《儒林外史》以公心讽世，寓讥弹于稗史。小说展现的文人道德的沦丧与重建道德秩序的无效实践，深刻彰显了“儒林”这一儒家精英群体的仕进焦虑。小说的表层文本涵盖科举制度对人的异化、商人阶层的崛起、文人的虚伪形貌和恶性竞争、急功近利的社会风气等，作者对此呈现批判的态度；而小说行文逻辑的深层彰显出作者对“礼”这一抽象概念的理解，他既能看到儒家礼仪的正面价值，也洞见这带来的恶劣后果。作为全书的高潮与思想主旨的重要体现，《儒林外史》第三十七回对泰伯祭礼的繁复描述，可见吴敬梓对颜李学派思想观念的吸收转化和对儒家礼仪主义的思考，以此为切入点，可寻溯小说文本围绕“二元礼”与“苦行礼”所展开的道德思考和重构尝试。十八世纪的思想文化内部存在的张力，使得作者在忠实于儒家礼仪主义的思想语境的同时，展露出儒家德行概念在具体社会实践中产生的负面效果，这促使儒家精英社会中的文人群体于困境中求变，提出自我修正和重建道德的方法。

The Scholars critically comments on the world with an impartial heart, embedding satire and criticism in a popular history. The novel vividly depicts the moral decline and the failure of efforts to rebuild moral order among scholars, profoundly revealing the collective anxiety of the "Confucian elite" group. The surface text of the novel covers the alienation of the examination system on people, the rise of the merchant class, the hypocritical appearance and malicious competition of scholars, and the short-sighted social atmosphere. The author presents a critical attitude towards these issues. The deep-level logic of the text reveals the author's understanding of the abstract concept of "rites", in which he can see the positive value of Confucian etiquette, but also the bad consequences it brings. The 37th chapter of The Outer Story of Scholars' Forest, which vividly describes the complicated rituals of the Taibo sacrifice, shows that Wu Jingzi has absorbed and transformed the ideas of the Yan-Li school and has reflected on Confucian ritualism. Starting from this point, one can trace the moral reflection and reconstruction attempt of the novel text around the dual concepts of "rites" and "ascetic rites". The tensions within the intellectual and cultural sphere of the 18th century led the author to showcase the negative effects of Confucian virtue concepts in specific social practices while remaining faithful to the Confucian ritualist ideological context. This prompted the literati group within Confucian elite society to seek change amidst difficulties and propose methods for self-improvement and moral reconstruction.