The Wenhua Lectures:the Dean Prof. Wei Chong-xin, Menfucious: Easy? Not to be grown.
A lecture concerning Mencius was held at Wenhua Hall on April 12th.From the experience to thought, Dean Wei explained the entire life of Mencius from different angles.
Professor Wei Chongxin made a wonderful reading of Mencius from the following five aspects:
First, Mencius was born in a grassroots family. Mother Meng paid especially careful attention to the cultivation of him. She assumed men could be influenced greatly by the environment around him. Therefore, Mother Meng moved three times to find a better place for her son's education. Although we could not restore the life experience of Mencius completely, but his story always spurred us to be a young man with faith!
Second, Confucius's hardcore fans. Mencius believed that Confucius was the master of Chinese culture, and his birth and everything he did were the demands of the times. Mencius worshiped Confucius by inheriting and developing his thoughts after understanding. According to the needs of the times, Mencius created an unique ideological system, which was formed by developing and creating the Confucianism all his life. This also inspired us that doubting authority, taking the essence and discarding the dross was a proper attitude we should have.
A ready-witted eristic. Menci’s articles have qi channel all around, logic and arguments are very strong. What style he is good at is that he dosen’t tit for tat, but follow others’mind first and then leading them into his own logic trap. Menci valued the mind of adaptable to changing circumstances of the unification of principle and flexibility, consequently, the propriety which he stood for is not rigid, but flexible.
Mencius is full of the“Dazhangfu”personality and the sense of freedom and pride, just as his saying,wealth can not be sex, poverty can not be changed, a mighty can not be subdued,the above are great men.Mencius is very ambitious and confident. He once said,‘In today’s world, except me, who else can create a peaceful world?’Besides, he traveled around the country, trying to translate Confucian political theory and governance theory into specific proposals of national governance. Although he did not succeed of that time, he did affect alarge number of future generations with lofty ideals.
Mencius is a romantic idealist Confucianism. He is a lovely,upright Saint with human interact. He has a specific political ideal and clear political blueprint——Benevolent governance. The traditional Chinese Confucian thoughts is a kind of idealism thoughts with romantic flavor.Mencius is such a romanticist. Although his thoughts can not be fully realized until today, it always inspires us to constantly seek forward.
On April 1st2014，at the College of Europe in Belgium，General Secretary Xi Jinping on Chinese civilization，said:“China is a country with a long civilization. In the several ancient civilizations of the world, Chinese civilization is a civilization without interruption, which has a history of more than 5000 years. The characters created by our ancestors thousands of years ago are still in use. China appeared the pomp of Hundred Schools of Thought 2000 years ago. Lao Tzu, Confucius, Mo Tzu and other thinkers explored from astronomy to geography and inquired the essence of the relationships between man and man, man and society as well as man and nature extensively. They formed a broad and profound ideological system. Many ideas they put forward still have a profound impact on the lives of Chinese people,such as loyalty and filial piety, sense of propriety, justice, integrity and honour, benevolent love, nature-human integration, imitation of the nature,strive constantly for self-improvement and so on. Chinese people have their own unique value system in the view of world, society and life. The unique and enduring spiritual world let the Chinese people have a strong national self-confidence and cultivate the national spirit with patriotism as the core.”
Facing with many challenges to our cultural security, one of the things we can do is to protect our splendid traditional culture and traditional spirit, to safeguard our culture security.
