Dong Zhong-shu 董仲舒 温海明 Prof. WEN Haiming Associate Professor, School of Philosophy Renmin University of China 中国人民大学哲学院副教授 Ph.D. University of Hawaii 夏威夷大学哲学博士   Prof. Haiming Wen, School of Philosophy, Renmin University of China 11

Dong Zhong-shu  Lived from about BCE  Instrumental in making Confucianism the Han dynasty’s orthodox belief  Tried to justify current socio-political order  Human beings are the image of Heaven  Justification of human’s behavior found in tian

Dong Zhong-shu’s Cosmology  The universe has ten constituent elements: heaven, earth, yin, yang, wood, fire, soil, metal, water, man  Order of the five processes (wuxing)  Human is immersed in the ever-present yin and yang, like a fish in water  Yin and yang wax and wane and affect seasons, preside over them

Human Nature  Humans are replicas of tian and can achieve perfection like heavens through li and yue, essentially culture and civilization  Xing (human nature) and qing (emotions) give birth to human-heartedness  Goodness does not lie within, only cultivated through culture  Dong Zhong-shu: we are “not yet good”

Social Ethics  Everything has a correlate  Including human relationships  Three gang relationships  sovereign-subject, husband-wife, father-son  Five chang, or constant virtues: ren, yi, li, zhi, xin  Chang are individual virtues, gang are societal virtues

Political Philosophy  Humans must cultivate culture and civilization by knowing the moral laws  Government must help do this  The Four Ways of Government  beneficence, rewards, punishments, execution  King is co-equal with Heaven  Bad ruling brings about natural disasters

Historical Philosophy  The Three Reigns: Black, White, and Red  Three pervious dynasties  Unchanging nature of regimes  The Mandate of Heaven

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