Confucius’ conception of the political being and its significance for building the political being in present-day Vietnam

Abstract

The aim of the present article is to clarify Confucius’ views on the political being with typical qualities such as benevolence, ritual propriety, and rectification of names; this is to show the effort of the Communist Party of Vietnam in building the political being by drawing upon dialectical materialism and the methods of comparison, analysis and synthesis, logic, and history. In the history of human thought, Confucius’ thought, in particular, and Confucianism, in general, became the ideology of the feudal class during the development of feudal dynasties in China and many other Asian countries, including Vietnam. With a system of world views and especially human views expressed in socio-political, moral and ethical theories, Confucius was the one who laid the foundation for the development of Confucianism in the history of Chinese thought. The view of humans in general and political beings in particular is one of the main contents of Confucius’ conception of socio-politics, morals, and ethics. Therefore, in order to successfully build a new socialist man, as well as successfully carry out the socio-economic innovation, it requires us to promote education about the right political ideals, education about the moral qualities of benevolence, propriety, and rectification of names according to Confucius’ viewpoint.