Text: Xiao Peng's brilliant notes
Editor|Xiao Peng's brilliant notes
[Preface]
The foundation of the state construction in the Shang and Zhou dynasties was the patriarchal system formed with blood relations as the main link, and under the influence of the patriarchal system, the concept of the family and the world was deeply rooted in the hearts of the people, forming a matching sub-feudal system.
The imperial system established by the Qin and Han dynasties, while transforming the patriarchal feudal system into the emperor's county system, used the political system and social structure to abandon the order of the Zhou system and strengthen the state system instead.
The formation of the state order in the Qin and Han dynasties formally overrode the family consciousness left over by the primitive society, and established the prototype of the state construction method in later generations.
So, how did such an order come about, and what kind of historical laws did it contain?
[The Evolution of Political Centralization]
At the beginning of the founding of the Zhou Dynasty, the princes were divided into feudal lords in the newly occupied areas, and the ties between the Son of Heaven and the princes and the princes were strengthened through marriages and other means, with the purpose of relying on the princes to monitor the place and enhance the control of the Son of Heaven.
However, the feudal system of the Zhou Dynasty had its own historical environment constraints and the defects of the system itself, which led to the lack of strong control of Zhou Tianzi over the local area.
This was manifested in the lack of stability of the Zhou dynasty's control over the territory, and although King Wu of the Zhou Dynasty completed the apparent reform of power, his rule was not solid in reality.
Throughout the Zhou Dynasty, the northern Dog Rong and the Lynx tribes had always been a great threat, and under the continuous invasion of the Rong Di tribes, the Zhou royal family was forced to move the capital to Luoyi, and since then it has been in a state of collapse.
Although the influence of nomadic tribes such as the dog Rong and the fox on the Zhou Dynasty was huge, it was ultimately an external invasion.
The rebellion of the Yin Shang homeland and the Dongyi tribes really demonstrated the fact that the Zhou Dynasty was not strong enough to rule within the scope of its own rule.
King Wu died three years after Keshang, and Wu Geng, the son of King Shang, rebelled with Uncle Guan, Uncle Cai, and Uncle Huo, and received a wide response from the Xiangren, Dongyi, and Huaiyi.
Although this rebellion was instigated by the old nobles of the Yin Shang dynasty, the response of the Jiuyi tribes and the division within the Zhou royal family also showed that the rule of the Zhou dynasty was not widely recognized.
It was not until the auxiliary government of the Duke of Zhou, pacified the rebellion of Guan Cai and "cut down the king for three years, begged for his king, drove Lian to the corner of the sea and killed him, and destroyed the country fifty", and carried out the second large-scale partition, that the rule of the Western Zhou Dynasty was initially extended to the whole country.
Moreover, the governing system of the Zhou Dynasty lacked universality, in other words, the princes of the Zhou Dynasty and the Fang State basically went their own way in terms of governing concepts and systems.
In the early years of the Western Zhou Dynasty, the Zhou Dynasty affirmed one country, two systems in terms of system, and implemented "commercial administration" in "Yinxu" and "Xia Zheng" in "Xiaxu".
Qin Shi Huang initially decided the whole country, and the prime minister, Wei Juan, etc., suggested that the first emperor set up the princes as kings and restore the feudal system, but Li Si ignored the opinions and strongly persuaded the first emperor to replace the feudal division with counties.
The reason why Qin Shi Huang was able to adopt Li Si's suggestion and abolish the feudal system was not to restrain the princes from attacking each other, but to solve the hidden danger that the power of the Son of Heaven was weakening to the point that he could not restrain the princes.
The establishment of a unified state, in addition to its unprecedentedly vast territory, is also reflected in the further concentration of state power.
The bureaucratic system of emperor-prime minister-hundred officials replaced the relatively loose structure of the Son of Heaven, princes, and ministers, and the increasing power of the prime minister and the monarch further concentrated political power.
Therefore, the influence of blood relations in the construction of the state is diluted, and finally the original family-centered family-state order is replaced by the national order with the state system as the core.
【The Exaltation of Shangxian's Thoughts】
Three generations and before the holy monarchs, most of them can attach importance to or appoint sages, such as the legendary Yao's respect for Xu You, Shun's reuse of Gaotao and Boyang, Shang Tang's appointment of Yi Yin and Wu Ding's appointment of Fu Shuo, King Wen and Jiang Shang's monarchs and ministers are like-minded, and so on.
But this kind of respect for the wise and the wise is only an individual act, not the general consciousness of the whole society.
In the early years of the Western Zhou Dynasty, the idea of honoring the virtuous had become a Xi among the upper class rulers, and King Tai of Zhou had three sons, Taibo, Yu Zhong, and Wang Ji, and later because Wang Ji's son Ji Chang "gave birth to Shengrui", so he gave birth to his eldest son Taibo and second son Yu Zhong, and made Wang Ji his queen.
and King Wen, who also gave up his eldest son Boyi and set up the second son, the reason is that among the sons, "only Fa, Danxian, left and right auxiliary King Wen, so King Wen Sheboyi took the test and took Fa as the prince".
After King Wu ascended the throne, he chose Zhou Gongdan, who was younger and more capable, as his assistant, which also reflected this tendency to choose talents.
During the Warring States Period: "The princes of the world want to fight and compete for heroes to support themselves." This is the autumn of the winner, and the loss of the soldier is the autumn of the fierce. Therefore, the wind of honoring the virtuous gradually rose, and gradually became popular among the princes.
At the beginning of the Warring States Period, Wei Wenhou opened the door to raise soldiers, and among the talents he recruited, there were more than ten people such as Zixia, Tian Zifang, Duan Ganmu, etc., which can be described as the style of cultivating virtuous people in the Warring States.
Later, the monarch had many courteous sages, such as Lu Mugong, who personally visited Confucius's disciple and reused Zisi.
Zhongyun in "Mencius": "In the past, Lu Miao Gong did not care about Zisi's side, so he could not settle Zisi", it can be seen that Zisi's status in Lu at that time was important, so that his self-esteem was so high.
Although there are "few real scholars and many pseudo-scholars" among the disciples, it also has another function, which is to let more and more scholars and scholars enter the circle of nobles and be reused because of their own talents.
If the cultivation of virtuous by the monarch is only a courtesy to first-class virtuous people, then the cultivation of virtuous nobles at the end of the Warring States period is to further expand the scope of virtuous people, and at the same time, the influence of Shangxian's thought is expanded.
Influenced by the thought of the sons of the pre-Qin Dynasty, in February of the 11th year of Gaozu of the Han Dynasty, Liu Bang issued an order to the wise men and doctors, asking the county guards to persuade the wise men to respond to the edict.
In the second and fifteenth years of Emperor Wen of the Han Dynasty, he issued two edicts to "raise virtuous and good people who can speak outright", "princes, kings, ministers, and county guards who can speak outright and speak extremely well", until Emperor Wu took "raising virtuous and virtuous" as a fixed system of electing officials.
At the end of the Western Han Dynasty, with the increasing corruption of the imperial government, the concept of the Chan state to make virtuous people was combined with the popular prophecy of the time.
At the end of the Han Dynasty, Gu Yong and others said, "Vertical three unifications, three upright, go to no way, open virtue, not a private surname, tomorrow is the world of the world, not the world of one person", in fact, Han Confucianism for the further development of Shangxian thought.
Shangxian thought has gradually risen from individual behavior to social thought, which has brought about not only the whole society, but also the respect for virtuous and virtuous people, and more deeply affected the organizational structure of society.
The cultivation and use of virtuous by the nobility of the Warring States period allowed more scholars to emerge and appear on the stage of history, which accelerated the subversion of the Shiqing Shilu system, and also marked the breaking of the state of family and blood relations above the national consciousness, as well as the establishment of a state-family order with the state as the center and the family as the grassroots organization.
The Western Han Dynasty Confucianism's thought of making the virtuous of the Zen country is based on the theory that "the world is the world of the world, not the world of one person", which has a great impact on the traditional concept of a family and a surname country, which further reduces the influence of the family on the country.
【Shaken family concept】
In addition to the influence of the establishment of a unified state, the gradual strengthening of political centralization, and the gradual exaltation of the idea of Shangxian, the replacement of the family order by the state order of the Qin and Han dynasties was also related to the shaking of the family concept.
Although the concept of family has always existed in ancient Chinese society, and even after the Han and Wei dynasties, there was a wave of rising power of the gate lords, but if we only analyze the changes in the family concept in the imperial family, we can find that the family concept in the imperial family before the Qin and Han dynasties was getting weaker and weaker.
First of all, marked by the emergence of the father-son inheritance system, the horizontal blood relationship within the imperial family before the Qin and Han dynasties gradually faded, and the family concept also changed.
In primitive society, for the survival of the tribe, the ancestors must elect the most capable person from the crowd to become the leader of the tribe, and the tribal leader has the responsibility to lead the entire tribe to overcome difficulties, but does not have the power to determine the next generation of leaders.
The succession of the chief is not limited to a particular family. When human beings gradually broke away from primitive society, this primitive "democratic deliberation" style of transmission still remained.
When Emperor Yao was old, he consulted Siyue, and finally according to the opinions of Siyue, he investigated Shun, which was later passed on to Shun.
This type of succession occurred before the early state and was a manifestation of the monarch's lack of control over his or her own family.
At the time of the Xia Shang Dynasty, the monarch's control over the country had been strengthened, and the succession of the throne could no longer be concerned about others, so the succession to the throne began to be confined to the internal clan, and the family concept was deepened day by day.
In the early Shang Dynasty, the method of "brother to brother" showed that the transmission of political power had been controlled by the family, but because the political power was shared by the family, it could not be inherited between father and son, but should be passed on among the brothers of the same generation in the family.
Compared with the brother-to-brother system, the father-son inheritance system is a major adjustment of the family relationship, marking the alienation of the family from the blood relationship, and the direct blood relationship has become increasingly important, while the horizontal blood relationship has gradually faded.
[The collapse of the sub-sealing system]
It further reflects the necessity and inevitability of the emergence of the state-family order after the shaking of the family concept, and the disappearance of the feudal system is a spiral process.
Qin Shi Huang established a unified state with a county system, concentrated power in the hands of one person, and completely abandoned the feudal system, which was the first major change, but the death of Qin Dynasty II gave the possibility of reproducing history of the feudal system.
At the beginning of the Han Dynasty, the feudal system was still implemented, but in fact, the feudal system at that time had gradually become famous and insubstantial, and the princes and kings of the Han Gaozu had both the same surname and the princes with different surnames, which seemed to be not far from the system of the Western Zhou Dynasty, but in fact, this feudal system was a dual-track mechanism that was parallel to the county and county.
Under this dual-track mechanism of feudal counties, the county magistrates and the feudal princes jointly managed local affairs within the Fang Kingdom, which greatly weakened the power of the princes and kings, which was not the same as the actual status of the princes of the Zhou Dynasty.
After that, Emperor Wen of the Han Dynasty, Emperor Jing, and Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty were committed to weakening the princes, and the princes were either forced to rebel and finally died in the country, or their territories were cut off due to crimes or other reasons, or under the order of the imperial court, the number of knighthoods increased, and the territory became smaller.
Even so, after the establishment of the Eastern Han Dynasty, the power of the princes was further weakened, and the princes and kings divided by Emperor Guangwu not only had a much smaller fief area than the early Western Han Dynasty.
Moreover, only the feudal food is no longer politically powered, and the princes are actually equivalent to local governors in name only.
In the late Eastern Han Dynasty, although there were still Liu Biao, Liu Yan, Liu Zhang, Liu Yu and other Liu clan relatives, they were all able to divide one side by obeying the order, rather than by the power of the princes, and it was also another manifestation that after the collapse of the feudal system, the princes no longer had any power.
In the process of the gradual demise of the feudal system, two points are particularly noteworthy: first, the disappearance of princes and kings with different surnames, indicating that in the components of state power, the distribution of different surnames or different families to the same power has ended, and has been replaced by the idea of one family and one surname for the world.
The second is the loss of the fiefdoms of the princes, which means that even the princes and kings with the same surname no longer have the status and strength of the princes of the Zhou Dynasty.
This not only means that the clan with the same surname has been excluded from the distribution of power in the imperial family, but also reflects the inevitability of the will of the state to replace the blood relationship of the clan and form the national order after the family concept is shaken.