My Aim
Most Chinese religions focus on the role of ancestors and the need to respect their role
and hold the belied that there are no strict dichotomies between good and bad , right
and wrong. Confucianism is one such religion. In this paper I shall discuss about the
philosophy of Confucianism.
Introduction to Confucianism
Confucianism, is the way of life propagated by Confucius in the 6th–5th century BCE
and followed by the Chinese people for more than two millennia. Although transformed
over time, it is still the substance of learning, the source of values, and the social code of
the Chinese. Its influence has also extended to other countries, particularly Korea,
Japan, and Vietnam.
Confucianism, a Western term that has no counterpart in Chinese, is a worldview, a
social ethic, a political ideology, a scholarly tradition, and a way of life. Sometimes
viewed as a philosophy and sometimes as a religion, Confucianism may be understood
as an all-encompassing way of thinking and living that entails ancestor reverence and a
profound human-centred religiousness. East Asians may profess themselves to be
Shintōists, Daoists, Buddhists, Muslims, or Christians, but, by announcing their religious
affiliations, seldom do they cease to be Confucians.
Although often grouped with the major historical religions, Confucianism differs from
them by not being an organized religion. Nonetheless, it spread to other East Asian
countries under the influence of Chinese literate culture and has exerted a profound
influence on spiritual and political life. Both the theory and practice of Confucianism
have indelibly marked the patterns of government, society, education, and family of
East Asia. Although it is an exaggeration to characterize traditional Chinese life and
culture as Confucian, Confucian ethical values have for well over 2,000 years served as
the source of inspiration as well as the court of appeal for human interaction between
individuals, communities, and nations in the Sinitic world.
Confucianism was perceived by the Mongols as a Chinese religion, and it had mixed
fortunes under their rule. The teachings of the Neo-Confucian school of Zhu Xi from the
Song period were introduced to the Mongol court at Zhongdu in the late 1230s but…
The Thought Of Confucius
The story of Confucianism does not begin with Confucius. Nor was Confucius the
founder of Confucianism in the sense that the Buddha was the founder of Buddhism and
Jesus Christ the founder of Christianity. Rather, Confucius considered himself a
transmitter who consciously tried to reanimate the old in order to attain the new. He
proposed revitalizing the meaning of the past by advocating a ritualized life. Confucius’s
love of antiquity was motivated by his strong desire to understand why certain life
forms and institutions, such as reverence for ancestors, human-centred religious
practices, and mourning ceremonies, had survived for centuries. His journey into the
past was a search for roots, which he perceived as grounded in humanity’s deepest
needs for belonging and communicating. He had faith in the cumulative power of
culture. The fact that traditional ways had lost vitality did not, for him, diminish their
potential for regeneration in the future. In fact, Confucius’s sense of history was so
strong that he saw himself as a conservationist responsible for the continuity of the
cultural values and the social norms that had worked so well for the idealized civilization
of the Western Zhou dynasty.
Confucius
The scholarly tradition envisioned by Confucius can be traced to the sage-kings of
antiquity. Although the earliest dynasty confirmed by archaeology is the Shang dynasty
(18th–12th century BCE), the historical period that Confucius claimed as relevant was
much earlier. Confucius may have initiated a cultural process known in the West as
Confucianism, but he and those who followed him considered themselves part of a
tradition, later identified by Chinese historians as the rujia, “scholarly tradition,” that
had its origins two millennia previously, when the legendary sages Yao and Shun created
a civilized world through moral persuasion.
Confucius’s hero was Zhougong, or the duke of Zhou (fl. 11th century BCE), who was
said to have helped consolidate, expand, and refine the “feudal” ritual system. This
elaborate system of mutual dependence was based on blood ties, marriage alliances,
and old covenants as well as on newly negotiated contracts. The appeal to cultural
values and social norms for the maintenance of interstate as well as domestic order was
predicated on a shared political vision, namely, that authority lies in universal kingship,
heavily invested with ethical and religious power by the “mandate of heaven”
(tianming), and that social solidarity is achieved not by legal constraint but by ritual
observance. Its implementation enabled the Western Zhou dynasty to survive in relative
peace and prosperity for more than five centuries.
Inspired by the statesmanship of Zhougong, Confucius harboured a lifelong dream to be
in a position to emulate the duke by putting into practice the political ideas that he had
learned from the ancient sages and worthies. Although Confucius never realized his
political dream, his conception of politics as moral persuasion became more and more
influential.
The concept of “heaven” (tian), unique in Zhou cosmology, was compatible with that of
the Lord on High (Shangdi) in the Shang dynasty. Lord on High may have referred to the
ancestral progenitor of the Shang royal lineage, but heaven to the Zhou kings, although
also ancestral, was a more-generalized anthropomorphic god. The Zhou belief in the
mandate of heaven (the functional equivalent of the will of the Lord on High) differed
from the divine right of kings in that there was no guarantee that the descendants of
the Zhou royal house would be entrusted with kingship, for, as written in the Shujing
(“Classic of History”), “heaven sees as the people see [and] hears as the people hear”;
thus, the virtues of the kings were essential for the maintenance of their power and
authority. This emphasis on benevolent rulership, expressed in numerous bronze
inscriptions, was both a reaction to the collapse of the Shang dynasty and an affirmation
of a deep-rooted worldview.
Partly because of the vitality of the feudal ritual system and partly because of the
strength of the royal household itself, the Zhou kings were able to control their kingdom
for several centuries. In 771 BCE, however, they were forced to move their capital
eastward to present-day Luoyang to avoid barbarian attacks from Central Asia. Real
power thereafter passed into the hands of feudal lords. Since the surviving line of the
Zhou kings continued to be recognized in name, they still managed to exercise some
measure of symbolic control. By Confucius’s time, however, the feudal ritual system had
been so fundamentally undermined that the political crises also precipitated a profound
sense of moral decline: the centre of symbolic control could no longer hold the
kingdom, which had devolved from centuries of civil war into 14 feudal states.
Confucius’s response was to address himself to the issue of learning to be human. In so
doing he attempted to redefine and revitalize the institutions that for centuries had
been vital to political stability and social order: the family, the school, the local
community, the state, and the kingdom. Confucius did not accept the status quo, which
held that wealth and power spoke the loudest. He felt that virtue (de), both as a
personal quality and as a requirement for leadership, was essential for individual
dignity, communal solidarity, and political order.
The Analects as the embodiment of Confucian ideas
The Lunyu (Analects), the most-revered sacred scripture in the Confucian tradition, was
probably compiled by the succeeding generations of Confucius’s disciples. Based
primarily on the Master’s sayings, preserved in both oral and written transmissions, it
captures the Confucian spirit in form and content in the same way that the Platonic
dialogues embody Socratic pedagogy.
The Analects has often been viewed by the critical modern reader as a collection of
unrelated reflections randomly put together. That impression may have resulted from
the unfortunate perception of Confucius as a mere commonsense moralizer who gave
practical advice to students in everyday situations. If readers approach the Analects as a
communal memory, a literary device on the part of those who considered themselves
beneficiaries of the Confucian Way to continue the Master’s memory and to transmit his
form of life as a living tradition, they come close to why it has been so revered in China
for centuries. Interchanges with various historical figures and his disciples are used to
show Confucius in thought and action, not as an isolated individual but as the centre of
relationships. Actually the sayings of the Analects reveal Confucius’s personality—his
ambitions, his fears, his joys, his commitments, and above all his self-knowledge.
The purpose, then, in compiling the distilled statements centring on Confucius seems
not to have been to present an argument or to record an event but to offer an invitation
to readers to take part in an ongoing conversation. Through the Analects Confucians for
centuries learned to reenact the awe-inspiring ritual of participating in a conversation
with Confucius.
Confucius was deeply concerned that the culture (wen) he cherished was not being
transmitted and that the learning (xue) he propounded was not being taught. His strong
sense of mission, however, never interfered with his ability to remember what had been
imparted to him, to learn without flagging, and to teach without growing weary. What
he demanded of himself was strenuous:
It is these things that cause me concern: failure to cultivate virtue, failure to go deeply
into what I have learned, inability to move up to what I have heard to be right, and
inability to reform myself when I have defects. (7:3)
What he demanded of his students was the willingness to learn: “I do not enlighten
anyone who is not eager to learn, nor encourage anyone who is not anxious to put his
ideas into words” (7:8).
The community that Confucius created was a scholarly fellowship of like-minded men of
different ages and different backgrounds from different states. They were attracted to
Confucius because they shared his vision and to varying degrees took part in his mission
to bring moral order to an increasingly fragmented world. That mission was difficult and
even dangerous. Confucius himself suffered from joblessness, homelessness, starvation,
and occasionally life-threatening violence. Yet his faith in the survivability of the culture
that he cherished and the workability of the approach to teaching that he propounded
was so steadfast that he convinced his followers as well as himself that heaven was on
their side. When Confucius’s life was threatened in Kuang, he said:
Since the death of King Wen [founder of the Zhou dynasty] does not the mission of
culture (wen) rest here in me? If heaven intends this culture to be destroyed, those who
come after me will not be able to have any part of it. If heaven does not intend this
culture to be destroyed, then what can the men of Kuang do to me? (9:5)
That expression of self-confidence informed by a powerful sense of mission may give
the impression that there was presumptuousness in Confucius’s self-image. Confucius,
however, made it explicit that he was far from attaining sagehood and that all he really
excelled in was “love of learning” (5:27). To him, learning not only broadened his
knowledge and deepened his self-awareness but also defined who he was. He frankly
admitted that he was not born endowed with knowledge, nor did he belong to the class
of men who could transform society without knowledge. Rather, he reported that he
used his ears widely and followed what was good in what he had heard and used his
eyes widely and retained in his mind what he had seen. His learning constituted “a
lower level of knowledge” (7:27), a practical level that was presumably accessible to the
majority of human beings. In that sense Confucius was neither a prophet with privileged
access to the divine nor a philosopher who had already seen the truth but a teacher of
humanity who was also an advanced fellow traveler on the way to self-realization.
As a teacher of humanity, Confucius stated his ambition in terms of concern for human
beings: “To bring comfort to the old, to have trust in friends, and to cherish the young”
(5:25). Confucius’s vision of the way to develop a moral community began with a holistic
reflection on the human condition. Instead of dwelling on abstract speculations such as
humanity’s condition in the state of nature, Confucius sought to understand the actual
situation of a given time and to use that as his point of departure. His aim was to restore
trust in government and to transform society into a flourishing moral community by
cultivating a sense of humanity in politics and society. To achieve that aim, the creation
of a scholarly community, the fellowship of junzi (exemplary persons), was essential. In
the words of Confucius’s disciple Zengzi, exemplary persons must be broad-minded and
resolute, for their burden is heavy and their road is long. They take humanity as their
burden.
Is that not heavy? Only with death does their road come to an end. Is that not long?
(8:7)
The fellowship of junzi as moral vanguards of society, however, did not seek to establish
a radically different order. Its mission was to redefine and revitalize those institutions
that for centuries were believed to have maintained social solidarity and enabled people
to live in harmony and prosperity. An obvious example of such an institution was the
family.
It is related in the Analects that Confucius, when asked why he did not take part in
government, responded by citing a passage from the ancient Shujing (“Classic of
History”),
“Simply by being a good son and friendly to his brothers a man can exert an influence
upon government!” to show that what a person does in the confines of his home is
politically significant (2:21).
That maxim is based on the Confucian conviction that cultivation of the self is the root
of social order and that social order is the basis for political stability and enduring peace.
The assertion that family ethics is politically efficacious must be seen in the context of
the Confucian conception of politics as “rectification” (zheng). Rulers should begin by
rectifying their own conduct; that is, they are to be examples who govern by moral
leadership and exemplary teaching rather than by force. Government’s responsibility is
not only to provide food and security but also to educate the people. Law and
punishment are the minimum requirements for order; the higher goal of social
harmony, however, can be attained only by virtue expressed through ritual
performance. To perform rituals, then, is to take part in a communal act to promote
mutual understanding.
One of the fundamental Confucian values that ensures the integrity of ritual
performance is xiao (filial piety). Indeed, Confucius saw filial piety as the first step
toward moral excellence, which he believed lay in the attainment of the cardinal virtue,
ren (humanity). To learn to embody the family in the mind and the heart is to become
able to move beyond self-centredness or, to borrow from modern psychology, to
transform the enclosed private ego into an open self. Filial piety, however, does not
demand unconditional submissiveness to parental authority but recognition of and
reverence for the source of life. The purpose of filial piety, as the ancient Greeks
expressed it, is to enable both parent and child to flourish. Confucians see it as an
essential way of learning to be human.
Confucians, moreover, are fond of applying the family metaphor to the community, the
country, and the cosmos. They prefer to address the emperor as the son of heaven
(tianzi), the king as ruler-father, and the magistrate as the “father-mother official,”
because to them the family-centred nomenclature implies a political vision. When
Confucius said that taking care of family affairs is itself active participation in politics, he
had already made it clear that family ethics is not merely a private concern; the public
good is realized by and through it.
Confucius defined the process of becoming human as being able to “discipline yourself
and return to ritual” (12:1). The dual focus on the transformation of the self (Confucius
is said to have freed himself from four things: “opinionatedness, dogmatism, obstinacy,
and egoism” [9:4]) and on social participation enabled Confucius to be loyal (zhong) to
himself and considerate (shu) of others (4:15). It is easy to understand why the
Confucian “golden rule” is “Do not do unto others what you would not want others to
do unto you!” (15:23). Confucius’s legacy, laden with profound ethical implications, is
captured by his “plain and real” appreciation that learning to be human is a communal
enterprise:
Persons of humanity, in wishing to establish themselves, also establish others, and in
wishing to enlarge themselves, also enlarge others. The ability to take as analogy what
is near at hand can be called the method of humanity. (6:30)
Formation Of The Classical Confucian Tradition
According to Han Feizi (died 233 BCE), shortly after Confucius’s death his followers split
into eight distinct schools, all claiming to be the legitimate heir to the Confucian legacy.
Presumably each school was associated with or inspired by one or more of Confucius’s
disciples. Yet the Confucians did not exert much influence in the 5th century BCE.
Although the reverent Yan Yuan (or Yan Hui), the faithful Zengzi, the talented Zigong,
the erudite Zixia, and others may have generated a great deal of enthusiasm among the
second generation of Confucius’s students, it was not at all clear at the time that the
Confucian tradition was to emerge as the most-powerful one in Chinese history.
Mencius (c. 371–c. 289 BCE) complained that the world of thought in the early Warring
States period (475–221 BCE) was dominated by the collectivism of Mozi and the
individualism of Yang Zhu (440–c. 360 BCE). The historical situation a century after
Confucius’s death clearly shows that the Confucian attempt to moralize politics was not
working; the disintegration of the Zhou feudal ritual system and the rise of powerful
hegemonic states reveal that wealth and power spoke the loudest. The hermits (the
early Daoists), who left the world to create a sanctuary in nature in order to lead a
contemplative life, and the realists (proto-Legalists), who played the dangerous game of
assisting ambitious kings to gain wealth and power so that they could influence the
political process, were actually determining the intellectual agenda. The Confucians
refused to be identified with the interests of the ruling minority, because their social
consciousness impelled them to serve as the conscience of the people. They were in a
dilemma. Although they wanted to be actively involved in politics, they could not accept
the status quo as the legitimate arena in which to exercise authority and power. In
short, they were in the world but not of it; they could not leave the world, nor could
they effectively change it.
Mencius is known as the self-styled transmitter of the Confucian Way. Educated first by
his mother and then allegedly by a student of Confucius’s grandson, Mencius brilliantly
performed his role as a social critic, a moral philosopher, and a political activist. He
argued that cultivating a class of scholar-officials who would not be directly involved in
agriculture, industry, and commerce was vital to the well-being of the state. In his
sophisticated argument against the physiocrats (those who advocated the supremacy of
agriculture), he intelligently employed the idea of the division of labour to defend those
who labour with their minds, observing that service is as important as productivity. To
him Confucians served the vital interests of the state as scholars not by becoming
bureaucratic functionaries but by assuming the responsibility of teaching the ruling
minority humane government (renzheng) and the kingly way (wangdao). In dealing with
feudal lords, Mencius conducted himself not merely as a political adviser but also as a
teacher of kings. Mencius made it explicit that a true person cannot be corrupted by
wealth, subdued by power, or affected by poverty.
To articulate the relationship between Confucian moral idealism and the concrete social
and political realities of his time, Mencius began by exposing as impractical the
prevailing ideologies of Mozi’s collectivism and Yang Zhu’s individualism. Mozi, a former
Confucian who had become disaffected with rituals that he viewed as too time-
consuming to be practical, promoted a mode of collectivism that rested on the principle
of loving everyone (jianai) without respect to social status or personal relationship.
Mencius contended, however, that the result of the Mohist admonition to treat a
stranger as intimately as one’s own father would be to treat one’s own father as
indifferently as one would treat a stranger. Yang Zhu, on the other hand, advocated the
primacy of the self and the nourishment (yang) of one’s nature (xing) rather than
investing one’s time and energy in social concerns and institutions that (Yang suggested)
violated that nature. Yang Zhu gained infamy among Confucians for declaring that he
would not sacrifice one eyelash to save the world. His point was arguably that people all
too often waste their own lives in the service of social arrangements that actually
undermine their best interests. Mencius, however, who as a good Confucian viewed the
family as the natural paradigm of social organization, contended that excessive
attention to self-interest would lead to political disorder. Indeed, Mencius argued, in
Mohist collectivism fatherhood becomes a meaningless concept, and so does kingship in
Yang Zhu’s individualism.
Mencius’s strategy for social reform was to change the language of profit, self-interest,
wealth, and power by making it part of a moral discourse, with emphasis on rightness,
public-spiritedness, welfare, and influence. Mencius, however, was not arguing against
profit. Rather, he instructed the feudal lords to look beyond the narrow horizon of their
palaces and to cultivate a common bond with their ministers, officers, clerks, and the
seemingly undifferentiated masses. Only then, Mencius contended, would they be able
to preserve their profit, self-interest, wealth, and power. He encouraged them to extend
their benevolence (his interpretation of ren) and warned them that this was crucial for
the protection of their families.
Mencius’s appeal to the common bond among all people as a mechanism of
government was predicated on his strong populist sense that the people are more
important than the state and the state is more important than the king and that the
ruler who does not act in accordance with the kingly way is unfit to rule. Mencius
insisted that an unfit ruler should be criticized, rehabilitated, or, as the last resort,
deposed. Since “heaven sees as the people see; heaven hears as the people hear,”
revolution, or literally the change of the mandate (geming), in severe cases is not only
justifiable but is a moral imperative.
Mencius’s populist conception of politics was predicated on his philosophical vision that
human beings can perfect themselves through effort and that human nature (xing) is
good. While he acknowledged the role of biological and environmental factors in
shaping the human condition, he insisted that human beings become moral by willing to
be so. According to Mencius, willing entails the transformative moral act insofar as the
propensity of humans to be good is activated whenever they decide to bring it to their
conscious attention.
Mencius taught that all people have the spiritual resources to deepen their self-
awareness and strengthen their bonds with others. Biologic and environmental
constraints notwithstanding, people always have the freedom and the ability to refine
and enlarge their heaven-endowed nobility (their “great body”). The possibility of
continuously refining and enlarging the self is vividly illustrated in Mencius’s description
of degrees of excellence:
Those who are admirable are called good (shan). Those who are sincere are called true
(xin). Those who are totally genuine are called beautiful (mei). Those who radiate this
genuineness are called great (da). Those whose greatness transforms are called sagely
(sheng). Those whose sageliness is unfathomable are called spiritual (shen). (VIIB:25)
Furthermore, Mencius asserted that if people fully realize the potential of their hearts,
they will understand their nature; by understanding their nature, they will know heaven.
Learning to be fully human, in this Mencian perspective, entails the cultivation of human
sensitivity to embody the whole cosmos as one’s lived experience:
All myriad things are here in me. There is no greater joy for me than to find, on self-
examination, that I am true to myself. Try your best to treat others as you would wish to
be treated yourself, and you will find that this is the shortest way to humanity. (VIIA:4)
Xunzi: The transmitter of Confucian scholarship
If Mencius brought Confucian moral idealism to fruition, Xunzi (c. 300–c. 230 BCE)
conscientiously transformed Confucianism into a realistic and systematic inquiry on the
human condition, with special reference to ritual (li) and authority. Widely
acknowledged as the most eminent of the notable scholars who congregated in Jixia,
the capital of the wealthy and powerful Qi state in the mid-3rd century BCE, Xunzi
distinguished himself in erudition and by the quality of his argumentation. His critique of
the so-called 12 philosophers gave an overview of the intellectual life of his time. His
penetrating insight into the limitations of virtually all the major currents of thought
propounded by his fellow thinkers helped to establish the Confucian school as a
dominant political and social force. His principal adversary, however, was Mencius, and
he vigorously attacked Mencius’s view that human nature is good as naive moral
optimism.
True to the Confucian and, for that matter, Mencian spirit, Xunzi underscored the
centrality of self-cultivation. He defined the process of Confucian education, from
exemplary person (junzi) to sage, as a ceaseless endeavour to accumulate knowledge,
skills, insight, and wisdom. In contrast to Mencius, Xunzi stressed that human nature is
evil. Because he saw human beings as prone by nature to pursue the gratification of
their passions, he firmly believed in the need for clearly articulated social constraints.
Without constraints, social solidarity—the precondition for human well-being—would
be undermined. The most-serious flaw he perceived in the Mencian commitment to the
goodness of human nature was the practical consequence of neglecting the necessity of
ritual and authority for the well-being of society. For Xunzi, as for Confucius before him,
becoming moral is hard work.
Xunzi singled out the cognitive function of the heart-and-mind (xin), or human
rationality, as the basis for morality. People become moral by voluntarily harnessing
their desires and passions to act in accordance with society’s norms. Although that is
alien to human nature, it is perceived by the heart-and-mind as necessary for both
survival and well-being. It is the construction of the moral mind as a human artifact, as a
“second nature.” Like Mencius, Xunzi believed in the perfectibility of all human beings
through self-cultivation, in humanity and rightness as cardinal virtues, in humane
government as the kingly way, in social harmony, and in education. But his view of how
those could actually be achieved was diametrically opposed to that of Mencius. The
Confucian project, as shaped by Xunzi, defines learning as socialization. The authority of
ancient sages and worthies, the classical tradition, conventional norms, teachers,
governmental rules and regulations, and political officers are all important for that
process. A cultured person is by definition a fully socialized member of the human
community who has successfully sublimated his instinctual demands for the public
good.
Xunzi’s tough-minded stance on law, order, authority, and ritual seems precariously
close to that of the Legalists, whose policy of social conformism was designed
exclusively for the benefit of the ruler. His insistence on objective standards of
behaviour may have ideologically contributed to the rise of authoritarianism, which
resulted in the dictatorship of the Qin (221–207 BCE). As a matter of fact, two of the
most-influential Legalists, the theoretician Hanfeizi from the state of Han and the Qin
minister Li Si (c. 280–208 BCE), were his pupils. Yet Xunzi was instrumental in the
continuation of Confucianism as a scholarly enterprise. His naturalistic interpretation of
tian, his sophisticated understanding of culture, his insightful observations on the
epistemological aspect of the mind and social function of language, his emphasis on
moral reasoning and the art of argumentation, his belief in progress, and his interest in
political institutions so significantly enriched the Confucian heritage that he was revered
by the Confucians as the paradigmatic scholar for more than three centuries.
The Confucianization of politics
The short-lived dictatorship of the Qin marked a brief triumph of Legalism. In the early
years of the Western Han (206 BCE–25 CE), however, the Legalist practice of absolute
power of the emperor, complete subjugation of the peripheral states to the central
government, total uniformity of thought, and ruthless enforcement of law were
replaced by the Daoist practice of reconciliation and noninterference. That practice is
commonly known in history as the Huang-Lao method, referring to the art of rulership
attributed to the Yellow Emperor (Huangdi) and the mysterious founder of Daoism,
Laozi. Although a few Confucian thinkers, such as Lu Jia and Jia Yi, made important
policy recommendations, Confucianism before the emergence of Dong Zhongshu (c.
179–c. 104 BCE) was not particularly influential. Nonetheless, the gradual
Confucianization of Han politics began soon after the founding of the dynasty.
By the reign of Wudi (the “Martial Emperor”; 141–87 BCE), who inherited the task of
consolidating power in the central Han court, Confucianism was deeply entrenched in
the central bureaucracy. It was manifest in such practices as the clear separation of the
court and the government, often under the leadership of a scholarly prime minister, the
process of recruiting officials through the dual mechanism of recommendation and
selection, the family-centred social structure, the agriculture-based economy, and the
educational network. Confucian ideas were also firmly established in the legal system as
ritual became increasingly important in governing behaviour, defining social
relationships, and adjudicating civil disputes. Yet it was not until the prime minister
Gongsun Hong (died 121 BCE) had persuaded Wudi to announce formally that the ru
school alone would receive state sponsorship that Confucianism became an officially
recognized imperial ideology and state cult.
As a result, Confucian Classics became the core curriculum for all levels of education. In
136 BCE Wudi set up at court five Erudites of the Five Classics and in 124 BCE assigned
50 official students to study with them, thus creating a de facto imperial university. By
50 BCE enrollment at the university had grown to an impressive 3,000, and by 1 CE a
hundred students a year were entering government service through the examinations
administered by the state. In short, those with a Confucian education began to staff the
bureaucracy. In the year 58 all government schools were required to make sacrifices to
Confucius, and in 175 the court had the approved version of the Classics, which had
been determined by scholarly conferences and research groups under imperial auspices
for several decades, carved on large stone tablets. (Those stelae, which were erected at
the capital, are today well preserved in the museum of Xi’an.) That act of committing to
permanence and to public display the content of the sacred scriptures symbolized the
completion of the formation of the classical Confucian tradition.
The Five Classics
The compilation of the Wujing (Five Classics) was a concrete manifestation of the
coming of age of the Confucian tradition. The inclusion of both pre-Confucian texts, the
Shujing (“Classic of History”) and the Shijing (“Classic of Poetry”), and contemporary
Qin-Han material, such as certain portions of the Liji (“Record of Rites”), suggests that
the spirit behind the establishment of the core curriculum for Confucian education was
ecumenical. The Five Classics can be described in terms of five visions: metaphysical,
political, poetic, social, and historical.
The metaphysical vision, expressed in the Yijing (“Classic of Changes”), combines
divinatory art with numerological technique and ethical insight. According to the
philosophy of change, the cosmos is a great transformation occasioned by the constant
interaction of yin and yang, the two complementary as well as conflicting life forces (qi).
The world, which emerges out of that ongoing transformation, exhibits both organismic
unity and dynamism. The exemplary person, inspired by the harmony and creativity of
the cosmos, must emulate that pattern by aiming to realize the highest ideal of “unity of
man and heaven” (tianrenheyi) through ceaseless self-exertion.
The political vision, contained in the Shujing, presents kingship in terms of the ethical
foundation for a humane government. The legendary Three Emperors (Yao, Shun, and
Yu) all ruled by virtue. Their sagacity, xiao (filial piety), and dedication to work enabled
them to create a political culture based on responsibility and trust. Their exemplary lives
taught and encouraged the people to enter into a covenant with them so that social
harmony could be achieved without punishment or coercion. Even in the Three
Dynasties (Xia, Shang, and Zhou) moral authority, as expressed through ritual, was
sufficient to maintain political order. The human continuum, from the undifferentiated
masses to the enlightened people, the nobility, and the sage-king, formed an organic
unity as an integral part of the great cosmic transformation. Politics means moral
persuasion, and the purpose of the government is not only to provide food and maintain
order but also to educate.
The poetic vision, contained in the Shijing, underscores the Confucian valuation of
common human feelings. The majority of verses give voice to emotions and sentiments
of communities and persons from all levels of society expressed on a variety of
occasions. The basic theme of that poetic world is mutual responsiveness. The tone as a
whole is honest rather than earnest and evocative rather than expressive.
The social vision, contained in the Liji, shows society not as an adversarial system based
on contractual relationships but as a community of trust with emphasis on
communication. Society organized by the four functional occupations—the scholar, the
farmer, the artisan, and the merchant—is, in the true sense of the word, a cooperation.
As a contributing member of the cooperation, each person is obligated to recognize the
existence of others and to serve the public good. It is the king’s duty to act kingly and
the father’s duty to act fatherly. If kings or fathers fail to behave properly, they cannot
expect their ministers or children to act in accordance with ritual. It is in that sense that
a chapter in the Liji entitled the “Great Learning” (Daxue) specifies, “From the son of
heaven to the commoner, all must regard self-cultivation as the root.” That pervasive
consciousness of duty features prominently in all Confucian literature on ritual.
The historical vision, presented in the Chunqiu (“Spring and Autumn [Annals]”),
emphasizes the significance of collective memory for communal self-identification.
Historical consciousness is a defining characteristic of Confucian thought. By defining
himself as a lover of antiquity and a transmitter of its values, Confucius made it explicit
that a sense of history is not only desirable but necessary for self-knowledge.
Confucius’s emphasis on the importance of history was in a way his reappropriation of
the ancient Sinitic wisdom that reanimating the old is the best way to attain the new.
Confucius may not have been the author of the Chunqiu, but it seems likely that he
applied moral judgment to political events in China proper from the 8th to the 5th
century BCE. In that unprecedented procedure he assumed a godlike role in evaluating
politics by assigning ultimate historical praise and blame to the most powerful and
influential political actors of the period. Not only did that practice inspire the innovative
style of the grand historian Sima Qian (c. 145–c. 87 BCE), but it was also widely
employed by others writing dynastic histories in imperial China.
Dong Zhongshu: The Confucian visionary
Like Sima Qian, Dong Zhongshu (c. 179–c. 104 BCE) took the Chunqiu absolutely
seriously. His own work, Chunqiu fanlu (“Luxuriant Dew of the Spring and Autumn
Annals”), however, is far from being a book of historical judgment. It is a metaphysical
treatise in the spirit of the Yijing. A man extraordinarily dedicated to learning (he is said
to have been so absorbed in his studies that for three years he did not even glance at
the garden in front of him) and strongly committed to moral idealism (one of his often-
quoted dicta is “rectifying rightness without scheming for profit; enlightening his Way
without calculating efficaciousness”), Dong was instrumental in developing a
characteristically Han interpretation of Confucianism.
Despite Wudi’s pronouncement that Confucianism alone would receive imperial
sponsorship, Daoists, yinyang cosmologists, Legalists, shamanists, practitioners of
seances, healers, magicians, geomancers, and others all contributed to the cosmological
thinking of the Han cultural elite. Indeed, Dong himself was a beneficiary of that
intellectual syncretism, for he freely tapped the spiritual resources of his time in
formulating his own worldview: that human actions have cosmic consequences.
Dong’s inquiries on the meaning of the wuxing, or five phases (metal, wood, water, fire,
and earth), the correspondence of human beings and the numerical categories of
heaven, and the sympathetic activation of things of the same kind, as well as his studies
of cardinal Confucian values such as humanity, rightness, ritual, wisdom, and
trustworthiness, enabled him to develop an elaborate worldview integrating Confucian
ethics with naturalistic cosmology. What Dong accomplished was not merely a
theological justification for the emperor as the “son of heaven” (tianzi); rather, his
theory of mutual responsiveness between heaven and humanity provided the Confucian
scholars with a higher law by which to judge the conduct of the ruler.
Despite Dong’s immense popularity, his worldview was not universally accepted by Han
Confucian scholars. A reaction in favour of a more rational and moralistic approach to
the Confucian Classics, known as the Old Text school, had already set in before the fall
of the Western Han. Yang Xiong (c. 53 BCE–18 CE) in the Fayan (“Model Sayings”), a
collection of moralistic aphorisms in the style of the Analects, and the Taixuan jing
(“Classic of the Supremely Profound Principle”), a cosmological speculation in the style
of the Yijing, presented an alternative worldview. That school, claiming its own
recensions of authentic classical texts allegedly rediscovered during the Han period and
written in an “old” script before the Qin unification, was widely accepted in the Eastern
Han (25–220 CE). As the institutions of the Erudites and the Imperial University
expanded in the Eastern Han, the study of the Classics became more refined and
elaborate. Confucian scholasticism, however, like its counterparts in Talmudic and
biblical studies, became too professionalized to remain a vital intellectual force.
Yet Confucian ethics exerted great influence on government, schools, and society at
large. Toward the end of the Han as many as 30,000 students attended the Imperial
University. All public schools throughout the land offered regular sacrifices to Confucius,
and he virtually became the patron saint of education. Many Confucian temples were
also built. The imperial courts continued to honour Confucius from age to age; a
Confucian temple eventually stood in every one of the 2,000 counties. As a result, the
teacher—together with heaven, earth, the emperor, and parents—became one of the
most-respected authorities in traditional China.
