Carefree Prince In Tang Dynasty

Once Confucianism is pushed to the height of philosophy, it is no longer a shackle that hinders specific disciplines, but a powerful driving force. Because the core of Confucianism is actually against superstition.

The patriarch Confucius once said, respect ghosts and gods and keep them at a distance. It means that he respects the theory of ghosts and gods, but he does not believe it. Implicit in this is respect for the unknown, rather than arbitrarily inferring and explaining the unknown based on the known, which is the so-called superstition.

Later, his protégé Ji Lu also asked him how to enshrine ghosts and gods and the topic of death, and he also calmly replied: "If you don't know life, how can you know death?"

I don't even know how to live, so what's the point of thinking about death so early?

From these two sentences, we can see that what Confucianism advocates is a positive attitude towards reality. Different from Christianity, Buddhism, and even Taoism in China, these religious philosophies all have a more or less negative psychology of escaping from the real world.

The three concepts of heaven, afterlife, and immortality are essentially the same thing, which is a betrayal of the real world. They all first assumed that there is something eternal beyond the human body, and then they came up with concepts such as heaven, the afterlife, and immortals.

But in fact, human beings are human beings, just ordinary creatures. To die is to die, and there is nothing left. Instead of striving to pursue happiness in this world, but placing hope in the afterlife, at least in the Confucian system, such an attitude is not respected.

Not being superstitious and having the courage to face reality are the two basic characteristics of Confucianism. Perhaps it pursues pragmatism a bit too much, which affects the development of basic disciplines to some extent. But that's not too much of a problem. Because the progress of basic disciplines already requires a strong foundation of applied science.

When pursuing practicality, if science can be vigorously developed, then it will naturally push forward the progress of basic disciplines after it reaches a certain level. This is also in line with the law of scientific development.

All in all, after Li Xin established the basic framework for discussing political economy, the officials of the Ministry of Household Affairs quickly continued to develop and innovate on this basis. Li Xin even thinks that if things go on like this, books like The Wealth of Nations will probably not be as important as Adam Smith and the like in the future.

The Ministry of Households is equivalent to the complex of the Central Ministry of Finance, Commerce Bureau, and Taxation Department in later generations. No one who can enter such an important institution is a fool. They are all smart people among smart people, otherwise it would be an insult to the people of Tang Dynasty.

After Li Xin proved the correctness of economic theory with examples, they quickly realized the importance of economics and began to study in depth.

No theory can withstand day and night discussion and research by a group of extremely smart people. These household officials' understanding of economics soon reached a level similar to that of Li Xin. Therefore, Li Xin couldn't teach them with a shy face, so he consciously retreated to the second line and became a consultant.

The usual fixed class time allows them to play freely and argue with each other. Only when they disagree, Li Xin will try his best to give a fair judgment based on his knowledge and experience beyond thousands of years. For academics, this atmosphere is very beneficial.

As the so-called reason does not distinguish, it is in the collision of wisdom that human civilization has emerged.