关键词: 帝王道德, 仁义, 明智, 勤俭, 工具主义

Abstract: With understanding morality played an important role in keeping their ruling, some emperors in ancient china could follow and perform some moral norms,especially humaneness and righteousness, wisdom, and diligentness and frugality, for example. However, because their hearts were dominated by royal prerogative,in practice they were often averse to such morality though giving some attention to it, would rather disobey than perform it,and hoped others to perform it while they themselves evaded doing them. In conclusion, they held a view of moral instrumentalism.

Key words: morals of emperors', humaneness and righteousness, wisdom, diligentness and frugality, instrumentalism