Confucius' Thought of the Mandate of Heaven and Cultural Traditions in Yin & Zhou Dynasty

The recent research on Confucius, whose thought of the mandate of heaven has been taken seriously by more and more researchers, has grown from the scope of ethics and politics to the metaphysical philosophy. The multiple connotations involved in Confucius' thought of the mandate of heaven are related to his inheritance and development of Yin Zhou cultural traditions. Inheriting the culture of Yin, Confucius changed the religious heaven into the moral and emotional heaven by reforming the subject of it. Inheriting the culture of Zhou, he also turned political heaven used as the basis of authority transformation and representing people's will into the basis of individual's morality. Although the man's freedom in moral realm obviously appeared in the comparison between Confucius's thought of the mandate of heaven and Yin Zhou culture, the mandate of heaven became a negative factor with fatalism because of its los'ing contact with man's practice.