东方论坛—青岛大学学报（社会科学版）

《中庸》是一部阐释孔子所说的君子“中庸”至德的先秦儒学四书之一，经过宋儒的注释，宋元之后成为科举考试的必读书，是理解先秦儒学思想的关键之一。“中庸”，即中和、折中的不易之道。它是方法论，也是道德论。《中庸》沿着孔子及《大学》开辟的内圣外王思路，要求人们以巨大的虔诚，修养不走极端的中庸之道，控制情感喜怒，应对社会矛盾，恪守礼教规范，以“仁”修身成圣，以“智”成物济世。自此，不偏不倚、中正平和成为古代士大夫修养完美人格的根本法则，也成为古代君子必须具备的可贵品质。

Zhongyong(Doctrine of the Mean) is one of the Four Books of pre-Qin Confucianism that expounds the supreme virtue of the “golden mean”(zhongyong) advocated by Confucius. Through the annotations of Song Dynasty Confucians, it became a required text for the imperial examinations after the Song and Yuan dynasties, serving as a key to understanding pre-Qin Confucian thought. “Zhongyong”, namely the constant way of harmony and the “golden mean”, functions both as a methodology and as a moral theory. Following the trajectory of inner sageliness and outer kingliness established by Confucius and Daxue(Great Learning), Zhongyong requires people to cultivate the non-extreme way of the golden mean with great piety, to control emotional joy and anger, to respond to social contradictions, and to strictly abide by ritual norms. It aims to achieve sageliness through self-cultivation of “benevolence”(ren) and to benefit the world through the “wisdom”(zhi) of transforming things. Since then, the principle of impartiality and centrality, equilibrium and harmony, has become the fundamental rule for ancient scholar-officials in cultivating a perfect personality, as well as a valuable quality that ancient gentlemen were required to possess.