Abstract:
“Dismissing royal office for honoring the father” in The Six Morals of the bamboo slips in the Kingdom of Chu unearthed in Guodian aroused a hot dispute in academic world, which has offered different interpretations up till now. An investigation of relevant historical sources in terms of the original reveals that the “dismissing” in “dismissing office for honoring the father” shares the meaning of “succeeding”, which involves the ceremonial system of mourning garment in the period of Spring and Autumn and Warring Kingdoms and is related with the early Confucian conception of loving the beloved and respecting the respected. “Father and son are naturally associated but monarch and subject are faithfully associated” in the context of “dismissing office for honoring the father rather than dismissing the father for royal office” adheres formerly to Confucius’s theory of the unity between monarch and father and later to Xun Zi’s theory of “the monarch’s grace is greater than the father’s”. This perception shows the historical evolution from early Confucian theory of unity between monarch and father to its later development of the superiority of sovereignty.
