Book: S. Vasiliev. Ethics and ritual in traditional China

Ancient Chinese society did not know polis democracy and the type of philosopher generated by it, consciously detached from the empirical life around him in the name of understanding being as such.

Confucius and the first ZhU philosophers saw their main task in the theoretical understanding of the historical connection between society and the personal fate of a person. From the very beginning, Confucius' policy was to convey,

The first historically reliable creator of philosophical theory in China was Confucius, who realized himself as an exponent of the spiritual tradition of Zhu - educated, intellectual scientists, whose name later became the terminological designation of Confucians.

In any developed society, it is philosophy that generally reflects in itself all spheres of spiritual culture and, for its part, plays the role of a universal methodology for them. But it itself cannot fail to follow a certain metaphilosophical formal methodology as the most general theory of the correct acquisition and expression of true knowledge.

The universal model of society as a system of blood relations, expressed by the Confucian slogan China

Because philosophy is alive

Confucian ethical and ritual norms and values became indisputably obligatory for all members of society, from the emperor to the commoner. Extremely stable standards of behavior and speech, clearly fixed rites and ceremonies were adopted by the Confucian scholar-official, and the Buddhist monk, and the itinerant merchant, and the settled peasant or artisan.

In Chinese philosophy, ethics had not only social and anthropological, but also epistemological and ontological meaning. The types of knowledge differed in their moral significance, and the fundamental concepts of being were interpreted in predominantly ethical categories - goodness, virtue, sincerity. Sometimes the merit of Confucianism is seen precisely in the creation of a moral

Chinese thinkers successfully developed a moral

The ruler directs his subjects through LI. Overcoming oneself and turning to LI constitute humanity.

The Chinese character LI corresponds to a large range of related concepts (rules of conduct, ritual, custom, decency) can be translated as a combination of ethics-ritual. LI comes close to the term TI (body, essence, substance). The etymological relationship of LI and TI laid the core of the later philosophical ontologization of ethics and ritual in China, where the beginning uniting them began to be thought of as the most important factor not only in cultural creation, but also in cosmic ordering.

The main content of the doctrine of Confucius comes down to the proclamation of the ideal of social harmony and the search for means to achieve this ideal, the standard of which the sage himself saw in the reign of the legendary sages of antiquity - the very ones who shone with virtues.

Thanks to the gigantic adaptive power, the Chinese cultural tradition became capable of quickly and radically transforming foreign ideas that penetrated the country, skillfully and very harmoniously Sinicizing them, as happened, in particular, with Buddhism.

The sociocultural genotype, which underlies the mechanism of reproduction of civilization, which guaranteed its adaptive and transformative power, its regenerative functions that brilliantly manifested themselves at the right time, began to form at the beginning of the first millennium BC. e. The concept of heavenly predestination that arose at that time expressed the principle of ethical determination in the management of people (the right to own the Celestial Empire was taken away from the vicious ruler and handed over to the owner of the highest virtue).