The Analects of Confucius is an early recorded prose, and the language is basically spoken, which is easy to understand. The text is concise, generally speaking only one's own point of view, not fully demonstrated. There are many concise, philosophical and enlightening statements in The Analects of Confucius, such as "Learning without thinking is useless, thinking without learning is dangerous" and "When the cold comes and the summer goes, you will know the pine and cypress wither", which have been passed down from generation to generation and become common idioms and proverbs.
"On Quotations" does not pursue a certain effect in literature, but sometimes it shows the characters' personalities through short dialogues, which also has certain literary significance.
Although the Analects of Confucius is not long, as one of the Confucian classics, it has already become a must-read book for cultural people. Its attitude towards life and thoughts have left a profound influence on China's cultural and ideological history. The second is Mozi. Mozi is a collection of Mohist works written by Mo Zhai, his disciples and later scholars. There are 7 1 articles in Han dynasty, and there are 53 existing articles.
Mozi advocated "universal love" and opposed the distinction between intimacy and inferiority based on patriarchal clan system. Put forward "no attack" and oppose wars between countries aimed at plunder; Require "frugal burial" and "frugal use", and oppose extravagant lifestyles and rituals and music systems; Advocate "Shang Tong" and "Shang Xian" and oppose nepotism.
Mozi is a book with simple language and strict logic, and is good at reasoning with concrete examples. Strictly speaking, China's ancient exposition began with Mozi. In this respect, it occupies an important position in the history of China's prose.
The third is Mencius. Mencius wrote seven articles describing Monk's words and deeds. The writing of this book is different from the Analects of Confucius, which was completed by himself and his disciples. Institutionally speaking, Mencius still belongs to the bibliography system, but it has made great progress compared with the Analects. This is not only because its length has been lengthened, but also because many paragraphs are developed around a certain center, with complete structure and clear organization. As long as you add a topic, you can write a separate article.
Among the essays of pre-Qin philosophers, Mencius and Zhuangzi are the most literary. Because monk is not as deep and solemn as Confucius, but he is arrogant and sharp-edged. Reflected in the article, it not only explains the truth logically, but also has a strong emotional color. His writing style is frank and frank, popular and fluent, and he likes to use layers of parallel prose, thus forming a remarkable feature of Mencius' prose-majestic.
The fourth is Zhuangzi. Zhuangzi was recorded as 52 articles in the Han Dynasty, and there are 33 existing articles. Among them, 7 pieces of "Internal Articles" are generally considered to be written by Zhuangzi himself; Waipian has 15 and Zapian has 1 1, which contains the works of Taoist people in Zhuang and Zhou Dynasties and later.
Zhuang Zhou's thought is based on Laozi. But the center of Laozi is to expound the political philosophy of natural inaction, and the center of Zhuangzi is to explore how individuals can realize self-liberation and self-preservation in a heavy and dark society. In the author's view, the most ideal society is the chaotic state in ancient times, and all artificial systems and cultural measures are against human nature, so they are worthless. For personal life, Zhuangzi emphasized "loyalty", abandoned any worldly knowledge and reputation, and pursued the integration with the abstract essence of the universe-"Tao", thus achieving absolute and perfect spiritual freedom.
Zhuangzi himself is both a philosopher and a poet. Therefore, Zhuangzi, a philosophical work, is full of strong literary color. Moreover, its article system has been divorced from the form of quotation, which indicates that the pre-Qin prose has developed into a mature stage. In the literary sense, it represents the highest achievement of pre-Qin prose.
The article structure of Zhuangzi is also very strange. It doesn't look tight, but it often comes suddenly, but the ideas can run through it, and the sentence patterns are also rich. Influenced by Zhuangzi, the writers of later generations are numerous in ideas, styles, article systems and writing skills. As far as first-class writers are concerned, there are Ruan Ji, Tao Yuanming, Li Bai, Su Shi, Xin Qiji and Cao Xueqin. It can be seen that their influence is great.
In addition, Xunzi and Han Feizi had great influence in hundred schools of thought's essays, which represented the new achievements of the essays in the pre-Qin period.
Although Xunzi's thought originated from Confucianism, it absorbed the theories of other schools and reformed Confucianism. Among them, the most prominent is to oppose the former king of France and advocate that the cultural system will change with the development of history; He denied that heaven has the will to dominate human affairs, and put forward the view that "man can conquer heaven", and "evil human nature" is also his famous view.
There is also a group of articles in Xunzi called Fu Pian, which is one of the origins of Han Fu.
Although Han Fei studied under Xunzi, his thoughts were quite different. Han Fei had a thorough understanding of the world at that time. He doesn't believe that people have good feelings, but only believes that rewards and punishments are clear, so as to drive others away and harm others. A book "Everything is Wrong" constructs a set of methods and theories of extreme absolutism and strict control of people, which makes people shudder to read. However, this is an extremely important book for studying political science.
From the cultural point of view, Han Fei despises everything that belongs to the category of art and aesthetic feeling, but his articles are very distinctive, even better than Xunzi in terms of strict logic, meticulous discussion and clear organization.