Chapter 24 Chapter One

The burning of books by Qin Shihuang and the imprisonment of hundreds of schools of thought caused a dull situation in Chinese culture at that time. The Han Dynasty was built on the large-scale subversion of the Qin Dynasty. It was manifested in the ideological and cultural aspects. The silent schools of thought began to revive rapidly in different forms.According to the "Han Shu Criminal Law Records", when Liu Bang, the emperor of the Han Dynasty, each family coexisted and used both: "Ren Xiaocao's writings, Liangping's strategy, Lu Li's distinction, Ming Shusun Tong's ritual, civil and military match general Lift it up."

At the beginning of the Han Dynasty, Huang Lao's inaction politics was implemented, and the policy of "resting with the people" was adopted. After the famous "Rule of Wen and Jing" in history, the centralization of power was greatly strengthened during the reign of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, and the economic strength of the Han Dynasty was unprecedentedly strong.After internal stability and prosperity, Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty turned his attention to the outside. He attacked the Huns in the north, regained the lost ground, and returned in triumph, washing away the shame of Han Gaozu's "Siege of Baideng"; Vietnam established a vast and unified territory stretching from the East China Sea in the east to Lake Balkhash in the west, from Lake Baikal in the north to the South China Sea in the south, and brought China's feudal society into its first heyday.The coexistence of a hundred schools of thought will inevitably lead to some competition, criticism and slander among them. The conflicts between factions headed by Taoism and Confucianism have intensified and their struggles have become increasingly acute.Once this kind of struggle between factions is used by the princes who split and separatist, it will be extremely inconsistent with the political unification at that time.Under the situation of territorial unification, political unification, military unification, and economic unification, Emperor Wudi of the Han Dynasty was also actively seeking the corresponding ideological unification.As a result, Dong Zhongshu, a great political Confucian, came into being, and put forward the idea of ​​"removing all schools of thought and respecting Confucianism alone", which was highly appreciated by Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty and was strictly implemented nationwide.

Academic freedom seems to be accompanied by feudal separatism. With the disappearance of the separatism, the situation of a hundred flowers blooming will naturally end. Qin Shihuang's burning of books and burying Confucianism is the beginning of ideological unification; The trend of division and segregation, for a time, a hundred schools of thought contended, and it seemed that there was a quite "prosperous" period, and the success of the Han Dynasty's reduction of vassals doomed the fate of the hundred schools of thought to perish.Autocratic and centralized rulers absolutely cannot tolerate any dissenting ideas and listen to different voices, and cultural unification is inevitable.It’s just that after Dong Zhongshu’s “single respect for Confucianism” was strictly implemented by Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty as a “national policy”, the Confucian “one-word hall” will always be at the core of cultural unification, even after the long period of war and feudal separatism. There was an active situation of revival of schools of thought and contention among a hundred schools of thought, and it was not until the "May 4th" New Culture Movement stole the "fire" from the West that this monopoly of Confucianism was broken.

Among all the philosophers, why did the feudal rulers only fancy and choose Confucianism as the axis of Chinese culture?Why does Confucianism have such a huge "charm" that it can "uniquely" dominate the fate of Chinese culture even in an era of wars and political divisions?Dong Zhongshu's "once and for all" "success" password?Confucianism's "one family singing alone" has shrouded the land of China heavily in the long history of more than two thousand years. How much impact has it had on our nation? ... These are all serious and important issues that we have to face when thinking about ancient Chinese culture.