Courtesy, benevolence, and righteousness are the three pillars of Confucius's thought. Among them, benevolence is the core, and the simple understanding is kissing and fraternity. From the perspective of the level of human needs, it is a high-level psychological demand that will naturally occur on the basis of people's physical and mental needs in terms of food and clothing, as well as the satisfaction of psychological values and emotional needs, and then through the dialectical satisfaction of aesthetic and admiration needs.
The meaning is the same as "appropriate", which refers to the appropriate, appropriate, and appropriate handling of interpersonal relations according to local conditions. It takes respect for the virtuous as the greatest, benevolence as the guiding direction and destination, and embodies fraternity, mutual assistance, justice, reasonableness, etc. At the same time, this is one of Confucius's fundamental propositions for measuring and judging the relationship between people in terms of value creation, storage, exchange, and distribution. External behavior and habits affect the psychology and form psychological inertia - take etiquette as the paradigm, uphold righteousness and appropriate action, and realize the great harmony of the world of benevolence, the trinity.
Confucius's ideal was to restore the Zhou rites, create a unified country with benevolence, righteousness, courtesy, respect and inferiority, orderliness between the young and the old, and coordination between the upper and lower levels, eliminate the collapse of etiquette and happiness in the Spring and Autumn Period, and the chaotic wars of the nations, so that the people can live and work in peace and contentment. For more than 2,000 years, Confucianism has been following his direction, and on the foundation he has rammed, according to his guiding ideology, he has added columns, bricks, erected walls, erected beams, covered the roof, and added tiles.
Mencius added a pillar called "wisdom". Specifically, it refers to the fact that people have "four hearts", and their nature is good; go with the flow, carry forward their nature, not be impregnated by acquired vices, be compassionate, ashamed, and resign, and rely on the "heart of right and wrong" to distinguish between black and white, penetrate the true and false, distinguish between good and evil, right and wrong, and choose benevolence, righteousness, and courtesy, so as to achieve the goal of not giving in, being righteous, and being courteous.
Dong Fuzi added another pillar, called "faith", which specifically refers to the importance of promises and promises in interpersonal communication. This can also be regarded as a fundamental value proposition, which is used to maintain and constrain the value creation, exchange, and distribution relationships between people across a specific period of time, so that they can interact appropriately and fulfill as promised. The delayed public value of trustworthy people relative to others and groups is both safe and secure, so the idiom of "a promise is a thousand gold" has been circulated.
Benevolence, righteousness, propriety, wisdom, and faith are the five pillars of Confucianism: benevolence is in the center, and righteousness, propriety, wisdom, and faith are guarded at the four corners. They are collectively known as the "Five Constants" of human ethics, that is, people's words and deeds, and how they behave in the world, must be taken as routine, and they must be pursued and observed at all times.
Later feudal rulers put the value standards of loyalty and filial piety in the front row, highlighting loyalty to the monarch and filial piety to parents, so that the supreme ruler attached the personality of "monarch father" under the godhead of the Son of Heaven and the authority of the emperor. All the people in the world are his people, and they must serve him as they honor their parents—loyalty and filial piety complement each other so that they become more and more valuable than the "five constants".
In order to promote order, mutual respect and love between brothers and sisters, the value standard of chastity has always been flaunted; in order to restrain officials from obeying the law, being diligent in government and loving the people, and the value standard of honesty has always been flaunted; in order to stabilize the family, pass on the family lineage, and eliminate men's worries, the value standard of chastity has always been flaunted -- in order to warn everyone not to disobey the above value standards, to bring humiliation on oneself, and to abandon people and gods, the value standard of shame has always been flaunted.
No matter how the feudal rulers ordered, in the final analysis, "benevolence" is the core, direction and destination of universal values. Loyalty, filial piety, righteousness, wisdom, trustworthiness, loyalty, chastity, honesty, shame, etc., are all unified public standards that assist in measuring personal value and defining and judging the value creation, storage, exchange, and distribution relationship between people.
Under the premise of consistent value goals and value orientations, everyone acts according to the above value standards, regardless of monarchs and ministers, fathers and sons, husbands and wives, brothers, and friends, can stably promote each other, as well as the mutual "belonging" and "self-esteem" of individuals and collectives, and produce "sympathy" and "empathy" - the above value standards are correspondingly elevated to the common emotional standards of the country and society.
"Li" is expressed as the etiquette of people and the external norms of related places, utensils, utensils, etc. In the past, even if people had their own evil intentions and calculated with each other, as long as they were respectful and orderly on the surface, and they advanced and retreated in a certain way, they could maintain the coordination between the upper and lower levels of a specific collective. Just like the powerful ministers of all dynasties, Huo Guang, Wang Mang, Cao Cao, Sima Yi, etc., although they are in power, they look down on the world, and when they see the emperor, they must be polite and bow down to maintain the harmony of the court and the subjects.
If the internal and external cultivation is both internal and external, and complement each other, it will promote the inner cultivation and external demeanor of the individual; but if the appearance is inconsistent and the yang is contrary to the yin, it will make people hypocritical and pretentious, with a form that loses its connotation, has a demeanor but no temperature, and is easy to expose its feet in a hurry, and it seems that the emperor is at a loss and the advance and retreat are out of ground.
Confucian values are measured, defined, and judged on the basis of the mutual criteria of conditional "belonging" and "self-esteem", and then "benevolence" glues everyone together.
For example, between kings and ministers, Confucius advocated that "the monarch should be courteous to his ministers, and the ministers should be loyal"; Mencius added: "If the monarch regards his ministers as siblings, the ministers regard the monarch as his heart, and if the monarch regards his ministers as dogs and horses, the ministers regard the monarch as a countryman, and the monarch regards his ministers as mustard, and the ministers regard the monarch as an enemy" - that is, Confucius and Mencius believed that the exchange of values between monarchs and ministers must abide by the common standards of benevolence, righteousness, propriety, and wisdom, and no one should come to the fore.
However, the "faint monarchs" of later generations all wanted to take their own freewheeling as the standard; their ministers were attached, formed into princes, gate lords, prominent clans, and powerful people, and took it as their responsibility to be promoted to become wealthy and to seal their wives and sons. The "Ming Jun" wanted to favor the common people in terms of value storage, exchange, and distribution, and promote the formation and implementation of some laws and regulations and systems that robbed the rich and helped the poor, and made up for the surplus and the short. The monarch and the minister have been fighting for more than 2,000 years, and the result is thunder and rain and dew, which is not the grace of heaven, the king let the minister die, and the minister has to die.
Whether it is the value standard of the monarch and the minister, the value concept of the people, or the economic base and superstructure, they are all developing in the direction of paranoia to meet the "self-esteem needs" of the imperial power and the imperial family. Subjects are increasingly reduced to "closed" "dependent" tribute, rather than belonging to those who dialectically satisfy their "self-esteem needs" at the same time. They all consciously take the emperor's joys, sorrows, and sorrows as their emotions, the emperor's leisure and elegance as their beauty, the emperor's great achievements as their admiration, and the emperor's private feelings and secret love as benevolence.
Father and son were originally "father and son", husband and wife were originally "respectful of each other", brothers were originally "brothers, friends and brothers", and friends were originally "complementary...... They are all conditional, and the value exchange of equality and reciprocity is carried out according to the common value standard, which later evolved into the words of the matchmaker of the parents, marrying the chicken with the chicken and the dog with the dog, the eldest brother like the father and the sister-in-law like the mother, and sticking a knife in the ribs for the friend—all went to the extreme of their own paranoia.
Chapter 5 The Collapse of Etiquette and the Confusion of Values in the Information Age
Chapter 6 This society lacks a soul
One Study: The Theory of Creation: "The Awakening of Human Nature"