• (The)Study of the Eastern Classic
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• no.37
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• pp.473-507
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• 2009

The purpose of this study is to understand Zhuxi's Taoxuezhengzhi(道學政治) by reorganizing both his political opinion in each different political situation and his consistent political consciousness appeared in his whole political career. He concluded that the politics was the real problematic in Southern Sung, which made its structure distorted. This distorted structure of politics had widely rooted in whole sphere of society. In order to cure this political problematic, Zhuxi had focused on huangdi(皇帝) and chaoting(朝廷). That is why people is the basis of State and the result of politics, while huangdi and chaoting is the basis of politics and the beginnig of politics. According to Zhuxi, forming their political power group of their own will by using huangdi's power, the political elites close to only to huangdi made the function of chaoting unstable, with the result that the political decay produced. In chaoting, it resulted in the weakness of huangdi's power, the collapse of official discipline(紀綱), and the absence of public opinion(公論) and public aggreement(公議). Beyond chaoting, it resulted in the absence of political trust and the degeneration of public morals(風俗). In the Southern Sung were not altered the political orientation and culture based on the political decay, but only political orientation and characteristics of political elite only altered. This proves Zhuxi's approach that all problems in Southern Sung could resolve by the political approach. Zhuxi had suggested political issues in office. The alternatives for those political issues had basis of the theme, the one that saving people(恤民) is the purpose of politics. However his political ideas and the execution of them had been occsionally collapsed by the complex political structue, the mechanisms of political power, and the sameness and privatization of political geography in Southern Sung. Qingyuandanghuo(慶元黨禍) was the final stage of his political frustration, with the result that it led to the failure of Zhuxi's taoxuezhengzhi and interrupted the tradition of taoxue(道學) for the time being.