Comment on “Moral thought: evaluation on the moral education and virtue cultivation of traditional Chinese music”The place of music as a medium of moral cultivation has an exclusive position in Chinese intellectual history, both as an art form and an instrument of virtue development. In the li-yue (rites-music) tradition, music is not merely an ornament of culture but an active instrument of moral cultivation. Classical Chinese philosophy regarded it as essential both for the formation of character and for guiding individuals toward a harmonious social order. Since at least the Zhou’s time, music had been incorporated into state ritual, education, and administration, expressing an abiding faith in its moral potency. Yue Ji (Record of Music)2 says that “virtue is the essence of nature, and music is the essence of virtue,” a formulation that corresponds to the Confucian idea that through properly ordered sound, human emotion can be brought to congruence with moral order. In this system, li holds back external behavior while yue polishes the interior sensibilities, both generating harmony within the individual and polity. The Wang (2024) affirms this position but would have benefited from situating its analysis more explicitly within the reciprocal relationship between li and yue. Within this framework, music moderates excessive emotion, making moral action the outcome of cultivated disposition rather than imposed discipline.
Confucius thought music was most important when it made you a better person. As recorded in The Analects of Confucius (Roger; Henry, 1999), he liked old Shao music because it mixed beauty and goodness. But he warned that music without rules could be dangerous. Guqin music already has a good reputation. It might be closer to Confucius’ ideas because it’s usually quiet and personal. Zhao (2021, p. 119-122) says that playing the Guqin well takes skill, control, and focus. These things put Confucian values into action, instead of just showing them.
The piece properly situates classical Chinese music within a pluralist philosophical tradition with Confucian, Taoist, and Buddhist elements. Its characterization of these forces is, however, towards enumerative listing. More synthetic treatment would identify how the traditions cross over and branch off in their moral-aesthetic goals. For instance, Taoist music emphasizes atonement to the natural order, and this promotes virtues of humility and spontaneity, whereas Buddhist chant seeks inner cleansing and detachment from mundane desire. When these traditions are blended with Confucian moralism, what results is a pedagogy of morals that is multi-dimensional and that blends discipline and transcendence.
Another strength of Wang (2024) is its awareness of music’s psychological and emotional effects. It properly maintains that folk songs may release stress and create an emotional balance, which is consistent with modern studies in music psychology. Moral transformation through aesthetic experience, however, is not instantaneous; the reception of music’s ethical content depends on cultural familiarity, social context, and the interpretive frames available to listeners. Without such mediation, audiences may appreciate its form without internalizing its normative values. This is all the more true in contemporary China, where young audiences are more interested in cosmopolitan pop culture.
In this regard, the evolution of Chinese music education philosophy since the 1990s is instructive. As Yang (2023) demonstrates, educational policy has moved from an exclusive emphasis on aesthetic cultivation (meiyu) to a more integrated vision that balances heritage preservation, creativity, and moral development.
Aesthetic education established ground rules of teaching music in Chinese schools in an effort towards quality teaching. Since 1986, textbooks based on the Ministry of Education statutory National Music Curriculum standards and guidelines have, in all public schools, been introduced in mainland China. All textbooks are designed keeping in mind the implicit needs of state schooling policy and curriculum at the national level. In this way, MEP development is of music teaching development per se and needs in varying social, economic, and cultural contexts as a platform where direct borrowings of theories have not yielded results. In like manner, neither wholesale substitution of an already-existent system nor obstinate retention of outdated dogmas shall drive MEP forward (Yang, 2023).
In this context, classical music is not only retained but re-framed in ways that engage contemporary sensibilities. Such proposals in this article as community concerts, school groups, and creative incorporation with festivals, might be enhanced through an explicit framing within this wider transformative process of schooling (Wang, 2024).
The mention of innovative practices is a refreshing note, citing musicals, storytelling, and multi-arts integration as conduits of moral message. But, once more, their moral effectiveness depends on how legible their ethical message is. Traditionally, as in Yue Ji, music was integrated within an orderly value system imparted through ritual and textual study. In a contemporary, multicultural cultural domain, moral content needs to be rendered legible without recourse to traditional support from collectively shared rites and classical works. Then the virtues aimed by performance remain obscure or get reinterpreted through wholly alien value schemas.
Aesthetically, classical Chinese music offers more than moral signification; it enacts an experiential mode of being. The Guqin master, the opera singer, or folk balladeer embodies patience, attention, and harmony, drawing listeners into a world where moral and aesthetic sensibilities overlap. The controlled tempi, pitch balance, and content of classical pieces instantiate ideals of restraint and relational attunement. These are not idealized abstractions but experiential practices, refined through habitual, disciplined exposure to the music.
Overall, Wang (2024) makes a worthwhile contribution to the debate about cultural heritage and moral education, providing an overview of broad and accessible overview. Its value lies in articulating the modern-day significance of classical music and advancing concrete methods of its renewal. Future research can add depth to this contribution through further contextualizing discussion within li-yue’s philosophical framework, basing arguments upon original Confucian source materials, further enriching the investigation of Guqin as a moral practice, and connecting pedagogical prescriptions to Chinese music-philosophy’s recent development. In this way, discussion can proceed from basking in traditional music’s moral promise to critically considering cultural, institutional, and interpretational environments essential to its fulfillment within rapidly changing society.”
REFERENCES
- ROGER, A; HENRY, R. The Analects of Confucius: A Philosophical Translation. New York: Ballantine Books, 1999.
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WANG, H. Moral thought: evaluation on the moral education and virtue cultivation of traditional Chinese music. Trans/Form/Ação: Unesp journal of philosophy, Marília, SP, v. 47, n. 5, p. e02400167, 2024. Available at: https://revistas.marilia.unesp.br/index.php/transformacao/article/view/14871
» https://revistas.marilia.unesp.br/index.php/transformacao/article/view/14871 - YANG, Z. The development of music education philosophy in mainland China during 1990-2022: A corpus-based thematic review. British Journal of Music Education, v. 40, n. 2, p. 123-140, 2023.
- ZHAO, Y. Cultural Characteristics and Literature Value of Traditional Guqin Music. Academic Journal of Humanities & Social Sciences, v. 4, n. 6, p. 119-122, 2021.
