Upholding Fundamental Principles and Breaking New Grounds: On the Humanistic Spirit for Jingxue in China

Confucianism has found its inheritance in jingxue (Classics Scholarship) which dates back to the Han Dynasty. Jingxue has crystallized Chinese wisdom through historical and cultural creativity by the Chinese people, and it has become an important intellectual resource today for China’s national rejuvenation and a common cultural heritage for all mankind. As a distinctive academic-cultural domain featuring Chinese characteristics, jingxue is an open, dynamic and comprehensive system of ancient cultural information. It contains canonical texts, commentaries and annotations which reflect humanistic spirit and serve for valuable materials of history and culture. Jingxue aimed to cultivate scholar-official elites for the government, to give moral education to the common people, and to secure social harmony and national stability. Through persistent innovation whiling adhering to core Confucian values, jingxue has played a significant role for the continuity and inheritance of Chinese traditional culture as well as for intellectual and ethical advancement. The development of jingxue is a history of innovation in traditional thoughts and values, a history of cultural advancement and mass education in Confucian ideas. Jingxue became the mainstay intellectual activity in traditional Chinese societies because of their humanistic concern and pragmatism, its function for cultural continuity by innovative transformation, and, most important of all, its people-oriented spirit that characterizes Chinese civilization.