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A Study on Suicide Phenomena of Officials in Song Dynasty

Author: QiuZhiCheng
Tutor: XieYuanLu
School: Sichuan Normal University
Course: History of Ancient China
Keywords: Song dynasty officers and officials suicide life death the idea of the confucianism
CLC: K244
Type: Master's thesis
Year: 2009
Downloads: 237
Quote: 1
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Abstract

In the history of human understanding, mechanism, organism,wholism and nonlinear scientific life theory have given different answers to thenature of life from different perspectives. Death is the end of life. However withdifferent judgment criteria of death, its meanings are quite different. As to suicide,there are three commonly accepted definitions. One is to regard suicide as a kind ofsocial abnormal behavior; another as a mental disease and the third as aphysiological disease. People in Song dynasty understood suicide quite differentfrom what we understand today.In Song dynasty people who committed suicides included emperors, imperialclansmen, relatives of the emperor on the side of his mother or wife, civil andmilitary officials, imperial concubines and eunuchs. Of all these people, civil andmilitary officials take up the biggest percentage. Most of them committed suicide forloyalty. That is why the time of the invasion of Jin and Meng (Yuan) has become thepeak time of officials’suicides in Song dynasty. There are political, economic andsocial factors as well as some psychological and physiological factors for theirsuicides.There were some unsuccessful suicides because some officials did not have highmotivation to commit suicide or they were prevented from doing so. As to thetreatment and cure of those self-killers, there were already some scientific andeffective ways such as physical therapy, medication and acupuncture.The Confucianism classified human beings into four strata: natural state, utilitysate, moral state and universe state. People in different states understood life anddeath differently and held quite different attitudes towards it. People in natural statedidn’t have a clear idea of the deep meaning of life and death and they just lived unaffectedly; people in moral state regarded their individual life as a part of thesocial life of human beings. They often viewed life as working and death as rest andattached great importance to humanity, justice and virtue. People in universe statewere neither opposed to nor escape living. Be it life or death, it was just a kind ofadaptation. Deeply influenced by the ideas of Confucianism, most of officials inSong dynasty went beyond the natural state and entered the moral state. Thus theycould sacrifice their own small individual life for the benefit of their state, theirsociety, and their nation and also for humanity, justice and virtue. However, because“this spirit of sacrifice almost faded away until Five Dynasties, the Confucian valuesystem (including the value of life and death) which supported the whole country andsociety needed to be reconstructed. The government’s policy of upholding literati andrestraining militarism in Song dynasty provided a prerequisite for this process ofreconstruction and its rewarding both spiritually and physically to those with moralintegrity also provided a direct impetus to this process. And at the same time theencouragement of moral integrity in the literati circle and the worship towards those“loyal officials”among the folk people laid a wide-ranging social foundation for it.In addition, so many officers and officials committing suicides in Song dynasty canalso be regarded as a result of following suit.

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