Emperor Chongzhen of the Ming Dynasty

Chapter 294

Liu Zongzhou, Shangshu of the Ministry of Rites, is a Confucianist thinker who emphasizes improving self-cultivation, and even put forward the theory of "being cautious and independent". He didn't know how to speak for a while, so he could only bow his hands to Chongzhen Zhu Youjian in embarrassment: "Please enlighten me, Your Majesty!"

Huang Daozhou, the left servant of the Ministry of Rites, habitually used the principles learned from books to forcefully explain Chongzhen Zhu Youjian's doubts.

After all, Zhu Youjian, the current emperor of Chongzhen, seldom asks his ministers for their opinions. The rare monarch and his ministers answer each other. He feels that as the left servant of the Ministry of Rites, he has to be perfunctory, so he stretches his hands and kowtows:

"Reporting to Your Majesty, these ministers and bureaucrats died out of discipline and were willing to follow the thieves. They are really villains. Because your Majesty was too eager to employ people in the past, your Majesty will be a good minister in the future, and you can be far from a villain."

After Huang Daozhou finished speaking, he saluted again. This kind of dialogue usually appeared in the dialogue between monarchs and ministers in many dynasties. Generally speaking, the emperor's next question would be to ask his ministers how to be close to good officials and far away from villains; Huang Daozhou felt that When the time comes, it will be enough for me to answer according to the meaning of ancient books and Confucianism, citing scriptures and classics, and I can also leave a good story about the monarch and his ministers answering each other.

Wang Siren, the right servant of the Ministry of Rites, smiled slightly. He is a person who is used to idleness, and he has no ambition to make progress in his official career. Naturally, he is not keen on what Huang Daozhou wants to tell the emperor, and he really can't give a real answer. .

In his opinion, observing the festival is his own business, he can indeed guarantee that he will be loyal to Daming and observe the festival, but he doesn't know how to ensure that others will also observe the festival together.

Therefore, Wang Siren just reasoned that he was stupid and didn't know how to comment on this matter.

Zhu Youjian smiled slightly, and now only Huang Daozhou answered his question directly, but it happened to be the answer he least wanted to hear.

But now Zhu Youjian will no longer be angry because of this. He can't expect any constructive suggestions from a famous Neo Confucianist.

"Huang Aiqing is a Jinshi in the second year of Tianqi. He can be regarded as an old minister. He should also understand that people in this world, whether they are villains or gentlemen, are nothing more than the attributes of nature. At the beginning of human beings, nature is good. Teaching and preaching What they do is to teach people to be virtuous ministers. The officials who surrendered to the Qing Dynasty, like the officials who went south with me, all grew up studying Cheng Zhu Neo Confucianism, and even became officials, but they still turned out to be treacherous officials and thieves. Explain what, explain that the current knowledge has not succeeded in making all the people in the world become virtuous ministers!"

Zhu Youjian's words shocked Liu Zongzhou, Huang Daozhou, and Wang Siren on the spot. They didn't expect that His Majesty would directly deny the correctness of Cheng Zhu Neo Confucianism based on this!
Since the Song Dynasty, this has been the orthodox learning respected by the literati and the royal family, but it will be rejected by His Majesty at this moment, because Cheng Zhu Neo Confucianism also failed to avoid the appearance of treacherous ministers, villains and traitors.

But Liu Zongzhou and others couldn't say anything at this time. They couldn't deny the fact that many officials surrendered, and they didn't care about it before. They paid more attention to their own cultivation and paid attention to learning for their own use. , I never thought about promoting this kind of knowledge because it is so good and what effect it will achieve.

Zhu Youjian is a person of later generations, and his thinking is utilitarian, and he requires that there must be some effect before he can do something. Therefore, his views gave Liu Zongzhou and others a great impact, and even made them unable to refute!

This made Liu Zongzhou have to think of the incident that happened during His Majesty's southward migration, when the officials who followed him threatened the whole family of Kong's family to hang themselves.

No one has elaborated on the specific reason and process of this incident, and the officials who went south are silent about it, so now not many people know the specific secret. Come, so die loyally for Daming.

Scholars in Jiangnan and even scholars all over the world are willing to believe this fact, and even if they don’t believe it, they won’t expose it, because to pursue the truth is tantamount to denying one’s own ideology.

Even the Confucians of the Southern Sect said that this is the festival that the descendants of the most holy teachers should do.

Zhu Youjian also made a decree, hoping that the Confucian sect of Nanzong can pass on the integrity of the descendants of saints, be loyal to the country, and swear to the death not to be the persuasion of the barbarians to enslave China. Only by virtue can we live up to the name of the family of the world's number one sage.

But now Liu Zongzhou discovered that His Majesty should have been involved in this matter. Although he believed that he was a cultivated person, he did not believe that the Confucian sects of the Northern Sect would really hang themselves to observe the festival for Daming.

Such an ideal scene should not have happened. Perhaps His Majesty and all the officials forced Confucius to do this in order to rectify the education, rectify people's hearts, and uphold the integrity of all people.

Liu Zongzhou couldn't help but secretly sighed, His Majesty and the officials who followed him back then did this without good intentions, they used their own lives to preserve the virtues of Confucianism and correct the ethics of the world.

"Your Majesty is now pointing out that Cheng-Zhu Neo-Confucianism is not very good at educating people's hearts. Perhaps it is not a denial of the entire Confucianism, but the current world's learning is too much advocating personal self-cultivation and has not fulfilled the responsibility of enlightenment. This is why there are so many rebels and rebels. Perhaps the orthodoxy of the world's learning needs to be re-evaluated and improved. For example, the Confucian family, as descendants of saints, can hang themselves in the loyalty of the Ming Dynasty because of the bandits. Those who keep the chastity are just the later generations who read too much, and they are too utilitarian, so they end up in a state of no restraint and no virtue."

What Liu Zongzhou said made Zhu Youjian quite satisfied.

Zhu Youjian knew that even if he was an emperor, it would be difficult for him to shake the orthodox position of Confucianism in the entire society. Moreover, his current imperial order and authority also needed the theoretical support of Confucianism. The rule of etiquette is the basis for maintaining the rule of heaven, earth, monarch, relatives and teachers. I can't completely abandon it now. After all, today's Ming society is still based on the family and clan as the basic unit, and what these families and clans rely on is the rule of ritual order. The above are combined into a family and country, that is, the emperor himself, equivalent to the patriarch of the big family of the entire Ming Han people in the world.

Zhu Youjian can't deny this order now, and he can't deny this order. Unless one day, the economic form changes and family production is completely changed by industrial production, the rule of law will undergo a major change.

But even then, there will still be the basic unit of the family that forms the basis of the entire society, but without the control of the clan.

This is what Zhu Youjian wants to see. He doesn't want to have a clan between himself, the emperor, and an ordinary direct family.

(End of this chapter)