History of Chinese Ethics

Author: Cai Yuanpei
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2000-08-01
Features:
"Knowledge is endless, yet human understanding is limited. Accumulating countless limited understandings to chase after the limitless, allows this limited understanding to gradually approach the limitless. This is the principle why academic history is indispensable in academia. Without academic history, the knowledge of predecessors cannot serve as a foundation for later scholars to further progress. What later scholars strive to obtain with all their effort may either be what predecessors had already achieved or what predecessors had abandoned earlier. Moreover, without academic history, the methods predecessors used to acquire knowledge cannot serve as a reference for later scholars to refine their research. What later scholars painstakingly seek may still be the crude methods of predecessors, or even methods that predecessors had already discarded. Therefore, academic history is extremely important.
All phenomena change and evolve with the passage of time. Among these, the phenomena of the spiritual world change and multiply at a speed and complexity far exceeding those of the natural world. Yet, the knowledge we rely on cannot be separated from this system of change and multiplication. Thus, the history of spiritual sciences is particularly important.
Our country has long valued ethics, yet to this day, we still lack a history of ethics. Currently, the era of skepticism in ethics has begun, and foreign theories are entering from different directions, like plates and candles, nearly clashing with each other. Without the guiding system of our own indigenous philosophical thought, we will be even more lost in confusion. This matter is urgent, yet it seems that contemporary scholars are too busy to address it. Without measuring my capabilities, I have pieced together this work in the gaps of my studies, hoping to serve as a starting point for future developments. Given my limited knowledge and scarce references, there are bound to be omissions and contradictions. I hope readers will correct them. The purpose of this compilation is briefly outlined in the preface and conclusions. There are three points that I must inform the readers in advance."