Abstract

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Title:: The Logic in Discovering Talents for Governing a Country：An Interpretation of Confucius’ Thoughts on Human Resourcesin the Contemporary Context

Keywords:: state governance; capacity for governance; recommendation and recruitment of talents; Confucius’ thoughts on human resources

Abstract:: The Confucius’ thoughts on human resources can mainly be found in his Analects and some relatedworks produced before the Qin Dynasty. Though his discourse on how to cultivate，discover and employqualified personnel distributed in different places seems fragmentary，it is actually consistent and reveals thegeneral principle of the issue. The logic in his thoughts on human resources is as follows. As windows onthe mind，the words and actions of a person，who is considered a talent and under a review for a promotion，should be put under great scrutiny，the true mind behind them should be seen and in particular the mistakes hehas made，after careful analysis，should be used as a reliable access to making a fair judgment of the personat issue. A key component of the criteria for recommending a person for a public post is to see whether he is afair and virtuous man. When a person is selected as a talent，he should be assigned a post matching his capacitywith his strengths fully exploited and weaknesses avoided. According to the actual condition and needs，wecan even optimize the structure of the organization and set up positions for the talents where they each have theopportunity to realize their full potential.