Chapter 895 0890 [I, Liu Yannian, Will Become a Great Scholar of the Time Who Studies Xunzi]

The West has a social contract theory, and Xunzi also has a set of contract theories.

He summarized everything that the country, society, and individuals need to follow, including systems, etiquette, morality, laws, and customs, as "names".

And "names" are not imposed, but must be agreed upon.

To put it bluntly, all legal and moral systems need to be recognized by the general public.

It is equivalent to establishing a social contract!

If everyone abides by the contract, society can develop steadily.

After the social contract is established, the people should be ruled by power, guided by positive energy, commanded by orders, educated by words, and punished by criminal law.

If someone breaks the contract, it must be stopped and corrected, including the monarch.

Otherwise, this set of contracts will gradually become invalid, and the country and society will fall into chaos.

Trust is established and hegemony!

If you win the trust of the people at home and the trust of other countries abroad, you can enrich the country and strengthen the army and dominate. This is also abiding by the contract.

If you only know how to win the trust of other countries but lose the trust of the people, your hegemony will fail.

If a country loses its trust in both the people and other countries, it will be doomed sooner or later.

The advanced version is: establish the king with righteousness!

From this advanced version, we can see that Xunzi and the Legalists are really different in essence.

He said that the country should formulate rites and laws, which should be righteous rites and laws.

If rites and laws that violate moral humanity are formulated, even if the country can be enriched and the army can be strengthened in the short term, it will certainly not last long.

In fact, it is discussing the legitimacy and adaptability of the social contract.

If the current social contract loses its legitimacy and adaptability, it will lead to "if a king rises, there will be some who follow the old name and some who create the new name."

Xunzi's words are very beneficial to Zhu Ming.

That is, the previous monarch was doomed because of breaking the contract, and a new wise monarch established the country. This new monarch will inevitably follow some old systems, and at the same time will establish a new system to make the country and society run again.

It is equivalent to the new monarch re-signing a contract with the people.

Xunzi also emphasized "following the king after" on the basis of "following the king before", that is, following the basic moral norms of the ancient sage kings, and then learning the successful experience of the monarchs of later generations.

Don't just imitate the ancients, but develop a set of rules suitable for the present as the times develop!

Moreover, Xunzi also advocated: kingship and hegemony, righteousness and profit, and rites and laws.

Zhu Ming liked these things too much.

…

Liu Yannian tried his best to straighten his back and leave the palace. While he was desperate, he was also a little ambitious.

He knew very well that as long as he could handle the matter of splitting the clan well, the emperor might really give him a promotion.

The next day, Liu Yannian went to the bookstore to buy a copy of "Xunzi" for careful study.

He had read "Xunzi" before, but only superficially. Because his uncle hated Xunzi very much, Liu Yannian also had a preconceived idea that Xunzi was a person who used law to mess up Confucianism.

"Don't squeeze, don't squeeze, line up!"

Liu Yannian was dumbfounded when he arrived at the bookstore. There were so many scholars crowded there.

Are the scholars in Luoyang so fond of learning?

Liu Yannian walked over curiously, but saw that they were all buying "Xunzi Justice"

The Ministry of Rites printed 3,000 copies, and in addition to distributing them to official schools across the country, they also sold and gave them away to booksellers in various places.

Since it was a textbook for the imperial examination, the booksellers were naturally very enthusiastic. They were even too lazy to use movable type printing. Anyway, this thing had few words, and it could be printed and sold repeatedly by directly engraving.

For booksellers, as long as it was a list of imperial examination books, engraving was more cost-effective than movable type.

After buying new books, the scholars left happily.

Liu Yannian felt a little outrageous. Why did so many people like "Xunzi"?

But then he thought, he was also here to buy "Xunzi".

He turned his head and looked at the towering imperial city in the distance.

Alas, imperial power!

Xunzi has never been popular, and few people have made annotations.

At present, there is only one book "Xunzi Notes", which was reorganized and annotated by Yang Jing in the Tang Dynasty based on Liu Xiang.

This book has many errors and omissions. Not to mention the meaning of the article, even the annotations of the meaning of the words have many problems.

For example, "非能水也而绝江河", the "绝" here should be interpreted as "跨渡", which is clearly written in "Shuowen Jiezi". But Yang Jing did not study it carefully and directly annotated it as "过" for crossing the river.

There are several similar mistakes in "Quanxue Pian" alone.

Zhu Ming ordered the Ministry of Rites to re-annotate it and named it "Xunzi Zhengyi".

The great scholars of the court annotated it once, and Zhu Ming personally corrected it. In some places, he annotated it with his own understanding, which perfectly reflects what "Six Classics Annotate Me".

Holding the freshly baked "Xunzi Zhengyi", Liu Yannian read it carefully in the inn.

The first chapter "Quanxue", Liu Yannian still likes it very much.

The second chapter "Cultivating Self", Liu Yannian read it carefully and found that every sentence was reasonable. Why didn't he find it before?

The third chapter "Not Careless", Liu Yannian suddenly sat up straight, he saw something different.

Xunzi said: A gentleman governs an orderly country, not a chaotic country, because a chaotic country has violated etiquette. Then will the country not be governed if it is chaotic? The answer is: Don't govern on the basis of chaos, but directly eradicate the source of chaos and make the country orderly again.

Liu Yannian recalled the end of the Song Dynasty, that kind of chaos was indeed difficult to govern.

From Fan Zhongyan, to Wang Anshi, to Cai Jing, they all governed chaos on the basis of chaos. They could not eradicate the source of chaos, so they were bound to fail, but the emperor of the Ming Dynasty tore it down and started over.

As he read, Liu Yannian frowned again.

Confucians all say that "the king of law is the first", but Xunzi said "the king of law is the queen". Liu Yannian believed that the fundamentals should be abandoned and the last should be pursued.

"The Queen of France" is understood to mean King Wen of Zhou and King Wu of Zhou, which was something far-fetched only in the Qing Dynasty. Zhang Taiyan even thought that the Queen was talking about Confucius.

From Sima Qian to the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, "the Queen of France" was understood to mean learning from modern kings.

What can we learn from the kings of modern times?

After reading the annotation carefully, Liu Yannian began to nod in approval again.

Because he discovered that the annotations here, as well as the annotations in the previous two paragraphs, were all written by Ju Ming himself, directly marked with the prefix "The Emperor of Heaven said"!

Ju Ming's special annotation emphasized that the original text of "Xunzi" "examines" the way of the queen, not the "law" of the way of the queen mentioned by Sima Qian.

The understanding of this paragraph is to examine and explore the gains and losses of kings in the past, especially the kings of modern times, and then compare them with the practices of the ancient kings. Summarize what is right and what is wrong, promote the right approach, and abandon the wrong approach.

"Wonderful!"

Liu Yannian couldn't help but clapped his hands and praised: "Your Majesty is indeed a great Confucian of the world. Such annotation coincides with the meaning of Mencius. It turns out that although Mencius and Xunzi have different views, they have the same purpose."

It was getting dark, so Liu Yannian turned on the light and read at night.

At first he still couldn't stand the evil nature and hypocrisy of etiquette, but he found that other than that, the other principles in "Xunzi" made sense.

And, very well said!

Damn it, why didn’t I notice this before?

Is it true that human nature is inherently evil, and etiquette is really done by saints rather than innate?

A few days later, Liu Yannian, as a traveler of the emperor, or an imperial envoy, took several officials to Jiangxi to dismantle the clan.

In the past few months, Wei Liangchen had only been holding land. After a thorough inventory of the land was completed, he would gradually break up the clan and relocate. The migration date must wait until after the autumn harvest, otherwise there will be disputes over the ownership of the grain in the fields.

Along the way, Liu Yannian stayed in the cabin reading "Xunzi's Justice".

When your mentality changes, your ideological tendencies will also change.

He is about to go to Jiangxi to work as a cruel official, and his academic thinking must be consistent with this status.

When the official ship arrived at the Yangtze River, Liu Yannian had completed the change in his thinking. He felt that "Xunzi" made sense.

Human nature is evil, and etiquette is designed to restrain human nature.

Otherwise, why did Confucius say "make an appointment with courtesy"?

If nature is inherently good and propriety comes from heaven, then a gentleman can pursue his nature, and Confucius does not need to use the word "covenant".

A binding agreement!

Qingjiang Liu's main classic is "Spring and Autumn", which does not conflict with "Xunzi".

Liu Yannian planned to be a great Confucian who studied "Xunzi".

This was a new Confucian track that the emperor seemed to like very much, and Liu Yannian thought he could stand out.

Because most of the Confucian scholars at the same level as him strongly rejected Xunzi.

As long as he goes out to study and promote "Xunzi", there will definitely be no one at the same level who can compete with him.

If you study it well, you can win the favor of the emperor!

After arriving in Nanchang, Liu Yannian hosted a banquet for some old friends. As soon as the wine was poured, he sighed: "In the past, I wrongly blamed Xunzi. Xunzi is a real sage. His Majesty personally annotated "Xunzi". I read it for many days and finally got started. It contains the principles of heaven and earth. , the way of governing the country!”

The old friends were shocked when they heard this, and they all looked like they had seen a ghost.

A friend said: "I heard that my dear brother was ordered by His Majesty to come back to Jiangxi to preside over the clan relocation?"

"Of course," Liu Yannian said, "each tribe has quite a lot of illegal things, so the court wants to split up the tribes and move them. This coincides with Xunzi's idea of ​​'the king of judges'. It is not the king of law, but the king of judges. Judgement is review. To explore the gains and losses of kings in the past dynasties, this migration of clans has been around since ancient times, and it has been done in the Han Dynasty..."

Next, Liu Yannian talked a lot about "the king after trial" and made several old friends look as black as coal.

"boom!"

A friend put down his wine glass and said angrily: "You are shameless and treacherous. I will cut off your robe and seat with you today. Bring me the knife!"

The servant brought a knife, and the man cut off his robe and left.

Several other friends also shook their heads and sighed, and left the wine table one after another.

Liu Yannian shouted: "You don't know Xunzi's great way. I will explain it to you in detail another day."

The hard work of dismantling and relocating the tribe completely destroyed Liu Yannian's character, and he was already a little mentally disturbed.

Perhaps, he did this on purpose.

Liu Yannian ran to see Wei Liangchen who was in Zhangtian again: "Governor Wei, please be polite in front of me. I wonder if Governor Wei has ever read Xunzi?"

Wei Liangchen was confused: "I have read it."

Liu Yannian said: "I have recently read "Xunzi's Justice" annotated by officials and learned a lot. I would like to discuss it with Governor Wei."

Wei Liangchen said: "Didn't Liu always criticize Xunzi for what he learned?"

"That's me, the Liu family of Qingjiang. I have always misunderstood Xunzi." Liu Yannian sighed.

Wei Liangchen murmured in his heart: Has your Majesty driven this person crazy?