📖 Meaning
To practice the ways of antiquity while directing one's efforts toward serving the present age. It conveys the principle that times and circumstances inevitably change, so ancient wisdom must be applied with understanding and adaptation rather than followed as rigid dogma.
📜 Origin Story
This idiom does not trace to a single canonical text but crystallizes a perennial theme in Chinese intellectual history: the proper relationship between antiquity and the present. The tension between honoring ancient models and adapting to current needs runs through Confucian debates from the Warring States period onward. Mencius advocated following the ancients, while later thinkers such as the Tang dynasty essayist Han Yu and Song dynasty reformers like Wang Anshi grappled with how to make classical learning serve contemporary governance. The phrase captures the idea that one should draw on ancient wisdom not as inflexible rule, but as living guidance adapted to present circumstances.
💡 Example Usage
治学贵在行古志今，不可食古不化。
In scholarship, the key is to draw on ancient wisdom for present purposes; one must not swallow antiquity whole without digesting it.
🏷️ Category
➕ Similar Idioms
➖ Opposite Idioms
🔤 Quick Facts
- Chinese: 行古志今
- Pinyin: xíng gǔ zhì jīn
- Literal Translation: act, ancient, aim, present
- Category: Philosophy
- Characters: 4