| Abstract |
Scholars in West-Jin Dynasty were known to be extravagant. Shi Chong’s behaviors in history even made him a representative figure of the time. The sentence “Scholars should seek for body and fame’s easiness”, which recorded in “The Book of Jin”, ascertained his historical image. When the background and cause of the sentence was further investigated, it was found that the so-called “both body and fame’s easiness” cannot simply be judged as Shi Chong’s self-proclamation on his extravagant life; instead further discussion should be carried out by investigating the development of Shi Chong’s personal characters as well as the correlation with the political, economical, and cultural environment. This assay thought Shi Chong’s “easiness” referred to the “comforts” in both physiological and psychological aspects. In pursuit of “easiness“ Shi Chong chose to consolidate his political and economic status, and gradually build up his cultural reputation in condition of family factor and bad political environment in West-Jin Dynasty. Therefore, he deliberately expressed his luxurious acts to manifest his economic status, attached to powerful courtier Gu Mi, and formed “Twenty-Four Friends Community” to ascertain his political status, and hosted the “Jin-Gu-Hui” to build up his cultural status by gathering scholars. Nevertheless, when the “realistic easiness” was accomplished, Shi Chong’s “internal easiness” was challenged by his personal characteristics of always being capricious and emotional. Such conflicts caused his failure and death. A straw shows which way the wind blows，the discussion of Shi Chong can also be inferred to all other scholars in West-Jin Dynasty for a further study to comprehend how West-Jin scholars dealt with the reality while living in such a chaos world and to know the significance in Chinese history.
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