism in the Warring States period. Mingke was born in Zou (now Zou County, Shandong Province). Born in the fourth year of the reign of Zhou, he died in the twenty-sixth year. According to legend, Mencius is a descendant of Lu nobles. He lost his father when he was a child, and his family was poor. He was a student of Zisi. After finishing his studies, he lobbied the governors as scholars in an attempt to promote his own political views, and successively went to Liang (Wei), Qi, Song, Teng and Lu. At that time, several great powers devoted themselves to strengthening this rich country and striving for reunification through violent means. Mencius' theory of benevolent governance is considered to be "circuitous and broader than things" and has no chance to be implemented. Finally, he retired to give lectures, and together with his students, he "wrote a poem as a preface, wrote a book, expounded Zhong Ni's meaning, and wrote seven pieces of Mencius".
Mencius lived in an era when a hundred schools of thought contended, and "Yang Zhu's words prevailed in the world". Mencius criticized it fiercely from the standpoint of Confucianism. Mencius inherited and developed Confucius' thoughts and put forward a complete ideological system, which had a great influence on later generations and was regarded as the "sage" after Confucius.
Mencius inherited and developed Confucius' thought of ruling by virtue, and developed it into the theory of benevolent governance, which became the core of his political thought. He applied the principles of "pro" and "long" to politics, eased class contradictions and safeguarded the long-term interests of the feudal ruling class.
Mencius closely combined ethics with politics, emphasizing that moral cultivation is the basis of doing politics well. He said: "The foundation of the world is in the country, the foundation of the country is at home, and the foundation of the home is in the body." Later, the idea of "nourishing qi and calming the world" put forward by University was developed according to this idea of Mencius.
The highest category of Mencius' philosophical thought is heaven. Mencius inherited Confucius' thought of destiny, removed the residual meaning of personality god, and imagined heaven as a spiritual entity with moral attributes. He said: "Honest people, heaven is also." Mencius defined the moral concept of honesty as the essential attribute of heaven, and believed that heaven was the origin of the inherent moral concept of human nature. Mencius' ideological system, including his political thoughts and ethical thoughts, takes heaven as the category.
Laozi
Bai Yang, surnamed Li Minger, lived around 580-500 BC in the late Spring and Autumn Period. "Historical Records" contains "Qu Renli was in Chu County". Li Xiang, the ancient county of Chu, is now Zhabei Zhengdian, Guoyang County, Bozhou City. Laozi once served as the History of the Zhou Tibetan Room, and he has a deep understanding of the books and classics of the Zhou Dynasty, so he is knowledgeable. Seeing the decline of the Zhou royal family, he abandoned his official position and went west, where he met Guan Lingyin. Yin asked him to write a book, "so I wrote a book, expressing morality, leaving more than 5 thousand words", and finally became a hermit, "at a loss" (Historical Records)
Tao Te Ching, also known as Laozi, is rich in meaning and words. Although it is only 5,000 words, it contains very rich and profound philosophical thoughts. The core idea of Laozi's philosophy is the cosmological theory of "Tao gives birth to everything", which holds that the universe is a process of natural production and evolution, everything in the world develops and changes according to the laws of nature, and "Tao" is the origin of the world. The essence of Laozi's philosophy is his simple dialectical thought, which holds that everything in the world is complementary to each other. "Whether they are born together or not, whether they are difficult or not, whether they are high or low, whether they are compatible or not," the two sides of the contradiction are interdependent and mutually conditional. It is also pointed out that opposites can be transformed into each other, and things always go to their opposites. In order to prevent going to the opposite side, he advocated putting himself in a weak position and thought that "the weak wins the strong." This view is reasonable under certain conditions, but it ignores the struggle between the two sides of the contradiction and regards transformation as an unconditional cycle. In political thought, Laozi advocated "inaction" and thought that inaction could do anything, which reflected the powerlessness of the rulers at that time and attempted to ease the sharp social contradictions. However, his admonitions to "princes", such as "the hungry people depend on the amount of food tax" and "people are not afraid of death, why not fear it with death", are all very incisive. Laozi's view of history is backward, and he wants to return to the era of "small country and few people". "The neighboring countries look at each other, and the voices of chickens and dogs are heard, and the people are not happy." Laozi's philosophy occupies an important position in the history of China's thoughts, and many later philosophers have been influenced by it to varying degrees. Since the Han Dynasty, there have been more than a thousand kinds of annotations on Laozi, which are rare in China ancient books. Laozi not only founded Taoism, one of the three major religions in China, but also influenced the development of the whole history of philosophy in China and the ideology of the whole feudal society.
Zhuangzi
Zhou (about 369 BC-286 BC) was born in the eastern suburb of Mengcheng County (now Dongcheng Road, Chengguan Town) and was a famous thinker and writer during the Warring States Period. Zhuangzi wrote more than 100,000 words in his life, entitled "Zhuangzi". The appearance of this document indicates that in the Warring States period, China's philosophical thinking and literary language have developed to non-; Deep level is a treasure in China's ancient books. Therefore, Zhuangzi is not only a famous thinker in the history of China philosophy, but also an outstanding writer in the history of China literature. No matter in philosophy or literary language, he had a far-reaching and great influence on China thinkers and writers, and played a very important role in China's ideological official and literary history.
Zhuangzi worked as a small official in Mengcheng Lacquer Garden (now the former site of Lacquer Garden on the north bank of the Wohe River in Shangjun County), but he resigned soon. He lives in a humble alley and writes books. When life was hard to maintain, I borrowed food from Hou Jianhe. Chu Weiwang heard that Zhuang Zhou of China was a learned and moral man, so he sent messengers to the Lacquer Garden (Mengcheng) to prepare gifts for his daughter, and asked Zhuangzi to be the prime minister of Chu. After the emissary made it clear that the king of Chu thought that the phase was the will, Zhuangzi smiled and said to the envoy of Chu, "A thousand dollars is a heavy gift, and the phase is the highest. However, didn't you see the cows during the sacrifice? People fattened the cows and wore red clothes when they sacrificed. Didn't they take them to the ancestral temple and kill them as sacrifices? I would rather live in indifference than sacrifice cows. " Zhuangzi talked like an ox in a joke and never became the prime minister of Chu. In the early years of the Warring States, the princes and soldiers met with each other, with frequent wars and social unrest. In this social background, academic thoughts are unprecedentedly active, and academic schools compete with each other, forming his unique philosophy system and thought bank, which are only a hundred miles apart, so it is also called "the study of Laozi and Zhuangzi". In his later years, Zhuangzi often fished in Pushui (now Qiuhe River in the south of the city) and swirling water, swam in Haoliang (now southwest of Linhuai City in Fengyang, Anhui Province) and enjoyed a quiet and leisurely life with the fish and birds. In the first year of Tianbao of Emperor Xuanzong of Tang Dynasty (742), Emperor Xuanzong of Tang Dynasty issued a biography, giving Zhuangzi the title of "South China True Man" and calling his book "South China True Classic". There are also some scholars who have studied Zhuangzi in past dynasties, and there are hundreds of works. In recent years, Zhuangzi Vernacular and Zhuangzi Modern Edition have been published one after another.