The purpose of meting out punishment is to eliminate punishment, which is an extension of the Confucian idea of “rule by virtue.” The Confucian point of view is that education by rites and music is the main means of state governance, and penalties are only auxiliary. The aim of governance is to educate the people through these two means, educatin…
The pursuit of moral principles in daily life should be true and sincere. “Being sincere in thought” is one of the “eight essential principles” from the philosophical text The Great Learning, the other seven being “studying things,” “acquiring knowledge,” “rectifying one’s mind,” “cultivating oneself,” “regulating one’s family well,”…
The aesthetic conception evoked by a poem or prose transcends what a physical object denotes, and a reader needs to perceive and appreciate the beauty of such aesthetic conception. Jing (境) here refers to an aesthetic conception created by a poem or prose, while xiang (象) refers to the image of a concrete object portrayed in such writing. Composed…