Burning books and entrapping Confucianism and respecting Confucianism

1. Strengthened ideological control, which was conducive to the stability of society at that time and the consolidation of feudal rule;

2. Destroyed many cultural classics and destroyed many precious pre-Qin cultures;

3. Embedded people’s thoughts, which was not conducive to innovation and development, and had a bad impact on future generations.

Details:

"Burning books and trapping Confucians" and "Deposing hundreds of schools of thought and respecting Confucianism alone" are two important events in the history of Chinese culture. On the surface, these The two things are of opposite nature, one kills Confucianism and the other praises Confucianism. But in reality, they are equally damaging to culture.

During the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, Chinese culture reached a peak through the "Contact of a Hundred Schools of Thought". At that time, intellectuals were not only free to express their opinions academically, but also received unprecedented respect in terms of political status. The monarchs and ministers are thirsty for talents, and it is a common practice to cultivate scholars. Scholars from hundreds of schools of thought travel around the country to give advice and advice.

Educated people in that era developed the habit of freely discussing government affairs, but the "burning of books and entrapping Confucians" ruined all this. Although Qin Shihuang only killed a few hundred Confucian students, he did not have all the books. It was burned, but it used a powerful deterrent to inform scholars all over the world, letting them understand that from now on, China has entered an era of autocracy, and they can no longer speak nonsense. "Burning books and entrapping Confucians" took a bad lead and used violence to treat culture. Therefore, there were "literary prisons" in subsequent dynasties and generations.

"Destroying hundreds of schools of thought and respecting Confucianism alone" is completely different. It does not use any violence, but uses a harmonious method to set a model and an example. Want to succeed? Want to be a saint? Okay, learn Confucianism and don’t learn anything else. Confucianism is the mainstream, and everything else is non-mainstream. Non-mainstream people will remain poor scholars all their lives. Only mainstream people can enter the ranks of scholar-bureaucrats.

This "praising" is actually "killing", but there is no blood, and the method is very civilized and clever. However, the nature of culture determines that only the contention of different schools and different ideas can progress. Only one idea can unify the world. No matter how good this idea is, it is a kind of restriction on culture.

Chinese culture has spent more than two thousand years in this kind of praising and killing, and it has never seen the glory of hundreds of schools of thought. No matter how good the Tang poems, Song lyrics, Yuan operas, and Ming and Qing novels are, they cannot conceal the sadness of this culture.

A nation that is not culturally strong can easily fall into political corruption and ideological decadence. It is useless to be strong only in technology and economy. It is not truly strong. The Song Dynasty is a typical example. In terms of science and technology, the Song Dynasty was the first in the world. The four great inventions that the Chinese are proud of were born during this period. Economically, the Song Dynasty was also number one in the world, and the River Along the River During the Qingming Festival shows the prosperity at that time. It just so happened that such a powerful country that ranked first in the world in terms of technology and economy at that time was repeatedly bullied by the small country of Jin, and was finally destroyed by Mongolia. The development of Confucianism in the Song Dynasty reached a peak, and its pedantry also reached a peak.

The Joseph Needham problem shows that China has developed extremely slowly and has been surpassed by the West in one fell swoop. What's the problem? It is because of culture that after the West passed through the "Dark Middle Ages", it suddenly awakened. The emergence of a large number of thinkers such as Rousseau and Voltaire brought the West into an era of cultural explosion, which continues to this day. China has never seen that kind of cultural prosperity again, and the "Hundred Schools of Thought" has become an eternal memory in the history of Chinese culture, a monument that can only be admired by future generations, but cannot be reproduced and carried forward.

It can be said that "burning books and trapping Confucianism" and "deposing hundreds of schools of thought and respecting Confucianism alone" have affected culture for two thousand years. This is a huge tragedy.

The Imperial Examination System

The Imperial Examination System was a system for selecting officials through examinations in feudal dynasties throughout the ages. Because the method of selecting scholars by subject was adopted, it was called the imperial examination. The imperial examination system was implemented from the first year of Daye in the Sui Dynasty (605) to the 31st year of Guangxu in the Qing Dynasty (1905) when the final Jinshi examination was held, which lasted more than 1,300 years.

The imperial examination system has been implemented in China for a full thirteen hundred years, and has had a profound impact on China's social structure, political system, education, and humanistic thought after the Sui and Tang Dynasties.

The original purpose of the imperial examination was to promote talents from among the people for the government, break the hereditary phenomenon of the nobility, and rectify the official system.

Compared with hereditary, recommendation and other selection systems, the imperial examination is undoubtedly a fair, open and impartial method, which improves the employment system. Initially, Japan, South Korea, and Vietnam in East Asia followed China's example in holding imperial examinations, and Vietnam's abolition of the imperial examinations had to wait until China. From the 16th to the 17th centuries, European missionaries saw the imperial examination system in China and introduced it to Europe in their travel notes. During the Enlightenment Movement in the 18th century, many British and French thinkers praised China's fair and just system. The civil service recruitment method established by the United Kingdom in the mid-to-late nineteenth century stipulated that government civil servants be recruited through regular public examinations, gradually forming a civil service system that was later imitated by European and American countries. The examination principles and methods adopted by the British civil service system were very similar to those of the Chinese imperial examination, and to a large extent they absorbed the advantages of the imperial examination. Therefore, some people call the imperial examination the fifth greatest invention of Chinese civilization. Today's examination system is still a continuation of the imperial examination system to a certain extent. Since the Song Dynasty, the imperial examination has been open to everyone regardless of origin, wealth or poverty. This not only greatly broadens the basis for the government to select talents, but also allows intellectuals in the middle and lower classes of society to have the opportunity to move to the upper class of society through scientific examinations. This policy has played a considerable role in maintaining overall social stability. Nearly half of the Jinshi scholars in the Ming and Qing dynasties came from "poor" families whose ancestors did not study, or who studied but did not serve as officials. But as long as they can "climb the dragon gate", they will naturally be "worth ten times as much". Over the years, tens of millions of students have bowed their heads and willingly served as a coward, with many goals but the hope of becoming famous in one fell swoop and honoring their ancestors. It can be said that the imperial examination is an effective method to win over and control scholars in order to consolidate their rule.

The imperial examination has discovered and cultivated a large number of talents for Chinese dynasties. Over the past 1,300 years, the imperial examination produced nearly 100,000 Jinshi, and millions of candidates and scholars. Of course, not all of them are knowledgeable people, but most of those who can pass five levels and kill six generals and pass the scientific examination to become Jinshi are not ordinary people. Among the famous ministers, prime ministers and pillars of the country in the Song, Ming and Qing dynasties, those with Jinshi background accounted for the vast majority. The practice after Yingzong of the Ming Dynasty was that "non-Jinshi will not enter the Hanlin, and non-Hanlin will not join the cabinet." The imperial examination became the only way for high-ranking officials. When Matteo Ricci visited China in the middle of the Ming Dynasty, he saw that the class of scholar-bureaucrats responsible for governing the country were produced by the imperial examination system.

The imperial examination also played a considerable role in promoting the popularization of knowledge and the reading culture among the people. Although this push was due to ordinary people's pursuit of fame rather than the desire for knowledge or spirituality; objectively speaking, because it became a fashion to enter the imperial examination and become an official, China's writing style has generally been improved. During the Ming and Qing dynasties, most of the time, the number of scholars in China, measured as scholars, was no less than 500,000; including children, the number was in the millions. Except for a few people who can advance further in their career, most of them have become grassroots intellectuals living in various places, which has played a certain role in the popularization of knowledge. Moreover, because these scholars were all products of the same system and studied the same "books of sages," they also indirectly maintained the unity and centripetal force of culture and thought across China.

The negative impact caused by the imperial examination mainly lies in its assessment content and examination format. Beginning in the Ming Dynasty, the content of the imperial examination became rigid and only required candidates to produce articles that conformed to the form, instead of focusing on the candidates' actual knowledge. Most scholars are studying for scientific examinations, and their thoughts are gradually constrained by the narrow Four Books and Five Classics and the pedantic eight-legged essay; their vision, creativity, and independent thinking are greatly restricted. Most people regard passing the scientific examination as the only purpose of studying. Studying becomes just for being an official and honoring one's ancestors. In addition, the imperial examination also limited the options for talents. By the Qing Dynasty, most of the famous figures who had made outstanding achievements in literary creation or various technologies failed in the imperial examinations. It can be inferred that while the imperial examination system discovered talents for the government, it also buried outstanding figures in other fields among the people. Over the past century, countless elites of all kinds were trapped in the examination room and wasted their time. In order to enslave the Han people, the Qing government strictly restricted the content of the imperial examinations. The imperial examination system in the Qing Dynasty was in decline and had more and more drawbacks. Although the rulers of the Qing Dynasty were particularly harsh in punishing fraud in the imperial examination system, due to the shortcomings of the imperial examination system itself, the fraud became more and more serious, and the imperial examination system finally died out.

Even after the imperial examination was abolished, it still left many traces in Chinese society. For example, the "Provisional Constitution of the Republic of China" created by Sun Yat-sen stipulated the separation of powers among the five powers, and the "Examination Yuan" included in it originated from China's imperial examination tradition. In addition, some habits of the imperial examination can still be seen in the college entrance examination in mainland China today.

For example, admissions are divided into provinces, binding the test papers with candidates' identity information on the headers to prevent collusion between examiners and candidates to cheat, and calling the person with the highest score in the college entrance examination the number one scholar. These are all relics of the imperial examination.

Insufficient and negative impact of the imperial examination

According to Mr. Qian Mu’s research on the ancient Chinese political system: “If a good system lasts for a long time, it will suffocate politics.” With the development of the imperial examination system, especially in feudal society, the imperial examination system will also have some negative effects.

First, because the rulers changed the content of the examination and made the imperial examination a shackles that restricted the minds of intellectuals, Emperor Taizu of the Ming Dynasty officially designated the eight-legged essay originating from the Yuan Dynasty as the imperial examination style. This style of writing consists of paragraphs such as breaking the title, carrying the title, starting the story, beginning, beginning, middle, back, and closing. The last four paragraphs each have two opposing lines of text, which are combined into eight parts, so it is called Eight-legged essay. The theme of the eight-legged essay must be stated on behalf of the sage, that is, the thoughts of Confucius should be used to guide the writing of the essay. The Qing Dynasty expanded sages to include disciples of Confucius and Neo-Confucianists such as Zhu Xi, and required Zhu Xi's style of writing to be used as a style. After Qianlong, test poems became an important item in the imperial examination. The test poem has the same fixed formula as the eight-part essay, which is also eight couplets and sixteen sentences, but the eight-part poem is changed into six parts. The first couplet is like breaking the title, the second couplet is like carrying the title, the third couplet is like starting the sentence, the fourth and fifth couplets are like the middle part, the sixth and seventh couplets are like the back part, and the eighth couplet is like the binding part. Moreover, we must carry forward the thoughts of Confucius, Mencius and Zhu Xi, and we must not express our own feelings arbitrarily. I think the original intention of setting the eight-part essay may be to write it in a fixed format to facilitate the examiner's scoring and to show "fairness". Otherwise, everyone has their own writing style, and it will be difficult to distinguish between superior and inferior writers. But later it became a tool for the rulers to control their thoughts. Because the eight-part essay test suppressed the thoughts of those who were not good at imperial examination subjects, it also prevented some intellectuals from innovating academically and ideologically. This has led to ideological backwardness and stagnated the development of science and technology. There were even imperial examination victims like Kong Yiji.

Second, the imperial examination system also produced family tragedies. Since those who pass the imperial examination system enjoy abundant preferential treatment and honor, and the imperial examination is also an important way for ordinary people to get ahead, tragedies of poor people abandoning their wives and children after high school often occur. I believe Chen Shimei (first of all, this is just a character in an opera) , according to textual research, it is purely false. How could the ancient emperors tolerate such a deceitful person? Secondly, this is also a matter of personal morality). Everyone knows about his ugly name. Although the important reason for this lies in the ideological values ??and sense of responsibility of the parties involved, the imperial examination after all gave it such a soil for survival.

Finally, the imperial examination system led to official corruption. With the advancement of history, the imperial examination system became politicized, and the education of the emperor, the king, the master, and the master led to the prevalence of the teacher-sect relationship. This resulted in serious nepotism among teachers. These divisions formed cliques in the officialdom, and officials protected each other. The corrupt officials and gentry during the Qianlong period of the Qing Dynasty are the best example. He took advantage of Emperor Qianlong's favor to dominate the world, accepted bribes, and became as rich as the enemy. Moreover, he repeatedly used imperial examination questions as bait to collect bribes from candidates. This is not conducive to the country building a good social system that is just, fair and open. It caused darkness in official circles and chaos in society.

In short, the negative effects of the imperial examination system are not mainly the fault of the system itself. The system itself should recognize that the imperial examination is a good system for selecting officials and talents. The imperial examination system is for selecting talents, and it can also select the true talents of traditional society and entrust them with important tasks. As for the eight-part essay style of the imperial examinations in the Ming and Qing Dynasties, coupled with the traditional Chinese tradition of emphasizing skills rather than technology, and emphasizing humanities over natural sciences, these are the real reasons for the backwardness of science and technology after the Ming and Qing Dynasties. Many commentators describe cheating in the examination room, such as coercion, taking exams for others, bribing examiners, and cheating, as shortcomings of the imperial examination system. They believe that the prevalence of cheating in the examination room in the late Qing Dynasty indicates the darkness of the imperial examination system. In fact, judging from the examination rules that have been basically finalized since the Song Dynasty, cheating is a problem of people, not the system itself. Even today, there is cheating in the college entrance examination. Women were excluded from the selection, and it cannot be blamed on the imperial examination. Without the imperial examination system, ancient women had no right to participate in politics. This was determined by the nature of ancient society.