Abstract

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Author(s):: Gong Jian-ping; School of Humanities, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an 710049, Shaanxi, China

Keywords:: epistemological obstacles; cognitive obstacle; Confucianism; Taoism; ritual and music

Abstract:: To study the epistemological obstacles of Confucian ritual and music, the study was conducted from the concept of epistemological obstacles. From the two concepts of cognitive obstacle and epistemological obstacle, it can better understand the significance of Confucian ethics, especially the education and cultivation of ritual and music, and understand the importance of ritual and music to overcome the restriction between people. Epistemological obstacles are due to cognitive obstacles. However, the former emphasizes that personality factors in cognition lead to differences in the interpretation of the same object or concept between people. The latter highlights the factors that affect people’s grasp of the truth, including these factors. In order to overcome and transcend the obstacles of cognition and epistemology and achieve the interaction and communication between subjects, the basis or universal conditions for communication in different interpretations and perceptions are found. So they can all be regarded as generalized activities to overcome epistemological obstacles. If people are not darker and crueler than one another, it is necessary to arrange and regulate instincts by ritual and music. However, ritual and music may be obscured by their external forms, and they still do not fundamentally transcend all obstacles of human interaction and cognition, so they can not replace individual selfconscious moral cognition and moral cultivation.