标题: 发展的儒家思想 [打印本页] 作者: Scar 时间: 2003-6-11 04:01 标题: 发展的儒家思想 The Confucian Development
Since the Second World War, research and further development about Confucianism have been paid more and more attention by the Japanese thinkers about management. Those Japanese thinkers believe that it is a natural reflection of Confucianism for the workers and staff members to own high degree collectivism, high loyalty as well as a feeling of belonging to the enterprises. The Japanese enterprises always quote these three sentences to summarize their operating manners of Confucianism: the workers will remain with the company for the length of their careers, the salary increases are based on seniority of workers, and labor union will be established in the company. The above collectivism of Japanese, I think, has to be the outcome of the Confucian management.
We can conclude, from the above, that the Chinese Confucianism influences Japan a lot, especially in the management. Early in the 800s A.D., Confucianism was carried out through executive methods in Japan and standards of filial piety were greatly advocated. In the 1600s, Confucianism was stipulated as the Japanese official philosophy and a full-scale research about old Chinese ideologies began to rise in Japan. Up to now, marks of Confucianism can also be seen clearly from the Japanese characters.
Since the Second World War, the Japanese economy has risen to a miracle and a vigorous mass campaign to study the secrets for Japan’s success has appeared among the whole world. After a series of discussion and related research, Euro-American scholars found out that the economic miracle came from vigorous energy of companies, and vigorous energy originated from successful enterprise management, which rested with the powerful enterprise culture. The enterprise culture, as is well known to the world, is the traditional Chinese culture, especially the Confucianism combined with the traditional Japanese culture and national psychologies. Hence, the powered factor of the success of the Japanese enterprise management is obviously the Confucianism.
However, to say that the taking off of Japan’s economy perfectly relies upon the Chinese Confucianism is not that appropriate, I think. Its success of economy does thank to the cultural factor and the Confucian culture itself, but this factor is not sole, and not unique at all. It is wrong to neglect the cultural factors in the economic development and it is also absolutely wrong to exaggerate it. Centering about the Confucianism, the traditional eastern culture emphasizes on the ethical relations and the harmonious aspects of human characters. That is to say, it is good for the stabilization of the society, to say optimistically; however, it shows out some kind of conservatism, to say negatively.
Then in fact which culture is more conducive to economic development, Japan has given us a perfect answer.
The Japanese enterprises absorb the positive value from Confucianism, like the emphases on collectivism and social relations and at the same time overcome the disadvantages of it, which only emphasize on the social character but neglect people’s individualism. So actually, the absorption of Chinese Confucianism for Japan is a kind of implantation, which breaks the traditional Confucian system and combines the active fraction with the western humanities spirit, which pays more attention to the personalities and individualism. This kind of connection not only holds back the traditional core of Confucian spirit, it also puts down roots the Confucianism into the soil of market economy and makes it a new developing method for economy.
Everything has its two side and we cannot say which is right and which is wrong. Also, we cannot simply say which view is more convincing according to the above. The best method is to absorb their both advantages and make it your own one. Japan lives us a typical example.