Research Into Zhu Xi’s Ethical Thoughts and Its Modern Enlightenment to the Ideological and Political Education

Zhu Xi stresses the importance of the inner cultivation of one’s inner virtues. His fundamental approaches of the morality cultivation methods including the way to conserve virtues and to nurture temperaments constitute the essential further improvement of practical wisdom of Confucian Ethics. Through the further improvement and development of the educational thoughts of the Confucian ethics, and by means of integrating the relevant theory and practice concerning the Confucian virtue ethics, Zhu Xi has constructed his own thoughts of moral education which has great enlightenment meaning to today’s moral practice. Zhu Xi’s ethical thoughts is based on the foundation of “Nature is li”, which emphasizes the self-responsibility of the moral subjects in terms of the study of cultivating one’s morality. Meanwhile, it stresses the importance of exploring thoroughly the reason and maintaining the respectful mind, which is essential to the modern moral construction and the improvement of the effectiveness of the moral education of ideological and political education.